Although this story had its start late one evening above a harbor in Nova Scotia, it began for me with a late evening phone call from none other than the good doctor of mystery-Seymour O'Life. Hearing that Shira and I had planned a late summer soirée to Nova Scotia, he was adamant that I do a little research.

            "What's this about, Seymour?" I asked. "The Daily Show is on."

            "Rathjen, I heard you and the lovely one are riding to New Scotland," he replied. "I have only two words to say to you-Shag Harbor."

            He then hung up and left me to wander down to the office to Google "Shag Harbor." Being that it was Seymour, I assumed that Shag Harbor was some sort of Hedo III Resort. Who would have thunk it-gutsy Canadians! But, that was not the case at all. What was the case was the single most important, and more importantly, documented UFO case in Canadian history.

            It began on the night of October, 4 1967, just after 11 p.m., above the tiny fishing village of Shag Harbor, Nova Scotia. An airship of some type, some 60 feet in diameter, was seen flying over the water.

            The craft, which we'll call a UFO simply because no one now knows what it truly was, displayed four bright lights that flashed in sequence, tilted to a 45-degree angle and descended rapidly towards the water's surface. It slammed into the water of Shag Harbor with a deafening roar. Thinking a jet liner had ditched into the harbor locals began to call the Royal Canadian Mounties at nearby Barrington Passage. At this point, nobody was calling it a UFO. Believing it was a commercial airliner, they were only concerned with rescuing any survivors.

            Now the story gets really strange. Arriving at the impact site, they found that the craft had slowly sunk and had completely disappeared, but there was a trail of dense yellow foam that floated with the tide. Neither the Rescue Co-ordination Centre in Halifax nor the nearby NORAD radar facility at Baccaro, Nova Scotia, had any knowledge of missing aircraft, either civilian or military. The Mounties at the site reported that the object had "changed" during its descent to the water's surface, that it changed shape, and that it appeared to be "no known object."

            When questioned later, locals on the scene reported the same details as those of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. Also, a coast guard lifeboat from nearby Clark's Harbour and several local fishing boats were summoned to investigate, but the UFO had submerged before they reached the site. The sulfurous-smelling yellow foam continued to well to the surface from the point where the UFO went down, and a 120 by 300-foot slick developed. Search efforts continued until 3 a.m. and then resumed at first light the next day. Everybody involved was convinced that "something"-that is, something real and unidentified-had gone into the water, but what?

            This is where the story goes from UFO to USO-Unidentified Submerged Object. Suddenly the Canadian Navy cancelled the search. Local residents could not understand why, when so many had seen something slam into the waters.

            Recently declassified government papers revealed a startling story, involving the Canadian, US and Soviet military.

            According to the Canadian and United States military the first craft eventually came to rest a few miles off shore of Shelburne, some 30 miles north. Here it was met by another such craft and after a few hours-with word of this incident flying around military circles world wide-and a dozen or so Navy ships floating above for seven full days keeping an eye on the two submerged crafts, even as divers reported strange beings from the second craft lending assistance to the stricken craft. On the seventh day there was suddenly another variable thrown into the mix with a Soviet submarine coming in to investigate. As the flotilla of Navy ships moved to intercept the sub (this was the height of the Cold War) the two USOs began to move, one towing the other at a rate of speed far faster than the sub or ships above could match and eventually disappeared towards the Gulf of Maine.

            A couple of days, later reports came in of two crafts bursting forth from the Atlantic and disappearing into the sky in a typical-UFO zig-zag pattern.

            What crashed into Shag Harbor? What came to its rescue? Why did they both move off when the Soviet submarine approached? How did hundreds of people, the Canadian, United States and Soviet Navies let these two crafts slip away? How did the most government-documented UFO incident in recent memory slip through the cracks of history?

            For these questions even Doctor O'Life has no answers-it is simply a part of mysterious America ... or Canada as this case shows.