ALIEN: The Falcon Lake Incident

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Picture this.

You're deep in the woods, hours away from civilization.

Maybe you're hiking or camping.

Either way, you're minding your own business when suddenly a UFO lands right in front of you.

You're probably thinking no one's ever going to believe this.

Of course, you'd be right.

Outside of an X-Files episode, authorities get pretty skeptical when someone claims they've seen a mysterious spacecraft.

But in 1967, when Stefan Michilak reported a UFO in Falcon Lake, Manitoba, officials had a much harder time writing him off.

50 years later, the government still admits that something must have happened.

The reason why?

Stefan brought back evidence, and it was all over his own body.

This is Supernatural.

I'm your host, Ashley Flowers.

This This week's episode is about the Falcon Lake incident.

In 1967, Stefan Michelak returned from the Canadian wilderness covered in strange burns that he claims came from an unidentified craft.

That evidence, plus other proofs Stefan recovered, make this the best documented UFO encounter in Canadian history.

We'll have all that and more coming up.

Stay with us.

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If you're a fan of extraterrestrial stories, you might notice a trend with the types of people who encounter UFOs.

They're usually pretty normal folks.

And this is mostly because of geography.

The most famous sightings have happened in rural areas to ordinary people like farmers, housewives, suburbanites.

But in today's story, Stefan Michelak is anything but normal.

Stefan grew up in Poland where he spent the first half of his life surviving a literal Nazi invasion.

And while working as a Polish intelligence officer, the Nazis actually captured him.

He spends the next year and a half at a concentration camp in what is now western Poland.

When the war ends, Stefan escapes Poland and joins the American army that's occupying Germany.

He travels around working as a translator for Allied soldiers as they dismantle the concentration camps.

So safe to say, Stefan has seen some horrible things.

And it makes sense that when he gets the opportunity to move his family to Canada in 1949, he jumps at the chance.

So fast forward to 1967, Stefan's been living the Canadian dream for almost two decades now.

He has a home with his wife and three kids in Winnipeg, Manitoba.

Now, during the week, he's an industrial mechanic at a cement company in the city.

And on weekends, he has this special hobby.

Stefan roams the Canadian wilderness as an amateur prospector, which is basically somebody who drills for minerals, just for fun.

Stefan is fascinated by rocks and minerals and he likes to collect samples to bring back home.

He's so good at it that he's even staked a few claims by finding ore deposits and registering them with the government.

So it makes sense that with Victoria Day coming up, he's got big plans to go prospecting.

Victoria Day is a Canadian national holiday that falls on a Monday, kind of like President's Day in the U.S.

Stefan's going to spend the entire three-day weekend out by Falcon Lake.

Falcon Lake sits smack in the middle of the Canadian Shield, which is this giant plateau made of incredibly ancient rocks.

It's around 3 million square miles, so literally more than half of Canada.

And Stefan's visited it many times, but he knows that with how massive it is, he could find untapped silver or even gold in a spot no one's ever been to before.

So on Friday, May 19th, Stefan takes the Greyhound out to Falcon Lake.

He checks into a local motel, gets a solid night's rest, and the next morning, May 20th at 5.30 a.m., he leaves his room, crosses the highway, and treks deep into the Canadian wilderness.

By 9 a.m., he's found a quartz vein inside a rock in a clearing.

Stefan's pleased with his discovery and spends the next few hours just happily chipping away at the crystals.

Noon rolls around and Stefan is still tinkering around when suddenly he hears this large flock of geese behind him.

They're honking excitedly like something is scaring them.

Stefan whips around when he spots something.

Two shiny objects hovering above the trees.

From the way he describes it, they look basically like your typical flying saucers.

Each one is oval shaped with a raised bump bump in the very center.

Stefan watches as they change color from bright red to orange to gray.

He's so distracted that he almost doesn't notice that they're not floating in place.

They're actually descending straight down towards him.

One of the objects floats above Stefan for a few minutes.

Then it darts off into the sky and just disappears.

But the other one sticks around.

It lands on a flat rock about 150 feet away from Stefan.

The whole time, it's changing colors until eventually it settles on a bright silver, but it's giving off this like spooky yellow glow.

And near the top, there's actually an opening with a bright purple light shining out of it.

Stefan is freaked out.

He can hear the motor churning and he smells honestly something terrible.

It's like almost a combination of exhaust mixed with rotten eggs.

But his first thought isn't that it's aliens.

His first thought is like, this has to be some kind of military aircraft.

Now, Stefan knows about Canadian planes.

His son was actually part of a youth program run by the Royal Canadian Air Force.

And he just sort of assumes that, you know, this must be an American plane.

So he inches towards the ship, trying to find any markings from the U.S.

Air Force, but Nada.

As he gets closer, he starts hearing voices.

They sound like humans, but over the roar of the ship's engine, he can't make out what they're saying, except that it's at least two people talking.

So, like any self-respecting Canadian, he offers to help them.

Stefan shouts out, quote, Okay, Yankee boys, having trouble?

Come on out and we'll see what we can do about it.

But he doesn't get any answer.

He tries again, this time in Russian, but nothing.

So Stefan tries again in German, tries in Italian, Polish, French, even Ukrainian.

Remember, he once worked as a translator.

This guy is a one-man United Nations, but the voices inside have totally clammed up.

Now, putting myself in Stefan's shoes, I'd take this as a warning to leave.

But Stefan's just sort of curious.

He goes right up to the craft and puts on the protective goggles he uses for prospecting.

Then he just sticks his head inside the glowing purple opening.

The interior is like nothing he's ever seen before.

Beams of light crisscross in different directions.

Others blink on and off in some sort of strange pattern.

It's almost like a disco night at a roller rink in there.

The lights are so bright, they hurt Stefan's eyes.

So he jerks his head back outside.

The second he clears the edge of the hole, these metal panels come out of nowhere, sealing it shut.

And from the outside, the craft now appears entirely seamless, not an opening in sight.

But then, Stefan sees this weird spot on the ship.

It's round with circular holes arranged in a checkered checkered pattern, almost like an exhaust port.

I'm not sure if that registers with him though, because instead of keeping his distance, Stefan walks over and touches the ship right next to the exhaust port.

Immediately, the superheated metal scorches his glove, and seconds later, the craft rotates counterclockwise and one side tilts up towards the sky.

At the exact same time, Stefan feels a sharp pain as a white-hot gust of air hits his chest and stomach.

It's so hot, his shirt instantly catches fire.

Stefan tears it off and drops to the ground, but it's too late.

He can already feel severe burns forming on his abdomen.

But meanwhile, the craft lifts up and zooms off into the sky.

Coming up, Stefan fights for his life.

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Now back to the story.

When the UFO takes off, Stefan can hardly pay attention.

His chest feels like it's been barbecued.

And when he finally stops rolling around, he can see a symmetrical grid of perfectly round burns on his stomach, matching the design on the exhaust port.

His head aches, he is sweating profusely, and then he starts to vomit.

Now again, Stefan has experienced some horrible things in his lifetime, but being severely burned and vomiting alone in the wilderness is definitely up there.

And slowly, this thought creeps into his mind.

If the craft was some sort of top secret military vehicle, who knows?

Maybe it could run on nuclear power and the exhaust that hit him could actually have been radioactive waste.

It's a terrifying thought and when Stefan feels strong enough to stand to his feet, he knows he needs to make it to the hospital ASAP.

But for some reason, his compass has stopped working.

The needle will not point north.

So he just starts walking through the Canadian wilderness.

It's rough going.

Stefan keeps stopping to puke and he's disoriented.

The whole time, he's followed by that same terrible smell, that mix of burnt electronics and rotten eggs.

But eventually, he realizes that the stench is actually coming from him.

And in his panic to get out of the woods, he's getting more and more lost.

He's also growing more and more desperate because a new thought keeps flashing through his mind.

What if the ship comes back?

After hours of trekking, Stefan finally stumbles onto a highway.

He realizes he's about a mile away from where he entered the woods that morning, so he starts heading in the direction of town.

And eventually, a mounted police officer spots him.

The officer trots up to Stefan who explains that a mysterious aircraft just appeared to him in the woods.

And you would at least think that with Stefan being shirtless with burns on his chest, the mountaine would see that he needs help.

But supposedly, he wouldn't hear a word of Stefan's story.

And when Stefan asks for help finding a doctor, the man refuses.

I'm not sure whether to believe Stefan about this encounter, but in any case, he keeps walking.

And when he finally reaches his motel, he gets more bad news.

The receptionist tells him that the only doctor in the area lives about 45 miles away.

So instead, Stefan calls his wife and arranges for his adult son to meet him at the Winnipeg bus depot.

That's right, Stefan, weak, vomiting, and horribly burned, has to take a two-hour bus ride home, which just sounds like the most miserable trip ever.

Stefan arrives in Winnipeg at around 10.15 p.m.

and his son takes him to the hospital.

After his encounter with the Mounties, Stefan's worried his family and the hospital staff won't believe him, so he tells them that he got hit by airplane exhaust.

The doctors can't tell what's wrong with Stefan beyond his burns, which again are just super bizarre looking.

The same grid pattern of coin-sized burns stretches all the way from his chest to his stomach.

But they must not be too horrible because the hospital puts ointment on him, gives him a sedative, and tells him to just go home and rest.

And that's what he does.

Stefan rests for most of the next day, May 21st.

By May 22nd, once he's regained some strength, he finally tells his wife and sons that he's seen a UFO.

His family actually believes him, especially once they see how he's suffering.

I mean, Stefan's bedridden with non-stop migraines.

He can't keep any food down, so he's steadily losing weight, and there's still that awful smell.

His son remembers the entire bedroom smelling like an overheated motor full of sulfur.

Stefan himself can't escape it.

It's like when you eat too much garlic, but a thousand times worse.

The family doctor pays a visit and agrees.

Stefan's symptoms, the vomiting, the migraines, the smell, just don't make any sense.

And over time, Stefan's family shares the same concern as their dad.

They're worried that he may have radiation poisoning.

Which, if that's the case, they all need to know stats.

Stefan could be putting them all in grave danger.

So in the days following his encounter, they take Stefan to a Canadian National Atomic Research Center.

He's poked and prodded, levels are taken, body parts are scanned.

Thankfully, it's good news.

Stefan is not radioactive.

The bad news, they still don't know what's wrong with him.

The doctors who examine him admit that whatever he's suffering from, it looks similar to radiation poisoning.

One of them thinks the circular burns came from powerful gamma rays.

If they passed through Stefan's stomach, they could immediately break down the food inside.

This explains why Stefan instantly started vomiting and why he carries such an awful smell, But it's just one theory.

And then there's Stefan's blood count.

Normally, white blood cells should be about 25 to 40% lymphocytes.

But after the incident, Stefan's count is only 16%.

This also looks like radiation.

But since the tests are coming out clean, they send Stefan home.

Meanwhile, public interest is exploding.

A reporter from the Winnipeg Tribune catches wind of Stefan's story.

She shows up at the house on May 21st, literally the day after the incident, and the news story breaks the following day.

Soon, it makes headlines across the country.

It's even reprinted in America and other countries, like something about Stefan's story just rings true.

And maybe that's because he's not the only one telling it.

On May 19th, one day before Stefan's sighting, residents of the nearby town of Lockport claimed to see a glowing craft moving impossibly fast through the sky.

About a week later, in the days after Stefan's sighting, a 13-year-old girl from Winnipeg sees similar oval crafts.

The sketch she makes looks almost exactly like the ones Stefan described.

Altogether, at least 20 different people reported UFOs near Falcon Lake in the four weeks before and after Stefan's incident.

So his story is part of this wider sensation.

Stefan's family phone rings off the hook.

Reporters loiter on his doorstep.

Journalists interview friends and neighbors asking if he seems stable or if he has like a drinking problem.

And Stefan's youngest son is bullied at school for having a dad who saw a UFO.

But despite all the skepticism, it doesn't take long for the feds to pay serious attention to Stefan.

Representatives from the Royal Canadian Air Force and, ironically, the mounted police show up to interrogate him.

I'm not sure if there's some sort of truth that prompted this, but the same suspicion crops up regarding Stefan's drinking habits.

One official asks Stefan point blank if he likes to drink, and the bartender at the motel in Falcon Lake actually reports seeing Stefan the night before the incident.

Supposedly, he was at the bar downing several beers.

But Stefan claims he didn't go near the bar.

So for a little while, there's this conundrum, who's lying?

The bartender or the man who saw a UFO?

Ultimately, receipts from that night prove that Stefan is telling the truth.

He didn't buy anything at the bar.

But at this point, the Air Force and the Mounted Police have both sent teams out to find the landing site with no luck.

Now, it's not like they're looking for aliens.

Both agencies are concerned that if Stefan really did see an aircraft out in the woods, it may have been an enemy spy.

Remember, this is 1967 in the midst of the Cold War.

While Canada isn't caught up in the same technology race as America, they still aren't on friendly terms with Russia.

Rumors about Soviet spy capabilities are at an all-time high.

So these officials need to locate the landing site.

And so does Stefan, because even though he's got the scars to prove it, he needs more convincing evidence.

Right now, his one beacon of hope is a guy named Barry Thompson.

Barry's from the Aerial Phenomena Research Organization, or APRO, which is this UFO group.

So he's definitely an enthusiast and he reaches out to Stefan immediately after his story hits the papers.

Barry is super sympathetic and the two of them become fast friends.

Meanwhile, Stefan's on the road to recovery.

Eventually, he's able to eat again and walk around the house, which is great because all he wants to do is be able to go back to the site of his encounter.

Two weeks after the incident, on July 4th, Stefan's well enough to make the journey.

He heads back to Falcon Lake along with Barry and a magazine photographer, but he can't find the way back to the site, so they're forced to give up.

A few weeks later, the Air Force takes Stefan out in a helicopter thinking that maybe an aerial view will help, but no dice.

At this point, the feds are getting testy.

They've gone out twice now, once on their own, once with Stefan, and their witness can't seem to get his bearings.

But Stefan's not ready to throw in the towel.

He teams up with yet another new pal named Jerry Hart.

Jerry's an eccentric electrical engineer who had a cabin near Falcon Lake, and he's a bit of a character.

The kind of guy who doesn't trust the government and hasn't paid taxes in years, but he knows the area better than anyone else.

So in late June, one month after the encounter, Stefan strikes out into the forest one more time, this time with Jerry.

And miraculously, they find it.

There's a huge round outline of the ship on the rock where it landed weeks earlier.

They even find Stefan's burned shirt and his tape measure lying nearby.

Then they notice something weird.

The leaves of the trees near where the craft landed have turned yellow and their branches are dying.

It's almost as if they've been poisoned.

Pretty soon, Stefan gets the Air Force, the Mounted Police, and APRO all together to examine the site.

And as soon as they break out the Geiger counters, the needles go wild.

The area immediately near where the craft touched down is definitely radioactive.

Coming up, Stefan searches for anth.

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Now back to the story.

Thankfully, the radioactivity at the Falcon Lake landing site isn't enough to be dangerous.

And as the officials point out, there's a base level of heightened radiation in the Canadian Shield due to a lot of granite in the area.

Apparently, granite often has pockets of radioactive material.

But they do find something the shield can't explain.

Right in the middle of the rock where the ship landed, there's a blip on the Geiger counters.

It seems this one spot is more radioactive than everything else around it.

So between this, the burned shirt, the dead trees, and the circle left by the ship, it's obvious something happened.

The feds don't know if it's an alien UFO, but they're willing to believe Stefan had some sort of encounter with some sort of aircraft.

The officials take soil samples for testing and promise Stefan that they'll tell him the results.

Meanwhile, the public is demanding answers.

Even other government officials want to know what's going on, but the feds are acting coy.

On June 29th of 67, a Canadian member of parliament asks in open session to see the Falcon Lake incident reports.

According to Stefan's son, the Speaker of the House immediately cuts him off and moves on to the next subject.

Stefan's dealing with the same issue.

Summer turns to fall, fall turns to winter, and he still can't get any more information from the Canadian government.

They tested the soil samples from the landing site and confirmed that the dirt was slightly radioactive, but they couldn't, or maybe wouldn't, tell Stefan anything else.

But the lack of answers doesn't stop Barry Thompson.

With no further evidence, Barry goes ahead and publishes an article in the April newsletter, claiming that Stefan's encounter is irrefutable proof of extraterrestrials.

Now, this happens without Stefan's permission.

And at this point, Stefan has still never made a public statement about extraterrestrial life.

The only thing he'll admit to is a strange aircraft.

But if Stefan thought the media frenzy was bad before, now it is downright unbearable.

Reporters hound his family asking questions about Barry's article.

Stefan won't answer the phone anymore because he's so sick of being asked the same questions over and over again.

And all this time, he's still dealing with bizarre symptoms from the encounter.

One day in September, this is roughly like four months since the incident, Stefan's working at the cement company when his body starts swelling up, like his arms and legs balloon and they begin to turn this dark purple color.

His supervisor eventually finds him.

Horrified, he rushes Stefan to a specialist who literally has to cut off Stefan's clothes because his body is so bloated.

And they notice Stefan's faded burn marks have flared up.

They're now like super red and angry.

But then, just as suddenly, these symptoms fade away.

The next day, Stefan's completely fine.

No explanation, just the worst 24-hour bug of his life.

At some point, while Stefan's battling these sort of weird side effects, he decides to write down his entire experience.

Well, actually, it was Barry's idea.

Apparently, the two of them are still friends, and Stefan has to admit that having a paper copy of his story is a good idea.

This way, he can just hand out little booklets to journalists instead of dealing with the questions.

Stefan calls his pamphlet, My Encounter with the UFO.

His family keeps a stack by the door to hand to anyone who stops by.

And Barry, helpful soul that he is, even volunteers to sell the book through the April newsletter.

He's using the sales to collect money for Stefan's family.

But Funny thing, the address listed in the magazine doesn't belong to Stefan.

It's Barry's address.

Stefan never sees a penny, and once the media frenzy dies down, Barry vanishes once and for all.

So Stefan's left with this unsatisfying ending.

His closest ally has used and deserted him.

The government won't answer his calls, and he still doesn't know what he saw on Falcon Lake.

Fast forward to May 1968, a full year after Stefan's ill-fated prospecting trip.

In a last bid for answers, he takes another friend out to Falcon Lake.

He remembers seeing this large crack on the top of the rock where the craft landed.

So he has this idea that maybe the radioactivity isn't coming from the rock's surface.

Maybe it's inside.

They reach the landing site and for hours, Stefan uses his prospecting tools to chip at a large crack in the center of the rock.

Several inches down, he strikes gold, or in this case, silver.

Sitting at the bottom of the fissure are several irregular pieces of shiny metal, the same color as the outside of the spaceship.

They're the same shape as the crack itself, meaning liquid must have dripped down and hardened there.

Whatever it is, it is not naturally occurring.

And when they scan the silver pieces with a Geiger counter, the needle swings wildly.

The metal is radioactive.

Stefan thinks this is it, proof of the UFO, and more importantly, proof he is telling the truth.

He takes the sample home and sends it off for testing.

The lab results come back saying that the metal is a very pure silver coated in materials containing radioactive uranium, almost like an ice cream cone dipped in sprinkles.

It's unclear what these uranium containing materials are, but this mysterious silver is the last piece of physical evidence anyone finds.

I'm not sure how long the case is open, but eventually both the Canadian Air Force and Mounted Police close their investigations.

They believe Stefan encountered something that burned him in the woods, but it probably wasn't a threat to national security.

Both departments label the phenomena unexplained.

For the next few years after the incident, multiple government officials apparently try and fail to see the reports.

But it's not until 1979 that some of them become available to the public.

And even then, I mean, it's only portions.

The full report has never been released.

And this could be for a variety of reasons.

Maybe the government was able to connect the ship back to a foreign power.

I mean, if it was something like a Soviet spy plane, they probably didn't want to spill the beans to the public and cause a panic.

Not to mention, they couldn't let the Soviets know that they knew that they were being spied on.

Or maybe they were just avoiding the embarrassment of an inconclusive report.

Or maybe they found actual proof of extraterrestrials.

Remember, multiple other people reported UFOs in May 1967.

So who knows what other investigations may have been going on or what they found?

As for Stefan, he never claims it was aliens.

All his life, he suspects it was a top-secret military ship.

But a year after the incident, he's still suffering, so he tries a new tactic.

In August 1968, Stefan checks himself into the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota.

He still has those circular pattern burns on his chest and stomach, awful headaches, and he faints often.

The doctors at the Mayo Clinic confirm it wasn't radiation, but they have a new hypothesis for Stefan.

Maybe he was burned by toxic gas.

His symptoms have lasted so long because his body is still fighting whatever chemical compound he was burned with, which could also explain why he fell ill at work.

Maybe something in the cement factory with the same compounds triggered a reaction, making him blow up like the stay-puffed marshmallow man.

It makes sense.

If an experimental military craft burned Stefan, who knows what kind of nuclear fuel it was using?

The doctors at Mayo Clinic also do a psychological evaluation on Stefan, and the results are promising.

He's stable, trustworthy, and not likely to make up a story like this.

But over the years, minor blips have cropped up.

The place where Stefan touched the UFO was within view of a forest ranger tower, but the rangers on duty that day didn't see anything.

Now, it's super possible no one was looking in that direction when the UFOs landed or took off.

And as Stefan and others described, the ships moved impossibly fast.

But there's also some debate about how radioactive the site was.

Some accounts claim authorities thought it might even pose a danger to the community, but others say the Canadian Shield is made of granite, which can contain trace amounts of radioactive materials.

The entire area would probably probably set a Geiger counter off, not just the landing site.

Still, it doesn't explain the pieces of metal Stefan found.

The government ran dozens of tests on the metal pieces from the rock, and so did private experts.

None of them could explain why those pieces were radioactive or how they got deep inside the crack.

Years after his incident, Stefan still had scar tissue in the same grid pattern on his abdomen.

And even though he recounted it dozens of times to newspapers, government officials, and UFO enthusiasts, he never changed his story, not even under hypnosis.

Stefan Michelak died in 1999, true to his story until the end.

And with him died the only chance of getting to the bottom of the Falcon Lake incident.

But maybe we'll get lucky and our visitors, whether they're from another country or another planet, might come back for another vacation to Falcon Lake someday.

Thanks for listening.

I'll be back next week with another episode.

To hear more stories hosted by me, check out Crime Junkie and all Audio Chuck originals.

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