From a
galaxy far, far away?
White Rock
appears to have enjoyed a special preview of
Star Wars this past weekend, as four independent
sources are claiming to have seen strange goings
on in the night sky there on Friday, Saturday
and Sunday.
North Delta
resident Graham Conway, president of UFO*BC, is
quite impressed with the number of unexplained
sightings.
"I don’t
understand what’s going on," he said. "For some
reason there’s a lot of activity going on in
White Rock. This is such a collection of such
good eye witness stuff."
A man
reportedly ran into the Ocean Beach pub about 10
pm Friday, "stuttering like mad" that he’d seen
a huge blue plasma ball cruising over Semiahmoo
Bay.
"He said it was
monstrous," said UFO tracker Bill Oliver, of
Guildford. "He was rattled big time."
Whatever it was
cast such a bright light it lit up the sea
beneath and "apparently acted in an intelligent
manner," said Conway.
The thing
apparently cruised over the bay, around Kwomais
Point and "out of sight."
Then on
Saturday, the really interesting stuff began.
Two young women and a girl, South Surrey
residents, were at the McDonald’s restaurant on
Johnston Road when they claim to have seen a
huge boomerang-shaped object with eight lights
on front, at about 10 pm. Shaking with fear,
they watched it move "very, very slowly" for
about eight seconds before it took off. Conway
said the experience left the 11-year-old girl
crying and one of the women, 18, so disturbed
she slept with her light on the following two
nights.
About five
minutes after that sighting two women were
standing on White Rock pier when they claim to
have seen a wedge-shaped object – a flying
triangle – traveling below the tree level. They
watched it for about three or four minutes as it
headed across the bay, away from White Rock.
Then on Sunday,
about 10:15 pm, Jen Pieschel and her boyfriend
Kevin Pearce saw a wedge-shaped object flying
over Highway 99, near the Crescent Road turnoff
. They saw it had blue and red flashing lights,
and then spotted an amber flash, like a flare,
from a second craft.
"We saw
something weird," Pieschel said. "We just want
to know what it was."
They searched
the Internet and found something like what they
saw: An F-117A Nighthawk stealth bomber. Only
thing is, Stealths can’t hover. Or can they?
The sightings
this past weekend weren’t the first such sights
in the White Rock/South Surrey area, either.
Richard Desilets of Aldergrove was near Zero
Avenue and Pacific Highway earlier this year
when he saw what looked like "two headlights"
blinking on and off just above a set of power
lines.
"It sounded
like a plane, like a turbine motor, but very,
very quiet," he said. "It just slowly took off."
In spite of the
four sightings this past weekend, Transport
Canada, NAVCAN, Vancouver International
Airport’s Traffic Control tower, Surrey and
White Rock RCMP, the weather office, National
Defence, and Vancouver Planetarium astronomer
David Dodge either hadn’t heard of anything
unusual, or didn’t know what to make of it.
Dodge noted though, that the US Whitby Island
naval base it not far away from White Rock.
"If it’s a
military thing, they don’t keep me informed,"
Dodge said.
Still, an
official at the naval station told the NOW the
wedge-shaped objects aren’t theirs.
"There’re
pretty cool, but we don’t have them here," he
said.
The UFO*BC
sightings hotline is 878-6511.
RETURN TO HISTORY INDEX