Climate Change/Catastrophism; Myth and Legend

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Kitchener leads area for UFO sightings


http://news.therecord.com/News/Local/article/385189

July 18, 2008
Record news services

GUELPH

Seven UFO sightings in Kitchener, two in Guelph and one in Cambridge were among a record number of sightings in Ontario last year, according to a Manitoba group that tracks such things.

Ontario accounted for 329 out of 836 sightings in Canada in 2007, said the survey released on Wednesday by Ufology Research of Manitoba.

One of the Guelph sightings, on Aug. 12, was of a dark egg-shaped object streaking eastbound across the sky.

The witness told the researchers that "it had been raining off and on all day but at this moment the rain had stopped. The skies were grey and overcast but the object was clearly seen in the sky."

The next sighting was the following night at 11 p.m., of a multicoloured sphere that drifted and then disappeared.

The person who saw the egg-shaped UFO wrote to Pararesearchers.org about the experience.

"The object was clearly not any kind of regular plane, nor could it have been a helicopter because there was no sound whatsoever," wrote the unnamed Guelph resident.

The 2007 Canadian UFO Survey is an analysis of data collected from numerous sources of UFO sightings, including the Pararesearchers of Ontario website.

The survey's authors define a UFO as "an object seen in the sky which its observer cannot identify," and in a press release said there is "no incontrovertible evidence that some UFO cases involve extraterrestrial contact."

Pararesearchers of Ontario have a broader definition.

"Some people believe all UFOs are just misidentifications, others believe aliens pilot them, and yet others think time travellers or extradimensional intelligence are behind it," said Sue Darroch, a director of Pararesearchers of Ontario.

"Any of these might be right or none at all, or it could be a combination of many solutions. We don't know for sure other than with those sightings we are able to reconcile to more earthly and natural explanations. It is the seemingly unsolvable ones that truly intrigue Ufologists."

Both the Pararesearchers of Ontario and the authors of the UFO survey try to find earthly explanations for sightings.

The pararesearchers typically find there are earthly explanations for 80 per cent of the sightings reported to their organization, Darroch said.

The UFO report also grades each sighting on the reliability of the witness reports and the strangeness of the sighting.

On scales from 1 to 9, the egg-shaped sighting scored a 6 on the reliability scale, and 4 on the strangeness scale. The multicoloured sphere rated a 2 on the reliability scale and a 4 on the strangeness scale.

"In our line of study there is rarely a usual sighting so to speak," Darroch said. "However, discs, cigar-shaped, and triangles are more often reported to us, but egg-shaped are not overly unusual and there are many examples within UFO literature of that shape."

The survey offers statistics about UFO sightings, including that most sightings have two or more witnesses, most UFOs are white, a typical sighting in 2007 lasted an average of 17 minutes, and reports of flying saucers are rare compared to triangular or spherical UFOs.