Charlie Red Star | Ep. 84
Welcome to another episode of Believing the Bizarre. This week we head north – even more north than Ohio! We find ourselves in Manitoba, Canada, and the topic is UFOs.
Back in 1975 and 1976, Manitoba experienced a consistent and playful red orb that became known as Charlie Red Star.
Apparently, thousands of residents witnessed this UFO phenomenon. But, how believable is it? Listen now.
The Tale Of Charlie Red Star, North America’s Biggest UFO Sighting
What would you do if a hovering spacecraft flew towards you?
Why would a rural Canadian town be a hotspot for UFO sightings for 2 years?
What’s up Bizarros? This week we dive into the bizarre tale of Charlie Red Star.
Where Did Charlie Red Star Happen?
Manitoba, Canada, is a small quiet town of about 3,000 residents. It’s located in Central Canada but is home to one of North America’s greatest UFO stories.
The story about Charlie Red Star begins in February of 1975. This period was a hotbed of UFO sightings.
The 50s, 60s, and 70s was a great time to be on the hunt for aliens and possible signs of a UFO crash, (Roswell anyone?).
So, our story with Charlie Red Star begins with a normal, everyday farmer when he sees “a bright red light in the sky” that looked like a ball.
Just giving it the eye test, the farmer estimated the red light to be about 14 to 18 inches in diameter and it swooped down and around and flew directly over his head. It was too small to be meteors
While the red light flew over his head, he said it emitted a searing, almost painful, heat.
And beyond that, he actually felt the red light affect him physically.
He began to feel drowsy and a bit disoriented during the time he could see the UFO.
After a few moments, the red light shot directly up into the sky and out of the farmer’s sight.
This was the first of many unprecedented sightings which ended up becoming quite frequent in the area.
Some spectators in the area claimed the small red light had almost a playful feel to it, as it would quickly fly towards people then dart away and hide like it was playing a game.
On the other hand, other folks near Manitoba, Canada reported seeing flying objects more like what we expect as a traditional UFO – flying saucer-type craft.
However, when they’d see this flying saucer it would often be accompanied by red orbs surrounding it.
Other UFO Sightings In The Area
On March 27th, of the same year, a young girl was awoken in the middle of the night by a loud, unexplained sound coming from outside.
It was reported to sound like a screaming siren.
She sat in her bed, confused but a little freaked out by the sound she had just heard.
Then, she claimed the entire house began shaking like a massive earthquake was happening.
She rushed to the window but, what she saw outside confirmed it was absolutely in the paranormal realm and not an earthquake.
She saw a blazing, red ball of light racing by her window, which flooded her room with a bright light and emitted so much heat that she actually thought it started a fire inside her home.
It flew up and over her house, then the unidentified object flew back down in front of her window and hovered for a few moments.
She said when it came down it was almost as bright as the sun. Then, a second later, it flew off into the distance, illuminating the ground underneath it as it went.
The next month, on April 10th, there was a couple at a private airfield near their rural farm in Carman, Manitoba that witnessed the unexplained phenomena of the red light.
The farm belonged to Bob and Elaine Diemert.
While they were walking around the private airfield they saw what looked like a large, red light slowly moving as it hovered above the tree line not too far away from their location.
Cautiously and curiously, they approached the red light.
As they got closer, they saw that it wasn’t just a random ball of light, it actually looked disk-shaped and had a dome attached to it.
This red glowing disk hovered for another few minutes, and Bob and Elaine noticed that it was almost pulsating.
Then the disk darted directly at them but stopped suddenly and veered away and flew above the treetops.
While they were shocked at the moment, this initial sighting near Bob and Elaine’s farm turned into a regular almost nightly occurrence for them.
It was so consistent to the point that other local folks began showing up to see the red light themselves.
Due to its consistency and Bob and Elaine telling folks and asking them to come back and become and see it for themselves, more and more people began coming to see this unexplained phenomenon.
As mentioned earlier, it did not inspire fear. Many eyewitnesses said it actually had a playfulness to it.
It would hover, and then shoot back and forth, start approaching observers but then quickly back away.
Due to its growing popularity, it was around this time that the red glowing UFO got its name as “Charlie Red Star.”
One particular person that came to observe Charlie Red Star was Ian Nicholson, a Royal Canadian Mounted Police Constable.
He wanted to see this phenomenon for himself, which he described as an oval red light, surrounded by an x-shaped white halo.
He was quoted as saying,
“I sat there for two or three minutes just looking at the object, which appeared stationary at the time. Then I decided to get a closer look at it. I drove west…and I can say I was moving pretty fast. As I was going west, the object seemed to be flying in a northeasterly direction. I continued for approximately 12 miles, keeping the object in sight, trying to get somewhat abreast of it so that if the opportunity presented itself, I could have driven north toward it. About 16 miles west of Carman, I stopped the car. I’d seen there was no way I was going to catch up to it. So I just stopped the car and watched the object go out of sight over the tree line on the horizon.”
Meanwhile, the popularity of Charlie Red Star grew to the point that it was legitimately causing traffic jams, almost like it was there were tours to see the UFO.
Roger Pitts, an airline pilot, witnessed the red orb and said,
“It was flying on a 45-degree angle, but it was still flying straight at us. As we watched, it didn’t turn around. It just went directly the other way straight away from us. It just went off into the distance away from us, and a puff of smoke appeared – an odd shape, like a small cloud, and it disappeared in that.”
Naturally with all of this hoopla going on the media caught on and wanted to get involved.
On May 11th, a local TV news crew comprised of Bill Kendricks and John Berry arrived at the area to see if they could film Charlie Red Star, with the ultimate goal of not making it look like it was captured on a potato, and see what the heck this thing is.
Well, for two days they got absolutely nothing. Just a single light going across the sky which they quickly dismissed as a normal airplane.
It was two days later, on May 13th, that they finally got what they were hoping for.
Not long after arriving, they witnessed a red orb rise from the tree line, flash bright and brilliantly, and then shoot directly into the sky within just a few seconds.
The men were awestruck and silent for a few minutes, completely stunned regarding what they just witnessed.
Eventually, they dispersed, and that is when the red orb returned. The newspaper editor, Howard, was quoted as saying,
“I could see this big glow behind some trees less than half a mile away off to the right and ahead of us … It was smoky red, a hazy glow, and to me, the thing was higher than the trees, maybe 50 feet tall. It was about 20 feet thick and was sitting at an angle of about 45 degrees. The edges were fuzzy and not sharply defined. It was much like seeing a drive-in movie screen from the side.”
Bill and Alan saw it too and described it looking like a blood-red moon in the night that was hovering up and down through the trees.
Allen was able to capture a few moments of footage of the red object as it flew overhead, but because of the technology of the time and how late it was, it simply looks like a red light in the sky – not the most conclusive evidence.
A few days after this event, the guys returned to the site with a radiation meter to test the areas they witnessed the red light and to see if anything unusual would come up.
Unsurprisingly to the men, they found several spots with radiation anomalies. To them, this was the proof their eyes needed to justify what they witnesses the other night.
Were There Any Other Sightings Of Charlie Red Star?
On June 4th, a farmer was in his field when he saw a massive, glowing red disk with two domes appear in the sky.
His initial response was fear and he immediately ditched the farm and ran to his truck.
But, as he put the key in his ignition, in true horror movie form, he turned, and turned, and turned, but the truck’s engine wouldn’t start.
In his mind, it was that red flying saucer that somehow sucked the energy out of his truck and stopped it from working properly.
Another UFO Sighting
On July 1st, a group of three friends saw a bright red orb hovering around a grain elevator. They described its general motions as erratic, not really having control or planning where it wanted to move.
Eventually, the light landed in the field briefly before shooting off into the night sky.
One of the friends said,
“It was about 85 feet in diameter and perfectly round…. so round it was unbelievable. It was saucer-shaped…and the top and bottom traveled in different directions. The bottom one spun…to the right, and the top one spun to the left. There was a center section that didn’t move, about six to eight feet in width, and there were oval-shaped windows in it. I’d say that there were about 16 windows in the whole circumference, eight looking on the side we were on.”
Other UFO Sightings In Canada
What kind of other UFO sightings were reported in the area where Charlie Red Star appeared?
Here are some fun facts:
Ufology Research’s 2014 Canadian survey detailed more than 1,000 UFO cases reported in Canada. During the mid-70s just in Manitoba and Carman, they were experiencing 5 times the national average UFO sightings.
So, one of the earliest documented UFO encounters from the rural Canadian town came in 1792.
David Thompson and Andrew Davy were exploring the area when they witnessed what seemed like multiple meteorites larger than the moon had crashed into ice.
David Thompson’s journal details how bizarre the
“It struck the river ice, with a sound like a mass of jelly, was dashed into innumerable luminous pieces and instantly expired,” the diary says. “The next morning we went to see what marks this meteor had made on the ice, but could not discover that a single particle was marked.”
Here are four other UFO-related reports:
May 20, 1967:
Stefan Michalak was hanging out at Falcon Lake in Manitoba around noon. While just enjoying the view of the lake, he saw a disc-shaped object land on a large flat rock.
He was freaked out but didn’t want to miss out on this encounter so he hid and recorded the UFO by sketching it out.
Gathering a little bit of courage, he stepped out from his hiding spot and approached the disk-shaped object.
He says he immediately heard two human-like voices and was hit by a burning hot gas that actually set his clothes on fire.
But apparently not his sketchbook.
He, however, experienced weight loss, odd burn marks on his chest and stomach, charred hair, and a strange rash.
For a few weeks after the incident, he reported reoccurring dizziness and when the seen of the encounter was investigated by authorities under the impression of extraterrestrial contact, they found radiation at the site.
March 4, 1977:
Mr. S was driving towards his farm near sundown when suddenly about 5 meters in directly in front of him he saw vibrant oval light in the sky that he described as shimmering and pulsating.
It was completely silent and didn’t seem to be solid.
He continued driving, dumbstruck by what he witnessed. Eventually, he came upon three “people” standing on the road in front of him.
He said they looked about 5 feet or so tall and had the overall shape of bowling bins. They had bulbous heads, a very slim neck, and a flared body similar to a skirt.
Other than these descriptions, no other identifying features were visible to Mr. S.
Unfortunately, they popped up in front of him too quickly and he wasn’t able to hit the brake. He clenched his teeth and braced for impact, but he never felt a thing.
The three creatures seemed to completely vanish as soon as they touched the bumper.
October 9, 1989:
Around 2:50 pm, a family was on a trip to the Fort Whyte Nature Center in Winnipeg when they witnessed a boomerang-shaped object flying around the sky.
Only the parents had noticed the craft, so they yelled for the children to get in the car so they wouldn’t be freaked out by the UFO.
Once the kids were safely inside, the parents watched as the object hovered, slowly rotating.
Nov. 1, 1992:
Around 2 am, a nurse in Winnipeg named Karen was awakened by a loud thud on her bedroom door.
She got out of bed, made her way to the door, and discovered two little creatures in her living room.
They had massive, round eyes but that was their only defining feature. They wore long, white robe-like gowns.
Once they noticed her standing there, they telepathically told her that they wanted to take her for a ride into space.
The next thing she knows, she was in a large hangar that contained a cigar-like craft. She and the two small aliens got in and she immediately saw the main control room with multiple chairs, screens, and buttons.
The little creatures started pushing buttons and suddenly outside the screens, she saw what looked like endless stars.
A second later, she found herself back in her room.
What Are Some Possible Sources Of These UFOs And the Unexplained Encounters?
Nuclear Research Facility
So, just some background information about the area – The Whiteshell Laboratories, originally known as the Whiteshell Nuclear Research Establishment (WNRE) was an Atomic Energy of Canada (AECL) laboratory in Manitoba, northeast of Winnipeg.
Apparently, they tested nuclear waste disposal and have an underground research laboratory.
In 1974, just a year before Charlie Red Star appeared, the ZEUS (Zoological Environment Under Stress) experiment tested the longer radioactive releases and measured the results.
They claim the test was intended to see effects on Meadow voles, which are essentially field mice. But, they did not reach any conclusions and I wasn’t digging further with the animals involved.
So, could this somehow have either attracted UFOs or perhaps something was actually created here? Could Charlie Red Star be man-made?
What do you think Bizarros? Is Charlie Red Star the result of an underground research laboratory, or the nuclear operations that were going on in the area?