The Mystery of the “Edmonton Plates” Found at a UFO Landing Site
The year 1967 was a landmark for local ufology in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. In fact, it marked the most famous UFO incident in the city’s history.
On November 4, 1967, around 11:30 PM, an unnamed witness (an immigrant from Italy), known only by the initials L.P., returned to his rented room after meeting with friends. He hadn’t even turned on the coffee maker yet when he saw a bright moving point in the dark sky through the window.
At first, he thought it was an airplane, as there was an airport nearby. But the point started moving in such a strange trajectory that he realized it was something else. The object quickly descended, and at some point, it hovered.
The man then saw its shape — an intensely pulsing red orb. Then it faded, and in its place appeared a bright blue ring that began to descend towards the ground, expanding in diameter.
By that moment, the witness had already turned off his coffee maker and was completely focused on observing the strange object.
Then, from the ring, a very small sphere emerged and flew downward. When it was about 500 meters above the ground and quite close to the witness’s house, he saw that it wasn’t perfectly round but appeared slightly flattened at the ends and had a silvery color. The UFO-sphere rotated around its axis and hummed like a transformer, emitting a soft violet light.
The UFO flew over the Saskatchewan River and gently landed on the grass at the Riverside municipal golf course, about 1.5 km from the witness’s home. Once it landed, the orb went dark, and the witness didn’t see it anymore. However, about five minutes later, it lit up again and took off, rising back toward the ring and disappearing into it.
Then the rings turned back into a bright pulsating sphere, which slowly flew away to the north, gradually gaining speed until it disappeared completely.
The witness didn’t dare to go outside, fearing the object might return. The next morning, he immediately bought a newspaper, hoping to find reports about the night “visitor,” but found nothing.
Eventually, curiosity got the better of him. He went to the golf course and soon found obvious traces of the UFO’s landing — a ring of heavily flattened grass, about 5 meters in diameter.
Two meters away from the ring, he discovered deep puncture marks about 10 cm in diameter, likely from the UFO’s supports.
There was nothing else remarkable on the site. But as the witness was about to leave, he noticed something glinting in the grass.
He found a thin plate, seemingly made of copper, covered with mysterious figures and symbols resembling hieroglyphs. The plate measured 17.3 cm long and 12.5 cm wide, and was very thin, only about 1 mm thick — just a bit thicker than foil — and seemed very fragile.
He took the plate with him.
In the following days, he kept buying newspapers, hoping to read about the UFO incident, but there were no reports at all, as if no one else had seen anything that night.
The witness decided to remain silent too. As an immigrant, he didn’t want to draw unnecessary attention to himself.
Six years later, the witness left Canada and returned to Italy, never fully settling in Canada. He took the plate with him.
In 1976, his story was finally published in the local paranormal magazine Il Giornale dei Misteri. It seems he finally decided to share his experience.
The publication also included a black-and-white photo of the plate, which became the only known image in history. After that, the witness never contacted any other magazines, never published further photos, and did not speak with ufologists — nor did they ever contact him.
Fifteen years later, a journalist stumbled upon this story and contacted L.P., hoping to see the plate. It turned out that the witness no longer had it.
He told a sad story: he always carried the plate in his bag for good luck. One day, while driving, someone started shooting at him from the street. Bullets shattered the car window, but he managed to escape unharmed, leaving his bag in the car.
When the police (the Carabinieri) examined his car and later returned it to him, the bag with the plate was missing.
He decided not to bother them with requests to return it, believing it was better to let it go.
Since then, many have tried to decipher the plate’s contents using that single published image. The symbols seem to resemble several ancient scripts simultaneously (including Celtic Ogham writing), but they remain undeciphered to this day.
There is a theory that this plate might be something like an extraterrestrial analogue of the Voyager Golden Record — the plate containing information about Earth and humans sent into deep space in 1977 aboard Voyager.
