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.