Stigma for UFO witnesses disappearing, says physicist

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Charles Perry
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Are there more unidentified flying objects in Canadian skies?

A recently released report by the Winnipeg-based Ufology Research would certainly indicate there are. The volunteer group of researchers noted there were 1,004 reported sightings of UFOs by Canadians in 2008.

This represents a more than 25 per cent increase over the previous year and the highest amount since Ufology has been tracking them.

"But the increased sightings do not indicate there are any more flying saucers and other UFOs in our skies than previously," said Stanton Friedman of Fredericton president of the UFO Research Institute. "There are no more UFOs; there are just more people reporting their sightings," he said.

Not that many years ago, nobody wanted to "stick their neck out" and report sighting an unidentified flying object, Friedman said.

But the stigma surrounding people claiming to have seen a UFO is gradually disappearing, said the physicist. He said the media is giving it more coverage in recent years and the coverage is much fairer than it used to be.

Chris Rutkowski, spokesman for Ufology Research, said the size of the increase in UFO reported sightings in Canada was astonishing. He offered three possibilities for the dramatic boost.

He suggested it could be a sign that there is "something up there" in greater numbers than before; there are perhaps more military flights occurring or the public has more ability to access Internet websites where they can report UFO sightings.

Friedman said the latter two reasons would definitely contribute to the jump in reported sightings. But in terms of there being more UFOs in the skies, he says he holds firm to his contention that those numbers have probably been about the same for many years.

The majority of UFO sightings end up being airplanes, stars, planets or from other explainable sources, said the internationally known physicist.

But there are still a small percentage of them that cannot be explained apart from the notion they were manned by aliens, said Friedman. He has been lecturing since 1967 that flying saucers are real and the evidence that Earth has been visited by extra-terrestials is "overwhelming," he said.

Meanwhile, the Ufology Research study showed that Ontario residents were the most active star gazers in 2008 with 334 reported UFO sightings. British Columbia was second with 272 and Alberta placed third with 157.

n Charles Perry's Weather column appears daily.