Maclean's - June 15, 1995

ST. CATHARINES - Rob McConnell says that he was only five years old when he first sighted an alien spaceship. "Staring out my bedroom window, I saw a cigar-shaped thing with little round portholes floating across the sky," recalls the former Montreal policeman. "I know what I saw was not from this realm - I know I saw a UFO." Now 43 and living in St. Catharines, Ont., McConnell says that he is not alone, that "an astonishing number of people have been touched by a paranormal experience." And now, with the popularity of Fox TV's drama The X-Files - the 'X' stands for the unknown, McConnell says that the time is right to reach out to such people with his new monthly tabloid, The 'X' Chronicles. Like the television show, the publication is devoted to UFOs, apparitions, monsters and things that go bump in the night - but with the aim of being as factual as possible. "Our paper is not going to be like the National Enquirer with aliens on the cover," he says. Well, maybe not aliens - just aliens' skulls. The first issue, published in May, features photos of cone-shaped skulls above the headline, "Proof of a race of ancient astronauts." Another story attempts to prove that the Great Lakes are more treacherous than the fabled Bermuda Triangle. McConnell is unlikely to run out of mysteries for future issues. Last year alone, he says, the National Research Council of Canada, the Ottawa-based federal government research and development organization, received 185 reports of UFO sightings in Canada. The 'X' Chronicles plans to continue investigating those close encounters of the Canadian kind.

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