On January l7th, 2000, Darren and his friend Brian were out together for a social evening,
returning home to Sooke Basin, which is located outside Victoria on the southwest side of
Vancouver Island. At around 12:30 a.m. they decided to go down to their own private beach
and do some stargazing. It was a fairly clear evening and they noticed a rather strange
dark cloud that was in the southern sky, shaped like a beehive. It soon vanished over the
hills towards the city of Victoria. The evening was cold and snow covered the ground,
there was fortunately no wind. Commenting upon the strangeness of the cloud the two men
suddenly noticed three lights that appeared to outline a dark triangle that, to their
mutual amazement, seemed to be lower than 10,000 feet.
Brian said, "what if
those lights go out?" and immediately one did, quickly followed by the other two.
"Did you see that?" Darren promptly acknowledging that indeed he had. However
even with the lights extinguished they could still see the outline of the triangle above
them. Shortly afterwards the craft began to move in the same direction as the strange
cloud, towards Victoria. Within ten minutes the object had vanished from sight. Both of
the men felt that something strange was in the air. The time now was around 2:30 a.m.
Despite feeling frozen both men were reluctant to move. Around 3:00 a.m. they noticed
another strange cloud seemingly appear from nowhere moving towards east Sooke. As it did
so it emitted a Krypton green flash that illuminated the whole sky, just like turning a
switch on and off a few times, a really bizarre spectacle. On reflection the two men
speculated that what they had just witnessed may have been some way to affect the sleeping
residents of the Sooke area by the way of a "frequency alteration". At any rate
the "discharge" occurred about three times. It certainly didn't look like
lightening and there was no expected accompanying thunder. Nor were they in anyway
convinced it was the northern lights. They then noticed a second and third cloud appear,
all moving gently together over the Sooke basin, giving the observers the impression that
each was concealing something inside it. Finally coming together they spanned the sky,
completely covering the basin.
The whole mass looked very much saucer-shaped, very wide in the middle, then narrowing
down at each end. At this point Darren pulled out his Pentax P5 camera with its 200mm lens
attached and promptly shot off three pictures from right to left so that it would
encompass the whole cloud. He had also taken photos of all the other strange things that
they had previously seen. As the two men stood in silent awe the cloud began to disperse
revealing a huge spacecraft that seemed to have mist hanging from it and which still
partially hid it. They estimated that the craft was at least TWO MILES across! It was hard
to believe that no one else was seeing what was so evident to them. The craft remained in
position for a good fifteen minutes as more photos were taken of it. Then the clouds began
a slow motion swirl as it began to move from stop into cruise mode and also headed off in
the direction of Victoria. More pictures were taken as it departed. It was now 3:30 a.m.
The whole experience had been very freaky. Now totally frozen stiff they decided to head
back to the house to warm up as the object was no longer in view. It had been quite an
evening, although by this time it was well into morning of course. Changing into some
warmer clothes, grabbing his wife's camera and a flashlight, Darren headed back to the
beach and the water's edge. Only this time he was confronted with something entirely
different in the ocean about 75 feet away, a sea serpent no less! But that's enough
excitement for one story, let's save those details for another time.
Oh, yes, did I hear you
ask about the two rolls of film that were exposed that very memorable night? Sorry folks,
he can't find 'em, just vanished, no-one has any idea what happened to them, so you'll
have to be content with these drawings.
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