When a Cigar-Shaped Craft Follows You
As told to me by my father in July of 2014.
Date of event: Summer, early 1950s.
Born in Mannville, Alberta, my father had many puzzling experiences in his life. In the summer of 2014, he reminded me about this one. Then in his eighties, he was getting weaker, so I committed this account to memory.
My dad and his father were driving east on Highway 16 near Minburn on a normal day when they noticed a dull black, cigar-shaped craft was pacing them to the north. Dad estimated it was a quarter of a mile in length. They didn’t notice it arrive; it was just suddenly there. Dad said it looked like an airplane without wings or windows. It cruised close to the ground, was silent, and moved too fast to be a dirigible or other hot air craft.
Needless to say, the sight shocked them both. The craft paced them all the way to Mannville which, on 1950’s roads, would’ve taken about fifteen minutes.
Highway 16 went through Mannville at that time, so my dad slowed at the town limit sign. Like most small towns, there were three or four grain elevators along the train tracks. As Dad and Grandpa entered the town, they were on the south side of the elevators, and they converged with the craft which would pass along the north side of the elevators that paralleled the highway. At this point, only a few hundred yards separated their vehicle from the mysterious ship.
They watched the silent black craft as it was eclipsed by the first of the elevators. Expecting it to reappear on the other side, they were shocked when it didn’t. They watched the tail end follow wherever the front had gone. The gigantic craft simply vanished as if it’d flown into a porthole to another dimension, time, or space – perhaps all three. There was no flash of light, no noise, and no indication of where it had gone.
This event was one of my family’s early UFO encounters. It must’ve made an impression on my father, as he referred to it over the years. It remained a puzzle as to how such a monstrous craft could disappear behind a comparatively narrow structure as an old-fashioned grain elevator.
My dad and grandfather discussed it once in a while, but I don’t recall anyone in town witnessing or talking about it. That in itself is a mystery. How could everybody in the entire town or on the highway not see such a huge craft?
Then again, people have told me Mannville has a unique latitude/longitude position on the planet and that the town has an alien connection. I don’t know about that, but maybe there’s a transfer point or porthole there. Who knows? But my dad swore the story was true. He told it the same way every time, and you could see the wonder in his eyes as he relived the event.
Who knows what this was? It’s just another mystery in a universe filled with them.
And, yes, I was born in Mannville too . . .