Page 29 - The 'X' Chronicles Newspaper - September 2021

Alien Fever or Pandemic Boredom? 29

Canadian UFO sightings

are up — but are aliens or

COVID-19 to blame?

Continued from Page 28

In Shag Harbour, N.S. — now the home of The
Shag Harbour Incident Interpretive Centre,
formerly known as the Shag Harbour UFO
Centre — a group of people claimed to have
seen mysterious lights and something falling
into the water.

The town of St. Paul, Alta., also inaugurated a
UFO landing pad in 1967, which seems to have
gone unused so far by spacecraft.

Interest has not waned over time, either; a
Fredericton, N.B. museum is starting an exhibit
this summer dedicated to the work of late
nuclear physicist and ufologist Stanton
Friedman, who was a local resident.

Alien fever or pandemic boredom?

FOs have come back in a big way throughout
the COVID-19 pandemic — but why?

Boredom could be part of it, according to Hayes.

“Over the last year or so, all of the extra interest,
UFO Sightings in 2020 by Province: Newfoundland and Labrador 203; Prince Edward Island
the pandemic has a role to play in that,” he said.
90; Nova Scotia 658; Quebec 3827; Ontario 6,713; Manitoba 1,454; Saskatchewan 869; Alberta
“People are bored, they’re going outside.
2,307; British Columbia 5,199; Yukon 179; Northwest Territories 105; Nunavut 30.
They’re reading these articles that they might
not read otherwise. They have lots of time on
to be hovering overhead. And it’s really a very objects zipping around the skies, most can be
their hands to think about this stuff.”
great mixture of things.” explained. And the ones that can’t be explained
don’t automatically seem to show alien
Interest in UFOs waxes and wanes along with
Rutkowski is a “doubting Thomas” by his own spacecraft. They’re strange, but some of them
pop culture, alien movies and even larger social
admission when it comes to UFO reports, he might eventually have some explanation,”
anxiety, he said. In the 1960s, people fretted
said. “Like most of my colleagues in astronomy, Rutkowksi said.
about the Cold War and possible nuclear
we think that there’s probably life out there
destruction, and so they saw UFOs and told
somewhere, but it’s a long way between here “We can’t automatically assume that the
stories about aliens coming to Earth to save
and some other star.” unidentified UFOs are automatically spacecraft.
We have to just wait for a little more evidence.”
humanity.He thinks the pandemic might be
“Even though we have these reports of unusual []
contributing to a similar anxiety. “People are
always looking to the cosmos for solutions to
these massive problems that we just can’t seem
to solve, and the pandemic certainly seems to be
one of them.”

People are likely looking to the night sky more
often because they’re looking for things to do at
home during the pandemic, Rutkowski said.

“People are fascinated with the night sky.”

“Because they’re looking up, they saw some
things up there that were quite rightly unusual:
satellites or planets that were very, very, very
bright, low down to the horizon. And they seem
to dance around a little bit. So when you see
things like that, you tend to report them,” he
said.

There’s “certainly” a media effect when it comes
to UFOs, he said, but he doesn’t think that social
factors account for everything. “We’re
continuing to get reports from pilots who are
reporting odd lights that are pacing their aircraft.
People are reporting triangular objects that seem