Speaker 1: Fellow conspiracy realist. In nineteen sixty seven, the tiny fishing
Speaker 1: community of shag of Harbor up in Canada, became ground
Speaker 1: zero for one of the most infamous UFO sightings in
Speaker 1: modern Western history.
Speaker 2: And it was spooky season, y'all. It was October.
Speaker 3: Oh, and here we are in spooky season now, so
Speaker 3: kind of weirdly were weirdly appropriate?
Speaker 2: Is it already spooky season?
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's called summer ween. Yeah, it's always Halloween in America.
Speaker 1: Let's a roll it. From UFOs to psychic powers and
Speaker 1: government conspiracies. History is riddled with unexplained events. You can
Speaker 1: turn back now or learn this stuff they don't want
Speaker 1: you to know. A production of iHeart Radios How Stuff Works.
Speaker 2: Welcome back to the show. My name is Matt noel
Speaker 2: Is on Adventures.
Speaker 1: They call me Ben. We were joined as always with
Speaker 1: our super producer Paul Mission controlled decand most importantly, you
Speaker 1: are you. You are here, and that makes this stuff.
Speaker 1: They don't want you to know this. This is what
Speaker 1: I'm pretty excited about, Matt. What about you?
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's been a minute since we've really gotten our
Speaker 2: unexplained phenomena I e UFOs Unidentified Flying Objects sometimes unidentified
Speaker 2: submerged objects, any of those, We're We're into it.
Speaker 1: And we had a lot of people, a lot of
Speaker 1: our fellow listeners suggest this topic, so we picked one
Speaker 1: one person that we wanted you to hear from directly.
Speaker 4: Hey, boys, I'm a big fan of your show and
Speaker 4: I really enjoy all the episodes you do. I just
Speaker 4: had an idea for a great episode, and that's the
Speaker 4: mystery of the Shag Harbor incident. That was a huge
Speaker 4: UFO sighting seen by many many people, actually relatives of
Speaker 4: personal friends of mine here in Eastern Canada. Happened on
Speaker 4: the south shore of Nova Scotia back in the nineteen
Speaker 4: sixties and not far from Oak Island, right, another awesome
Speaker 4: place of mystery. So apparently there was a pretty substantial
Speaker 4: RCMP investigation into that. And yeah, I think it would
Speaker 4: make for a great episode.
Speaker 2: Yes, thank you anonymous caller from East Canada over there
Speaker 2: in Nova Scotia or near Nova Scotia at least.
Speaker 1: Yeah, thank you so much. These are two fantastic ideas
Speaker 1: that have been on our mutual minds for some time.
Speaker 1: Oak Island is a story all its own, and we've
Speaker 1: done some videos on that before, right, Matt.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we have. I cannot recall if we've actually made
Speaker 2: a podcast episode, but we should if we haven't.
Speaker 1: Yeah, maybe Buried Treasure episode or something tantalizing, tantalizing story
Speaker 1: Shag Harbor however, Yeah, that's what we're going to look
Speaker 1: at today. It has been quite a while, old friends,
Speaker 1: since we did an episode on UFOs. I for one am.
Speaker 1: You know, I'm still convinced that various governments are hiding
Speaker 1: some sort of advanced technology or another. And you, both
Speaker 1: of us, you especially Fox Moulder style, still want to believe.
Speaker 1: Is that correct?
Speaker 2: Oh, very much true, especially with something like the incident
Speaker 2: we're going to discuss today. Our caller said that, you know,
Speaker 2: a bunch of people witnessed this thing, and it is
Speaker 2: true that I would say dozens. I think dozens of
Speaker 2: people did witness this at some point during the official incident.
Speaker 2: You know, it's not a ton of people. It's not
Speaker 2: like it was over a large city and a bunch
Speaker 2: of you know, everyone had their cell phones or something.
Speaker 2: We're talking nineteen sixty seven. But enough people saw it
Speaker 2: that it wasn't just a trick of the light that
Speaker 2: you know, a captain on a ship saw or you know,
Speaker 2: maybe me it could be explained pretty easily.
Speaker 1: Or something funky on the horizon seen by a pilot exactly.
Speaker 2: There's there are more. There are more vantages to this
Speaker 2: than a lot of UFO sightings.
Speaker 1: This is one of the most well documented UFO sightings
Speaker 1: in modern history. To be honest, they call it Canada's Roswell,
Speaker 1: and that's not an ironic name like Little John or something.
Speaker 1: This really is one of the most historically significant, well
Speaker 1: known and famous or infamous UFO sightings in Canadian history,
Speaker 1: if not the most famous. So we received tons of
Speaker 1: great episodes for specific UFO sightings. We get them a lot.
Speaker 1: This one we were curious about because if you're not
Speaker 1: from Canada and you don't spend much time thinking about UFOs,
Speaker 1: you probably have not heard of shag Harper. A lot
Speaker 1: of people who are ufologists in the United States may
Speaker 1: not have heard of this. But here are the facts.
Speaker 1: Shag Harbor is a tiny, tiny town, a village really,
Speaker 1: and it is as as our callers said, on the
Speaker 1: southern shore of Nova Scotia. The population is somewhere between
Speaker 1: it's under five hundred people, it's four hundred, four and
Speaker 1: and fifty people or so, and their big business is lobster,
Speaker 1: which I love this because the lobster is amazing. But
Speaker 1: here where we're based and landlocked Atlanta, Georgia, you get
Speaker 1: what you pay for.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, And just so you have an idea of
Speaker 2: where this is. If you do live in the United States,
Speaker 2: as do most of you out there listening, we know
Speaker 2: this if you are in Portland, Maine. So if you're
Speaker 2: imagining Portland, Maine, way up there in the northeast section
Speaker 2: of the United States, and you essentially go east. No,
Speaker 2: it's not perfectly east because we live, you know, on
Speaker 2: a globe. But if you east on a map and
Speaker 2: you just travel that till you hit Nova Scotia, you
Speaker 2: essentially hit Shag Harbor, just to know exactly where you are,
Speaker 2: because Nova Scotia is essentially a peninsula that comes down.
Speaker 2: It's close to an island, but that's a peninsula that
Speaker 2: comes down off of Canada up on the top there.
Speaker 1: On the eastern side. Yeah. And this this fishing community, right,
Speaker 1: most of their business in the fishing industry takes place
Speaker 1: from November to May. That's going to be important for
Speaker 1: the story as it unfolds. On a side note, I
Speaker 1: just checked downstairs at one of the only places that
Speaker 1: does sell lobster rolls. Yes, here in the area, twenty
Speaker 1: four dollars.
Speaker 2: For one for like a small lobster.
Speaker 1: Roll, right for just a regular lobster roll.
Speaker 2: And that's of course, to get that lobster to Atlanta
Speaker 2: and then buy it in Pont City Market. Oh boy, now,
Speaker 2: just saying it might be a little inflated, that's all.
Speaker 2: That's all.
Speaker 1: One day, Matt. Maybe one day I'll treat myself to
Speaker 1: a lops you know what. I might just at this point,
Speaker 1: maybe I should just fly to Maine or Nova Scotia's.
Speaker 2: Well, let's look at Dave's Lobster in Halifax. Let's see.
Speaker 2: Let's see if they've got a menu.
Speaker 1: I looked up some places in Shag Harbor there I
Speaker 1: couldn't find. I couldn't get the website for Captain Wayne's
Speaker 1: to work. But I'm interested. So if you're listening, you've
Speaker 1: ever been to Captain Waynes in Shag Harbor, Let let
Speaker 1: let me know what you think and let me know
Speaker 1: what I should order when I go there, because after this,
Speaker 1: after doing this research, I'm excited about taking a trip
Speaker 1: there one day.
Speaker 2: Oh I do. That would be wonderful. We should definitely
Speaker 2: do that.
Speaker 1: And while we're there, we can check out the Chapel
Speaker 1: Hill Museum, Captain Wayne's, and some other restaurants, a few
Speaker 1: tourism sites. But what sort of tourism sites, you may ask.
Speaker 2: Well, you know a lot of people would probably go
Speaker 2: out there for fishing or maybe to try and catch
Speaker 2: their own lobster.
Speaker 1: Dude, that would be so cool. Some people may visit
Speaker 1: for the history of Chapel Hill is a historically significant site,
Speaker 1: but many people visit for a different reason. They visit
Speaker 1: Shag Harper, you see, because they are convinced that human
Speaker 1: beings saw a UFO night, even a UFO an extra
Speaker 1: terrestrial object in this town in the nineteen sixties. Here's
Speaker 1: where it gets crazy. So let's get our let's get
Speaker 1: our primary sources for this right, and we'll go with
Speaker 1: the official story, and then we'll go with some speculation,
Speaker 1: and then we'll go with some analysis.
Speaker 2: That sounds great.
Speaker 1: I feel like I'm over explaining it. That's very Alice
Speaker 1: in Wonderland, where the Hatter says, start at the beginning,
Speaker 1: go through the middle, and when you get to the end,
Speaker 1: stop Now.
Speaker 2: Signposts in my opinion are actually good, so let's keep
Speaker 2: with them.
Speaker 1: Okay. All right, Well we've made a promise now, Matt,
Speaker 1: so we'll have to try to We'll have to try
Speaker 1: to keep our stories straight, which is a problem in
Speaker 1: the Shag Harbor tale as well. Our primary sources for
Speaker 1: contemporary reports from the authorities and civilian witnesses come from
Speaker 1: a paper call the Halifax Chronicle Herald, and here's most
Speaker 1: of what we know. On Wednesday, October fourth, nineteen sixty seven,
Speaker 1: at around eleven twenty pm, multiple witnesses claimed to see
Speaker 1: the following.
Speaker 2: Some reported a row of lights, row of lights on
Speaker 2: a craft that was roughly sixty feet long. Now that's,
Speaker 2: of course an approximation, but that was used several times
Speaker 2: sixty feet long. And this row of lights on whatever
Speaker 2: this thing was, the lights at least because a lot
Speaker 2: of people couldn't at least several of the reports couldn't
Speaker 2: see an object. They just saw the lights because of
Speaker 2: the distance they were away. But the lights descended down
Speaker 2: and there was some kind of noise that was emanating
Speaker 2: from whatever this was that was. It was reported as
Speaker 2: like a whistle, sometimes sometimes as a wooshing sound, and
Speaker 2: it was almost like it was akin to, at least
Speaker 2: some of them said, a bomb falling, or like in
Speaker 2: a movie you would hear a bomb like beer exactly.
Speaker 2: And it was so it was descending down right, and
Speaker 2: then it hovered over the water out there at Shag
Speaker 2: Harbor or right outside of Shag Harbor, essentially hovered over
Speaker 2: the water just momentarily, and then it began to submerge.
Speaker 2: And there was some really weird details we're going to
Speaker 2: get into here with how the light functioned or didn't function.
Speaker 2: It was very strange, but let's continue along.
Speaker 1: Sure, Yes, yes, the object or the lights whatever, this
Speaker 1: was submerged into the Atlantic Ocean, a famously large body
Speaker 1: of water.
Speaker 2: Which, by the way, if you are in Shag Harbor
Speaker 2: to your east, nothing but water, that's it, yes, exactly.
Speaker 1: And emergency crews primarily the Royal Canadian Mounted Police or
Speaker 1: the RCMP, as our caller mentioned earlier, they arrived within
Speaker 1: fifteen minutes or so, so they're not fooling around. They
Speaker 1: reasonably assumed this was a plane crash at first, so
Speaker 1: lives could be on the line and the clock is ticking.
Speaker 1: The Coastguard later joins in the search. Initially civilians and
Speaker 1: authorities the way the story goes, noted a thick yellow foam,
Speaker 1: or specifically, a glittery yellow foam. A local fishing boat
Speaker 1: captain said this was about eighty feet wide the swath
Speaker 1: of foam, and it's important to remember that he made
Speaker 1: this observation in the darkness, based on his unaided eyesight.
Speaker 1: According to the records, no one obtained a sample of
Speaker 1: this strange substance, so even today we don't know what
Speaker 1: it is. We can guess, but we don't know for
Speaker 1: about three When the authorities search the bottom of the
Speaker 1: harbor and they have no luck. They find nothing, no bodies,
Speaker 1: no debris bupkiss. They also find when they contact Halifax
Speaker 1: and other regional authorities, that no planes were reported missing,
Speaker 1: And with that, the incident seemed set to be a
Speaker 1: flash in the pan headline. Local radio reported it, The
Speaker 1: Chronicle Herald reported it, but it seemed like an unusual
Speaker 1: sighting that, like thousands and thousands of others, would eventually
Speaker 1: end up being little more than a footnote in regional
Speaker 1: history books. See this is the important thing. So this
Speaker 1: happens in nineteen sixty seven, right, it's twenty nineteen now,
Speaker 1: and this is a famous, world famous UFO incident. But
Speaker 1: in let's say nineteen seventy seven, this was not the case.
Speaker 1: Something happened between sixty seven and today day that changed
Speaker 1: the way the public thinks about this specific night in October.
Speaker 1: And you know, I know I'm setting us up here,
Speaker 1: but we will tell you what that moment is. We
Speaker 1: found it. But for now, let's look at the facts.
Speaker 1: That's the gist of the story. And there are a
Speaker 1: couple of problems with it, a couple of contradictions. If
Speaker 1: we rely just on the articles from the Chronicle Herald,
Speaker 1: what do we find.
Speaker 2: We'll tell you right after a quick word from our sponsor. Well,
Speaker 2: if we do rely on those Chronicle Herald articles and
Speaker 2: we just say that that's all we're gonna use, we're
Speaker 2: gonna find a couple of things. First, is that four
Speaker 2: teenagers said, and this is a claim, they saw four lights,
Speaker 2: not three. They said that the lights were yellow or white.
Speaker 2: So we already hear like even amongst a group of
Speaker 2: people who were from the same vantage, saying they saw
Speaker 2: us maybe slightly different things. They confirmed the lights were
Speaker 2: descending coming down from the sky. One of the four
Speaker 2: kids said the lights appeared to turn off and on
Speaker 2: or blink in some way. Another kid said that he
Speaker 2: heard the aforementioned whistling noise the some sound. So again
Speaker 2: one of the four witnesses said, I heard it emitting
Speaker 2: some kind of sound, But the other kids, the other
Speaker 2: three didn't mention anything about a sound until this other
Speaker 2: person mentioned it. Who knows if that's then some kind
Speaker 2: of confirmation bias or wanting to be correct if you
Speaker 2: missed it. Another teen said he heard a loud noise
Speaker 2: when the lights appeared to hit the water, So some
Speaker 2: kind of boom or splash. That's where you kind of
Speaker 2: get that end of the bomb sound. And you know,
Speaker 2: if it was a massive object and it impacted the water,
Speaker 2: there would be some kind of sound. Sure, it just
Speaker 2: depends on how far away you are if you could
Speaker 2: hear it.
Speaker 1: Essentially, if it were indeed, a craft sixty feet long,
Speaker 1: no matter how light it was, would make an audible noise.
Speaker 2: One hundred present. If a UFO falls in the water
Speaker 2: and no one's around, does it make a sound. Yes.
Speaker 2: Another thing you're gonna find is that a whole separate
Speaker 2: group of people in this case, a couple other teenagers
Speaker 2: said they saw three red orange lights this time, so
Speaker 2: rather than white, yellow, white, or yellow descending again from
Speaker 2: the sky forming a line at a roughly forty five
Speaker 2: degree angle. Now, these two, this pair, they were actually
Speaker 2: driving when they when they saw this, and they didn't
Speaker 2: stop the vehicle, and the lights just kind of passed
Speaker 2: out of you as they're driving around, and you know
Speaker 2: you're probably somewhere near the coast over there, and they're
Speaker 2: going to be gone even if they're descending down. So
Speaker 2: we at least have two vantage points specifically from the
Speaker 2: Chronicle Herald, specifically teenagers.
Speaker 1: And this isn't the end of our witness list. This
Speaker 1: is just where the witness list gets a little bit
Speaker 1: at times murky. But picture you're self looking at an
Speaker 1: aerial map of Shag.
Speaker 2: Harbor and you can pull one up right now.
Speaker 1: You could pull one up right now now, zoom out
Speaker 1: and taken a bigger region into your aerial view, and
Speaker 1: there's Halifax. Okay. So local radio stations reported a glowing
Speaker 1: object had been seen by a bunch of people who
Speaker 1: called their newsrooms and they reported witnessing strange glowing objects
Speaker 1: flying around Halifax at around ten pm.
Speaker 2: So what is our established timeline at this point when
Speaker 2: did the impacts at the water Do we have we
Speaker 2: established that yet?
Speaker 1: It would be either it would be before midnight, yes,
Speaker 1: but after eleven twenty exactly.
Speaker 2: Okay, So we couped like an hour and change beforehand,
Speaker 2: all over Halifax, and I've been as you said, like
Speaker 2: not a significantly significant distance way, but far enough away
Speaker 2: an hour before that you see lights, glowing objects, got.
Speaker 1: It right, Yeah, And it would be helpful for us
Speaker 1: to say that distance, right, it's about from Halifax, Nova
Speaker 1: Scotia to shag Harbor, Nova Scotia. You're looking at about
Speaker 1: two hundred and fifty five kilometers or one hundred and
Speaker 1: fifty eight miles.
Speaker 2: So that's pretty far.
Speaker 1: That's according to distance between cities dot net.
Speaker 2: Oh that's great. That's just their thing, unless it's a
Speaker 2: driving distance of some sort.
Speaker 1: Right, right, So the radio stations are reporting this, and
Speaker 1: they're not the only ones. Air Canada flight three h
Speaker 1: five noted something strange on the left side of their
Speaker 1: plane at seven fifteen PM, and they called it a
Speaker 1: brilliantly lit rectangular object with a string of smaller lights
Speaker 1: trailing the object. At seven nineteen the pilots noticed a
Speaker 1: sizeable silent explosion near the object, and two minutes later,
Speaker 1: another explosion occurred and it faded to a blue cloud
Speaker 1: around this thing, whatever it was they saw.
Speaker 2: So they oh, got when when I read that and
Speaker 2: I read that, all I hear is force field of
Speaker 2: some sort, I got hit or like reacted.
Speaker 1: Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah. So we know they saw something unusual,
Speaker 1: but we don't know necessarily whether that is tied to
Speaker 1: this stuff that happens hours later. This is where we
Speaker 1: want to introduce our first book, the one that people
Speaker 1: would consider conspiratorial. Doug Ledger wrote a book called Maritime
Speaker 1: UFO Files, and in this book he claims that additional
Speaker 1: witnesses exist. Daryl Dorry and his sister Annette and Daryl's
Speaker 1: mother were sitting on their front porch when they noticed
Speaker 1: a large object maneuvering above the southwestern horizon. The next day,
Speaker 1: Daryl writes a letter to the Royal Canadian Air Force
Speaker 1: Greenwood based commander, asking what was flying over the water
Speaker 1: that evening because I've never seen anything like it?
Speaker 2: And yes, so we've got, you know, two people who
Speaker 2: saw something and they reported it, which is you know,
Speaker 2: always good, especially reporting it to a commander of a
Speaker 2: base with the Royal Canadian Air Force. That's pretty cool
Speaker 2: and it's good to know. But then you turn to
Speaker 2: our next witness, Captain Leo Howard Mercy. Now, this gentleman,
Speaker 2: you can actually find. You can find a memo because
Speaker 2: he contacted the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and a report
Speaker 2: was taken on the seventh of October nineteen sixty seven
Speaker 2: and as pertaining to the fourth but an actual you
Speaker 2: can find a written report. And so you know, we're
Speaker 2: saying that this is taken from maritime UFO files by
Speaker 2: Doug Ledger, and it's true. But a lot of times
Speaker 2: when you're, you know, reading a book like that, it's
Speaker 2: hard to know whether the sources are legit or real.
Speaker 2: Right in this case, they most certainly are. So Howard Mercy,
Speaker 2: Captain Leo Howard Mercy, he was looking at his radar.
Speaker 2: He's standing on his ship and he's looking at four
Speaker 2: blips on his deca radar. They seem to be stationary.
Speaker 2: But then you know, he says, well, I want to
Speaker 2: see I want to see what this is. He looks
Speaker 2: out and he sees about twenty eight kilometers from where
Speaker 2: he is on his ship, he could see four bright
Speaker 2: lights in again, kind of a formation, like a rectangular
Speaker 2: formation roughly is what he was estimating. And then the
Speaker 2: entire crew of I think it was twenty, yeah, nearly
Speaker 2: twenty fishermen who were with him on his ship, they
Speaker 2: went out, they got on the deck, they watched this thing,
Speaker 2: this object, whatever it is, this group of objects, they
Speaker 2: watched it, and he was in the northeastern sky. And
Speaker 2: then this guy Mercy radioed the Rescue Coordination Center at
Speaker 2: the Harbor Master in Halifax and he asked for, you know,
Speaker 2: something like, hey, guys, what's going on over there? And
Speaker 2: it was one of those things where he reported knowing
Speaker 2: that the Air Force conducted, you know, testing out in
Speaker 2: that area where he was looking. So we didn't necessarily
Speaker 2: think it was anything too off at least according to
Speaker 2: the official memo and report, but he did think it
Speaker 2: was odd, so you know, he asked for an ex explanation.
Speaker 2: He filed this report with the RCMP and that was
Speaker 2: about it. At the end of the report, it is
Speaker 2: noted that he is considered to be a reliable type
Speaker 2: individual that's a quote and bears a good reputation in
Speaker 2: his community. So that's something that that was noted by
Speaker 2: the RCMP, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.
Speaker 1: So, which is just them saying that he's considered a
Speaker 1: credible reporter. He's not pranking people, he's not a crazy,
Speaker 1: you know, paint huffing maniac who calls every weekend.
Speaker 2: Yes, someone reliable saw this, whatever it was.
Speaker 1: So so we have these additional witnesses, and there are
Speaker 1: a few more. But in cases like this, where there's
Speaker 1: something up in the sky that's not too far into
Speaker 1: the wee hours of the night, we know that there
Speaker 1: are almost certainly a bunch of witnesses who saw something
Speaker 1: and did not go to the trouble of writing to
Speaker 1: the Air Force station. Yes, because that's a lot of work.
Speaker 1: So let's go their initial ideas initially. Initially, oddly enough,
Speaker 1: most people are not thinking in terms of anything other
Speaker 1: than mundane activities, tragedies, meteorological phenomenon. So they first assume, well,
Speaker 1: maybe this is a boat, got to search that. Maybe
Speaker 1: this is a plane, got to search for that.
Speaker 2: Well, in the plane and or boat makes a lot
Speaker 2: of sense depending on the color of the lights that
Speaker 2: they saw, and if they were flashing or at least
Speaker 2: on and off in some kind of repeating.
Speaker 1: Pattern, right right, that could be distressing.
Speaker 2: And we did notice that in a few of the witnesses.
Speaker 1: True, that is true. They say, well, you know what
Speaker 1: else could fit this story? A distress flare? This is
Speaker 1: a for people who are convinced that this was a craft.
Speaker 1: This feels like a stick in the mud answer. But
Speaker 1: there are some pretty compelling similarities. So, first off, flare
Speaker 1: guns are standard on boats, the standard ond boats. If
Speaker 1: there's a problem, you use a flare gun. After you
Speaker 1: fire a flare. Have you ever fired a flare?
Speaker 4: I have?
Speaker 1: They're so cool. Yeah, after you fire a flare, then
Speaker 1: you know, there's a little bit of a delay before
Speaker 1: it burns. It might it varies, but it might start
Speaker 1: burning almost immediately after you shoot it off, or it
Speaker 1: might hit its arc and then start going downward and
Speaker 1: then ignite. But this idea with a flare gun inspired
Speaker 1: some of the more skeptical thinkers to say things like
Speaker 1: like Brian Dunning said, ssh, is it outside the realm
Speaker 1: of possibility that someone was playing around with a flare
Speaker 1: gun at eleven at night after killing part of a
Speaker 1: six pack or a whole six pack or a whole
Speaker 1: six pack. You know what I mean, because if you've
Speaker 1: been drinking. Maybe shooting off a flare gun sounds like
Speaker 1: a cool thing to do, and yes.
Speaker 2: And just to put it out there the way. One
Speaker 2: of the big parts of this story that is so
Speaker 2: fascinating is how the light landed on top of the
Speaker 2: water for a little bit and then sunk into the.
Speaker 1: Water, right and one of the witnesses, I think in
Speaker 1: that group of four teenagers, one of the witnesses said
Speaker 1: a single light remained for a moment before it submerged
Speaker 1: or before it was put out by the water. So
Speaker 1: later on, I mean months or years later on, people
Speaker 1: proposed that the sighting could fit the description of something
Speaker 1: like a falling satellite, which is completely a possibility nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty seven and completely a possibility that a satellite may
Speaker 1: have fallen.
Speaker 2: Especially if pieces of it are breaking apart as it's
Speaker 2: falling and you have multiple lights where fires are burning
Speaker 2: up choces of it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, absolutely as it enters the atmosphere. And then
Speaker 1: it could also be a meteoric fireball, so like us
Speaker 1: falling satellite, meteors frequently break up during their fall and
Speaker 1: that could also look like a line of lights and
Speaker 1: depending on the angle of the viewer or your perspective
Speaker 1: as you're watching this, it could seem to be moving
Speaker 1: much more slowly than it actually is at kind of
Speaker 1: a low angle. So the big question immediately here is
Speaker 1: did the story change. Here's the thing. After these reports
Speaker 1: were printed, primarily in the Chronicle Herald but also in
Speaker 1: other papers of the time, people began to connect the
Speaker 1: dots and build what could have been interpreted as separate
Speaker 1: sightings a single cohesive narrative. That is, there's nothing wrong
Speaker 1: with that. That's what people do. We find patterns, we
Speaker 1: connect dots. That's how our species got to where it is.
Speaker 1: So the crazy thing that we discovered here is that
Speaker 1: the foam and the lights were not initially connected. No
Speaker 1: one initially reported seeing the objects or lights leaving the foam,
Speaker 1: but people began saying that they saw the lights actually
Speaker 1: leave the foam behind. So before that point, the foam
Speaker 1: could have just been something weird that that captain saw.
Speaker 1: So there we have it for now, this series of
Speaker 1: spooky lights. If we're going to use the technical term,
Speaker 1: but how do we get from spooky lights to UFOs?
Speaker 1: We'll explore that after a word from our sponsor, and
Speaker 1: against all odds, we have returned how did this transform
Speaker 1: or from spooky lights to genuine concerns about extraterrestrials being cited? Well,
Speaker 1: according to a couple of different sources, this story did
Speaker 1: not actually take off in the national international sphere until
Speaker 1: decades later, until nineteen ninety three, when a ufologist named
Speaker 1: Chris Stiles said that he witnessed the UFO around the
Speaker 1: same time and place several weeks after the initial sighting.
Speaker 1: He co wrote a book called Dark Object, the world's
Speaker 1: only government documented UFO crash. In this book, Styles and
Speaker 1: his co author Doug Ledger from earlier.
Speaker 2: Oh THEO What was that book called the Meteor.
Speaker 1: The Maritime UFO Files. Yes, So in this book Dark Object,
Speaker 1: Styles and Ledger claimed that what people saw that night
Speaker 1: in Shag Harbor was a spaceship, not just an unidentified
Speaker 1: flying object, but an unidentified submerged object. For the USOS
Speaker 1: is the my favorite. Yeah, you introduced me to that concept.
Speaker 1: And they further trace the path of this object after
Speaker 1: it submerges in the ocean. They say that after it
Speaker 1: went underwater, it traveled about seventy clicks northeast to a
Speaker 1: US Navy facility called the HMCS Shelburn at the time,
Speaker 1: the HMCS Shelburn was a support compound for offshore sonar
Speaker 1: array that was meant to detect submarines. It's part of
Speaker 1: an anti submarine system, and this was also part of
Speaker 1: a larger global network. Back to the book, the authors
Speaker 1: claimed that this USO unidentified submerged object met up with
Speaker 1: another ship underwater, they were monitored by the US Navy,
Speaker 1: and then they were eventually launched into space. For the record,
Speaker 1: as near as we can find, a Ledger and Styles
Speaker 1: were the first people to propose this idea or deposit
Speaker 1: this series of events, and we couldn't find what their
Speaker 1: sources were for this claim.
Speaker 2: But if you did have information about this, let's say
Speaker 2: you got it from someone's last words on their deathbed,
Speaker 2: someone's you know, no one's ever heard of this before,
Speaker 2: but this happened, you would be the first person to
Speaker 2: ever report that. The problem is, you know, why would
Speaker 2: there be no why would there be no reporting of
Speaker 2: that kind of incident, that kind of thing, unless it's
Speaker 2: just completely redacted and held because it's you know, national
Speaker 2: security kind of situation. So there's it's one of those
Speaker 2: things we always talk about. We we'll get into a
Speaker 2: little later but it's it's not provable. It's not provable
Speaker 2: either way.
Speaker 1: Right right, right. We know that there's enough evidence to
Speaker 1: say that people definitely saw something. We know little else, Yep,
Speaker 1: because even even the mundane explanations are not perfect one
Speaker 1: to one fits, you know what I mean. So in
Speaker 1: the in the case of the flare, if if it
Speaker 1: were a distress flare, we would have probably found an
Speaker 1: object right from which that was shot. If it were
Speaker 1: a prank by someone who had had too much to
Speaker 1: drink or was just out living their best life on
Speaker 1: the coast.
Speaker 2: Didn't even have to be a prank, just somebody messing around.
Speaker 1: Then, you know, how do we explain the fact that
Speaker 1: no one came forward. We would just say that they
Speaker 1: were so terrified that they decided to take the secret
Speaker 1: to their grave, because I don't I don't know. I
Speaker 1: don't think they would have gotten in serious trouble. But
Speaker 1: maybe they freaked out because they saw all the all
Speaker 1: the law enforcement and rescue responders out there.
Speaker 2: Maybe they were like illegal lobster poachers and they didn't
Speaker 2: want anyone.
Speaker 1: To know, yeah, doing illegal flare lobstering.
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, the flaring for lobsters, you know, that's in
Speaker 2: that old standby.
Speaker 1: Flaring for Lobsters Sun new t shirt.
Speaker 2: Yep.
Speaker 1: So we've got these claims from these authors, and there
Speaker 1: are more. There are more arguments or theories around, but
Speaker 1: the claims of Styles and Ledger are probably the most
Speaker 1: well known on that side of the fence. Let's go
Speaker 1: to the official word because those of us who may say, well,
Speaker 1: I'm more of a skeptically minded person and I'm convinced
Speaker 1: this is a flare, we have weird news for you.
Speaker 1: The government disagrees. The Canadian government was not convinced. On
Speaker 1: October sixth, a couple of days after the incident, a
Speaker 1: Colonel W. W. Turner issued a memo where he said, quote,
Speaker 1: the Coordination Center conducted preliminary investigation and discounted the possibilities
Speaker 1: that the sighting was produced by an aircraft, flares, floats,
Speaker 1: or any other known objects, and he got that this
Speaker 1: is weird. This is probably the strangest piece of trivia
Speaker 1: I learned doing this. He got that from a telex,
Speaker 1: an early kind of form of facts sent from a
Speaker 1: Coastguard ship, and it was very shortened to the point,
Speaker 1: you know, essentially it was like telegraph language where they said,
Speaker 1: we search for this with nil results, we search for
Speaker 1: this other thing with nil results. All that means is,
Speaker 1: while they're not totally ruling it out, they're saying they
Speaker 1: didn't find anything that supports any of those mundane explanations.
Speaker 1: So even though they didn't find anything, they still didn't
Speaker 1: feel that the normal explanations fully explained everything. And this
Speaker 1: is this sounds sinister, right, it could be seen as
Speaker 1: a very sinister thing. But we also have to remember
Speaker 1: it's kind of predictable if it were a flair. They're
Speaker 1: searching the ocean for a flare.
Speaker 2: Well, you mean you can't just dive down there easily
Speaker 2: with a snorkel and grab it.
Speaker 1: It's not like a video game. Oh, it's not like
Speaker 1: a mission where you can snag some of the video game.
Speaker 2: And it's so true. You'd have to have such specialized
Speaker 2: equipment to even get to the bottom of the ocean
Speaker 2: there if you could, and then from that point you're
Speaker 2: just gonna look for a flare that could have carried.
Speaker 1: You know, that's if it makes it to the bottom.
Speaker 2: If it is a flare.
Speaker 1: If it is a flare, what if it was.
Speaker 2: Some you know, extraterrestrial species just probe. It's like small
Speaker 2: little probe spherically shaped or something that's designed to go
Speaker 2: down to the bottom of the ocean. Oh and then disappear, Yeah,
Speaker 2: like burrow into the sand in the ground. Okay, Like
Speaker 2: if that's what it was, you'll never find it.
Speaker 1: That's I mean, yeah, maybe that's true with the technology
Speaker 1: they had at the time, right lightar. But now we
Speaker 1: have lightar. Yeah, And I think some relatives of Jacques
Speaker 1: Custeau actually traveled up a few years back to Shag
Speaker 1: Harber to film a documentary about the Shag Harbor incident.
Speaker 1: So they'll be bringing with them technology that did not
Speaker 1: exist in the late nineteen sixties. They'll also be working
Speaker 1: with one of the original members of the dive team
Speaker 1: that explored the incident.
Speaker 2: When it occurred.
Speaker 1: Cool, and this is where we're at now. This is
Speaker 1: pretty interesting because there are there are people who are
Speaker 1: convinced that this was an accident that got covered up,
Speaker 1: whether mundane or military or somehow beyond this world in nature.
Speaker 1: And then there are people who are convinced that this
Speaker 1: is an easily explainable thing that people may not necessarily
Speaker 1: want explained because you see today shag Harbor remains a
Speaker 1: popular tourist that the nation for local UFO enthusiast. When
Speaker 1: the weather's right, you can check out the UFO Gazebo
Speaker 1: and picnic site and you can look out onto the
Speaker 1: ocean to the spot where the object crashed.
Speaker 2: That's right. Did you say the name of it yet?
Speaker 2: That place?
Speaker 1: Oh? I just said the UFO Gazebo and Picnic.
Speaker 2: Well, there's a it's specifically called and you can find
Speaker 2: it on Google Maps, the Shag Harbor Incident Interpretive Center.
Speaker 2: It's a yellow building. I think it's still yellow. You
Speaker 2: can find it. There are phone numbers you can call
Speaker 2: to reach them, a fax number, and even an email address.
Speaker 1: Right. You can also when you visit, find articles, documentaries,
Speaker 1: and memorabilia pertaining to the incident.
Speaker 2: Exactly. Just something you should know if you are going
Speaker 2: to go up there. This place, specifically the shag Harbor
Speaker 2: UFO Center. It only operates from June fifteenth until September thirtieth,
Speaker 2: so if you're planning to go go soon.
Speaker 1: You can also contact the Shag Harbor Incident which collects
Speaker 1: and organizes information about this event. Neat bookending note here
Speaker 1: They are headed by Lori Wickens One of the teenagers
Speaker 1: who first cited the object. He also participated in the
Speaker 1: Custeau documentary.
Speaker 2: He, by the way, is a ah.
Speaker 1: So there's where we are Barring some new revelations or
Speaker 1: deathbed confessions, we want to know what you think. We
Speaker 1: do also want to point out that there is still
Speaker 1: a little bit of a sketchy documentation on the side
Speaker 1: of the Canadian government. Let's let them summarize it themselves.
Speaker 1: Here's the conclusion from the Department of National Defense. The
Speaker 1: crashing of the unidentified flying object and Deshaghaba is still
Speaker 1: discussed today, with many articles appearing on the antidet. There's
Speaker 1: no trace of THESEMP reports of the siding and the
Speaker 1: files the Department of National Defense has identified decided as
Speaker 1: unsolved and the only documentation that exists in the files
Speaker 1: is a D and D memo.
Speaker 2: And we have that memo. If you want to hear it, well,
Speaker 2: then here it is UFO report. Lower Wood Harbor, Nova Scotia.
Speaker 2: An RCMP corporal and six other witnesses observed what they
Speaker 2: believed to be an unidentified flying object off the southwest
Speaker 2: coast of Nova Scotia, Canada, on the fourth of October
Speaker 2: nineteen sixty seven. The object was described as approximately sixty
Speaker 2: feet in length and was flying in an easterly direction
Speaker 2: when first sighted. During their observation, the UFO descended rapidly
Speaker 2: to the surface and made a bright splash as it
Speaker 2: struck the water. For some time after the impact, a
Speaker 2: single white light remained on the surface. The RCMP corporal
Speaker 2: endeavored to reach the floating white object, but unfortunately, before
Speaker 2: he could reach the location, the object sank. A search
Speaker 2: of the area failed to produce any material evidence which
Speaker 2: would assist in explaining or establishing the identity of the object.
Speaker 2: An underwater search conducted by divers from the Department of
Speaker 2: National Defense also failed to locate any tangible evidence which
Speaker 2: could be used to arrive at an explainable conclusion. So
Speaker 2: literally what you said, Ben, it's unexplainable and that's all
Speaker 2: we got.
Speaker 1: Right, So we can easily see why this is so
Speaker 1: intriguing and remains so intriguing. Despite the fact that it
Speaker 1: is one of the one of the better documented sightings
Speaker 1: or incidents, there's a surprisingly sparse amount of paperwork regarding it,
Speaker 1: and some of this came out only when the Canadian
Speaker 1: government declassified pages and pages and pages of files on
Speaker 1: unidentified flying objects reports. Now we do have one. We
Speaker 1: do have one pretty I think, a pretty cool point
Speaker 1: that we have to make every time we do a
Speaker 1: UFO sighting up. So this is a UFO. Any unidentified
Speaker 1: flying object is by virtue of being unidentified and in
Speaker 1: the air and an object AUFO. That does not mean
Speaker 1: it was from Alpha centaur I, or Mars or some
Speaker 1: place in the darkness between the stars. It just means
Speaker 1: that we have no real idea what it is. And
Speaker 1: even if we as a species have some good guesses,
Speaker 1: they are still only that they are only guesses until
Speaker 1: some sort of hard proof exists. Also, on a personal note,
Speaker 1: I love that the Department of National Defense is abbreviated
Speaker 1: to D and D yes. And when I first read
Speaker 1: the original summarization quote, I had this image in my
Speaker 1: head that there was a file from a D and
Speaker 1: D game.
Speaker 2: Oh, it was just a game master.
Speaker 1: That the RCMP was playing like they were deep into it,
Speaker 1: although I'm fairly certain D and D did not exist
Speaker 1: in the nineteen sixties. Oh and that fact I forgot
Speaker 1: to mention the telex I never followed up the weird
Speaker 1: fact I learned about telex. Okay, So, telex or teleprinter
Speaker 1: is the original form of data transmission and was developed
Speaker 1: in World War Two, supposed to be reliably secure over
Speaker 1: long distances, unlike now we have faxes, we have emails.
Speaker 1: We have faxes still for some reason, right, But unlike
Speaker 1: facts and email, telex has what's called full legal document
Speaker 1: status in every country in the world. So if you're
Speaker 1: send something on telex, it matters.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well the facts. It's like, I don't know, I'm
Speaker 2: going to need a cover sheet.
Speaker 1: Yeah right, So I thought that was weird because maybe
Speaker 1: that's the reason why it was so popular.
Speaker 2: But do you remember sending cover sheets with fax machines?
Speaker 1: Yeah? Yeah, I used to, Doe. Yeah, we had to.
Speaker 1: It was very strange.
Speaker 2: We've been doing this a while, Ben.
Speaker 1: We have we can technically still fax things.
Speaker 2: We could if we want to.
Speaker 1: Have you ever prank faxed people?
Speaker 2: Oh no, I used to.
Speaker 1: Prank fax people at our old office. What I don't know, Man.
Speaker 2: Send something Marshall's way, not in a mean way.
Speaker 1: Not in a mean way. I would fat things like
Speaker 1: like attention for your eyes only. The transmission will begin
Speaker 1: at you know, five fifteen or something. Tell no one
Speaker 1: destroy this paper. It was brilliant facts an optometrist or something.
Speaker 2: That is brilliant.
Speaker 1: Can you get in trouble for that?
Speaker 2: Probably?
Speaker 1: Probably? I hope that statute of limitations on prank vaccine
Speaker 1: is pretty low.
Speaker 2: Somebody somewhere in an office is listening to this on
Speaker 2: their break or like while they're waiting a dental aygenis waiting.
Speaker 1: Or going use yet. But the I did fax people
Speaker 1: at five point fifteen as well, you.
Speaker 2: See there you go, you know, just enough time to
Speaker 2: get out the door with a little fun, little light step.
Speaker 1: One time. It was just like I tried to fact
Speaker 1: I tried to fax a picture of Christopher walk In,
Speaker 1: but you know, you mainly fax text through through facts machine,
Speaker 1: So I don't know what they got, but but yeah,
Speaker 1: that was my I feel better. I feel like I
Speaker 1: have confessed my sins to you.
Speaker 2: Oh well, hey, I love it and not just now
Speaker 2: I want to do it. So, if you have ever
Speaker 2: experienced an unidentified flying or sub merged object.
Speaker 1: Well facts or facted anyone an unidentified facts object.
Speaker 2: Yes you can. You can reach out to us. We
Speaker 2: would love to hear your stories. You can give us
Speaker 2: a call. We are one eight three three s T
Speaker 2: d W y t K leave a message detailing what
Speaker 2: you've seen. You can, like one of our recent listeners
Speaker 2: first called us and left a message or two, I believe,
Speaker 2: and then sent us several videos like showing what she
Speaker 2: experienced with some kind of object that she noticed.
Speaker 1: That was fantastic. Yeah, thank you for doing that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, thank you so much for sending that. You can
Speaker 2: you can do that, or you can just leave us
Speaker 2: a message telling us what happened one time or what
Speaker 2: you've experienced. You can do all that stuff, or you
Speaker 2: can reach out to us on Instagram where we are
Speaker 2: a conspiracy stuff show, and Ben you are.
Speaker 1: I am in a burst of creativity at Ben Bullen,
Speaker 1: so you can follow me to see me get kicked
Speaker 1: into and out of various countries on various misadventures perfection.
Speaker 2: Is there an HSW involved or is it just no? Okay,
Speaker 2: I'm Matt Frederick HSW. Something I don't know. Good luck,
Speaker 2: you'll never find it. Aha. And then and we have
Speaker 2: Embryonic Insider, which is and Paul is what is it?
Speaker 1: Paul? Paul is Paul is at applebe revolutionary?
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, Applebee's was it the Appleby's Revolution?
Speaker 1: It's either. I think Mission Control has several different Applebee's accounts, okay,
Speaker 1: which I'm surprised that he finds time for all of them.
Speaker 2: You're just gonna have to search around and find it.
Speaker 2: I can't remember, and it was a really complicated.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you have to earn that one. In the meantime,
Speaker 1: while you're on the internet, if you want to check
Speaker 1: out our favorite part of the show your fellow listeners,
Speaker 1: hop on over to Here's where it gets Crazy, our
Speaker 1: Facebook page where you can see, you know, you can
Speaker 1: see a ton of different ideas, some pretty high tier memes.
Speaker 1: But then one thing I think that a lot of
Speaker 1: us enjoy about the page is some in depth conversation
Speaker 1: about things.
Speaker 2: Specifically about stuff we've covered on the show. Well, we'll
Speaker 2: get into discussion about what something truly meant, or like
Speaker 2: an extra piece of evidence that maybe we didn't see,
Speaker 2: or something that it's really great. You should definitely go there, and.
Speaker 1: That's our classic episode for this evening. We can't wait
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