Friday, October 16, 2009

Gathering The Goods On UFOs


The Terrace Standard
by Keith Freeman
Wednesday, October 18, 2000

So you've seen a UFO ? Who are you gonna call ?

Well there is no alien busters, not yet anyway, but there's one man in the Northwest who's spending a lot of time gathering stories and creating a database of sightings and encounters. He's Brian Vike, who in the past few years has been running Houston British Columbia, Canada UFO Research out of his home. And his research just doesn't consist of old filing cabinets stuffed with old newspaper clippings and frantically scrawled out reports either. he's gone to the world wide web and created Northwestern B.C.'s first homemade UFO web site.

Vike, 50, says that the whole moon walk and space program that spawned during his generation's upbringing generated his interest in the UFO question. "You could say I was hooked (after the moon walk)," he said. "I'd like to think we're not alone in the vastness of space." When one hears of so many strange sighting incidents from around the world, then you start to wonder, are we alone ?"

He got his first low powered telescope when he was a teenager in 1969, and the star gazing hasn't stopped to this day. "My day researching the UFO phenomena starts as soon as I wake up," he said. "I head for the computer where there's unusually numerous letters addressed to me, accounts of sightings and reports from all over the world." Vike says he receives reports through e-mail, personal mail, newspapers and TV reports. Vike isn't the only person in the house that does it either. "My wife helps me out a lot with entering information into my database and offers ideas on how to present the information on the web site," he said.

Vike admits he's never actually seen a truly unidentified flying object. "The strange things I've seen in the sky could easily be explained," he said, alluding to things like weather balloons and the ever-increasing number of satellite's orbiting the earth.

The rest of the family, almost inevitably, has also taken an interest in UFOs. "My kids have grown up surrounded by my beliefs and interests and I'm sure some of it has been absorbed by them through the years."

Vike says his goal is to travel the province and gather stories, eventually putting together a book on the Canadian aspect of the phenomenon. One report Vike shared dates back more than 30 years and involves a Lillooet woman and her friend, who's names he protected. The pair were relaxing in the living room of the woman's suite overlooking the Fraser Canyon. While preparing to watch the Dean Martin Show, the lady's friend saw a huge flaming fire-ball through the window hurdling towards them. The object then proceeded to hover above a mountainside spinning, flaring and jerking erratically before receding back into the sky and vanishing. Being a weekend nothing was open and no one else was around who might have seen the same thing. Also, being 1966, the ladies felt rather awkward about reporting the incident to others in the tiny town.

How times have changed. Vike says UFO sightings are more wide spread than ever and the media now plays a crucial role in getting the message out. "I browse the hundreds of online newspapers and television stations from around the world and somewhere you'll find a reporter doing a story on a UFO sighting, or report on what the government may know and are hiding," he said.

There are limits though to how far Vike will go in believing what people report to him. he says, he keeps "an open mind" and has "never brushed off anyone's suggestions of a UFO."

Vike says that those close at hand support him regardless of their own leaning on the issue. "I get a lot of support from family and friends," he said. "Some believe, some don't believe, but it's been interesting hearing of some of the strange occurrences in their lives that are often unexplained."

Have a sighting to share ?

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