RCMP Officers and Snowmobiles Chase a Mushroom-Shaped UFO, Southern Saskatchewan (1973)

Southern Saskatchewan. Flat farmland, cut into squares by grid roads. In 1973, Canadian UFO reports were sent to the National Research Council, which filed them as "non-meteoric sightings" and rarely took them further.

This case survives because three officers of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police put what they saw in writing. Their reports were later held at the National Archives of Canada, where researcher Patrick Gross found and transcribed them.

It was a clear November evening. Just before 8 pm, a citizen called the local RCMP detachment. The caller described a large red and orange object, fast moving, about 150 feet across.

Two constables went out. At first they saw nothing. They drove the grid roads, searching. Then one officer spotted an odd set of lights to the west. They drove towards it. With the headlights on, the object disappeared. With the headlights off, it reappeared.

What they found was a mushroom-shaped object, an upside-down saucer, about 150 feet in diameter. It seemed to sit on the ground, or very near it. Red and orange lights covered the whole thing. It changed from orange to red, faded, then grew bright once more. "At no time did they hear any noise coming from the object." Then it gained altitude, to about 100 feet, and started to move towards the two officers.

A third RCMP officer arrived. With him came 15 civilian members of the Emergency Measures Organization, Canada's civil defence body, riding snowmobiles. They set off straight across the fields.

Each time they got close, the object quickly moved away. Several people studied it through a rifle scope, at least one officer among them. His report put it plainly. "It appeared to have portholes!" Finally the object climbed a little and flew off quickly to the east, following the contours of the terrain.

Three officers filed written reports, and those reports went to the National Research Council. Transport Canada and the military air base at Moose Jaw were checked. No aircraft were in the vicinity. No other object was tracked on radar. No NRC conclusion has ever been found.

About 20 years later, a group known as AUFORG spoke with one of the officers. He called it "the most unusual event he had ever experienced."

No one has accused the witnesses of a hoax. No conventional explanation has been published either. The official checks ruled out known aircraft and radar targets, and nothing more. At least 19 people were in the fields that night, and the case remains unexplained on paper.

The officers are unnamed. So is the detachment. Every detailed account online traces back to a single transcription. But Library and Archives Canada lists two NRC records for Balcarres, Saskatchewan, dated 27 November 1973, in the same "non-meteoric sightings" series. They may be the original paperwork. Until those scans are read, the match remains a strong lead.

Saskatchewan's better known encounter came less than a year later, at Langenburg, where farmer Edwin Fuhr reported his own strange visitors on 1 September 1974. The snowmobile chase of 1973 stays quieter. Three police reports, a pulsing light on the prairie, and a craft that kept its distance.