Falcon Lake incident is Canada's 'best-documented UFO case,' even 50 years later

Stan Michalakcan still vividly remember when his dad came home sick and injured after something happened in the Falcon Lake woods in Manitoba on the May long weekend of 1967.

It was something that put his family life into upheaval and remains one of the world's best-known UFO encounters.

"I recalled seeing him in bed. He didn't look good at all. He looked pale, haggard," said Michalak, who was nine years old at the time and was allowed to see his dad for a couple of minutes on the day after what soon become known as the Falcon Lake incident.

• The Falcon Lake event: Canada's most famous UFO encounter

Then there was the smell.

"When I walked into the bedroom there was a huge stink in the room, like a real horrible aroma of sulphur and burnt motor. It was all around and it was coming out of his pores. It was bad," said Michalak, who co-authored the book When They Appearedwith Winnipeg UFO researcher Chris Rutkowski.

The book will be launched on Saturday in conjunction with the50thanniversary of the incident.

"I was very afraid. My dad had been injured and I didn'tknow anything about it,"Michalaktold CBC News in recalling that Saturday 50 years earlier.

Within a couple of days, however, not only did heknowmore so did much of the public.

The story about his dad being burned by a UFO ran in the Winnipeg Tribune newspaper "and that's when everything pretty much hit the fan,"Michalak said.

The encounter

StefanMichalakwas an industrial mechanic by trade and an amateur geologist who liked to venture into the wilderness around Falcon Lakeabout 150 kilometres east ofWinnipegtoprospect for quartz and silver.

He had staked some claims the prior year and set out on theMay long weekend in 1967 to explore some more.

On May 20, 1967,Stefanwas near a vein of quartz along the Precambrian Shield in the area when the 51-year-old was startled by a gaggle of nearby geese that erupted into a clattering of honks.

According to his accounts, as reported in newspapers at the time and since repeated in books, magazines and on TV shows like Unsolved Mysteries, Stefan looked up and saw two cigar-shaped objects with a reddish glow hovering about 45 metres away.

One descended, according to Stefan's account, landing on a flat section of rockand taking on more of a disc shape. The other remained in the air for a few minutes before flying off.

Believing it to beasecretU.S.military experimental craft, Stefan sat back and sketched it over the next half hour. Then he decided to approach, later recalling the warm air and smell of sulphur as he got closer, as well as a whirring sound of motors and a hissing of air.

He also noted a door open on the side with bright lights inside, and said he heard voices muffled by the sounds from the craft.

He said he called out, offering mechanical help to the "Yankee boys" if they needed it. The voices went quiet but did not answer, so Stefan tried in his native Polish, then in Russian and finally in German.

Only the whirr and hiss of the craft responded.

He claims he went closer and noted the smooth metal of the ship, with no seams. He then looked into the bright doorway, pullingon thewelding goggles he used to protect his eyes while chipping at rocks during prospecting.

Inside, Stefan said he saw light beams and panels of various-coloured flashing lights, but could not see anyone or any living thing. When he stepped away, three panels slid across the door opening and sealed it.

He reached to touch the craft, which he said melted the fingertips of the glove he was wearing.

The craft then began to turn counter-clockwise and Stefan says he noticed a panel that contained a grid of holes. Shortly afterward, he was struck in the chest by a blast of air or gas that pushed him backwardand set his shirt and cap ablaze.

He ripped away the burning garments as the craft lifted off and flew away.

Disoriented and nauseous, Stefan stumbled through the forest and vomited. He eventually made his way back to his motel room in Falcon Lakethen caught a bus back to Winnipeg.

He was treated at a hospital for burns to his chest and stomach that later turned into raised sores on a grid-like pattern. And for weeks afterwards, he suffered from diarrhea, headaches, blackouts and weight loss.

'Itjust flipped ourlives over'

Once the story was out, theRCMP, the air force, themedia, various government agencies, and hordes of gawking members of the public descended on theMichalaks's small River Heights bungalow in Winnipeg.

That's who Michalakrefers to in the title of the book those endless visitors and phone calls, the media and people camping on the lawn, the people who would follow Michalakto school one day peppering him with questions.

"Itjust flipped ourlives over," he said. "It took several years before it finally died down."

After that, and until the day he died in 1999 at the age of 83, Stefan believed he never should have said a thing, Michalaksaid.

But at the time, he felt it was a duty. He wanted others, if they were to see the same thing, to avoid it and not get hurt,Michalak said.

In Poland, before Stefanmoved his family to Canada, he was a military policeman with a set ofmoral guidelines that he lived by that is, if something happened, it should be reported,Michalak said.

In addition to constant probing from authorities, the family endured condemnation and criticism in the public, Stefan's sanity was questionedandMichalak was bullied in school.

Though he wished he hadn't said anything, Stefan never backed away from the story, either. He also never claimed to have seen aliens andstill considered it asecretmilitary craft.

"If you asked him what it was he saw, he could describe it in intimate detail but he would never say, 'Oh, it was definitely extraterrestrials,' because there was no evidence to prove that," saidMichalak.

"He might ask, 'What do you think I saw?' but right up until hedied, his story never changed one iota nothing about it or how he told it."

In all those years since and with some 300 pages of documentation on the encounter, "there's nothing so far that has flawed his story," Michalak said.

So what does he think?

"I'm not so close-minded that I can't entertain the possibility that it's otherworldly. I can't discount that. But without specific evidence to show me that it is, I don't know," Michalak said.

"What I can tell you is that I'm an aviation fanatic, a huge aviation buff, and I am very familiar with how aviation technology has advanced in the past 50 years. And there was nothingeven close to that in the works anywhere at that time."

Intensely investigated

The casewas investigatedintensely by a number of levels of government and the official conclusion, even from the United States Air Force, was that the case was unexplained,Rutkowski noted.

• 'Canada's UFO guy' long fascinated by mysterious lights in the sky

"The Falcon Lake incident is possibly Canada's best-documented UFO case," he said.

"It even beatsRoswell[the alleged flying disc that landed in New Mexico in 1947] because the United States still doesn't recognize that anything happened inRoswellout of the ordinary."

If Dad hoaxed this remember we're talking about ablue-collar, industrial mechanic if he hoaxed it then he was afreakin' genius.- StanMichalak

Items were later retrieved from the encounter site, including Stefan's glove and shirt and some tools, which were subjected to extensive analysis at an RCMP crime lab. No one could determine what caused the burns.

At the landing site was a circle about 15 feet in diameter, devoid of the moss and vegetationgrowing in other areas of the same rock outcropping. Soil samples, along with samples of clothing, were tested anddeemed to be highly radioactive.

So were pieces ofmetal that were chipped out of cracks in the rock about a year after the incident. The metal had somehow been melted into the cracks.

Many of the items have long since been lostas they were transferred through various authorities and agencies. However, Rutkowskiand Michalakstill have one of thepieces of metal, which remains radioactive.

Still sick in 1968 with recurrences of the burns showing up on his chest and suffering from blackouts, Stefan went to the Mayo Clinicin Rochester, Minn.

Doctors did a thorough investigation and even sent him to a psychiatrist "who came back with the report that this is a fellow who's very pragmatic, very down to earth pardon the pun and does not make up stories,"Rutkowskisaid.

"If Dad hoaxed this remember we're talking about ablue-collar, industrial mechanic if he hoaxed it then he was afreakin' genius," saidMichalak.