Gallagher's Canyon UFOs

On a weekend in July 1963, Carl Steiger, who was then a high School senior, and his older brother, George, took their Volkswagen van for a weekend of camping and fishing at Gallagher's Canyon, about 150 miles north of their home in Kelowna, British Columbia. They parked off the road by a creek at the foot of the canyon and fished all afternoon, then built a campfire and had their supper. They sat up watching the fire die down until about midnight, then went to bed in their sleeping bags in the van.

George went right to sleep, but Carl was restless. He decided to go out and make himself a cup of coffee over the coals. When he sat up, he could see the new compass they had left on the hump over the engine housing. In the moonlight he could see that the arrow was moving slowly. As he watched it, it would go about three quarters of the way around, from SE through N then down to SW, and back.

He picked it up, wondering if it was being affected by the engine coil, clicked it off and on again. In his hand it still moved around and back. So he put it down and went outside.

He could hear the water running in the swift shallow creek and hear a waterfall a little way upstream. Other than that, the night was still. Across the creek on the bare hillside five or six lights were wandering around at about walking speed. His first thought was that sheepherders must be looking for lost sheep, but that hardly seemed likely at one o'clock in the morning.

And the lights did not look like flashlights. They were white, about the size of basketballs, and they just floated along. They had no beam coming from them. Curious, Carl walked down to the stream and shouted across the water, "Hey, out there!" Immediately all the lights went out. Carl started back to the van to tell George, but before he got there he was aware that it was getting brighter around him.

Looking over his shoulder, he could see coming toward him, flying above the trees on the other side of the road, a very large bright light, larger than the van. It stopped about 75 feet away, pulsating slowly as it changed from dark green to light green. The light in a circle beneath it was so bright that Carl could see each pine needle on the ground.

"I could have read the newspaper," he says. After three or four minutes, the light continued on its path from southwest to northeast, following the canyon. By this time George had got up and he watched with Carl as it moved along, illuminating the canyon wall.

About three miles away they could see it rise to the top of Black Mountain, where there was a fire lookout tower. It spiraled the top of the mountain, its lights clearly reflected in the windows of the tower. Then, picking up speed, it shot into the sky and was lost to sight among the stars.

The next morning the boys broke camp and started the steep drive out of the canyon. They reached a point where the road dropped sharply on the west side, giving an unobstructed view across the valley. Just below them they could see an apparently abandoned log house standing in a field. There was an outhouse and some rusting pieces of equipment, but the puzzling thing was the large black circle in the green grass.

After stopping and looking at the scene through binoculars, they found a place on the narrow road to turn around and went back to get a closer look. As they thought, when they found the old ranch house it was empty, and there was no sign that anyone had been there for a long time. But about 150 feet from the house, an eight foot wide ring was burned to the ground in the two foot tall grass, leaving an unburned circle about 30 feet across in the middle. On the edges of the ring, the grass leaned away from the burned area. This grass was very dehydrated and crumpled when the fellows kicked it.

After Carl and George got home, they told their family and close friends about their experience but they did not report it to any authorities. (Carl did tell his science teacher, who had no explanation.)

UFOs had been reported in the area that summer, Carl says, but he and his brother had taken no particular interest in the stories. They didn't talk much about what they had seen because "at that time, if you did tell any people they thought you were a little weird."