All of these strange things have been sighted in my home state of Wisconsin, and I know that because of a fun, wonderful book called "The W-Files," by my old friend Jxx. I was recently gifted with a copy of the book by the author, and even though I am officially only interested in UFOs, I also secretly enjoy reading about bigfoot and lake monsters and all sorts of bizarre paranormal phenomena that sometimes manifest here in the Dairy State.
Available now at fine bookstores.
What I like best about the book, though, is that it starts right out in Chapter One telling the story of Wisconsin's zaniest Close Encounter of the Third Kind: the 1961 Joe Simonton "Pancake" incident. In contrast to the account of the terrifying Kelly-Hopkinsville incident that I blogged about yesterday, Mr. Simonton's Close Encounter wasn't alarming in the slightest. On the contrary... as recounted in my friend's book, it was altogether cute, silly and charming...
"At 11 a.m., April 18, Simonton was having a late breakfast when he heard a sound like that of a jet being throttled back, something like the sound of 'knobby tires on wet pavement.' He went into the yard and saw a flying saucer drop out of the sky and hover over his farm. It was silver and 'brighter than chrome...'"It also had exhaust pipes, but that's not the weirdest part of Simonton's tale. The object landed, a door opened, and three "dark skinned aliens" emerged.
"They appeared to be about 25 to 30 years old and were dressed in dark blue or black knit uniforms with turtleneck tops, and helmetlike caps. They were clean-shaven, Simonton said, and 'Italian-looking.'"The beings carried a futuristic, unearthly thermos, which Simonton filled with water; he knew they wanted water somehow, even though they never spoke. When Simonton returned the thermos he caught a glimpse inside the spaceship and saw one of the aliens cooking over a futuristic, unearthly stovetop. The alien was making pancakes.
"In return for the water, one of the aliens--the only one with narrow red trim on his trousers--presented Simonton with three of the pancakes, hot from the griddle. As he did so, the alien touched his own forehead, apparently a salute in thanks to Simonton for his help."The pancakes were 3 inches and diameter, and "perforated with small holes." They also tasted like cardboard, according to Simonton.
The U.S. Air Force's scientific UFO consultant, Dr. J. Allen Hynek, always searching for hard evidence that UFOs were a real phenomenon, arranged for one of the flapjacks to be analyzed, and the lab ...found it to be made of flour, sugar and grease; it was rumored, however, that the wheat in the pancakes was of an unknown type."
Ultimately, the Air Force's Project Blue Book listed the Simonton encounter as "unexplained," and there it ended. Or so the world thought. But, by my calculation, there is still an alien pancake out there somewhere... We know that Simonton ate one, and a second was dissected in the lab; that leaves one alien pancake at large, and I think you know what I'm thinking: "One more reason to storm the gates at Area 51."
Thank you, Jxx, for the autographed copy of "The W-Files," and for sending me off on another wild goose chase!
