- UFO enthusiasts call it the Surrey corridor -- a three-kilometre-wide
strip of land that runs from New Westminster to the U.S. border, along
BC Hydro's high-voltage power lines.
-
- It is here, they say, where you will find the greatest
concentration of UFO sightings and alien encounters in the province.
-
- "I have received numerous reports from inside this
area, not only of sightings, but abduction events," said Graham Conway,
vice-president of UFO*BC, who said anywhere from one-quarter to one-third
of all Unidentified Flying Object sightings in the Lower Mainland take
place in the corridor.
-
- Last year alone, there were 304 UFO sightings in B.C.,
according to Chris Rutkowski, a UFO researcher in Manitoba who collects
numbers from provincial groups like UFO*BC.
-
- That made B.C. the number one province for UFO sightings
in the country, with more than twice the sightings of second-place Ontario,
which had 150. It was B.C.'s fifth year in top spot.
-
- And UFO*BC is doing its best to keep track of it all.
-
- The nine-year-old organization posts detailed reports
on sightings and abductions on its website, sends out a quarterly newsletter
to its 60 members and even maintains a toll-free hotline where B.C. residents
can report UFO sightings and alien encounters.
-
- It's been more than five years since The X-Files left
Vancouver.
-
- But when it comes to the things that go bump in the night
-- be they aliens, ghosts or Ogopogo -- B.C. seems to have no shortage
of people willing to investigate the unexplained.
-
- In addition to UFO*BC, the province boasts organizations
devoted to the investigation of haunted houses and "cryptozoologists"
who specialize in gathering evidence about beings not yet accepted by science,
like the Sasquatch.
-
- And polls suggest there are a lot of British Columbians
willing to believe in them.
-
- A 2001 poll by Leger Marketing suggests British Columbians
are more likely to believe in aliens than most other Canadians.
-
- In all, more than a third of B.C. residents -- 36.1 per
cent -- said they believed in aliens, more than residents of any other
province except Alberta (40.7 per cent).
-
- And that same poll found B.C. residents were far more
likely to report seeing a ghost, with 10.4 per cent of us saying we'd seen
one, well above the national average of 6.3 per cent.
-
- What makes our belief in the paranormal so surprising
is that, by some measures, British Columbia is a province of non-believers.
-
- The 2001 census found that more than a third of us --
35.9 per cent -- have no religious affiliation at all, more than double
the national average of 16.5 per cent and higher than any other province.
-
- And British Columbians are less likely to believe in
that most self-interested of faiths -- life after death -- than anyone
else in Canada.
-
- The Leger poll found just 53.3 per cent of us believe
in an afterlife, below the national average of 57.4 per cent and lower
than any other region of the country.
-
- While our selective skepticism may seem strange at first,
Barry Beyerstein, a psychology professor at Simon Fraser University, says
it makes a certain degree of sense.
-
- Beyerstein, chairman of the B.C. Skeptics Association,
said our eagerness to believe in aliens and ghosts may reflect a spiritual
hunger in people that is no longer being filled by traditional religions.
-
- "These are substitutes for the more traditional
kinds of religion that many people grow up with," he said. "We've
left behind some of our traditional, spiritual beliefs ... and we're looking
for no-hassle spirituality."
-
- Not surprisingly, those who believe don't see it that
way.
-
- "I like to consider myself skeptical," said
Heather Anderson, director of the B.C. Ghosts and Hauntings Research Society,
a three-year-old organization.
-
- Believing in ghosts, Anderson said, is simply a matter
of looking at the evidence.
-
- Anderson's society collects reports of ghost sightings
and hauntings. And it also carries out its own "investigations".
-
- One of the most elaborate, she said, was into a townhouse
complex near southeast Marine Drive in Vancouver.
-
- According to Anderson, her group received a tip by e-mail
in 2001 that the complex -- which contained about 70 separate homes --
was haunted.
-
- After talking to more people at the complex, she said,
the group found that people in seven separate homes had reported paranormal
activity -- everything from hearing strange sounds to seeing a strange
white presence in photographs.
-
- "We did some research on the land and found out
some amazing things," said Anderson.
-
- A search of the Vancouver city archives turned up a report
about a tree that fell on a buggy in 1889 as it travelled along North Arm
Road, an early incarnation of today's Marine Drive.
-
- Four of the buggy's occupants were crushed to death,
while two survived.
-
- According to a story about the crash that appeared in
the Daily Colonist, many blamed the crash on a man named James Saint, who
lived near the site of the crash.
-
- A few days before, Saint had apparently put burning coals
inside the trunk of the tree -- a popular way at the time of felling trees.
-
- Anderson refused to provide an address for the complex,
saying its owners don't want it publicly identified.
-
- While the Marine Drive complex is one of the most active
hauntings in the Lower Mainland, the haunting hotspot of the Lower Mainland
-- the ghostly equivalent of the Surrey corridor -- is North Burnaby.
-
- "Definitely Burnaby Heights," said Anderson.
"That area just seems to be so incredibly active."
-
- A partial list of Burnaby hauntings on the group's website
includes a "phantom jogger" who appears and disappears in Confederation
Park, nun-like figures seen near Gilmore school at night and the image
of a little boy seen running through the headstones in the Masonic cemetery.
-
- There have also been several reports of hauntings at
Ceperley House, an old mansion in south Burnaby that now houses Burnaby
Art Gallery, Anderson said.
-
- Members of her society were walking in the house's yard
a few years ago when several of them began to feel as if they were being
followed.
-
- Anderson turned around and took a picture of the stairs
behind them.
-
- When the photo was developed, Anderson said, she was
shocked to see a blurry, white figure in the centre of the frame.
-
- "It seems to look like a lady walking down the stairs,"
said Anderson.
-
- In general, as one might expect, the most active areas
for ghost sightings are in the city's oldest areas.
-
- "The old areas seem to be saturated with energy,"
said Anderson. "There are more layers of history. ... [More] opportunities
for tragic things to happen."
-
- AHEAD OF THE CURVE
-
- John Kirk, president of the B.C. Scientific Cryptozoology
Club -- which studies the existence of undocumented animals like the Sasquatch
and Ogopogo -- is adamant that he shouldn't be lumped in with people who
believe in ghosts and aliens.
-
- "We have absolutely no interested in the paranormal
whatsoever," said Kirk. "Our entire investigations are based
on the principles of science. And we have arrived at conclusions rather
than beliefs."
-
- According to Kirk, cryptozoologists are simply ahead
of the curve -- accepting the existence of new species before mainstream
scientists do.
-
- "We approach it completely from a biological [and]
zoological perspective," Kirk said. "And conservation."
-
- Conservation?
-
- "The habitat of the Sasquatch," he said. "It's
incumbent on us to make sure the habitats are secured."
-
- The cryptozoology club was founded 15 years ago by a
group of people including Kirk, a writer, and Paul LeBlond, a retired professor
of oceanography at the University of B.C.
-
- The club is focused primarily on three creatures: Sasquatch,
a hairy, upright animal that has been reportedly spotted across North America;
Ogopogo, a serpent-like animal believed to live in Lake Okanagan; and Cadborosaurus,
a creature like the Ogopogo that members say inhabits the waters around
Vancouver Island.
-
- And while people commonly refer to "the Sasquatch"
or "the Ogopogo", Kirk says all three have been reported for
so long that there must be several of each.
-
- "The story of Ogopogo is 300 years old," said
Kirk. "You have to have a viable breeding population."
-
- While he believes in the existence of all three creatures,
Kirk -- who has written a book called In The Domain of the Lake Monsters
-- says he thinks the evidence for Ogopogo is by far the strongest.
-
- He claims to have seen the beast himself 11 times and
to have interviewed witnesses who claim to have had direct contact with
it -- in one case being lifted straight out of the water.
-
- And Kirk stresses that several people have taken photographs
and video of the monster -- including a Kelowna resident who supposedly
took a lengthy video of the monster last August.
-
- "The evidence for Ogopogo is pretty darn strong,"
he said.
-
- Indeed, Kirk says there is far more evidence for Ogopogo
than for its more well-known cousin, the Loch Ness Monster in Scotland.
-
- "I've been to Loch Ness and I believe that nothing
actually lives there," said Kirk, saying he suspects instead that
people have simply seen "an unknown species of very large eels"
that travel through the lake as a shortcut between ocean waters.
-
- Kirk feels he knows Ogopogo so well that he can give
a reasonable description of what it would look like: anywhere from four
to 25 metres long with a serpentine body and small legs on its front and
back that push it along.
-
- "The front legs do a breast stroke and the rear
legs do a push-off kind of motion," he said.
-
- And somehow -- Kirk says he's not sure exactly how --
it is able to move its body in such a way as to create humps in the water.
-
- "Whether it uses air bladders or whatever ... it's
able to swim in a hump or series of humps," he said.
-
- And while he is less familiar with it, Kirk says the
Sasquatch is a hairy primate that grows to as high as 270-centimetres (nine
feet) tall and weighs about four times as much as the average man.
-
- It also smells really bad -- like rotten eggs, according
to some reports.
-
- The biggest problem cryptozoologists have is explaining
why -- if such large creatures have existed for hundreds of years -- no
one has ever found a dead one, or even a skeleton.
-
- "The acidity of the soils in this province tend
to lead to quick disintegration of remains," said Kirk, saying that
may explain why a Sasquatch has never been found.
-
- As for Ogopogo, Kirk points to the incredible depth of
Lake Okanagan -- where, he says, temperatures drop to just below freezing.
-
- "In that kind of a climate, a carcass is fairly
well preserved and does not deteriorate and float to the surface,"
he said. "They tend to sink down or be suspended in the water column."
-
- DESIGNED TO BELIEVE
-
- Without more convincing evidence, Beyerstein says he
can't believe in things like ghosts, aliens and monsters.
-
- But he understand why other people do: Our brains are
designed to believe.
-
- "There's pretty good evidence from cognitive psychology
that magical thinking is the default mode," said Beyerstein. "That's
kind of the natural way our brains work. We come wired up to believe this
kind of thing."
-
- In part, Beyerstein said, we believe in the supernatural
because it's nice to believe in something larger and more powerful than
ourselves.
-
- "It's comforting to believe that there is justice
in the universe and it's meted out by some supernatural force," he
said.
-
- Ghosts imply an afterlife, he said, which makes death
-- of ourselves or loved ones -- less scary.
-
- And aliens suggest there is a wiser, more advanced society
out there than our own.
-
- The motivation behind beliefs in monsters like Ogopogo
and Sasquatch is more complex, he said.
-
- "Some of it is kind of a chip on the shoulder, wanting
to prove the experts wrong," he said. "[Or that] despite the
fact we've messed up the world and polluted it, there are some creatures
that are too smart for us and keep out of our clutches and ... remind us
that we aren't so smart after all."
-
- A lot of paranormal belief can also be explained simply
by the human mind's desire to find patterns in the world.
-
- Just as many of us see well-defined objects when we look
at clouds in the sky, Beyerstein said, we turn mysterious objects in the
water into a lake monster or the creaks of a house settling into a ghost.
-
- "Our minds are built to make sense out of vague
and indistinct stimuli and we do it all the time," he said. "We're
pattern detectors. ... And we are often so good at doing that that we see
patterns that aren't there."
-
- More difficult to explain are those people who claim
to have had direct contact with paranormal creatures.
-
- Kelowna resident Corina Saebels said she and a friend
were stargazing in a rural area just outside Kelowna around midnight on
July 31, 2003, when they saw a bright green, oval-shaped craft hovering
in the sky.
-
- "At that point, I flashed on the light down the
road ahead of us and there were five sets of eyes staring at us,"
said Saebels.
-
- She and her friend rushed back into her Jeep and drove
home.
-
- Saebels said she recalls the creatures having large,
almond-shaped dark eyes and bulbous heads.
-
- As they were driving back home, Saebels said, she and
her friend looked at the clock and noticed it was several minutes past
1 a.m.
-
- "It would be a little over an hour's missing time,"
said Saebels. "We have no idea what happened. As far as we're concerned,
we were only out there five or six minutes tops and we left."
-
- The day after their experience, Saebels said, her friend
had a round circular burn mark on her back.
-
- Saebels said she had large bruises on her chest and on
one of her feet.
-
- "I've had strange medical things happen ever since,"
she said.
-
- She now runs a support group in the Okanagan for others
who claim to have been abducted by aliens. The group -- about eight people
-- meets once a month, she said.
-
- Saebels said she's no longer in contact with her friend
and wouldn't provide her name or contact details.
-
- Conway of UFO*BC said he's met more than 350 people like
Saebels who claim to have had encounters with aliens or to have been abducted.
-
- "These people are not telling a story to me, they
are reliving a series of events and there is a great deal of emotional
content to what they're telling me," he said.
-
- Beyerstein said he doesn't doubt that the majority of
people who claim to have had encounters with aliens or other creatures
are sincere.
-
- But he said he thinks they are mistaken.
-
- Beyerstein said research into such supposed abductees
indicates few are suffering from severe mental problems -- such as schizophrenia
-- that could cause hallucinations. But he said there is some evidence
that such people have highly suggestible personalities and may be more
prone to waking fantasies, especially when they're sleep-deprived.
-
- "There's a lot of research on what is known as fantasy-prone
personalities -- people who experience what might be called waking dreams,"
he said. "They have such rich fantasy lives and they experience such
visual imagery with all of their senses that they sometimes have trouble
distinguishing episodes of reality from fantasy and they kind of waft back
and forth between them."
-
- Of course, in some cases, explanations for the supernatural
may be more simple.
-
- Elisha Moreno, a spokeswoman with BC Hydro, said high-voltage
power lines -- like the ones along the "Surrey Corridor" where
so many UFO sightings take place -- often give off strange lights, especially
on rainy days or if there is debris on the insulating wires.
-
- "It can be yellow. It can be blue. It can be blue-green,"
she said. "When you have [electricity] travelling at a very high voltage
like that, there is some line loss that takes place. It's a leakage current."
-
- WHAT BRITISH COLUMBIANS BELIEVE:
-
- B.C. residents are less likely to have traditional
- religious beliefs ...
-
- The percentage of people who say they have no
- religious affiliation:
-
- Canada: 16.5%
- B.C.: 35.9%
- Alberta: 23.6%
- Prairies: 17.3%
- Quebec: 5.8%
- Ontario: 16.3%
- Atlantic Provinces: 8.2%
-
- Source: Statistics Canada, 2001 Census
-
- The percentage of people who say they believe in life
- after death:
-
- Canada: 57.4%
- B.C.: 53.3%
- Alberta: 60.0%
- Prairies: 59.6%
- Ontario: 59.6%
- Quebec: 54.0%
- Atlantic Provinces: 59.8%
-
- Source: Leger Marketing Poll, 2001
-
- ...but more likely to believe in some aspects of the
- supernatural.
-
- The percentage of people who say they've seen a ghost:
-
- Canada: 6.3%
- B.C.: 10.4%
- Alberta: 7.1%
- Prairies: 7.7%
- Ontario: 6.8%
- Quebec: 3.2%
- Atlantic provinces: 4.8%
-
- Source: Leger Marketing Poll, 2001
-
- The percentage of people who say they believe in
- aliens:
-
- Canada: 31.5%
- B.C.: 36.1%
- Alberta: 40.7%
- Prairies: 33.0%
- Ontario: 27.1%
- Quebec: 34.2%
- Atlantic provinces: 24.3%
-
- Source: Leger Marketing Poll, 2001
-
- B.C. WEB SITES ABOUT THE SUPERNATURAL:
-
- UFO*BC
- http://www.ufobc.ca/
-
- British Columbia Ghosts and Hauntings Research Society
- http://www.westghosts.org/bc/
-
- British Columbia Scientific Cryptozoology Club
- http://www.cryptosafari.com/bcscc/
-
- B.C. Skeptics Association
- http://www.seercom.com/bcs/index.cgi
-
- © The Vancouver Sun 2004
- http://www.canada.com/vancouver/vancouversun/soundoff/story.
html?id=f80235ab-64c6-4a59-b632-45890135ae0d
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