How long do you have to stare at something before “you probably just saw it wrong” stops feeling like a satisfying explanation? In 1978, a Canadian police officer spent an extended period watching a strange object over the water near Clarenville, Newfoundland. To this day, there is still no completely satisfying answer.
RCMP Constable James Blackwood was called to investigate a strange object over the water near Clarenville. Local residents had already been curiously watching it. Trying to find an immediate rational explanation, Blackwood initially thought it was an aircraft. After observing it through binoculars and eventually a high-powered telescope, he described an elongated, oval-shaped object with a dull-looking surface. Underneath there seemed to be some kind of white illumination, with blue lights on its sides and a red light above. He did not notice any doors or windows. There was no engine noise. Blackwood later compared its apparent size to a Boeing 737.
The weirdest part? Blackwood activated the lightbar on his police car. According to his account, lights on the object immediately responded. The incident lasted for nearly an hour, with several witnesses observing the phenomenon. No physical evidence was found afterward.
The National Research Council later suggested that the witnesses may have been looking at the planet Jupiter. Bright astronomical objects can sometimes be misidentified, particularly when atmospheric conditions distort their appearance. That makes the theory at least plausible. But what complicates the Jupiter explanation is Blackwood’s description of an apparently structured object with several different lights. And let’s not forget his claim that those lights responded when he activated his police lights.
UAP reports are easy to label as “unexplained.” But there are a wide variety of reasons why that happens: not enough data, no decisive evidence, unverifiable witness testimony, missing records and several possible explanations with no way of proving which one is correct.
It is also crucial to point out that just because something is “unexplained,” that does not mean we can jump the gap and say, “It was aliens.” There can be perfectly grounded reasons why something remains unsolved. Current U.S. government material makes much the same point: some cases remain unresolved simply because there is not enough information to make a definitive determination.
There is another intriguing case that we should look at.
On 7 November 1990, at the Bonaventure Hotel in Montréal, Canada, people near its rooftop pool noticed a large luminous, oval-shaped phenomenon in the sky. Around 40 witnesses reportedly saw it, including journalists and police officers. It remained visible for nearly three hours before disappearing behind thick cloud. Witnesses described orange or yellowish lights and beams or shafts of light. Air-traffic controllers reported no corresponding radar activity. At least one photograph was taken.
One mundane explanation is an atmospheric optical effect, possibly involving ground lighting interacting with ice crystals in the atmosphere to create light pillars. That could explain why the phenomenon appeared stationary, why nothing showed up on radar and why it had such a luminous appearance.
Interestingly, police reportedly arranged for downtown spotlights to be switched off during the sighting to see whether they were the cause. The phenomenon remained visible. That does not necessarily rule out every possible optical explanation. There were plenty of other light sources across a major city. But it certainly makes the story more interesting.
It is important to remember that around 40 people saw the phenomenon, the sighting lasted a very long time and the lack of radar detection actually strengthens the plausibility of an optical effect rather than a physical craft. However, the question remains…does that explanation account for absolutely everything the witnesses said they saw?
This is another example of why an explanation can sometimes feel less than completely satisfying. We have photographs, around 40 witnesses and attempts to eliminate obvious sources of nearby lighting. The optical explanation fits quite well. But perhaps not perfectly.
Our final case is much more famous because it happened in modern times. You may already be familiar with the USS Nimitz “Tic Tac” UAP incident from 2004.
While the Nimitz carrier group was conducting exercises off Southern California, radar operators aboard the USS Princeton had reportedly been tracking unusual objects. Navy aviators including David Fravor and Alex Dietrich were then called from a training exercise to investigate.
They described seeing a smooth white object with no obvious wings, rotors or exhaust. Fravor estimated it to be around 40 feet long and compared its appearance to a giant Tic Tac or propane tank. He later testified that as he attempted to move closer to it, the object appeared to react to his movements before rapidly accelerating away.
It is important to know that the famous infrared footage was not recorded during Fravor’s exact close encounter. A different Navy crew flying later captured the video commonly associated with the incident. The Pentagon officially released the footage in 2020 and said that the phenomenon shown in it remained characterised as “unidentified.”
Why this case remains so fascinating is the combination of several different strands: multiple trained military eyewitnesses, reported radar tracking, visual observation and later infrared footage. Fravor and the other witnesses also reported seeing no obvious means of propulsion.
Unfortunately, there is very little surviving supporting data available for modern analysis beyond the footage and eyewitness accounts. Former AARO director Sean Kirkpatrick acknowledged that this makes the incident extremely difficult to investigate retrospectively, because much of the sensor data from 2004 was simply not retained.
There are also rational arguments about what the video itself shows. Analysts have pointed to viewing geometry, camera movement and the behaviour of the tracking system as possible explanations for some of the apparent movement. Those explanations may well have merit.
But explaining aspects of the video does not automatically explain what Fravor and the other aviators reported seeing directly.
So, all in all, it is one of those incidents that is likely to remain unsolved for quite a while yet. The more technical explanations for the footage have possible merits, but they do not by themselves settle the entire encounter. That leaves enough unanswered questions to make us wonder whether this case is quite as closed as some might like it to be.
The interesting part is not choosing between “aliens” and “nothing unusual happened.” It is what sits in the space between those two answers. That is where cases like these remain. Not proven, not fully explained, and still strange enough to keep looking at.
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