Late summer, somewhere around August or early September 1985, in the remote expanse of the Almaguin Highlands south of North Bay, Ontario, an event took place that defies rational explanation. My brother-in-law and I were out riding ATVs on Crown land, a vast, building-free wilderness nearly 20 miles from North Bay. After three hours riding through the starry, windless night, we paused on a ridge about 1400 feet above sea level. The silence was profound – not even the wind disturbed the air. The only sound was a faint bark from a dog miles away in the valley below.
Then came the first flash of light. Initially, I mistook it for the familiar red blink of the North Bay radio tower. But within moments, the reality struck us both. Over the ridge behind us, approximately twenty-five feet above the treetops, emerged a massive disk-shaped craft, luminous and silent. Its edge was adorned with lights that shifted seamlessly through a mesmerizing spectrum of yellow, red, orange, blue, and green. The object extended nearly a hundred feet in length and glided slowly along the ridge line, maintaining a steady height just above the trees.
Suddenly, it flashed with an intense burst of light like an enormous camera flash, instantly illuminating the entire landscape. Trees, bushes, and rocks—details invisible moments before—were revealed in stark, dazzling clarity. No sound accompanied this spectacle, not even a whisper. The scene was so surreal that I found myself speaking only in a whisper, careful not to disturb whatever presence hovered there.
As the craft moved onward, it flashed again, and the blinding light overwhelmed my vision, making it impossible to discern distinct features beyond the glowing perimeter and its general shape. Then, as it passed directly to our right, the surrounding pine trees suddenly bent and whipped in violent gusts, buffeted by strong air currents generated by the huge craft’s passage—a powerful silent wake that rippled through the forest.
The uncanny stillness returned as quickly as it vanished. Despite the impossibility, nature’s response was undeniable. The violent wind was proof that something monumental had just swooped through the valley.
For over ten minutes, we tracked the craft’s compass heading as it floated down the valley, flashing bright bursts every twenty seconds that painted acres of land in brilliant light. Having served two years in the Canadian Air Force, working closely with jets and helicopters, I knew that nothing this size could move without sound—except perhaps a glider, but even then, wind would betray its passage.
The terror was immediate and overwhelming. Despite my military experience, my first instinct was to hide, to seek refuge under a rock. I was so shaken that it took me twenty minutes to regain enough composure to continue riding.
The next morning, local radio aired multiple reports of strange lights over North Bay but dismissed them as a Soviet satellite crashing into Lake Superior. Yet the craft we encountered was clearly flying, not crashing, and Lake Superior lies about 600 miles west—a distant explanation that didn’t hold.
Though skepticism greets this story often, the memory remains vivid, compelling me to share this true account of a silent, color-changing disk that haunted a quiet night on the edge of the Canadian wilderness.