It’s been 45 years since a ‘UFO’ surprised this tiny Labrador outport

Melita Dyson was 18 and working as a nurse’s aid in Black Tickle, Labrador in 1978. She was washing dishes at the nursing station on the evening of Nov. 13 when she saw something strange outside, just as the sun was setting. 

“The beginning part was flat,” Dyson recalled, speaking to CBC News from her home in Happy Valley-Goose Bay.  

“Honest to goodness, it was like a saucer.”

Dyson called over the nurse, Elizabeth McKibbon, who called more people from around the community to take a look.  

In an interview with CBC Radio from 1978, McKibbon said she looked at the object through binoculars and “saw that it was like a bright red, orangey-coloured object that gave off trails,” enshrouded in red light.

A second, larger, saucer-shaped object came into view and connected on top of the first, Dyson said.

They both stayed in the sky for about 40 minutes before leaving into the night.

“That night, after all the buzz and everything else was gone, I said, ‘That was really a UFO. That was really a UFO,'” Dyson said. 

“To this day, I don’t know what happened to it, or it got there, or where it went.”

On the 45th anniversary of the sighting, Dyson and others who saw it maintain something from far away came to Black Tickle that day.

Community connects fire to UFO sighting 

The same day, not long before the objects were spotted in the sky, a fire started at Martin’s Pond. The pond and bog area was the town’s water supply, and also provided a large flat space for planes to land in the winter. 

Richard Neville was 9 at the time. Neville said he remembers seeing the ground still smoldering from the large area that had been burned, along the side of the hill near the bog. 

“It was surreal,” Neville said. “Something fell out of the sky and we could see that it made its mark, you know, and it was very real.”

Dyson said there wasn’t another way a fire could have started, given it was November in Labrador with snow and frost on the ground. 

“Nobody down there camping or nobody down there trying to make a fire,” Dyson said. “Nothing [that] could spontaneously start.”

Cartwright RCMP officers Greg Dorkin and Sidney Elson responded in the days that followed to investigate. RCMP documents obtained by an access to information request show the RCMP asking if a plane could have been in the area, or a satellite could have crashed.

The documents reveal locals voiced concerns about fireballs hitting the ground, but there were no known satellites that re-entered the atmosphere in the area.

RCMP reports show no debris was found in the area of the fire. 

Lost, curious or bakeapples?

Dyson believes the UFO may have gotten lost while looking for a different destination. She said she thinks it was maybe meant to head to the Bermuda Triangle to be with the other mysteries. 

Neville has a different theory — the pilots of the craft were after one of Labrador’s most sought-after berries.

“I know it for sure,” he said. “Bakeapples.” 

Neville remains convinced that something from far away wanted to take a look at humans without drawing too much attention, leading them to an isolated outport in Canada’s frigid north.

“Something landed in our little community of Black Tickle,” he said.

Reports of red lights above Labrador 

Kirby Lethbridge says it’s not the first time locals have spotted odd lights above the Big Land.

Lethbridge says his uncle and cousins were travelling near Cartwright in January a few years before the Black Tickle incident when they saw big swirling lights above them for a few moments before they disappeared. 

“People have reported unusual sightings way, way, way back, and the same as elsewhere in the world,” Lethbridge said. 

The 5 Wing Goose Bay air force base also reported multiple strange lights in the sky, including on June 22, 1953, when a pilot and his radar operator saw a red light flying at an estimated 1,700 miles per hour.

A CBC News report said the flying object eluded the chasing F-94 after five minutes. 

More recently, multiple people in the town of Postville saw strange flying objects in 2008, and a Wabush woman saw unidentified flying objects over the skies on July 1, 2012.

“In my heart, I know that they’re not men. They’re not our military or our people,” Lethbridge said.

“Keep looking up and get some cameras on the night sky.”

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