By Chuck Tobin

Six years ago, the Yukon’s UFO organization held the first-ever conference in the territory to discuss and share stories about the unexplained, as part of the millennium celebrations.
Early on in the planning, organizers estimated the gathering would attract 50 or 60 people. Then it was up to 80 or so, maybe 90.
A month of two beforehand, it was as high as an encouraging 120.
In the end, it was standing room only as more than 300 people jammed the conference room at the Westmark Whitehorse, listening to world-renowned ufologists and locals who shared their experiences and research from across North America.
Among the guest speakers was Stan Friedmann, seen by many as a leading authority on the Roswell, N.M. incident that involved reports of flying saucers in 1947. The U.S. Army went to great lengths to explain away the incident, and Friedmann remains convinced it was a cover-up.
There were first-hand accounts of UFO sightings in the Yukon, including the Dec. 11, 1996 sighting of a spacecraft that was first seen on the Klondike Highway near Fox Lake, but later witnessed by several others, from Carmacks to Pelly Crossing, to Mayo.
Thirty-one in all have given eyewitness testimony from that night, describing essentially the same size and shape of craft.
There was a first-hand account from a woman who was followed by a spacecraft from the Takhini Hot Springs Road, then abducted as she travelled up Hamilton Boulevard toward home.
Martin Jasek, a nine-year resident of the Yukon and founder of the local organization, was among those who organized the event.
As a professional engineer continuing his career studying ice and river flows in B.C., Jasek returned to Whitehorse as the guest speaker for the 2002 conference. He is back again to host tomorrow’s conference, beginning at 7 p.m. at the Alpine Bakery.
Whether the stigma that was attached to anyone who spoke of close encounters has lessened over the years is something hard to gauge, Jasek said in an interiew Thursday.
“I just hope to bring about more witnesses,” he said. “I would like to see in my lifetime these possibilities getting accepted.”
If not accepted, he added, at least treated some probability.
For Kevin Brumm, a former Yukon resident of Ross River and Whitehorse who is now living in Calgary, it was many years after his experience on the North Canol Road that he dared speak of it.
It wasn’t until four years ago when he attended a UFO conference in St. Paul, Alta., where he met Jasek by coincidence, that he went public with his story, which is laid out on the UFOBC website.
Brumm recalls then he was driving up the road on his motorbike during a moose hunting trip, a couple of days ahead of others in his hunting party, when he pulled over to have scope out the countryside.
He saw a UFO, was mesmorized by the moment but a few minutes later heard a something like a car door slam around the corner.
Thinking it may be the early arrival of his hunting partners, he went to have a look and saw two aliens standing side by side in the grassy shoulder of the road, he notes in his published recollection.
One of the aliens shone a flashlight object at him, and the next thing he knew he was standing on the road somewhat bewildered, with the keys to his motorcycle in his hands.
He always left the keys in his bike, for fear of losing them while crawling through the bush. His bike was parked on the opposite side of the road from where he’d left it.
Later that evening, he noticed small, scoop-like scars on the palm of each hand that were not there before the experience, but remain today.
Gradually, he began to piece together his memory of the encounter, and the recollection of how he was abducted. He remembers the friendly treatment by his alien abductors, who invited him to the window of the spacecraft to look far off into the distance at a planet – Earth.
“I think it was a really good experience, actually,” Brumm said in a telephone interview Wednesday. “It was the most scariest thing at the time.
“But after you experience it, and work through it, you realize it really was a beautiful thing. It opened my eyes.”
Recollection of the expierence did not fully unfold until years later when he was working as a lathe operator at a shop in New Zealand, but unfold it did.
Brumm said as a naturally shy guy, it’s not his mission to tell his story. He doesn’t jump if he overhears a UFO discussion.
But when he does share his experience, the reaction among those listening is everything from acceptance to fright.
“It’s amazing how many people tell me they have had something similar happen to them,” said Brumm, who worked as a civilian for the RCMP while in the Yukon. “And I think the more it gets out, the more open it will become.
“I think a lot of people do see things that are unexplainable.”
Jasek also believes gatherings like tomorrow’s conference are important as a means of allowing those with similar experiences to hear other talk about their own sightings or encounters.
There are people who are drawn to UFO conferences because of pure curiousity, and then there are those like Brumm.
“People want to validate their own experience, and share their experience with others that will take them seriously, that won’t laugh at them.”
He is hoping, for instance, that one of those who’ve provided eyewitness accounts to the UFO over Mary Lake in Febuary 2005 will agree to describe their experience.
It was a cold, clear night when one resident was outside looking to check out if conditions were right for his visiting inlaws to see the northern lights.
He witnessed two round objects in the sky, and, together with his wife and inlaws, watched the objects.
“We went outside of our house and we watched them for maybe five minutes, as they just seem to hang around slowly moving away,” reads the account published on the UFOBC website.
“The lights then came really close to each other, then one went up, the other went down, and vice-versa. Then the right light slowly appeared to move farther away with the other light following the first light. The lights didn’t go further away but rather straight up. Then one just disappeared completely and the last one just sat there way up in the sky and appeared to have some additional colours flashing. I went upstairs to grab my digital camera but when I ran back downstairs the other one had disappeared.”
Days later, they learned of others who’d witnessed the same thing, including a couple of building contractors who had been out looking at their house project with children when they saw the two objects.
The builders and children took refuge under the house. As the objects appeared so close, they thought they were going to land on top of the house.
Jasek said he’ll be speaking for a couple of house, discussing recent UFO reports, and then will provide a couple of more hours for questions and an open microphone for anyone who might want to share his or her experience.

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