Charlie Red Star

by Grant Cameron

  A Saucer Visits Aspen Air Base

  “You see something like what I saw,” said Peter Chociemski, “and there’s no doubt in your mind. Two hours … you couldn’t follow an aircraft that long.”

  “We’re the ones that saw it,” added Linda, his 23-year-old wife. “It was a red light. Every time I think about it I get scared.”

  Peter, his wife, and four-year-old daughter were driving north to their home in Gimli, Manitoba, after a night of shopping in Winnipeg. It was around 10:00 p.m. and they had driven 20 miles when Peter spotted the object near a microwave tower northeast of Clandeboye.

  “When I first spotted it, it was just a blinking red light,” Peter told the National Enquirer’s Daniel Coleman. “It looked like an airplane, but after a couple of miles I noticed that I was passing the light. I was going approximately 60 miles per hour and started passing it. It didn’t really seem to have a speed to it. Most of the time it was just standing still.”

  “Peter never showed it to me for a long time,” Linda stated. “Then he said, ‘Look at that light in the sky — it’s going the same speed we are and it seems that we’re keeping up with it.’ So we followed it up to Gimli and got about a mile from town or so when it crossed the road and was going into town. Then it went into the Aspen Air Base [west of town] and crossed over the road [east] and continued on. We followed it north of Gimli to Walter Zdanowicz’s place.”

  The object was going so slow that Peter decided to pass it. Pulling into Walter’s yard, Peter summoned him to come and see the object.

  In conversation with Daniel Coleman and me, Walter confirmed the whole incident and described how the object made two passes over his house from the highway into the west. He made it in time to see the triangle of lights fly over his house the first time and agreed with Walter’s interpretation of what the object was.

  “Peter said that he was going after it again, so he went back to his car and I went back to my shed,” Walter told us. “A couple of minutes later I noticed that Peter was still in the driveway. The thing had made a big circle and was coming back. It flew over the house a second time, and that’s when Peter started chasing it again.”

  Meanwhile, in the car, Peter and his family watched the erratic movements of the craft. “We were watching it and it seemed that every time lights would come down the highway, the object would back up,” Linda Chociemski said. “When there were no lights, it would come closer to us. We didn’t have any lights on in the car and were just watching it. We couldn’t hear a sound. Peter was watching with binoculars and then it started going back [south], so we followed it without lights for a while.”

  The object headed south down Highway 8, turned west, and continued on Highway 231. When it arrived in Gimli, Peter and his family were hot on its tail.

  “The object was within one-tenth or one-eighth of a mile from the highway,” Peter said. “It went over to David Roman’s place. That’s when I really saw it close. I pulled into David’s yard, and it was close … maybe 50 yards. It was just on the south side of his house, and it was so low you could have hit it with a rock if you threw hard enough. It was about the height of the TV antenna.”

  Peter jumped out of the car, ran to David’s house, and pounded on the back door. David was alone inside, watching television when he heard the noise. Thinking it was his son, he made no move to answer the door. As the banging continued, however, he got up to see who it was. Finding Peter standing there urging him to come outside, he figured the visitor had had an accident or was drunk. But at Peter’s insistence he decided to see what the emergency was. In a later conversation with Coleman and myself, David admitted, “I’m sure sorry that I didn’t hurry.”

  While Peter got David out of the house, his wife and daughter waited in the car 50 yards from the hovering object. For them the night’s fun was over.

  “When Peter went to the house,” Linda told Coleman, “it started coming lower and lower, and that’s when I saw it. It was the shape of a saucer and had these little windows. It came down and landed, and when it landed, the lights went out and we couldn’t find it. Sherri was so scared. She was saying, ‘Let’s go home.’ When Peter got back into the car, I told him that I wanted to go home. I was pretty scared. I wanted to leave it, but Peter didn’t want to. He wanted to follow it, but I was too scared to look at it.”

  Returning to the car a few minutes later, Peter shone the car lights on the field south of the farm to see the landed saucer. They couldn’t find it, so they switched off the lights and waited for David Roman.

  “About two seconds after we shut the lights off the craft lit up and it took off again and landed on the runway. [Aspen Air Base was a half mile east of David’s farm.] It went east and landed like a helicopter.”

  Finally, David appeared, and Peter tried to point the object out to him. “But I couldn’t distinguish it from all the hangar lights at the air base,” David recalled. “He knew which one it was, but I couldn’t see it.”

  Peter Chociemski’s drawing of a UFO with windows.

  David got into his truck, Peter returned to his car, and they started after it, heading east toward the base.

  “We went driving around,” Peter said, “with no lights or anything, and we came back to the yard and talked for a while. Roman still didn’t believe me. All of a sudden the lights came back on, blinking. It went along the ground maybe a hundred yards and lifted off and went south. The funny thing about it was that Roman said, ‘It’s an airplane,’ but it gave a roar when it took off and then went silent.”

  “Now that I saw,” David said, “it was a light rising into the south of the base. It made a low, rumbling noise, but this only lasted for a few seconds. I worked at the base for 21 years [clearing snow from the runways], and it didn’t sound like a plane to me. Which runway it came off, I don’t know. I couldn’t tell because of the distance. It was moving too slowly to be a plane, and it was moving off into the south.”

  Upon seeing the light take off, Peter hopped into his car and sped off after it again. David, still uncertain what was happening, declined to go.

  “I followed it for miles,” Peter said. “It was going back to Winnipeg Beach, four, five miles from here. It was after midnight when we left it. My car was running low on gas, and my wife was after me to leave, so we just left it, hovering over the treetops.”

  The National Enquirer was extremely interested in this case and in a landing that occurred south of Doris People’s farm four miles east of David Roman’s place. When Coleman and I talked to Doris, we found that she, too, had been involved in the Chociemski sighting.

  Doris and her 13-year-old daughter had been driving home, west on Highway 231 one night, which she was sure was the same evening as the Chociemski encounter.

  “Whatever it was, it was sitting in Roman’s yard,” she told us. “From the road it was about a block. Not even a block, because I said to the girl, ‘It’s funny that they’re having a wiener roast at this time of the night.’”

  Doris estimated the object to be about half the size of the barn. Peter and his wife had described the object as taller.

  “It was about 30 feet in diameter,” Peter told us, “roughly … I don’t know … 15 feet … 12 feet high. You could see the outline when it was lit up. It had rectangular windows [wider than tall] around it, four or five on the side that I could see. They were about two-thirds the way up the craft. The lights coming out of the windows were different colours. They would get brighter and duller.”

  Doris, however, only got a brief glimpse of the object. “I drove right on by,” she said. “I didn’t take notice of it until after I saw this thing [referring to the object that landed down the road from her farm] and I heard that Peter had seen it.”

  Asked whether she had discussed the event with Roman, she answered, “No, because no one would believe me. I thought, No, I’m not going to say anything.”
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  There were strong indications from my sources at Gimli Collegiate that a number of students had been involved in the Chociemski affair, but those people didn’t wish to get involved. Still, with the number of witnesses, the similar times, and the closeness of the sighting, the Chociemski case must be considered a classic.

  Four days after Peter Chociemski sighted the first object, he and five others made a spectacular sighting at the plant they were employed at north of town and east of Highway 8 where Peter had chased the first object. This was a fairly lengthy sighting, and the RCMP was involved.

  Peter told the story to me but then stated a couple of months later to the National Enquirer that he couldn’t talk about it. I recognize Peter’s desire not to do so and include reference to the incident only to show there were quite a few sightings in the Gimli-Fraserwood area during that week in April 1976.

  The Second Night — Charlie Takes Off

  On the second night a car salesman named Sam Brazil, one of the few night pilots in southern Manitoba, joined the Britains at their private sighting spot high in the Pembina Hills.

  “After that night,” Anthony Britain told me, “Brazil’s life would never be the same.”

  It was the usual routine. Charlie appeared at the border and started his descent toward Carman. Tannis Major, the photographer, and the Britains were off to the car in a shot. They moved quickly to cut Charlie off.

  Brazil, the rookie, wasn’t so sure. “He felt sorry for us because he was sure that we were chasing an airplane,” Anthony told me with a chuckle in his voice.

  They headed into the valley after Charlie, but as if Charlie had seen the posse coming, he cut short the loop and continued back long before he got to Carman. “Consequently,” Anthony and Rachael Britain told me, “we were behind him by the time we got to the highway in the valley.”

  Nevertheless, they sped south down Highway 3 after him. As with the sighting the night before, the lighting formation had begun as a ­blue-and-white light. “As we chased it,” Anthony said, “the light changed to a pulsating red light, and from then on we never lost sight of it. Then it went from a pulsing red to a steady red, so it changed configurations three times while we watched it.”

  Brazil, however, was still convinced it was a plane. He told the Britains that it would go back to the west and land at Jordan. Instead, Charlie headed south into North Dakota. “It disappeared over the horizon into the U.S.,” Anthony said, “and the four of us decided that the night’s fun was over, so we turned around and started back for Carman. Suddenly we noticed that it was coming back at us, and as it was coming back, it wasn’t pulsing. It was solid red.”

  Everyone got out of the car and watched as the object moved north, closer and closer to their position. As Anthony watched it with his 7x50 binoculars, Tannis set up her camera for a picture she would never get.

  “It almost got close enough for Tannis to get a picture, but not quite,” Anthony said. “She got the camera set up, trained on it, telephoto lens and all, but what are you going to take a picture of? One little light? She waited too long. She was waiting for it to get a little closer, and all of a sudden one, two lights went off, the other dimmed, and she was beat.”

  The whole episode about the lights dimming down and then shutting off was a complex affair, and the inquisitive mind of Anthony Britain had a lot to say about it. As the object approached, Anthony handed his binoculars to Brazil, whose plane theory was now shot down in flames. He watched it for a while and then cried out, “It’s changing its altitude!”

  When Anthony got his binoculars back, he confirmed Brazil’s ­observations. “It had shifted itself on its edge. Just as it flipped on the angle, many other things happened. It got close enough so that I could actually see it against the starlight — the shape of the thing. You know. The disk shape of the thing … you put together two plates and you get sort of a cigar shape. It had two lights on the edge of the disk.”

  Anthony continued. “It had two running lights from each side. When it went on an angle, the bottom light went out and the top light sucked down. The top light was the only one that remained. Everyone thought it had disappeared. I could see with the binoculars that it was still there. It had just sucked down its light the same way as when you short out a welder.” He referred to a drawing he had just made. “There was a haze here. Like St. Elmo’s fire. Some type of field, but it was actually like little fingers of flame, just the same as the one that we saw at the tower.”

  To prove his point, he got a colour drawing that had been done by Brian James of Winnipeg. Just as Anthony was now telling me, there was a field protruding out the side of a cigar-shaped object.

  “It disappeared from us as it moved in a long arc upward,” he said. “The lights started to come on as if it no longer needed the power. As the power came back on, it got brighter and brighter. Brazil told me that without the binoculars he could see it getting brighter as it moved off into space. It picked up speed. Soon it was going so fast that I said, ‘See, it’s going from that star to that star to that star. It achieved orbit in 35 seconds from the time it flipped on its side, which is faster than any man-made machine.’”

  From this observation, which was one of the best Anthony Britain made from his numerous sightings of Charlie Red Star, he drew up a list that outlined the things he believed were going on.

  It was manned because it went out in a long, large arc.

  I believe the drive is electronic because of the sucked-down light and the fact they shut the other one off to conserve power.

  They weren’t using anti-gravity because they wouldn’t have put on the angle and the long bank. They were setting up the best G angle.

  They conserve energy because they didn’t go into orbit to the south, the direction it was travelling, but arced to the east so they could use the spinoff off the ground.

  Their most economical cruising speed is between 60 and 80 miles per hour.

  They like to fly not more than 1,000 feet or usually less. When they set up for blast-off, they were below 1,000 feet.

  It had a halo under it after an angle. It looked like St. Elmo’s fire, or blue mist, some type of magnetic field.

  Power came back on [light got brighter] as it achieved orbit. This would mean less power drain.

  Orbit in 35 seconds, counted from suck-down until it was gone. No noise. We were within five miles, maybe as little as three miles. It was hard to tell at night.

  The Third Night

  According to Anthony Britain, Sam Brazil saw the same thing again six months later in December 1975. Brazil and his wife were driving east to Winnipeg on Highway 2 and had just passed through Starbuck, Manitoba. Near the Starbuck tower, his wife saw an object on the ground and pointed it out to Sam, asking him whether it was a yard light.

  They slowed the car and watched it. It didn’t look right. It was little and red and didn’t have the same halo found around a yard light.

  “All of a sudden it took off,” Anthony said. “Same circumstances. It went into orbit, but this time he was on the other side of it. It went into orbit over them.” It made a bank and headed up and into the east just as the one at Morden had done. “This time, Anthony added, “it left a definite trail.”

  And Now Others See

  It was April 10, partway through Darlene Hebert’s recuperation period, when Charlie appeared again, this time swooping east into the Pembina Valley toward Carman.

  There were many witnesses this time, including the Britains. This was the first time they saw Charlie Red Star, but it wouldn’t be their last. They probably had more sightings than anyone else who came forward as witnesses in the Carman area.

  Looking back at the April 10 sighting, Anthony Britain commented, “That is probably the closest we’ve ever been to the thing. It was close enough so that you could see the dome on the top, but it was all red — pulsing red. It was a b
ig red light coming at us, like a big landing light. You couldn’t miss it. It was right at eye level, and it was just loafing along. I looked at it, and even after it was by us, I still didn’t want to believe it. No way had I wanted to believe it.”

  The object headed along the river and then north of town. Rachael Britain urged Anthony to chase it, but as he said, “It was at a low level, and when you are low like that, it is soon over the horizon. You don’t have much time.”

  At the same time the Britains were watching the object head north out of town, Maria Rhodes was sitting in her living room crocheting and gazing out the window toward the airport where the Britains were standing.

  “I saw this red ball go by the trees,” Maria stated. “It was low down by the trees. I just happened to look out, and I just saw that big thing. It was low and it was a great big thing. You know — like fire. It looked like a red ball. It was very red — that’s one thing that I noticed.”

  As Anthony described it, Charlie followed the Boyne River through Carman on the way out of the north side of town. It was at this point that Freda Waterman spotted the object as it flew over her house along the river.

  “It was exactly as Anthony Britain described it,” she told me. “That was the first time that I saw it, and it disturbed me. I didn’t know what to do, so I didn’t report it. It was a couple of days later that Anthony told his story. That’s when I realized it was the same time as mine.”

  That ended Charlie Red Star’s April 10 flight, but it wouldn’t be his last. Charlie was seen many times and often by Anthony Britain around his small airstrip. Once, as Anthony explained, Charlie flew low along the runway, just feet off the ground. There were also many more witnesses, some who made it a hobby to hunt UFOs every night.

  The reported sightings over the next couple of weeks were scattered. May brought with it sightings all over the province. A particular one occurred south of Morden near the U.S. border.