Dane Gibson
Northern News Services

WHITEHORSE (Oct 25/99) - Martin Jasek thinks they're out there. In his mind there is no doubt that the 22 people he talked to from three different Northern communities saw an unidentified flying object.

More than northern lights Whitehorse-based UFO investigator, Martin Jasek, recently released a detailed report about a multiple-witness UFO sighting that took place on Dec. 11, 1996, just outside of Whitehorse. What he may not know is that around the same time, residents in NWT's Deh Cho region were also seeing unexplained activity in the sky. "Almost everybody in Trout Lake saw something in the sky in 1996," said Ruby Jumbo of the Sambaa Ke Dene Band. "We had major sightings here during that time, but it's slowed down since then." Exactly one month before the 1996 event that Jasek's report documents, the Deh Cho Drum newspaper in Fort Simpson ran a front page story about an elder who saw "mysterious lights" in the sky. Liidli Kue elder Leo Norwegian was one of many area residents who reported seeing lights that hovered then sped away "faster than anything known on this planet." The newspaper's editor at the time, PJ Harston, wrote an editorial a week later because cynics were coming out to joke with him about the story, which he didn't think was funny. He said in his Jan. 18, 1996 editorial: "How can a reporter so easily laugh away a strange sighting seen by dozens of people, video taped AND under investigation by the Department of National Defence?" More recently, in the July/August 1999 edition of Canadian Geographic, the magazine's Geo Map section identified UFO hot spots in Canada. Yellowknife was one of the areas identified on the map. "In the latest (Ufology Research of Manitoba) report, British Columbia and Ontario each have about 30 per cent of the sightings and there is also an unusually large number from the Yukon, with reports from the North increasing over the last few years," states the Canadian Geographic article. For more information on sightings in the North, check out the Internet Web site, www.ufobc.org.

Along with his duties as husband, father, and Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development water-resource engineer, Jasek is a UFO investigator.

"We know some of these craft are large and encounters are close," Jasek said from his home in Whitehorse, Yukon.

"They also exhibit behaviour that's not explainable through human technology."

Jasek has compiled testimony from 22 witnesses who saw something in the air on Dec. 11, 1996, that was "larger than a football stadium." The sightings took place along a 216-kilometre stretch of the Klondike Highway in the Yukon.

The witnesses were located in three major areas along the highway: Fox Lake, the village of Carmacks and the village of Pelly Crossing.

After researching the incident for three years, Jasek has released his findings on the Internet and is preparing a hard-copy report for the RCMP.

"What I hope is that the report will encourage acceptance from mainstream science. I also hope it will help provide an atmosphere of legitimacy so people will feel more comfortable coming forward if they see something they can't explain," Jasek said.

Jasek said the sightings from witnesses were consistent, collaborating what was seen in each different area. All but one witness requested their names not be used in the report.

In the Fox Lake area, the report states two friends were following one another home from Whitehorse to Carmacks in separate vehicles. They both spotted the UFO and slammed on their brakes.

According to the report, one of the men got out of his vehicle to better observe the craft. The UFO proceeded to drift silently towards them and stopped directly over where they had parked.

He described seeing a "white light in the centre of an elliptically-shaped object." The object continued to travel over him and eastward out of sight.

In total, there were six witnesses in the Fox Lake area from different points along the lakeshore. In Carmacks,

the UFO was seen by nine witnesses, including a family of five.

The last seven recorded sightings were in Pelly Crossing. One witness was tending his trapline northeast of Pelly when he observed a long row of lights drifting over the hills.

In a matter of seconds, it was hovering an estimated 275 metres in front of him. He ran away from the object and when he turned back, it was gone.

A little later, four women who were taking an evening course at the Pelly Crossing Community College spotted the object from the school's front deck where they were taking a break.

"They were out on a break on the front deck of the one-storey building looking west when they observed a row of lights," the report's event summary states.

"The lights were travelling slowly towards them and slightly towards the north. They recall the object being huge and there was no sound at all."

Jasek said comparing the size of the UFO to a football stadium is not due to exaggeration on the witnesses' part.

"On the contrary. This comparison is conservative as it was shown in the report that the UFO was likely much larger than a football stadium," Jasek said.

He said a reasonably accurate estimate of the size of the UFO (or UFOs) was accomplished by a technique known as triangulation.

"Triangulation relies on the observation of an object from different vantage points at the same time. This method was employed six times to obtain six estimates for the size of the UFO," he said.

Jasek said by using this technique, he estimates the UFO to range anywhere from .88 of a kilometre to two kilometres in length.

After reviewing all his research, he's convinced that there was something in the sky that December night that can't be explained.

"I think the evidence is overwhelming. It's just a matter of acceptance and getting used to the idea," Jasek said.

"To some people, it may indicate there's extraterrestrial involvement. Based on the evidence I've seen, it's the most logical explanation. As to what they're doing here, we're not sure. But that's one of the things we'd like to find out."