“The UFO phenomenon frequently appears to exhibit discernible patterns. Specific locations tend to draw these mysterious sightings, often during periods when they become more conspicuous.”
The UFO phenomena frequently appears to occur in phases. There are times when a specific location seems to attract these bizarre anomalies for reasons we can’t possibly understand. One of these instances was a case from Canada that resulted in physical evidence in the shape of a copper disk that appeared to have been left behind by aliens but has never been translated. On occasion, these UFO sighting fads would suddenly shift into the genuinely weird.
Edmonton, located in the Canadian province of Alberta, would witness a number of extremely bizarre occurrences in 1967. On May 8, 1967, at approximately two in the morning, a 14-year-old kid named Ricky Banyard was walking through the Mount Pleasant Cemetery on his way home when he reportedly spotted “a spacecraft” in the sky. It was described as having a spherical form, red and green lights, and rotating top and bottom portions.
A strong white light beam appeared to be scanning the earth below the craft’s bottom like a searchlight. As it moved approached some trees in the graveyard, the youngster ran to get his buddy Glenn Coates. They both observed what was happening. In order to obtain a better look at the item, they made the decision to fetch some binoculars and conceal behind a nearby tree. Banyard would then describe what they had seen:
It was hovering between 200 and 300 feet in the air and emitted a muted whistling sound. From the bottom of it, a white ribbon of light emerged and extended in the form of a rectangle approximately 15 cm above the ground. The earth appeared to be white hot beneath it. The light vanished as I emerged from the woods for a better view, followed by what sounded like a plane taking off. There were perhaps seven or eight blasts before the ship’s lights all went out and it took off.
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The gravel road that meandered through the cemetery had some rectangular-shaped black streaks on it, which they discovered when they examined the location where the light had struck the ground. When news of what Banyard had seen spread, hordes of curious people started flocking to the cemetery every night in an effort to catch a sight of the enigmatic object. Banyard would draw the UFO. A middle-aged couple living close by reported seeing a spherical UFO with red and blue flashing lights on its edges and a beam coming down from beneath it two days after Banyard’s encounter.
Ten days later, Jack Strangman, a 29-year-old school janitor, reported seeing a “whitish, oval-shaped” object lurking over the cemetery. Around the same time, Norman Fibke reported seeing a “really bright, egg-shaped” craft with two pulsing red lights at each end streaking away from the cemetery and into the night. Strange lights were observed in Edmonton’s skies during the summer of that year as a result of this series of sightings, which at the time generated a lot of media attention and discussion. However, it wasn’t until November of that same year that the most bizarre instance of all would come to light.
When an extremely bright red light was seen streaking through the sky over the Saskatchewan River near the Riverside Municipal Golf Course on November 4, 1967, an Italian immigrant living in the neighborhood known only as “L.R.” looked out his window. He had just returned from dinner with friends around 11:30 p.m. He observed as it began to move in the direction of the earth before coming to a stop and hovering in the air. He initially believed it to be a plane, but after realizing that it wasn’t one, he was curious enough to head to the window for a closer look. He could make out that the thing was circular and that it was pulsing with a red light that was so brilliant that it was almost blinding.
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An ethereal blue ring emerged in the air immediately after the bright red light of the unusual item abruptly faded out as it hovered, and it then dropped toward the earth before appearing to disappear as he watched. Then, a smaller light exited from the bottom of the vessel and flew towards the earth. Soon after, another blue ring followed suit. Then, another did the same.
While the bigger vehicle stayed motionless, the smaller item, which seemed to be a silver sphere with a faint violet glow, soared about over the golf course, making a buzzing noise as it went, before appearing to drop on the ground and disappear. After a short while, the light came back on, and the smaller object shot up toward the larger one before vanishing inside of it. The larger object then got brighter and began to pulse violently in red before the craft took off into the distance.
L.R. went outside the following day to investigate the location where he had witnessed the peculiar light display the previous evening. After moving across the golf course, he eventually found the area where, in his estimation, the smaller object had landed. It was a 16-foot-wide circle of flattened grass, and over to the side were several strange holes in the earth. He continued to gaze about the area when he noticed something shining on the grass nearby. When he went to investigate, he discovered a plate made of what appeared to be copper laying there, measuring around 17.3 cm (6.8 inches) broad by 12.5 cm (4.9 inches) high.
There were symbols and designs that looked to be similar to hieroglyphs on its surface, but it was unclear what they meant. L.R. was mesmerized by what he was seeing and picked up the plate to discover that it was incredibly thin—only 1 mm (0.04 inches) thick—before taking it home and studying the odd pictographs on its surface. He was extremely careful not to damage it since he thought it was fairly delicate at this point because he was sure that this plate had originated from one of the ships he had seen.
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After returning home, L.R. pondered his next move and whether he should reveal the identity of the enigmatic plate to anybody. However, he ultimately came to the conclusion that no one would believe him, so he opted to hold onto it and keep it a secret for years. Six years later, he returned to Italy with the weird relic, and somehow news of it reached Il Giornale degli Misteri, an Italian publication that focuses on unsolved mysteries. This attracted a UFO researcher’s notice.
Daniela Giordano, who spoke with L.R. in person, said the following about their correspondence:
I was then a resident in Rome, and after making a few phone calls to the magazine, I was able to get L.R.’s contact information. She was at the time residing in Southern Italy, close to Naples. I called him on the phone as a result. Despite my prodding, he corroborated the account and informed me that he was not interested in studying the plate. It served as his lucky charm, kept in his strongbox, and the attention being paid to his tale was beginning to worry him. Additionally, he wasn’t really interested in UFOs and associated topics. After this talk, I suggested that I only give my buddy who lives closer to his town the duty of snapping a photo of this odd plate.
He concurred, so I had my friend see him. Since then, we haven’t spoken, but I’ve been working in my own time to attempt to make sense of this perplexing plate. I’m not aware of any other researchers that have ever investigated or analyzed this peculiar thing.
The sole known image of the strange item is one that Giordano was able to take of the plate. Years later, Giordano would locate L.R. and learn that he had misplaced the license plate after being stopped by the police on his way to work and having his car and the bag he usually carried with him seized after his car had been struck by an unknown gunfire.
He received his car back a week later, but the license plate was missing, and he would never see it again. Nobody knows where it went, thus the only evidence that it ever existed are L.R. and Giordano’s statements and the photos. The image is accessible here. We are left wondering precisely what was going on in this extremely unusual instance that is connected to other sightings from the same region. Was this purposefully left behind or was it dropped? Was it only a joke? Where did it go and what did it say if it were real? Probably never will we find out.
