Somewhere in the mid 1800s, novelist and columnist and columnist Fanny Fern (real name Sara Wills) coined the adage: “The way to a man’s heart is through his stomach”. While still popular today, the year 2020 may bring to the national lexicon a different one: “The way to full UFO and ET disclosure is through New Hampshire.” That’s because an intrepid reporter with The Conway Daily Sun has been putting tough questions about recent UFO sightings by military personnel to every Democratic and Republican presidential candidate to pass through the state which hosts the first presidential primary election (not a caucus) on February 11. On January 3rd, it was South Bend, Indiana, mayor Pete Buttigieg’s turn in reporter Daymond Steer’s UFO hotseat and the former US Navy lieutenant showed why the key to electing a president willing to open the X-files to the public might be a military background.

Pete Buttigieg

“Well, strange things happen out there.”

In response to Steer’s UFO question about the USS Nimitz UFO incident in 2004 witnessed by New Hampshire’s own fighter pilot David Fravor, Buttigieg immediately defended the right and responsibility of military personnel to be able to report strange incidents like that without fear of ridicule or reprisal. He then tells a personal story from his childhood. On a New Mexico trip past a military base, he saw a strange-looking blimp under heavy security. Twenty years later when he was deployed at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan, Lieutenant Buttigieg looks up and saw the blimp doing surveillance to protect the base and its troops. Does this mean he thinks all UFOs are secret military test aircraft?

“It’s very unlikely we’re alone in the universe.”

Buttigieg takes the safe approach in saying we’re not the only life forms around, but he doesn’t think we’ll see “concrete evidence” of it on Earth. However, that doesn’t mean we should stop watching the skies.

“As a curious species, we should always be looking at what’s going on around us.”

Mayor Pete is obviously a very curious guy. But is he openminded enough to accept the idea that “what’s going on around us” — or went on around us in the past with evidence stored in secret files — could indeed be visitors from another planet or galaxy if presented with proof?

“Unimaginably strange things often happened in the grand sweep of American and world history and we should never fail to be on the lookout for what’s happening around us.”

“Unimaginably strange things.” Could they be too unimaginably strange to reveal to the American public? If Pete Buttigieg were elected president, would he accept that it was because a majority of voters are part of his “curious species” and want to know “what’s going on around us” too?

An unimaginable strange thing that became a reality?

Pete Buttigieg was one of the most open to the UFO questions of the candidates sitting down for the Sun Editorial board meetings and the inevitable questions from reporter Daymond Steer. (You can watch the full clip here.) However, if Mayor Pete is too young for your taste in presidents, longshot candidate Joe Stesak, a retired three-star Navy admiral who commanded an aircraft battle group in Afghanistan and Iraq before serving two terms in Congress representing Pennsylvania’s 7th Congressional District in the U.S. House of Representatives, had an admiral-like blunt answer to the same question about what Fravor saw. (Stesak dropped out of the race last month but he can still be a write-in.)

“If you’re an F-18 pilot, you’re nobody’s fool.”

The New Hampshire primary isn’t until February 11th and more candidates will be in the hotseat. Stay tuned.

One of the most dramatic and harrowing supposed UFO encounters in not only Canadian history, but that of anywhere else, began in 1967 in the remote wilderness of a place called Falcon Lake, Manitoba, located just about 150 kilometers east of the city of Winnipeg. It was here in this peaceful wilderness where on May 20, 1967, industrial mechanic and Polish immigrant Stefan Michalak was out prospecting for mineral deposits. At one point he seemed to have found what he was looking for, a rich vein of quartz, but as he was getting ready to try and go about staking a claim on it a very bizarre sequence of events would unfold that would change his life forever, and would go on to become one of the most intriguing cases of a purported UFO attack ever.

As he scoped out the area, Michalak was startled by a gaggle of geese suddenly alighting into the sky with some commotion, which he followed skyward until his eyes fell upon an otherworldly sight hovering above. He says that the geese passed in front of two large, oval or cigar-shaped objects in the air surrounded by a reddish glow, and that one of these began to descend as he looked on in awe to land on a nearby flat shelf of rock, where it seemed to morph into a disc-like shape right before his startled eyes. As the strange object did this, the other craft allegedly ascended into the sky to disappear, leaving Michalak alone with the glowing disc that had landed only about 45 meters away from him.

The witness would claim that he had warily approached the curious sight, and as he did so a hatch would open on the side of the object as the glow subsided to reveal a metallic surface. He claimed that the opening belched forth a smell not unlike sulphur, and that a motorized whirring noise could be heard emanating from within, as well as the glare from a bright light. He still crept closer, and says that he could hear what sounded vaguely like voices echoing about within. Michalak allegedly called out to whoever it was, but there was no reply. The multilingual Michalak even tried calling out in Polish, Russian, and German, thinking that this was a manmade craft, but met with only that unearthly machine hum each time. Where as most people would have probably called it a day and gotten out of there with haste, Michalak was so curious that he moved ever closer to the craft, each call out to the occupants unanswered, until he was purportedly standing right at the portal that had opened in the craft, and it was here where things would get truly bizarre.

After taking a peek within to see various flashing lights, panels of some sort, all bathed in a purplish glow, he reached out to touch the side of the object to find it extremely hot to the touch, causing him to withdraw his hand in surprise. Inspecting his glove, he apparently found that it had been actually melted, and as he stared at his hand in bafflement the whole of the craft then began to rattle and shake. As this was happening, the now frightened man says he was struck in the chest by what felt like a stream of very hot air emitted from within the craft, which sent him sprawling back away from the disc. The bizarre craft then began to lift off the ground to hover over him, before shooting off over the trees into the sky to leave Michalak feeling nauseous to the point that he vomited where he stood. In his head he could feel an intense pain building, as well as an intense burning in his chest area, and he knew that something was very wrong. Wrapping himself close with his jacket, he meandered off towards the road and towards civilization, constantly vomiting along the way and eventually stumbling into the the parking lot of the Falcon Motor Hotel.

When hotel staff found him, he was delirious and rambling, disheveled and wild-eyed and still vomiting, and it was at first thought that he was just very drunk. Michalak managed to make it on his own on a bus back to Winnipeg, where he was whisked off to the hospital and things would get even stranger still. When examined it was revealed that he had a series of burn marks that formed a grid-like pattern over his chest, as well as signs of what appeared to be radiation sickness, the causes unknown. Michalak’s son, Stan Michalak, would later say of seeing his father in this state:

I recalled seeing him in bed. He didn’t look good at all. He looked pale, haggard. 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. I was very afraid. My dad had been injured and I didn’t know anything about it.

Stefan Michalak after the incident

As soon as the man was lucid enough to give his version of events, the story hit the news and a UFO sensation was born. Apparently there was quite a lot of interest from the military and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) and Royal Canadian Air Force at he time, with numerous alleged searches of the area of the incident using tracker dogs and aircraft, and even Michalak himself was recruited to join in the sweep when he was feeling better. They apparently found the remains of Michalak’s scorched and melted glove, as well as some of his tools and allegedly a circular area on the rock that was strangely devoid of moss or any vegetation and which possessed soil high in radiation readings and some odd pieces of melted metal within the cracks of the rock, also radioactive in nature.

In the meantime the tale was really launching itself into local legend, and there was by many accounts a pronounced military presence in the area for weeks, with helicopters hovering above at all hours. There was also a deluge of reporters and curiosity seekers gravitating towards the Michalak home, and in the meantime there was also an intense investigation going on into the claims he had made. There were some efforts at the time to discredit Michalak, trying to paint him as a town drunk who had hallucinated the whole thing or completely fabricated it, but this didn’t stick and seems to have been wholly invented just to make him look crazy. He had been a military policeman in his former years and was known as an honest and responsible upstanding citizen, with no history of telling tall tales, by all accounts not someone who would be making these kinds of stories up or showing up stumbling about ranting about flying saucers. There was also the physical evidence left behind, which could not be easily explained and which was confirmed by doctors. UFO researcher Chris Rutkowski, who has written the definitive book on the whole incident, When They Appeared: Falcon Lake 1967: The inside story of a close encounter, has said of this:

Michalak certainly wasn’t an alcoholic. He didn’t drink to excess but he drank socially. To suggest that having a few drinks or even three or four drinks the night before his experience would make him imagine something to the point where he would be physically burned and leave radioactive debris behind is, I think, quite a quantum leap.

We have a witness who was judged by a psychiatrist to not fabricate stories. A person who was a good member of society holding a good job, a background in the military himself, and no reason to perpetrate such a hoax at all. He maintained until he died that this is what happened to him. He did not have a history of seeing aliens around every corner, like so many contactees and abductees maintain these days in their own stories. This was a very unusual experience that happened to him and he was as puzzled as anyone. Whether it was something from outer space or a military vehicle… there’s no question something happened. It’s a mystery. It’s quite fascinating. I knew the family quite well, and he wasn’t the type of guy to make up stories like this.

Michalak’s son would agree, having said, “If Dad hoaxed this — remember we’re talking about a blue-collar, industrial mechanic — if he hoaxed it then he was a freakin’ genius.” There were also the findings of official investigators and civilian researchers, who came to the conclusion that there was no explanation for the incident, the radiation, or what happened to Michalak, and to this day the Canadian Department of National Defence considers the case to be officially unsolved. Michalak himself would adamantly stand by his story right up until his death in 1999, so what happened to him? Was this just all some sort of elaborate hoax or something else, and if so, what? One idea is that he saw not aliens or extraterrestrials, but rather some sort of terrestrial experimental aircraft, and indeed Michalak himself thought this could be the case, never really specifically insisting that what he saw was aliens. His son Stan has said of this:

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. He might ask, ‘What do you think I saw?’ but right up until he died, his story never changed one iota — nothing about it or how he told it. 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. 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 nothing even close to that in the works anywhere at that time.

What are we dealing with here? Was this an extraterrestrial presence? Was it some type of top secret military craft? Was it all a tall tale, and if so how did he fake the injuries and the physical evidence that was allegedly found at the site? Or was it something else altogether? What caused those grid-like burns on his chest and was this some sort of attack directed at him? These are questions we still don’t have the answers to, and the case of the Falcon Lake Incident has become one of the great mysteries of the landscape of UFO lore.

In a new article at his website titled “Codename Rendlesham,” Dr. David Clarke addresses the matter of the famous Rendlesham Forest UFO landing of December 1980. As Dave notes: “Next Christmas marks the 40th anniversary of the story that began on Boxing Day morning, 26 December 1980.” He also says: “As the legend moves into its fourth decade there is an ever growing cast of story-tellers and alleged experiencers, all armed with rival versions of the story. Each personality has their own group of followers ready to engage in flame-wars to win the credibility battle with rival story-tellers.” The main thrust of Dave’s article, however, is a forthcoming documentary on the still-mysterious affair: Codename Rendlesham. Dave says of this production: “It avoids the more sensational tropes that have emerged more recently, particularly those concerning alleged cover-ups and contactee stories. Instead, it concentrates on the how the story first emerged and how it developed, placing factual evidence under a withering examination.”

With that all said,  and the fact that in less than one year from now we’ll be celebrating the 40th anniversary of the incident, I figured I would get the wheels moving. It’s time to share certain data with you that perhaps will be expanded upon by someone as Rendlesham gets closer and closer to forty. It was right around Christmas 1980 when one of the most significant of all UFO encounters occurred in Rendlesham Forest, Suffolk, England – adjacent to the twin-Royal Air Force Bases, Woodbridge and Bentwaters. A memo prepared the Deputy Base Commander, Lieutenant Charles Halt reveals the astonishing facts:

“Early in the morning of 27 Dec 80 (approximately 0300L) two USAF security police patrolmen saw unusual lights outside the back gate at RAF Woodbridge. Thinking an aircraft might have crashed or been forced down, they called for permission to go outside the gate to investigate. The on-duty flight chief responded and allowed three patrolmen to proceed on foot. The individuals reported seeing a strange glowing object in the forest. The object was described as being metallic in appearance and triangular in shape, approximately two to three meters across the base and approximately two meters high. It illuminated the entire forest with a white light. The object itself had a pulsing red light on top and a bank(s) of blue lights underneath. The object was hovering or on legs. As the patrolmen approached the object, it maneuvered through the trees and disappeared. At this time the animals on a nearby farm went into a frenzy. The object was briefly sighted approximately an hour later near the back gate.” The notable encounter remains unresolved to this day.

In case you may not know, an equally controversial affair occurred just two nights after the Rendlesham events went down – and on the other side of the world, specifically Texas, USA. When, shortly before 9:00 p.m., Vickie Landrum, her grandson, Colby, and Betty Cash exited the restaurant where they had just eaten, they couldn’t imagine what was just around the corner. As they headed towards the town of Huffman, they were terrified by the sudden sight of an unknown object in the sky. Worse, it was descending on a flight-path guaranteed to ensure it landed on the road they were on. As they got closer, they could see the aerial thing appeared to be in flames and shaped not unlike a diamond. It reached a perilously low level of around twenty-five feet, something which ensured a screeching of brakes and the car brought to a shuddering standstill. The interior temperature of the car suddenly reached intolerable levels. The three jumped out of the vehicle and could only stare in awe and fear. Then, out of the blue, around two dozen, double-rotor helicopters were on the scene, clearly intent on correlating the UFO. Or, perhaps they were escorting it. Cash was sure they were CH-47 Chinooks. They watched as both the UFO and the helicopters left the area and were finally lost from sight.

Within days, all three fell sick: nausea and vomiting were at the forefront. Betty Cash was the one affected most of all – which may be explainable by the fact that she was the one member of the group who got closest to the object. Her hair started to fall out, her skin was covered with pustules and blisters, and the nausea got worse. Despite attempts to force the U.S. government to come clean on what went down, there was nothing but denial after denial from the authorities. The case is a puzzling one, with some UFO researchers believing the three encountered a real UFO, while others suspect they were unfortunate enough to cross paths with a top secret, nuclear-powered, prototype aircraft that was in deep trouble.

It’s interesting to note that the witnesses at Huffman reported seeing multiple helicopters surrounding the craft. It just so happens that RAF Woodbridge had an interesting helicopter-based connection attached to it. As Captain John E. Boyle of the U.S. Air Force revealed to me in 1988: “In the late 1960s and early 1970s, the 67th Aerospace Rescue and Recovery Squadron stationed at RAF Woodbridge [provided] standby rescue coverage for the American space flights. Of course, they were never needed to provide emergency rescue actions, but at the time, the unit was trained and available to rescue astronauts with their HH-53 and HC-130 aircraft. In early 1988, the 67th ARRS was re-designated as part of the 39th Special Operations Wing, their primary mission changing from that of rescue to supporting U.S. Special Operations forces. Their secondary mission remains that of search and rescue and they would provide any assistance necessary in future space missions.”

So, we have two near-legendary UFO-themed events, which, time-wise, were very closer to each other. Also, the ARRS was still in place when the Rendlesham incident occurred. This brings us to the possibility of a Soviet connection. Ian Ridpath notes: “At 21.07 on the evening of 1980 December 25 (i.e. a mere six hours before the supposed UFO landing in Rendlesham Forest) the Russian Cosmos 749 rocket re-entered over north-west Europe and was widely reported as a UFO.” Was something Russian secretly retrieved in the forest? Let’s see what Jenny Randles, who has written a number of books on the Rendlesham case, has to say about this. In her 1998 book, UFO Crash Landing? Friend or Foe?, Randles says: “It seems inconceivable that if a Soviet nuclear motor was retrieved from Rendlesham Forest several days earlier it would have been ferried across the Texas countryside in this way. However, the links between the cases are stunning. The shape is very like that described by Burroughs and Penniston. Then there is the radiation.” And as Randles is careful to note: “The NASA-trained Aerospace Rescue and Recovery squadron at Woodbridge links with the main NASA HQ near Huffman [italics mine].”

Perhaps, someone reading this article will feel up to the challenge and pursue this theory – and the intriguing threads – to a much greater degree, in time for the 40th anniversary in December 2020. It’s time to get moving; there’s a little less than twelve months to go.