So, about a week ago, the home page on UFOs in the NWT joined the World Wide Web. It recounts the latest Northern encounters and links you to information on those within Canada over the past several years. As any fan of the X-Files will tell you, UFOs inevitably lead to government cover-ups. A self-confessed "conspiracy buff," Wasylkiw soon started scouring the Net for stories on some other strange occurances in Northern skies: the crash of a supposedly Soviet space satellite in the 1970s and, a decade before that, of what was reported to be an American spy plane. The results of his Internet research only made Wasylkiw more curious. After posting an inquiry to a UFO newsgroup, which is essentially a forum for discussion by e-mail (on the Usenet sub-network), he received responses from places as far away as the U.K. One of these even proposed a new theory about the mysterious new Northern lights: they're emitted by a super-fast experimental U.S. Air Force helicopter.

"It's such an easy way to communicate," Wasylkiw says of the Internet. The Alberta UFO Research Association would certainly agree - within months of inaugurating their Web site, they received 73 on-line reports of UFO encounters. (Their home page links you to a report form which you can fill out on your computer and e-mail back.) Of course, it's difficult to check the credibility of someone on the other end of a phone line.