Graham Slaughter, CTVNews.ca 
 
 
 
 
 
 A pair of orange fireballs streaking across the dark horizon. A mysterious object crashing into Lake Winnipeg. A nighttime visit from a “being with blonde hair and blue skin.” 
 
 These are among 1,267 reported UFO sightings across Canada in 2015, the second-biggest year for unexplained alien activity in the last 30 years. 
 
 The detailed Canadian UFO Survey released Monday by the Winnipeg-based group Ufology Research includes accounts of where, when and precisely what Canadians claim they saw in the sky last year. 
 
 The trove of strange stories includes dozens of unexplained lights, aircraft shaped like discs and diamonds, silently hovering UFOs and a few close encounters of the third kind. 
 
 In one case from Quebec, someone reported seeing three short “humanoids” with heads too big for their bodies and “big, black slanted eyes.” They then heard a high-pitched hum and woke up the next morning. 
 
 The stories may sound unbelievable, and researchers admit that many don’t hold up. Only about 12 per cent of the reports were classified as “unexplained.” 
 
 “The ridicule factor is quite certainly there, but we’re not saying the little grey guys are here. This is simply what people are reporting,” Winnipeg-based UFO researched Chris Rutkowski told CTV News Channel on Tuesday. 
 
 The data was collected from 17 sources across the country including Transport Canada, Canada National Defense, the National UFO Reporting Center and YouTube. 
 
 Witnesses included pilots, police officers and “other individuals with reasonably good observing capabilities and good judgement,” researchers wrote. 
 
 The only year with more UFO sightings than 2015 was 2012. Researchers believe that may have related to reports of a supposed “end-of-days” phenomenon from the Mayan calendar. 
 
 “We do know that the UFO reports continue to be made in growing numbers every year and this is just indicative that people are paying attention to what is in the sky. They’re not just looking down at their cellphones,” Rutkowski said. 
 
 Having trouble seeing this map? Click here. 
 
 UFOs prefer Quebec 
 
 Quebec led the country with 35 per cent of all UFO reports in 2015 -- a notable jump from previous years when that figure wavered between five and 15 per cent. 
 
 “It could be (that) the media are a little more attentive to the UFOs in Quebec,” Rutkowski said. 
 
 Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Nova Scotia and Newfoundland all had an increase in UFO sightings in 2015. In terms of major Canadian cities, Montreal had the most reports with 97, with 78 sightings in Toronto and 69 in Vancouver. 
 
 The average sighting lasted about 16 minutes. 
 
 Ufology Research has collected the reports on a yearly basis since 1989. Since then, they’ve compiled 16,905 sightings. 
 
 Many strange lights, few alien beings 
 
 By and large, Canadians mostly reported seeing strange lights in the night sky. They came in a variety of colours (pink, orange, “brilliant white”) and shapes (orbs, triangles), and some moved in curious zigzagging or stop-and-go patterns. 
 
 The data becomes particularly strange is in several isolated reports of one-on-one contact with alien beings. 
 
 In Montpellier, Que., a “humanoid” reportedly approached a house after lights were seen. In Kentville, N.S., an alien reportedly entered a person’s bedroom and held their shoulders. In Oshawa, Ont., someone reported being abducted aboard a spaceship (a note indicates “photos that don’t show anything.”) 
 
 In an attached essay on the data, researchers ponder what, if not proof of alien life, underlies the eyewitness reports. 
 
 “Is this phenomenon psychological, sociological, cultural, and/or physical? Is it our contemporary culture’s storytelling? Is it our collective psychological and social mythology generating what myths have generated since ancient times, answers to our desires, visions of our nightmares, and insights into what our future may hold? Or is the phenomenon something else? Physical objects created by our species or another form of life we cannot begin to understand?” 
 
 Canadians more open to discussing UFOs 
 
 The steadily rising reports of UFOs could be linked to several factors: the popularization of drones, camera phones, laser pointers, at-home strobe lights. But Rutkowski suggests that the increase likely relates to the country’s collective curiosity. 
 
 “People are more interested. I think other people will talk to each other at a party or in school or university, and these are the types of topics people are interested in,” he said. 
 
 He added that, as writers like Stephen Hawking continue to pen popular books on outer space, humankind will continue to question the existence of extra-terrestrial life. 
 
 “Because space is so much in the public eye, I think people are paying a little more attention to the possibility that we are not alone.” 
 
 With files from Jesse Tahirali ||||| The annual Canadian UFO Survey was released Monday, showing an increase in reports in 2015 compared to 2014 in Canada and Manitoba. 
 
 "Overall in Canada, there was a slight increase in the number of UFO reports, and it's at the second highest level of sightings that we've recorded since we started doing the survey back in the 1980s," said Chris Rutkowski, a science writer who compiled this year's survey. 
 
 In 2015, there were 1,267 reported sightings of UFOs, second only to 1,981 in 2012. 
 
 "That ranges from reports from B.C. right across to Newfoundland," said Rutkowski. "We're very puzzled because we don't hear a lot about UFOs anymore although the UFO sightings continue to come in … in 2015, there was an unusual number of cases from Quebec, in fact three or four times." 
 
 Rutkowski said the survey defines a UFO as objects in the sky that people can't explain. 
 
 "There are many ways for reports to be filed," he said, including reports from official sources like Transport Canada. "They come from every demographic … and all parts of Canada." 
 
 Most of the sightings can be explained by stars, planets, fireballs, aircraft and police helicopters, but about 12 per cent of their total reports remain unexplained despite information from other sources, Rutkowski said. 
 
 "We do break those down into high quality cases, where we do have enough information from a number of sources – investigators have gone to a site or we've talked to the witnesses … It brings the unexplained numbers to a more manageable number of one or two or three per cent," he said. 
 
 One "high quality" unexplained case included one from Manitoba in October of 2015. 
 
 A couple were driving on Dugald Road and saw a very bright light which they thought was a cellphone tower. 
 
 "As they drove a bit closer, they saw it wasn't on a cellphone tower at all," he said. "They saw what they described as a dark triangle that was moving along with the red light in front and a green and another colour on the side." 
 
 Rutkowski said it was silent and didn't look like an aircraft to the couple. 
 
 His group investigated to see if there were any aircraft in the area at the time, but so far, they haven't come up with an explanation for the sighting. 
 
 "The [report] does show that people continue to see things in the sky and whether that's an example of more education that's needed or simply an encouragement to get people to look up more instead of staring at their cellphones, I think it's important that we do continue to talk about this," he said. "As an astronomer, I know it's possible there's life out there somewhere, but we don't have the proof that it's coming here. Whether the aliens would come fly triangles around Dugald Road in the middle of the night – I don't know." ||||| Share This Story 125 49 Share Email 
 
 Stacy Brown was coming back from a night of fishing on the Ochlockonee River when he first caught glimpse of it — an orange glow emanating from behind the top of the pine trees. 
 
 It was a dark, winter night, with no moon visible from the john boat he and his brother-in-law had just loaded with catfish. He figured the trees were on fire as the two headed down a straightaway toward the boat landing. But then something burst through the tree tops on the left bank and into full view. 
 
 “The whole thing was like a huge fireball,” he said. “You could see the flames. When I first saw it, I thought it was a meteor — I thought it was coming down. But then it just went straight across the river and above the tree tops on the other side.” 
 
 Dozens of people have reported UFOs over North Florida since the 1970s. VPC 
 
 The object, about the size of a Volkswagen bug with a long tail behind it, passed above them as it slowly crossed the river, casting an eerie blue light inside the boat. It made no sound as it finally disappeared from sight. 
 
 Flummoxed but not frightened, Brown turned to his brother in law to ask what they’d just seen. “I don’t know” was all he said. Over the next 30-plus years, they’d never speak of it again. 
 
 But Brown could never quite shake the possible close encounter, which happened in the early 1980s near Sopchoppy. After all these years, he still has no idea what it was. 
 
 “I don’t really believe in little green men,” said Brown, a retired business owner from Crawfordville. “But it was odd. It was weird. It’s perplexed me. Maybe somebody can tell me what it was — that’s what I’m hoping.” 
 
 A witness recreation of reported UFOs seen Sept. 26, 2008, over Tallahassee. "I still can't get what I saw out of my head, nor can I wrap my brain around it," the witness said. 
 
 (Photo: MUFON) 
 
 Brown’s far from the only person to have seen something exotic — and perhaps otherworldly — in the skies over the Big Bend. In recent years, more than 50 people in Leon and surrounding counties have reported UFOs to the Mutual UFO Network, a nonprofit organization that tracks and investigates them. 
 
 The area sightings date from last month to the 1970s, according to the MUFON database, which includes witness accounts, photos, sketches and video of the mysterious but often explainable objects. 
 
 In September alone, MUFON got more than 58 reports of UFOs in Florida and 985 worldwide, said George Williams, a state section director who lives in Wakulla County. According to another organization tracking UFOs, the National UFO Reporting Center, some 5,385 sightings have been reported in Florida, second only to California in the nation. 
 
 The reports worldwide include everything from strange lights in the sky to alien abductions. Of the couple of dozen cases Williams has investigated around Florida, only five were found to be unknown objects. The others turned out to be airplanes, drones, sky lanterns, launches from Cape Canaveral and, in a couple of cases, hoaxes. 
 
 “We try to start eliminating,” said Williams, a retired investigator for the federal Bureau of Prisons. “Was it an airplane? Was it a satellite? There are a number of things it could possibly be, and if we eliminate all the possibilities, then we will characterize it as an actual unknown object.” 
 
 ‘Something ... not of this earth’ 
 
 Some cases are easier to explain than others. After someone flying into Tallahassee in August took a photo of what he or she thought was a UFO off the wing of the plane, Williams found out which flight it was, got publicly available schematics of the aircraft and determined the bright light was nothing more than a strobe on the wing. 
 
 A photo of a reported UFO over Tallahassee on June 13. "That thing flew so fast, we had never seen something like that," the witness said. 
 
 (Photo: MUFON) 
 
 But MUFON couldn’t figure out what in the world happened to Charles Ellison, a retired Navy aviation storekeeper who claims to have nearly crashed into a UFO in 2012 while driving late at night on Interstate 10 near Pensacola. 
 
 Ellison was going about 75 mph in his Ford pickup when he decided to pass two 18-wheelers he’d been following. As he moved into the left lane, a bright light behind some kind of object appeared in front of him. He slammed on his brakes, his truck started going sideways and he was sure he was going to crash and die. 
 
 But before he knew it, he was 100 yards up the road, he and his truck unscathed. He got out and started walking toward the light and the two tractor-trailers, which had stopped. But caution got the better of him, and he decided to get back in his truck and bolt. 
 
 A UFO reported April 16, 2009, over Apalachicola. "I call them patrollers because they patrol our skies," the witness said. 
 
 (Photo: MUFON) 
 
 “If I was a betting man, I would say it was something that’s not of this earth,” said Ellison, who lives outside Jacksonville. “I’ve been driving for a long time — there’s absolutely no way I could not have hit what was in the middle of the road. Something stopped me from hitting what it was and put me up about 100 yards in front of everything.” 
 
 MUFON ruled the case an actual unknown. Williams called the story a possible case of "missing time," something associated with UFOs. 
 
 And while Williams himself has never seen a UFO, he's open to the possibility they're out there. 
 
 "I'm sure there's life on other planets," he said. "And I think it's highly possible that they're visiting us. I think that accounts for some of the sightings." 
 
 But Joe Nickell, an investigator with the Skeptical Inquirer magazine who has spent four decades investigating flying saucers, haunted houses and other paranormal phenomena, pointed out science has never found a single extra-terrestrial craft, let alone an alien being. 
 
 "Most of the paranormal taps into our hopes and our fears," he said. "We're hopeful that we don't die, so we believe in ghosts. We're hopeful we're not alone in the universe, so we're looking for alien life. It's all a developing belief system in which the idea is that extra-terrestrials are coming to the planet Earth. And they aren't." 
 
 'How weird is that?' 
 
 One of the more recent sightings in the area happened the night of June 2 on Alligator Point. A family was outside on their back deck watching strange lights over the Gulf of Mexico. They reported watching two lights followed by a single one that multiplied into five before disappearing “without a sound.” 
 
 The family, who wished to remain anonymous, submitted video of the lights to MUFON, including their real-time reactions to what they were seeing. 
 
 A sketch of a UFO seen May 15, 1975 over Wellborn, between Live Oak and Lake City. "It happened," the witness said. "Nothing is shaped like that. Nothing can travel that fast. It was absolutely silent." 
 
 (Photo: MUFON) 
 
 Man: “How weird is that?” 
 
 Woman: “That is weird!” 
 
 Man: “I’ve been telling you for years that there’s aliens.” 
 
 Williams said another MUFON investigator looked into the sighting and determined the lights to be ordinary sky lanterns, though Williams himself said they may have been military flares or counter-measures. 
 
 Another case from November 2014 in Miramar Beach, just east of Destin and not far from Eglin Air Force Base, may seem outlandish to skeptics, but MUFON closed it as an actual UFO sighting. 
 
 A sketch of a UFO reported over Tallahassee on July 15, 2011. "I thought it might be a balloon but seemed to be moving under its own power in a straight line," the witness said. "It had a definite circular shape that I could see and it was metallic with a dome." 
 
 (Photo: MUFON) 
 
 Richard Norman, a retired police officer from Miami, was sitting in a golf cart near the beach when he spotted a star-like object moving in a straight line in the clear night sky. Suddenly, an oval-shaped light appeared the color of lime sherbet, with white light surrounding it. When the star-like object flew into it, the light imploded and the object was gone. Norman suspects the light may have been a portal of some kind, transporting the object to cosmic parts unknown. 
 
 “It doesn’t scare me,” said Norman, who's seen other UFOs before. “I would love for one to land right in the front yard. I’d probably be the first one out in the neighborhood welcome wagon.” 
 
 Number of sightings in the Big Bend: 
 
 Leon County: 28 
 
 Franklin County: 11 
 
 Wakulla County: 7 
 
 Gadsden County: 5 
 
 Jefferson County: 2 
 
 Source: Mutual UFO Network 
 
 The top 10 states for UFO sightings: 
 
 1. California: 11,542 
 
 2. Florida: 5,385 
 
 3. Washington: 5,163 
 
 4. Texas: 4,467 
 
 5. New York: 4,046 
 
 6. Arizona: 3,336 
 
 7. Pennsylvania: 3,296 
 
 8. Illinois: 3,174 
 
 9. Ohio: 3,049 
 
 10. Michigan: 2,570 
 
 Source: National UFO Reporting Center 
 
 MUFON gathering 
 
 A MUFON meetup will be held 1 p.m. Saturday, Dec. 5, at the Woodville branch library, 8000 Old Woodville Road. Participants are asked to confirm by going to meetup.com.
– Perhaps aliens have taken a liking to the Great White North. The annual Canadian UFO Survey by Winnipeg-based Ufology Research shows "the second highest level of sightings that we've recorded since we started doing the survey back in the 1980s," with 1,267 across Canada in 2015, rep Chris Rutkowski tells the CBC. Only 2012 had more, with 1,981 sightings. The provinces of Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Nova Scotia, and Newfoundland each saw an increase in reports over 2014, but Quebec outpaced them all, according to data from 17 sources, including Transport Canada and YouTube. The province, which typically produces 5% to 15% of all UFO reports in Canada, generated 35% of reports in 2015, reports the Canadian Press. Montreal led Canadian cities with 97 reports, followed by 78 in Toronto, and 69 in Vancouver. That doesn't mean there were that many unexplained cases; about 88% of unidentifiable objects turn out to be stars, planets, airplanes, or helicopters, Rutkowski says. Ufology Research investigates the remaining cases—by visiting a site and talking to witnesses—to determine if a case is "high quality." About 1% to 3% of cases fall into this group, Rutkowski says. One of the perhaps not-so-high-quality ones: A resident in Sainte-Brigitte de Laval, Quebec, recalled seeing three 4-feet-tall "humanoids" with huge heads and "big, black slanted eyes," and hearing a high-pitched hum. "We're not saying the little grey guys are here," Rutkowski tells CTV News. "This is simply what people are reporting." (Aliens might also have a thing for Florida.)