SPIKE IN UFO SIGHTINGS STUMPS EXPERTS
The Canadian Press
WINNIPEG -- Marie Ford-Quigley says she isn't the kind of person who believes in UFOs and aliens, and she doesn't usually take a great interest in the skies.
But she is still looking for an explanation about the metallic, spherical object she watched for more than a half an hour from the veranda of her home in Tyron, P.E.I.
It slowly travelled through a clear blue sky on Boxing Day, 2007, just before dusk.
"We thought it was a balloon, but it was up too high for that," Ford-Quigley recalled yesterday. "It wasn't an airplane, by any means."
At one point, Ford-Quigley and her husband Tony noticed the strange object dip into a cloud.
"It started to smoke once it got through the cloud, almost like a piece of the back end came apart from the front end. It looked like it broke into two. And after that, a tremendous smoke trail coming from behind it," she said.
The pair, who took video of what they saw, called the police and the airport, but nobody seemed to know anything about it.
The case has stumped Ufologists too.
Of the 836 cases that were reported last year, Ford-Quigley's case is one of a handful that are considered "high-quality unknowns," said Chris Rutkowski, director of the Winnipeg-based Ufology Research institute.
It's one of the cases Rutkowski examines in his annual study on reported UFO sightings in Canada, something he's put together since 1989.
Released yesterday, the study says last year there was 12% increase in reported UFO sightings over 2006.
"We had been seeing a fairly high level for a number of years, but to see such a high increase in 2007 was quite surprising," said Rutkowski.
The vast majority of unusual sightings that are reported later turn out to be stars, planes, satellites or fireballs.
Then there's cases like Ford-Quigley's, which are well-documented and have good witnesses, but don't have a reasonable explanation.
"Those are the ones that really make us scratch our heads," said Rutkowski
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Thanks, but I don't need any help getting into trouble since I seem to manage quite well on my own.