YARMOUTH, NS – Renowned UFO researcher Chris Styles says when people talk about the 1967 Shag Harbour UFO incident, they’re looking for an ending to the story because the ongoing mystery that’s lingered for 55 years about what took place in southwestern Nova Scotia provides no satisfactory conclusion.
Of course people want to know, what was it?
Over time, he says, some people had concluded that an incident in Shelburne harbour was an ongoing continuation of the Shag Harbour tale.
But Styles says it can’t be because the Shelburne incident happened seven years earlier in 1960.
And he knows more than just that, having doggedly researched this for a long time.
Many answers he was seeking he finally discovered in recent years, although, Styles says, he doesn’t have all of the answers yet.
Like Shag Harbour, it’s been an ongoing mystery – but he feels he’s cracking it.
Styles shared what he’s learned during a UFO expo that was held in Yarmouth in early October – an event that coincided with the anniversary of the Shag Harbour incident.
Learning more about Shelburne
Styles knew from what he’d heard about Shelburne that there was an underwater search. He recalls someone with a diver’s background saying to him in 1993, “You know about Shelburne, right?”
Styles knew of it, but not a lot.
That fellow, now deceased, told Styles if he talked to the right people, the right divers – and if he could get them to talk, which wouldn’t be easy – he’d learn more.
He did track someone down – for the man’s family reasons he refers to him by the pseudonym Harry. He told Styles Shelburne was the real deal, aliens and all.
But he wouldn’t say much more. Styles figured it was because the fellow had talked to his former employer, Maritime Command/Department of National Defence. After all, Harry had a pension to protect.
However standing in this man’s doorway many years ago, the man’s wife – motioning to Styles and another person he had brought with him – said to her husband, “For God’s sakes invite them in. I made sandwiches and coffee.”
They sat around talking about war stories, navy stories. Styles’ dad had served, after all. Eventually, the talk turned to UFOs.
“Shelburne is the real deal,” Harry told them. “We came face to face with aliens under the water.”
Styles listened to the story about how Canadian and U.S. warships had been in the harbour conducting mine sweep exercises. He was told the divers that went into the water saw something.
“(Harry) says they panicked on the ship. He says we kind of went into battle stations … some guys come up so quick, they had to go into the decompression chamber. All hell broke loose.”
While an intriguing story, Styles says it came far from providing him with the answers he was seeking.
Seeking more answers
His research continued.
He ticked off more names on a list of people he wanted to talk to, hoping those people wouldn’t go to their former employer and be told not to say anything.
One fellow on the list lived in Toronto. Styles called him “to get to him before anyone else did.”
He told Styles that whatever Harry said was the truth. And then he said, “Goodbye.”
“No, don’t hang up,” Styles told him.
But the fellow said not to call back.
The years passed, filled with more research, promising leads and dead ends.
“Well, 29 years after that pursuit began, I now have some answers and the real investigation has just begun,” he told those at the UFO convention. This past Dec. 28, he says, was filled with more than just mincemeat and the lingering smell of turkey. After watching some UFO specials and catching up with more reading, he later had a dream. It was about the time his dad had served on the HMCS Cape Scott – a supply ship that also had an eight-bed hospital.
He pulled out his laptop and started researching the Cape Scott. He came across a sentence that changed everything for him. It told him that in October 1960 in Shelburne, the Cape Scott had been part of a NATO naval exercise.
His father passed away in 2011. Were it not for that, the two of them would have now had a very interesting conversation, Styles says.
But he did reference another interesting conversation he once had with a fellow who had been in Shelburne at the time and overheard conversations the divers had.
“Every night it was the same thing,” the fellow told Styles. “They said, ‘we were sitting over UFOs on the seabed and there were aliens in the water.’”
On went the research
As Chris Styles continued to carry out his research, he came across different descriptions of that multi-day naval exercise in Canadian and U.S. versions. One was flowery, the other suggested something more ominous had happened.
It wasn’t easy, but Styles was eventually able to source the Cape Scott’s ship log in which something in particular caught his eye. It was stated the exercise went into DEFCON 1 for three minutes – the highest and most severe state of military readiness.
“You’re on a war footing,” says Styles. “You can fire without clearance. You can defend yourself.”
Styles presentation about his research during the UFO expo was lengthy and this story only skims what he shared.
He intends to write a book about his research so people can learn more.
Shag Harbour revisited
The UFO expo that was held Oct. 1 and 2, meanwhile, also revisited the 1967 Shag Harbour incident in which several eyewitnesses reported seeing a lighted object traveling horizontally in the sky that eventually made a rapid descent into the water.
Many initially thought they had witnessed a plane crash.
However, no debris was ever found.
The weekend expo event included a bus tour to retrace the path of what witnesses saw, including a visit to an area overlooking the crash site.
The expo also featured presentations by renowned UFO researchers including Nick Pope, David Marler, Debbie Ziegelmeyer and Rob Swiatek. While each gave individual presentations, they also participated in a panel Q&A.
Part of the discussion that stemmed from that Q&A pointed to the feeling that the world is due for another significant wide-scale UFO sighting.
“We’re actually overdue for a significant sighting, a mass sighting,” said Marler, noting a difference from sightings decades ago compared to now is a mass sighting would likely be widely captured on video given the number of people who own smartphones.
There was also speculation about what technology could exist ‘out there.’
In a universe nearly 14 billion years old, expo attendees were told, there might be civilizations out there with a billion-year head start on us.
What would that technology look like, if it exists?
No one knows, the researchers said, but they’d love to find out.