Unmarried or widowed single women, such as a sister of the father or mother, sometimes lived with the family like The Insane Spinster Ghost of Appleton I wrote about. Often grandparents lived with their son or daughter’s family. Sometimes the only way poor families could fend off starvation was for the children to either work or be sent off to another family. Such is the case of young Margaret Moore. If this had happened today Mr. Howard would not have gotten off lightly.
The prisoner was indicted for the abduction of Margaret Moore, a girl under 14. The girl some three or four years ago had been placed by her mother in charge of Mr. Howard’s mother to bring up. The latter died a short time ago and the girl’s sister, who resides in Pakenham, wished to take her sister with her to the States and the girl was given up by Howard to one James McKeon who proposed sending her to her sister.
Howard afterwards went to McKeon’s and got passes of the girl on the plea that he would take her to her sister’s in Pakenham. Instead of doing so, however, he took her home and refused to give her up. The judge thought the girl old enough to decide for herself and she was called to take the stand and asked whether she would go back with Howard or go with her sister. She decided to go with her sister and they settled the case and the prisoner was discharged.
Howard was let off because of complaints of low water in the Mississippi. At Pakenham the factory had been “shut down,’’ and there were whispers of contaminated water. His representatives said he had drank some bad water and it had affected his mind. Was this an OJ Simpson type defense before its time?
On August 18, 1991, West Carleton, Ontario housewife Diane Labenek was home when she heard her dogs barking. When she looked out the window to investigate, she saw a UFO-type object in a field nearby with red flames and lots of smoke. The ship then lifted up and disappeared into the trees. Diane claimed that about ten minutes after the ship left, a helicopter flew over the area where she saw the lights, and then flew over her house and vanished. Diane went to the site the next day, but she found nothing and only told her husband and mother about the incident.
AMERICAN TELEVISION NETWORKS INVESTIGATE UNEXPLAINED UFO SIGHTINGS NEAR ALMONTE The Almonte Gazette
Feb. 3, 1993
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UFO researcher Bob Oechsler waved a hand over the pile of documents and photos on the kitchen table. “This is a landmark case in ufology (the study of UFOs),” he said. The pictures on the table show a blur of multi-colored lights in a disc shape and white faces with black almond-shaped eyes. Most of them were taken off a video sent to Oechsler anonymously almost a year age. Since then, Oechsler has methodically and meticulously analyzed the video and the site near the Old Almonte and Corkery Roads.
His case was convincing enough to draw two major American television networks there to film. NBC’s Unsolved Mysteries airs its version this Wednesday on cable at 8 p.m. and this Friday on CJOH. The Fox network’s story on Sightings hits the airwaves Feb. 12. Oechsler’s involvement began when he received the videotape at his Annapolis, Maryland home last February.
The Video
The 32 minutes of footage show a “mostly white” linear light with red flares off to the left and a flashing light on top, said Oechsler. The color of the lights ranges from red to blue to green from one end to the other. Smoke billows out from under the lights and moves to the right. As the photographer moves closer, reflections off the disk show a rounded turret in the centre with a vertical blue strobe on top and “fins” or slates around its edge.
Closing in even more, “Guardian” gets shaky close-ups of the upper strobe.
The sound track has sounds of barking dogs and a “ratchet” sound. (NBC spent $115,000 to recreate this whole effect with no success, said Oechsler.) The rest of the tape is taken up with freeze frames or still shots of supposed aliens standing in tall grass. Some are holding bright lights in their hands.
Hooded figures with large almond shaped eyes have short snouts and little facial detail.
The tape was wrapped in six pages of accompanying information, some typed on fake Department of National Defense (DND) letterhead. The documents showed a map of the Corkery area and a page of hand-drawn symbols with a map of the same area. There is also a photocopy of two Polaroid shots with grass lit by a flash in the foreground and a row of lights in the back.
Lightfoot and Oechsler asked if the Labeneks had seen anything unusual. It turns out Diane Labenek had seen an unusual set of lights when tucking her children into bed around 11 p.m. Aug. 18 1991, said Oechsler. She had also witnessed the November, 1989 event. (Because of her agreement with NBC, Labenek cannot tell her story until after the broadcast.)
She drew pictures that were “geometrically correct” to the video and gave details about the incident not captured on tape, like the craft’s departure. A neighbor recalls seeing “red lightning” and a white light with a gold halo the same night, according to Oechsler.
Within a half hour of the sighting, and for months afterward, the Labenek home became the target for unusually active helicopter activity. The black, seamless, unmarked choppers hover over the house sometimes low enough to see in the Labenek’s windows. Twice they have blown shingles off the house and the outside shed.
DND has given the Labeneks pictures of its machinery to prove it is not their doing. That element still remains a mystery. Only the cattle know for sure!
Case File: Guardian UFO Location: West Carleton, Ontario Date: August 18, 1991 Description: West Carleton is a historic township in Eastern Ontario, Canada. It is located in the rural parts of the new City of Ottawa, west of Kanata. Local Diane Labenek described a UFO craft she described with a blue flashing light on top and another light on the bottom with burning red flames.
Case
History: On August 18, 1991, West Carleton, Ontario housewife Diane Labenek was home when she heard her dogs barking. When she looked out the window to investigate, she saw red flames and smoke coming from a field nearby. She then saw a UFO-type object landing next to the flames in the field. The ship then lifted up and disappeared into the trees. Diane claimed that about ten minutes after the ship left, a helicopter flew over the area where she saw the lights. The helicopter then flew over her house and vanished. Read more here.. CLICK
Filmmaker re-examines the mystery of the Carp UFO sighting decades ago BLAIR CRAWFORD
It’s the unsolved mystery of an unsolved mystery. Who was “Guardian” the person whose blurry videotape of strange flashing lights in a field near Carp more than 30 years ago lured UFO researchers and TV crews to West Carleton like conspiracy theorists to an Area 51 picnic. It’s the question Toronto filmmaker Nick Crowe plans to explore when he visits the area next month to film a documentary on the events of the fall of 1989 for CBC’s Point of View. The film, Searching for Guardian, is looking at the eye witness reports of a purported spacecraft landing and lurid claims of aliens who worked with the Nazis and planned to enslave humans.
“A lot of serious UFO types don’t even bother with it because there was something so strange about it and people thought it was just a hoax,” Crowe said. “We’re treating this less like, ‘Whoa. Did a UFO really land there?’ to ‘Why did someone go to so much trouble to do this? What’s the human story behind this?'” Whoever launched the unidentified alien frenzy went to a lot of trouble. The incidents spanned over several years and included claims of a UFO crash landing near Manion Corners on Old Almonte Road and an “eye witness” report from a woman, Diane Labenek, who claimed to have seen a strange, brightly lit craft land in a field near her house the night of Nov. 4, 1989.
Coupled with those stories was the video mailed to several UFO researchers in Canada and the U.S., signed only with the name “Guardian” and a thumbprint. The nighttime video shows abrightlylit object with a blue flashing strobe approach a clump of bright flares in what appears to be a landing zone. The video, though blurry and inconclusive, didn’t appear to have been doctored, Crowe said. “It was a fairly convincing attempt at showing a spaceship landing,” he said. “The feeling among people with expertise in photographic analysis was that it was a pickup truck with road flares.”
The tape became fodder for several TV shows, most notably Unsolved Mysteries, which aired on Fox from 1987 to 1996. Canadian UFO enthusiasts who investigated the Guardian video and Labenek’s claims concluded it was all a hoax, but in February 1992, Guardian mailed another copy of the video to a prominent U.S. UFO researcher, Bob Oechsler. That was enough to bring a crew from Unsolved Mysteries to Carp. The show interviewed Oechsler and others and featured a recreation of Labenek’s sighting, played by Labenek herself. But the highlight was the Guardian video, which host actor Robert Stack gravely intoned was “to be shown for the first time ever on national television.”
“That’s what everyone remembers that videotape” Crowe said. Searchingfor Guardian is a natural follow for Crowe, whose previous documentary, Spaceman, was about an eccentric 32-year-old B.C. mechanic who was building a spaceship in his yard. The man vanished before it was finished, telling his family he was going on a journey with extraterrestrials. It’s the human story behind the Guardian hoax that intrigues Crowe, but finding area residents with first-hand memories of the incident has been difficult. “What we’re lacking is anyone who had a personal connection to it. We’re not making something salacious or a ‘gotcha’ piece looking to explain the whole thing away.”
At the end of the 1992 Unsolved Mystery broadcast, a stone-faced Stack resolves the West Carleton mystery leaves only questions, “Questions perhaps the person called Guardian alone can answer.” If you have memories of the West Carleton UFO story, you can contact Crowe at nick.crowesaloon-media.com. bcrawfordpostmedia.com
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