Charlie Red Star

by Grant Cameron

  The object was so low that as it moved to the north side of the road it seemed about to disappear behind a set of school buses parked beside the road in a lot. I clearly recall that I was so excited by what was happening that I tried to get out of the car before it fully stopped. All three of us raced to the buses and watched as Charlie darted away from us, bobbing up and down into the northeast away from Carman.

  It was at this point that my friends stored what they had seen in the backs of their minds and went on with their lives. I, on the other hand, fell off the planet and became infected with the obsessive feeling of mission that has affected many in the UFO community.

  I was completely transported by the experience and could think about little else except going back and getting a better look. Two nights later Doug and I returned to Carman, hoping to see Charlie again.

  As on the first night, we tried to find Friendship Field, which was owned by Anthony Britain, the aviation legend. But we still couldn’t locate it even though we now knew it was in the southwest part of town. Later we discovered we had parked just down the road from the airport without being aware of it.

  I had alerted all my friends from the city to show up for the spectacle of their lives. I was very evangelistic about it and convinced a number of people to drive out. They did make the trip, but after an hour of waiting they had had enough and retreated to Winnipeg at 12:30 a.m., saying, “We’re hungry and we’re going back to the city for pizza.” I pleaded for them to stay, but no one would listen.

  Hundreds of people were driving around the area. Many were looking for Charlie and some were merely teenagers cruising or searching for a quiet place to drink beer.

  When we first arrived on the road west of the airport, there were 25 people gathered on the dark gravel road. By the time the object arrived just before 1:00 a.m., only eight people were left.

  Our car had four people, and there was another vehicle with four others in their early twenties. On the side of their vehicle was a large decal for a Winnipeg courier company. All the people who remained were about to experience something extraordinary.

  In our car we had brought Doug’s younger brother, Rob, and Danny, one of Rob’s friends from down the street. Rob and Danny were sitting in the field scanning west toward the hills. Suddenly, one of them called out that he had spotted something. I looked and thought I also saw a flash. It seemed as if a flash on a camera had gone off about a mile away.

  Moments later there was a second flash, which both Rob and Danny saw. They started to yell, and I confirmed to them that I could see it. The problem was that the second flash was nowhere near the first one. Perhaps there were two objects. A third and fourth flash followed, each in a different part of the western sky. The flash moved around like a bouncing ball. The young children of the McCann family eight miles north of Carman later described this as the “bouncing ­­Ping-Pong ball.”

  By now seven of the eight witnesses could see the object. There was lots of excitement and shouting. As had happened with my first ­sighting, everyone immediately knew this was a UFO and became instant believers.

  One young girl in the other car couldn’t see the object. After all, it was jumping all over the sky. She began to cry and said, “I can’t see it. Someone show me where it is.” Everyone, however, ignored her. They were too busy watching the incredible show.

  One of the men in the second car had a camera with a motor drive. He used the top of the car to brace the camera and took pictures as fast as he could.

  As on the first night, no one asked, “Is that it?” We all knew this was the object everyone was talking about.

  While the seconds ticked by, the flashes became brighter and closer together. The girl could now see it and stopped crying. It appeared to be right before us.

  I don’t recall how it happened, but the object changed from the white strobe flash to a blood-red pulsing ball of light exactly like the object we had seen two nights before. It was very low to the ground and still coming at us. The yelling and the sound of the clicking camera continued.

  When the object was about half a mile away, it turned left toward the north side of town. It was only a couple of hundred feet off the ground. As it turned, a green glow could be seen on the back bottom side. The object shape couldn’t be determined because of the intense red glow surrounding it. All that could be established was that it was longer than it was high. It looked like a glowing heart with a ­slow-pulse heartbeat.

  Once the object made the turn north, it moved away from us. The people in the other car jumped into their vehicle, declaring they were going to chase the object. With gravel shooting out from behind spinning tires, they sped away.

  I had now had my second dramatic sighting in two days. Other people who had seen Charlie Red Star were as impressed as I was. Although the sighting had been an ongoing event for two months, there had only been a few newspaper articles describing what was happening. I wondered why no one else was investigating and talking to all the witnesses, so I decided I would take on the task.

  More Media Attention

  Media outlets in Winnipeg were beginning to acknowledge the existence of UFOs, and because of the regularity of Charlie’s appearances, movie crews started to visit the area, hoping to capture him on film.

  The National Enquirer also became involved. It had heard from J. Allen Hynek, a prominent ufologist and director of the Center for UFO Studies in Chicago, that something unusual was occurring in Manitoba. The Enquirer decided to assign a reporter to do a story and gave the job to Daniel Coleman, its leading UFO reporter.

  In his assessment of the Manitoba flap, Dr. Hynek had distinguished in a statement made in early June that the situation was unique:

  We have had for the past six weeks a fair amount of activity in southern Manitoba [in] an area about 55 miles south of Winnipeg. We’ve had some very interesting sightings from there. The pattern has been in the past that an area can remain “UFO hot” for several weeks and then things just die down. This thing is unusual in that it has lasted so long. It’s beginning to look as if northern Wisconsin, northern Minnesota, and southern Manitoba form one large area.6

  The sightings continued day after day throughout the summer and in all types of weather. Definite patterns of time and place could be ­established from the numerous reports that came in.

  Media coverage didn’t seem to have an effect on sighting reports as one would expect. For example, some towns in Manitoba reported no sightings at all, even though they were reading the same newspapers as everyone else. One town, Steinbach, had a large UFO convention while the flap was going on, but investigators didn’t uncover a single UFO sighting in that town.

  The idea that UFO sightings were a random event was now a ­long-dead idea. In the first eight nights I was in Carman, I had had six sightings. The evidence seemed to indicate that at least in this situation the phenomena could be isolated.

  Sightings were so commonplace, in fact, that Anthony Britain took Winnipeg crews out on Carman’s back roads, trying to film Charlie Red Star. In four trips they had four sightings but were only able to ­document one. That footage, shot by Martin Rugne (then a film editor with CKY-TV), became one of the most important UFO movies of the day.

  There were nine photographers I knew of who attempted to get pictures. It was in the days before digital cameras and videotape ­recorders. A lot of work and expense went into getting shots. Yet they persisted because they saw something that was unique and unidentified — something worth photographing.

  Anthony Britain

  Anthony Britain and his wife, Rachael, were at the centre of the UFO flap. Their airport, Friendship Field, was on the southwest side of town and had a clear view of everything. Anthony was a local hero known to everyone and a person with whom people shared their UFO experiences.

  Anthony Britain working in an airplane hangar at Friendship Field in Carman.
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  Anthony had made his reputation as a restorer of Second World War planes. He was the first to restore a “war bird,” as they are now called, in what is now a multi-billion-dollar business. In 1962 he reconditioned a Hawker Hurricane, a fighter aircraft that was a significant factor in the Allied victory in the Battle of Britain. In fact, Anthony flew his, one of only three at the time, in the 1969 movie Battle of Britain.

  The Carman native had also restored other very rare planes such as the Japanese Zero. At the time he rebuilt a Zero he had the only flyable one in the world. He had also done the same for a Japanese Val dive bomber, which he hauled out of a jungle and restored.

  Already famous for rebuilding vintage aircraft, now Anthony became celebrated as the Carman expert on UFOs and acted as the tourism office for anyone who had questions or wanted to see Charlie Red Star.

  The Apollo Story

  Years after the Carman UFO flap Anthony Britain had a chance meeting with one of the men who had walked on the moon. The Apollo 15 astronaut was in Carman lecturing at a local high school. In talking with the people hosting the lecture, Irwin mentioned he would like to meet Anthony while in town. Like Anthony, the moon walker had an interest in restoring Second World War aircraft and wished to speak with Anthony, who had pioneered the business.

  Anthony didn’t attend the lecture but did meet with the astronaut at Friendship Field after it. He recounts what occurred:

  He told me the story here in the hangar … as soon as we were by ourselves [Rachael, Anthony’s, wife, had just left the hangar]. He turned to me and he looked at me and said, “I’m going to say something that is top secret. If you repeat it I will deny ever having said it.” He said they weren’t there [on the moon surface] an hour and a saucer landed a mile away from them and we asked Houston if we could motor over and say howdy. They said “no ignore them and pretend they’re not there, and carry on about your business.” He said that all the time we were there they saw no sign of movement, and they were still there when we left.

  As dramatic as this story is, there are other accounts that back up the idea that a UFO incident was witnessed by the Apollo 15 crew while on the moon.

  A few years after Anthony had told the story to me a couple of times I learned that Dr. Frank Stranges, a minister and UFO researcher, had experienced a similar encounter with James Irwin. I contacted Stranges by phone, and he confirmed the report I had heard.

  In 1976, Stranges was hosting a UFO convention at the Anaheim Convention Center. The keynote speaker was this Apollo astronaut who was, according to Stranges, going to “inform us of the strange things that he saw on the surface of the moon.”

  The fact that Irwin was scheduled to speak clearly demonstrated that he had an interest in UFOs, something had occurred, and he was prepared to reveal what had happened. Stranges recalls his encounter:

  You want to hear something interesting about our astronauts? We put on a space convention some years ago at the Anaheim Convention Center and one of our top speakers for the convention was [James Irwin] — United States astronaut. He was all set to come to inform us of the strange things that he saw on the surface of the moon.

  The day before the convention started I got a telegram from him saying “I’m sorry. I’m not able to come. I am returning the check that you sent — the honorarium.” Plus we had to cancel his hotel reservation. When I questioned him after the convention in Colorado Springs he said, “Look I have a pension to worry about. I have a family to take care of, and they told me to just back away from this entirely — or else.” That was a cold slap in the face to say the least.

  The final piece of evidence supporting the fact that James Irwin had UFO experiences on the Apollo 15 moon mission came in an interview he gave to a Japanese film crew doing a UFO documentary. The interview was public, and therefore the astronaut was much more conservative in what he revealed. His story was akin to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) version of events. Here is what he said:

  We travelled back and saw strange things around us. We could call them UFOs — they’re Unidentified Flying Objects. What they were I do not know. They could have been other spacecraft, perhaps satellites, perhaps part of the spacecraft that came floating with us, part of the fuel that we dumped or ice crystals. We were surrounded by a beautiful cloud of ice crystals as we travelled … it was hard to discern. Very few would say that they are spacecraft from another world.

  The Personification of Charlie Red Star

  During 1975, people living in the Pembina Valley told many stories about the UFO sightings being made. Yet in all the stories rarely was the term UFO used. Instead, the glowing, pulsating disk became known as Charlie Red Star, the toast and talk of every town in southern Manitoba. Conversations in cafés and pubs were abuzz with Charlie’s name, and no one thought for a moment that it was a child’s game to personify the thing.

  Even local newspapers and television and radio stations played along. At first they — the media — called it a UFO, but after countless interviews with those involved, they, too, named the object Charlie Red Star. The Carman press even used him as a way to entice customers for businesses advertising with them. Ads were headlined: SHOP WHERE CHARLIE RED STAR SHOPS.

  What was Charlie? Most people thought he was extraterrestrial, but no one really cared, not even those who saw him. As Frances Stagg of Carman put it, the whole affair was fast becoming the legend of Charlie Red Star.

  Charlie was seen as a friendly guy, evidenced by the fact that he never hurt anyone. Those who caught a glimpse of Charlie as he dropped into the valley wondered why he came to Carman of all places. No one really wanted to expound on a theory and then be forced to defend it. It was decided that Charlie lived in the west near Roseisle. He remained in the hills during the day and flew into the valley at night, perhaps to pick up a case of beer and then return to the hills for the night. This jokingly became known as “the beer run.”

  To most residents, Charlie was a lazy sort, evidenced by the fact that he flew very slowly. The nightly flight into the valley was, therefore, not so much a mission of a businessman driving down the freeway to work but of a man picking up his beer for a night of television watching.

  Yet, when the people of Miami and Carman attempted to chase Charlie with cars, they learned first and foremost that he was far superior to everyone in knowledge and technology. They discovered that Charlie was able to dodge and tease them, or was capable of disappearing at the first sign of a chase.

  Ultimately, Charlie was considered the property of southwestern Manitoba. He was a one-time occurrence in history. Few of those I talked to bothered to reflect on whether Charlie was the same craft that nabbed Travis Walton, or the vessel that blasted Thomas Mantell’s airplane out of the air in 1948.7 He certainly wasn’t one of those ships with the ugly little greys that flew around abducting people.

  It seemed that southern Manitobans subconsciously behaved as if Charlie had been created solely for their entertainment. He was born, visited the province for 18 months, and now resided in a paradise for flying saucers in the sky. He was the one and only Charlie Red Star.

  “Words, Words, Words”

  The chapters that follow are intended for the entire spectrum of society. Skeptical scientists struggling to maintain their research budgets and stagnant ideas might be the exception. Hopefully, then, I have prepared a complete banquet for readers.

  Most of the ensuing chapters simply tell people’s encounters with UFOs. They are stories that readers may regard or disregard as they see fit.

  The reports of UFOs in Manitoba are, I believe, valuable additions to the overall history of UFOs, and I hope the small piece presented here will greatly enrich the picture as a whole. In 1977 there were, according to the computer files at the Center for UFO Studies, 5,000 UFO reports from Manitoba over the previous 10 years.8 My estimate is that there were probably 4,000 reported and unreported ca
ses from 1975 to 1977 in Manitoba alone. Consequently, due to the heavy numbers of sightings, I gave up two years of university studies to collect and file the many UFO stories. I spent an estimated $7,000 to keep up with a flap that at times appeared to have no end.

  To me the whole series of events was never anything to take too seriously. I had lived in a world where the paranormal wasn’t supernatural but merely things that lay undiscovered by humans. I had heard the stories people were telling and I had seen Charlie Red Star myself. But to me these things were just symptoms, and it didn’t appear as if anyone was looking for the cause.

  As with cancer research, it seemed as if everyone was merely ­collecting case studies in the same way a hobbyist amassed stamps, coins, or ­matchbook covers. When I found that I, too, was compelled to do little else, I began to gather the stories for what they were — stories that should be told to all who wished to hear them.

  There was, hidden somewhere in the maze of sightings, a cause. At the end of my two-plus-year search I made my guess. My hypothesis was that the sightings in Manitoba represented an extraterrestrial visitation.

  Most ufologists, however, didn’t hypothesize, because it meant too much to them to be called scientific. Ufologists are scientists, and scientists must be objective. They mustn’t speak until they know they are right. To do so and be wrong would mean the end of their attempts to be accepted by scientists in other disciplines.

  On this and many other points, I disagreed with scientific ufology, and I did all in my power not to become part of it. Scientific ufologists have stifled research by believing that UFOs had to be understood to exist. Science knows less about the mind than it does about UFOs, but then who would dare stand up to deny the mind’s existence?