UFO sightings: a phenomenon that always makes people talk
More or less 1000 UFOs are reported in Canada every year.
For once, a Quebec film – Mistral Spatial by Marc-Antoine Lemire – addresses the issue of alien abductions. To what extent does this phenomenon and that of UFOs still fascinate the population? Have there been cases of kidnappings in Quebec? Overview of an unexplained phenomenon…
On returning home after a breakup, Sam, the main character of Mistral Spatial, loses consciousness for an unexplained reason and wakes up a few hours later in the middle of the street. Marked by this event and haunted by a melody that constantly resounds in his head, Sam questions himself. Was he crushed by his broken heart or was he the victim of an alien abduction?
During the promotion of his film, director Marc-Antoine Lemire was asked if it was not a bit corny to talk about extraterrestrials in 2023.
“It's rather the opposite”, maintains the journalist Christian Page, specialist in questions relating to paranormal phenomena and author of the book UFOs in Quebec.
Indeed, if the media interest was weaker a few years ago, the journalist observed a new craze for UFOs since the New York Timesrevealed in 2017 that the US military continued to be interested in it, despite the end of Project Blue Book in 1969. This story was so talked about that in 2020, the US Congress asked the Department of Defense and the services to reopen an investigation into the UFO question, says Christian Page.
Project Blue Book was established in April 1952 by the United States Air Force to study the phenomenon of unidentified flying objects (UFOs). It ended in 1969.
This request led to the creation in July 2022 of a new UFO investigation office whose acronym is AARO (< em>All-domain anomaly resolution office), which could be translated into French as the “Bureau desolving anomalies tout domaine”.“[Since the 1980s], we have never talked so much about UFOs as in the last five years, adds the journalist. The Department of Defense has just released its first real annual report. Not only is the subject more talked about, but there is also more serious interest in it, he adds, among other things because of the increased presence of drones above our heads.
“This is a subject that we must take seriously, because it represents a danger to national security, since a UFO can be a potential Chinese or Russian foreign drone which comes to collect information on training grounds. military.”
These UFO phenomena can also represent a danger for air navigation.
Christian Page, specialist in questions relating to paranormal phenomena
Thus, despite the popular image evoked by the notion of UFOs, nothing indicates that they are of extraterrestrial origin, quite the contrary.
UFOs here
Even in Canada, the issue is taken more seriously. Representatives of the American government have also asked to meet their Canadian counterparts in order to ensure that UFO sightings in Canada are considered by the authorities, maintains Christian Page, “which they no longer did. .
Documents obtained by CTVNews.ca revealed last year that former Canadian Defense Minister Harjit Sajjan received a UFO briefing in June 2021, in response to the media hype. phenomenon in the United States.
“[We must] take them into consideration and standardize the investigation reports so that they can be communicated to the United States using the same scales in order to facilitate investigation”, explains Christian Page.
For the latter, it is a good thing that the authorities are taking this in hand, in order to have a more accurate portrait of UFO sightings in Canada.
“[For decades], the UFO issue was only taken up by small amateur groups who actually have only one wish, to convince us that we are being visited by extraterrestrials.”
I want to believe it
Between 2017 and 2019, Quebec was the champion of UFO sightings in Canada. According to Christian Page, this statistical disparity was due to the greater number of civil organizations interested in this phenomenon in Quebec.
“As Quebec is the province with the most UFO groups, there are more sightings being reported.”
UFO sightings in Canada according to figures from UFOlogy Research
2017< /strong>: 518 reports in Quebec out of a total of 1101 in Canada (47%)
2018: 382 reports in Quebec out of a total 931 in Canada (41%)
Regarding alien abductions specifically, Christian Page claims to have heard of at least twenty cases in Quebec, but that very few have been publicized, people fearing being stigmatized as a result of their testimony.
“I did not investigate all these cases, only a few and it's always a bit the same thing that comes back, explains the journalist who relates one of these stories of abduction in his book Ovnis au Québec. Overall, all the studies that have been conducted by competent people show that these phenomena do not exist. »
He points out that specialists such as psychologists, psychiatrists and parapsychologists do not reject the idea that some people are convinced that they have had extraordinary experiences and/or aliens, but alternative explanations to that of an alien abduction must be considered.
“It is often said 'I believe what I see', but what is also true is that I see what I believe. »
