Canadian Humanoid Encounter Wave of 1968

Between January and November 1968, a series of encounters in which witnesses described small, humanoid or otherwise non-human figures was recorded across Canada. The best-known catalogue, reproduced in ufology publications and online compilations, counts 31 cases for that year. Most were reported in Quebec, with others in Saskatchewan, British Columbia, Ontario and the Northwest Territories. The label "wave" is the compilers' term; the cases were never officially treated as a single phenomenon.

The reported cases

The first entry is the Carrot River case of 10 January 1968, in which two witnesses reported being followed by a bright blue light that changed colour, accompanied by noises in the bush, a headache, and a face-shaped pattern of frost on the car hood. The compilations cite Constable H. H. Esson of the RCMP and a page on saskfiles.com; neither the page nor the Esson report has been located or read for this entry.

Other frequently cited cases include:

• Keats Island, British Columbia (January and May 1968): a woman living alone reported lights, then two men in dark coveralls who claimed to be water-company workers and seemed uneasy. Later accounts link the case to Men in Black folklore; the source is a 1974 Saga UFO Report article quoting John Magor.
• St-Thomas, Quebec (2 July 1968): a constable and another officer were reportedly present when two small naked figures fled a drainage ditch, the same evening a meteor was seen.
• Montreal (4 August 1968): three young men described a three-foot creature that made a thirty-foot leap. Police responded and said no circus or escaped animal had been reported.
• Yellowknife airspace (November 1968): the flight engineer, pilot and co-pilot of a cargo aircraft reportedly saw a disc flying beside the plane and reported it to air traffic control. This is the only case in the list with several trained aviation witnesses, and the report to controllers is the one element that could in principle be checked against aviation records.

Investigation and the record

Police or aviation authorities appear in only a handful of the 31 entries, and most citations are to ufology books and magazines such as Saucers, Space and Science, John Keel's and John Brent Musgrave's works, and local enthusiast sites. The compilations do not reproduce the underlying RCMP or air traffic records. Library and Archives Canada holds a digitised collection of federal UFO files, which is the obvious place to test whether the Esson report and the Yellowknife entry exist as described.

None of the sources describes an official investigation that linked the cases to one another, and none reports an outcome for the individual cases beyond the police and air traffic notes above.

Interpretation and context

Ufologists generally treat the wave as evidence of a real and unusual phenomenon, pointing to the number of witnesses and the recurrence of small humanoid descriptions in the same months. Sceptics offer more mundane readings. Media attention in 1968 was high, and the reports cluster in a period when UFO books and magazine coverage were circulating widely, so publicity and expectation could shape what witnesses described. Some of the Quebec entries also appear in later French-language compilations that reuse earlier reports, which makes it hard to count independent sightings.

Because the wave is catalogued mostly from secondary sources, the honest summary is that the 1968 Canadian humanoid reports are a documented claim cluster rather than a verified event. The Carrot River RCMP reference and the Yellowknife air traffic report are the two points that research into official archives could confirm or rule out.

For comparison, see the earlier and better-known Canadian case of Shag Harbour (1967) and Falcon Lake (1967), both of which have more substantial documentation.