If you had “India” in the office pool picking which country’s space probe would be the first to provide definitive evidence of water on the surface of the Moon, get ready to collect your prize and head on down to your favorite curry house to celebrate a discovery that will certainly give a boost to moon expeditions – take that, Elon Musk!

“These ice deposits might be utilized as an in-situ resource in future exploration of the moon.”

A new report published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) revealed that a team of scientists found three distinct signatures of water on the lunar surface using NASA’s Moon Mineralogy Mapper (M3) instrument which was delivered there in 2008 by the Indian Space Research Organization’s (ISRO) Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft. That was India’s first lunar probe, entering lunar orbit on November 8, 2008. It also released the Moon Impact Probe which crashed into the Moon’s south pole and first detected water in the lunar soil below the surface. M3 also detected what could be indications of water on the surface, but scientists at that time could not agree on its validity.

Fortunately, NASA never throws anything away. Ten years later, Shuai Li of the University of Hawaii and Brown University and Richard Elphic from NASA’s Ames Research Center in California took another look at the M3 data. This time they noticed that reflective areas on the surface in the barely lit shadows of craters at the lunar south pole absorbed infrared light in the same way that solid ice does. That was the first proof of ice on the lunar surface. Additional studies of the data from the lunar north pole showed similar surface ice, but in much lower quantities.

This is truly big news for future lunar astronauts who will now be able to obtain water without having to use radar or dowsing instruments to find it underground and then drill for it. Sure, they’ll still have to deal with the -250 degrees Fahrenheit temperatures at the poles where the water is, but what’s a little cold when you’ll soon be making hot lunar water coffee?

Chandrayaan-1 continues to be an interesting little spacecraft. While it was supposed to operate for two years, it mysteriously shut down and went dead after just 10 months. Fortunately, it had completed 95% of its mission. While most scientists figured it would soon leave orbit and crash into the lunar surface, curious NASA scientists extrapolated its orbit and, in 2016, found the little probe still circling the Moon – an exercise that will help locate lost satellites and equipment in the future.

Did you just hear a squishing sound?

While NASA and the Russian and Chinese space programs get all of the publicity, India’s little Chandrayaan-1 has managed to confirm one of the greatest discoveries in human history. What has Elon Musk’s space traveling Tesla done for us lately?

It may seem as if the wastelands of the deserts are completely devoid of life. With their never-ending expanses of bleak scrub and sand dunes this all appears as if it must be a barren realm that might as well be on another planet. Yet not only does life thrum here behind the scenes, eking out a living in these badlands, but there are also quite a few reports of mysterious creatures from here of a surprisingly humanoid nature. Here are some of the strangest.

One of the most bizarre and unsolved cases of a desert humanoid creature of some sort is an enormous beast that has come to be known as the Yucca Man. The tales seem to originate in the 1960s, in the vicinity of the of the Twentynine Palms military base, located in the Mojave Desert of southeastern California and southern Nevada. Here in this remote, desolate location there would be a series events that has remained unexplained for decades, and which hints at some sort of desert-roaming humanoid entity. The first sighting that really put the phenomenon on the map allegedly occurred in 1971, when a Marine from the base whose was on guard duty reported hearing something out in the desert scrub, which sounded like heavy breathing from some very large creature, as well as grunts and growls seemingly circling his guard station. When he warily went out to investigate, expecting to see some wild animal, he claimed to have been confronted with a gigantic, 8-foot-tall hairy ape-like creature with glowing red eyes. In some versions of this account the Marine is knocked down by the beast, only to awaken hours later and find his rifle twisted and bent like a pretzel.

The Mojave Desert

This would be far from the last anyone would here of the strange creature, with frequent reports of dogs going haywire, and of hikers encountering a fetid stench beginning to come in at a steady rate in the following years, and there was a spate of such odd occurrences at Joshua Tree National Park throughout the early 70s, with numerous campers telling of a large beast rummaging through their campsites and even attempting to open their tents, as well as park employees telling of sighting monstrous man-like forms prowling the desert that were estimated as being up to 12 feet tall. There were also massive footprints found and several indistinct, predictably blurry pictures of the creature or creatures taken. Such sighting made their way into several Southern California news publications at the time, and one June, 1973 report from the Antelope Valley Daily Ledger-Gazette described the creature and some reports thus:

The creature likes to run around houses and leaving footprints. That is its MO in the East Lancaster area where footprints were found around several houses recently. One woman reported that the creature ran around her house and scratched at the door. A small boy sent to tell his father supper was ready was found hours later crying near the corral. When asked what happened to him, he answered that a big, furry man would not let him pass.

In that year, 1973, there were many sightings of the creature in the area of Lancaster, in the western Mojave Desert in California, such as a sighting made by three separate Marines and other disparate witnesses as well. It got to the point where in this year there was a near tragedy when two search parties were out Bigfoot hunting in the wake of the mysterious reports and almost opened fire on each other. Sightings continued, and in 1979 there was an account given by an elderly couple, who claimed that the beast stepped right out in front of their car to tower over the vehicle, before lumbering off into the night, leaving enormous tracks behind. In that same year there were two additional sightings from Hemet, California, of a massive 10 foot tall creature that left behind footprints a foot and a half long.

Road through the Mojave Desert

Around this time there was a string of sightings of all sorts of strange phenomena near the Edward’s Air Force Base, about 22 miles (35 km) northeast of Lancaster. Here there were numerous reports of base personnel sighting hulking humanoid figures in the dark, which allegedly used a series of underground tunnels to move about. Oddly, there were many purported UFO sightings in the area at the same time, but whether or not this has any connection is unknown. One of the more far-out reports from the base was collected by Bigfoot researcher Edwards Bobbie Ann Slate, and concerned of one of the creatures that apparently had bright blue eyes. The report was given by a base policeman, who said:

Heading back to the main base, I noticed maybe 200-300 yards to my left, these large blue eyes. I do a lot of night hunting and it was strange — they were larger than anything I’d ever seen before. The [blue eyes] had to be about four inches apart and seven feet off the ground. I stopped the truck and sat there watching them. It was too dark to see any body shape to the thing. The blue glows proceeded toward my truck at a right angle for about 100 yards and then stopped. The movement of the eyes was extremely fast. Another thing that bothered me was that they didn’t bob up and down. It was like two lights on a wire moving from one point to another.

This particular creature, nicknamed “Blue Eyes,” has apparently been regularly seen by base police and was widely discussed amongst them right up into the present. Several other personnel at the remote desert base at the time also came forward to anonymously report that large, Bigfoot-like creatures has been routinely spotted through night-vision equipment skirting the perimeter of the base, often with red glowing eyes, walking through it, or even venturing into the many underground tunnels in the area. The witnesses explained that the presence of the creatures was officially classified, and that they had been specifically told not to fire upon them. There had allegedly been several instances of catching the creatures on surveillance cameras at the base, but this footage was labeled as classified and never released to the public.

It is not even necessarily Bigfoot-like creatures that have been seen, as there are reports of indistinct shadow men and even shape-changing entities from the base, as well as what seem to be just disembodies glowing eyes. What is going on here? Also from Southern California are more modern reports of some sort of hair-covered, semi-bipedal creature with glowing red eyes that has ben seen loping or running along at high speeds along the Highway 14, and which has come to be called the “Sierra Highway Devil.”

Another odd, red-eyed humanoid monstrosity from the same area is what has come to be called “The Cement Monster,” named for its appearance at a concrete mine near Big Bear Lake owned by the Mitsubishi Cement Corporation. In 1988 the beast was seen by two U.S. Marines who were on their way home from a skiing trip to the area when they saw the creature looming over an abandoned strip mine in the area. One of the witnesses, a Ken Cross, would tell researcher Douglas E. Trapp thus:

From the left side of the road something very large seemed to stand up on two legs and run across the road. The bottom half looked human, covered with hair. The top half wasn’t very visible, but appeared monsterish, scary in other words. The headlights only got the bottom half, and the damn thing ran out about 150 feet in front of us. It made it across the road in three strides. I distinctively remember seeing the arms pumping back and forth just like any of us would do if sprinting across the road in front of a car. It appeared to be 8 feet tall.

In the sun scorched, burning wilderness of a place called Borrego Sink, 45 mi SE of Borrego Springs, California, there have been reported terrifying encounters between man and mystery beast. The desert may seem to be a strange place to find Bigfoot, but not only have they been reported in this savage wasteland, but they seem to be of a rather aggressive variety, especially the ones that have come to be known as the Borrego Sasquatch. One such incident occurred in 1939, when a man was camping alone in one of the many dry gulches of the area. The man was awoken in the middle of the night by a band of two-legged hairy creatures stalking about his camp on the fringes of the campfire’s light. The beats were described as having white or silver fur and possessed piercing red eyes that glowed in the dark. The pack of creatures circled the camp menacingly for some time but seemed to be somewhat afraid of the fire and kept their distance until they finally slunk off back into the desert.

The Anza-Borrego wastelands

Thirty years later in the same region, a man by the name of Harold Lancaster had his own frightening encounter as he was camping in the Sink. Lancaster described how an enormous, hair covered, bipedal creature stalked out of the wilderness and lumbered straight towards him in an intimidating manner. The man, fearing that he was about to be attacked, fired his revolver into the air in an effort to scare the monster away. Whatever the creature was, the gunshots did the trick and the thing reportedly jumped around 3 feet into the air before glaring at Lancaster and running off into the brush.

Borrego Sink is not the only place in the desert with its share of ominous man-beasts. In a place called Deadman’s Hole, located 7 miles from Warner Springs on Hwy 79, a string of vicious, unsolved murders occurred back in the 19th century that have long been blamed on a malicious, marauding Sasquatch. In 1858 the first victim was killed under mysterious circumstances, followed by more slayings over the years; a Frenchman who was slaughtered in his cabin, a prospector named David Blair who was killed by what looked like a knife attack, and a woman named Belinda who was strangled and mutilated. The story may have just been chalked up to an insane killer on the rampage had it not been for a curious story that surfaced in 1888. Two hunters were out hunting in an area known as Dark Canyon when they came across a cave full of the scattered remains of various mutilated animals.

As they investigated the cave, the hunters reported being attacked by a huge, man-like beast covered in matted black hair and with huge hands and feet. According to the hunters, they opened fire on the beast and killed it, after which its body was apparently moved to San Diego and shown to police. At the time, a paper called the San Diego Union ran the story and claimed that the rampaging mystery creature had been the one responsible for the murders, causing quite a public stir in the process. Oddly, the paper ran a story the following day dismissing the article as a mere April Fool’s joke. It is unknown if there was ever really a body or if the creature really existed, but what is known is that the mysterious murders remain unsolved.

Another strange case involving some sort of humanoid creature comes from the deserts of the Mexican State of Chihuahua. At the end of 1989 and the beginning of 1990, a group of teenagers were on a mission to explore the caves of a place called Cerro Pajarito when they came across something that would haunt them for the rest of their lives. As the group was exploring one of the caves, they came upon the discovery of a dead deer and a doe that were freshly killed and exhibited three odd perforations on their necks that formed a triangular pattern. In the surrounding area, there were footprints that looked like those of a puma, but it soon became apparent that no puma had done this.

The group suddenly heard blood curdling squealing sounds and the air became pervaded by a stench described as smelling like burning wood. The terrified group of teenagers looked and saw a hunched over, humanoid figure crouched upon a rock outcropping about 15 meters away from them. The creature apparently started bounding towards them and one of the groups emptied his pistol at it, although the bullets seemed to have no effect. As the panicked group turned tail and ran for dear life, they reported passing yet another humanoid creature that was described as being metallic green in color and standing only 80 cm high. What could this have possibly been? Who knows?

The desert is indeed a very isolated domain of intense natural beauty and solitude. Anyone who has been there can attest to that. There is just something about these places that holds to it a certain mystique and allure that it is hard to pinpoint, and there are vast mysteries lurking here. What are these humanoid entities that we have looked at here, and how or why do they manage to remain in this forbidding landscape? Are these caryatids, some sort of desert Sasquatch? Are they ghosts, demons, interdimensional travelers, or something else? No one knows, and they serve to add to the allure of these oft-forgotten and avoided places.

If you’re still waiting for a glass of sarcophagus sewer waterfrom the big black mysterious marble coffin opened in Alexandria, Egypt, recently, keep holding your breath (a smart thing to do around that vile liquid anyway). On the other hand, if you were hoping for confirmation of your theory that the soaked skeletons swimming in said sarcophagus sewage were not soldiers but something else, you were right about at least one of them. And fear not, water waiters — no one has poured the sewer water back into the sewer … yet.

According to Dr. Kheider, pelvic size showed that one skeleton belonged to a woman between the age of 20 to 25 years old, with a height around 160 to 164 cm (around 5 foot 4 inches). The second one belonged to a man between the age of 35 to 39 years old, with a height ranging between 160 to 165.5 cm while the third skeleton was a man between the age of 40 and 44 years old and its height was between 179 to 184.5 cm (almost 6 foot). It’s doubtful that the woman was a soldier, so the original theory that the three skeletons were in the military is now questionable.

Tell us more!

Anther interesting find by the researchers was a hole in one skull that the owner appeared to have lived with for a while, indicating it was probably the result of trepanation surgery, where a hole is bored or chipped to relieve pressure, drain fluid or just poke around. While trepanation was common elsewhere, it was not in Egypt. Even more interesting was the presence of gold flakes or sheets inside the bones. There was no speculation in the report how this happened. Finally, the remains were found stacked on top of each other, indicating the sarcophagus had been opened multiple times.

One poor unnamed researcher was tasked with studying the infamous sewage water which over 20,000 people had petitioned to drink. They may change their minds when they find out it was a mix of water, decomposed human remains and decomposed burial wrappings. Just to be sure (or perhaps as punishment for some work infraction), the researcher will be conducting further tests on the sewage water. DNA tests will also be done on the bones to determine if they were related.

An example of trepanation

Who were the people in the mysterious black sarcophagus? What was wrong with the person who had their skull drilled? Why was there gold in the bones? Why was such a large sarcophagus in an elaborate tomb used so many different times? The research will continue.

It’s a good thing Egypt has so many antiquities experts.

What if you were a prisoner in your own world and daily life? Imagine if, despite the seeming appearance of a normal, modern lifestyle around you, you were actually being held captive by certain powers that be; an inmate within invisible walls possessing no iron bars or chains, but which relied instead on surveillance and sentries to corral and confine its detainees?

Imagine now that you no longer wished to remain here. As you seek ways to escape, what if the powers in control effectively worked stifle your every attempt… perhaps even presenting a ruse when necessary to help you think you were closer to freedom than you actually were?

In such a circumstance, one might surmise that the careful control of people’s actions—perhaps through things like punishment, or even deadly force—could serve as a far stronger form of imprisonment than an actual fortified location with thick walls and barred windows.

It’s an interesting thought experiment: the idea that imprisonment can take many forms, or even that imprisonment could occur with or without one even knowing it. Here, of course, the question arises as to whether we today, living in a free society as we do, are nonetheless effectively “prisoners” in some fashion or another.

This was the premise of what is arguably among the most well-regarded science fiction series of classic television, The Prisoner, harkening back to the late-1960s era where, thanks largely to Ian Fleming’s immortal character, spy dramas were very much en vogue.

The Prisoner starred Patrick McGoohan in the role of a stoic and at times tempestuous former secret agent who, upon angrily quitting his job, finds himself a captive within a small coastal community somewhere in Europe. In this new place, known colloquially as “The Village,” each person is known by a number rather than by a name; here, the lyrics of the 1948 American country music song by Jimmy Skinner, “Doin’ My Time,” come to mind, where Skinner sang, “Lord, they call me by a number, not a name.”

Beginning in September 1967, this most unusual program appeared on televisions in Britain and Canada, combining elements of a James Bond-like spy thriller with science fiction by employing advanced surveillance technologies and balloon-like robotic sentries which helped enforce authority in the “Village.” Over the course of 17 episodes, the program saw McGoohan’s character—known to other Villagers as “Number Six”—engaged in repeated and increasingly elaborate attempts to escape from his strange prison with no walls. His primary antagonists are a variety of characters who take the role of “Number Two” over time, engaging in efforts to psychologically “break” Number Six with the intended goal of finding out why he resigned.

Patrick McGoohan in his role as “Number Six” on The Prisoner (fair use).

Number Six, in essence, represents the Individualist; he is a free-thinker that has been thrust into a collectivist world, where good behavior and complacency is rewarded. Add to that the obviously Orwellian elements of surveillance and control, and what we now find in The Prisoner is a sharp cultural commentary that is designed to make us think as much as it was intended to entertain.

Plenty of commentaries have been offered about the series and its influence, perhaps most notably in books like Chris Gregory’s Be Seeing You…: Decoding The Prisoner (University of Luton Press, 1997). Gregory analyzes the series on almost every level conceivable, from the mythological to the political and sociological, arguing fundamentally that like Orwell’s 1984, the inevitable encroachments of civil liberties that occur as government grows has, over time, made The Prisoner all the more relevant, and hence its lasting appeal.

As human beings, we think of things in terms of matters relevant to us, and which are of existential importance to our wellbeing. However, if we were to expand on the themes incorporated in The Prisoner and carry them further into the realm of science fiction, we might entertain the notion that living on planet Earth is, in its own way a sort of benign “imprisonment.” What if, for instance, we were to eventually learn that alien beings existed that were well aware of humankind’s aspirations to colonize planets like Mars, and explore distant worlds not only with remote probes… but eventually in person as well?

The idea that there could be cosmic forces at work which make it difficult for us to get off-planet may not be entirely science fiction, nor does it have to include alien oppressors in order to make sense. Last year, a video by Kurzgesagt – In a Nutshell on YouTube called, “Why Earth Is A Prison and How To Escape It” makes some fascinating arguments for why humans are, essentially, imprisoned here.

It’s because we owe the universe a debt… a 4.5 billion-year-old debt: 

As the video explains, every atom in our being as individuals was once a part of some greater event in the formation of the cosmos. Planetary formation is no small task, and for humans to ever be able to leave this world, the energetic requirements for doing so are essentially the same as that which formed the Earth. Hence, we build machines which have energetic potential that is great enough, at very least, to overcome gravity (rockets, in other words), which aid us in escaping our world and exploring space.

In The Prisoner, Number Six commits a great deal of energy (although perhaps not quite as much as a rocket produces) in an effort to escape his confinement at a coastal resort. It’s not a bad place to live, altogether, and while his captors are bent on interrogating him by various means in order to learn why he resigned from his previous work in espionage in the first place, his complacency is encouraged along the way, which would ensure that he would live well in The Village, so long as he cooperates.

The idea that humanity is similarly “imprisoned” here on Earth by cosmic forces like gravity is an interesting one, in the sense that we share a potential for having a good life here, which may not necessarily require getting off-world in order to ensure humanity’s survival. To the contrary, the late Stephen Hawking and others have argued that, in fact, space exploration might actually become requisite for human survival at some point, even if that’s not the case in the immediate sense. They argue this because of the finite nature of resources on a planet where, as science improves the quality of life for many, as well as the length of time humans spend here, there is an ever-increasing necessity for greater resources; at some point, population growth and lifespan could meet well exceed production levels, and beyond this “point of diminishing returns” one might speculate that inevitable problems would arise. Whether this would constitute war, famine, or other perils resulting from scarcity is anyone’s guess, although it’s beyond the scope of the present argument.

On the other hand, some might see the above views as being alarmist to an extent, and while there are obvious untapped resources that outer space might afford us, this doesn’t necessarily mean that we are running completely out of resources here on Earth. In fact, pushes toward the implementation of renewable energy sources on Earth, and more resourceful ways of managing commodities (in addition to finding new, as-yet-untapped sources for them altogether) might prove very beneficial for future humans. Getting along with the other villagers and staying where we are, in other words, might actually require less energy than the trouble we can expect to meet while trying to escape.

Of course, the amount of energy it took for our ancestors to push outward from habitable regions in the ancient past, which led to the exploration and eventual settlement of distant lands also required tremendous energy and hardship. Maybe the acceptance of a stable environment (barring instances where natural disasters or other hardships might have forced ancient humans toward migrations) simply isn’t as appealing as the quest for adventure, and the fulfillment of indulging our curiosities.

It seems likely, then, that humans will follow in the footsteps of our ancestors, and eventually escape our earthly “prison.” And much like Number Six with his repeated failed attempts to liberate himself from The Village, we’ll probably do so at whatever cost is necessary, despite the hardships or the amount of energy required.

And we do this because to face such hardships is the greatest expression of our freedom: our ability to act in accordance with our own will, and to proclaim loudly that we are not merely things or simple bundles of cosmic stardust, helplessly watching our fate play out before us. Or, to put it as McGoohan’s character famously retorted to his captors, I am not a number… I am a free man! 

We are humans, after all, and going great lengths to achieve the seemingly impossible appears to be in our nature.

When we think of UFOs, we can’t help but think of America: birthplace of the “flying saucer,” home to Roswell, Area 51, and, of course, Hollywood, which is responsible for some of the most iconic UFO-related imagery in the history of cinema. However, anyone who’s ever opened a book on the UFO topic will know that the phenomenon is not restricted to the United States of America, nor can America stake a geographic claim on all of history’s most dramatic UFO events. The UFO phenomenon is truly global in scope. With this in mind, over the next several weeks, I’ll be conducting interviews with leading UFO researchers from countries all around the world in an effort to paint a clearer picture of global UFOlogy today.

Chris Rutkowski and friends.

Our global UFO trek starts in Canada with Chris Rutkowski, a Canadian science writer and educator with degrees in astronomy and education. Since the mid-1970s, Rutkowski has been studying reports of UFOs and writing about his investigations and research. He has eight published books on UFOs and related issues, including Unnatural History (1993), Abductions and Aliens (1999), A World of UFOs (2008), I Saw It Too! (2009) and The Big Book of UFOs (2010). He has appeared on numerous radio programs, podcasts and documentary TV series, including Unsolved Mysteries, UFO Hunters, Sightings, Eye2thesky, The Paracast, Discovery’s Close Encounters and A&E’s The Unexplained. He is past president of both the Winnipeg Science Fiction Society and the Winnipeg Centre of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada.

RG: Who have been the defining figures in Canadian UFOlogy over the past 70 years (for better or for worse), and why?

CR: There are a lot to choose from. In an entry on Canadian ufology for Jerome Clark’s UFO Encyclopedia, Volume 1, published in 1990, I noted such people as Wilbert B. Smith and Omand Solandt, who were diametrically opposed individuals associated with Canada’s version of Project Blue Book, namely Project Magnet and Project Second Storey. Paul Bissky was a lead in the Canadian military UFO investigation team in the 1960s. Peter Millman and Ian Halliday were astronomers with the National Research Council who handled UFO reports, usually by debunking them.

In a section of my entry on Canadian ufologists, I noted: Stanton Friedman, John Magor, John Brent Musgrave, Douglas Curran, Grant Cameron, Larry Fenwick, Harry Tokarz, and Ed Barker.

Influential Canadian UFO researchers, Wilbert B. Smith and Stanton T. Friedman.

Historically, there were other notable individuals such as (the great and highly influential) Errol Bruce-Knapp, Jim Moroney, Michael Strainic, Brian Vike, Fern Belzil, and Pat de la Franier. In Quebec, Claude Macduff, Henry McKay, and Francois Bourbeau had been active.

I would today note both John Robert Columbo and David A. Gotlib in Toronto, as well as Gene Duplantier and Bonnie Wheeler. Also, Christian Page, Yann Vadnais, Donald Cyr, Jean Casault, Gilles Milot, and Michelle McKay. And we can’t forget Claude Vorhilon “Rael!” Further east, I would have to note Don Ledger, Noah Morritt, and Chris Styles.

Others who have made significant impacts would be Palmiro Campagna, Michael Persinger (who just passed away), Yurko Bondarchuk, Sue Demeter-St. Clair, Gord Kijek, Martin Jasek, Michel Deschamps, Charles Lamoureaux, Don Dondieri, Paul Kingsbury, Geoff Dittman, Roy Bauer, MJ Banias, and Paul Kimball. (I hope I didn’t leave anyone truly significant out of this list.)

RG: What do you consider to be the most compelling Canadian UFO incident on record, and why?

CR: Ah, that’s a good question. The word “compelling” is not one I’d use for most UFO cases. One could argue that the Falcon Lake case of 1967 is the most compelling, because it has elements of everything that a good UFO case should have: detailed witness testimony; physical effects on the environment, including radiation; physiological effects on the witness; a site that has been located and is accessible today; voluminous documentation by government and military investigators; a physical artefact that has been tested by several independent laboratories; recognition by a government that the incident is of historical value; literally hundreds of pages of official documents from two different countries that have been located, retrieved, and made available by researchers, attesting to the incident actually occurring and having been taken seriously by various agencies; queries about the incident in a parliamentary assembly made fully public; plus official statements by police and military investigators that the incident cannot be satisfactorily explained.

Artistic rendering of the Falcon Lake UFO, based on the witness’ original sketch.

Name one other case like that anywhere in the world. Sure, it’s a single-witness case, but it has a lot of probative evidence. Having said that, I’m sure investigators of the Shag Harbour case would say that was the most compelling, and Palmiro Campagna suggests the most compelling is actually Falconbridge. (NB: “Charlie Red Star” and the Carman, Manitoba, flap of 1975-76, currently proclaimed by some as “One of North America’s Biggest UFO Sightings,” isn’t really in the same ballpark.)

RG: What is the Canadian government’s official stance on UFOs? When was the last time it issued a statement on the subject?

CR: Like most large democratic countries and governments, Canada remains officially disinterested in UFOs. This has not changed significantly over the years. An official memo of the Department of National Defence in 1961 stated:

“The Canadian Government is concerned with any report which might affect national security and, undoubtedly, this would be the attitude of the United States Government also. However, to date, UFO reports which have been investigated by various departments of the Canadian Government have not revealed positive evidence of anything which might affect national welfare and which could not be attributed to possibly natural phenomena or mistaken identity.”

In the late 1960s, responsibility for UFO reports was transferred to the National Research Council of Canada (NRC). In 1976, a spokesman for the NRC stated: “Our responsibility was that the NRC would take over the maintenance of a file of UFO reports and conduct any investigations determined by the scientific merit they appeared to have. There was no commitment to do anything specific.”

RG: Does the Canadian Department of National Defence have an official UFO investigations unit?

CR: Short answer: yes. Long answer: sort of. At one time (in the 1960s), there were a few individuals within the Canadian military who seemed to be involved in many UFO investigations. One in particular was Squadron Leader Paul Bissky, whose name appears in a number of case files, including one that suggests he was part of an investigation “team,” greatly predating the X-Files. But into the 1970s, the attitude seemed to have changed, and the Canadian posture mirrored that of the USA. As noted above, the NRC investigated UFO reports, but only because astronomers within the NRC were interested in meteorites, and they looked at UFO reports as largely being due to misidentifications of meteors. The NRC managed to get the RCMP to agree to investigate UFO reports for them with this in mind. When the NRC stopped being interested in meteoritics in the mid-1990s, the “Non-Meteoric Sightings File” was closed, and the RCMP was no longer obligated to investigate and send in reports.

However, UFO reports are still collected by the Department of Defence. Evidence of this is a current policy on “MERINT” reports as defined by the Canadian Coast Guard in its annual directive to mariners. The policy states:

“In order to extend the early warning coverage for the defence of the North American continent a plan is now in existence for the reporting of vital intelligence sightings during peacetime… All Canadian vessels should originate MERINT reports as and when applicable… MERINT reports should be made under the following circumstances… (a) Immediately upon a vital intelligence sighting, except when the vessel is within territorial waters of a country other than Canada, the U.S.A. or Greenland.”

It is important to note that MERINT instructions apply to all ships, both civilian and military. And what kinds of things need to be reported? The Coast Guard is very explicit that “All airborne and waterborne objects which appear to be hostile, suspicious or unidentified should be reported,” including:

“(i) Guided missiles.
(ii) Unidentified flying objects.
(iii) Submarines.
(iv) Surface warship positively identified as not Canadian or U.S.
(v)Aircraft or contrails (vapour trails made by high flying aircraft) which appear to be directed against Canada, the U.S., their territories or possessions.”

RG: Has the Canadian government shown more or less transparency on the UFO subject than the US government?

CR: Canada is much more transparent than USA in this regard. Despite the much-ballyhooed demands for “Disclosure” by UFO zealots, official documents about UFOs in Canada have always been available in the National Archives, regularly added to every year. And this isn’t “gradual” or “soft” disclosure; it’s simply standard procedure for yearly reviews of documents as they come up for release. Several Canadian ufologists have been filing AI (the Canadian version of FOIA) requests regularly for decades, receiving documents as part of their research.

Chris Rutkowski in his office.

RG: Does Canada have a national UFO investigations organisation today, and how many smaller Canadian UFO groups are you aware of?

CR: Nothing national, but there is a Canadian chapter of MUFON which has representatives in several provinces. As for smaller groups, a few provinces have them: UFOBC, Ufology Research, PSICAN, AQU, GARPAN, and perhaps a few others. There were dozens in the 1970s and 1980s. (I could claim that Ufology Research is national, in the sense that we compile the annual national Canadian UFO Survey with data obtained from all groups and organizations across the country.)

RG: What are the most active regions of Canada for UFO sighting reports?

CR: The Canadian UFO Survey has shown that the number of UFO reports is related to population, so that the most UFO reports originate from the largest population centres. Having said that, in 2017, Quebec had about half the total number of UFO reports in the country. Not completely sure why. There are a few places where UFO reports seem slightly high, despite demographics: Surrey, BC; St. Catharines, Ontario; and perhaps even Laval, Quebec.

RG: Have you personally had any UFO sightings?

CR: No, although in 1977, I saw a distant moving red light in the sky and reported it to the NRC. I found my own report on file in the National Archives! (And no, it was never investigated by them. I suspect it was an aircraft.)

RG: How long have you been involved in the UFO subject; roughly how many cases have you personally investigated; and what conclusions, if any, have you drawn about the underlying nature of UFO phenomena?

CR: I started investigating UFO sightings in 1974. I can’t count the number of cases I have investigated since then. Hundreds? Thousands? Even 50 per year for 40 years or so works out to more than 2,000.

I first had an article published about UFOs in 1976. My first book was published in 1989.
My conclusions? In 1991, I stated:

“As with the 1989 Survey of Canadian UFO Reports, the 1990 Survey does not offer any positive proof of the physical reality of UFOs. However, it does show that some phenomenon which is called a UFO is continually being observed by witnesses. The typical UFO sighting is that of two people observing a moving, distant white or red light for a period of over 15 minutes. In most cases, the UFO is likely to be eventually identified as a conventional object such as an astronomical object. However, in a small percentage of cases, some UFOs do not appear to have an easy explanation and they may be given the label of ‘unknown’.”

Whereas in 2018, I noted:

“Statistical studies of UFO report data have often been subject to criticism from both hardcore UFO believers and debunkers. The former insist the small number of high quality unexplained cases does not reflect the true abundance of alien craft in our skies, while the latter note that UFO data is not at all convincing that a real phenomenon exists… The reality is that UFO reports are the foundation of ufology and are the basis for belief in extraterrestrial visitation by ETH adherents. But in short, UFO report data does not prove that aliens are visiting Earth. In fact, if anything, the UFO report data show that most often, the average witness is misidentifying conventional objects or ordinary phenomena… It should be emphasized the classification of Unknown does not imply alien visitation. Each case may still have an explanation following further investigation. And of those that remain unexplained, some may remain unexplained, but still are not incontrovertible proof of extraterrestrial intervention or some mysterious natural phenomenon. In short, witnesses are seeing real things, and the challenge remains to identify the conventional astronomical objects, aircraft, and other terrestrial objects in order to winnow out the truly unexplained UFOs, if any.”

RG: How can Canadian UFOlogy better itself?

CR: More beer. No, wait. Through better cooperation between organizations and individuals. It’s still a challenge every year to compile data on all Canadian UFO sightings when some groups and ufologists are parochial in their approach and don’t freely share information. It’s the same in the USA and other countries, of course. There’s also no agreed-upon standard when it comes to recording and presenting UFO data.

But the good news is that Canadian ufology is ahead of other countries in that we do have access to official UFO reports as well as civilian cases, and that the Canadian UFO Survey remains a good and useful tool for understanding some basic information about UFOs.

To learn more about Chris Rutkowski and his work, visit his blog, Ufology Research, and his Amazon page.