THE TRUTH IS OUT THERE

SCIENTISTS AND AMATEUR UFO SPOTTERS ARE CLOSER TO PROVING THAT WE’RE NOT ALONE IN THE UNIVERSE

- Brad Badelt

Jason Guillemette’s memory of the event is hazy around the edges, like a half-forgotten dream. He was 13 at the time, living with his family in the remote Quebec mining town of Cadillac. It was September, around 9 p.m. He remembers being perched on the handlebars of a bicycle, like E.T., while his twin brother pedalled. They were on their way home from a friend’s house when they were suddenly bathed in an intense red light.

“It came from directly above us,” says Guillemette, now 40, fair-haired, bearded and living in Chilliwack, B.C. “My brother stopped the bike right away, and I just remember looking up, because I thought a street-light transformer had blown.” But it wasn’t anything that could be so easily explained.

Hovering some 20 or 30 metres above them, he says, was a school bus–sized spacecraft. It was oblong in shape, with an underside that glowed like an overheated stove element. The ship moved silently, casting a crimson light on the street below. The two brothers stood speechless as it slipped past them and drifted over a row of houses on the horizon. Then it was gone.

In the decades since, Guillemette and his brother have told countless people this story. Some believed them, but most didn’t. Skepticism of aliens runs deep, after all, and for good reason—despite centuries of supposed sightings, there’s never been any conclusive proof that they exist.