A summer night in 1967, warm, calm, the sky a cobalt blue, speed of automobile, 35 miles an hour. Location, the Upper Levels highway overlooking the city of Vancouver. Direction of travel, west towards Sentinel Hill. At this approach, going west, the North Shore Mountains were silhouetted against the sky. From the northwest corner of the sky, like a floating leaf or the movement of a bat in slow motion, comes a pulsating red globe of light.

At the time of the sighting it was directly in front of my line of vision. Its movement and speed fascinated me to the extent that I pulled the car over to the side of the highway for a more steady view. It continued to move from the northwest over the highway and toward Sentinel Hill. Its movement still continued to fascinate me.

Having been in the R.C.A.F., and knowing most aircraft by night or day, I felt that this might be a helicopter, but there was no noise. My observation of the light continued for about a half an hour in which time it moved from the vicinity of Sentinel Hill out over Burrard Inlet and over the PNE grounds where searchlights knifed the night sky, and eventually it disappeared over the Central Park area. At no time did I detect a change in speed. There were moments during my observation that it hovered, or seemed to stop, and then moved on. At all times the light continued to pulsate very slowly from bright red to dull red, to bright red to dull red. There were no other colors visible during this sighting. The interesting point here is that from my airforce experience I recognize the various lights used on aircraft for night flying and if the light was an aircraft, why did the light always pulsate red. Obviously, the angle of the globe changed as I watched it, but no other light was observed. The floating leaf motion of the craft and its very slow speed with no sound would not lend itself to being a light plane or helicopter - at least in my mind - because it took a half hour to go from Sentinel Hill to Central Park in the path I have described.

The following week, a young radio friend of mine was visiting with my wife and myself at our home. We were watching television when my wife suddenly spotted a pulsating globe of light out the front window some distance away. We immediately got up and walked outside to have a closer look. It was the same type of object I had spotted the week before. I first should explain that my house is at the end of a street that looks down toward Vancouver from an elevation of approximately 500 feet. The sky at night over the North Shore is much clearer than it is over much of the Vancouver area. The glow of city lights can be seen in the distance over the tree tops at the end of the street. It was in this area, just above the tree line, that the pulsating globe of red light was spotted moving in a floating motion in the night sky. Seeing the three of us in the street late at night prompted the neighbors to come out and inquire as to what we thought we saw. We pointed out the red globe and some of the neighbors said it was probably an airplane. We watched it move from one direction to the opposite direction in the sky for about five minutes. It then seemed to move closer into the area where we were standing and at that time we could make out a light, bulb yellow color [?] in the middle of the red globe. The outer fringes of the globe pulsated red, but the inner section remained steady.

My friend suggested calling the Vancouver airport and against my better judgement, did just that. He was informed by the control tower at the airport that nothing was in the air over the city at that time and that as far as he knew, nothing had been for over an hour. He asked for a description of what we thought we saw and we gave it to him. He said this was just one of many calls he had received, but said we were probably watching the searchlights emanating from the PNE grounds. It was an interesting week. Now, I know what red and yellow searchlights look like. They pulsate in the sky, and appear to be about the size of a dime held at arm’s length -- they float through the air like leaves in flight, and move in any direction of their choosing in a moment of decision and break all the natural laws of aeronautics. But then someone once said that the bumblebee flies in the spring air against all the laws of gravity.