Today in UFO History

May 10, 1967 – Edmonton, Canada: 

In May 1967, the skies over Edmonton became the center of a growing UFO craze that had residents staring upward and wondering what, exactly, was flying above them.

The wave of sightings intensified on May 10, when a local couple contacted the Edmonton Journal to report a strange object hovering roughly 500 feet in the air. Nervous about being labeled “kooks,” the witnesses refused to give their names. They described an object flashing red-and-blue lights that drifted away, only to mysteriously return moments later before disappearing again into the darkness. The newspaper quickly sent a photographer to the scene, but whatever had been in the sky was already gone.

By that point, however, Edmonton was already deep in UFO fever.

Just days earlier, 14-year-old Ricky Banyard had shared a chilling account of an encounter near Mount Pleasant Cemetery that captivated the city. Banyard claimed he was walking home before dawn when he spotted a strange object streaking across the sky. When he arrived home, he said the craft reappeared and remained visible for nearly four hours.

According to Banyard, the object looked like a glowing sphere divided into two spinning halves, hovering only a few hundred feet above the ground. Red and green lights pulsed across its surface while it emitted a muffled whistling sound. Then, after several loud explosive-like bangs, the craft suddenly shot skyward and vanished. Banyard even sketched the object in detail, adding fuel to the growing mystery.

The story spread rapidly throughout Edmonton, turning Mount Pleasant Cemetery into a hotspot for late-night UFO watchers hoping to catch a glimpse of something unexplained. Reports soon followed of another strange, egg-shaped object blazing across the sky in the same area.

Although the sightings eventually slowed, the mystery lingered. Later that year, reports of unusual landing marks in a field near Camrose prompted an investigation connected to personnel from CFB Suffield. Investigators admitted the markings were unusual, though they could not determine whether they were authentic or an elaborate hoax.

Decades later, Edmonton would continue to rank among Canada’s most active UFO-reporting cities. In 2015, it recorded the fourth-highest number of sightings in the country. Interest surged again during the pandemic in 2021, when emergency services received a spike in calls about mysterious lights and strange objects in the sky — proof that fascination with the unknown above Edmonton never truly disappeared.