This article was published in the daily newspaper The Times & Transcript, of Moncton, New Brunswick, Canada, on January 24, 2004.
January 24, 2004
CHARLES PERRY
Times & Transcript Staff
When Danielle Cormier of Moncton read about a UFO sighting by a couple in northern Kent County in yesterday's Times & Transcript, she had no problem relating to the story.
Not only did she get a first-hand look at the unidentified flying object for approximately 45 minutes, but she had three friends with her to witness the experience.
Danielle, 21, said she and her boyfriend Terry Steeves, along with her best friend Peggy and the latter's then-boyfriend Ed, were leaving Shediac about 11:30 p.m. on a clear summer night last year to drive back to Moncton. She said they were on the ramp heading onto the four-lane highway when she glanced out the window and noticed a "brilliant star" which she thought was the North Star.
Then, suddenly, Ed brought the pick-up truck to a halt and she noticed that her three companions were staring out the window, "looking absolutely stunned, their faces white as though they had just seen a ghost," she said yesterday in an interview.
What she had perceived a few seconds earlier as the North Star was now hovering just above the tree line, characterized by three lights arranged in a triangle, with one on the top and two on the base, said Danielle. Apart from making slight movements up or down or to one side or the other, she said it remained there, "as though it was observing us," for the next 45 minutes.
"We had pulled the truck over to the side of the road, but we were too scared to get out of it," she said. Terry told her that there was no way it was a helicopter or any kind of aircraft he had ever seen before, she added.
The four of them, although "we were terrified," stayed there transfixed on the unidentified object hovering over them above the trees.
"We were scared, intrigued and mesmerized all at the same time," said Danielle. The fact it stayed aloft in basically the same spot was unnerving, she said.
After about 40 to 45 minutes, she said its lights started flashing and it began to move in a "freakish way" and then, gradually descended. Since there were clearings among the trees, she was hoping they might get a good look at it when it landed.
But before it reached the ground, its lights suddenly went out and it disappeared.
Danielle said they checked afterwards at both the Moncton airport and with the Air Traffic Control Centre in Riverview and described what they had seen. They were told that the only aircraft in the Moncton area at that time would have been Fedex and other cargo planes, which did not remotely mirror what they had seen.
Like the married couple reported a UFO sighting last Saturday night near St-Louis-de-Kent and the Caraquet man who witnessed a similar sight the same night, none of the four Moncton witnesses could detect the shape of the aircraft.
And Danielle is not the only family member to witness such an incident.
Her father Yvon Cormier, a baker for the Sobey's at Champlain Place in Dieppe, said about a month and a half ago, he was going in to work about 5:30 a.m. He was arriving when he saw, hovering in the sky above the store, the same three lights, arranged in a triangle, described by his daughter.
Cormier said the craft was making occasional moves up and down or to one side or the other. He said it made a "humming sound" when it moved, "not the kind of noise you would hear coming from an airplane."
"I mentioned it to someone when I went inside, but they just laughed," he said. "So, I just went about my work and made no further mention of it. I did take a look outside about 10 minutes later, but it was gone."
Marge Cormier noted that not long after Danielle's experience in Shediac, she was en route to Memramcook, when she saw the same three lights hovering in the air near the airport. "It was there for about 10 minutes and I was shaking. Then, later Yvon sees it. It is weird that all three of us got to see a UFO in a short period of time."
