1967: The Shag Harbour Incident and Nova Scotia's “Night of the UFOs”
On the evening of October 4, 1967, lights and objects were reported at several locations in the skies over Nova Scotia, primarily around Halifax and Dartmouth and along the southwestern coast, and the most famous case was an object that crashed into the sea off Shag Harbour. Nearly sixty years later, CBC recalled what the authorities recorded at the time and what has remained unresolved ever since.
Chris Styles was twelve years old when, around ten o'clock that evening, he spotted a dull, orange-glowing, spherical object along the shoreline road from his bedroom window in Dartmouth. He watched it through his grandfather's binoculars, then ran out to the water's edge. On the same evening, similar phenomena were seen in Sambro and Wedgeport as well, which is why ufologists later named the event “The Night of the UFOs.” Styles has since written several books on the subject, including Impact to Contact: The Shag Harbour Incident.
Something happened at sea that day as well. According to the statement that the captain of the vessel Nickerson, Leo Mersey, gave to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), around nine o'clock in the evening he spotted an object with three flashing red lights about 25 kilometers away, which also appeared on radar; the radar also showed three additional objects, not visible to the naked eye, about ten kilometers away. Around eleven o'clock in the evening, the object he could see rose into the air, by then with only one red light. In the statement, the RCMP described Mersey as a reliable person with a good reputation.
Shag Harbour: the object that crashed into the water
The most attention went to what happened in the small fishing village of Shag Harbour, where, according to several eyewitnesses, an object with flashing lights crashed into the water. RCMP officer Ron O'Brien, who arrived at the scene, told the Chronicle-Herald on October 7, 1967, that he saw a light about 800 meters offshore, which the tide began carrying out to the open sea, and that it had disappeared before they could reach it. The RCMP used two fishing boats and searched together with local residents for possible survivors, suspecting a plane crash. According to the accounts, the object either disappeared or submerged, and a yellow foam was found on the water, which some witnesses described as smelling of sulfur.
On Friday, October 6, a naval diving team was sent to the scene, and seven divers searched the water over the weekend but found nothing. The investigation reached the highest levels of Canada's Department of National Defence: Col. W. W. Turner, the department's director of operations, wrote in an October 6 memo that the Rescue Coordination Centre's preliminary investigation had ruled out that the phenomenon was caused by an aircraft, flares, floats or any other known object. His son, John Turner, told CBC that his father could easily explain many similar reports – for example, as photos of a Frisbee or a hubcap – but that, according to him, others simply remained unexplainable.
On the same evening in Dartmouth, a woman on her way home from work saw a bright, round object with an orange halo near the Halifax–Dartmouth ferry terminal. At home, she also looked at it through binoculars and was sure it was not a star. The Chronicle-Herald followed up on the case with the control tower at the CFB Shearwater air base, but no one there was monitoring the radar during the time in question, so the sighting could not be compared with any instrument data.
What do we know, and what don't we?
We know for certain that unusual lights and objects were reported that evening at several independent locations, that some of these were recorded in contemporary police and military documents, and that the naval search found nothing in the water off Shag Harbour. What we do not know, however, is what exactly the object was that, according to the witnesses, crashed into the sea, nor what caused the objects, invisible to the naked eye, that appeared on the Nickerson's radar. The Department of National Defence's own memo stated only that the phenomenon could not be explained by known causes – no official explanation has been issued for either case since.
Further photos and documents are available in the source article.
The sober take
According to the Canadian Department of National Defence's 1967 memo, the phenomenon could not be explained by a known aircraft, flares, floats or any other known object, and no official explanation has been issued since. According to Col. Turner's son, his father easily identified other reports as everyday objects (for example, as a Frisbee or as photos of a hubcap), but according to the sources, this did not apply to the Shag Harbour case.