"It was a clear January night, and 22-year-old Mathieu Robichaud was behind the wheel of his Chevy Cavalier, his girlfriend next to him, headed for the store the next town over. .
They were looking forward to a quiet Saturday night -- just the two of them together, watching movies back at the apartment they shared in the basement of her mother's house. .
The conversation between the two had fallen to silence. The familiarity of the road, the music on the radio and the tranquilizing hiss of the car heater cranked on high had lulled them into a quiet comfort. .
Then: "Jesus!" he exclaimed. "What's that?" .
Two lights low in the sky. .
Jenny Laplante noticed them just at that moment, too. "It's a plane," the 17-year-old high school student thought, "and it's about to crash." .
But as they drove closer, the details became clearer: two lights morphed to four white lights -- translucent, like light spilling through a distant window. Smaller blue lights were set between the white. .
There was no way, they thought, that it was an airplane: it wasn't the right shape and it moved too slowly. .
Craning his neck to follow it as it approached, Mr. Robichaud also noticed white lights on bottom. He quickly pulled into the nearest driveway and jumped out of the car. .
He figured it was only about 15 metres above him. He couldn't see the body of it in the dark, but the arrangement of lights made it appear as if it was shaped like a diamond. It looked to be about twice the width of his car and four times as long. .
He was struck by the silence -- the thing made no noise. He watched as it banked into a sharp turn over the house to his right and floated off toward a neighbouring thicket of forest. .
He jumped back into the car. His girlfriend was frightened. He raced down the road, trying to follow it. He lost it over the woods.".
This is a section of the same article that the whole population of Inkerman, New Brunswick, read in disbelief the morning of January 13, 2002.