Falcon Lake UFO

A man is left with mysterious burns after witnessing a UFO.

Stephen Michalak claimed he saw two UFO’s

Michalak’s sketch of the UFO’s

CASE DETAILS

This photograph shows Michalak’s burns

People who claimed to have seen UFOs do not typically return with any evidence to verify their stories.  But in this instance, the person involved came back with more than a tall tale.  The evidence of his encounter was actually burned into his body.

Stephen Michalak and his wife came to Manitoba, Canada, from Poland, after World War II.  Stephen found work as an industrial mechanic and was also an amateur rock hound.  He spent every spare moment in the beautiful natural woodlands of Manitoba:

“I love nature.  I love birds, animals. Every weekend I usually travel, go… out in the country and snooping in the… rocks.”

On May 20, 1967, Stephen was prospecting in the hills east of Winnipeg, when he was suddenly distracted by a noisy flock of geese:

The strange burn marks never went away

“Looking on the tree, I notice two cigarette-like shape things, with the hump in the middle.  I said ‘What the hell is that?’ One… in the air and the other one is coming down, down, down.  I start looking for marks.  NASA or something… Nothing, I didn’t see anything on it.”

Stephen’s son, Stan Michalak, was 10-years-old at the time and recalled what his father witnessed:

“I do remember one description that he gave at the time.  He said that the skin of the craft, the outside of the craft was flawless.  There was… nothing.  It was as though you had milled out of a solid block of steel, this disc, this saucer with the dome on top.”

Stephen told his son that, after a few moments, the door of the craft slowly opened.  The light emitted from the door was so bright, he had to snap down the visor on his safety goggles.  Then, after a few moments, the door suddenly shut.  According to Stephen, the craft rotated counterclockwise, knocking him backwards, and setting his shirt on fire:

“After igniting with the fire, the craft lifts up 30 to 40 feet and vanishes.  And then I decide… now is the time for me to buzz off from here.  So I start going.”

The burned out area was 30 feet across

In shock, Stephen headed back toward his car.  He was nauseous and vomited several times.  Disoriented, he checked his compass, trying to find his way southeast, to the road.  But the needle went haywire.  Stephen made his best guess at the right direction.  Nine hours later, he finally arrived back home.  He was badly burned and still disoriented.  According to his son, Stan, Stephen’s burns left doctors baffled:

“At that point in time, the diagnosis, if you can call it that, was burns.  And sure they were burns, yes.  Heat-caused burns.  What they couldn’t diagnose and didn’t have a clue about was what appeared below the chest on the abdomen, the exact same pattern of holes that was on the grid on the side of the craft in the same order, in the same rows in the same number appeared as red spots on his lower abdomen, red dots.”

Stephen was released from the hospital, but his symptoms worsened.  The nausea continued and his body seemed to emit a sulfuric stench.   Stephen was tested for radiation poisoning, but the results were negative.  No one could explain the source of the strange burns on his torso. 

Six weeks after the encounter, Stephen and a friend went looking for the site.  After several hours they found a burned-out circle the same size as the craft Stephen had seen.  It was more then 30 feet across.  Within days, a team of experts from the United States, working with the Royal Canadian Air Force, converged on the site.  They took measurements, catalogued soil samples, and checked for radiation.  The levels appeared quite high, and the Health Department considered quarantining the area.  Later, however, they discovered that the high levels were caused by an unrelated vein of radium which ran under the entire region.

Meanwhile, Stephen’s burns, which had appeared to be healing, suddenly flared up again.  According to Stephen, his doctors remained mystified:

“After every three months, my burns from legs and here were coming back, showing up again and burning.”

Nearly 30 years after his encounter, Stephen died with the burn marks still emblazoned on his torso.  For the remainder of his life, Stephen Michalak never lost faith that on May 20, 1967, he had a remarkable encounter with something not of this Earth.