Shag Harbour Dark Object Incident

“The book recounts Laurie Wickens' account that a low object with four sequentially flashing lights descended toward Shag Harbour at roughly a forty-five-degree angle, at times appearing to pause or hover. Wickens and passengers then reported a whistling/whooshing sound and a bang before seeing a pale yellow light bobbing on the water approximately two to three hundred yards offshore.”

“After Wickens called the Barrington Passage RCMP detachment, Corporal Werbicki reportedly received additional calls from Mary Banks, observers near Cape Sable Island, and a caller at Bear Point describing lights, a whistling sound, a flash or bang, and concern that an aircraft had gone down near Shag Harbour.”

“At the waterfront, responding RCMP officers and civilians watched a light associated with the object on the water. Constable Ron Pond, assigned to observe it through binoculars, reportedly saw the light grow fainter and disappear from view in a manner interpreted as the object slipping beneath the surface.”

“A source identified by the authors under the pseudonym “Earl” said he had received a later military briefing claiming the Shag Harbour object submerged, moved around Cape Sable Island to Government Point near Shelburne, and was joined underwater by a second object while naval vessels monitored the area. The authors themselves identify this account as secondhand.”

“Civilian search boats reaching the reported impact area encountered a broad patch of glittering yellow foam, described as roughly three inches thick with bubbles rising through it. One crew member who touched the material was reported to have an oily substance on his arms, though it caused no immediate pain and the fishermen could not identify it as ordinary fuel or engine oil.”

“Norm Smith later estimated the foam/slick as about eighty feet wide and roughly half a mile long. Lawrence Smith recalled a distinct sulfur-like odor near the rising bubbles and steered away because of concern that an unknown gas might present a fire hazard.”

“Local fisherman Donald Nickerson is reported by the authors as saying he saw naval divers bring aluminum-colored debris to the surface. The book explicitly notes that no official record available to the authors confirmed that this material was associated with the unidentified object.”

“A 1988 Fisheries research cruise side-scan chart near the broader Shag Harbour area included acoustic features annotated “May not be boulders,” including four circular depressions in a diamond-like pattern.”

“The 1995 Canadian Seabed Research/Sightings expedition completed a sonar survey of the sound and several dives but found no target of highly unusual nature; weather prevented a return to the offshore Navicula target area.”

“Ledger and Styles report that by the morning of October 5 the Rescue Coordination Center had eliminated a missing-aircraft explanation and was referring to the object as a UFO. They later located a priority message from RCC Halifax to Canadian Forces Headquarters stating that a UFO had impacted the waters of Shag Harbour and naming RCMP personnel among the witnesses.”

“The authors describe a priority telex from Canadian Maritime Command to the Fleet Diving Unit Atlantic ordering a diving officer and three divers to search for an object reported by the RCMP approximately three hundred yards offshore. In the document, the word UFO was prominently emphasized.”

“The book states that Royal Canadian Navy divers searched the sound beginning October 6 and that Canadian Forces Maritime Command ended the official search on October 9 without publicly reporting a recovered object or definitive explanation.”

“A retired air-force source called “Jim” in the book said he had served aboard a naval vessel near Shelburne as part of an aircraft-identification team and overheard divers insisting that the submerged target was not a submarine. Another retired ELINT source called “Terry” described a week of unusual Canadian-American coastal missions dropping sonar buoys near Shelburne. Neither account is presented with independently verifiable identities in the book.”

“The book emphasizes that Wickens and other initial callers thought an aircraft had crashed; the RCMP and RCC began with a rescue/aircraft-loss problem rather than a civilian claim of an alien craft.”

“Chapter Eight quotes the RCMP record as “Baccaro Radar - Negative.””

“The book describes Condon-project investigator Norman Levine as contacting Maritime Command and RCMP, after which the case was dropped because the official search was considered immediate and thorough; Condon classified it unexplained.”

“Styles found that an archival file group had documented “significant deletions” in July 1994; he interpreted the reduced file as possibly sanitized.”

“Ledger and Styles describe the Shag Harbour object as poorly resolved in hull shape. Laurie Wickens and companions primarily reported four lights flashing sequentially in a straight line, while RCMP Corporal Victor Werbicki later estimated that the light on the water appeared associated with a large object roughly sixty feet across.”