So abundant were UFO reports on our field survey of the Cariboo that ironically after a while we hoped we would not hear of any more. Probably like most ufologists in similar circumstances we were looking for a pattern, and now that we thought we had found it – sketchy though it was – we wanted it to remain intact. In that flap of 1967, we concluded, the core of work – for whatever purpose – was carried out by those vari-colored balls of lights that showed up everywhere. Apparently they were some kind of sensors gleaning information which they then relayed back to a central body of information.

It was all so clear. Brian Grattan at Lone Butte had told us how he had seen four of these lights storing up energy, or whatever, in company with their parent body. Next we had the McCleese Lake report of a red light carrying out its mission, and finally the step-by-step account of the Hills at Green Lake who saw the actual system of dispatch and return.

Scattered throughout were high-flying objects of various forms but these seem to be a part of any flap and we made no special effort to fit them into the pattern. Right from the start, however, there were two other objects that posed a problem: namely, the conventional saucer-type that flew over Grattan's cattle, and then the brilliant white light that landed near his ranch and created an electrical storm. How did they fit into the picture?

As the ball-of-light sightings intruded themselves more and more into our report, we began mentally to isolate these two incidents from the rest of the flap. In the manner of our scientific friends, we argued they were oddities and therefore had no more than coincidental bearing on the main events.

Then, just about the time our minds were comfortably made up, we stumbled across another incident and our pattern fell apart, or seemed to. It happened when someone suggested somewhat mysteriously we get in touch with Herman Sten at Lac La Hache.

When we did so, we understood the mystery. Clearly Herman Sten is not a man given to ready conversation, particularly when approached at work by a stranger. He has the look and manner of one who gives himself quietly and completely to his job, which is the maintenance of heavy equipment. Unless we had shown him a copy of Canadian UFO Report he might have had little to say to us. But the magazine convinced him of our real interest and, like a man trying to rid himself of a disturbing dream, he described what happened to him one evening in the late fall of 1967 (unknown to him, the Cariboo flap year).

“I don't remember the exact date,” he told us, “but I do remember it was a Friday. I was driving home from work about six o'clock and at that time on a Friday there should have been lots of traffic on the highway. But this time there was hardly any.”
Since he was living then at 100 Mile House about 30 miles to the south, he had plenty of time to observe the rolling ranch country through which he was driving. The only restriction was the approach of night.

“Soon after I left Lac La Hache I noticed something in the air away ahead of me to the right. It looked like a blinking light at first but it wasn't moving very fast so I thought it must be a helicopter on some kind of exercise, and I kept my eye on it.”

Several miles farther on he realized he was catching up to the light, and by the time he reached a small lake at the 108-mile point he was abreast of the object and had a close look at it.

“It was hovering about 200 feet above the lake and I could see the light wasn't blinking at all,” he said. “It was revolving around some large dark thing that looked like two plates pressed together, one upside down on top of the other. On top was a dome-shaped piece and on top of that was a steady red light, not very bright. The whole thing must have been more than 100 feet wide.”

Despite a complete lack of sound from the object, and its strange shape, Sten still believed he was looking at some sort of conventional aircraft.

“I thought something must have happened out on the lake and this was an air-rescue operation. Then I began to wonder because all at once the thing flew across the highway right in front of me and hovered over a small hill on the other side. A moment later I knew for sure something funny was going on. The object started to come down among some trees on the hill, and when I saw the light flashing around on those trees, I figured it was time to get away from there.”

About three miles farther on he stopped the car again and looked back just as the object was climbing in a sweeping curve toward the west. Finally reaching home at 100 Mile House, he looked for the object once more and for an instant saw the intermittent light before it disappeared high in the darkness.

So here was yet another type of closely observed object that we had to fit into the Cariboo flap. Definitely not of the red-light variety, it seemed more like a larger version of the disc-shaped craft seen by Brian Grattan over his corral at Lone Butte (though this sighting actually took place early in 1968).

Did this mean, then, there were two flaps going on – one composed of glowing lights and the other of flying discs? Both are a frequently seen type of UFO but, since we hold the view that our space visitors probably have various origins, it bothered us that objects of such dissimilarity should be operating in the same areas at about the same time. By some weird chance, was the Cariboo being visited simultaneously by two sets of aliens?

Then we remembered that Grattan had seen a disc and a group of red lights together, and that seemed to answer our question. Different though they looked, the two types of UFOs were related and on the same mission.