Dark Object: The World's Only Government Documented UFO Crash

THE BEGINNING DON LEDGER Every journey has a beginning. This book was begun during a 1995 trip with Chris Styles in his Chevy Blazer. I met Chris after I joined the UFO organization MUFON earlier that year, after reading countless books about the phenomenon. MUFON put me in touch with Chris, who was then the assistant provincial director in Nova Scotia. Chris brought up the subject of Shag Harbor during our first meeting. His enthusiasm for the case was infectious, and over the next few months I found myself being drawn into the investigation. On this sunny day in 1995 I had accompanied Chris to a meeting with the president of Canadian Seabed Research in Porter's Lake, Nova Scotia. I went along as an interested party, and as a possible member of an underwater survey team in Shag Harbor, Nova Scotia, the next summer. There was also another reason, one of convenience. In the weeks prior to this trip, as a fledgling Mutual UFO Network (MUFON) investigator, I had been looking into a UFO sighting by two fourteen-year-old girls one year earlier, on the thirteenth of April, 1994. At the time the sighting had received some attention by the local press and electronic media. One of the girls lived in a suburb of Dartmouth known as Cole Harbor, a community in the same general area as Porter's Lake. During the initial investigation I didn't have my camera with me, and I wanted to photograph the area and get an idea of the location of the sighting. Since the area in question would be just a little out of our way, I asked Chris the night before if he would mind going there on our return trip, and of course he agreed. After the meeting, we arrived at the sighting location around three-thirty in the afternoon. The area was new to Chris. While I took some pictures, he looked around. It was while I had the camera to my eye that he noticed that I was not the only person photographing this spot. There was another car, a black unmarked Nissan, parked farther down the road in this sparsely populated location. Chris observed a man with a camera shooting in our direction, either at us or at the wooded area I was photographing. I glanced toward the vehicle too late to see the other photographer. "Probably a real estate agent," I suggested. "There's a lot of land around here for sale." I continued snapping pictures. The car started and proceeded up the road in our direction. By this time I was busy nailing down a compass bearing. The Nissan passed us and turned left around a corner. The road ended there, and there was only cleared land, with forest after that. "Hey! GRC!" Chris exclaimed. He was referring to the Gendarmerie Royale du Canada, otherwise known as the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, or "Mounties." "What?" I asked, looking up from my compass. "Those guys had GRC shoulder patches on their jackets. I saw them when they went by us." "Are you sure?" I asked. I watched as the vehicle continued down the road to our left, eventually disappearing behind some trees in the thickly wooded area. "Saw them as plain as day," Chris said. "They weren't more than ten feet away when they went by." "Why would they be photographing the same area as me?" I was puzzled. "I'm sure they would have done all of that stuff last year, when the UFO was reported, if they were even interested then." "Could be they were taking pictures of us." "Us ... why us?" I was frankly shocked by his suggestion. "Beats the hell out of me. But I'm less and less surprised by the things that happen in this field, as I get further into it." "Bull!" I snorted. I wasn't ready to buy into that yet. We got back into the truck and began the drive back to the city. Chris continued talking, relati