Canada reported unidentified aerial event — 1972-07-31 — Selkirk, MB

Two juvenile witnesses near Selkirk, Manitoba, reported a strange light shortly after midnight on 31 July 1972. They had been sleeping in a farm bunkhouse in the St. Andrews area when a low throbbing sound drew them outside. Around 00:10 they saw a bright, star-like, multicolored object against a clear sky. Police received a call within minutes and sent a patrol to the farm. The boys said the light travelled south in a sharp zigzag pattern, stopped for four or five seconds, then made a distinct right-angle change toward the west and disappeared. They could not estimate altitude or size beyond its star-like appearance. They rejected helicopter and jet suggestions because they believed they knew how those looked at night. Their description did not include a resolved hull, occupants, a landing or communication; the accompanying sound was their impression of a low throbbing noise. Follow-up inquiries found no other local observers. The investigating constable questioned the boys’ reliability based on previous dealings and suspected a low-flying commercial aircraft near the regional flight route. That is an attributed police assessment, not an identified flight or independently demonstrated hoax. An archive-index match that actually depicts a separate Sackville, New Brunswick, case is excluded from these redacted juvenile statements. The plate shows the two young observers and a distant light in the farm setting, preserving both the limited visual detail and the conventional explanation considered in the file.