By Tom Dare
A VIDEO in which an unidentified flying object lights up the night sky before disappearing behind the brow of a hill is baffling thousands of people across western Canada today.
The footage, taken on Monday evening (September 4) from the security camera of a movie theatre in Cariboo, British Colombia, shows a bright white light streaming through the night sky, becoming brighter and bigger as it nears the camera before disappearing in a flash of light behind the brow of a hill.
Hundreds of people from Calgary, in Alberta, to Hornby Island in British Colombia (over a thousand miles apart) claimed to have seen the huge fireball tear through the sky, with many taking to social media to report what theyâd seen.
And local woman Jacquie McKay, who runs a local movie theatre in Cariboo, said the light was so bright that she initially assumed it was a lightning strike.
âWe saw a bright flash, and at first thought it was lightening,â she said.
âBut it was a clear night, and when we looked at the camera we were like âWhat the Heck??ââ
âWe figured it was a meteor. I mean, its classic meteor activity. But weâve not had that confirmed to us by anyone. Weâve just heard from the media.â
Police have confirmed they received several phone calls from concerned residents from across the region, with chief fire information officer for British Columbia, Kevin Skrepnek, taking to Twitter to explain what he had seen.
âInitially I thought it was a power surge and all the streetlights were shorting at once,â he wrote.
âThen, to the east, I saw a reddish fireball streak and break up (almost like a sideways firework) going south to north. Nothing happened afterward, but then within 60 seconds there was a massive sound (like a long, rolling thunderclap) for about five seconds.â
Police in the area have confirmed that they donât know for sure what the object was, but have stressed that itâs most likely to have been a meteor shower.