I moved to a one-room cabin on Keats Island October,
1967. Since the cabin was meant for summer use only and hadn't
been used much even then, there was a great deal to do to get
ready for winter. When darkness came I fell into my bunk dog-tired, with
hardly a glance out the window.
The top bunk where I
slept was alongside a window I could look out of without raising my
head. January 27 the cold woke me at 6 a.m. It was still dark and stars
were glittering. As I looked out at them, a very bright white star
moved into view from over the roof. It made two wide spirals
down, zig-zagged parallel to the earth a couple of times, then stopped
for about ten minutes. It then took off at great speed, turning yellow,
then pink, as it faded in the distance. It was very high during
all this and when it took off (going east over Bowen Island) it
did not seem to be following the earth's curvature but to be going off
into space. This had to be a flying saucer or UFO and I was delighted to
have seen it.
This tiny cabin on Keats Is.,
here vacant and boarded up, was where Miss Niblett lived for
several months before UFO activity drove her away. She has since
moved to Gibsons on B.C. mainland.
I decided to keep a lookout from
then on. The cabin was a perfect spot for watching -- on a rocky point
about 65 feet above the water. The front window gave a wide view of sky,
water and small islands about two miles away. To give a more
complete picture, perhaps I should explain that most of the cabins
were at Eastbourne, a good mile away. My cabin was a thousand feet from
where the road ended and couldn't be seen from there because of a hump
in the road. There was a scattering of tall firs and cedars to right and
left and up the steep rocky hill that rose directly behind the
cabin. Near the top of this hill there was a relatively flat, cleared
space that once had been a church camp ground. From Labor Day to the end
of May, I was the only resident on the west side of the island. Few
visited their cottages because the government dock at Eastbourne was
removed for the winter and the water supply pumps weren't in
operation.
The very next evening (Jan. 28) I
saw another UFO from the front window. It travelled very slowly over the
water from south to north -- only a few hundred feet up. This one seemed
to be a long dark body with dim red and yellow lights at both
ends. It weaved from side to side, stopping two or three times
with its lights dimming almost out. It wasn't at all like the first one.
I was delighted to see another so soon.
Next afternoon two men in neat,
dark coveralls came down the path to the cabin, saying they were
Hydro men and how surprised they were to find someone living here. They
asked if I needed any help, which I did, as I had some new
stovepipes I hadn't been able to put up myself because of all the
elbows. While I held the pipes steady inside, one of the men got on the
roof and added the new pipes. I could hear the man on the ground
directing him and the one on the roof would answer, "Yes, Master."
When the pipes were together I went out and told the man on the
roof not to bother with the guy wires since I could fix them easily
myself. He looked inquiringly at the man on the ground, who told him to
finish it.
They
then came in for tea.
I asked what their work area was,
and the 'boss' said they checked wires from Powell River -- which
seemed a hell of a long route for two men, and I said so. They in turn
asked if I liked living here, did I go hunting and didn't I get
frightened at times? Asked what there was to be afraid of, the men
looked at one another before the 'boss' finally answered, "Oh, things!"
Although the men were friendly
enough, they were a little 'stiff' and just not the kind to discuss UFOs
with, so I didn't mention them. After they left (nearly dark) I wondered
how they knew anyone WAS here since the cabin couldn't be seen
from the road (and just barely from the water if you knew where to
look). The stove was out when they arrived, so there was no smoke from
the chimney.
Feb. 14 From the window -- another
UFO in the early evening, travelling about the same path and speed as
the second.
Feb. 17. Woke about 6 a.m. again
(still dark) and saw one travelling inland over Keats from north to
south. It was below the tree tops most of the time as it went up the
hill behind the cabin where it was lost to view. This was
definitely a long, dark body with two or three yellow and red
lights on each end. As with the others, the lights would dim to almost
out now and then.
I was feeling uneasy and less
enthusiastic about seeing these things now. They were definitely
interested in the ground and must be picking up things --? I just might
end up as a 'sample'! I recalled a TV interview I'd seen a few
years back. An American couple claimed they had been taken inside
a UFO and given a thorough physical examination. They were made to
forget it all when set free, but hypnosis made them remember it again.
Feb. 21. Had just walked to the
front window. The sun was almost down. Sky and water were pink.
Something about 60 feet above the water, with 'frosted' yellow lights at
the sides and a bright red one in the middle, slid over from front
left to my rocks, then back again without turning around. It slid
up and back as if on a rail. My knees turned watery and my stomach
filled with butterflies! I realized I'd seen several of those same
things many times, but through trees, as I sleepily observed them
from my bunk window. Because they were over water I'd presumed
they were boats, though I did wonder what kind of boat since they seemed
to maneuver so easily and silently. They would go back and forth between
the beach, a little way to the left of the cabin, and the point where my
cabin was.
As much daylight as there was, I
didn't see the body of the machine, just the arrangement of lights.
Those I'd seen from the bunk window had no discernible bodies either,
but only what I took to be mast lights. The frosted yellow bulbs
seemed about grape fruit size and reflected on nothing.
Another thing I'd seen from my bunk
the same time as those 'boats' was a bright flash of light that
occasionally appeared slightly above the ground, between path and water.
The ground was too rough and brambly for someone to be walking
there at night, as first there seemed to be, so I decided it was a
momentary beam from one of the boats. My door was locked anyway and I
was too tired to care if someone was prowling around in the dark.
After seeing the thing slide up and
away again, it took sometime to get over my fright. Curiosity
finally made me brave enough to venture out to the edge of the rocks
where I could get a wider, unobstructed view. On the other side of
Ragged Island and more than half hidden by it appeared to be a big
boat well lit up with neon lights. (No binoculars, unfortunately.) As I
wondered, "Why there?" three balls of scintillating light flew up
from it, yellow to amber. Hard to guess how big -- maybe four feet in
diameter. Eventually there were five or six of them, some off to Bowen
Island, others to Keats, Pasley and other Islands. I kept glancing
behind me for fear one of the lights would get between me and the cabin,
cutting off retreat!
The balls travelled slowly over
tree tops dropping down amongst them or to the water's edge. Every once
in a while one would go back behind Ragged Island, although the bright
ship had disappeared --under water? A tugboat rounded the corner
quite close to shore, hauling a barge. Over the tug was one of the
balls of light, and one over the barge as well. I wanted to share this
sighting so badly with someone it was tantalizing not to be able to yell
at the tugboat men to look. But it was making too much noise and, of
course, no one was on deck anyway. The balls of light stayed with
the tug only a matter of seconds before peeling off exactly together
--one going to Bowen, the other to Pasley.
Running back to the cabin, I locked
the door. This was all too much! This was a nest of UFOs! Oh, if I
could only tell someone about it, but I had no phone and the public
phone was in Eastbourne, through all that dark where I might bump
into 'something'. How could I have been so blindly unobservant as
to miss all this before? In moving to Keats I had probably moved
right into their midst from the beginning! Now I realized that the first
star-like UFO had come closer not just to have a look at our planet.
They knew 'George and His Gang' were somewhere in this area of
Earth. The zig-zagging may have been to locate their communications beam
then, finding it, stop to talk.
Next day I phoned people who had
boats -- one on Bowen Island and the other on the mainland --and tried
to get them to come over and see these things.
But the water was too rough to come
over or they didn't have time, or the real reason -- they thought
I was probably mistaken about the whole thing anyway. Must be some new
kind of aircraft being tested, one man insisted.
Not knowing anyone at Gibsons at
the time, I phoned the newspaper there and asked if they'd had any
UFO reports. A bored voice said, "Not lately."
With restraint I told him there
were quite a few flying around here these nights, and he should send
someone over to have a look. He wasn't interested and said I should get
in touch with Rev. Mr. Willis who was also caretaker of the
Baptist camp on Keats. Having met the minister once, I thought he
was the type to pooh-pooh such things but found out too late this was
not the case.
March 5. There was no one else to
turn to so I walked over to the Baptist camp to see the Willis'. I got
there in time to see them pulling away from the dock on their way to
Gibsons.
What about the RCMP? They might be
interested, and there was a public phone at the dock.
Knowing it would be easy for them
to give me a brush-off if I told them about UFOs over the phone, I told
them instead that there were prowlers about and would they please come
over?
On board their boat and under the
cool gaze of the two young policemen, I felt rather foolish. To them I'd
be just a nutty woman seeing things. I heard much later that the RCMP
had received several UFO reports but these men didn't tell me about it
to make me feel less foolish about mine.
Since the UFOs usually didn't put
in an appearance when there were boats in the immediate area, I asked
the police to leave their boat at the Baptist camp and walk over. They
said they would come the next evening. Late the next afternoon I
saw the police boat go by --they had apparently decided not to
walk. They must have hung around during the evening for I saw no UFO.
A few days later when I was on my
way to Bowen Island in a water taxi, the police boat happened to be in
the vicinity. They drew close and told me the flashing red light I saw
was the buoy somewhere at the south end of Popham Island. It was
not the time and place to argue about it.
For several nights the weather was
stormy so I stayed inside, going the round of windows occasionally.
Because our aircraft was grounded by poor weather I expected theirs to
be, too, but it didn't seem to make any difference to them.
There were lots of UFO reports on
the air that winter (late 1966 and early 1967 was an 'invasion' period
--Ed.). Seattle, Tacoma and Vancouver I remember especially.
Around 10 o'clock on one of those
blustery nights I heard a sound like an enraged hornet approaching. It
seemed to hover close over the cabin, move away, then back again. The
sound of a large hornet flying round is enough to give anyone goose
pimples. Combined with a stormy night it was almost too much! When
it seemed overhead my eyes were riveted to the ceiling, expecting
something to come boring through the roof. I was too frightened to even
take a peek out the window at it.
For at least two weeks that
'hornet' was around, but at a distance. It was a bright, white ball (as
far as I could make out) and it went back and forth in a small area in
front of Ragged Island. Sometimes it flew to an area in front of
the beach, to go back and forth there. That stormy night I first
heard it, it probably was over the water and not overhead, as I'd
thought. It surely must have been taking something from the ground under
the water to stay in those same spots so long.
A corridor of trees had been cut
from Andy's beach to the old camp grounds on the hill above. Many times
one or two 'kettle' type UFOs would go up there from over the beach,
flying lower than the tree tops.
These 'kettles' might have been
about 20 feet wide, had a rather high dome and narrow rim. I could
usually make out a thing like an aerial, as well as a yellow light, on
top. A green light was about halfway down, a red and three or four
yellowish lights across the bottom. They always travelled rather
slowly, and when they got to the old campground, would drop straight
down as if landing. Because of land conformation and underbrush they
would be lost to sight when and if they did land.
I never saw them taking off again
from the campground, although I watched for half an hour or more a
couple of times to see how long they stayed there.
Daytime I often went up to look
around. The thick mat of wet leaves was a bit scuffed here and there and
there were holes an inch or so wide punched in. One set made a perfect
square of about three feet. But there were a lot of deer around
and I wasn't sure that deer and possibly mice had not made these
scuffs and holes. What I was really hoping for was an object they might
accidentally have dropped, but I guess they're not too careless. I also
looked for digging, burning or some unusual disturbance in the
area to give some idea what they were doing up there so long, but
noticed nothing. The woods beyond were gray and uninviting, so I must
admit I didn't do much exploring there.
Strangely, the other
kinds of UFOs didn't go up there as far as I know, except possibly the
long one I mentioned earlier. From what I've seen, it seems to me that
all the different UFOs performed some special function or did some
specific job.
"Kettle" UFOs flew along this
corridor.
One night as I was standing out on
the rocks one of these 'kettle' UFOs stopped to one side just above the
tall trees. Instead of a green light there was a not very bright white
light in its place and it seemed to be pointed right at me. The
machine tilted down in my direction also. Daringly, I blinked my
flashlight at it. There was no answering blink. It made them seem
unfriendly or terribly impersonal, which frightened me considerably and
made me run back in the cabin and lock myself in.
Another night as I watched outside,
a bright flashing red light came from the south following the shoreline.
It was about the same height above the water as I was standing (60-65
feet). Passing a few yards out in front of me, it suddenly turned in and
went down a short distance to my left. There was a distinct thump
but it was out of sight. Then came humming buzzing sounds in short
bursts.
I could easily have gone down the
rocks the short distance required to look around the bushes and possibly
see what they were doing but was afraid they wouldn't like it. Even back
in the cabin I could hear the humming buzzes it was making.
Next day I went to look at the
rocks where I presumed it had been. They were covered with a thick mat
of moss, and two chunks of about a foot each had been knocked off. The
drill holes I thoroughly expected to find were not visible to me.
Either they covered their work up exceedingly well or I was blind
to anything that might have been unusual in the rocks.
At the beginning of March I moved
my sleeping-bag to the long table by the front window so I'd have
a chance to catch what might be going on later at night. I woke up to
see a luminous golf-ball sized light moving three to four feet
above the path directly in front. I thought it was a deer with
something phosphorescent on its tail. I shone the flashlight out
the window but there was nothing to be seen. A night or two later I woke
again to see the golf-ball light, this time out the back window. I
presumed it was outside until it moved beyond the window to the
end of the room. It then went past the window again to the other
end of the room, then back to the window and out. The window was open
but screened. During its trip I turned on the electric light but
it wasn't visible with the light on.
I was more annoyed than frightened
to see that thing in the cabin, for I felt it was some kind of snooping
device and angrily thought they could have found out what they wanted by
less scary means.
As the weeks passed I began to feel
the UFOs weren't going to hurt me, so I got up the courage to sit
under the verandah of the vacant cabin next to mine overhanging the
steep bank in front of the left-hand beach. I wanted to see why so
many of the UFOs appeared to be going there and established myself
under the verandah well before dark in hopes they wouldn't know I was
there.
Before full dark three UFOs rose up
behind Ragged Island with a few minutes interval between each one. About
halfway to the beach they turned right or left and did not come all the
way over at all.
I got a fairly good
look at the small red flasher as it passed to the left, faintly outlined
against the still light sky. Crazy as it seems, the body looked like a
big barrel with stubby wings like rounded ears. There was a
bright flashing red light about the size of a car headlamp in the
middle. It rode tilted forward and rolled a little from side to side as
if the red light was what it saw by. (There were no other lights.)
In its July, 1972 issue, 'UFO
Investigator' published by NICAP carried this diagram of a
barrel-shaped object seen by four boys in New Hampshire. Its shape and
flashing red light correspond with features of objects seen by Bernice
Niblett five years earlier. (Reprinted courtesy of 'UFO Investigator.')
Another coming up from behind
Ragged Island was like spinning pink steam -- a reflection of the pink
sunset no doubt. When it got above the dark trees of the island behind,
I could no longer see it.
A little later a big
white light like the 'hornet', but making no sound, flew over with an
up-and-down motion the way some small birds fly. It didn't come all the
way to the beach, either, and disappeared somewhere to the right.
Looking from Cabin toward Bowen
Island.
Time dragged on as it got darker
and darker. My nerves were all keyed up for something to happen,
but nothing did. My cabin seemed to be farther away in the black night
and I began to get spooked. As I was deserting the watch, I
glanced up at the verandah I'd been sitting under. A foot or so
above the railing was the golf-ball light. I shone the flashlight
at it -- nothing! Light out -- there it was, unmoving!
One clear evening as I stood out on
the rocks, no UFO was around, apparently because a tug was between
Ragged and Pasley. It was turning a very large boom around. A point of
interest about the tug was that one of its mast-lights kept blinking in
an irregular pattern -- a most unusual kind of circuit, if that's
what caused it to blink. After the boom straightened itself out, a 'red
flasher' flew up from the boat. It flew to Bowen at its usual
leisurely pace. At this point in time I was almost beyond surprise at
seeing a UFO fly up from a tug.
Other things along that line had me
wondering...
Several times a 'red flasher' came
up from somewhere south or Keats or the Pasley group and went to
Bowen Island. It landed very close to a lit-up house on the side of the
hill.
In daylight I tried to get a better
look at the place from Eastbourne. It was a white house in a small
cleared area. Whoever lived there must have been the only winter
residents on that side of Bowen, for there was no other light
except on an occasional weekend.
Mr. Wainwright, who operated the
water taxi and marina in a cove further south on Bowen, knew who
lived in that white house, when I asked. The man who lived there was a
travelling salesman. How could UFOs keep landing in his yard without his
knowing? Why were they going there?
May 2. Had been on the north beach
collecting bark. On my way home along the road I saw two men coming up
the path from my cabin. One was the 'boss' Hydro man in his neat
coveralls. The other was a different, younger man of about 19-20.
As I entered the path, the boss man indicated with his hand for
the young man to get behind him. They got well off the path and waited
for me, the young man a little behind his boss. The fellow stared at me
as if I was some kind of freak. (I'm quite ordinary looking,
really.)
The 'boss' said he'd been thinking
of me and had come to see if I was all right. After replying that I was
fine etc., and because of the young man's intense stare, I remarked that
he had a new helper. The 'boss' smiled at the young fellow with a
protective air and merely said, "Yes."
When I asked the young man how he
liked his new job, he seemed to take the question quite seriously.
Without smiling and with a little bow, he replied "Fine."
Much to my regret I didn't ask them
to tea, but I knew the stove would be out, the cabin was in a mess and I
was dog tired.
Next Day. Went to the road to pick
up some bark I'd dropped there. I saw a jeep slowly approaching. When it
came to the end of the road it stopped and four men jumped out. They
were Hydro men inspecting lines from the moving jeep. Very human,
carelessly dressed, workaday men! None in coveralls. The boss
wasn't obviously so. They expressed no surprise at seeing me there, no
concern or any particular interest.
I told them two of their men
already had been around the day before, inspecting the lines. They
assured me yesterday's men weren't Hydro men, that somebody had been
'pulling my leg.' I described the former men to make sure and also
told them they had been around before.
These men didn't know them.
I found out, too, that the jeep was
parked at the Baptist camp for the use of the meter-reader, telephone
repairman and Hydro repairmen.
The other 'Hydro' men hadn't come
in a jeep.
I should have asked these real
Hydro men if they checked lines all the way to Powell River, as the
'boss' had said on the first visit, but I didn't think of it soon enough.
The possibilities as to who the
first men were dawned as something I'd been too dense to see before.
What with seeing a 'red flasher' leave a tug and others going to a house
on Bowen Island, I think a number of UFO people are among us...
and they include, those phony 'Hydro' men.
Every human is different. We expect
it, so when we exchange a word or two with someone whose phraseology is
different or who has an accent, we only wonder what country he's from,
not what planet. Maybe that's a mistake.
* *
This account which started months ago as a brief note from Miss Niblett
and was enlarged upon at our request grew into such an
extraordinary story that for a while we were on the brink of
disbelief. Miss Niblett expected we would be. '(Won't blame you if you
don't believe it," she wrote in sending the first part. "It gets hairier
as it goes along, too."
And, while we read on goggle-eyed,
so it did. In different circumstances we might have concluded by
throwing it away, even though fascinated. Our policy is to reject
dubious material, no matter how sensational.
But contradictory though it may
sound we could not class Miss Niblett's seemingly incredible experience
as "dubious." For one thing, she never tried to "sell" us. After that
first brief note she agreed to continue in return for only a few back
copies of Canadian UFO Report. Also she had trouble putting the
story down at all. As she said, "Writing and trying to edit all
this material without a typewriter is a very time consuming and tedious
job!"
A still more telling point was the
ring of the story itself. Not only did the writer's phrasing carry the
sound of truth, but so did her description of strange things observed.
In some cases we have seen similar descriptions in only the most
obscure reports, and it is our business to collect such reports.
It is not Miss Niblett's.
But the final persuader was in
meeting Miss Niblett, speaking to other witnesses she had listed*, and
hearing at first hand her tale of a year's lonely adventure that became
an ordeal from which she was eventually forced to escape. Although
it had happened four years before, there was no doubt those
mystifying, often frightening events still lived with her -- and to
judge by the restrained intensity of her description, there was no doubt
either that she was explaining exactly what she heard and saw.
If there is any variation from the
truth in this story, it can only be a matter of interpretation. For Miss
Niblett the objects she saw and persons she met led to the conclusion
she was in a nest of UFO activity. For someone else they might
have added up to something less mysterious.
But our vote is for Miss Niblett
--and if we are right, here is a person who has had a contact with the
UFO riddle which, considering the time it lasted and the frequency of
incidents, is probably in a class by itself.
Yet not for a moment does she
pretend to be a contactee. Although she had unusual, strikingly vivid
dreams following her experience, she has no message of universal
importance to impart. Instead she talks as a woman who was badly
frightened but is still curious about what happened. We think that
reaction is the believable one.
When we asked why there were no
pictures, Miss Niblett said in the first place she had no camera and
secondly, because all the activity occurred at dusk or later (a perverse
but common UFO habit) there was virtually no chance to use one
anyway.
If the lack of a camera seems
strange, it should be emphasized that Miss Niblett's year of isolation
in the wildnerness was precisely just that. Everything she had in her
tiny cabin was carried there by hand over a long country road and
another exhausting stretch of an almost invisible path through
brush. There at times even the essentials were lacking. In mid-winter
when the pump was closed off, she had to fetch her water by bucket.
Although the island is a popular summer spot close to shipping lanes and
within easy ferry distance north of Vancouver, we had the impression
around that small cabin that we were at the end of nowhere.
Besides all that, Miss Niblett is
not a camera bug anyway and preferred we not take her picture. So
we must fill that gap by explaining she is tall, slender and of young
middle-age. The only reason her picture is not here is because she
wished it that way.
Miss Niblett now lives at Gibsons,
B.C.
-------------
*Two with sightings of particular interest were of Mrs. Ewart McMynn
and Mrs. Anne Prewer.
In her house at Gibsons Mrs. McMynn
was awakened by an "unaccountable something in the dead of night"
in the late fall, 1966 (about a year before Miss Niblett moved to Keats
Island). Looking out her window, she saw an object "red like fire"
speeding in her direction from the hills on Keats. As it descended
rapidly, she noted it was circular "up in the center and about 20
feet across, with a mist around it like steam." It shot down so
close to the water she thought it was going to hit a nearby public
beach. But it continued its headlong flight close to shore until it was
lost from view.
Mrs. Prewer, who lives at
Grantham's Landing just outside Gibsons, had her sighting one evening in
early summer, 1971, when a light through the window caught her
attention. Pausing to look, she saw a light "bigger than an
airplane" flying over Keats. The light was dullish white, round,
and she thought she detected another white light underneath. Suddenly,
over the Baptist camp mentioned in Miss Niblett's account, the light
"stopped dead" and blinked out. The witness recalled the object not only
looked unlike a plane but was travelling in an opposite direction to
those usually seen in the vicinity.
For another sighting over
Keats Island, see the letter by Mrs. G. E. Webb in the Letters section.
Mrs. Webb wrote long before our visit to Keats and obviously had no idea
we were planning to carry this article.
UFO OVER BLAZING FISHBOAT
In case Bernice Niblett's reference
in the preceding article to a 'red flasher' flying from a tugboat
sounds too unbelievable all by itself, we refer readers to a letter by
associate editor Brian Cannon in vol. 1, no. 3. Here Cannon lists
several unexplained marine incidents which, reported in the public
press, happened in those same coastal waters in roughly the same
period.
But 10 years earlier in the nearby
Strait of Juan de Fuca there occurred a marine disaster even more
mystifying. Here there was startling closeness between a strange flying
object, seen by a ship's entire crew, and the stricken vessel.
Just as strange was the fact that the doomed boat was never
identified. Was it part of the UFO domain about which Miss Niblett
speculates?
The incident was recently reviewed
in the Victoria (B.C.) Daily Colonist by marine historian T.W.
Paterson, who wrote:
"The strange case of the "KC-13"
goes back to November, 1957, when the Japanese freighter Meitetsu
Maru steamed slowly through the darkness in calm seas, 30 miles off the
west coast of Vancouver Island, For hours the Maru proceeded without
sign of another ship when, suddenly, a wavering tower of light
attracted her lookout's attention. Immediately ordering increased
speed, Capt. Ohuchi headed for the scene, some four miles off, and, as
his ship neared, he could see the blazing remains of a fishing boat. But
it was not the fiery wreckage which held his eyes captive. It was
the glowing, circular white light that hovered over the wreck at
which they stared, hypnotized. As their freighter inched closer, the
eerie light retreated swiftly in a great, upward arc, vanishing into the
dark skies.
"After unsuccessfully searching for
survivors, the Japanese radioed the alarm. Because the dying vessel was
ablaze from bow to stern, Capt. Ohuchi make no attempt to have his men
board and continued on to Vancouver as the United States Coast Guard and
aircraft of the RCAF began an intensive search of the area. Aided
by unseasonally fine weather, both forces covered more than 6,000 square
miles of ocean.
"However, although numerous fishing
vessels were in the area, none had picked up any survivors. Only one, in
fact, had reported an incident which could have had any connection with
the burned vessel: That report mentioned the strange white light
which the Japanese merchantmen had seen, arching upward from the
sea.
"All that the vast, two-day search
uncovered of the vessel described as ... of about 50 tons gross
and about 70 feet long, was a medium-sized gasoline tank to which were
attached some pieces of charred wood.
"In the way of further
identification, all Capt. Ohuchi had been able to offer authorities were
the figures "KC-13-ac" on the side of the burning hull.
"Fifteen years after, the mystery
of KC-13 remains just that. For no Canadian or American fishing vessels
had been reported as missing or overdue at the time of the loss, and the
figures given by Capt. Ohuchi did not correspond with numbers of
fishboats of either nation. The only tangible clue, the gas tank,
was forwarded to the RCMP in Vancouver and eventually identified as
having come from the Nanaimo fishing craft Jo-Joe which went missing off
Vancouver Island's west coast on Oct. 30, 1957.
"At first thought to be a company
listing, KC-13-ac has never been identified. RCMP officials, when
contacted in 1963, said they had no record of the white light. Up to
that date, the Jo-Joe's owner had not turned up, and it had been
assumed that he was lost with his boat. There was no mention of
others having been aboard.
"Today, in 1972, the original
questions are still to be answered: What was the cause of the fire that
destroyed a 70-foot craft in minutes? And, even more intriguing, what
was the mysterious white light that hovered over the scene, only
to zoom away at the Meitetsu Maru's chance arrival?"
STRANGE RADAR SIGNAL
The latest west coast marine
incident to come to our attention, while not dramatic, gave the witness
an eye-popping figure as to the speed of the object.
It happened early one foggy morning
last August as fisherman L. G. Swenson of Burnaby, B.C., was
navigating carefully along the west coast of Vancouver Island with a
close eye on his radar set. Suddenly a strange blip appeared in
the upper left quadrant of his screen.
"It was something above the water,
no more than 100 feet, about three miles away," he said. "It must
have been a solid object, probably metallic, to give a bright blip like
that, and it was stationary."
To get a better idea of distance,
Swenson changed the range on his set. In the three or four seconds it
took to find the object again, it had moved right across the screen.
"That meant it had moved just about
eight miles," he said. In other words, at least 7,000 m.p.h. from
dead start to dead stop.
Then abruptly the blip
disappeared.
LETTERS
Sir:
I live at Grantham's Landing just opposite Keats Island. A couple of
years ago my husband and I were sitting in our living-room in the
after-dark with just the light of the fire.
A sudden light in the sky over
Keats caught my eye and I went to the window to look further. I called
to my husband to come also and we stood for several minutes and watched
a strange object perfectly motionless in the sky. Difficult to
estimate the size of this object but it seemed very Large and
perfectly round and bright golden -- looked just like the moon but the
moon was also there in another part of the sky.
We stood entranced, wondering what
this strange object could be, when it moved slowly and disappeared
behind a larger hill. I heard a couple of days later that someone in
North Vancouver had witnessed the same object that same evening.
For what it is worth,
it certainly wasn't like a balloon or anything else we have ever seen.
Mrs. G.E. Webb.
Grantham's Landing, B.C.
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