May 3, 2019 • 45 mins
In 1967 the tiny fishing community of Shag Harbor became ground zero for one of the most infamous UFO sightings in Canadian history. More than 50 years later, people still haven't forgotten the bizarre series of lights they saw that October night... but what exactly were they? Listen in to learn more about the mysterious event known as Canada's Roswell.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of I Heart Gradios How Stuff Works. Welcome back
(00:24):
to the show. My name is Matt noel Is on
Adventures they called me Ben. We are joined as always
with our super producer Paul Michion controlled decond Most importantly,
you are you. You are here, and that makes this
stuff they don't want you to know this. This is
what I'm pretty excited about. Matt, what about you. Yeah,
it's been a minute since we've really gotten our unexplained
(00:48):
phenomena i e. Uh UFOs, unidentified flying objects, sometimes unidentified
submerged objects, any of those. We're we're into it. And
we had a lot of people, a lot of our
fellow listeners suggest this topic, so we we picked one
one person that we wanted you to hear from directly. Hey, boys, UM,
(01:11):
I'm a big fan of your show, and uh, I
really enjoy all the episodes you do. I just had
an idea for a great episode and that's uh, the
mystery of the Shag Harbor incident. That was a huge
UFO sighting seen by many many people actually relatives of
personal friends of mine here in Eastern Canada. Happened on
(01:35):
the south shore of Nova Scotia back in the sixties
and not far from Oak Island, right, another awesome place
of mystery. So apparently there was a pretty substantial RCMP
investigation into that, And yeah, I think it would make
for a great episode. Yes, thank you anonymous caller from
East Canada over there in Nova Scotia, for near Nova
(01:57):
Scotia at least, Yeah, thank you so much. These are
two fantastic ideas that have been on our mutual minds
for some time. Oak Island is a story all its own,
and we've done some videos on that before, right, Matt, Yeah,
we have. I cannot recall if we've actually made a
podcast episode, but we should if we haven't, Yeah, maybe
(02:19):
Buried Treasure episode or something tantalizing, tantalizing story Shag Harbor however, Yeah,
that's what that's what we're going to look at today.
It has been quite a while, old friends, since we
did an episode on UFOs. I for one am you know,
I'm still convinced that various governments are hiding some sort
(02:41):
of advanced technology or another. And and you both of us, you,
especially Fox Molder style, still want to believe is that correct?
Very much true, especially with something like the incident we're
going to discuss today. Our caller said that, you know,
a bunch of people witnessed this thing, and it is
true that, I would say dozens. I think dozens of
(03:04):
people did witness this at some point during the official incident.
You know, it's not a ton of people. It's not
like it was over a large city and a bunch
of you know, everyone had their cell phones or something.
We're talking nineteen sixty seven. But enough people saw it
that it wasn't just a trick of the light that
you know, a captain on a ship saw, or you know,
(03:27):
maybe a meteor that could be explained pretty easily, or
something funky on the horizon seen by a pilot exactly.
There's there are more, there are more vantages to this
than a lot of UFO sightings. This is one of
the most well documented UFO sightings in modern history. To
be honest, they call it Canada's Roswell, and that's not
(03:50):
an ironic name like Little John or something. This this
really is one of the most historically significant, well known
and famous or infamous UFO sightings in Canadian history, if
not the most famous. So we received tons of great
episodes for specific UFO sightings. We get them a lot.
(04:12):
This one we were curious about because if you're not
from Canada and you don't spend much time thinking about UFOs,
you probably have not heard of shag Harbor. A lot
of people who are upologists in the United States may
not have heard of this. But here are the facts.
Shag Harbor is a tiny, tiny town, a village really,
(04:36):
and it is as as our color said, on the
southern shore of Nova Scotia. The population is somewhere between
it's under five people, it's four hundred four and fifty
people or so. And their big business is lobster, which
I love this because lobster is amazing. But here where
(04:56):
we're based and landlocked Atlanta, Georgia, you get what you
pay for, yeah yeah, um. And just so you have
an idea of where this is. If you do live
in the United States, as do most of of you
out there listening, we know this, um if you are
in Portland, Maine. So if you're imagining Portland, Maine, way
(05:18):
up there in the northeast uh section of the United States,
and you essentially go east. No, it's not perfectly east
because we live, you know, on a globe. But if
you look east on a map and you just travel
that till you hit Nova Scotia, you essentially hit Shag Harbor,
just to know exactly where you are, because Nova Scotia
is essentially a peninsula that comes down. Um, it's close
(05:42):
to an island, but that's peninsula that comes down off
of Canada up on the top there on the eastern side. Yea.
And this this fishing community, right, most of their business
in the fishing industry takes place from November to May.
That's going to be important for the story as it unfolds.
(06:03):
On a side note, I just checked downstairs at one
of the only places that does sell lobster rolls here
in the area. Twenty four dollars for one for like
a small lobster rule, right, for just a regular lobster rule.
And that's of course to get that lobster to Atlanta
and then buy it in pont City Market. Oh boy, now,
(06:26):
just saying it might be a little inflated, that's all.
That's all. One day Matt. Maybe one day I'll treat
myself to a lobster. You know what, I might just
at this point, maybe I should just fly to Maine
or Nova Scotia. Let's well, let's look at Dave's Lobster
in Halifax. Let's see. Let's see if they've got a menu.
I looked up some places in Shag Harbor there I
(06:47):
couldn't find. I couldn't get the website for Captain Wayne's
to work. But I'm I'm interested. So if you're listening,
you've ever been to, uh, Captain Wayne's in Shag Harbor.
Let let let me know what you think, and let
me know what I should order when I go there,
because after this, after doing this research, I'm excited about
taking a trip there one day. That would be wonderful.
(07:10):
We should definitely do that. And while we're there, we
can check out the Chapel Hill Museum, Captain Waynes, and
some other restaurants, a few tourism sites. But what sort
of tourism sites, you may ask, Well, you know a
lot of people would probably go out there for fishing
or maybe to try and catch their own lobster. Dude,
that would be so cool. Uh. Some people may visit
(07:31):
for the history of Chapel Hill, which is historically significant site.
But many people visit for a different reason. They visit
Shag Harbor, you see, because they are convinced that human
beings saw a UFO, not even a UFO, an extra
terrestrial object in this town in the nineties sixties. Here's
(07:56):
where it gets crazy. So let's get our let's get
our primary sources for this right, and we'll go with
the official story, and then we'll go with some speculation,
and then we'll go with some analysis. That sounds great.
I feel like I'm over explaining it. That's very Alice
in Wonderland, where the Hatter says, start at the beginning,
to go through the middle, and when you get to
(08:17):
the end, stop. Signposts, in my opinion, are actually good,
so let's keep with them. Okay, all right, Well we've
made a promise now, Matt, so we'll have to try
to We'll have to try to keep our stories straight,
which is a problem in the Shag Harbor tale as well.
Our primary sources for contemporary reports from the authorities and
civilian witnesses come from a paper called the Halifax Chronicle Herald.
(08:43):
And here's here's most of what we do. On Wednesday,
October four, at around eleven twenty pm, multiple witnesses claimed
to see the following. Some reported a row of lights.
Row of light it's on a craft that was roughly
sixty feet long. Now that's of course an approximation, but
(09:05):
that was used several times, uh sixty ft long and
this row of lights on whatever this thing was. The
lights at least because a lot of people couldn't at
least several of the reports couldn't see an object. They
just saw the lights because of the distance they were away.
But the lights descended down and there was some kind
of noise that was emanating from whatever this was that was.
(09:29):
It was reported as like a whistle sometimes sometimes as
a whooshing sound. Um. And it was almost like it
was akin to, at least some of them said a
bomb falling, or like in a movie you would hear
a bomb like exactly, um. And it was so this
it was descending down right and then it hovered over
(09:50):
the water out there at Shag Harbor or right outside
of Shag Harbor essentially hovered over the water just momentarily,
and then it began to submerge, and there was some
weird details were going to get into here with how
the light functioned or didn't function. It was very strange,
but let's continue along. Yes, yes, the object or the
(10:11):
lights whatever this was, uh, submerged into the Atlantic Ocean,
a famously large body of water, which, by the way,
if you were in shack Harbor to your to your east,
nothing but water. That's it. Yeah, exactly, Uh. And emergency crews,
(10:32):
primarily the Royal Canadian Mounted Police or the RCMP, as
our caller mentioned earlier, they arrived within fifteen minutes or so,
so they're not fooling around. They reasonably assumed this was
a plane crash at first, so lives could be on
the line and the clock is ticking. The Coast Guard
later joins in the search. Initially civilians and authorities the
(10:57):
way the story goes, noted a thick yellow foam, or specifically,
a glittery yellow foam. A local fishing boat captain said
this was about eighty feet why the swath of foam,
and it's important to remember that he made this observation
in the darkness, based on his unaided eyesight. According to
(11:18):
the records, no one obtained a sample of this strange substance.
So even today we we don't know what it is.
We can guess, but we don't know. For about three days,
the authorities searched the bottom of the harbor and they
have no luck. They find nothing, no bodies, no debris.
Uh bubb kiss. They also find when they contact Halifax
(11:42):
and other regional authorities that no planes were reported missing.
And with that, the incident seemed set to be a
flash in the pan headline. Local radio reported it, The
Chronicle Herald reported it, but it seemed like an unusual
fighting that, like thousands and thousands of others, would eventually
(12:03):
end up being little more than a footnote in regional
history books. That's see that this is the important thing.
So this happens in nineteen sixty seven, right, it's twenty
nineteen now, and this is a famous, world famous UFO incident.
But in let's say nineteen seventy seven, this was not
(12:23):
the case. Something happened between sixty seven and today that
changed the way the public thinks about this specific night
in October. And and you know, I know I'm setting
us up here, but we will tell you what that
moment is. We found it. But for now, let's let's
(12:45):
look at the facts. That's the gist of the story,
and there are a couple of problems with it, a
couple of contradictions. If we rely just on the articles
from the Chronicle Herald, what do we find. We'll tell
you right after a quick word from our sponsor. Well,
(13:05):
if we do rely on those Chronicle Herald articles and
we just say that that's all we're gonna use, we're
gonna find a couple of things. First, is that uh,
four teenagers said, and this this is a claim, they
saw four lights, not three. They said that the lights
were yellow or white. So we were already here like
even amongst a group of people who were from the
(13:27):
same vantage, saying they saw maybe slightly different things. They
confirmed the lights were descending coming down from the sky.
One of the four kids said the lights appeared to
turn off and on or blink in some way. Another
kid said that he heard the aforementioned whistling noise, the
some sound. So again one one of the four witnesses said,
I heard it emitting some kind of sound, But the
(13:49):
other kids, the other three didn't mention anything about a
sound until this other person mentioned it. Who knows if
that's then some kind of confirmation bias or wanting to
be correct if you've missed it. Another team said he
heard a loud noise when the lights appeared to hit
the water, So some kind of boom or splash. That's
where you kind of get that end of the bomb sound.
(14:11):
And you know, if it was a massive object and
it impacted the water, there would be some kind of sound.
It just depends on how far away you are if
you could hear it. Essentially, if it were indeed, a
craft sixty ft long, no matter how light it was,
would make an audible noise. Present if a UFO falls
in the water and no one's around doesn't make a sound. Yes,
(14:33):
another thing you're gonna find is that a whole separate
group of people in this case, a couple other teenagers
said they saw three red orange lights this time, so
rather than white, yellow, white or yellow descending again from
the sky forming a line at a roughly forty five
degree angle. Now, these two this uh, this pair they
(14:55):
were actually driving when they when they saw this, and
they didn't stop the vehicle and the lights just kind
of passed out of you as they're driving around. Um,
and you know, you're probably somewhere near the coast over there,
and they're going to be gone even if they're descending down. Um,
so we at least have two vantage points specifically from
the Chronicle Herald, specifically teenagers. And this isn't the end
(15:21):
of our witness list. This is just where the witness
list gets a little bit at times murky. But picture
picture yourself looking at an aerial map of Shag Harbor
and you can pull one up right now, and you
can pull one up right now now zoom out and
taking a bigger region into your aerial view, and there's Halifax. Okay.
(15:45):
So local radio stations reported a glowing object have been
seen by a bunch of people who called their newsrooms
and they reported witnessing strange glowing objects flying around Halifax
at around ten pm. So what is our established timeline
at this point? When did the impact at the water
do we have we established that yet would be either
(16:08):
it would be before midnight but after exactly. Okay, So
we couped like an hour and change beforehand all over
Halifax and been as you said, like not a significantly
significant distance way but far enough away an hour before
that you see lights, glowing objects, got it right? Yeah?
(16:31):
It would be helpful for us to say that distance, right,
it's about from Halifax, Nova Scotia to shag Harbor, Nova Scotia.
You really going about two kilometers or one hundred and
fifty eight miles, So that's pretty far. That's that's according
to distance between cities dot net. Oh, that's great. That's
that's just their thing, unless it's a driving distance of
(16:55):
some sort, right, right, So the radio stations are reporting this,
and they're not the only ones. Air Canada Flight three
oh five noted something strange on the left side of
their plane at seven fifteen pm, and they called it
a brilliantly lit rectangular object with a string of smaller
(17:16):
lights trailing the object. At seven nineteen the pilots noticed
a sizeable silent explosion near the object, and two minutes
later another explosion occurred and it faded to a blue
cloud around this thing whatever it was they saw. So
they when I read when I read that, and I
read that all I hear is force field of some sort,
(17:37):
I got hit or or like reacted. Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah.
So we know they saw something unusual, but we don't
know necessarily whether that is tied to this stuff that
happens hours later. This is where we want to introduce
our first book, the one that people would consider conspiratorial.
(17:58):
Doug Ledger wrote a book called Aratime UFO Files, and
in this book he claims that additional witnesses exist. Darryl
Dorry and his sister Annette and Darryl's mother were sitting
on their front porch when they noticed a large object
maneuvering above the southwestern horizon. The next day, Darryl writes
(18:20):
a letter to the Royal Canadian Air Force Greenwood Base commander,
asking what was flying over the water that evening because
I've never seen anything like it? And yes, so we've got,
you know, um, two people who who saw something and
they reported it, which is you know, always good, especially
reporting it to uh a commander of a base with
(18:43):
the Royal Canadian Air Force. That's pretty cool and it's
good to know. But then you turn to our next witness,
Captain Leo Howard Mercy. Now this gentleman, you can actually
find uh, you can find a memo because he contacted
the Royal Canadian and Mounted Police and a report was
taken on the seventh of October nineteen UM and as
(19:08):
pertaining to the fourth, but an actual you can find
a written report, and so you know, we're we're saying
that this is taken from maritime UFO files by Doug Ledger,
and it's true. But a lot of times when you're,
you know, reading a book like that, it's hard to
know whether the sources are legit, are real. Right, in
this case, they most certainly are so. Uh, Howard Mercy,
(19:31):
Captain Leo Howard Mercy, he was looking at his radar.
He's standing on his ship and he's looking at four
blips on his deca radar. They seem to be stationary.
But then you know, he says, well, I want to
see I want to see what this is. He looks
out and he's about twenty eight kilometers from where he
is on his ship. Um, he could see four bright
lights in again kind of a formation, like a rectangular
(19:55):
formation roughly is what he was estimating. And then, uh,
the entire crew of I think it was twenty, yeah,
nearly twenty fishermen who were with him on his ship,
they went out, they got on the deck. They watched
this thing, this object, whatever it is, this group of objects. Um,
they watched it. And he was in the Northeastern Sky
(20:17):
and then this guy Mercy radio the Rescue Coordination Center
at the Harbor Master in Halifax, and he asked for,
you know, something like, hey, guys, what's going on over there?
And it was one of those things where he he
reported knowing that the Air Force conducted you know, testing
out in that area where where he was looking. So
we didn't necessarily think it was anything too off, at
(20:39):
least according to the official memo and report, but he
did think it was odd, so you know, he asked
for an explan explanation. He filed this report with the
RCMP and that was about it. At the end of
the report, it is noted that he is considered to
be a reliable type individual that's a quote and bears
a good reputation in his community. So that's a that's
(21:04):
something that it was noted by the RCMP of the
Royal Canadian amount of Police, So which is just them
saying that he's considered a credible reporter. He's not pranking people,
he's not a crazy, you know, paint huffing maniac who
calls every weekend. Yes, someone reliable saw this, whatever it was.
So so we have these additional witnesses, and there are
(21:27):
a few more. But in cases like this, where there's
something up in the sky that's not too far into
the wee hours of the night, we know that there
are almost certainly a bunch of witnesses who saw something
and did not go to the trouble of writing to
the Air Force station because that's a lot of work.
So let's go there. Initial ideas. Initially, initially oddly enough, Uh,
(21:54):
most people are not thinking in terms of um anything
other of the mundane activities, tragedies, meteorological phenomenon. So they
first assume, well, maybe this is a boat, got to
search that. Maybe this is a plane, got to search
for that. Well, in the plane and or boat makes
(22:14):
a lot of sense depending on the color of the
lights that they saw, and if they were flashing or
at least um on and off in some kind of
repeating pattern, right right, that could be distressing. And we
did notice that in a few of the witnesses. True,
that is true. Then they said, well, you know what
else could fit this story? A distress flare. This is
(22:35):
a for for people who are convinced that this was
a craft. This this feels like a stick in the mud.
Answer but there are some pretty compelling similarities. So first off,
flare guns are standard on boats, standard ond boats. If
there's a problem, you use a flare gun after you
(22:57):
fire a flare. Have you ever fired a flare? They're
so cool. If after you fire a flare, then you
know there's a little bit of a delay before it burns.
It might it varies, but it might start burning almost
immediately after you shoot it off, or it might hit
its arc and then start going downward and then ignite.
(23:19):
But this, this idea with a flare gun inspired some
of the more skeptical thinkers to say things like like
Brian Dunning said, is it outside the realm of possibility
that someone was playing around with a flare gun at
eleven at night after killing part of a six pack
(23:39):
or a whole six pack or a whole six pack?
You know what I mean? Because if you've been drinking,
maybe shooting off a flare gun sounds like a cool
thing to do. And and yes, and just to put
it out there the way, one of the big parts
of this story that is so fascinating is how the
light landed on top of the water for a little
(24:00):
bit and then sunk into the water right, and one
of the witnesses, I think in that group of four teenagers,
one of the witnesses said a single light remained for
a moment before it submerged or before it was put
out by the water. So later later on, and I
mean like months or years later on, people proposed that
(24:21):
the sighting could fit the description of something like a
falling satellite, which is completely a possibility, seven completely a
possibility that satellite may have fallen, especially if pieces of
it are breaking apart as it's falling, and you have
multiple lights where fires are burning up of it. Yeah, yeah, absolutely,
(24:42):
as it go, as it enters the atmosphere. And then
it could also be a meteoric fireball, so like us
falling satellite, meteors frequently break up during their fall, and
that could also look like a line of lights. And
depending on the angle of the viewer or your perspective
as you're watching this, it could seem to be moving
(25:03):
much more slowly than it actually is a kind of
a low angle. So the big question immediately here is
did the story change. Here's the thing. After these reports
were printed primarily in the Chronicle Herald, but also in
other papers of the time, people began to connect the
(25:24):
dots and build what could have been interpreted as separate
sightings into a single cohesive narrative. That is, there's nothing
wrong with that. That's what people do. We find patterns,
we connect dots. That's how our species got to where
it is. So the crazy thing that we discovered here
is that the foam and the lights were not initially connected.
(25:49):
No one initially reported seeing the objects or lights leaving
the foam, but people began saying that they saw the
lights actually leave the foam behind. So for that point
the phone could had just been something weird that that
captain saw. So there we have it for now, this
series of spooky lights. If we're going to use the
(26:11):
technical term, but how do we get from spooky lights
to UFOs? Will explore that after a word from our sponsor,
and against all odds, we have returned. How did this?
How did this transform from uh spooky lights to genuine
(26:35):
concerns about extraterrestrials being cited? Well, according to a couple
of different sources, this story did not actually take off
in the national international sphere until decades later, until when
a ufologist named Chris Styles said that he witnessed UFO
around the same time and place. Uh Several weeks after
(26:57):
the initial sighting, he co wrote a book called Our Object,
the world's only government documented UFO crash. In this book,
Styles and his co author Doug Ledger from earlier what
was that book called the Meteor the Maritime UFO Files.
So in this book Dark Object, Styles and Ledger claimed
(27:19):
that what people saw that night in Shag Harbor was
a spaceship, not just an unidentified flying object, but an
unidentified submerged object. For the us OS, yeah, you introduced
me that concept, and they further trace the path of
(27:39):
this object after it submerges in the ocean. They say
that after it went underwater, it traveled about seventy clicks
northeast to a US Navy facility called the h m
c S. Shelburne. At the time, the h m c S.
Shelburne was a support compound for offshore sonar array that
(28:00):
was meant to detect submarines as part of an anti
submarine system, and this was also part of a larger
global network. Back to the book, the authors claimed that
this us O unidentified submerged object met up with another
ship underwater. They were monitored by the U. S. Navy
and then they were eventually launched into space for the record,
(28:22):
as as near as we can find, a Ledger and
Styles were the first people to propose this idea or
deposit this um series of events, and we couldn't find
what their sources were for this claim. But if you
did have information about this, let's say you got it
(28:45):
from someone's last words on their deathbed, someone's you know,
no one's ever heard of this before, but this happened,
you would be the first person to ever report that.
The problem is, you know, why there be no um
Why would there be no reporting of that kind of incident,
that kind of thing, unless it's just completely redacted and
(29:08):
held because it's you know, national security kind of situation.
So there's it's one of those things we always talk about.
We'll get into it later, but it's it's not provable. Rather,
it's not provable either way, right right right. We know
that there's enough evidence to say that people definitely saw something.
We know little else because even even the mundane explanations
(29:34):
are not perfect. One the one fits, you know what
I mean. So in the in the case of the flare,
if if it were a distress flare, we would have
probably found an object right from which that was shot.
If it were a prank by someone who had had
too much to drink or was just outliving their best
life on the coast, didn't even have to be a brank,
(29:57):
just somebody messing around. Then, you know, how do we
explain the fact that no one came forward. We would
just say that they were so terrified that they decided
to take the secret to their grave because they don't
I don't know. I don't think they would have gotten
in serious trouble. But maybe they freaked out because they
saw all the all the law enforcement and rescue responders
(30:21):
out there. Maybe they were like illegal lobster poachers and
they didn't want anyone to know, Yeah, doing illegal flair lobstering. Well, yeah,
they're flaring for lobsters that you know. That's an old standby,
flaring for lobsters, starting in a T shirt. So so
we've got these claims from from these authors, and there
(30:42):
are more there. There are more arguments or theories around,
but the claims of Styles and Ledger are probably the
most well known on that side of the fence. Let's
go to the official word because those of us who
may um say, well, I'm I'm more of a skeptically
(31:03):
minded person, and I am convinced this is a flair. Uh,
we have weird news for you. The government disagrees the
The Canadian government was not convinced. On October six, a
couple of days after the incident, a Colonel W. W.
Turner issued a memo where he said, quote, the Coordination
(31:23):
Center conducted preliminary investigation and discounted the possibilities that the
siding was produced by an aircraft, flares, floats, or any
other known objects. And he got that this is weird.
This is probably the strangest piece of trivia I learned
doing this. He got that from a telex, an early
(31:46):
kind of form of facts sent from a Coastguard ship,
and it was very short and to the point, you know,
essentially it was like telegraph language where they said, we
searched for this with nil results. We searched for this
other thing with nil results. All that means is, while
they're not totally ruling the doubt, they're saying they didn't
find anything that supports any of those mundane explanations. So
(32:12):
even though they didn't find anything, they still didn't feel
that the normal explanations fully explained everything. And this is
this sounds sinister, right, it could be seen as a
very sinister thing. But we also have to remember it's
kind of predictable if it were a flare. They're searching
the ocean for a flare. Well, you mean you can't
(32:35):
just dive down there easily with a snorkel and grab it.
It's not like a video game. It's not like a
mission where you can snag some of the video game.
And it's so true, you'd have to have such specialized
equipment to even get to the bottom of the ocean
there if you could, and then from that point you're
just gonna look for a flare that could be carried.
(32:56):
You know. That's if it makes it to the bottom.
If it is a flare, if it the flair, what
if it was some you know, extraterrestrial uh species, just probe,
like small little probe spherically shaped or something that's designed
to go down to the bottom of the ocean, Oh
and then disappear, Yeah, like burrow into the sand in
(33:17):
the Okay, Like, if that's what it was, you'll never
find it, that's I mean, yeah, maybe that's true with
the technology they had at the time, right light. But
now we have ledar. Yeah, and I think some relatives
of Jacques Cousto actually traveled up a few years back
(33:38):
to Shag Harbor to film a documentary about the Shag
Harbor incident. So they'll be bringing with them uh technology
that did not exist in the late nineteen sixties. They'll
also be working with one of the original members of
the dive team that explored the incident when it occurred.
(33:58):
And this is this is where we're now. This is
pretty interesting because there are there are people who are
convinced that this was um an accident that got covered up,
whether mundane or military or somehow beyond this world in nature.
And then there are people who are convinced that this
(34:20):
is an easily explainable thing that people may not necessarily
one explained because you see today Shag Harbor remains a
popular tourist destination for local UFO enthusiasts. When the weather
is right, you can check out the UFO gazebo and
picnic site and you can look out onto the ocean
(34:41):
to the spot where the object crashed. That's right, did
you say the name of it yet? That place. Oh
I just said the UFO gazebo and picnic. Well, there's
a it's specifically called and you can find it on
Google Maps, the Shag Harbor Incident Interpretive Center. It's a
yellow building. I think it's still yellow. You can find
it have There are phone numbers you can call to
(35:02):
reach them, a facts number, and even an email address. Right.
You can also when you visit, find articles, documentaries, and
memorabilia pertaining to the incident. Exactly. Just something you should
know if you're going to go up there. This place,
specifically the shag Harbor UFO Center. It only operates from
June until septem so if you're planning to go go soon.
(35:27):
You can also contact the Shag Harbor Incident Society, which
collects and organizes information about this event. Neat bookending note here.
They are headed by Lori Wickens, one of the teenagers
who first cited the object. He also participated in the
Cousteau documentary He By the way, Loria is a So
(35:52):
there's where we are barring some new revelations or deathbed confessions,
we want to know what you think. We do also
want to point out that there is still a little
bit of sketchy documentation on the side of the Canadian government.
Let's let's let them summarize it themselves. Here's the conclusion
(36:14):
from the Department of National Defense. The crashing of the
unidentified flied object in the Shaghaba is still discussed today,
with many articles appearing on the end to that there's
no trace of the O c MP reports of the
siding and the files. The Department of National Defense has
identified this siding as unsolved and the only documentation that
(36:34):
exists in the files is a d n D memo
and we have that memo. If you want to hear
it well, then here it is UFO report, lower Wood Harbor,
Nova Scotia and r CMP corporal and six other witnesses
observed what they believe to be an unidentified flying object
off the southwest coast of Nova Scotia, Canada, on the
(36:55):
fourth of October nineteen sixty seven. The object was described
as approximate at least sixty ft in length and was
flying in an easterly direction when first sighted. During their observation,
the UFO descended rapidly to the surface and made a
bright splash as it struck the water. For some time
after the impact, a single white light remained on the surface.
(37:16):
The RCMP corporal endeavored to reach the floating wide object,
but unfortunately, before he could reach the location, the object sank.
A search of the area failed to produce any material
evidence which would assist in explaining or establishing the identity
of the object. An underwater search conducted by divers from
the Department of National Defense also failed to locate any
(37:37):
tangible evidence which could be used to arrive at an
explainable conclusion. So literally, what you said, Ben, it's unexplainable
and that's all we got, right, So we can easily
see why this is so intriguing and remains so intriguing.
Despite the fact that it is one of the one
(38:00):
of the better documented sightings or incidents, there's a surprisingly
sparse amount of paperwork regarding it, and some of this
came out only when the Canadian government declassified pages and
pages and pages of files on on Unidentified flying Objects reports.
(38:22):
Now we do have one. We do have one pretty
i think a pretty cool point that we have to
make every time we do a UFO sighting episode. This
is a UFO. Any unidentified flying object is by virtue
of being unidentified and in the air and an object
a UFO. That does not mean it was from Alpha
(38:44):
Centauri or Mars or someplace in the darkness between the stars.
It just means that we have no real idea what
it is, and even if we as a species have
some good guesses, they are still only that they are
only guesses until some sort of hard proof exist. Um.
Also on a personal note, I love that the Department
(39:05):
of National Defense is abbreviated to D and D, and
when I first read the original summarization quote, I had
this image in my head that there was a file
from a D and D game that the RCMP was
playing like they were deep into it, although I'm fairly
certain D and D did not exist in the nineteen sixties.
(39:27):
Oh and that fact I forgot to mention the telex.
I never followed up with the weird fact I learned
about telex. Okay, So, telex or teleprinter, is the original
form of data transmission and was developed during World War two,
supposed to be reliably secure over long distances. Unlike now
we have facts, is we have emails? We have facts
(39:48):
is still for some reason, right, uh? But unlike facts
and email tell X has what's called full legal document
status in every country in the world. So so if
you're sending something to tell X, it matters. Yeah, with
the facts, it's like, I don't know, I'm gonna need
a cover sheet. Yeah right, So I thought that was
(40:11):
weird because maybe that's the reason why it was so popular.
But do you remember sending cover sheets with facts machines? Yeah? Yeah,
I used to do that in the old office. Yeah,
we had to. It was very strange. We've been doing
this a while, Ben, we have we can technically still
facts things we could, we could if we wanted to
(40:31):
have You ever prank facts people? Oh no, I used
to prank facts people in our old office. What I
don't know, man said something Marshall's way. Not in a
mean way, not in a mean way. I would. I
would facts things like, uh like attention for your eyes only,
(40:52):
the transmission will begin at you know, five fifteen or something. Uh,
tell no one destroy this paper. It was really in
facts an optometrists or something that is brilliant. It's see
you get in trouble for that. Um probably probably. I
hope this statute of limitations on on prank faccine is
(41:15):
pretty low. Somebody somewhere in an office is listening to
this on their break or like while they're waiting a
dental igenis waiting. Yeah, but the I did fax people
at five fifteen as well to see there you go,
you know, just enough time to get off the door
with a little fun little white step. One time. It
was just like I tried to fax um, I tried
(41:39):
to fact a picture of Christopher walking, but you know,
you mainly facts text through through facts meseing, So I
don't know what they got, but but yeah, that was
my I feel better. I feel like I have confessed
my sins to you. Oh well, hey, I love it,
and not just now I want to do it. So
if you have ever experienced an unidentified flying or submerged
(42:02):
objects an unidentified facts object, yes, uh you can. You
can reach out to us. We would love to hear
your stories. You can give us a call. We are
one eight three three S T D W y t K.
Leave a message detailing what you've seen. You can, like
one of our recent listeners first called us and left
(42:25):
a message or two, I believe, and then sent us
several videos like showing what she experienced with some kind
of object that she she noticed. That was fantastic. Yeah,
thank you for doing that. Yeah, thank you so much
for sending that. You can you can do that, or
you can just leave us a message telling us what
happened one time or what you've experienced. Um, you can
(42:47):
do all that stuff where you can reach out to
us on Instagram where we are a conspiracy stuff show
and Ben you are. I am in a burst of
creativity at Ben Bullin, so you can follow me to
see me get kicked into and out of various countries,
various misadventures perfection. Is there an HSW involved or is
it just okay? I'm Matt Frederick. HSW is something I
(43:08):
don't know. Good luck, you'll never find it. Um. And
then uh, and we have Embryonic Insider, which is and
Paul is Paul What is it? Paul? Paul is Uh?
Paul is at appleby Revolutionary? Oh yeah, Applebee's. Was it
(43:30):
the Applebee's Revolution? It's either I think I think these
Mission Control has several different Applebee's accounts, which I'm surprised
that he finds time for all of them. You're just
gonna have to search around and find it. I can't remember.
And it was a really complicated. Yeah, you have to
(43:50):
earn that one. Uh. In the meantime, while you're on
the internet, if you want to check out our favorite
part of the show your fellow listeners, hop on over
to Here's where it gets crazy, our Facebook page where
you can see, um, you know, you can see a
ton of different ideas, some some pretty high tier memes.
But then one thing I think that a lot of
(44:12):
us enjoy about the page is some in depth conversation
about things, specifically about stuff we've covered on the show. Well,
we'll get into discussion about what something truly meant, or
like an extra piece of evidence that maybe we didn't see,
or something that it's really great. You should definitely go there,
And as always, a shout out and a huge thank
(44:35):
you to the hardest working mods in the business, Sam
Zack and of course Cat, thanks for putting up with us. Folks.
If you if you say I have a story to tell, I,
like most people in these are modern days, hate using
the phone and uh, I listened to your episode about Facebook.
(44:57):
That thing's bananas. How how on earth can I reach you? Guys?
If you if you have that problem, we have a
solution for you. You can write to us directly send
us a good old fashioned email. We are conspiracy at
how stuff works dot com. Stuff they Don't want you
(45:30):
to Know is a production of I heart Radio's How
Stuff Works. For more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit
the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
listen to your favorite shows.
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of I Heart Gradios How Stuff Works. Welcome back
(00:24):
to the show. My name is Matt noel Is on
Adventures they called me Ben. We are joined as always
with our super producer Paul Michion controlled decond Most importantly,
you are you. You are here, and that makes this
stuff they don't want you to know this. This is
what I'm pretty excited about. Matt, what about you. Yeah,
it's been a minute since we've really gotten our unexplained
(00:48):
phenomena i e. Uh UFOs, unidentified flying objects, sometimes unidentified
submerged objects, any of those. We're we're into it. And
we had a lot of people, a lot of our
fellow listeners suggest this topic, so we we picked one
one person that we wanted you to hear from directly. Hey, boys, UM,
(01:11):
I'm a big fan of your show, and uh, I
really enjoy all the episodes you do. I just had
an idea for a great episode and that's uh, the
mystery of the Shag Harbor incident. That was a huge
UFO sighting seen by many many people actually relatives of
personal friends of mine here in Eastern Canada. Happened on
(01:35):
the south shore of Nova Scotia back in the sixties
and not far from Oak Island, right, another awesome place
of mystery. So apparently there was a pretty substantial RCMP
investigation into that, And yeah, I think it would make
for a great episode. Yes, thank you anonymous caller from
East Canada over there in Nova Scotia, for near Nova
(01:57):
Scotia at least, Yeah, thank you so much. These are
two fantastic ideas that have been on our mutual minds
for some time. Oak Island is a story all its own,
and we've done some videos on that before, right, Matt, Yeah,
we have. I cannot recall if we've actually made a
podcast episode, but we should if we haven't, Yeah, maybe
(02:19):
Buried Treasure episode or something tantalizing, tantalizing story Shag Harbor however, Yeah,
that's what that's what we're going to look at today.
It has been quite a while, old friends, since we
did an episode on UFOs. I for one am you know,
I'm still convinced that various governments are hiding some sort
(02:41):
of advanced technology or another. And and you both of us, you,
especially Fox Molder style, still want to believe is that correct?
Very much true, especially with something like the incident we're
going to discuss today. Our caller said that, you know,
a bunch of people witnessed this thing, and it is
true that, I would say dozens. I think dozens of
(03:04):
people did witness this at some point during the official incident.
You know, it's not a ton of people. It's not
like it was over a large city and a bunch
of you know, everyone had their cell phones or something.
We're talking nineteen sixty seven. But enough people saw it
that it wasn't just a trick of the light that
you know, a captain on a ship saw, or you know,
(03:27):
maybe a meteor that could be explained pretty easily, or
something funky on the horizon seen by a pilot exactly.
There's there are more, there are more vantages to this
than a lot of UFO sightings. This is one of
the most well documented UFO sightings in modern history. To
be honest, they call it Canada's Roswell, and that's not
(03:50):
an ironic name like Little John or something. This this
really is one of the most historically significant, well known
and famous or infamous UFO sightings in Canadian history, if
not the most famous. So we received tons of great
episodes for specific UFO sightings. We get them a lot.
(04:12):
This one we were curious about because if you're not
from Canada and you don't spend much time thinking about UFOs,
you probably have not heard of shag Harbor. A lot
of people who are upologists in the United States may
not have heard of this. But here are the facts.
Shag Harbor is a tiny, tiny town, a village really,
(04:36):
and it is as as our color said, on the
southern shore of Nova Scotia. The population is somewhere between
it's under five people, it's four hundred four and fifty
people or so. And their big business is lobster, which
I love this because lobster is amazing. But here where
(04:56):
we're based and landlocked Atlanta, Georgia, you get what you
pay for, yeah yeah, um. And just so you have
an idea of where this is. If you do live
in the United States, as do most of of you
out there listening, we know this, um if you are
in Portland, Maine. So if you're imagining Portland, Maine, way
(05:18):
up there in the northeast uh section of the United States,
and you essentially go east. No, it's not perfectly east
because we live, you know, on a globe. But if
you look east on a map and you just travel
that till you hit Nova Scotia, you essentially hit Shag Harbor,
just to know exactly where you are, because Nova Scotia
is essentially a peninsula that comes down. Um, it's close
(05:42):
to an island, but that's peninsula that comes down off
of Canada up on the top there on the eastern side. Yea.
And this this fishing community, right, most of their business
in the fishing industry takes place from November to May.
That's going to be important for the story as it unfolds.
(06:03):
On a side note, I just checked downstairs at one
of the only places that does sell lobster rolls here
in the area. Twenty four dollars for one for like
a small lobster rule, right, for just a regular lobster rule.
And that's of course to get that lobster to Atlanta
and then buy it in pont City Market. Oh boy, now,
(06:26):
just saying it might be a little inflated, that's all.
That's all. One day Matt. Maybe one day I'll treat
myself to a lobster. You know what, I might just
at this point, maybe I should just fly to Maine
or Nova Scotia. Let's well, let's look at Dave's Lobster
in Halifax. Let's see. Let's see if they've got a menu.
I looked up some places in Shag Harbor there I
(06:47):
couldn't find. I couldn't get the website for Captain Wayne's
to work. But I'm I'm interested. So if you're listening,
you've ever been to, uh, Captain Wayne's in Shag Harbor.
Let let let me know what you think, and let
me know what I should order when I go there,
because after this, after doing this research, I'm excited about
taking a trip there one day. That would be wonderful.
(07:10):
We should definitely do that. And while we're there, we
can check out the Chapel Hill Museum, Captain Waynes, and
some other restaurants, a few tourism sites. But what sort
of tourism sites, you may ask, Well, you know a
lot of people would probably go out there for fishing
or maybe to try and catch their own lobster. Dude,
that would be so cool. Uh. Some people may visit
(07:31):
for the history of Chapel Hill, which is historically significant site.
But many people visit for a different reason. They visit
Shag Harbor, you see, because they are convinced that human
beings saw a UFO, not even a UFO, an extra
terrestrial object in this town in the nineties sixties. Here's
(07:56):
where it gets crazy. So let's get our let's get
our primary sources for this right, and we'll go with
the official story, and then we'll go with some speculation,
and then we'll go with some analysis. That sounds great.
I feel like I'm over explaining it. That's very Alice
in Wonderland, where the Hatter says, start at the beginning,
to go through the middle, and when you get to
(08:17):
the end, stop. Signposts, in my opinion, are actually good,
so let's keep with them. Okay, all right, Well we've
made a promise now, Matt, so we'll have to try
to We'll have to try to keep our stories straight,
which is a problem in the Shag Harbor tale as well.
Our primary sources for contemporary reports from the authorities and
civilian witnesses come from a paper called the Halifax Chronicle Herald.
(08:43):
And here's here's most of what we do. On Wednesday,
October four, at around eleven twenty pm, multiple witnesses claimed
to see the following. Some reported a row of lights.
Row of light it's on a craft that was roughly
sixty feet long. Now that's of course an approximation, but
(09:05):
that was used several times, uh sixty ft long and
this row of lights on whatever this thing was. The
lights at least because a lot of people couldn't at
least several of the reports couldn't see an object. They
just saw the lights because of the distance they were away.
But the lights descended down and there was some kind
of noise that was emanating from whatever this was that was.
(09:29):
It was reported as like a whistle sometimes sometimes as
a whooshing sound. Um. And it was almost like it
was akin to, at least some of them said a
bomb falling, or like in a movie you would hear
a bomb like exactly, um. And it was so this
it was descending down right and then it hovered over
(09:50):
the water out there at Shag Harbor or right outside
of Shag Harbor essentially hovered over the water just momentarily,
and then it began to submerge, and there was some
weird details were going to get into here with how
the light functioned or didn't function. It was very strange,
but let's continue along. Yes, yes, the object or the
(10:11):
lights whatever this was, uh, submerged into the Atlantic Ocean,
a famously large body of water, which, by the way,
if you were in shack Harbor to your to your east,
nothing but water. That's it. Yeah, exactly, Uh. And emergency crews,
(10:32):
primarily the Royal Canadian Mounted Police or the RCMP, as
our caller mentioned earlier, they arrived within fifteen minutes or so,
so they're not fooling around. They reasonably assumed this was
a plane crash at first, so lives could be on
the line and the clock is ticking. The Coast Guard
later joins in the search. Initially civilians and authorities the
(10:57):
way the story goes, noted a thick yellow foam, or specifically,
a glittery yellow foam. A local fishing boat captain said
this was about eighty feet why the swath of foam,
and it's important to remember that he made this observation
in the darkness, based on his unaided eyesight. According to
(11:18):
the records, no one obtained a sample of this strange substance.
So even today we we don't know what it is.
We can guess, but we don't know. For about three days,
the authorities searched the bottom of the harbor and they
have no luck. They find nothing, no bodies, no debris.
Uh bubb kiss. They also find when they contact Halifax
(11:42):
and other regional authorities that no planes were reported missing.
And with that, the incident seemed set to be a
flash in the pan headline. Local radio reported it, The
Chronicle Herald reported it, but it seemed like an unusual
fighting that, like thousands and thousands of others, would eventually
(12:03):
end up being little more than a footnote in regional
history books. That's see that this is the important thing.
So this happens in nineteen sixty seven, right, it's twenty
nineteen now, and this is a famous, world famous UFO incident.
But in let's say nineteen seventy seven, this was not
(12:23):
the case. Something happened between sixty seven and today that
changed the way the public thinks about this specific night
in October. And and you know, I know I'm setting
us up here, but we will tell you what that
moment is. We found it. But for now, let's let's
(12:45):
look at the facts. That's the gist of the story,
and there are a couple of problems with it, a
couple of contradictions. If we rely just on the articles
from the Chronicle Herald, what do we find. We'll tell
you right after a quick word from our sponsor. Well,
(13:05):
if we do rely on those Chronicle Herald articles and
we just say that that's all we're gonna use, we're
gonna find a couple of things. First, is that uh,
four teenagers said, and this this is a claim, they
saw four lights, not three. They said that the lights
were yellow or white. So we were already here like
even amongst a group of people who were from the
(13:27):
same vantage, saying they saw maybe slightly different things. They
confirmed the lights were descending coming down from the sky.
One of the four kids said the lights appeared to
turn off and on or blink in some way. Another
kid said that he heard the aforementioned whistling noise, the
some sound. So again one one of the four witnesses said,
I heard it emitting some kind of sound, But the
(13:49):
other kids, the other three didn't mention anything about a
sound until this other person mentioned it. Who knows if
that's then some kind of confirmation bias or wanting to
be correct if you've missed it. Another team said he
heard a loud noise when the lights appeared to hit
the water, So some kind of boom or splash. That's
where you kind of get that end of the bomb sound.
(14:11):
And you know, if it was a massive object and
it impacted the water, there would be some kind of sound.
It just depends on how far away you are if
you could hear it. Essentially, if it were indeed, a
craft sixty ft long, no matter how light it was,
would make an audible noise. Present if a UFO falls
in the water and no one's around doesn't make a sound. Yes,
(14:33):
another thing you're gonna find is that a whole separate
group of people in this case, a couple other teenagers
said they saw three red orange lights this time, so
rather than white, yellow, white or yellow descending again from
the sky forming a line at a roughly forty five
degree angle. Now, these two this uh, this pair they
(14:55):
were actually driving when they when they saw this, and
they didn't stop the vehicle and the lights just kind
of passed out of you as they're driving around. Um,
and you know, you're probably somewhere near the coast over there,
and they're going to be gone even if they're descending down. Um,
so we at least have two vantage points specifically from
the Chronicle Herald, specifically teenagers. And this isn't the end
(15:21):
of our witness list. This is just where the witness
list gets a little bit at times murky. But picture
picture yourself looking at an aerial map of Shag Harbor
and you can pull one up right now, and you
can pull one up right now now zoom out and
taking a bigger region into your aerial view, and there's Halifax. Okay.
(15:45):
So local radio stations reported a glowing object have been
seen by a bunch of people who called their newsrooms
and they reported witnessing strange glowing objects flying around Halifax
at around ten pm. So what is our established timeline
at this point? When did the impact at the water
do we have we established that yet would be either
(16:08):
it would be before midnight but after exactly. Okay, So
we couped like an hour and change beforehand all over
Halifax and been as you said, like not a significantly
significant distance way but far enough away an hour before
that you see lights, glowing objects, got it right? Yeah?
(16:31):
It would be helpful for us to say that distance, right,
it's about from Halifax, Nova Scotia to shag Harbor, Nova Scotia.
You really going about two kilometers or one hundred and
fifty eight miles, So that's pretty far. That's that's according
to distance between cities dot net. Oh, that's great. That's
that's just their thing, unless it's a driving distance of
(16:55):
some sort, right, right, So the radio stations are reporting this,
and they're not the only ones. Air Canada Flight three
oh five noted something strange on the left side of
their plane at seven fifteen pm, and they called it
a brilliantly lit rectangular object with a string of smaller
(17:16):
lights trailing the object. At seven nineteen the pilots noticed
a sizeable silent explosion near the object, and two minutes
later another explosion occurred and it faded to a blue
cloud around this thing whatever it was they saw. So
they when I read when I read that, and I
read that all I hear is force field of some sort,
(17:37):
I got hit or or like reacted. Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah.
So we know they saw something unusual, but we don't
know necessarily whether that is tied to this stuff that
happens hours later. This is where we want to introduce
our first book, the one that people would consider conspiratorial.
(17:58):
Doug Ledger wrote a book called Aratime UFO Files, and
in this book he claims that additional witnesses exist. Darryl
Dorry and his sister Annette and Darryl's mother were sitting
on their front porch when they noticed a large object
maneuvering above the southwestern horizon. The next day, Darryl writes
(18:20):
a letter to the Royal Canadian Air Force Greenwood Base commander,
asking what was flying over the water that evening because
I've never seen anything like it? And yes, so we've got,
you know, um, two people who who saw something and
they reported it, which is you know, always good, especially
reporting it to uh a commander of a base with
(18:43):
the Royal Canadian Air Force. That's pretty cool and it's
good to know. But then you turn to our next witness,
Captain Leo Howard Mercy. Now this gentleman, you can actually
find uh, you can find a memo because he contacted
the Royal Canadian and Mounted Police and a report was
taken on the seventh of October nineteen UM and as
(19:08):
pertaining to the fourth, but an actual you can find
a written report, and so you know, we're we're saying
that this is taken from maritime UFO files by Doug Ledger,
and it's true. But a lot of times when you're,
you know, reading a book like that, it's hard to
know whether the sources are legit, are real. Right, in
this case, they most certainly are so. Uh, Howard Mercy,
(19:31):
Captain Leo Howard Mercy, he was looking at his radar.
He's standing on his ship and he's looking at four
blips on his deca radar. They seem to be stationary.
But then you know, he says, well, I want to
see I want to see what this is. He looks
out and he's about twenty eight kilometers from where he
is on his ship. Um, he could see four bright
lights in again kind of a formation, like a rectangular
(19:55):
formation roughly is what he was estimating. And then, uh,
the entire crew of I think it was twenty, yeah,
nearly twenty fishermen who were with him on his ship,
they went out, they got on the deck. They watched
this thing, this object, whatever it is, this group of objects. Um,
they watched it. And he was in the Northeastern Sky
(20:17):
and then this guy Mercy radio the Rescue Coordination Center
at the Harbor Master in Halifax, and he asked for,
you know, something like, hey, guys, what's going on over there?
And it was one of those things where he he
reported knowing that the Air Force conducted you know, testing
out in that area where where he was looking. So
we didn't necessarily think it was anything too off, at
(20:39):
least according to the official memo and report, but he
did think it was odd, so you know, he asked
for an explan explanation. He filed this report with the
RCMP and that was about it. At the end of
the report, it is noted that he is considered to
be a reliable type individual that's a quote and bears
a good reputation in his community. So that's a that's
(21:04):
something that it was noted by the RCMP of the
Royal Canadian amount of Police, So which is just them
saying that he's considered a credible reporter. He's not pranking people,
he's not a crazy, you know, paint huffing maniac who
calls every weekend. Yes, someone reliable saw this, whatever it was.
So so we have these additional witnesses, and there are
(21:27):
a few more. But in cases like this, where there's
something up in the sky that's not too far into
the wee hours of the night, we know that there
are almost certainly a bunch of witnesses who saw something
and did not go to the trouble of writing to
the Air Force station because that's a lot of work.
So let's go there. Initial ideas. Initially, initially oddly enough, Uh,
(21:54):
most people are not thinking in terms of um anything
other of the mundane activities, tragedies, meteorological phenomenon. So they
first assume, well, maybe this is a boat, got to
search that. Maybe this is a plane, got to search
for that. Well, in the plane and or boat makes
(22:14):
a lot of sense depending on the color of the
lights that they saw, and if they were flashing or
at least um on and off in some kind of
repeating pattern, right right, that could be distressing. And we
did notice that in a few of the witnesses. True,
that is true. Then they said, well, you know what
else could fit this story? A distress flare. This is
(22:35):
a for for people who are convinced that this was
a craft. This this feels like a stick in the mud.
Answer but there are some pretty compelling similarities. So first off,
flare guns are standard on boats, standard ond boats. If
there's a problem, you use a flare gun after you
(22:57):
fire a flare. Have you ever fired a flare? They're
so cool. If after you fire a flare, then you
know there's a little bit of a delay before it burns.
It might it varies, but it might start burning almost
immediately after you shoot it off, or it might hit
its arc and then start going downward and then ignite.
(23:19):
But this, this idea with a flare gun inspired some
of the more skeptical thinkers to say things like like
Brian Dunning said, is it outside the realm of possibility
that someone was playing around with a flare gun at
eleven at night after killing part of a six pack
(23:39):
or a whole six pack or a whole six pack?
You know what I mean? Because if you've been drinking,
maybe shooting off a flare gun sounds like a cool
thing to do. And and yes, and just to put
it out there the way, one of the big parts
of this story that is so fascinating is how the
light landed on top of the water for a little
(24:00):
bit and then sunk into the water right, and one
of the witnesses, I think in that group of four teenagers,
one of the witnesses said a single light remained for
a moment before it submerged or before it was put
out by the water. So later later on, and I
mean like months or years later on, people proposed that
(24:21):
the sighting could fit the description of something like a
falling satellite, which is completely a possibility, seven completely a
possibility that satellite may have fallen, especially if pieces of
it are breaking apart as it's falling, and you have
multiple lights where fires are burning up of it. Yeah, yeah, absolutely,
(24:42):
as it go, as it enters the atmosphere. And then
it could also be a meteoric fireball, so like us
falling satellite, meteors frequently break up during their fall, and
that could also look like a line of lights. And
depending on the angle of the viewer or your perspective
as you're watching this, it could seem to be moving
(25:03):
much more slowly than it actually is a kind of
a low angle. So the big question immediately here is
did the story change. Here's the thing. After these reports
were printed primarily in the Chronicle Herald, but also in
other papers of the time, people began to connect the
(25:24):
dots and build what could have been interpreted as separate
sightings into a single cohesive narrative. That is, there's nothing
wrong with that. That's what people do. We find patterns,
we connect dots. That's how our species got to where
it is. So the crazy thing that we discovered here
is that the foam and the lights were not initially connected.
(25:49):
No one initially reported seeing the objects or lights leaving
the foam, but people began saying that they saw the
lights actually leave the foam behind. So for that point
the phone could had just been something weird that that
captain saw. So there we have it for now, this
series of spooky lights. If we're going to use the
(26:11):
technical term, but how do we get from spooky lights
to UFOs? Will explore that after a word from our sponsor,
and against all odds, we have returned. How did this?
How did this transform from uh spooky lights to genuine
(26:35):
concerns about extraterrestrials being cited? Well, according to a couple
of different sources, this story did not actually take off
in the national international sphere until decades later, until when
a ufologist named Chris Styles said that he witnessed UFO
around the same time and place. Uh Several weeks after
(26:57):
the initial sighting, he co wrote a book called Our Object,
the world's only government documented UFO crash. In this book,
Styles and his co author Doug Ledger from earlier what
was that book called the Meteor the Maritime UFO Files.
So in this book Dark Object, Styles and Ledger claimed
(27:19):
that what people saw that night in Shag Harbor was
a spaceship, not just an unidentified flying object, but an
unidentified submerged object. For the us OS, yeah, you introduced
me that concept, and they further trace the path of
(27:39):
this object after it submerges in the ocean. They say
that after it went underwater, it traveled about seventy clicks
northeast to a US Navy facility called the h m
c S. Shelburne. At the time, the h m c S.
Shelburne was a support compound for offshore sonar array that
(28:00):
was meant to detect submarines as part of an anti
submarine system, and this was also part of a larger
global network. Back to the book, the authors claimed that
this us O unidentified submerged object met up with another
ship underwater. They were monitored by the U. S. Navy
and then they were eventually launched into space for the record,
(28:22):
as as near as we can find, a Ledger and
Styles were the first people to propose this idea or
deposit this um series of events, and we couldn't find
what their sources were for this claim. But if you
did have information about this, let's say you got it
(28:45):
from someone's last words on their deathbed, someone's you know,
no one's ever heard of this before, but this happened,
you would be the first person to ever report that.
The problem is, you know, why there be no um
Why would there be no reporting of that kind of incident,
that kind of thing, unless it's just completely redacted and
(29:08):
held because it's you know, national security kind of situation.
So there's it's one of those things we always talk about.
We'll get into it later, but it's it's not provable. Rather,
it's not provable either way, right right right. We know
that there's enough evidence to say that people definitely saw something.
We know little else because even even the mundane explanations
(29:34):
are not perfect. One the one fits, you know what
I mean. So in the in the case of the flare,
if if it were a distress flare, we would have
probably found an object right from which that was shot.
If it were a prank by someone who had had
too much to drink or was just outliving their best
life on the coast, didn't even have to be a brank,
(29:57):
just somebody messing around. Then, you know, how do we
explain the fact that no one came forward. We would
just say that they were so terrified that they decided
to take the secret to their grave because they don't
I don't know. I don't think they would have gotten
in serious trouble. But maybe they freaked out because they
saw all the all the law enforcement and rescue responders
(30:21):
out there. Maybe they were like illegal lobster poachers and
they didn't want anyone to know, Yeah, doing illegal flair lobstering. Well, yeah,
they're flaring for lobsters that you know. That's an old standby,
flaring for lobsters, starting in a T shirt. So so
we've got these claims from from these authors, and there
(30:42):
are more there. There are more arguments or theories around,
but the claims of Styles and Ledger are probably the
most well known on that side of the fence. Let's
go to the official word because those of us who
may um say, well, I'm I'm more of a skeptically
(31:03):
minded person, and I am convinced this is a flair. Uh,
we have weird news for you. The government disagrees the
The Canadian government was not convinced. On October six, a
couple of days after the incident, a Colonel W. W.
Turner issued a memo where he said, quote, the Coordination
(31:23):
Center conducted preliminary investigation and discounted the possibilities that the
siding was produced by an aircraft, flares, floats, or any
other known objects. And he got that this is weird.
This is probably the strangest piece of trivia I learned
doing this. He got that from a telex, an early
(31:46):
kind of form of facts sent from a Coastguard ship,
and it was very short and to the point, you know,
essentially it was like telegraph language where they said, we
searched for this with nil results. We searched for this
other thing with nil results. All that means is, while
they're not totally ruling the doubt, they're saying they didn't
find anything that supports any of those mundane explanations. So
(32:12):
even though they didn't find anything, they still didn't feel
that the normal explanations fully explained everything. And this is
this sounds sinister, right, it could be seen as a
very sinister thing. But we also have to remember it's
kind of predictable if it were a flare. They're searching
the ocean for a flare. Well, you mean you can't
(32:35):
just dive down there easily with a snorkel and grab it.
It's not like a video game. It's not like a
mission where you can snag some of the video game.
And it's so true, you'd have to have such specialized
equipment to even get to the bottom of the ocean
there if you could, and then from that point you're
just gonna look for a flare that could be carried.
(32:56):
You know. That's if it makes it to the bottom.
If it is a flare, if it the flair, what
if it was some you know, extraterrestrial uh species, just probe,
like small little probe spherically shaped or something that's designed
to go down to the bottom of the ocean, Oh
and then disappear, Yeah, like burrow into the sand in
(33:17):
the Okay, Like, if that's what it was, you'll never
find it, that's I mean, yeah, maybe that's true with
the technology they had at the time, right light. But
now we have ledar. Yeah, and I think some relatives
of Jacques Cousto actually traveled up a few years back
(33:38):
to Shag Harbor to film a documentary about the Shag
Harbor incident. So they'll be bringing with them uh technology
that did not exist in the late nineteen sixties. They'll
also be working with one of the original members of
the dive team that explored the incident when it occurred.
(33:58):
And this is this is where we're now. This is
pretty interesting because there are there are people who are
convinced that this was um an accident that got covered up,
whether mundane or military or somehow beyond this world in nature.
And then there are people who are convinced that this
(34:20):
is an easily explainable thing that people may not necessarily
one explained because you see today Shag Harbor remains a
popular tourist destination for local UFO enthusiasts. When the weather
is right, you can check out the UFO gazebo and
picnic site and you can look out onto the ocean
(34:41):
to the spot where the object crashed. That's right, did
you say the name of it yet? That place. Oh
I just said the UFO gazebo and picnic. Well, there's
a it's specifically called and you can find it on
Google Maps, the Shag Harbor Incident Interpretive Center. It's a
yellow building. I think it's still yellow. You can find
it have There are phone numbers you can call to
(35:02):
reach them, a facts number, and even an email address. Right.
You can also when you visit, find articles, documentaries, and
memorabilia pertaining to the incident. Exactly. Just something you should
know if you're going to go up there. This place,
specifically the shag Harbor UFO Center. It only operates from
June until septem so if you're planning to go go soon.
(35:27):
You can also contact the Shag Harbor Incident Society, which
collects and organizes information about this event. Neat bookending note here.
They are headed by Lori Wickens, one of the teenagers
who first cited the object. He also participated in the
Cousteau documentary He By the way, Loria is a So
(35:52):
there's where we are barring some new revelations or deathbed confessions,
we want to know what you think. We do also
want to point out that there is still a little
bit of sketchy documentation on the side of the Canadian government.
Let's let's let them summarize it themselves. Here's the conclusion
(36:14):
from the Department of National Defense. The crashing of the
unidentified flied object in the Shaghaba is still discussed today,
with many articles appearing on the end to that there's
no trace of the O c MP reports of the
siding and the files. The Department of National Defense has
identified this siding as unsolved and the only documentation that
(36:34):
exists in the files is a d n D memo
and we have that memo. If you want to hear
it well, then here it is UFO report, lower Wood Harbor,
Nova Scotia and r CMP corporal and six other witnesses
observed what they believe to be an unidentified flying object
off the southwest coast of Nova Scotia, Canada, on the
(36:55):
fourth of October nineteen sixty seven. The object was described
as approximate at least sixty ft in length and was
flying in an easterly direction when first sighted. During their observation,
the UFO descended rapidly to the surface and made a
bright splash as it struck the water. For some time
after the impact, a single white light remained on the surface.
(37:16):
The RCMP corporal endeavored to reach the floating wide object,
but unfortunately, before he could reach the location, the object sank.
A search of the area failed to produce any material
evidence which would assist in explaining or establishing the identity
of the object. An underwater search conducted by divers from
the Department of National Defense also failed to locate any
(37:37):
tangible evidence which could be used to arrive at an
explainable conclusion. So literally, what you said, Ben, it's unexplainable
and that's all we got, right, So we can easily
see why this is so intriguing and remains so intriguing.
Despite the fact that it is one of the one
(38:00):
of the better documented sightings or incidents, there's a surprisingly
sparse amount of paperwork regarding it, and some of this
came out only when the Canadian government declassified pages and
pages and pages of files on on Unidentified flying Objects reports.
(38:22):
Now we do have one. We do have one pretty
i think a pretty cool point that we have to
make every time we do a UFO sighting episode. This
is a UFO. Any unidentified flying object is by virtue
of being unidentified and in the air and an object
a UFO. That does not mean it was from Alpha
(38:44):
Centauri or Mars or someplace in the darkness between the stars.
It just means that we have no real idea what
it is, and even if we as a species have
some good guesses, they are still only that they are
only guesses until some sort of hard proof exist. Um.
Also on a personal note, I love that the Department
(39:05):
of National Defense is abbreviated to D and D, and
when I first read the original summarization quote, I had
this image in my head that there was a file
from a D and D game that the RCMP was
playing like they were deep into it, although I'm fairly
certain D and D did not exist in the nineteen sixties.
(39:27):
Oh and that fact I forgot to mention the telex.
I never followed up with the weird fact I learned
about telex. Okay, So, telex or teleprinter, is the original
form of data transmission and was developed during World War two,
supposed to be reliably secure over long distances. Unlike now
we have facts, is we have emails? We have facts
(39:48):
is still for some reason, right, uh? But unlike facts
and email tell X has what's called full legal document
status in every country in the world. So so if
you're sending something to tell X, it matters. Yeah, with
the facts, it's like, I don't know, I'm gonna need
a cover sheet. Yeah right, So I thought that was
(40:11):
weird because maybe that's the reason why it was so popular.
But do you remember sending cover sheets with facts machines? Yeah? Yeah,
I used to do that in the old office. Yeah,
we had to. It was very strange. We've been doing
this a while, Ben, we have we can technically still
facts things we could, we could if we wanted to
(40:31):
have You ever prank facts people? Oh no, I used
to prank facts people in our old office. What I
don't know, man said something Marshall's way. Not in a
mean way, not in a mean way. I would. I
would facts things like, uh like attention for your eyes only,
(40:52):
the transmission will begin at you know, five fifteen or something. Uh,
tell no one destroy this paper. It was really in
facts an optometrists or something that is brilliant. It's see
you get in trouble for that. Um probably probably. I
hope this statute of limitations on on prank faccine is
(41:15):
pretty low. Somebody somewhere in an office is listening to
this on their break or like while they're waiting a
dental igenis waiting. Yeah, but the I did fax people
at five fifteen as well to see there you go,
you know, just enough time to get off the door
with a little fun little white step. One time. It
was just like I tried to fax um, I tried
(41:39):
to fact a picture of Christopher walking, but you know,
you mainly facts text through through facts meseing, So I
don't know what they got, but but yeah, that was
my I feel better. I feel like I have confessed
my sins to you. Oh well, hey, I love it,
and not just now I want to do it. So
if you have ever experienced an unidentified flying or submerged
(42:02):
objects an unidentified facts object, yes, uh you can. You
can reach out to us. We would love to hear
your stories. You can give us a call. We are
one eight three three S T D W y t K.
Leave a message detailing what you've seen. You can, like
one of our recent listeners first called us and left
(42:25):
a message or two, I believe, and then sent us
several videos like showing what she experienced with some kind
of object that she she noticed. That was fantastic. Yeah,
thank you for doing that. Yeah, thank you so much
for sending that. You can you can do that, or
you can just leave us a message telling us what
happened one time or what you've experienced. Um, you can
(42:47):
do all that stuff where you can reach out to
us on Instagram where we are a conspiracy stuff show
and Ben you are. I am in a burst of
creativity at Ben Bullin, so you can follow me to
see me get kicked into and out of various countries,
various misadventures perfection. Is there an HSW involved or is
it just okay? I'm Matt Frederick. HSW is something I
(43:08):
don't know. Good luck, you'll never find it. Um. And
then uh, and we have Embryonic Insider, which is and
Paul is Paul What is it? Paul? Paul is Uh?
Paul is at appleby Revolutionary? Oh yeah, Applebee's. Was it
(43:30):
the Applebee's Revolution? It's either I think I think these
Mission Control has several different Applebee's accounts, which I'm surprised
that he finds time for all of them. You're just
gonna have to search around and find it. I can't remember.
And it was a really complicated. Yeah, you have to
(43:50):
earn that one. Uh. In the meantime, while you're on
the internet, if you want to check out our favorite
part of the show your fellow listeners, hop on over
to Here's where it gets crazy, our Facebook page where
you can see, um, you know, you can see a
ton of different ideas, some some pretty high tier memes.
But then one thing I think that a lot of
(44:12):
us enjoy about the page is some in depth conversation
about things, specifically about stuff we've covered on the show. Well,
we'll get into discussion about what something truly meant, or
like an extra piece of evidence that maybe we didn't see,
or something that it's really great. You should definitely go there,
And as always, a shout out and a huge thank
(44:35):
you to the hardest working mods in the business, Sam
Zack and of course Cat, thanks for putting up with us. Folks.
If you if you say I have a story to tell, I,
like most people in these are modern days, hate using
the phone and uh, I listened to your episode about Facebook.
(44:57):
That thing's bananas. How how on earth can I reach you? Guys?
If you if you have that problem, we have a
solution for you. You can write to us directly send
us a good old fashioned email. We are conspiracy at
how stuff works dot com. Stuff they Don't want you
(45:30):
to Know is a production of I heart Radio's How
Stuff Works. For more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit
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