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The Falcon Lake Incident remains Canada’s best-documented and most famous UFO case. Several decades later, speculation is still rife over what occurred that day, when one man allegedly witnessed the landing of an extraterrestrial spacecraft near picturesque Falcon Lake—and suffered the consequences.
“It’s still one of the most important
ones that’s been researched.”
Ed Marker, provincial director for the
Mutual UFO Network (MUFON)
In May 1967, Stefan Michalak was enjoying a quiet long weekend away at Falcon Lake, Manitoba. Born in Poland in 1916, Michalak enlisted in the Polish army just before the outbreak of World War II, and later joined the Polish Home Army in resistance operations against the Nazis. It was during this turbulent time that Stefan met Maria, his future wife. Maria was working with the Polish partisans as a courier, but in 1943 she and her two sisters were arrested by the Nazis and sent to Ravensbrück concentration camp.11 All three were among the fortunate to survive until their liberation in 1945. Maria and Stefan were married the following year. By now, Stefan was serving with the resistance against the country’s new Communist regime. He was forced to escape from Poland to Canada via the Allied occupation forces, leaving behind Maria and their two children, Ewa and Mark.22
Almost a decade later, Maria and Stefan reunited in Canada. Following the birth of a third child, Stan, the family settled in River Heights, Winnipeg. Stefan fully embraced the Canadian passion for the great outdoors. He developed a love for animals and birdwatching, but it was geology that became his number-one passion. Stefan frequently ventured out into the woodlands and rocky terrain of eastern Manitoba. His favorite spot was Falcon Lake, situated in the Whiteshell Provincial Park in southeastern Manitoba, approximately 47 miles (75km) north of the US border. The area is widely known for its various mineral deposits and is a popular destination for hikers, fishers, and amateur geologists. Stefan had successfully searched for quartz and silver there and even staked a few claims.
For May 1967’s Victoria Day long weekend—a national holiday—Stefan decided to explore Falcon Lake for precious metals. He collected his tools, including a hammer, welding goggles, map, compass, paper, pencil, and enough food for the trip. He caught the bus to Manitoba and checked into a motel on the south side of the Trans-Canada Highway, as he had done many times before.33 The following morning, Saturday, May 20, Stefan got up at 5:30am and crossed the road into Whiteshell Provincial Park. It was a bright and sunny day without a cloud in the sky. He wended his way through the park’s pine trees and climbed over rock formations, heading toward Falcon Lake. Around noon, wearing welding goggles and protective gloves, Stefan was chipping away near a vein of quartz along the Precambrian Shield when he was startled by a gaggle of geese nearby that suddenly began honking in unison.44 “Something had obviously frightened them far more than my presence earlier in the morning when they gave out a mild protest,” Stefan recalled.55
Glancing up at the sky, Stefan saw two cigar-shaped objects with a reddish glow and “humps” on them. He estimated that the objects were around 35 feet (10.7m) in diameter and 12 to 15 feet (3.7 to 4.6m) in height. They were hovering around 150 feet (46m) away and were eerily silent. According to Stefan, one of the objects began to descend, landing on a flat rock nearby. As it descended, Stefan realized that it was more disc-shaped than cigar-shaped. The other object remained hovering in the air for several minutes. As it began to ascend, Stefan saw that its color began to change from a reddish glow to an orange shade before turning gray. Once in the clouds, Stefan said its color changed once again—to a shade of bright orange. The craft that had landed on the rock also changed color “from red to gray-red to light gray and then to the color of hot stainless steel, with a golden glow around it.” Stefan noted that the craft looked as though it had an opening on the top from which a brilliant purple light was issuing. This light was so intense that it hurt his eyes to look at it, and he donned his welding goggles. Stefan assumed that the craft must be some US military experiment. He looked for any markings associated with the US Air Force, but saw none. He then sat watching the object for half an hour, sketching it on his notepad.
Once his sketch was complete, Stefan decided to approach the object. As he drew near, the air became noticeably warm and he could smell sulphur. He heard the whirring sound of motors and a hissing sound, which he described as sounding like “air had been sucked into the interior of the craft.” Stefan spotted a door open on one side with bright lights emanating from it. He also heard faint voices. “They sounded like humans, although somewhat muffled by the sounds of the motor and the rush of air that was continuously coming out from somewhere inside,” he recalled.55 Stefan described two different voices, one of which appeared to be significantly higher-pitched than the other. Still convinced that the craft was some kind of experimental military craft, he felt a surge of excitement at witnessing something no ordinary citizen had seen before. Wondering if, perhaps, something had gone wrong with the craft, Stefan decided to offer mechanical assistance. “Okay, Yankee boys, having trouble?” he called out to the voices. “Come on out and we’ll see what we can do about it.”66 The voices immediately went quiet. Perplexed, Stefan wondered whether maybe the occupants didn’t speak English. He cautiously asked, “Do you speak Russian?” There was still no reply. He then called out in German, Italian, French, and Ukrainian but received no response.77
Standing right next to the craft, Stefan noticed that it appeared to be made of some unnaturally smooth metal substance with no apparent seams or joints. The walls of the craft were extremely thick, around 20 inches (51cm), and highly polished. Stefan was an industrial mechanic with extensive knowledge of automotive machinery, welding, and metalwork, yet he had never seen anything quite like this before. Stefan removed his goggles and peered in through the open door. “The inside was a maze of lights” he recalled. “Direct beams running in horizontal and diagonal paths and a series of flashing lights, it seemed to me, were working in a random fashion, with no particular order or sequence.” As he stepped back from the door, two panels rapidly slid over the aperture and a third dropped over them from above, completely closing it off. Stefan noticed a small, screenlike pattern on the side of the craft that resembled some kind of vent, with slits of around a quarter of an inch (0.5cm) in diameter. He placed his hand on the craft and felt an intense heat that melted the fingertips of his glove. Moments later, the object began to turn counterclockwise, and before Stefan could react, he was struck in the chest by a blast of gas or air that pushed him to the ground and set his shirt and cap on fire. He managed to rip them both off as the craft took off. It hovered above the treetops and changed color and shape, turning back into the cigarlike form Stefan had first observed. The UFO then flew away, leaving a sudden rush of air in its wake.
Immediately afterward, Stefan felt disoriented and nauseated from whatever it was that had shot out of the craft and engulfed him. He picked up his belongings. The needle of his compass was whirling around as if controlled by some kind of magnetic force. A crushing headache overcame him and he broke out in a cold sweat as he stumbled back through the woods, stopping on occasion to vomit. “I knew that something totally unnatural had happened to me and, apparently, it was having an adverse effect on my physiology,” he said. As Stefan was making his way back to his motel, he saw a Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) constable. He gave the officer an account of what he had just witnessed and warned him not to come any closer, for fear that he might have been exposed to radiation. “Sorry, but I have duties to perform here,” replied the disinterested RCMP constable. Stefan was astounded. “He, apparently, did not believe a word I told him,” said Stefan. “The constable left me with my sickness and disappointment.”
Stefan eventually returned to his motel and was on the bus back to Winnipeg by evening. After he arrived back home, his son Mark drove him to Misericordia Health Centre, Winnipeg, where he was treated for second- and third-degree burns to his chest and stomach. When a doctor asked him what had caused the burns, Stefan said he had been “hit by exhaust coming out of an airplane.”
Stefan worried that he didn’t have the linguistic ability to make his fantastic story sound convincing. At the time, Stefan’s other son, Stan, was just 9 years old, but even at that age he knew that something was wrong with his father. “I recall seeing him in bed. He didn’t look good at all. He looked pale, haggard,” he said. Stan was allowed to see his father for only a couple of minutes on the day that he returned home, but one thing stuck in his memory: “When I walked into the bedroom, there was a huge stink in the room, like a real horrible aroma of sulphur and burned motor. It was all around and it was coming out of his pores. It was bad.”
For weeks after the incident, Stefan suffered from diarrhea, headaches, blackouts, and weight loss. In a weight journal, he documented that in the space of just one week, he lost 22lbs (10kg). His burns turned into raised sores that appeared in a gridlike pattern—an ugly reminder of his traumatic experience.
Before moving to Canada from Poland, Stefan had been a military policeman. He had a great respect for authority and a strong sense of moral responsibility. If he saw something unusual, Stefan believed it was his duty to inform the authorities of what he had seen. More than anything, he wanted somebody to explain to him what he had witnessed and what had happened to him. If it was something dangerous, he wanted people to be prepared.
Local newspapers caught wind of the incident and ran numerous articles about Stefan and his encounter. Most of these reports were skeptical. “I didn’t realize, as I recounted the events of the previous day, that this was the beginning of a long series of questions and harassment by the press, radio, television, the Air Force, and various authorities,” said Stefan.
Reporters and journalists descended on the family’s bungalow and camped out on their lawn, hoping to catch a comment from Stefan. They even followed Stan to school, questioning him about what his father had seen. For Stan, school was no release from the harassment. He was bullied by classmates who mocked his father. “It just flipped our lives over. It took several years before it finally died down,” recalled Stan.
The media circus that followed the incident also led to numerous Ufologists and scientists flocking to the scene. “It was very big,” recalled Ed Marker, provincial director for the Mutual UFO Network (MUFON). “It’s still one of the most important ones that’s been researched.”
Canadian and United States government officials were called in to investigate Stefan’s claims. The RCMP, the Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF), and the Canada Army Personnel Research Office (CAPRO) scrutinized the scene and discovered a circle around 15ft (4.6m) in diameter that was devoid of the moss and vegetation growing in the surrounding area. They also noticed that pine needles and leaves on the ground had been scorched.88 They also retrieved several items, including Stefan’s glove, shirt, and some tools that he had dropped when blasted by the gas or air. Soil samples were collected and sent off for analysis at an RCMP lab, along with the items collected. Although the lab was unable to determine what had caused the burns on the items, they discovered that both them and the soil were highly radioactive. An RCAF report noted that “there are certain facts, such as Mr. Michalak’s illness and burns and the very evident circle remaining at the site, which are unexplainable.”99
In June 1967, New Democratic Party (NDP) member of parliament Ed Schreyer (who would later go on to become Governor General of Canada) stood up in the House of Commons and inquired about UFO investigations and Stefan’s claims. “I had felt obligated to ask a question—it happened in my riding [district],” he said. “Plus, I was intrigued that someone seemed so genuinely convinced he had seen something inexplicable.” The question was taken by Prime Minster Lester Pearson, and a few days later he offered Schreyer a chance to look through the government files on the matter “from which a few pages have simply been removed.” Schreyer refused, stating that if he looked through the files, he would need to keep the contents confidential and felt that it would put him in a problematic position. Reassured that there was no significant danger to the country, he let the matter drop. Shortly afterward, defense minister Leo Cadieux announced that it wasn’t the intention of the Department of National Defence to make public the report of the sighting.
The following year, Stefan visited the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, and paid for an examination out of his own pocket, since his Canadian medical insurance would not cover it. The mysterious burn marks kept showing up on his chest and he was having recurring blackouts. Twelve separate doctors investigated Stefan and his ailments, and they concluded that his burns were caused by an unidentified chemical substance that his body had absorbed under extreme pressure.1010 They could not determine, however, what was causing his other health issues. During an examination at the Whiteshell Nuclear Research Establishment, Stefan was given a whole-body count that measured radioactivity within his body. It showed nothing above normal background readings.
During the immediate period following Stefan’s Falcon Lake encounter, his blood lymphocyte (a type of white blood cell) count had dropped from 25 to 16 percent. Some commentators have suggested that Stefan may have been affected by high doses of radiation; but if so, his blood lymphocyte count would have varied far more substantially. However, according to Dr. Horace Dudley, a radiologist at the University of Southern Mississippi, Stefan’s “nausea and vomiting followed by diarrhea and loss of weight is a classical picture of severe whole-body exposure to radiation with x– or gamma-rays. I would guess that Mr. Michalak received on the order of 100–200 roentgens [a unit of ionizing radiation]. It is very fortunate that this dose of radiation only lasted a very short time or he would certainly have received a lethal dose.” Other scientists have also speculated that the raised burns on Stefan’s chest were radiation burns.
In addition to being physically examined, Stefan was sent to a psychiatrist, who determined that “this is a fellow who’s very pragmatic, very down to earth, pardon the pun, and does not make up stories.”
Trying to make sense of what he saw that afternoon, Stefan wrote a pamphlet about his experiences, in which he states, “Up until the time and the events I am about to describe I had no special interests in ‘flying saucers’ and other strange phenomena one hears about time and again. Maybe they are real, maybe not, but I had never been seriously concerned about them. Not until May 20, 1967, when I, perhaps as nobody else—or at least very few—came in such a close contact with one of those strange objects commonly called UFOs.”
He ended the pamphlet by not blaming the craft for the injuries he had sustained. “The burns and suffering I had endured were not caused by any aggressive moves of the craft of its occupants . . . If I had stayed farther away from the craft I would not have been burned or suffered in any other way.”
In the aftermath of the Falcon Lake Incident, Stefan’s claims were frequently dismissed as an elaborate and calculated hoax. Just a few weeks after his encounter, Stefan had trouble finding the location where it had taken place, prompting suggestions that the reason he couldn’t find it was because he had made the whole thing up. The area, however, was off the grid and Stefan hadn’t been following a particular route; he had just been walking through the woods and rocks searching for minerals. Another puzzling aspect of the incident was that it had all taken place within view of a forest ranger tower. The ranger on duty that afternoon said that he had not seen any strange craft in the vicinity and had not seen any of the bright lights that Stefan described in such great detail.
Squadron Leader Paul Bissky of the Royal Canadian Air Force—who was investigating the case—bluntly asked Stefan if he had been drinking any alcohol on the day of his UFO encounter that might have caused him to hallucinate the entire incident. The idea that Stefan had hallucinated the sighting made little sense owing to the fact that Stefan’s injuries and subsequent ailments were very real. According to Bissky, however, a potential alternative scenario was that Stefan had burned himself on a barbecue grill while drunk. At one point during the investigation, Stewart Hunt, the head of the Radiation Protection Division of the Canadian Department of National Health and Welfare, even speculated that Stefan could have planted the landing site with commercially produced radium and had Stefan’s home and place of employment searched to check for radiation. No radiation was found. Despite his attempt to poke holes in Stefan’s story, Hunt was forced to concede that the incident was “unexplainable.”
Stefan himself never claimed that he had a close encounter with extraterrestrials and continued to believe that the UFO he had seen was a secret military craft. Moreover, in the wake of going public with his story, the publicity surrounding the case tormented him and his family. “If you asked him what it was he saw, he would describe it in intimate detail but would never say, ‘Oh, it was definitely extraterrestrials,’ because there was no evidence to prove that,” said Stan. Whether Stefan truly believed this or only claimed to believe this out of fear of further ridicule is open to question. “If it’s a hoax, it has enough complications to make it one of the best on record,” said Ufologist Chris Rutkowski. “It is even better than Roswell, because with that one, the government denies anything happened . . .”
Many observers latched onto the secret military craft theory. Department of National Defence engineer Palmiro Campagna concluded that Stefan had witnessed an experimental craft originally developed by Avro Canada. The Avro Canada VZ-9 Avrocar was a VTOL (Vertical Take-Off and Landing) aircraft designed by Avro Canada in the late 1950s on behalf of the US military. The Avrocar was a large silver disc, around 26 feet (8m) in diameter and 5 feet (1.6m) tall. It had US military markings on the top of its hull. In addition, it also had pads enabling it to land on any surface. When the Avrocar took off, it blew exhaust out of its rim, and once in the air it resembled a flying saucer. However, the Avrocar had been a complete failure, proving too unstable to fly higher than 3ft (1m) or much faster than 30mph (50kmph). The US military spent more than $7 million on the project before cancelling it in September 1959.1111
While Stefan himself may have been a nonbeliever, many Ufologists believe that the Falcon Lake Incident was a genuine “close encounter of the second kind”—broadly defined as a UFO event in which the witness experiences a physical effect and physical impressions, such as scorched vegetation, are left on the ground.
As an adult, Stan became a big aviation fan and extensively researched aviation technology. “There was nothing even close to [what my father saw] in the works anywhere at that time,” he later said. Local resident Bob Firth is a firm believer that Stefan saw something unexplainable. Years later, Firth—who was 14 years old at the time of the incident—corroborated what Stefan had witnessed. Firth had been at the beach on the south side of Falcon Lake when he and his three friends saw something to the north of the lake, moving westward. He described how he looked on as an object “just jumped across the sky.” Firth and his friends joked, “It’s a bird, it’s a plane, it’s a flying saucer!” At the time, Firth didn’t think too much of it, until news of the Falcon Lake Incident spread. “In my mind, I can still see it . . . Something crossed the sky and disappeared,” he said. 22
In fact, after Stefan’s experience was documented in the media, several people reported UFO sightings around the same time in that area. On May 19, 1967, residents in Lockport, near Winnipeg, reported a UFO with a “glowing ring of heat” moving at “indescribable speed.” Two nights later, three people at Eleanor Lake in Whiteshell Provincial Park reported seeing a “round, reddish, glowing object at treetop level.” On May 25, two men watched a “large, cigar-shaped object travel across the horizon at a tremendous speed.” On the same night, two witnesses saw “two very brilliant stars in close proximity to each other” over Winnipeg. Years later, another man reported a UFO encounter that took place around “the same time as Michalak” in the park’s West Hawk Lake. He had been walking to Caddy Lake along the highway between it and West Hawk Lake when he saw a large, disc-shaped object gliding above the trees before vanishing. The man’s sketch of the UFO was similar to the craft that Stefan had drawn. Then in 1992, another witness came forward to claim that she and her daughter had spotted a UFO on the highway near Falcon Lake over the same weekend as Stefan. She described it as a “perfectly flying saucer” that appeared to be spinning counterclockwise. She too had sketched the craft and it was eerily similar to Stefan’s drawing.
The Falcon Lake Incident marked the end of Stefan’s prospecting hobby. He no longer wanted to venture out into the wilderness in search of precious metals—it reminded him too much of the incident. Stefan regretted sharing his experience for the rest of his life. Up to that point, he had always trusted the authorities and held them in high regard. However, so many members of the police and Air Force had disregarded his claims and considered him a liar that, in the aftermath of the incident, his trust was completely shattered. “I never should have said a word,” he often said, up until his death, at the age of 83, in 1999.
In 2018, the Royal Canadian Mint commemorated the Falcon Lake Incident with release of a special commemorative $20 coin. “I was very surprised, frankly,” said Stan. “They called me out of the blue . . .”1212 The team behind the idea for the coin felt that the incident was a classic moment in Canadian history that they wanted to celebrate. “Everyone is sort of fascinated by this subject matter and we thought it would make a really interesting coin design,” said product manager Erica Maga. One side of the coin carries a standard engraving of the Queen, but the other side displays a full-color depiction of the moment that the craft lifted off the ground, with Stefan lying on the ground with his arm outstretched. Falcon Lake and the forest can be seen in the background behind Stefan, and the coin even glows in the dark. “I feel very privileged they’re doing it. If my dad was still around, he would be floored,” said Stan. “And if my mother was still here, she would say everything has a reason. Everything is connected. You do something here and there will be repercussions.”1313