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Some places have become synonymous with UFOs. Roswell, New Mexico, Rendlesham Forest in England, and even Vancouver Island? Yep, it's had several notable UFO sightings over the decades. Our first story is one of the most astounding. Take a look. October 8, 1981. Vancouver Island, British Columbia, Canada. It is a cool autumn morning, and an amateur photographer is taking photos of the beautiful mountain landscape with her 35-millimeter camera. But when she gets home and develops the film,
she says she's shocked by what she sees. A shiny metallic saucer hovers above a picturesque mountain. It appears to be silver in color with what looks like a bubbled glass dome in the center. This isn't your average light in the sky. This looks like a real flying saucer. - It's a fairly clear shot done on a film camera back in the '80s of, you know, a classic flying saucer, - [Tony] But that saucer shape may not be pure science fiction. Some theorize that it plays an integral part in the flying saucer's capabilities. - There's some theories out there, one of which that I subscribe to, that maybe they're disc-shaped for a reason, possibly because they're particle accelerators,
and they're generating particles that allow them to pop out of our four dimensions, X, Y, and Z moving through time, and go into a fifth dimension, and then pop back in. - [Tony] Could this be an interdimensional craft popping by Vancouver Island? It wouldn't be the first alleged appearance of a flying saucer in the area. - A nurse at the Cowichan District Hospital on the island was doing her rounds, and on New Year's Day in 1970, she opened the curtains in a patient's room and all of a sudden saw this strange disc-like object floating in the distance,
much like the object in the photograph. And within UFO circles, it became known as the Duncan incident. - [Tony] That incident is now known to be a hoax, perpetrated with a homemade balloon. But is this photo the real deal? Canadian officials certainly seem to be taking the subject seriously. - We know that in February of 2022, the Pentagon's UFO Task Force actually briefed the Canadian military and the Canadian government on this surge of UFO sightings all across North America. - Now, when I first saw this photo, I thought it was too good to be true, but in 1987, NASA scientist Dr. Richard F. Haines published this report detailing his in-depth analysis of the photo.
His conclusion, "The identity of the disc object remains unidentified." So if he couldn't crack it, can our experts? [tense music] We start by authenticating the photo for ourselves. - The lighting conditions within the scene and onto the object aid to legitimize the photo. The shadows, highlights, and midtones are all geometrically consistent with lighting conditions coming from above. From my perspective, I don't see any concerns for the integrity of the photo. - [Tony] Okay, so the lighting matches, but an informed hoaxer could achieve that simply by capturing two images on one negative, a double exposure.
This works because film captures an image by being briefly exposed to light. So all it takes to capture two images in one is to simply expose the same piece of film twice. But that trick is easier said than done. - This was taken with a Mamiya instamatic camera that you have to depress the camera's button to take the photo, and then when you release the button, you have to advance to the next negative in order to have the button to work to take the next photo. So it's impossible for me to create a double image on the same negative. [camera clicks] - [Tony] So the photo itself is real, but we still don't know what it actually shows. That saucer-like shape, might it just be a Frisbee?
- You would have to mount a dome on the top of it, which renders it not flyable. - [Tony] Not only that, but a Frisbee, or a hub cap, commonly used in early UFO hoaxes, wouldn't look this crisp. - 30 feet is what they call the hyperfocal distance, which means that when you have your camera set on infinity, the object has to be 30 feet away, otherwise it'll be out of focus. So now you're talking about an object that's somewhere between 30 feet and maybe that mountain peak that is up in the air. - [Tony] That means this thing is big. How big? Well, we ran the numbers.
- I did various calculations in terms of angular size that basically says that, hypothetically, if you get out to the distance right here that peak is, that I measured at 1/4 miles away, and because it's not a crystal clear photograph of it, it has some sort of distortion or distance to it, then you get to the object being about 78 foot in diameter. - [Tony] So it's a real photo depicting a 78-foot saucer-shaped craft. But then, how did the photographer miss it when she actually took the photo? [camera clicks] That's perhaps the most compelling piece of this mystery. - UFOs are most commonly known as being fast, so it may be that the UFO is moving so quickly that she didn't have the ability to see it but the camera still had the ability to capture it
and freeze it in time. - It is a legitimate, real photograph of a daylight object that doesn't conform to anything naturally we can explain or conventional that we can explain. It's an incredible case. [tense music] - Our verdict, we've got a genuine UFO. There's a reason this photo is so famous on Vancouver Island. Like Haines, we verified the photo, ruled out the explanations, and ran the numbers, all to reach the same conclusion. This disc cannot be identified.
