The most well-documented UFO incident is believed to be the Falcon Lake incident in Manitoba on a long weekend in May 1967.
Stan Michalak still clearly remembers the day his father returned injured from the forest.
“I clearly remember how he lay in bed. He looked not at all good. He was pale and lethargic,”says Michałach, who was nine in 1967.
And then the boy smelled a scent that he cannot forget. “When I went into the bedroom, it smelled terribly. It's like a mixed smell of sulfur and a burnt out engine. The smell emanated from him and seemed to ooze from all his pores, recalls Stan, who wrote the book When They Appeared with the researcher of unidentified flying objects Chris Rutkowski.
On Saturday, May 20, the publication will hit Canadian store shelves in time for the 50th anniversary of the event.
The story of the burns suffered by a local resident quickly became the property of the press, and the Winnipeg Tribune newspaper was the first to publish an article about it.
Michalak Sr., Stefan, was a professional industrial mechanic. His hobby was geology, which he devoted his free time to, exploring the soil around his town of Falcon Lake - about 150 km east of Winnipeg.
He hoped to find deposits of quartz and silver here and has already sent official applications with a message about the alleged deposits of these materials found by him to the government.
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On May 20, 1967, Stephen once again explored the area where he found a quartz vein - near the Precambrian shield.
Quite unexpectedly, he was distracted by a flock of geese flying into the air with wild cries.
According to articles written later, about 45 meters away from him, Stefan Michalak saw two cigar-shaped bodies in a pinkish glow, which were hanging above the ground.
One of these objects landed on a flat rock surface and looked more like a disk. The second remained in the air for several minutes, and then flew away.
Confident that he was observing the tests of some experimental American weapon, the amateur geologist sat down on a rock and sketched what he saw for a while, and then decided to come closer to examine the unusual object. As he approached, he smelled the smell of sulfur and heard the operation of motors and a strange hiss.
A door on the side of the apparatus was open, and inside the "salon" was brightly lit. Stefan, hearing some voices from within, offered them his help as a mechanic. At first, he addressed them in English, then in his native Polish, and then in Russian and German.
In response - a quiet noise and hiss. The man came even closer and saw smooth metal, but no joints. Putting on the safety glasses he had with him just in case (so that small pebbles and dust did not get into his eyes when he chipped off soil samples from the stone), the curious earthling looked inside.
Inside, as Stefan later said, bright lights were burning, including - and multi-colored lights on strange panels. None of the people or other living things were there. When he went outside, three panels immediately moved after him, "sealing" the entrance.
Stefan touched the surface of the "flying saucer" and his glove literally "melted".
The device began to move around its axis counterclockwise, and then a certain panel became visible, resembling a "lattice" with tyrki. A few seconds later, the "geologist" was hit in the chest with hot air or gas. The shirt and caps on his head caught fire.
The man managed to rip off the burning clothes, and the UFO rose into the air and instantly disappeared from sight.
Wounded and disoriented, Stefan walked for a long time through the forest. He was very sick. He eventually made it to his motel room and then took the bus to Winnipeg.
At the hospital, he went to the hospital. There were severe burns on his chest and stomach, which then turned into small lattice-shaped growths. Several weeks after discharge, the patient still suffered from severe diarrhea, headaches, and memory loss. He also lost a lot of weight.
The story of the mechanic-geologist prompted the police, the military, journalists, several government agencies to search for traces of the aliens, and Michalak himself was carefully and for a long time questioned and interrogated.
People found out his address and besieged a small bungalow in the River Heights area of Winnipeg.
The victim's son got it in childhood because of his father. He was teased at school, bullied by classmates, constantly questioned by journalists who literally smashed bivouacs on the lawn in front of the house.
“Our life has turned upside down,” the younger Michalak complains in his book.
When an unhealthy interest in him subsided, Stefan Michalak often (and until his death in 1999, when he was 83) said that he had made a terrible mistake and was sure that he should not have told anything about this case.
At the same time, in 1967, he was sure that he was doing the right thing, that he needed to warn others so that they would not get into the same situation and suffer.
In Poland, Stefan Michalak served in the police and was convinced that if something unusual happened, if it contradicted moral principles, it should be documented and made public.
He, of course, greatly regretted that he had told about the meeting with the UFO, and it cost him many years of bullying and other troubles, but he never once deviated from his version of what happened to him. By the way, he never stated that he had met with aliens, but considered the apparatus he saw as a kind of secret weapon.
“He never said it was something unearthly, because he had no evidence,” his son recalls.
Yes, and the son himself, although he does not deny that his father collided with a UFO, believes that he has no right to assert this reliably, since there is no real evidence or evidence of this.
In the aggregate of all official materials, the incident in the forest near Falcon Lake is considered the most widely and openly discussed, the richest in collected materials, which is much more than material about the "flying saucer" that landed in New Mexico in 1947. After all, the US authorities to this day say that nothing extraordinary happened there.
From the ground where, according to Stefan Mahalak, the unusual aircraft landed, they later picked up his half-burnt shirt, glove and some tools, which were subjected to laboratory research.
They never found out what caused the fire of clothing and burns (moreover, of this form) on the victim's body.
The 15-foot area where the saucer landed has lost all vegetation. Soil samples collected from this bridge showed their high radioactivity. About a year later, distorted pieces of metal were found near this stone. They also emitted radioactivity.
Most of these materials were lost to various agencies, but one piece of molten and solidified metal remained with the authors of the book.
When, a year later, in 1968, Stefan Michalak, who was still plagued by the effects of burns and blackouts, turned to doctors at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, he was referred to psychiatrists.
Doctors conducted a thorough examination of him, and delivered the verdict: "the patient is very pragmatic, has a realistic view of the world and does not invent any stories."
“If dad set it all up (remember, we're talking about being a mechanic, a blue collar), if he set it all up, then he was just a damn genius,” his son declares today.
Translation by Vladimir Kanevsky
