Research and Investigation into Anomalous Light Phenomena
on and over Lake Ontario, Ontario, Canada
(Image above taken on Pentax SLR attached to Celestron 8" reflector)
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PROJECT ORBWATCH is a Canadian not-for-profit organisation founded in 1997 and originally based in Milton, Ontario. We were maintaining frequent observation sessions on the north shore of Lake Ontario after having first seen anomalous lights behaving in unusual manner back on 22nd March 1997.
PROJECT ORBWATCH then relocated to the Niagara region in the summer of 2000. We continued our monitoring of Lake Ontario until June 2006 and then made the move to a more northerly area of Ontario. We do still occasionally make visits to Lake Ontario when the opportunity arises.
This website contains some of our archived documentation, including video, of the anomalous light phenomena recorded over and around Lake Ontario from 1997 to 2015. Other aspects of research into the mysteries of Lake Ontario are ongoing.
NOTE: When reference is made to "orbs" we are not referring to the spheres sometimes caught on camera using flash photography. An article discussing such spheres found in photography may be read here.
The Mysterious Hovering Objects - New York State 1915
It was a strange sight that confronted residents of Morristown, New York, and Brockville, Ontario, on February 14th 1915. Aircraft were still relatively new and were an oddity that attracted the public's attention. But for the residents of these two St. Lawrence River communities the aircraft that appeared in the skies above them were more than just an attraction; they were downright weird. When these three aircraft first passed over during the evening, they caused a commotion because few such machines had ever been seen in that area. When they returned a few hours later, they created an even greater commotion.
According to the account carried in the New York Times on February 15, the aircraft were first seen near Gananoque, Ontario, forty miles southwest of the Morristown-Brockville area. At that time, the three aircraft were on a northeast course almost paralleling the St. Lawrence River. On the return trip they travelled southwest, pausing along the way.
Just how these objects were able to hover in flight when such aircraft had not been invented is a question difficult to answer. Even more difficult to explain is how such aircraft could carry the equipment necessary to power the powerful searchlights, whose beams, according to witnesses, were swept back and forth, illuminating the communities.
Balloons! - According to the Canadian Government
This problem caused enough concern among the residents of Brockville that the mayor requested the Canadian Government to provide an immediate answer. The government's reply suggested that what the residents had seen were balloons, not aircraft. They did not say who the owners of the balloons might be, nor did they attempt to explain how a balloon could hover in a wind or travel in a direction opposite to it.
There is no evidence to indicate that action had been taken by the authorities to identify these "balloons" or their owners and the sightings continued. By the end of the week other communities along the St. Lawrence River were reporting similar encounters, showing that the phenomenon had been observed along a line stretching fifty miles from Gananoque to Ogdensburg.
It is worth noting that these events occurred in the evening hours and no complete description was supplied other than the impression of observers that the objects were aircraft. In most of the accounts there is the mention that there were three dark objects and at times each had been accompanied by bright lights. These match the description being supplied today (1980) by observers in the same area who are reported to have seen UFOs. In all these accounts the main feature is a bright light or lights which also seem to be observed in threes.
Strange Globes of Light - February 1913
If the residents of the St. Lawrence and the eastern end of Lake Ontario thought they were being ignored by the government they were actually only getting the same treatment that other communities had received two years earlier.
Observers in these communities reported a phenomenon in February 1913 that occurred in the western end of Lake Ontario on the Canadian shore. This one was witnessed by numerous people in Toronto who described the late night sighting as being like a procession of lights that crossed the sky from the northwest to southeast. The total time taken for this phenomenon to pass over Toronto was said to have been five minutes.
Among the witnesses to this event were two astronomers and these reliable witnesses reported their observations in the Royal Canadian Astronomical Society's journal. One of these astronomers described the sight as being like an express train lighted at night.
The following day a Toronto newspaper, the Daily Star, carried an article describing the second sighting. This time the objects were viewed against a bright sky and they appeared dark. Some witnesses thought the objects were airships traveling in groups of three and seven. Again, the course followed by these unidentified objects was from northwest to southeast.
"Meteors" - sayeth the Astronomers
A few days after the event, public curiosity about the objects began to fade. Astronomers decided that the evidence indicated that the objects were meteors and this appeared to solve the problem of the strange globes of light in the sky. At least for the time being.
However, the strange globes of light did not go away. In fact they are still with us today and are being reported by some observers who claim to have seen them a few feet above the ground. This suggests that, while the astronomers may be correct in some cases, there are others which show evidence of something far different from meteors.
This something different may include those globes of light reported by Mrs. Simcoe in the late 1700s which may turn out to be part of the UFO phenomenon so widely reported today. The quantity of those contemporary reports has now reached significantly large proportions, a fact that should attract considerable attention from the scientific community. Instead, most of the reports are simply ignored.
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