Last night this strange object reportedly overflew western Canada, creating a strange spiral wake and a massive explosion in the sky. Several different photos have surfaced along with a few eyewitness reports. Two videos also show the event from start to finish.

There are some immediate problems with these reports. I'd love to believe in this footage, but even though I see a few things here which do connect to my own experience with strange phenomena, I see way too much which doesn't harmonize well with mundane skills I also have, like photography.

The explanation for the position and steadiness of the camera in the first video is that Stephen Murray, the source of the footage, films meteors with four stationary cameras set up outside his home. This is edited footage of the entire event, and only one of the cameras caught it. By the time he got outside the event was over except for the arrival of the shock wave.

That's plausible, but there's something going on here which doesn't look right. The multiple spirals in the contrail before the explosion do look computer generated.

This second video, sent to Weatherspace.com hours later, shows the same event through the window of a plane. Background sounds include engine noise and voices of some very calm and mildly surprised people who apparently were filming this precise spot for some reason, right at the critical moment. In the foreground the sharp silhouette of a plane's wing appears, and the window through which the film was taken is directly over the wing. No other plane structure is in view and again the camera is rock steady. The plane's course is about as smooth as things ever get, the wing doesn't even quiver in relation to the horizon. Again all that's suspicious, and some of the unusual details from the first film are absent in this one.

A photo published at Weatherspace claims to show the same event from the ground, but portrays a complex spiral path that doesn't show up in the two videos. This sort of image could be computer generated or created physically by image overlay. The videos don't back it up.

Witnesses commenting on the two videos and also claiming to have seen the event mention that the lights in the sky did not illuminate any ground objects. While I've noticed something similar to that in encounters I do consider real, in this case it's a too convenient explanation of why no one noticed what was happening and why you don't see that in the videos. Unless you were looking directly at it, you wouldn't know it was up there. The likeliest explanation is that the event is fake and this is mentioned just to cover up faults in the footage. In the plane video, the object does light up the tip of the wing and part of the cloud layer, but only within the sphere of the expanding object. That either places the object about thirty feet from the plane or means the image is superimposed.

We'll have to wait and see how many people come forward with substantiating evidence and stories. Anything visible over a major city, as this event was, should have caught the attention of hundreds, if not thousands, who happened to be looking in the right direction at the right time. If we learned anything from the Norway Spiral it's that lots of us are watching, all the time.