Canada reported unidentified aerial event — 1972-05-01 — Maple Ridge, NB

At approximately 12:15 a.m. Atlantic daylight time on 1 May 1972, Nelma Graham watched a distinctive blinking red light in the northwestern sky from her home at Maple Ridge, Carleton County, New Brunswick. In the account subsequently taken by the RCMP, the object looked quite large and appeared cross-shaped when first observed. It moved vertically during an observation lasting about twenty minutes, then disappeared over the horizon. Her husband, Gordon Graham, watched for about ten minutes. She could not estimate its altitude reliably, although she believed it was very high; neither witness reported an associated sound. The night was clear, with the moon in the eastern sky. The police account specifically says the northwest view was open and unobstructed. The Grahams reported a second observation under similar conditions the following night, 2 May, beginning at approximately 12:40 a.m. and ending around 1 a.m. The surviving description concerns a distant red light and its apparent shape and movement. It provides no occupant account, resolved machinery, landing, or encounter with beings. After a newspaper report brought the matter to police attention, Mrs. Graham was interviewed at length. A radiogram was forwarded to the National Research Council’s Meteor Centre on 4 May; the fuller police report is dated 20 May 1972. Police regarded the witnesses as reputable and recorded no reason to doubt their sincerity, but that assessment did not identify the light or establish an extraterrestrial explanation. Some degraded OCR makes the year resemble 1978; the original dated pages support 1972. The Carleton County entry elsewhere in this atlas is another archival copy of this same two-night report, not independent corroboration.