The Clarenville UFO: An RCMP Constable and the Craft over Random Sound

Clarenville sits on Random Sound, an arm of Trinity Bay in Newfoundland. Across the water lies Random Island. In the early hours of Thursday, October 26, 1978, residents along the waterfront had been watching something over that stretch of water. They called the RCMP.

Constable James Blackwood was 25. He responded to the call at 1:45 a.m. He expected a routine report. Earlier calls had been about vague lights. This one was different. The object was clearly visible.

"I went down and the craft was hovering between Clarenville and Random Island, right on the water," Blackwood recalled. "It was only a couple hundred feet off the water." A large fluorescent-type light shone down from beneath it. It made no sound.

Chester Lethbridge and his wife were already watching through binoculars. Blackwood had something stronger, a scope built for drug surveillance. "Chester had binoculars. But this thing was a lot better with 60 times magnification. I got to see it close up."

Accounts described an oval or cigar-shaped object with a fin or curved tail, about the size of a Boeing 737, and Blackwood focused on its surface: "I'm familiar with aircrafts of all shapes and sizes. But the metal on it was not like aircraft metal. It was very dull and not shiny at all. It wasn't even smooth. It was very coarse looking."

Then Blackwood flashed the lightbar on his police cruiser. The craft instantly mimicked the lights. "I activated the roof lights of my police car and it activated lights at the same time." The Lethbridges reportedly did not think turning on the police lights was a good idea.

About a dozen people watched with him. By Blackwood's count, the object stayed a good two hours, then began to leave. It rose slowly, "taking forever to rise." Then, "vroom." It was "gone like a shooting star."

The National Research Council in Ottawa suggested the object may have been the planet Jupiter. Blackwood rejected the idea. He said the researcher never spoke to him or to any of the other witnesses. And he asked how a planet could cast a shadow on the water. No photographs, radar returns or physical traces were ever reported. Even the details differ from one telling to the next. The Royal Canadian Mint says the sighting lasted nearly an hour, and one account puts the object 100 feet above the water. In 2025 the federal Sky Canada Project listed Clarenville among Canada's historical cases. Its summary noted several witnesses, including an RCMP constable, and no material evidence.

Blackwood gave about 200 media interviews at the time. Years of ridicule followed. He had been a non-believer before that night. Afterwards he was not. He retired to Nova Scotia and rarely spoke of it, until a 2015 interview with The Packet. A 1978 NTV interview with him now circulates on YouTube. His view has not softened. "The technology was way beyond what we had then and still way beyond what we have now."

In 2020 the Royal Canadian Mint honoured the night with a glow-in-the-dark silver coin, the Clarenville Event, designed by Fogo Island artist Adam Young. It followed coins for the Falcon Lake Incident and the Shag Harbour Incident. Some now call it the most famous UFO sighting in Newfoundland's history.