by Charles Lear
Starting in the 1960’s, UFOs began to interact with witnesses in a most unpleasant manner. In part one of this series, we looked at cases where people were injured by UFOs, specifically by being burned. One case involved an eight-year-old boy in Hobbs, New Mexico in 1964. This week we’ll look at another episode from 1968 that has a lot of similarities. Two other cases will be examined as well. One comes from New York, and the other is a famous case from Canada. All are unexplained and may make one think twice before approaching anything unusual floating in the sky.
The first case comes from a report in the May-June 1966 APRO Bulletin. On April 24, 1966, in Fleming, New York, 45-year-old Viola Smartwood was in the passenger seat, riding in a car with her husband. A glowing ball appeared out of the rain and hovered close by. They heard a “loud snap,” and a shock went through Mrs. Smartwood’s right side. She was paralyzed on that side and was taken to the hospital where she slowly regained motor control. As it was raining, ball lightning seems like a plausible explanation. The trouble is, it has not been scientifically confirmed that ball lightning actually exists, despite hundreds of years of reports.
Next up is a well-covered classic, but it’s interesting to consider it within this larger context. On May 20, 1967, a celebrated incident occurred near Falcon Lake in Manitoba, Canada. Stefan Michalak was an amateur geologist and was prospecting in the area when he sighted two disc-shaped craft descending in the southwest. He described them as looking like they had been milled out of a solid piece of steel. As he watched, one of the discs stopped and hovered 15 feet above him. The other one ascended and moved away towards the southwest changing colors from red to orange to grey until it disappeared from sight. In the meantime, the remaining object landed about 160 feet away from him and was also changing colors from red to iridescent steel. Michalek got out a pad of paper and sketched the object while looking at it for nearly 30 minutes. He described it as being 40 feet in diameter and 10 feet thick.
Then a door opened, and he heard high-pitched indistinct child-like voices coming from the craft. Michalak walked towards it. As he got close, the light inside the craft was so bright that he needed to flip down the welding filter on the safety goggles he was wearing. He’d borrowed them from his job as an industrial mechanic at a cement factory to protect his eyes while hammering rocks.
Looking inside, he saw no beings but did see lights that seemed to come from instrument panels. He moved his gloved hand along the surface of the craft and found it to be as smooth as glass. When he pulled his hand away he saw that the glove had been burned and partially melted.
The door closed with three panels coming together “like a camera lens,” and the craft began to move. It rose up, and as it did, it released a hot gas through a grid of small circular openings that set his shirt and undershirt on fire and scorched the cap he was wearing. He was left with first and second degree burns on his chest and stomach. The burns on his stomach matched the pattern of the openings. The craft reached a height of around 40 feet and then vanished.
Michalak was nauseous and in shock and made his way to the highway where a passing Royal Canadian Mounted Police officer refused assistance because he thought he was drunk. He made his way back to his motel and after several hours, took a bus back home to Winnipeg.
In Winnipeg, he was examined by doctors and tested for radiation poisoning, but the results were negative. The burns on his chest were diagnosed as being caused by heat, but the grid pattern on his stomach seemed more like chemical burns.
Unexplainably, the grid pattern would fade and then reappear every three months, along with nausea, for close to a year and a half. He was left with the pattern for the rest of his life in the form of subcutaneous scar tissue. In addition, family members described a sulfurous odor like “an electric burning motor stink” that stayed with him for weeks after the event.
Michalak returned to the site on June 30, with a friend, and they saw a circular patch swept of vegetation more than 30 feet in diameter. When they returned to Winnipeg they reported the encounter to the Royal Canadian Air Force.
Investigators from numerous organizations subsequently examined the site and interviewed Michalek. Organizations include the RCAF, RCMP CID (Criminal Investigations Division) and both the federal and local Departments of Health and Welfare. Part of the official interest was due to radiation being detected at the site, but that was later attributed to a source of radon known to be in the area.
On March 19, 1968, in Beallsville, Ohio, 12-year-old Gregory Lynn Wells was walking home from his grandmother’s house next door. It was 8:30 p.m., and he had gone there to get some water because the water line in his family’s trailer home had broken. The neighborhood dogs were barking and howling. According to the report, towards the southwest, looking up at a 20° angle, he saw a light-red, glowing, oval object with dark-red circles of light flashing across its middle. It was about 100 feet away. A tube emerged from the bottom that moved from side to side. It then pointed at him. Before he could react, there was a sound like a “generator going round and round” as a red beam of light shot out and hit him on the arm. He felt a tingle as if from an electrical shock and was knocked to the ground. His jacket had been set on fire.
His mother heard his screams and came out. She also reported seeing the object. She said that it remained for ten minutes and then “just faded away.” She helped him put out the fire, and he was taken to a nearby hospital where he was treated for two coin-sized burns on his right arm.
In the June 20, 1968 Wheeling, West Virginia Intelligencer, Well’s father notes that “the television turned into wavy lines” when the object was overhead, and that his dog and his mother’s dog barked, rolled over and ran “round and round.”
The local Civil Defense Director checked Wells, his jacket and the area where the incident occurred for radiation and found nothing unusual. The jacket was sent by the local sheriff to a crime lab for analysis, and they too found nothing unusual.
The case was looked into by a local high-school senior, Bruce Francis, who was the president of a student club devoted to UFOs. He sent a report to the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena.
It came out that Wells had also seen the object two nights before. Another student, Janet Spears, came forward saying she’d seen a similar object on the night Wells was burned. The doctors who treated Wells were convinced he hadn’t made up the story, and one of his teachers told the Intelligencer, “I believe he saw something – what, I don’t know.” The Air Force investigated and labeled it a hoax. That settles that.
Material for the Wells case was graciously provided by David Marler from his archives. Details can also be found in the March-April APRO Bulletin.