Dark Object Reviewed

I finally managed to get a copy of Dark Object by Don Ledger and Chris Styles. As far as I know, this is the only book to document, solely The Shag Harbour Incident.

Don Ledger’s 1998, Maritime UFO Files has a good summary of The Shag Harbour Incident, but it’s a real treat to read about this curious case more in depth. Out of all the UFO cases I’ve read about the Shag Harbour one is the one that interests me the most. This particular UFO incident and crash, to my mind seems to be one of the most credible.

The story in brief: On the night of October 4, 1967, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) received reports that an airplane had crashed into the waters off Shag Harbour, Nova Scotia and that strange lights had been seen in the area. The RCMP and some locals rushed to render aide but encountered something that was not a conventional aircraft.

Both the RCMP and the Department of National Defense (DND) seemed to take the matter seriously and treated it as a bonafide UFO crash. Unfortunately, they never came up with any tangible evidence, even after sending divers down to search for this unusual sixty foot object. At least, not according to the official reports that are available at Library and Archives Canada.

I should note that the memo and messages regarding the Shag Harbour incident and related cases in the Shelburne county area all originate from the DND. Strangely there are no traces of the RCMP reports of this sighting in the Library and Archives Canada files.

What crashed and where it went from Shag Harbour or where it ended up remains a mystery almost forty-two years later.

If the basic Shag Harbour story is unusual (and it is) then the story that Ledger and Styles have put forward in Dark Object, is even more so. The additional information about this event that they’ve come up with during their research adds extra depth, and more levels of intrigue to an already strange case.

There were a few minor details that distracted me in the reading of Dark Object. However, these little details could have been caught by a better editing job…Which leads me to the biggest annoyance — namely the insistence of the editor, (Whitley Strieber) spelling Shag Harbour as Shag Harbor. I highly doubt that two Nova Scotian authors would get that spelling wrong.

Overall, I enjoyed reading Dark Object, and felt that the authors presented the incident well. In addition I was pleased to learn about other aspects of the case that I didn’t know about or had only heard in passing. If you’re interested in Canadian UFO incidents then I think that Dark Object is a must for your UFO library.

Dark Object is currently available from:

- Amazon

- Direct from Bantam/Dell / Random House

- The Whirligig Bookshop (That’s where I got my copy — you’ll have to visit them in person.)

- I’ve been told that there will be copies available at the UFO Museum for The Shag Harbour Incident Festival in August.

- You should be able to get Dark Object in from your local bookstore if you ask them as Bantam/Dell / Random House still carries it.