Girl spots unidentified flying object

by Keely Grasser

Mar 13, 2008

ALMAGUIN — Kaitlyn Watt was one of many Northern Ontario residents to catch a glimpse of an odd phenomenon in the sky Monday afternoon.

Kaitlyn, 11, was travelling on Hwy. 11 near Sundridge at about 1:10 p.m. when “she suddenly ‘yelled and said “Look! Look! Look!’ three or four times,” said her grandma, Bernice Leggett.

Kaitlyn reports that she spotted a strange object in the sky, northwest of the entrance to Hwy. 124 in Sundridge.

The object, she said, was red, with a black centre and “was kind of pointy at the top.” It was in the middle of the sky and “was leaving things behind it, like little red sparkles or something,” Kaitlyn said.

The object quickly disappeared from the bottom to the top, she explained.

It disappeared before Leggett got a chance to look at it.

“I wish I’d seen it but I had to keep my eyes on the road,” she said.

Kaitlyn tried to get her grandma to snap a picture of the object, but of course, it disappeared before they were able.

It was quite an experience for her, Leggett said. “She was definitely overwhelmed by it.”

Kaitlyn wasn’t the only person to witness the strange daylight event on Monday. The Ontario Provincial Police northeastern region received a number of calls about the object, from an area north to Kapuskasing and south to Parry Sound, said OPP spokesperson Neil Wigney. “It was quite a large area.”

Wigney said it’s believed that the object might have been a meteor, a theory echoed by several astronomy groups.