Tale of a close encounterMan recalls UFO sighting

By SHANNON VANRAES, SUN MEDIA

March 24, 2008

It wasn't a bird or a plane, and now an elderly Winnipeg man wants to tell people about his close encounter.

Ernest Buisse, 82, was on his parents' farm near Redvers, Sask., in the summer of 1950 when he believes he witnessed an unidentified flying object.

"It just flew by me," he said. "I was standing outside the house at 2 a.m. It was as high above me as a hydro pole."

Buisse described the flying object as round with lights on its underside.

"If they would have stopped and given me a ride, I would have taken it," he joked.

Buisse remembers the flying object approaching over fields where no roadways existed. After watching it fly overhead, he ran inside and woke his family up, then exited the house just in time to see the UFO disappearing to the west of the farm while travelling very low to the ground.

Although Buisse said he didn't tell anyone the following day about what he saw, it soon became apparent he wasn't the only person who witnessed something strange.

CROP CIRCLES

"The next day there were radio reports," he said, adding he noticed the UFO had left distinctive "crop circles" in one of his family's oat fields.

According to UFO watch groups like FarShores, the Redvers area is considered a hotbed for crop circles.

As recently as August 2002, crop circles were reported just north of the rural community, with local media receiving accounts of the oddities.

When Buisse discovered the mysterious marks more than half a century ago, he had never hear of the term "crop circle."

Today, the story is one he shares with his nine children and 24 grandchildren.

"My father never officially spoke to anyone in authority about this UFO sighting and because of the year it was seen ... with no commercial airlines flying and no air force in the area of Redvers ... what can one assume but that this was a real UFO sighting?" said Buisse's daughter, Rachel Spilkin.

She hopes it's a tale that lives on for others, as it has for her father.

"When I'm outside and it's dark, I always look up to see what I can see," Buisse said.