Meanwhile, the Mutual UFO Network, an international alien-tracking agency, says it has reason to believe the secret behind what everyone is seeing may be more mysterious than expected. Michael Strainic, the network's Canadian director, said sightings have been recently reported in Northern communities as widely separated as Fort Resolution and Resolute Bay. "We have determined that some people have seen a bonafide UFO by definition. But what that UFO is, we don't know," Strainic says in a phone interview from his Vancouver office.

A Resolute Bay scientist who is linked with the network is working on a theory that some of the sightings are the result of American military operations. "The American military is constantly testing gadgets and things without telling anybody what they're doing," Strainic said. Canadian Defence officials have been as mystified by the recent sightings as anyone, an indication Strainic said, that the U.S. didn't bother contacting them before launching an operation. But he cautioned that some of the sightings may never be explained or could be very well alien in nature. "I think what we're seeing here is the beginning of something much bigger."

Busy Season for Aliens
Strainic said this year's Northern night time sightings come on the heels of a British Columbia summer strewn with daylight spaceship sightings and UFO abductions. "We got buried alive with this sort of thing last summer, and so far it looks like there's going to be more of it in 1996. Strainic said what the North is experiencing right now is called a "flap," or a number of similar sightings within a relatively small geographic area over a short period of time. The flap could very well turn into a "wave," an increased number of sightings over a larger area for a sustained period. And strainic said it may get worse before it gets better. "The things we are beginning to hear (about UFO sightings and abductions) are completely off the wall. They almost seem like they're staged events - that something is trying to send us a message through a dramatic display. "The message may already be there for us to decipher, but we may not be mentally able to understand just what that message is yet." In the years leading up to the end of the millennium, he expects sightings to increase - be they legitimate, hoaxes or misperceptions.