Charlie Red Star

by Grant Cameron

  The Little Man didn’t seem to notice that Terry had spotted him, or at least he didn’t seem bothered. He simply ambled along the ditch and back up the other side, heading toward the saucer.

  Terry figured the Little Man had made a large circle walking in behind the truck. Terry’s girlfriend came to the same conclusion, because she suddenly became very frightened. Terry decided to take her home as quickly as possible. When they got to her place, he dropped her off and raced back to where the saucer had been sitting. The trip took him 10 minutes.

  When he arrived back at the scene, the saucer had lifted off the ground and was hovering and shimmering in the air. After a few minutes, it flew northwest at an incredible speed, which Terry described as like a bolt of lightning going into the sky.

  Such a story would have been questionable had it not been for the events that followed the initial sighting. Terry’s neighbours went into the field two days later where Terry had seen the craft. The field had recently been cleared of trees and brush, and the men found an area where the stumps and grass were burnt. They also noticed footprints where Terry and the mysterious visitor had walked.

  A couple of days after the sighting RCMP officers showed up at Terry’s place, even though he hadn’t reported the sighting. They asked him a whole bunch of questions about what had occurred and what Terry had seen. They were, according to Terry, a bit shocked by what he told them.

  Later, Terry received a call from a man in Ottawa. He identified himself, but Terry couldn’t remember his name. When I questioned Terry about what the man had asked him, he replied, “The same things you’re asking.” Sometime after, the Ottawa man called back and asked the same questions.

  Years later I saw the declassified RCMP files on UFOs. I looked in 1972 and 1973 and found no evidence of Terry Orlando’s story or the Ottawa investigation. These types of UFO cases disappearing from official government files never surprise me.

  More Little Men

  The Roland farm of Bill Wheatley was six miles south of Carman. The Wheatley family was famous in the area for growing giant pumpkins. In fact, Bill’s father, Roger, once held the Guinness Book of World Records for a 423-pound pumpkin.

  In October 1976 (the same year as the world-record pumpkin), Bill and a group of other combiners were combining cattle corn. Bill stated that one of the combines (operated by Devlin Faester, a neighbour) came across a 25-foot swirled area of corn. Figuring that the combine had broken down, Bill went over and saw the combiner staring at the four- to five-foot-high corn now swirled down to 12 to 18 inches. (Anyone who has ever tried to pull corn and break it up to dispose of it at the end of the season knows the pressure required to do this.)

  Bill related what he had found to the National Enquirer.1

  We got off and looked closer. You could see burnt marks up, say, six to eight inches from the ground. The stalks go up six inches and then they are burnt for a little bit, three or four inches. [The burn marks were only on the stalks at the edge of the circle. They were on both sides of the stalks and looked as if the scorching had been done with a blowtorch.] It was easy to see.

  Then I guess we noticed the tracks, really odd tracks. I’ve never seen anything like them in my life. They were round — I guess maybe five inches in diameter, almost perfect circle as I remember it. You see, it had rained a few days before, so these showed up quite well. They were sunk in the ground about an inch.

  They were approximately five to six inches in diameter but there were little marks to each one of these. It was just a round pad mark and there were little claw marks about this size [very thin] … and they sunk into the ground about an inch. It was something very heavy, but it didn’t look like they were machines.

  They looked like some kind of animal because these claw marks would go away from the spot, but they didn’t follow a pattern like an animal would [to the way it walks], but this didn’t have a pattern. It was just helter-skelter and yon.

  It didn’t have a pattern, and wherever these claw marks seemed to be there were cobs picked off the corn. The ears were picked right out of the husks. You wouldn’t have noticed unless you went and grabbed the husks and there was nothing in it. You know how the husks are dry in the fall? The husks were hanging there and there was no ear inside of it. It was gone! This is what was really weird, as far as we were concerned.2

  Footprints found in a corn circle.

  All of the prints were outside the circle and extended 20 to 25 feet away from it. All of the claw prints were pointed in the same direction, as opposed to tracks of a normal animal in which the claw marks would have pointed in different directions.

  There were 12 to 18 husks checked where the prints were, and they were all missing the ear of corn. When I interviewed Bill in probably 1977, I asked if the farmers had kept one of the stocks missing the ear or one of the burnt stocks. Bill said they hadn’t. It was the busy harvest time and they just drove over the circle after looking around.

  Neither Bill, his father, Roger, nor Devlin Faester had seen any of the UFOs. They did admit they had heard many stories about people in Roland (three miles away) having seen “the lights.”

  Roland

  In the midst of the 1975 flap, there was a landing right in Roland. The landing happened on the night of a very violent thunderstorm in the area. The brilliant red light hovered low in the town, and some witnesses actually thought a fire had been caused by the thunderstorm. The emergency fire volunteers were called to put out a fire they couldn’t find.

  The next day in the corner of one front yard a burn mark was discovered that looked somewhat like an X. When I went out to see it months later, the X was still visible. It indicated an object that wasn’t very big, more the size of a car than a house.

  Portage la Prairie

  Betsy Clinton found two horseshoe burns in a pasture near her home. They were 13 to 14 feet in size and were clearly defined. The grass on either side was tall and unscathed by whatever had burned the horseshoe print. They simply appeared one day.

  Morden

  This landing is discussed in detail in the “And Now Others See” section of Chapter 2. This landing location was very close to the northern edge of the Grand Forks missile silos in North Dakota.

  Halbstadt

  This landing occurred on July 2, 1975, in Halbstadt at the peak of the flap in southern Manitoba. The incident happened in the early growth of a sugar beet field. The site was discovered when a farmer, Elmer Friesen, found a 30-plus-foot-wide area where the beets were either dead or withering moving out from the centre of the circle.

  On closer inspection, Friesen discovered three peculiar markings in the shape of a triangle in one part of the circle. The pod marks were 17 inches across and three inches deep.

  Three staff members from the Winnipeg Planetarium — Dennis Targ, Elliot Slater, and Tibor Bodi — investigated the site. They eliminated fertilizer burns, lightning, and a host of other possible causes for the strange dead section in the middle of the field.3 The team found no radiation at the site in contrast to the Carman location (see the next section).

  The Halbstadt landing site.

  The CKY Movie Landing Site

  The complete story of the CKY film is told in Chapter 5, “Cameras, Photographers, and Charlie Red Star.” Eight days after that event the Winnipeg Planetarium’s Elliot Slater and Dennis Targ (an electronics technician) went out to the spot north of Carman to check for signs that an object had been there, as the 10 people involved in the TV film claimed.

  Dufferin Leader publisher Jeff Bishop led them to the site where he had seen the object. He had previously described it as “smoky red, a hazy glow, and not higher than the trees, maybe 50 feet tall. It was about 20 feet thick and sitting on an angle of about 45 degrees. The edges were fuzzy and not sharply defined. It was much like seeing a drive-in movie screen from the side.”

  After getting his bearing
s, Jeff pointed to the area he believed the saucer had been in. The farm was owned by Kenneth Roth. Dennis Targ took background radiation counts and found that they were 10 milliroentgens. As he examined the rest of the field, he came up with four hot spots. “In the centre of these four particular spots, he said, “I had readings of 38 to 40 milliroentgens, dropping off to 25 in the outer edges of the circles. These patches were about 50 feet in diameter and were 75 to 100 feet apart. They weren’t in an absolutely straight line but were in a little swoop, as if they were part of a very large circle. That was the first time I found readings that high.”4

  All possible alternate explanations for the high readings were considered and rejected.

  On June 8, two weeks later, Roger Haskins, a geologist with the Mineral Resources Department of the provincial government, his wife, Susan (also a geologist with the same department), and Dennis Targ from the Winnipeg Planetarium, made a second trip to the spot Jeff Bishop had identified as the place where the saucer had sat at a 45-degree angle on the night of May 13, 1975.

  The farmer had since planted and there had been a couple of major rainstorms. Readings taken in the circles were only slightly higher than background radiation. It was likely that the radiation from the saucer had been washed away.

  7

  Ground Lights

  In 1976, as mentioned earlier in this book, we started to discover what we referred to as “ground lights” on many of the mile roads in the UFO flap area. We gave them that name. Years later the same sort of objects were described by other researchers in other parts of the world as orbs, spook lights, and monitors.

  A lot of work went into researching these ground lights to see if they were connected to the large UFO, and if so, what their role was. As the research progressed, many theories were raised to explain these objects.

  Possibilities

  Distant cars as a possible rationalization for ground lights were given a lot of study. Of the 100-plus people who had seen Little Charlie, the only ones who continued to insist, after seeing the phenomenon, that it was caused by car lights were the photographers Carl Bachmanek and Paul Dawkins. These two men had seen Charlie Red Star, and one night they brought a 60x telephoto lens to the road Little Charlie frequented, hoping to film him.

  This was the only evening someone would insist Little Charlie was a natural phenomenon. When Carl, Paul, Anthony and Rachael Britain, and I arrived, Little Charlie seemed to know what was about to happen. He had moved far down the road and could barely be seen with the naked eye. Even with the powerful telephoto lens, he appeared no closer than usual.

  Carl and Paul, however, had never seen Little Charlie before. They were convinced that what everyone was looking for was nothing more than approaching car lights 20 miles down the road.

  An argument ensued between Anthony and the two photographers about how far one could see down the road before the horizon became a factor. When the two photographers insisted that a car could be seen on a flat road 20 miles away, Anthony got so upset that he and Rachael left. I stayed with the two photographers for another 45 minutes, but Little Charlie didn’t flare a single time. It was pitch-black at the end of the road for the most part.

  I was greatly disturbed by the fact that Paul and Carl assumed the object to be car lights, so I spent some time checking into how far the actual horizon was. A human’s line of sight regarding the horizon would have a height of about five feet, but for the skeptic’s sake, let’s make it six feet. A car’s lights would be about two feet off the ground, but again for the skeptic’s sake, let’s also make it six feet. The point at which the lights

  Calculation of the distance to the horizon.

  would disappear over the horizon would be three miles, or a little more than 10 percent of the 20-mile claim made by Paul and Carl.

  The two photographers weren’t the first people to claim we were watching cars coming at us. Usually, I asked such skeptics how far down the road they thought the object was. When they guessed, I asked how fast they thought the car might be moving. The usual estimate was 40 to 50 miles per hour. A quick calculation would give a time when the car would then pass us. After the object didn’t come 15 minutes after the person’s prediction, almost everyone quickly admitted the car theory was wrong.

  The other reason we ruled out cars as a possible explanation was because we had already determined from past experience and observation that the ground lights were dead lights. It was very easy to tell there was no car coming when looking through a high-powered telephoto lens like the one Paul and Carl had brought with them.

  As mentioned in “The Second Movie” section of Chapter 5, the first night I was able to get close to Little Charlie I noticed that though the object was very bright it didn’t cast light outward the way a normal incandescent bulb does. It was more like a light that had been placed inside a bag.

  Later, when viewing both Little Charlie and approaching cars through binoculars, I perceived a distinct difference. Car headlights are built to cast light down the road to illuminate it. With binoculars the actual beams can be seen.

  When observing Little Charlie, these beams weren’t visible. The light might be very bright, but it was more like a self-contained glow. In later observations with ground lights that sat on other roads, it was possible to tell exactly when a car would approach from behind the object. The beams of light suddenly appeared, and we would know there was a car behind the object. Then the object would move off the road, and within a couple of minutes a car would pass us. After that the ground light would return to the road and flare.

  Thanks to a number of years taking tours of people to Little Charlie’s road, I had exhausted my ideas and patience. Once they heard the stories of the lights, many people would propose an idea to get closer. Usually, it was something we had already tried. In the end, I would draw a map for the tourists of where the road was and when to go.

  A ground light on a dirt road at night.

  Ground Light Collision

  One of the more spectacular sightings during the two years I was in an around the area where the UFOs were being seen occurred in the summer of 1976. I was with the regular trio of students who often came with me: Rob Wheeler and Danny and Toby Penner. We were up in the Pembina Hills, looking for a vantage point to gaze over the valley to see if anything appeared. After a couple of hours seeing nothing, we headed back east toward Winnipeg. The time was very late — well past midnight.

  As we passed Sperling, we turned south to see what Little Charlie was up to. This time, rather than going two miles east and then three miles south to where he usually sat, I went three miles south and then two miles across, hoping that by coming from the side we could catch him off guard. The plan worked. As we crossed the second mile road, there he was — brilliant and appearing to be only a quarter mile from us. I quickly set up the tripod and took a picture. By then Little Charlie had moved back but was still pretty close.

  We thought we were onto something, which prompted us to continue driving a mile east so that the object was southwest of our position. It was still bright and appeared to be no more than a half mile from where we had taken the picture.

  Stopping to watch, we hoped we might be able to walk the mile across the field and sneak up on the object for a second time. It was at that point I noticed another object travelling from the north on Little Charlie’s road, heading right for him.

  We couldn’t tell if the object was a car or another ground light. I scrambled to put the camera on the now-folded tripod that we had just taken down moments before. (For those who haven’t shot a camera in pitch-black, think of it as like trying to assemble the whole thing by feel.) As the object passed the east-west mile road, I urged everyone to look for red, since a car driving across the field of vision would have red taillights.

  As the light passed, everyone called out at once that it wasn’t a car but another ground light racing st
raight for Little Charlie. I fumbled to get the camera ready, but there was no time. As the two objects came together, I stopped my struggle with the camera and watched.

  It was an incredible sight — and a vision — that is still as clear to me today as if it had occurred yesterday. As the two lights merged, there was a huge explosion and the intensity of the light increased at least 10 times. However, there was absolutely no noise; it was like watching a film of an atomic bomb going off without the sound. Then the intensity immediately dropped but stayed much higher than normal. By then I was able to get the camera ready and took a picture.

  Bright aftermath of two ground lights colliding on a road.

  We had now experienced two unique sightings one after another, so everyone was excited about walking right up to Little Charlie while he wasn’t looking. The trip across the field, however, wasn’t easy. It was wet and we picked up lots of mud on our shoes. Our progress was very slow, but everyone was determined to finish.

  Just as in the case of driving up to Little Charlie with a car, we didn’t seem to get any closer as we fought our way across the field. When we finally got across, Little Charlie still seemed to be in the next field. We concluded that we might have been looking at a farm light. Disappointment set in, since no one was prepared to hike through yet another muddy field. So we prepared to head back to the car and end our night of searching.

  However, something wasn’t right. We could hear a loud buzzing. Such a sound under a hydro line, where we stood, wasn’t uncommon, but this was particularly piercing. It was like being inside a beehive. Jennette Frost, who lived only a mile east of where we were, had mentioned the intense buzz in connection with the appearance of UFOs. She had had many sightings and had recorded them in a journal.