It's 1977 and a team of archaeologists and scientists is working on a dig on the northern tip of Labrador, Canada.

They are way up north.

Like if you got in a boat and took off heading east,

eventually you would hit Greenland.

These researchers are studying the geography of the area and they're looking for artifacts

from thousands of years ago, like the remains of sod houses and old trash piles and burial mounds.

One day they start digging right on the edge of the water. It's really stark and beautiful here.

The water is this deep, deep blue, and in fact this area

is known to some of the Inuit people who live nearby as a popular fishing spot. There's cliffs

and mountains that are gray-black and dotted with

snow. But at this spot they stumble on something very weird. It's a group of nine metal drums. They're about three feet high, 20

inches in diameter, and they are heavy. Each one weighs about 200 pounds. There's also two masts, one with some sort of

instrument on top and the other one like a tall radio antenna.

These definitely are not thousands of years old. The researchers peer at a painted sign on one of the drums.

It says Canadian Meteor Service.

Hmm.

That seems straightforward enough.

Meteorological equipment for some Canadian government agency.

But the problem was these were not actually the property of the Canadian

Meteor Service and in fact the Canadian Meteor Service didn't exist.

So who put these here and why?

I'm Amanda McGowan and this is Atlas Obscura, a celebration of the world's strange, incredible, and wondrous places.

...