JUDGE HALLET AND SEES A GLOWING EGG

Judge George Hallett and his wife were entertaining three guests at a celebratory New Year’s dinner, which they were hosting at their Mill Bay home at the same time that the Drummonds were temporarily severed from Bea’s home by a glowing egg-shaped device. With their home being located directly behind Bea Drummond’s house, the Halletts and company were in a unique position to confirm their UFO account… and that’s exactly what they did.

According to Canadian private investigator, Leanne Jones, who reconstructed the case in 2008, the Halletts’ sighting directly followed the Drummonds’ run-in. The guests at the dinner party all claimed that they watched as a massive orange light passed leisurely along the water’s edge opposite the Halletts’  home. According to Judge Hallet:

“This was no ordinary aircraft, and it was no plastic-bag trick either. It was making no sound that we could detect, it was moving very slowly and it was enormous. I’m quite sure no one could play a trick with such a large apparatus without being spotted. We watched it for about five minutes until it seemed to disappear into the clouds.”

THE DEER LODGE SIGHTINGS

It would be easy to assume that after no less than five potentially harrowing encounters with members of the human race that these aliens would call it a day, but that was not to be the case.

Just moment following both the Hallett and Drummond sightings, the ubiquitous UFO made its presence known yet again on Mill Bay. This time the glowing object appeared to the attendees of yet another dinner party, which was being hosted by Arthur Gillam and his wife at the Deer Lodge restaurant just off the Island highway, south of Mill Bay.

While this sighting occurred at a greater distance than either the Drummonds’ or Halletts’ sightings, all of the observers in attendance agreed that they saw a colossal, glowing sphere cruising over the Saanich Peninsula, about 10-miles to the east. According to Arthur Gillam:

“All we could see was a large ball of light moving quite slowly, much slower than an airplane. It must have been very bright for us to see it from that distance. I don’t think a helicopter would have been that bright.”

While in and of itself this long distance sighting is nothing to get worked up about, taken in conjunction with the Drummonds’ frightening run-in and Judge Hallett and his cohorts observations, it serves to further cement the fact that there was a genuinely anomalous aircraft soaring over Mill Bay that New Year’s Day eve. And while there’s no proof that these events are even remotely related to the CDH incident of that morning, the circumstantial evidence seems too obvious to ignore.

PRELIMINARY SIGHTINGS:

There can be little doubt that January 1, 1970, was a seminal day in the history of North American UFO encounters, but — according to various eyewitness and newspaper reports — the residents of Vancouver Island had been plagued by strange nighttime visitors for years previous to the events in question.

THE MAYOR, THE DOE AND THE UFO

Perhaps the most auspicious eyewitness to these incidents was the then mayor of Duncan — the city within which the CDH is nestled — Jim Quaife. Quaife claimed that in late 1964, he was relaxing in his home when he heard what he described as a roaring turbine-like sound.

They mayor leapt to his feet, yanked back the curtain and looked out the window. What he saw would be something he would never forget. Quaife asserted that his entire backyard was bathed in brilliant white light, which emanated from an unknown source above. He later stated that his eye had been caught by a doe frozen like a proverbial “deer in headlights” in his orchard.

The Mayor wasted no time in grabbing his rifle and charging outside. The moment he stepped out his door the light disappeared, enabling him to see a large, non-aerodynamic craft, which soundlessly sped off at a tremendous rate of speed. This would not be Quaife’s final encounter with a bizarre, airborne visitor.

On January 13^th, 1970, the Mayor arrived home after a city council meeting to find his neighbor staring skyward at a bulky, unknown craft that hovered above a nearby power plant pulsating with a purple radiance. Quaife rushed into the house to fetch his binoculars and his wife. The trio watched this strange pulsing object perform ostensibly impossible aerial maneuvers — including abrupt reversals of direction and dead stops — for at least 10-minutes, until the vessel soared off at breakneck speed toward Mt. Provost, then cut at a 90-degree angle and shot straight up.

According to the Mayor, the following day an article was published in the “Times Colonist” regarding an amateur astronomer and UFO buff by the name of Vernon Stanley-Jones, who had constructed his own observation tower on Richard’s Trail road in Duncan. Stanley-Jones not only claimed to have spied the UFO, but he also had a theory regarding its agenda… a theory which was shared by the Mayor himself.

BEEPERS AND THE ENERGY PIRATES

Vernon Stanley-Jones had erected his observation tower near his home on Vancouver Island, not far from CDH, where Nurse Kendall and her cohorts claimed to have seen the spinning saucer. He was fascinated by the mysteries of the cosmos and even more intrigued by the allegedly unearthly visitors that had made their presence so obvious in his hometown.

With that in mind, Stanley-Jones was exceedingly diligent in collecting evidence regarding the rash of UFO sightings taking place in the region, but it wouldn’t be until five days after the initial flap that he would have a close encounter of his own, though it was not the first time that he claimed to have seen a UFO.

The event in question occurred on Lakes Road on the evening of January 6, 1970, when he and his wife spied a massive, orange, disc-shaped object flying slowly over Lakes Road hill at approximately 11:00 pm. Stanley-Jones pulled over to the side of the road and killed his headlights, while he and his wife watched this amazing aircraft float between 500 and 1,000-feet of the ground for about 8-minutes.

At some point during this sighting, the couple — and other unnamed eyewitnesses — stated that the UFO emitted a series of “fireballs” as it made its way northward. While these witnesses described “fireballs,”  one can’t help but to wonder if these fireballs might be a long distance interpretation of the strange Morse code-like series of illuminated dashes that Jim Drummond claimed to have seen through his telescope. Either way, Stanley-Jones — who described the craft as the biggest thing he’d ever seen — described their sighting:

“When it reached the bottom of the hill, it paused briefly and then turned right and flew over Duncan. When it was over the center of Duncan it stopped again and we watched it just hanging there for awhile and then it moved off due west more rapidly.”

As the vehicle sped out of sight, the couple raced to a nearby friend’s home and borrowed a pair of binoculars. Sadly they were only able to reacquire the oddly moving object for a few moments before it disappeared for good. Stanley-Jones then speculated if this might herald the return of a phenomenon that folks had dubbed the “beepers.”

He later explained to a local reporter, Sharon Currie, that two years previous individuals from the Cowichan region claimed to have heard weird, electronic “beeping sounds, but couldn’t see anything.” He also asserted that it similar sounds had been picked up on an 80-meter band by a ham radio operator, but offered no explanation of their origins. Stanley-Jones story, which was published on January 14, 1970, was titled “Local Witnesses Claim U.F.O.’s Eject Fireballs.” He is an excerpt from her “Fireballs” story:

“Fire-balls ejected from an UFO hovering over Maple Bay and Crofton area last week could mark the return of “the beepers.” Vern Stanley-Jones, President of the Cowichan-Chemainus UFO Club, advocated. Stanley-Jones considered an expert on UFOs for more than a decade, mooted such a possibility after he, his wife and several other people in the area witnessed a large bright, yellow-orange craft cruising over the area Tuesday January 6th 1970.”

As if enigmatic “beepers” were not enough, according to investigator Leanne Jones, the area where the couple saw the UFO on Lake Road was less than 2-miles from the giant power grid mentioned by Quaife in his account. Based on this correlation, both Stanley-Jones and the Mayor proposed that this luminescent craft was in all probability making “fuel stops” and “sucking up energy” from the grid.

Just about any UFO enthusiast is familiar with the hypothesis that extraterrestrials (or extra-dimensionals) are visiting Earth for the purpose of exploiting our raw materials, be they water, gold or electricity. Bearing that in mind, one can understand how Quaife and Stanley-Jones might have come to this conclusion. According to Quaife:

“Actually I didn’t talk with Vern until after I spotted his report about the event in the Times Colonist a day or so later. When I called and advised him that I thought the craft was over his neck of the woods he stated that he thought it was over Duncan. At this point I suggested that it was neither, it had to be somewhere in-between which would have placed it over or near, the AC/DC substation on the Island Highway, I then suggested that the craft may have been “refueling” by tapping into the energy field of the substation. Vernon immediately questioned why I thought they needed to draw on electric energy and I related the story of my first incident on Riverside Road a few years earlier, that I distinctly heard a “turbine like” sound. He then agreed, saying that they have to refuel somewhere, and maybe that is how and where!”

It’s a theory that Leanne Jones seems to support:

“Perhaps, ‘Sonoluminescence ’[the emission of short bursts of light from imploding bubbles in a liquid when excited by sound] is the true source of UFO propulsion. Perhaps, we have been too naïve to realized until now that ‘UFO Piracy,’ i.e. the theft of Earth’s energy resources, may be one of the major reasons for UFO activities around Earth, as well as, government secrecy and denial. The possibility that Alien Presence(s) may be leeching electrical and nuclear energy (as well as human DNA and animal biological material) may be one of the most closely guarded secrets of all the world’s governments.”

As intriguing (and potentially terrifying) as this theory is, in my opinion there simply isn’t enough supporting evidence in this case to warrant this conclusion, but who really knows?

ONE LAST HURRAH!

In February of 1970, about month after all of the hubbub seemed to have fizzled, a farmer by the name of John Vanderhoek reported to authorities that motorists were congregating in front of his property near Vancouver Island highway in order to catch a glimpse of a “red thing in the air.” Vanderhoek claimed that the object — which was white on the top and red on the bottom — was ascending and descending, all the while varying in intensity.

As Vanderhoek made the report on the phone he watched as the lights receded into the west, finally disappearing into the mountains. The farmer and the other observers swore that there was no wind that evening and they had no doubt that the object was intelligently controlled. UFO sightings have continued in the area sporadically since then,  with a report being filed as recently as July 3, 2010.

PROJECT BLUE BOOK AND THE NOT QUITE MEN IN BLACK

In the days that followed the sighting Jim Drummond claimed that he was visited by a United States Air Force officer who hailed from Nevada. The military man claimed to be a representative of “Project Blue Book.” Project Blue Book was America’s only official investigative organization supposedly dedicated to uncovering the “truth” about the UFO mystery.

Intriguingly, Project Blue Book had been disbanded just weeks before in December of 1969, following the release of the notoriously slanted Condon Committee Report, which was the unofficial title of the University of Colorado UFO Project. This assemblage was funded by the USAF to study unidentified flying objects under the direction of physicist Edward Condon from 1966 to 1968.

What was supposed to be a reasonable assessment of the UFO phenomenon, was (according to many researchers and numerous inside reports — including a documented memo from one of the men in charge) nothing but a hack job with the preordained outcome of delegitimizing the entire field of study and thus reducing public panic — and therefore interest — in UFOs. Nevertheless, the media celebrated the results of this pseudo scientific report and, whether individual reporters realize it or not, western societies in general, and the press in particular, have based their ridicule of this genuine phenomenon on the presumed authenticity of the Condon Report — as well as other misleading campaigns inspired by the Robertson Panel — ever since… but I digress.

To this day there continues to be heated debate regarding the scientific integrity of the Project Blue Book; with many suggesting that it was a poorly staffed, incompetently led organization that existed as a catch all for “crackpots” who were haranguing the Air Force, and whose primary function, much like the Condon Report, was to debunk reports, be they “legitimate” or not.

Nevertheless, in the early days of 1970, members were still “unofficially” investigating accounts, which may well make the Vancouver Island incidents the last UFO reports to be examined by the team. That having been noted, there are some researchers who speculate that the military officer who questioned Jim Drummond was actually amongst the first wave of post-Blue Book investigators, who would continue the project’s work in a more confidential fashion.

There is also the very real possibility — according to Leanne Jones — that Jim Drummond’s “USAF military man” was using Project Blue Book as a cover for another, more clandestine, organization. Jones speculated that this mystery man was not CIA or NSA, but most likely a representative of the Air Force Office of Special Investigations (OSI), which was instituting another UFO investigation project, under an as yet unknown code name. This seems reasonable considering the fact that there’s not a single government of Earth that does not take seriously the potential threat that might come from hyper-technological aircraft that can invade their airspace undetected and at will, whatever their intentions may be.

Regardless of the origins of this mysterious Air Force officer, I can find not reports of either Drummond or any other witnesses who claimed to have been followed, threatened or in any way harassed by prototypical MIB characters.

CONCLUSION:

So what to make of these incredible UFO sightings? There can be little debate that this is one of the most remarkable UFO/humanoid cases in modern history. First off, it offers up an amazing amount of corroborating evidence. Not only that, it also proffers some of the most outstanding eyewitnesses ever assembled — running the gamut from a cadre of health care professionals to a ship’s pilot to Educators and administrators to a judge to a mayor and many other respected citizens.

It’s an impressive array to say the least. In fact, if the aforementioned witnesses had claimed to observe some sort of crime rather than a UFO, then just about any jury would deliberate for mere moments before moving to convict. Even more telling is the fact that the folks involved in these cases have all stuck by their stories for over 40-years — or, at least, the duration of their lives — and none of them have made any overt efforts to exploit their experiences. Perhaps Jones put it most succinctly:

“A significant factor of this sighting is that none of the witnesses made any effort to publicize it, yet at the same time made no pretense of being secretive.”

In terms of Wilson and Kendall — who bore witness to what was arguably the most unbelievable element of the case, the humanoids — I believe that the investigators, who published the details of the case in the summer of 1970 edition of the Canadian UFO Report Vol. 1 No. 7, described their credentials as professional caregivers and as witnesses perfectly:

“Miss Doreen Kendall, a practical nurse, and Mrs. Frieda Wilson, a registered nurse, are employed together on the night shift in the extended-care ward for elderly patients at the Cowichan District Hospital at Duncan on Vancouver Island. Theirs is a position that requires a special degree of tact, maturity and gentleness of manner for it is at night that their patients, often unable to sleep, have long lonely hours in which to contemplate the little that remains for them in life. A word or gesture of comfort from the nurses on duty is all they have in their fading world until the routine of morning helps them into another day. It is immediately apparent on meeting them that Miss Kendall and Mrs. Wilson, both in late middle-age, were assigned to their particular work with these qualifications in mind. In addition to what training obviously has given them, they have an inborn quality that invites trust, and it was no surprise, after we interviewed them, that friends and former patients of each told us they would accept their word under any circumstance. Coming from several who had doubted the existence of UFOs, this was a significant tribute in light of what the two nurses (with partial confirmation by two others who arrived seconds later) said they observed outside the hospital just as 1970 was dawning on the Pacific Coast.”

As in many such media hyped flaps, there were a few hoaxers making false reports over the following months and even one case of a fake UFO being released by what many have chalked up to school kids, drunks or both. Jim Drummond actually saw this “copycat” UFO a few days after his initial sighting and had this to say about it:

“The second one wasn’t the same thing at all. You could see it was a kids’ job, not a fraction as bright, and it was just bobbing around without really going anywhere.”

Nevertheless, it should come as no surprise that professional “debunkers” have used this incident to dismiss the entire flap. Former UFO skeptic and eyewitness, Nurse Wilson, completely dismissed the idea that what she, Kendall and the other nurses saw was some kind of hoax:

”Some people say we were looking at a plastic bag with candles in it, put there as a joke. But it would take a million candles to make it as bright as that.”

Sadly many of the eyewitnesses involved with this case are no longer with us, but their accounts remain as a testament to one of the most enigmatic and intriguing close encounters of all time… and it’s worth noting that when the CDH redid the facade of the hospital following the 1970 sighting, they emblazoned it with a huge, circular, star-burst. While I’ll be the first to admit that it was likely nothing more than an aesthetic decision, part of me can’t help but wonder if someone is subtlety trying to entice these ostensibly alien visitors to return.

 TAGS: alien, close encounter, flying saucer, ufo

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