UFO Talker
UFO Talker
Two Veteran Halifax Police officers describe their black triangle UFO encounter
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Season 2, Episode 10 (Originally Released on November 8, 2023)
What would you do if something enormous, silent, and impossible drifted across the night sky while you were on duty?
In this Summer "Best Of" episode of UFO Talker, Michael Ryan is joined by retired Halifax Police officers Rick Prescott and Rob Furlong, who recount one of Canada's most compelling police UFO encounters.
While working the night shift in Halifax, Nova Scotia, the two veteran officers observed a massive black triangular object slowly crossing the sky. The craft made no sound, displayed no conventional means of propulsion, and moved so slowly that both men immediately realized they were witnessing something unlike any aircraft they had ever encountered.
As the object continued across the sky, dispatch contacted both Halifax International Airport and CFB Shearwater to determine whether anything appeared on radar. The answer was the same from both locations: nothing.
For years, the officers kept their experience private, concerned about the stigma that often follows anyone reporting an unexplained aerial encounter. Now, they share the remarkable details of what they witnessed and explain why, after all these years, they still cannot identify what they saw.
In this episode:
- The complete account of the Halifax Black Triangle UFO
- Why two experienced police officers immediately ruled out conventional aircraft
- The calls made to airport and military authorities
- Why the sighting remained private for years
- Additional unexplained UFO reports from Nova Scotia
If you enjoy carefully researched UFO cases based on firsthand witness testimony, this is an episode you won't want to miss.
Website: www.ufotalker.ca
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Female announcer: Joy Ryan
Male announcer: Andrew Helbig
The National UFO Records Center link here
Christine Scott's Centennial Books 1230 Broad Street. Regina, Sask.
Hi everybody, this is Michael Ryan. We are on Summer Hiatus, but for the rest of the summer, we are going to play the best of UFO Talker podcast. So enjoy today's episode. And as always, if you have a question or comment or something you would like to say to us, send your email to UFO Talker at Bell.net.
SPEAKER_01You are listening to the UFO Talker Podcast. Come with us as we explore UFOs from the past and the present. With insightful discussions, interviews, and reviews, we will add our voice to the mysteries that have been seen in our skies and oceans for all of human history. Now, here's our host, Michael Ryan.
SPEAKER_04Welcome everybody to the podcast. This is season two, episode 10, coming to you from Studio 7H here in Ontario, Canada. On today's episode, I have two retired Halifax police constables who talk about their sighting of a large black triangle UFO. It is very interesting. I want to point out a mistake I kept making in the interview, and that was I was calling Rick Prescott and Rob Furlong police officers. So, you know, this has something to do with my upbringing in the US and a lot of American TV watched here in Canada over the years. So I kept referring to them as police officers, where in I think in almost every jurisdiction in Canada, police officers are actually uh police constables. So forgive me for that error, and I will try to do better in the future on that. Also, on today's episode, we start our brand new audio excerpts from UFO books, and that segment will always be the uh last segment at the end of the show. So I would really like to hear what everyone thinks of that. We'll be reading approximately about five minutes from each of our audio excerpts so you can get a taste of the book. And the first book will be the Matthew Hayes book, which is Search for the Unknown Canada's UFO Files and the Rise of Conspiracy Theory. Also, I have something a little bit different than normal. If you have been looking at a lot of the UFO Facebook forms, you've probably seen this ad for uh UFO Christmas ornaments. And I think there's about 30 of them all together, and they're all different UFOs from all different cases throughout history. So it is pretty unique, and they look like they're fairly well made. And so I hooked up with the guy who produces these, and he is giving all of the UFO talker listeners a 25% discount. So I will have his uh website in the show notes where you can uh link up to that, and all you have to do is put in the code the word UFO talker, all capitalized and all one word, no spaces, and you'll get twenty-five percent off. So that's pretty neat. Uh each saucer represents a fairly famous uh sighting. And also I want to talk about Arrow, which is the all-domain anomaly resolution office in uh the US. And so now they're taking um reports from current or former US government employees, service members, or contract personnel with direct knowledge of US government programs or activities related to UAP dating back to 1945. Wow. So we shall see what that produces. Um it's an interesting site, also. They have a few other things on there where they have a breakdown of all the UFO reports from I think 1996 and the different shapes that have been cited. So that so that's definitely of interest. So you have to be a bit careful where you click this link because there also is an arrow.ca. So the one I'm talking about is arrow.mil M I L. But right below it there's another one, Arrow.ca. So if you don't look too carefully, you could click on the wrong one. Arrow.ca is the automotive aftermarket retailers of Ontario. So that's where I reside. So yeah, not the arrow that we are interested on this program. Also, I just want to mention the Artemis Accords. So that is something that was started by the U.S. government and NASA, and it's basically setting up uh parameters for the peaceful use of the moon, Mars, and other astronomical objects, kind of like you know, a guideline of how everyone should behave in outer space. And I guess the emphasis uh is on the peaceful use of the moon and Mars and everything above us. So so far, uh 31 countries have signed in one territory, and just recently Iceland and the Netherlands just signed, but there's a lot of major countries have signed it also. And for all of those who may have missed it, I mentioned on last week's episode that I have started a companion blog to go along with the podcast. So how you can read that is to go to my website at ufoker.ca and in the upper right you will find the blog. So click that on and it will take you to the most uh current blog that is there. So I hope you go there and I hope you read it. There will be many more to come in the coming weeks. And on my shout out to listeners today, I want to give a shout out to the Eskazoni First Nations reservation, and that is on the eastern part of Cape Breton Island. So this is the first time I wasn't able to find much information out about the Eskazoni First Nations, uh, but the little I saw, it looks like it's an incredible spot. It has a population of 4,675 people. As always, I'd love to hear from the Eskazoni First Nations, and maybe you can tell me a little bit more about this area. And whether you're at the Eskoni First Nations or anywhere else in the world that listens to UFO Talker, I would love to hear, Femus. So drop me a line at UFOtalker at bell.net. We will be right back after this message.
SPEAKER_00The date was October 3rd, 1958. The place was north central Indiana. At 3.20 a.m., Monan Diesel Locomotive No. 91 was speeding by the Wasco intersection. The locomotive was pulling 56 freight cars. It was a cool night with the temperature around 40 degrees Fahrenheit. Visibility was over 13 miles. In the cab of the locomotive was engineer Harry Ekman, fireman Cecil Bridge, and head brakeman Morris Ott. In the caboose was conductor Ed Robinson and flagman Paul Sosby. Fireman Cecil Bridge had just poured himself a strong cup of coffee from his thermos when he noticed four big white lights in the sky about a half mile in front of the train. He pointed them out to Engineer Ekman and Morris Ott, but almost as quickly as they had noticed them, the light shot off to the east and disappeared. Within a few moments, the four lights came back. This time they got on the intercom and asked Ed Robinson and Paul Sosby if they could see anything. Ed Robinson, who was sitting in the cuppola, could see all four of them. They were about 200 feet above the train and they were flying toward the caboose. Ed Robinson and Paul Sosby estimated their size to be 40 feet in diameter and 10 feet thick. For a while, the four UFOs were following the caboose. In the caboose, they had a five-cell sealed beam flashlight that could throw its beam for quite a distance. Whenever the flashlight beam would hit the UFOs, they quickly moved out of the way of the beam. After a while, they stayed beyond the beam's light. The four UFOs followed the train for over an hour and ten minutes. When the train stopped in Frankfurt, Indiana, the UFOs seemed to land on the tracks about a mile behind the caboose. Dr. James McDonald and Frank Edwards were to investigate and interview the men about their encounter. Harry Ekman, Cecil Bridge, Morris Ott, Ed Robinson, and Paul Sosby never did find out exactly what they saw that night. It was a mystery that remained for the rest of their lives.
SPEAKER_04Rick Prescott was a U.S. Marine for six years. He served as an instructor, and also in the Marine Embassy Guard program at embassies around the world. In 1986, he joined the Dartmouth, Nova Scotia Police Service, which later became the Halifax Regional Police Service, where he served for 15 years. He has a bachelor degree from St. Mary's University in Halifax. Rob Furlong joined the Kentville Police in 1985, then the Dartmouth Police, and then the Halifax Police Service, where he served for 28 years. First as a patrol officer, and then in the forensic identification unit, and then the explosive disposal unit, and then in the chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear protection unit. He then traveled and taught his CBRN skills until he retired in 2016. Gentlemen, welcome to the podcast.
SPEAKER_03Thanks for having us.
SPEAKER_02Yep, thanks. Thanks so much.
SPEAKER_04And so I guess the first thing I before we get into your uh sighting, which is an incredible sighting, I I just want to get a feel for what you guys so you saw this in 1997. I just want to get a feel for what Halifax was like to you guys in 1997. What was it like?
SPEAKER_03Um well back in Halifax in in the 90s, well, and before, there were basically uh three cities, Halifax, Dartmouth, and Bedford, uh surrounding the basin. And we worked every all three cities had their own police department. Uh Rick and I worked in the Dartmouth on this side of the harbor. And uh it was there was a town on this side, probably about 68,000, 70,000 people at most, and that and the police department was about 125, 235 over those years uh of members. And so we were attached to our patrol shift, Rick and I. They were called uh platoons then, and there was probably 21 of us, uh, all constables except for a corporal sergeant and an inspector. And we were in charge of this side of the harbor because this was our city and and our police department. Um, the city was broken up into zones, and Rick would have had his own, and I would have had his own. We were in the north end of Dartmouth, and that's kind of how we policed then.
SPEAKER_04And Rick, what were your uh observations of living in that part of Halifax then?
SPEAKER_02Well, as Rob said, we uh primarily lived and worked on the Dartmouth side of the bridge. And uh being you know, working in the north end, it was a the Dartmouth in general is was even at that time a very vibrant community. Had awesome leadership as far as the mayorality was concerned, uh, the uh the city staff, uh the policing staff was uh was pretty solid. Um the training of the officers, the experience of the officers that uh patrol of the streets was uh just absolutely phenomenal. Very tight group. Uh the the we had our key our sheriff crimes. We would have our busy times day or night, and uh it would get you know busier on uh night shifts during the weekends, just as you can anticipate. And uh so we had every type of call imaginable, and many of which, most of which were you know pretty frivolous, uh, you know, with little disputes here and there, and and just negotiating the peace and this and that. But uh, we were pretty busy, it was a very busy department. I think my recollection is that we probably answered eight to fifteen calls during a night shift. Maybe that's a little high, but uh but that's that's my recollection. And many of them were really easy to to clear, you know, a little notebook kind of thing. And uh, but a few of them out of that number would be would require a larger uh uh dialogue in terms of a report. And uh and several of those would end up with uh with criminal charges or something along those lines where we'd have to do some paperwork and and put a person in cells and this and that. So it was very busy. We were all you know backing each other up for uh traffic stops. Um how do you describe it? Just it was a constant, fluid uh set of policing. And when it did get quiet, we would uh patrol. I don't think there was a street in the city of Darkness that wasn't covered at least uh once during a night when someone's beeping through it and and anticipating and looking for trouble, if you will. So somebody once said that to me, he goes, You're looking for trouble. I said, Yeah, that's exactly what I do. I'm looking around to see who's causing it. And and we would uh show the flag, so to speak. So that that police unit with the police written on the side of the door would be a a deterrence to crime. So that's that's what we did. That's what we did for a living.
SPEAKER_04Now, just because I have a lot of uh U.S. listeners and actually a lot of listeners around the world, but just so we can kind of pin this down, so Nova Scotia is slightly uh east of Maine. Um it's uh it's not that far. What is it, two or three hundred miles off the coast of Maine, something like that?
SPEAKER_03Yeah, we border with Maine. Uh um New Brunswick is another province that's in between us and and Maine, but uh primarily it's a big peninsula that's right on the ocean.
SPEAKER_04And kind of where you had this sighting, so it was in the the Halifax Dartmouth uh basin, I guess it is there. And you were slightly north of the Murray McKay Bridge in that general area.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, that's correct. We're we're on a main flight uh path from uh mainly the states uh to Europe. So we see a lot of planes and stuff going over at night because that's the main time they fly to Europe.
SPEAKER_04So if you could uh Rob or Rick, could you tell us about just set up how you saw what you saw, like the slightly prior to what you were doing slightly prior to the event, and then continue on to talk about what you saw?
SPEAKER_02Sure. Go ahead, Rick. Well, it was uh a clear night and uh an amazing one thing about Nova Scotia in that particular area, you can have a starry night, and it's almost like being in Alaska in a lot in some ways. It's not quite as vibrant as Alaska. You can see the Milky Way there, but here you can see thousands and thousands of stars. I mean, it's beautiful. And um where you know that particular evening, I would suggest using it. It was very busy uh from the from the onset of our shift, and for some reason, about 12:30, one o'clock in the morning, they the tap turned off. And we weren't we weren't uh answering a whole bunch of calls, going jumping from call to call uh as we did earlier uh in that evening. So we did what we do. Um a lot of people they they they like to laugh at police officers because they get together with a coffee or what. Well, that's the benefit of that is that we gained a lot of intelligence in terms of what's going on. We know who's who's doing the crimes, etc. But in the same token, it gave us a little uh reprieve and gave us some time to settle down and and and so on. So Rob and I, in that particular case, we got together over in the area of Burnside Industrial Park. And I would suggest say that on the uh the Highway 111 side of the park, just about the area where it it uh turns off to get onto the Victoria Road area, uh, which takes you into the Wright's Cove area and so on. In that, right around that bend, if you will, if you're looking at a map, um there's a field. And it was a like an open field. Uh, I think it was probably governed mostly by the Nova Scotia Power Corporation because the power lines came right through there. And uh, but there was a pathway, and the only pathway it was in there was for the Nova Scotia Power Corporation personnel. But we drove up in there, one, because eight, you're away from anybody, you're not gonna get snuck up on or something of this nature. We're in the middle of the field. We can see what's going on around us. We're pretty secure. Uh, two, we're in an area where if we do get a call, we're out of there within seconds and on the road, and we're still three to four minutes away from where we need to go anywhere in our in our zones. So anyway, we we get together. Um to, I would say the way we were positioned off to my left, I could see the uh over my left shoulder, the A Marina K Bridge. Um, I can see the Halifax Harbor, actually the Bedford Basin off to my left, and looking at the lights going across on the other side, where it's all vibrantly lit up from the Halifax side. I can see uh Fairview, I can see the Bedford Basin clearly, uh the traffic down below, uh etc. And you can see the McC the McKay Bridge and so on. So it was it was you know, they had a pretty good vantage point, but in the same token, it was nice and dark where we were too. So um anyway, we're sitting here car to car, um driver door to driver door with a cup of coffee, and I reached across, gave, I think Rob might have been drinking a tea at the time. It was it tea that you were drinking, yeah. So uh uh chamomile. So that was his favorite. So I gave him his uh coffee and we started shooting a breeze. And we did what we normally do. We're cracking jokes back and forth and teasing each other and just shooting a breeze. So um carry on with that, Mart Rob. See what you have to see what your memory is.
SPEAKER_03No, that's that's very accurate. It's up high and you can see all around, and and we blended into the darkness here. It was just a great spot to park and relax a little bit to take a break after all the calls. Um and as Rick said, we were door to door and uh talking and laughing. And it was late at night. Uh I don't know, it was after one, maybe two, or somewhere around there, three, and I can't remember the exact time, but um Rick kind of right out of the blue. I saw him looking out his driver's door window up into the sky, and he said, Uh, what's that? So I look up and I looked around and I didn't see anything. And I said, What? Uh where? And he goes, right there, look. You can you can see it, you have to look. There's like three white points like stars, but it's slowly moving along. And I could watch where he was pointing, and I could see what he was talking about. Now, for me, um police are pretty trained observers, and you know, they're good witnesses, but even civilian witnesses, everybody can see the same thing, and their version may be slightly different. So Rick might be slightly different than mine, because when we go to court, five witnesses observe a stabbing or something, and they all say something just slightly different, a black coat or a dark blue coat or what have what have you. Um, but I recall looking up and seeing these three white points moving slowly, fairly directly over our car, moving like in a northeast direction, but very slow. And it it seemed very huge to me. Similar to like you could put three or four seven forty-sevens in it. It was it was quite huge and up a fair distance.
SPEAKER_04Like if you so if you had to hold something at arm's length. And that would have covered roughly the same area. What size of object would it be that you would hold?
SPEAKER_03I recall it being about like an inch, inch and a half. Uh what about you, Rick?
SPEAKER_02You know, when when what I observed was that I looked off over the fairview area. So on the ground it was lit up, and up and uh up above that was uh an incredibly starry night. And all I I I can recall seeing something move incredibly slow across the sky. And uh I couldn't get I couldn't gather to see what what the heck it was, at least at that point, but I could see the stars disappearing behind it. And from that point of view, I can see that uh that this was a pretty good sized mass. It was not a cloud because it wasn't a cloud in the sky, it wasn't an air or airplane, uh, because they have landing lights and uh or blinking lights and everything else on it. Um, this was a triangular shape. You could tell it was metallic, you could tell it was a real deal. It was it was something tangible, it wasn't uh a smoke or or anything of this nature. So when uh when I mentioned that to Rob, he kind of giggled at me at first, and I remember pulling my car back a little bit, getting out of the car. I said, come over here and take a peek at this. Look at that, look, and I was pointing at it, and then uh that smirk on his face kind of turned into an awe, just like I was. He goes, and I said, What the heck is that?
SPEAKER_03He goes, I don't have a clue. It was just like a shade lighter than the sky, just it was so bright, just a shade lighter.
SPEAKER_04Yeah. And so what I'm trying what I'm trying to find out is like if if you held a football in your arm at arm's length, would that be the size, or would it's a baseball?
SPEAKER_02Or well, this thing seemed to me to be quite a distance away. Like I said, from our perspective, go across the Halifax, or sorry, the Bay Bedford Basin, what is that, a mile and a half, two miles? Yes, you know, and uh wide, and then you have the the Fairview area. This thing was above Fairview at the time. And from my perspective, I would say that uh if you took your thumbnail and and uh uh maybe I would say maybe two fingers. If you took two fingers and the width of that uh encompassed that size in the sky at arm's length.
SPEAKER_04Well, so that's a fair that's a fair size.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, it was huge, it was massive. Yeah, you know, and and Rob said, Hey, I think it's a couple of hundred yards wide. I'm thinking, no, that's a quarter mile wide, but it's it's difficult perspective, particularly during the night.
SPEAKER_04And there was was there any sound?
SPEAKER_02Not a bit.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, not any sound. You're right, Rick. It would I I would say you could have put like three or four 747s into that triangle shape.
SPEAKER_02Absolutely. That that was a good description there, too, because that was a those are very large aircraft, and this thing was uh was incredibly huge. So there was no missing it. And and from one perspective, like Rob mentioned, this is a uh a flight line area from most of the aircraft that go across from Europe from Heathrow Airport, flying to Gander, Newfoundland, they fly right over Halifax to go to New York and New Jersey or wherever they're going. And uh, and you know, this is their flight line and Halifax uh flights coming in from Boston and so on. And we we knew these we knew these planes really well. We saw them hundreds of planes uh throughout you know the evening. This is the flight line, and this thing was definitely a hazard. Uh you could look at it from that perspective. This was a navigational hazard for aircraft.
SPEAKER_04And there was and there was no no sound.
SPEAKER_02No sound at all.
SPEAKER_04So had had that been a commercial jet liner, you probab you have heard that sound before, and it would have had at least some noise if it had been on.
SPEAKER_03We've seen everything fly over here, and even today there's a lot of flies. I've seen V1s and V2s, and I've I've watched them get refueling off the south coast here on their way to Europe from an air tanker, and it was nothing like that. Nothing.
SPEAKER_04And how was it traveling the way a plane would travel or slower or super slow?
SPEAKER_02This thing was traveling so slow that a mass the size of an airplane would simply drop out of the sky.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, I agree.
SPEAKER_02And so, and I do know that that uh you know there's some perspectives where you can where you know I've seen this for a flying aircraft when I'm in an airplane and flying around another aircraft, when you're coming around at a certain angle, it looks like it's sitting in the sky. Um, it's this but that's when you're moving, and that's when it's moving at the same time, and you're you know, the dynamics of what you can see is uh is is manipulating your perspective, your perceptions. This wasn't one of those. We were sitting in a stationary position, and we were watching a craft that was actually moving, but moving so slow with no sound, no contrail, no means of propulsion, and it was simply occupying space and moving at a very slow rate of speed that would have been impossible for any type of an aircraft to do so. It wasn't a helicopter, it wasn't uh, because we would have heard the blades, and it wasn't the normal things that we would see or appreciate when we're looking at aircraft flying across the sky. This thing was an amazing piece of equipment that made no sound. It was impossible for it to be able to do what it was doing.
SPEAKER_04Now, Rob, uh I mean uh Rob mentioned he saw uh lights on the craft. Uh Rick, did you see lights on the craft?
SPEAKER_02I remember seeing a uh on the point of one of the the tips, yeah, there was a small square kind of light, and it looked to me like a window. It looked like a cockpit lit up inside. That's what that's what I get, that's what I thought. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03That was my interpretation of it. The points I could see were emanating light, like there was no reflection off it at all. But they just stayed right on the point, and and um it was something was illuminated there for sure.
SPEAKER_04And from the time that you first saw it till the time that you could no longer see it, how long of period was that? Oh my minutes. Oh, really?
SPEAKER_02Okay, so it wasn't like a quick No, this wasn't a quick little glance, and this thing flew across the sky. We had conversation.
SPEAKER_04Wow.
SPEAKER_02And uh so at at that after we watched this for a good, I don't know, 30 seconds to try to take this in and to try to interpret, you know, we're asking each other questions, like, what is that? I don't know what it's not what is if we were just going back and forth. So I got on the old what we called a shoe phone at the time, those great big uh cell phones. We both had them, and and we called one of the girls in dispatch, not at liberty to mention her name, but um uh because I don't have her permission. But I called her on the phone and I said, uh, hey, do me a favor, uh call to Halifax Airport. And in the meantime, we're still observing this thing. This thing isn't even isn't even halfway across the Bedford Basin yet, heading toward heading toward uh Bedford. That's how slow this thing is moving. So she says, uh, what's going on? I said, just just you gotta do this. Please call so they she called the airport, talked to the tower, and she asked them uh at my request, is there an aircraft coming in for a landing, or do you have anything on radar over the Bedford Basin in the Halifax area? And so she came back about 30 seconds, 40 seconds later, she says, uh no, there's nothing. They don't have anything.
SPEAKER_04And then then the the Halifax uh International Airport, that would have been a little northeast of your position and maybe 30 miles away, something like that.
SPEAKER_02I would say about 40 kilometers or so, yes. So somewhere about there. And I just looked at Rob and we're we're laughing at this point.
SPEAKER_03You gotta be kidding me. Well, you're trying to comprehend what it is, yeah.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah, exactly. So Rob mentioned to me, call Shearwater. Uh yeah, that's a good idea. So I I told the uh dispatch, I said to me, call Shearwater air base. That net that that that's a military base. You know, they they've got uh another perspective. Call them and ask them to see if they have anything on their radar and tell them where it's at, and so on. Well, she did the same thing, and they came back from Shearwater uh military base. It was an active military base at the time, not as active as it was before, you know, several years before that, but it was still occupied as a military base. So um the report was not as nothing.
SPEAKER_04And that and Shearwater is uh slightly southeast of where you were in about 10 kilometers, something like that.
SPEAKER_02I would say yes. Yes, yeah.
SPEAKER_04Now, Rob, did you uh I think you might have asked the woman to actually go outside and see if she could see it.
SPEAKER_03I don't I don't recall asking her or if Rick asked her, but uh one of us did ask her to go outside, and I don't think she could see anything at that point, or maybe she did, I or she didn't want to admit it. Uh one of those for sure. But I mean it took a long time to go over us, and we were sure that she would probably see it, or would be down that end of the city where dispatch was at that time near closer to Shearwater.
SPEAKER_04Uh but she couldn't see anything. Did you feel at the time? You know, I don't know if this could be done, but did you feel to call anybody else that was on your shift to see if they could see it?
SPEAKER_03Oh no, we weren't uh we ridiculed on shift and four, and what was going to survive with those guys for a long break, but uh there was a lot of tormenting going on and jokes on or off off hours when we didn't have galls, and but uh we we just didn't decide to really tell anybody until a few years later. Well, because we in all honesty, she might not have been able to see it, because I I probably wouldn't have saw it unless Rick actually pointed to where it was. And if you're going out into the sky and just looking for something that you're so used to seeing a plane or whatever go over, you would see it. But if you didn't know where to look, you you probably wouldn't see it.
SPEAKER_04So you because you know, even now there is there's stigma about it, but you know, in the in the 90s, definitely there would have been a lot more uh stigma about saying that you had seen something like this.
SPEAKER_02So you basically sorry, my Rob, go ahead.
SPEAKER_04So basically you just kept this to yourself at the time.
SPEAKER_02There's no way that I'm gonna go up to one of our my fellow officers and say, hey man, you're not gonna believe what we saw last night. You know, because I can see it for the rest of our for the rest of our career. Can you see Rob the tin hats and things like that, the you know, and little UFO airplanes hanging from the ceilings at briefings and stuff like that? I can just say no. With the group you worked with, yeah. We never hear the end of it.
SPEAKER_04So uh so at the time, I guess uh it's a safe bet that you had never nobody else in in the department ever mentioned seeing UFOs or anything like that at the time.
SPEAKER_03I would think they would be in the same boat as we were if they saw something which they wouldn't say in a word. They wouldn't say a word in a way.
SPEAKER_04So so now that you've had all these years to really think about it, I'd like to get your thoughts on what you think it was. And I guess I'll ask uh Rick first, what now that you've had time many years to think about it, what do you think that that was that you saw?
SPEAKER_02Well, let me put it like this. Um a lot of folks in Halifax region, they go to the Sherwater International Air Shows and so on. They've had the Galaxy aircraft there, which is the largest, one of the largest military aircrafts ever built. I mean, you you haul tanks, and it's uh inside of that the hull of that aircraft is the room the size of a basketball field for crying out loud. It's a massive aircraft. We see the uh you know the F-117 uh uh stealth bombers, and we see the B-1 bombers, and you know, we see everything. We everyone, yeah, like we know what we have out there as far as the size of uh of craft and what their capabilities are. We see them take off and land. And uh there's not a one of us out here that hasn't seen just about everything that the government has. And we even know what our adversaries have uh uh in Europe and and uh you know and elsewhere. So the fact of the matter is is that uh, and this is an axiomatic fact, I will say this emphatically that what we had seen is not not anything that is at least uh known in the military circles, uh from the civilian point of view, and uh, and so on. This thing was unique uh in its own right. It was incredibly massive, it traveled at a very low rate of speed, almost at a hover, if you will. It made absolutely no sound, not even a crackle, nothing. It uh there was no sense of of our observing a propulsion. Um the only thing, the only conclusion that I can come to is that what I saw was uh I hate to say this, I don't think it's of this earth. I really don't. And that was that's I still hold that conclusion to this very day. And how long has it been?
SPEAKER_04Rob, Rob, what do you feel that you saw? Like what do you feel that after all these years, what do you think it was?
SPEAKER_03Uh at the time, like I said before, we were trying to comprehend what it was, and a lot of things went through my mind. Is it is it not from here, is it from here? Um okay, if it's from here, uh you look back at the technologies, mostly American, when they were developed, like the stealth capabilities. Uh Rick might be able to say more than me, late 70s, early 80s, a lot of that seemed to come into play and was being developed and experimented with, and people would see things in the sky. But then about 20 or 25 years afterward, it became pretty much a known fact of this technology, um, whether it's stealth or the different platforms that they fly with. And you would think by now that that would have come out, but if it was one of their platforms, and so on, I'm thinking, you know, well, maybe it's not from here, or is it one of those dirigible, like a hot hot balloon type of stealth capability? But again, you know, why is that not not public by now? Why have we not seen that air platform? So uh I have no idea, and I kind of come to the same conclusion as Rick, and maybe it's not from here because it would have come out by now, I would think. I mean, it was so huge. Where do you hide it? Where do you launch it? How do you stay in the dark with it? I don't I don't know. I I still really don't know. And I've I I just can't explain it.
SPEAKER_02You know, the the the one thing that I that this experience had had done for me in a lot of ways is it uh opened up uh a curiosity, and so I became a little bit more open-minded in terms of the various stories that are that's going on uh on an ongoing basis and has been going on for several decades, about uh what they currently call UAPs and so forth. When I when I look at uh what we when I recall what we had observed, there's a story called, they they call it the Phoenix Lights. And it was about uh the same type of concept. It was a triangular shape, incredibly large uh unit that was uh moving incredibly slowly across the skies, seen by tens of thousands of people in out of Phoenix, Arizona, and uh and reported and they made jokes of it. And but the people that saw it, they don't take it too lightly. But uh but it was you know shoved and pushed around and and swept under the carpet, sort of thing. And I would suggest that this thing was probably think very similar to what they had seen there. Yeah, yeah. The only difference was that it wasn't so massive in terms, it wasn't so uh prevalent in terms of the numbers of lights and so on. That's the only difference. Yeah.
SPEAKER_04I before we had gone on air today, I had mentioned to Rick and Rob that um there's actually been several uh triangle-shaped uh crafts seen in Nova Scotia and not far away. Actually, uh season one for my listeners, um I interviewed uh U.S. soldier David uh Marceau, and he had seen this pretty much identical craft in 1992 in uh Gagetown, New Brunswick, which is about 380 kilometers away. So there's a lot of other people like you that have seen very, very similar craft in that area, and also that shape has been seen around the world, actually. Um it is mystifying, that's for sure.
SPEAKER_03Oh, yeah, there's no question. I wasn't totally aware of that. I thought it was kind of a I've heard of triangles before on on some of these other uh shows and and things like that, but it now it seems to be this UAP and these lights in the sky and that, but and the triangles seem to have died down a bit. But uh I'll reveal here today that and I don't know if I told you or not, Rick, but when I was in Pentfall, I think only my family knows, really. Um I was on the police department there for a couple of years, and my partner and I, then, um it's very similar at three in the morning. We get out of the car just outside town, had to go to the bathroom really bad, staying there in this field, and it's very, very dark there. And off to my right, which would be coming from the east, was something the equivalent of the North Star in the sky, quite bright. And um it was coming at a very fast speed, almost the speed of like a meteor coming into the atmosphere. And I said to my partner then, I said, Do you see that? And he said, Yeah, what is that? And I said, I don't know. And I kept coming, and it came almost directly over us, but more in front of us. Never slowed down, never made a gradual turn, but at full speed, it shot at a 90-degree angle and shot off to the north and disappeared out of sight. And I said to him, I said, Okay, that wasn't what I thought it was. What was it? And he said, I have no idea. And in true police fashion, said, I don't know what it was, but I'm never gonna tell anybody I saw it. So I kind of went with that all these years, but that was the only other thing that I can see that would relate what's going on today.
SPEAKER_04What year was that?
SPEAKER_03That would have been in '85. I just got on the police department.
SPEAKER_04Oh, yeah. So you're definitely weren't going to mention that to anybody else.
SPEAKER_03No, it was kind of be quiet and listen and learn from your partner then. And um I I just I never saw anything like it before. So when we saw this triangle, it was the total opposite thing of what I had saw down there, which seems to be more prevalent today, I guess, with the the UAP situation. It's funny, Rick mentioned something there, and it jogged, or you did, and it jogged my memory of um getting in touch with the authorities. I talked to a woman, she's uh probably in her late 70s, early 80s now, um kind of a friend of the family, and she I we were talking about this um probably about six months ago. And she said, Well, it's so funny because John and I, that was her husband, he has passed away since then. They were they were from Dartmouth, and they were down the eastern shore on a beach, and he ran a store for his parents, like a convenience store on the corner. And after the store closed, she said, In the summer nights, we would always go down to the beach. And she said, No, I haven't told anybody this, but we were on the beach one night at like two or three in the morning, and she said, John said, What's that out over the water? And she said, Out about three or four hundred or five hundred yards, whatever it was, there was this uh round cylinder shaped object, much like this tic tac is what she described. Now she doesn't follow any. That she doesn't even own a TV. She has the idea. And I said, like a TikTok shape. And she said, Yeah, exactly like that. She said it was hovering over the water, and John didn't know what it was, and I certainly didn't know what it was. And she said, We kind of got scared and we just we decided to leave. Well, John's car wouldn't even turn off.
SPEAKER_04Wow. Wow.
SPEAKER_03She said, Uh I kind of got really scared, but we sat there or stood there by the car and watched this thing. And then as quick as can be, it dove under the water and it just disappeared.
SPEAKER_04Wow.
SPEAKER_03So I said, Are you serious? And she said, I am. She goes, I never saw anything like it before or ever after. And it bothered John so much. He he their family owned the store, and it was close to Shearwater Air Base, the military base. And John, when John got home, he called later that morning, he called his friend who was who worked at the base, and he described what he said happened. And the guy said to me, He said, John, I'm gonna have someone call you back. He's gonna be from the military, much like the story you told me. Um, and the base commander and somebody else were on the phone. And I don't know who the other fellow was, or I don't know if she told me or she didn't know. Um, but they described that to him, and he's John asked me, What is it? And he said, We don't know, but we've seen a lot of them.
SPEAKER_04Wow. So what year was this?
SPEAKER_03That would have been in the 70s.
SPEAKER_04Wow.
SPEAKER_03And that's when she told that story, it it reminded me of her story, and I kind of forgot it, and I she had told it to me and me that day, because I was my I had my son's dog down visiting their dog. They're both German shepherds. And she I don't think she's uh told anybody that story, but she told me that day, and I I haven't really told anybody that since, other than my kids and my wife.
SPEAKER_04Before we wrap this up, I just want to thank Rick and Rob for telling about their experiences today. And I would also like to thank them for their service.
SPEAKER_03You're more than welcome. I was it was a pleasure to be on the show.
SPEAKER_02It was uh awesome, and uh thanks for having us very much. Totally appreciated here. Thanks.
SPEAKER_00Here are the Canadian Civil Aviation Anomalies for the week of October 30th through November 3rd, 2023. On November 1st, a Hala Jet International Sikorsky S-76C from Vancouver Harbor, British Columbia to Victoria Harbor, British Columbia, was struck by lightning, resulting in an unplanned descent. The aircraft declared pan-pan. On November 3rd, a Sunwing Airlines Boeing 737-81D, flying from Santa Clara, Cuba, to Toronto International Airport, reported observing a drone at 10,500 feet. Also on November 3rd at 2030 Zulu time, an unauthorized remotely piloted aircraft system was flying over the city 1,000 feet above ground level. It was reported to the Prince George, British Columbia Tower. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police were advised. There was no impact on operations, and all flights proceeded to their destinations without further incident. Today we are starting a new segment called Audio Excerpts from UFO Books. Today's book is Search for the Unknown, Canada's UFO Files and the Rise of Conspiracy Theory by Matthew Hayes. Used by permission from the author, read by Joy Ryan. Project Magnet. In the official memo to his superior, Smith requested permission to start Project Magnet and to use DOT equipment to do so. Commander C. P. Edwards, the Deputy Minister of Transport for Air Services, granted this permission, and in December 1950, Smith began his investigations. At first, Smith was the only DOT employee working on the project, and then only on a part-time basis. This quickly changed as Magnet acquired the assistance of three engineers and two technicians by the end of 1950, still meager resources by Smith's reckoning. The physical resources available to the team were basic. Smith had at his disposal, for instance, a galvanometer, a gamma ray detector, a radio receiver, and a gravimeter, all spare technologies that the DOT had on hand. The project received a secret security rating due to its potentially profitable technologies. This classification would become a sore point for the DOT and one of the main reasons the department would later shut the project down. In Magnet's early days, Smith worked quietly on what he called small and very crude experiments. He had actually carried out his first experiment into geomagnetics about a year before, requesting permission to start the project. Spurred by reports of UFOs in the late 1940s, Smith had already begun trying to puzzle it out. A preliminary report on the results of this experiment provided details on Smith's attempt to induce the collapse of the Earth's magnetic fields and thereby capture the released electrical energy through a system of coils wound around a core of ferromagnetic material. Smith concluded that the experiment was successful in that the captured energy was able to register a reading on a voltmeter, but that the apparatus was extremely crude and very difficult of precise measurement, and so the observations were purely qualitative in nature. Thus, the object of pursuing Project Magnet eight months later was to construct more adequate equipment and test his hypotheses in a more rigorous and quantitative manner. Smith believed that if these more advanced experiments were successful, they would prove that he could harness energy from the induced collapse of the Earth's gravitational fields and use it as a method of propulsion. UFOs might operate using the same principle, Smith proposed, and so it was necessary to continue the study to determine exactly what kind of technology the flying saucers represented. Judging from later correspondence, officials within the government did not believe that the flying saucers were of extraterrestrial origin. In fact, the DOT likely did not have any interest in UFOs at all, except for the potential, however small, of uncovering new technology that might assist with aviation. What made the proposal look palatable to the DOT was that Smith's ideas fell in line with research that the department was already carrying out. In the late 1940s and early 1950s, the Canadian government was intensely interested in the study of aurora and their effect on radio waves. Edward Jones Emotep has written that scientists in Ottawa struggled to understand the unique conditions of the ionosphere and the possibilities they might present for the extension of reliable communications throughout the Canadian North. In fact, the technology these government scientists used to produce and read ionograms, the visual image of the ionosphere that furnished the working objects of the discipline, regularly failed, and this technological failure was used to help define a certain idea of nordicity and the Canadian nation. The ionosphere scientists pointed to the apparent uniqueness of Canada's ionosphere and claimed an expertise for Canadian science distinct from America's expertise, which might help bolster the nation's sovereignty during a time of national redefinition. This is the end of today's excerpt.
SPEAKER_04Well, that's our podcast for this week. So please share, follow, subscribe, and do all those good things to help spread the word about UFO Talker. And until next time, this is Michael Ryan. Keep watching the skies.
SPEAKER_00You have been listening to the UFO Talker. If you have any questions or comments on this episode, you can email us at UFO Talker at Bell.net or visit our website at UFOTalker.ca. You can support UFO Talker by using the Buy Me a Coffee app with links on our website and in the show notes. We appreciate every listener. Thank you for your support. This has been a Michael Ryan production.
SPEAKER_0230. That's a wrap.