Two Veteran Halifax Police officers describe their black triangle UFO encounter

Summary

UFO Talker Podcast: "Two Veteran Halifax Police Constables Describe Their Black Triangle UFO Encounter"

Episode Date: July 22, 2026
Host: Michael Ryan
Guests: Rick Prescott (retired Halifax police constable, former US Marine) & Rob Furlong (retired Halifax police constable, forensics and CBRN specialist)
Location of Sighting: Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, Canada (Halifax-Dartmouth Basin)
Year of Sighting: 1997

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Episode Overview

This standout episode features two retired Halifax police constables, Rick Prescott and Rob Furlong, who recount their extraordinary and meticulously detailed sighting of a massive, silent, black triangular UFO over Halifax in 1997. Their firsthand account is set against the backdrop of their heavy policing experience and their deep familiarity with night skies and aircraft in the region―making their testimony particularly compelling. The episode also touches on other local and personal sightings, the stigma faced by witnesses, and broader reflections on unexplained aerial phenomena.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Setting the Scene: Halifax Policing in the 1990s

[11:29 – 15:28]

• Halifax in the 1990s was made up of three municipalities: Halifax, Dartmouth, Bedford, each with its own police force.
• Both guests worked in Dartmouth, a vibrant, busy city on the harbor’s North End, with highly trained, close-knit policing teams.
• Police shift culture included constant patrolling, responding to a wide range of calls, and briefly regrouping to share information and decompress.

Quote:
"It was a constant, fluid set of policing. And when it did get quiet, we would patrol. I don’t think there was a street in the city of Dartmouth that wasn’t covered at least once during the night." — Rick Prescott [13:48]

2. Background on the Sightings Location

[15:28 – 16:13]

• Nova Scotia described as just east of Maine; the Dartmouth site was beneath major transatlantic and American flight paths.
• The encounter location was an open field in Burnside Industrial Park, secluded and dark, with unbeatable visibility of the sky.

3. The Sighting: Event Breakdown

[16:31 – 33:45]

A. The Night & Initial Observation

• A quiet, starry post-midnight shift—unusually calm after a busy start.
• Rick and Rob stationed door-to-door in their patrol cars, relaxing with coffee and tea, when Rick first noticed “something moving incredibly slow across the sky.”

B. Description of the UFO

• Shape: Triangular, massive, metallic—“You could tell it was the real deal. It was something tangible.” [22:11]
• Size: “You could have put three or four 747s in it… it was massive.” [21:54]
  • At arm’s length, it spanned the width of two fingers, giving a rough sense of scale. [24:02]
• Sound: Absolutely silent—no noise, no sign of propulsion, no contrails, no blinking lights as with conventional aircraft.
• Movement: Drifted incredibly slowly (“almost at a hover”) across the sky without dropping altitude, an impossible feat for known aircraft. [26:27]
• Lighting: At least one point of the triangle had a small square of light, possibly a cockpit or window. [27:59]
• Color: Only barely distinguishable from the night sky—“a shade lighter.” [23:37]
• Duration: Several minutes—long enough for conversation and phone calls to dispatch.

Quotes:
"I could see the stars disappearing behind it... this was a pretty good-sized mass. It was not a cloud... it was a triangular shape, you could tell it was metallic..." — Rick Prescott [22:11]
"This thing was traveling so slow that a mass the size of an airplane would simply drop out of the sky." — Rick Prescott [26:27]
"There was a small square kind of light, and it looked to me like a window... it looked like a cockpit lit up inside." — Rick Prescott [27:59]

C. Attempted Verification

• Rick called dispatch and had them check with Halifax International Airport and Shearwater Military Base. Both replied that nothing was showing on radar over the area.
• Considered getting others to look, but hesitated due to fear of ridicule and professional blowback.

Quote:
"We called... dispatch... asked them to see if they have anything on radar... and they came back, 'No, there's nothing.'" — Rick Prescott [31:13]

D. Stigma and Silence

• Both officers decided not to tell colleagues at the time, aware of the intense skepticism and possible jokes or ostracism within police culture.

Quote:
"No way that I'm going to go up to one of our fellow officers and say, hey, man, you're not going to believe what we saw last night... I can just see it now with the group you work with... we'd never hear the end of it." — Rick Prescott [33:16 - 33:43]

4. Reflection: What Was It?

[34:23 – 39:30]

• Rick: After years of consideration, convinced it wasn’t any known military or civilian craft, calling it “not of this earth.”
• Rob: Initially speculated on possible classified technologies, but thinks it would have become public knowledge by now. Leans toward an extraordinary explanation; “I just can’t explain it.”

Quotes:
"What we had seen is not... anything that is at least known in the military circles... I don't think it's of this earth. I still hold that conclusion to this very day." — Rick Prescott [34:23]
"If it's from here... by now that would have come out... So maybe it's not from here." — Rob Furlong [36:41]

5. Connections to Other Sightings

[39:30 – 44:33]

• Rick draws a parallel to the famous Phoenix Lights (1997, Arizona) and other triangle sightings worldwide.
• Host Michael Ryan mentions similar triangles in the Maritime provinces, including an identical sighting by US soldier David Marceau in Gagetown, NB.
• Rob reveals a previous sighting in Kentville (1985) of a fast, bright light making a right-angle turn—never reported due to the same stigma.
• Rob also shares a thirdhand sighting from the 1970s: a Dartmouth couple witnessed a “Tic Tac”-shaped object over water that dove and disappeared, then heard from Shearwater Air Base that, “we don’t know, but we’re seeing a lot of them.”

Quote:
"He called his friend who worked at the base... and the base commander said, 'We don't know, but we're seeing a lot of them.'" — Rob Furlong [45:26]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “This thing was traveling so slow that a mass the size of an airplane would simply drop out of the sky.” — Rick Prescott [26:27]
• “There was no means of propulsion, and it was simply occupying space and moving at a very slow rate of speed that would have been impossible for any type of an aircraft to do.” — Rick Prescott [26:35]
• “You could have put three or four 747s in it... that was a good description.” — Rob Furlong [24:49]
• “What I saw was—I hate to say this—I don’t think it’s of this earth.” — Rick Prescott [34:23]
• “Where do you hide it? Where do you launch it? How do you stay in the dark with this? I, I don’t know. I just can’t explain it.” — Rob Furlong [37:07]

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Important Timestamps

• [11:05] — Guests introduced; background on both constables
• [16:31] — Sighting starts: how the event unfolded
• [22:11] — Detailed shape, size, and behavior description
• [26:27] — Discussion of movement and physical impossibility
• [27:59] — Description of lights/windows on craft
• [30:09] — Airport and military base confirmation: nothing on radar
• [33:16] — Discussion of stigma, reasons for silence
• [34:23] — Reflections: “not of this earth”
• [39:30] — Host puts sighting in context of regional, global phenomena
• [42:17] — Rob details previous sighting (1985, Kentville)
• [43:32] — Thirdhand “Tic Tac” over water, 1970s: transcript of military response

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Tone & Original Language

• The conversation is candid, sometimes humorous, but always careful and analytic—typical of veteran police officers trained to observe, corroborate, and document.
• Both guests remain open-minded but cautious, taking pains to emphasize what they know, what they observed, and what remains unexplainable—eschewing speculative leaps.

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Additional Segments (Content-Only)

Brief Reading: 1958 Indiana Train UFO Encounter

[07:23 – 10:04]
A dramatized reading of a historical 1958 US railroad crew's extended encounter with four UFOs—highlights the persistence and mystery of UFO phenomena through decades.

Audio Excerpt: Canadian Government & UFO Research

[46:16 – 53:01]
An excerpt from Matthew Hayes’s “Search for the Unknown” describes Project Magnet, Canada’s early postwar efforts to investigate UFO technology from a scientific and potential aviation standpoint.

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Summary

This episode delivers a rare, plainly presented, and highly credible account of a black triangle UFO, as seen by two trained police observers who hid their story for years due to fear of ridicule. Their systematic steps to seek official confirmation—and find none—underscore the ongoing enigma of such sightings. Their reflections, the connection to other regional and global incidents, and the willingness to revisit their own skepticism make for an engaging, impactful listen.

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For further reading on similar cases or to contact the show, listeners should visit ufotalker.ca or email [e-mail].

Transcript

[Michael Ryan]

Hi everybody, this is Michael Ryan. We are on summer hiatus, but for the rest of the summer we are going to play the Best of UFO Talker Podcast. So enjoy today's episode and as always, if you have a question or comment or something you would like to say to us, send your email to ufotalkerell.net. You are listening to the UFO Talker podcast. Come with us as we explore UFOs from the past and the present. With insightful discussions, interviews and reviews, we will add our voice to the mysteries that have been seen in our skies

[Rick Prescott]

and oceans for all of human history.

[Michael Ryan]

Now, here is our host, Michael Ryan. Welcome everybody to the podcast. This is season two, episode ten, coming to you from Studio 7H here in Ontario, Canada. On today's episode, I have two retired Halifax police constables who talk about their sighting of a large black triangle ufo. It is very interesting. I want to point out a mistake I kept making in the interview and that was I was calling Rick Prescott and Rob Furlong police officers. So, you know, this has something to do with my upbringing in the US And a lot of American TV watched here in Canada over the years. So I kept referring to them as police officers, wherein I think in almost every jurisdiction in Canada, police officers are actually police constables. So forgive me for that error and I will try to do better in the future on that. Also on today's episode, we start our brand new audio excerpts from UFO books. And that segment will always be the last segment at the end of the show, so I would really like to hear what everyone thinks of that. We'll be reading approximately about five minutes from each of our audio excerpts so you can get a taste of the book. And the first book will be the Matthew Hayes book, which is Search for the Unknown Canada's UFO Files on the Rise of Conspiracy Theory. Also, I have something a little bit different than normal. If you have been looking at a lot of the UFO Facebook forms, you've probably seen this ad for UFO Christmas ornaments. And I think there's about 30 of them all together and they're all different UFOs from all different cases throughout history. So it is pretty unique. And they look like they're fairly well made. And so I hooked up with the guy who produces these and he is giving all of the UFO talker listeners a 25% discount. So I will have his website in the show notes where you can link up to that and all you have to do is put in the code the word UFO talker, all capitalized and all one word, no spaces and you'll get 25% off. So that's pretty neat. Each saucer represents a fairly famous sighting. And also I want to talk about Arrow, which is the all domain Anomaly Resolution Office in the us and so now they're taking reports from current or former US government employees, service members or contract personnel with direct knowledge of US government programs or activities related to UAP dating back to 1945. Wow. So we shall see what that produces. It's an interesting site. Also they have a few other things on there where they have a breakdown of all the UFO reports from I think 1996 and the different shapes that have been cited. So that. So that's definitely of interest. So you have to be a bit careful where you click this link because there also is an arrow CA. So the one I'm talking about is arrow.mill mil but right below it there's another one, arrow CA. So if you don't look too carefully, you could click on the wrong one. Arrow CA is the automotive aftermarket retailers of Ontario. So that's where I reside. So yeah, not the Arrow that we are interested on this program. Also, I just want to mention the Artemis Accords. So that is something that was started by the US government and NASA and it's basically setting up parameters for the peaceful use of the moon, Mars and other astronomical objects. Kind of like a guideline of how everyone should behave in outer space. And I guess the emphasis is on the peaceful use of the moon and Mars and everything above us. So so far 31 countries have signed in one territory and just recently Iceland and the Netherlands just signed. But there's a lot of major countries have signed it also. And for all of those who may have missed it, I mentioned on last week's episode that I have started a companion blog to go along with the podcast. So how you can read that is to go to my website at ufotalker CA and in the upper right you will find the blog. So click that on and it will take you to the most current blog that is there. So I hope you go there and I hope you read it. There will be many more to come in the coming weeks. And on my shout out to listeners today, I want to give a shout out to the Eskazoni first nations reservation. And that is on the eastern part of Cape Breton Island. So this is the first time I wasn't able to find much information out about the Eskazoni First Nations. But the little I saw, it looks like it's an incredible spot and has a population of 4,675 people. As always, I'd love to hear from the Escazoni first nations and maybe you can tell me a little bit more about this area and whether you're at the Escazoni first nations or anywhere else in the world that listens to UFO Talker, I would love to hear from you. So drop me a line at ufotalker. We will be right back after this message.

[Narrator/Reader]

The date was October 3, 1958. The place was North Central Indiana. At 3:20am, Monan Diesel Locomotive Number 91 was speeding by the WASCO intersection. The Locomotive was pulling 56 freight cars. It was a cool night with the temperature around 40 degrees Fahrenheit. Visibility was over 13 miles. In the cab of the locomotive was engineer Harry Ekman, fireman Cecil Bridge, and head brakeman Morris Ott. In the caboose was conductor Ed Robinson and flagman Paul Sosby. Fireman Cecil Bridge had just poured himself a strong cup of coffee from his third when he noticed four big white lights in the sky about a half mile in front of the train. He pointed them out to engineer Ekman and Morris Ott, but almost as quickly as they had noticed them, the lights shot off to the east and disappeared. Within a few moments the four lights came back. This time they got on the intercom and asked Ed Robinson and Paul Sosby if they could see anything. Ed Robinson, who was sitting in the cupola, could see all four of them. They were about 200ft above the train and they were flying toward the caboose. Ed Robinson and Paul Sosby estimated their size to be 40ft in diameter and 10ft thick. For a while, the four UFOs were following the caboose. In the caboose they had a five cell sealed beam flashlight that could throw its beam forward quite a distance. Whenever the flashlight beam would hit the UFOs, they quickly moved out of the way of the beam. After a while, they stayed beyond the beam's light. The four UFOs followed the train for over an hour and ten minutes. When the train stopped in Frankfort, Indiana, the UFOs seemed to land on the tracks about a mile behind the caboose. Dr. James McDonald and Frank Edwards were to investigate and interview the men about their encounter. Harry Ekman, Cecil Bridge, Morris Ott, Ed Robinson and Paul Sosby never did find out exactly what they saw that night. It was a mystery that remained for the rest of their lives.

[Michael Ryan]

On today's episode, I have two guests. Rick Prescott was a U.S. marine. For six years, he served as an instructor and also in the Marine Embassy Guard program at embassies around the world. In 1986, he joined the Dartmouth Nova Scotia Police Service, which later became the Halifax Regional Police Service, where He served for 15 years. He has a bachelor degree from St. Mary's University in Halifax. Rob Furlong joined the Kentville police in 1985, then the Dartmouth Police, and then the Halifax Police Service, where He served for 28 years, first as a patrol officer, and then in the Forensic identification unit, and then the explosive Disposal unit, and then in the chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear protection unit. He then traveled and taught his CBRN skills until he retired in 2016. Gentlemen, welcome to the podcast.

[Rob Furlong]

Thanks for having us.

[Rick Prescott]

Yep, thanks. Thanks so much.

[Michael Ryan]

And so I guess the first thing I. Before we get into your sighting, which is an incredible sighting, I, I just want to get a feel for what you guys. So you saw this in 1997. I just want to get a feel for what Halifax was like to you guys in 1997. What was it?

[Rob Furlong]

Well, back in Halifax, in the 90s, well, and before, there were basically three cities, Halifax, Dartmouth and Bedford surrounding the basin. And we worked every. All three cities had their own police department. Rick and I worked in the Dartmouth on this side of the harbor. And it was. There was a town on this side, probably about 68, 70,000 people at most. And the. And the police department was about 125, 235 over those years of members. And so we were attached to our patrol shift, Rick and I. They were called platoons then. And there was probably 21 of us, all constables except for a corporal sergeant and an inspector. And we were in charge of this side of the harbor because this was our city and our police department. The city was broken up into zones. And Rick would have had his own, and I would have had his own. We're in the North End of Dartmouth, and that's kind of how we policed then.

[Michael Ryan]

And Rick, what were your observations of living in that part of Halifax then?

[Rick Prescott]

Well, as Rob said, we primarily lived and worked on the Dartmouth side of the bridge. And being, you know, working in the North End, it was a. The Dartmouth in general was even at that time, a very vibrant community, had awesome leadership as far as the mayorality was concerned. The city staff, the policing staff was pretty solid. You know, the training of the officers, the experience of the officers that patrol the streets was just absolutely phenomenal. Very tight group. We had our. Our share of crime. We would have our busy times. The Day or night, and it would get, you know, busier on night shifts during the weekends, just as you can anticipate. And so we had every type of call imaginable and many of which, most of which were, you know, pretty frivolous, the, you know, little disputes here and there and. And just negotiating the peace and this and that, but we were pretty busy. Was a very busy department. I. My recollection is that we probably answered 8 to 15 calls during a night shift. Maybe that's a little high, but that's my recollection. And many of them were really easy to clear, a little notebook kind of thing. But a few of them out of that number would require a larger dialogue in terms of a report, and several of those would end up with. With criminal charges or something along those lines where we'd have to do some paperwork and put a person in cells and this and that. So it was very busy. We were all, you know, backing each other up for traffic stops. You know, how do you describe it? It just. It was a constant, fluid set of policing. And when it did get quiet, we would patrol. I don't think there was a street in the city of Dartmouth that wasn't covered at least once during the night when someone's through it and anticipating and looking for trouble, if you will. So somebody once said that to me. He goes, you're looking for trouble? Yeah, that's exactly what I do. I'm looking around to see who's causing it. And. And we would show the flag, so to speak, so that that police unit with the police written on the side of the door would be a deterrence to crime. So that's. That's what we did. That's what we did for a living.

[Michael Ryan]

Now, just because I have a lot of u. S. Listeners and actually a lot of listeners around the world, but just so we can kind of pin this down. So Nova Scotia is slightly east of Maine. It's. It's not that far. What is it, two or 300 miles off the coast of Maine? Something like that.

[Rob Furlong]

Yeah, we border with Maine. New brunswick is another province that's in between us and. And Maine, but primarily it's a big peninsula that's right on the ocean and

[Michael Ryan]

kind of where you had this sighting. So it was in the. The Halifax Dartmouth basin, I guess it is there. And you were slightly north of the Murray McKay Bridge in that general area?

[Rob Furlong]

Yeah, that's correct. We're on a main flight path from mainly the states to europe, so we see a lot of planes and stuff going over at night because that's the main time they fly to Europe.

[Michael Ryan]

So if you could, Rob or Rick, could you tell us about just set up how you saw what you saw like the slightly prior to what you were doing slightly prior to the event and then continue on to talk about what you saw.

[Rob Furlong]

Sure, go ahead, Rick.

[Rick Prescott]

Well, it was a clear night and an amazing. One thing about Nova Scotia, in that particular area you can have a starry night and it's almost like being in Alaska in some ways it's not quite as vibrant as Alaska. You can see the Milky Way there but. But here you can see thousands and thousands of stars. I mean it's beautiful. And where that particular evening, I would suggest to you that was very busy from the onset of our shift and for some reason about 12:31 o' clock in the morning, the tap turned off and we weren't answering a whole bunch of calls, going, jumping from call to call as we did earlier in that evening. So we did what we do. A lot of people, they like to laugh at police officers because they get together with a coffee or what. Well, that's the benefit of that is that we gained a lot of intelligence in terms of what's going on. We know who's who, who's doing the crimes, etc. But in the same token it gave us a little reprieve and gave us some time to settle down and so on. So Rob and I, in that particular case, we got together over in the area of Burnside Industrial park and I would say that on the, the Highway 111 side of the park, just about the area where turns off to get onto the Victoria Road area which takes you into the right Wright's Cove area and so on in that, right around that bend, if you will, if you're looking at a map, there's a field and it was like an open field. I think it's probably governed mostly by the Nova Scotia Power Corporation because the power lines came right through there and. But there was a pathway and the only pathway was in there was for the Nova Scotia Power Corporation personnel. Well, we drove up in there. One, because you're away from anybody, you're not going to get snuck up on or something of this nature. We're in the middle of a field, we can see what's going on around us. We're pretty secure. Two, we're in an area where if we do get a call, we're out of there within seconds and on the road and we're still three to four minutes away. From where we need to go anywhere in our. In our zones. So anyway, we get together off to. I would say the way we were positioned off to my left, I could see the. Over my left shoulder, the a.m. murray McKay Bridge. I can see the Halifax harbor, actually, the Bedford Basin off to my left. And looking at the lights going across on the other side, where it's all vibrantly lit and lit up from the Halifax side, I can see Fairview, I can see the Bedford Basin clearly, the traffic down below, etc. And you can see the McKay Bridge and so on. So it was, you know, he had a pretty good vantage point, but in the same token, it was nice and dark where we were too. So anyway, we're sitting there, car to car, driver drawer to driver door with a cup of coffee, and I reached across, gave. I think Rob might have been drinking a tea at the time.

[Rob Furlong]

I was.

[Rick Prescott]

Was it tea that you were drinking?

[Rob Furlong]

Yeah, yeah.

[Rick Prescott]

So chamomile. So that was his favorite. So I gave him his coffee, and we started shooting the breeze. And we did what we normally do. We're cracking jokes back and forth and teasing each other and just shooting a breeze. So carry on with that, Rob. See what you have to see what your memory is.

[Rob Furlong]

No, that's. That's very accurate. It's up high and you can see all around and. And we blended into the darkness. They were just a great spot to park and relax a little bit, to take a break after all the calls. And as Rick said, we were door to door and talking and laughing and. Mr. It was late at night. I don't know, it was after one, maybe two or somewhere around there, three even. I can't remember the exact time. But Rick, kind of right out of the blue, I saw him looking out his driver's door window up into the sky, and he said, what's that? So I look up and I looked around, and I didn't see anything. And I said, what? Where? And he goes, right there. Look, you can. You can see it. You have to look. There's like three white points, like stars, but it's slowly moving along. And I could watch where he was pointing, and I could see what he was talking about. Now, for me, police are pretty trained observers, and, you know, they're good witnesses. But even civilian witnesses, everybody can see the same thing, and their version may be slightly different. So Rick might be slightly different than mine because when we go to court, five witnesses observe a stabbing or something, and they all say something just slightly different. A black coat or a dark Blue coat or whatever, what have you. But I recall looking up and seeing these three white points moving slowly, fairly directly over our car, moving like in a northeast direction, but very slow. And it seemed very huge to me. Similar to like you could put three or four 747s in it.

[Rick Prescott]

It was.

[Rob Furlong]

It was quite huge. And that's a fair distance.

[Michael Ryan]

Like if you. So if you had to hold something at arm's length and that would have covered roughly the same area, what size of object would it be that you would hold?

[Rob Furlong]

I recall it being about like an inch, inch and a half. What about you, Rick?

[Rick Prescott]

You know, when. When what I observed was that I looked off over the Fairview area. So on the ground it was lit up and up. Up above, that was an incredibly starry night. And all I. I can recall seeing something move incredibly slow across the sky. And I couldn't get. I couldn't gather to see what. What the heck it was, at least at that point. But I could see the stars disappearing behind it. And from that point of view, I can see that. That this was a pretty good sized mass. It was not a cloud because it wasn't a cloud in the sky. It wasn't an airplane because they have landing lights and. Or blinking lights and everything else on it. This was a triangular shape. You could tell it was metallic. You could tell it was a real deal. It was. It was something tangible. It wasn't a smoke or anything of this nature. So when. When I mentioned that to Rob, he kind of giggled at me at first. And I remember pulling my car back a little bit, getting out of the car, come over, take a peek at this. Look at that. Look. And I was pointing at it. And then that smirk on his face kind of turned into an awe, just like I was. He goes. And I said, what the heck is that? He goes, I don't have a clue.

[Rob Furlong]

It's like a shade lighter than the sky.

[Rick Prescott]

It was so close.

[Rob Furlong]

Just a shade lighter.

[Rick Prescott]

Yeah.

[Michael Ryan]

And so what I'm. What I'm trying to find out is like if. If you held a football in your arm at arm's length, would that be the size or it's a baseball or.

[Rick Prescott]

Well, this thing seemed to me to be quite a distance away. Like I said, from our perspective, go across the Halifax or. Sorry, the Bedford Basin. What is that, a mile and a half, two miles?

[Rob Furlong]

Yes.

[Rick Prescott]

You know, and wide. And then you have the. The Fairview area. This thing was above Fairview at the time. And from my perspective, I would say that if you took Your thumbnail and, and maybe, I would say maybe two fingers. If you took two fingers and the width of that encompassed that size in the sky at arm's length.

[Michael Ryan]

Wow. So that's a fair. That's a fair size.

[Rick Prescott]

Yeah. It was huge. It was massive.

[Rob Furlong]

Yeah.

[Rick Prescott]

You know, and, and Rob said, hey, I think it's a couple of hundred yards wide. I'm thinking, no, that's a quarter mile wide. But it's a difficult perspective, particularly during the night.

[Michael Ryan]

And there was. Was there any sound?

[Rick Prescott]

Not a bit.

[Rob Furlong]

Yeah, not any sound. You're right, Rick. I would say you could have put like three or four 747s into that triangle.

[Rick Prescott]

Absolutely.

[Rob Furlong]

That.

[Rick Prescott]

That was a good description there too, because that was a. Those are very large aircraft and this thing was, was incredibly huge, so there was no missing it. And, and from one perspective, like Rob mentioned, this is a. A flight line area from most of the aircraft that go across from Europe from Heathrow Airport, flying in Gander, Newfoundland. They fly right over Halifax to go to New York and New Jersey or wherever they're going. And, and you know, this is their flight line and Halifax flights coming in from Boston and so on. And we, we knew these, we knew these planes very well. We saw them, hundreds of planes throughout, you know, the evening. This is a flight line and this thing was definitely a hazard. You could look at it from that perspective. This was a navigational hazard for aircraft.

[Michael Ryan]

And there was. And there was no, no sound

[Rick Prescott]

at all.

[Michael Ryan]

So had, had that been a commercial jetliner, you pro. You have heard that sound before and it would have had at least some noise if it had been a.

[Rob Furlong]

We've seen everything fly over here and even today there's a lot flies. I've seen B1s and B2s and I've. I've watched them get refueling off the south coast here on their way to Europe from an air tanker, and it was nothing like that.

[Rick Prescott]

Nothing.

[Michael Ryan]

And how was it traveling the way a plane would travel or slower or super slow?

[Rick Prescott]

This thing was traveling so slow that a mass the size of an airplane would simply drop out of the sky.

[Rob Furlong]

Yeah, I agree.

[Rick Prescott]

So, and I do know that, that, you know, there's some perspectives where you can. Where, you know, I've seen this flying aircraft, when I'm in an airplane and flying around another aircraft, when you're coming around in a certain angle, it looks like it's sitting in the sky, you know, at this. But that's when you're moving and that's when it's moving at the same time. And you're, you know, the dynamics of what you can see is. Is. Is manipulating your perspective, your. Your perceptions. This wasn't one of those. We were sitting in a stationary position, and we were watching a craft that was actually moving, but moving so slow, with no sound, no contrail, no means of propulsion, and it was simply occupying space and moving at a very slow rate of speed that would have been impossible for any type of an aircraft to do. So it wasn't a helicopter. It wasn't. Because we would have heard the blades, and it wasn't not the normal things that we would see or appreciate when we're looking at aircraft flying across the sky. This thing was an amazing piece of equipment that made no sound. It was impossible for it to be able to do what it was doing.

[Michael Ryan]

Now, Rob. I mean, Rob mentioned he saw lights on the craft. Rick, did you see lights on the craft?

[Rick Prescott]

I remember seeing a. On the point of one of the. The tips.

[Rob Furlong]

Yeah.

[Rick Prescott]

There was a small square kind of light, and it looked to me like a window. It looked like a cockpit lit up inside. That's what. That's what I get. That's what I thought.

[Rob Furlong]

Yeah.

[Rick Prescott]

That was my interpretation of it.

[Rob Furlong]

The points I could see were emanating light, like there was no reflection off it at all, but they just stayed right on the point. And. And it was. Something was illuminated there for sure.

[Michael Ryan]

And from the time that you first saw it till the time that you could no longer see it, how long a period was that?

[Rick Prescott]

Oh, my. Minutes.

[Michael Ryan]

Oh, really? Okay, so it wasn't like a quick.

[Rick Prescott]

No, this wasn't a quick little glance, and this thing flew across the sky. We had conversation.

[Michael Ryan]

Wow.

[Rick Prescott]

And so at that, after we watched this for a good, I don't know, 30 seconds to try to take this in and to try to interpret, you know, we're asking each other questions like, what is that? I don't know what. That's not. What is if. We were just going back and forth. So I got on the old, what we call the shoe phone at the time, those great big cell phones. We both had them, and. And we called one of the girls in dispatch, not at liberty to mention her name, but because I don't have her permission. But I called her on the phone and I said, hey, do me a favor, Call the Halifax airport. And in the meantime, we're still observing this thing. This thing isn't even. Isn't even halfway across the Bedford basin yet. Heading toward. Heading toward Bedford. That's how slow this thing is moving so she says, what's going on? I said, just. Just, you got to do this. Please call. So they should call the airport, talk to the tower. And she asked them, at my request, is there an aircraft coming in for a landing, or do you have anything on radar over the Bedford Basin in the Halifax area? And so she came back about 30 seconds, 40 seconds later, she says, no, there's nothing. They don't have anything.

[Michael Ryan]

And then. Then the. The Halifax International Airport, that would have been a. A little northeast of your position and maybe 30 miles away, something like that, Correct?

[Rick Prescott]

I. I would say about 40 kilometers or so. Yes, somewhere about there. And I just looked at Rob, and we're laughing at this point. You got to be kidding me.

[Rob Furlong]

Well, as you're trying to comprehend what it is.

[Rick Prescott]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. So Rob, after me, calls, your water. Yeah, it's a good idea. So I. I told the dispatch, I said to me, call Shearwater Air Base. That. That's a military base. You know, they. They've got another perspective. Call them and ask them to see if they have anything on their radar, tell them where it's at, and so on. Well, she did the same thing, and they came back from Shearwater Military Base. It was an active military base at the time, not as active as it was before, you know, several years before that, but it was still occupied as a military base. So the report was, now there's nothing.

[Michael Ryan]

And that. And Shearwater is slightly southeast of where you were in about 10 kilometers, something like that?

[Rick Prescott]

I would say yes.

[Rob Furlong]

Yes. Yeah.

[Michael Ryan]

Now, Rob, did you. I think you might have asked the woman to actually go outside and see if she could see it?

[Rob Furlong]

I don't. I don't recall asking her or if Rick asked her, but one of us did ask her to go outside, and I don't think she could see anything at that point. Or maybe she did.

[Rick Prescott]

I.

[Rob Furlong]

Or she didn't want to admit it. One of those for sure. But, I mean, it took a long time to go over us, and we were sure that she would probably see it, or it would be down that end of the city where dispatch was at that time, near. Closer to Shearwater, and.

[Michael Ryan]

But she couldn't see anything. Did you feel at the time. You know, I don't know if this could be done, but did you feel to call anybody else that was on your shift to see if they could see it?

[Rob Furlong]

Oh, no, we weren't gonna say anything to anybody. It's a free game to be ridiculed on shift. It's bad enough just trying to survive with those guys. They were all great. But. But there was a lot of tormenting going on and jokes on our off hours when we didn't have gauze, but we just didn't decide to really tell anybody until a few years later. Yeah, because in all honesty, she might not have been able to see it because I probably wouldn't have saw it unless Rick actually pointed to where it was. And if you're going out into the sky and just looking for something that you're so used to seeing a plane or whatever go over, you would see it, but if you didn't know where to look, you probably wouldn't see it.

[Rick Prescott]

So you.

[Michael Ryan]

Because, you know, even now there is. There's stigma about it, but you know, in the, in the 90s, definitely there would have been a lot more stigma about saying that you had seen something like this. So you basically.

[Rick Prescott]

Sorry, Mike, Rob, go ahead.

[Michael Ryan]

So basically you just kept this to yourselves at the time.

[Rick Prescott]

There's no way that I'm going to go up to one of our. My fellow officers and say, hey, man, you're not gonna believe what we saw last night. You know, for the rest of our. For the rest of our career. Can you see, Rob, the tin hats and things like that, you know, and little UFO airplanes hanging from the ceilings at briefings and stuff like that? I can just see it now with

[Rob Furlong]

the group you work with. Yeah,

[Rick Prescott]

we never hear the end of it.

[Michael Ryan]

So. So at the time, I guess it's a safe bet that you had never. Nobody else in. In the department ever mentioned seeing UFOs or anything like that at the time.

[Rob Furlong]

I would think they would be in the same boat as we were if they saw something. They wouldn't say anything.

[Rick Prescott]

They would say a word in no way.

[Michael Ryan]

So. So now that you've had all these years to really think about it, I'd like to get your thoughts on what you think it was. And I guess I'll ask Rick first, now that you've had time, many years, to think about it. What do you think that that was that you saw?

[Rick Prescott]

Well, let me put it like this. A lot of folks in Halifax region, they go to the Sharewater International air shows and so on. They've had the Galaxy aircraft there, which is the largest. One of the largest military aircraft ever built. I mean, you. You haul tanks and it's inside of that. The, the hull of that aircraft is the. The room. The size of a basketball field, for crying out loud. It's a massive aircraft. We see the, you know, the F117 stealth bombers. And we see the B1 bombers and, you know, we see everything. We, everyone, we know what we have out there as far as the size of craft and what their capabilities are. We see them take off and, and land. And there's not a one of us out here that hasn't seen just about everything that the government has. And we even know what our adversaries have in Europe and, you know, and elsewhere. So the fact of the matter is, is that, and this is an axiomatic fact, I will say this emphatically, that what we had seen is not. Not anything that is at least known in the military circles from the civilian point of view and so on. This thing was unique in its own right. It was incredibly massive. It traveled at a very low rate of speed, almost at a hover, if you will. It made absolutely no sound, not even a crackle, nothing. It. There was no sense of, of our observing a propulsion. The only thing, the only conclusion that I can come to is that what I saw was, I hate to say this, I don't think it's of this earth. I really don't. And that was. That's. I still hold that conclusion to this very day. And how long has it been?

[Michael Ryan]

Rob? Rob, what do you feel that you saw? Like, what do you feel that after all these years, what do you think it was

[Rob Furlong]

at the time? Like I said before, we were trying to comprehend what it was, and a lot of things went through my mind. Is it, is it not from here? Is it from here? Okay, if it's from here, you look back at the technologies, mostly American, when they were developed, like the stealth capabilities, Rick might be able to say more than me. Late 70s, early 80s, a lot of that seemed to come into play and was being developed and experimented with and people would see things in the sky. But then about 20 or 25 years afterward, it became pretty much a known fact of this technology, whether it's stealth or the different platforms that they fly with. And you would think by now that that would have come out, but if it was one of their platforms. And so I'm thinking, you know, well, maybe it's not from here. Or is this one of those dirigible, like a hot, hot balloon type of stealth capability? But again, you know, why is that not. Not public by now? Why have we not seen that air platform? So I have no idea. And I kind of come to the same conclusion as Rick then. Maybe it's not from here, because it would have come out by now, I would think. I mean, it was so huge. Where do you hide it? Where do you launch it? How do you stay in the dark with this? I, I don't know. I, I still really don't know. And I, I, I just can't explain it.

[Rick Prescott]

You know, the, the one thing that I, that this experience had done for me in a lot of ways is it opened up a curiosity and so I became a little bit more open minded in terms of the various stories that are, that's going on on an ongoing basis and has been going on for several decades about what they currently call UAPS and so forth. When I, when I look at what we, when I recall what we had observed, there's a story called, they call it the Phoenix Lights and it was about the same type of concept. It was a triangular shape, incredibly large unit that was moving incredibly slowly across the sky, seen by tens of thousands of people out of Phoenix, Arizona and, and reported and they made jokes of it and, but the people that saw it, they don't take it too lightly. But, but it was, you know, shoved and pushed around and swept under the carpet sort of thing and I would suggest that this thing was probably very similar to what they had seen there. Yeah, the only difference was there wasn't so massive in terms, it wasn't so prevalent in terms of the numbers of lights and so on. That's the only difference.

[Michael Ryan]

Yeah, I, before we had gone on air today, I had mentioned to Rick and Rob that there's actually been several triangle shaped craft scene in Nova Scotia and not far away. Actually in season one for my listeners, I had interviewed US soldier David Marceau and he had seen this pretty much identical craft in 1992 in Gagetown, New Brunswick, which is about 380 km away. So there's a lot of other people like you that have seen very, very similar craft in that area. And also that shape has been seen around the world actually. It is mystifying, that's for sure.

[Rob Furlong]

Oh yeah, there's no question. I wasn't totally aware of that. I thought it was kind of a, I've heard of triangles before on, on some of these other shows and things like that, but it now it seems to be this UAP and these lights in the sky and that, but, and the triangles seem to have died down a bit. But I'll reveal here today that, and I don't know if I told you or not, Rick, but when I was in Kentville, I think only my family knows really I was on the police department there for a couple of years and My partner and I then, it's very similar. Three in the morning, we got out of the car just outside town, had to go to the bathroom really bad staying there in this field. And it's very, very dark there. And off to my right, which would be coming from the east, was something the equivalent of the North Star in the sky, quite bright, right? And it was coming at a very fast speed, almost the speed of like a meteor coming into the atmosphere. And I said to my partner, then I said, do you see that? And he said, yeah, what is that? And I said, I don't know. And it kept coming and it came almost directly over us, but more in front of us. Never slowed down, never made a gradual turn, but at full speed it shot at a 90 degree angle and shot off to the north and disappeared out of sight. And I said to him, I said, okay, that wasn't what I thought it was. What was it? And he said, I have no idea. And in true police fashion said, I don't know what it was, but I'm never going to tell anybody I saw it. I kind of went with that all these years, but that was the only other thing that I can see that would relate.

[Michael Ryan]

What year was going on today? What year was that?

[Rob Furlong]

That would have been in 85. I just got on the police department.

[Michael Ryan]

Oh yeah, so you're definitely. We're going to. Weren't going to mention that to anybody else?

[Rob Furlong]

No, it was kind of be quiet and listen and learn from your partner then. And I just, I never saw anything like it before. So when we saw this triangle, it was the total opposite thing of what I had, saw, saw down there, which seems to be more prevalent today, I guess, with the UAP situation. It's funny, Rick mentioned something there and it jogged, or you did. It jogged my memory of getting in touch with the authorities. I talked to a woman, she's probably in her late 70s, early 80s now, kind of a friend of the family. And she, we were talking about this probably about six months ago. And she said, well, it's so funny because John and I, that was her husband, he has passed away since then. They were, they were from Dartmouth and they were down the eastern shore on a beach. And he ran a store for his parents, like a convenience store on the corner. And after the store closed, she said in the summer nights, we would always go down to the beach.

[Michael Ryan]

Beach.

[Rob Furlong]

And she said, no, I haven't told anybody this, but we were on the beach one night at like 2 or 3 in the morning. And she said, John said, what's that out over the water? And she said, out about three or 400 or 500 yards, whatever it was, there was this round cylinder shaped object much like this Tic tac is what you described. Now, she doesn't follow any of that. She doesn't even own a tv. She has an idea. And I said, like a tic tac shape? And she said, yeah, exactly like that. She said it was hovering over the water and John didn't know what it was, and I certainly didn't know what it was. And she said, we kind of got scared and we, we decided to leave. Well, John's car wouldn't even turn over.

[Michael Ryan]

Wow. Wow.

[Rob Furlong]

She said, I kind of got really scared. But we sat there or stood there by the car and watched the, this thing. And then as quick as can be, it dove under the water and it just disappeared.

[Michael Ryan]

Wow.

[Rob Furlong]

So I said, are you serious? And she said, I am. She goes, I never saw anything like it before or ever after. And it bothered John so much. He, he. Their family owned the store and it was close to Shearwater Air Base, the military base. And John, when John got home, he called later that morning. He called his friend who was, who worked at the base, and he described what he said happened. And the guy said to me, he said, john, I'm going to have someone call you back. He's going to be from the military, much like the story you told me. And the base commander and somebody else were on the phone and I don't know who the other fellow was. I don't know if she told me or she didn't know, but they described that to him and he's. John asked me, what is it? And he said, we don't know, but we're seeing a lot of them.

[Michael Ryan]

Wow. So what year was this?

[Rob Furlong]

That would have been in the 70s.

[Rick Prescott]

Wow.

[Rob Furlong]

That story, it, it reminded me of her story and I kind of forgot it. And I, she had told it to me and me that day because I, I had my son's dog down visit their dog, they're both German shepherds. And she, I don't think she's ever told anybody that story, but she told me that day and I haven't really told anybody that since, other than my kids and my wife.

[Michael Ryan]

Before we wrap this up, I just want to thank Rick and Rob for telling about their experiences today. And I would also like to thank them for their service.

[Rob Furlong]

You're more than welcome. It was a pleasure to be on the show.

[Rick Prescott]

No, it was awesome. And thanks for having us very much. Totally appreciate it here. Thanks.

[Narrator/Reader]

Here are the Canadian Civil aviation anomalies for the week of October 30 through November 3, 2023. On November 1, a Halajet International Sikorsky S76C from Vancouver Harbour, British Columbia to Victoria Harbour, British Columbia, was struck by lightning resulting in an unplanned descent. The aircraft declared pan pan. On November 3, a Sunwing Airlines Boeing 737 81D flying from Santa Clara, Cuba to Toronto International Airport reported observing a drone at 10,500ft. Also on November 3, at 20:30 Zulu time, an unauthorized remotely piloted aircraft system was flying over the city 1,000ft above ground level. It was reported to the Prince George, British Columbia tower. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police were advised there was no impact on operations and all flights proceeded to their destination without further incident. Today we are starting a new segment called Audio Excerpts from UFO Books. Today's book is Search for the Unknown Canada's UFO Files and the Rise of Conspiracy Theory by Matthew Hayes, used by permission from the author, read by Joy Ryan Project Magnet in the official memo to his superior, Smith requested permission to start Project Magnet and to use DOT equipment to do so. Commander C.P. edwards, the Deputy Minister of Transport for Air Services, granted this permission and in December 1950, Smith began his investigations. At first Smith was the only DOT employee working on the project, and then only on a part time basis. This quickly changed as Magnet acquired the assistance of three engineers and two technicians by the end of 1950. Still meager resources By Smith's reckoning, the physical resources available to the team were basic. Smith had at his disposal, for instance, a galvanometer, a gamma ray detector, a radio receiver and a gravimeter, all spare technologies that the DOT had on hand. The project received a secret security rating due to its potentially profitable technologies. This classification would become a sore point for the DOT and one of the main reasons the department would later shut the project down. In Magnet's early days, Smith worked quietly on what he called small and very crude experiments. He had actually carried out his first experiment into geomagnetics about a year before requesting permission to start the project. Spurred by reports of UFOs in the late 1940s, Smith had already begun trying to puzzle it out. A preliminary report on the results of this experiment provided details on Smith's attempt to induce the collapse of the Earth's magnetic fields and thereby capture the released electrical energy through a system of coils wound around a core of ferromagnetic material. Smith concluded that the experiment was successful in that the captured energy was able to register a reading on a voltmeter, but that the apparatus was extremely crude and very difficult of precise measurement, and so the observations were purely qualitative in nature. Thus, the object of pursuing Project MAGNET eight months later was to construct more adequate equipment and test his hypotheses in a more rigorous and quantitative manner. Smith believed that if these more advanced experiments were successful, they would prove that he could harness energy from the induced collapse of the Earth's gravitational fields and use it as a method of propulsion. UFOs might operate using the same principle Smith proposed, and so it was necessary to continue the study to determine exactly what kind of technology the flying saucers represented. Judging from later correspondence, officials within the government did not believe that the flying saucers were of extraterrestrial origin. In fact, the DOT likely did not have any interest in UFOs at all, except for the potential, however small, of uncovering new technology that might assist with aviation. What made the proposal palatable to the DOT was that Smith's ideas fell in line with research that the department was already carrying out. In the late 1940s and early 1950s, the Canadian government was intensely interested in the study of aurora and their effect on radio waves. Edward Jones Imhotep has written that scientists in Ottawa struggled to understand the unique conditions of the ionosphere and the possibilities they might present for the extension of reliable communications throughout the Canadian north. In fact, the technology these government scientists used to produce and read ionograms and the visual image of the ionosphere that furnished the working objects of the discipline regularly failed. And this technological failure was used to help define a certain idea of Nordicity and the Canadian nation, the ionosphere. Scientists pointed to the apparent uniqueness of Canada's ionosphere and claimed an expertise for Canadian science distinct from America's expertise, which might help bolster the nation's sovereignty during a time of national redefinition. This is the end of today's excerpt.

[Michael Ryan]

Well, that's our podcast for this week, so please share, follow, subscribe and do all those good things to help spread the word about UFO Talker. And until next time, this is Michael Ryan. Keep watching the skies.

[Narrator/Reader]

You have been listening to the UFO Talker. If you have any questions or comments on this episode, you can email us at ufotalkerl.net or visit our website at ufotalker.ca. you can support UFO Talker by using the Buy Me a coffee app with links on our website and in the show notes. We appreciate every listener. Thank you for your support. This has been a Michael Ryan production.

[Rick Prescott]

30. That's a wrap.