The aliens have landed?

From the Archives – Mary Ducharme  (April 2011)

In the Huntingdon Gleaner, August 18, 1954, and in another newspaper called Civilian Saucer Intel- ligence is an unusual report. At 9:30 p.m. on a Saturday, 13-year-old Gabriel Coupal and his younger sibling were out horseback riding when they saw a brightly lighted object follow them to their farm at the Picket Line. It landed and turned black and a figure exited, completely covered with what looked like a shiny black diver suit except for the head. The tall person had large round eyes, and appeared to engage in some repair activity that made a buzzing sound with a tool that looked like a machine gun. The boys galloped home in a panic and the object rose, passed close by them, and landed again near the horse barn. It had a black cable and something square hanging from it. Three men were walking around it.

Mrs. Coupal telephoned Charles Petch to get an- other witness while Mr. Coupal and his oldest son went to the field where they saw the object, now red-orange in color, rise from the ground and speed off to the west. By then it was getting dark, but other local people were trying to follow the course of the saucer in the air as it travelled slowly about eye level in the distance. It emitted a noise like that of cutting grass. It appeared the thing had risen straight up, for there was no space for a normal take-off like an airplane. The grass was flattened down over a 15-meter area, with two tracks about five meters long.

Someone must have reported the incident because on Monday, an article appeared about the incident in The Montreal Gazette, commenting that Ottawa had not noted any strange aircraft on their radar screens. Theories flew about what it might be, from a meteor to an experimental aircraft, to overactive imaginations, but the mystery was never solved. Nonetheless, the Hemmingford UFO is now part of world-wide data files, reports and statistics about unexplained objects and possible extra-terrestrial visits.