"No one believed me," said a young man as he told of seeing an unidentified
flying object about eight years ago.
"Don't use my name," he told the
Journal. "I'm having a hard enough time from the guys at work because I'm
coming to these meetings."
He was at the meeting of Edmonton UFO
Society Sunday because of what he saw eight years ago and because he wanted to
learn if other people had had similar experiences.
He told the about 50 at the meeting
about coming to an open field on his father's farm near Fort Saskatchewan when
he was about 12 or 13.
SIZE OF CAR
It was late at night. In the middle
of the field he saw an elliptical object that, from 100 yards away, looked
"about the size of a car."
The object had red, blue and green
flashing lights at its base - in fact, he said, it was just like the UFOs
reported in Michigan.
"I was so scared I was just trying to
hide - I was afraid to run away so I hid on the ground and watched it."
There was no noise as the object
"took off straight up in the air."
But when the frightened boy ran home, no one would believe him.
SIMILAR EXPERIENCE
Other members of the newly-formed
society have had similar experiences although not as detailed as this one.
One man reported seeing hovering and
moving lights near Cold Lake where he was working building the air base in
1954.
It wasn't a plane, he insisted.
Another man reported seeing a moving
light to the west about sunset a few evenings ago as he was driving over the
overpass near Sherwood Park.
He conceded that it could have been
"a falling star."
Other members at the society's two
previous meetings have reported similar sightings.
These people appear to have come to
the meeting at the Highlands Masons Temple because they want to be among
people who have had similar experiences and who are willing to take them
seriously.
Others are there because of curiosity
- an urge to find some satisfactory explanation for the UFOs.
But one thing they don't want seems
to be personal publicity. They are afraid of being branded "a way out group of
nuts."
"One of the men reporting a sighting
at the last meeting is a high school principal - you can imagine what it would
do to him," the president told the Journal.
Members of the society are
approaching the question from all angles.
BACK TO BIBLE
One member at the Sunday meeting
discussed the metaphysical aspect. His material, based on several books,
traces the appearances of UFOs in the Bible. He also tied this into the
movements from one phase to the next of the zodiac.
A sceptic wouldn't be convinced by
some of the UFO information.
A book, Flying Saucers From Mars,
reviewed at the meeting, is the description of a meeting by the author Cedric
Allingham with a Martian in 1954 in Scotland.
According to Mr. Allingham, he saw a
saucer land and talked, in signs, with its occupant for about half-an-hour.
The book includes a signed statement
by a witness and a blurred photograph taken by Mr. Allingham of an extremely
humanoid "Martian."
But each member of the Edmonton UFO
Society is told to make up his own mind and to decide for himself what he will
believe.
The group meets every two weeks at
the Masonic Hall.
HOMEPAGE