Life along Lake Huron in southeastern Ontario in Canada is generally very quiet. But this weekend, the lake and the towns around it found themselves at the center of global news.

On Saturday there were reports of an unidentified flying object over the lake, and suddenly there was a total no-fly zone over the home of children’s book author Tara Shannon , who lives in the small town of Tobermory along Lake Huron in Canada.

– I went out and it was completely quiet. It was completely surreal. Usually you hear commercial aircraft. But there was nothing. The sky was clear and everything was calm, Shannon said. The Guardian.

– Should it land in our garden?

Then the silence was replaced by the thunder of fighter jets searching for the object, which was shot down on Sunday.

Lakeside residents say they received little information about the flying object, the shooting and the search operation that took place right outside their homes, writes The Guardian.

– We didn’t know what was going to happen. Should it land in our garden? What was it made of?, Shannon asks and continues:

– And we don’t know if they found anything or where it ended. We are left with many questions.

For now, the Canadian and American governments are very reluctant to share information, but according to a memo obtained by CNN it was to be a “small metal balloon with a payload underneath” that was shot down on Sunday.

On websites where you can track flights all over the world, you could see, among other things, a US Coast Guard plane apparently searching for the object over the lake.

Residents on the US side of the lake also reported hearing planes in the area.

Tense situation

The object that was shot down over Lake Huron on Sunday was the third to be shot down in the United States or Canada in as many days and created a tense situation in the country.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau told a news conference on Monday that Canadian authorities had observed “some kind of pattern” in the unidentified flying objects.

So far, authorities are careful to distinguish between the spy balloon and the other three objects.

The professor of political science at Rutgers University, Ross Baker, is nevertheless very critical of the fact that the American authorities have not been more open about the situation.

– Secrecy fuels people’s anxiety and paranoia. It sounds like “deep state” and other conspiracy theories about what’s really going on here, Baker told Dagbladet.