This INCREDIBLE UFO Sighting Changed Their Lives

Show Transcript

CRISTINA GOMEZ: Stefan Michalak walked out of the Manitoba wilderness with grid pattern burns seared into his chest, melted fingertips from his gloves, and a story that would trigger the most extensive UFO investigation in Canadian history. For the next two years, everyone wanted answers. The RCMP, the Royal Canadian Police, the Canadian Air Force, the US Military, Health Canada, and even the Mayo Clinic all examined his case. They found radioactive soil, documented his injuries, and interviewed him repeatedly. Their conclusion: completely unexplained. This is the Falcon Lake incident, the UFO encounter that even skeptics can't dismiss. Unlike Roswell or other famous cases, the Canadian government admits something happened there, and the physical evidence still exists. The site can be visited, and after more than half a century, no one has been able to explain what really happened that day. Hey UFOlogers, I'm Christina Gomez, and welcome to this episode of Mysteries with the History. Let me bring in my co-host Jimmy Church of Fade to Black Radio. Jimmy, happy Thursday. How are you?

JIMMY CHURCH: Good. I'm good. How are you? What's cracking? What's crack? Did we do an intro? Did I miss it?

CRISTINA GOMEZ: We did it just then. Just Oh, it was we didn't do vid.

JIMMY CHURCH: Christina, I have no idea what's going on in the world around me. I don't I don't I was waiting for the How you doing?

CRISTINA GOMEZ: Doing so good, man. I love your smile. Nothing but teeth. Like all teeth really. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, hello everybody. Yeah, we did a show last week. So, this is two weeks in a row.

JIMMY CHURCH: Yeah, we've got like we've got a trend. I got a stray hair. Can you see it? It's like right down. Don't you hate that? And it's just right where Yeah. Yeah. I got a stray hair. Two weeks in a row, man. We got a trend going. Yeah, but I'm not going to be here next week, I think. I don't know. Get back to me on that, Christina. Let me know. Let me know what my schedule is. The Falcon Lake UFO incident. We've talked about this many times. It's one of my favorite cases. And I know that you're always doing stuff and researching and things, but I have to ask the obvious, which I always do, but where where is this coming from? I thought that this week you would hit me with Lockheed or the Tic Tac or, you know, UFO hearings being cancelled for Epstein files, which I'm still not happy about, by the way. But I guess, you know, it's the life that that that we live. But why Falcon Lake this week?

CRISTINA GOMEZ: First of all, this is mysteries with the history, so we're always covering more historical cases here. But on top of that, this one, while we've always touched on it, but we've never done a deep dive on this case, and I thought, you know what? I think I think today's the day to do that. So that's why we're covering it here today.

JIMMY CHURCH: Is it because do you do what I do? Before we jump into this because we have a lot to cover, but do you do what I do where you're researching a case and you're reading something and and you see something and then the next thing you know that goes into something else. Then there's Falcon Lake and you're looking at Falcon Lake and then there's some little tidbit on the inside of that incident that goes, you know what? Yeah. I mean, is is that how it works for you? Because that seriously, that's that's what happens.

CRISTINA GOMEZ: Absolutely. I think it happens to a lot of us where one thing reminds you of another and then of another and then you go into this own version of your rabbit hole where you don't really finish the other things that kind of sparked your interest, but it takes you down one path and you're thinking, "Okay, I need to look a little deeper into this." And for Falcon Lake, there are some really bizarre and peculiar details about this incident. And and as I had to mention at the very beginning, this is one of the biggest UFO cases in Canadian history where even the US got involved in the investigation.

JIMMY CHURCH: So you pull up some images. Let's start let's start this dive. Let's start this dive. According to as just stated by Christina, this is very important. The CBC, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, says that the Falcon Lake incident is Canada's best documented UFO case. Now, it all started on Saturday, May 20th, 1967, when Constable GA Salatki of the Falcon Beach Highway Patrol was driving on the TransCanada Highway at around 3:00 p.m. when he was flagged down by Steve, some call him Stefan Michalak. And Michalak said that he had been burned by a spaceship. I'm putting that in air quotes because things changed. The incident happened Christina at Falcon Lake, which is within the White Shell Provincial Park in the Canadian province of Manitoba. Initially, yes, he told police that he was burned by a spaceship, but then he told the press later that it was a man-made aircraft, prompting investigations by law enforcement and the military. I want to touch upon one thing really quick because that was in May of '67. In 1968, he then tells the press that his burns had returned and they photographed a grid-like pattern and of marks on his abdomen that bore little resemblance to his earlier burns. There he is there. That's absolutely incredible. Now, he was a little background. He was an industrial mechanic by trade and an amateur geologist and he liked to venture into the wilderness around Falcon Lake. All of this about 95 miles Christina east of Winnipeg and he liked to go there to prospect for quartz and silver. It's when he said he looked up and saw two cigar-shaped objects with a reddish glow hovering about 45 meters away, about 90 ft. and one descended and landed on a flat section of rock. Then he noticed that it wasn't cigar-shaped, Christina. He said it actually was a disc. There's his goggles, by the way. Those are welding goggles that he wore while prospecting because he would chip away at rock and he didn't want stuff flying into his eyes. This would come in handy with the incident. Now, he said that the other craft, one landed, but the other one stayed in the air for a few minutes and then it flew off. Now I want to get into this because a couple of things happened. He noted that a door was open on the side with bright lights on the inside of the craft. He said that he heard voices muffled by the sounds from the craft. Now, I'm going to do this really quick and I'm going to hand this back to you because he said that inside he goes in the craft. He said that he saw light beams and panels of various colored flashing lights but could not see anyone or any living thing. When he stepped away, the three panels slid across the door the door opening and sealed it. Now, I want to stop right there and ask you something, Christina. He said that he heard voices, right? and he couldn't tell which language that it was. But then he goes into the craft and doesn't see anything. Doesn't see anybody. Christina, what do you make of that part of the story?

CRISTINA GOMEZ: He's hearing voices and he even yelled back to the craft saying, you know, do you guys need some help? I'm a mechanic. Right. What do you make of that part of the incident? It's a very strange one that you come so close to a craft and we need to keep in mind this was taking place during the Cold War. So the first thing that came to mind was not that he was encountering a UFO but actually a secret project maybe by the United States. So when these doors open and he and he walks in, he's yelling, "Hey Yankee boys, are you having any trouble?" and he got no response even though he was hearing hearing what sounded like humans mumbling in the background. So then he tried again in Polish, his native language cuz he immigrated to the US back in 1949. Then he tried Russian, German, Italian, and even Ukrainian. He tried all these languages, but he received no response back. and all they got instead was this whirling and hissing sound from the craft. So, I think for anyone encountering this, it would be a little nerve-wracking. It would be a little shocking, especially when in in your adult years, hide and seek can be a little scary. When you're a kid, you're you're all up for that adventure and curiosity, but as you get older, you become a little bit more weary. And in this case, not only was he a little bit nervous of the situation, but it was actually the aftermath, what happened to him, the burns that he received both on his skin and his shirt, which I have an image that I will show rather shortly.

JIMMY CHURCH: Well, does it indicate to you? Yeah. Does it indicate to you that this was remote controlled or intelligently controlled that there wasn't anybody piloting the craft? That's pretty interesting, especially during that time period, isn't it?

CRISTINA GOMEZ: It is. And it's also worth noting that he saw two craft. Both of them were in the air, but as he begins to look down, as one of the craft begins to land on the ground, the one that was in the sky, the second one quickly flew away. So his attention shifted from the sky to the ground and then he begins to hear hissing sounds from the craft and strange mumbling that he thinks are originally Americans making this but nothing was adding up. And during this time it's actually a 30 minute time frame before he goes and he touches a craft and tries to enter the craft he is standing behind a rock and he is drawing exactly what he's seeing. And I will pull up that image.

JIMMY CHURCH: Here it is. This image is great. He he says he sat for 30 minutes. 30 minutes. He just sat there and looked at the craft and sketched it out. Who has that kind of opportunity, right? We never get a chance to take a picture or have the craft sit there in front of you for that length of time that you could accurately draw it out and take notes. Pretty cool. He was definitely on the ball. I in my opinion with the whole situation. He's observing first, drawing it out, getting the evidence, and then going up to it, and then doing a more deeper deeper investigation. And the reason to that is because when he was back in Poland before he came to the US in 1949, he was actually a Polish policeman. That's right. So that really adds to the credibility of the story and his investigative process. On top of that, he reported the whole incident to the media. And at the time, he felt that it was his duty to do so. And then as soon as he tells the whole world what happened, he completely regretted it. He says, "I wish I never told anybody."

CRISTINA GOMEZ: Let's circle back to that because that's a really, really, really good point.

JIMMY CHURCH: Let's circle back to that because I want to focus on this image here. We saw earlier the burns on his abdomen and also on his clothes. We'll get to that. But if you look on the side of his drawing here, right there, that appears to be the vents or whatever they were that these gases, this hot air, this radioactive ejection exhaust, that's what burned the pattern into his abdomen. Now, he was standing so close to the craft obviously to do the burn, right? But he's standing next to it, comes out of the door, the door seals up, right? Three panels come down. And then he says that it began to turn Christina counterclockwise. And he noticed that panel that that contained the grid of holes that passed in front of him. That's where he got burned. He said that shortly afterward, he was struck in the chest by that blast of air or gas. He didn't know what it was, but that pushed him backwards and set his shirt and his hat on fire. Yeah. So, what does he do? You do what you do. Your clothes are burning. You rip everything off. You throw everything on the ground and then the craft lifted up and flew away. Now, he runs out. He flags down the police officer, right? The highway patrol. But the story gets out, Christine, and you touched upon this. Everybody descended on him and his family. The RCMP shows up, the Air Force shows up, the media shows up. Just about every three-letter agency descended on the family's home right there in Winnipeg. And everybody wanted answers. There it is. His clothes caught on fire. And then there's a smaller grid pattern there. Now, I do want everybody to understand something. We have that pattern there. The abdomen shot. Yeah. Go ahead. Can you pull up that picture of him lying down with his stomach right there? That showed up later. That wasn't there the day that the incident happened. All right. So that everybody's at his house, the media's there, and all of that kind of dies down. And then later in 1968 that appeared on him and then he calls the press again and that is a press photograph right there that the media took of him. So it appeared about 6 months later and I don't know of anything else that's quite happened like this. Two reports two different you you touched upon the soil samples his clothes were radiated. They initially announced the press and the law enforcement and the RCMP with the Air Force that it was heavy radiation in the area. There was a circular spot that was there all radiated radiated soil. But you know what else happened? They went up into the cracks of the rocks and they found metallic fragments there also radiated, you know, and you Yeah. And you look, that's a done, right? Where we actually have artifacts. Okay. Let's watch the chat room. Let's go. We got it. Christina, give me a dun dun. Why everybody wants evidence, right? I do. I want evidence. We all want evidence. Well, they actually recovered what appeared to be in in my opinion not not not what's the word that I want to like slag or melted metal or no, this had shape to it. So it was manufactured. Very interesting. So, they found all of that too as well. Yeah, right there. You got it. Back back up. While you've got that one. Yeah. Isn't that incredible?

CRISTINA GOMEZ: Yeah. These are the multiple fragments that were found. And it's How often do we get evidence like this that has been made public? We always want it, don't we? Yeah. Right. Yeah. You have the physical evidence of the burns on the body. You have this metallic evidence. You have the drawings and you have a you did have a living witness as well who again went through extensive interviews, extensive medical tests and psychological test too as well. They really Yeah, they really went after him from every angle and medical records as well. Yes. Which we're seeing here by the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota. 300 pages of official documents on this case. 300 pages.

JIMMY CHURCH: And the doctors that examined him all said the same thing. Pretty sensible guy. He's pretty pragmatic. He's pretty straightforward. It is not the kind of guy that that we would see that would be prone to be making stuff up like this was just a giant hoax. His son who wrote a book also said you know my dad was a really cool guy and he was very straightforward but he was also kind of simple you know he was just a mechanic. He was just a guy that like to go and an amateur geologist and like to go and and look at rocks and stuff, not make up and completely hoax a story with radiation and and radiated clothes and radiated metal fragments and and everything else that it would have been so elaborate that he just didn't see that in his dad. You touched upon one thing earlier and I do want to address this because after everybody descended on him and his family and their house, the media was constantly there and this went on for a couple of years. And after all of that, years of craziness, after the years of craziness, and until the day he died, Christina, in 1999 at the age of 83, he believed he never should have said a thing. He should have kept quiet, but he never backed away from his story. He never changed the story. And he never claimed to have seen aliens, right? He

CRISTINA GOMEZ: Yep. He till the day he died, he said, "You know what? I never said it was aliens. I don't believe it was aliens. I think it was a secret military craft."

JIMMY CHURCH: And the case the case by the way was intensely investigated by a number of levels of government and agencies. The official conclusion from all of them, even from the United States Air Force, by the way, was that the case is unexplained. That's right. Even Project Blue Book went ahead and did their own investigation and couldn't explain it either.

CRISTINA GOMEZ: Something else that we need to address here is, and Jimmy, you touched on this, but I'm going to just emphasize it a little bit more, is the radiation in the soil. It was tested by the Royal Canadian Police and it was mentioned in a letter that was written in the book that Stefan's son wrote stating that while the radiation wasn't necessarily hazardous, it was still still significant enough to not mail the soil samples through the mailing system because there there was traces of radiation attached to it, which is strange.

JIMMY CHURCH: I when they try to debunk the case. Well, I'm going to stay with this for a second and get your comment. You know, they're trying to debunk the case from every angle, by the way. And they said, you know, it was probably radioactive paint, right? It's like that's where they're going, right? So they have a a soil sample from a 15 foot circle where nothing was growing anymore. The soil is radiated and and he's using radioactive paint. Where's the paint in the soil? Show me that part. Right. Where's the paint on his clothes? Where's the paint on his where where is the evidence of the paint? And the reason why they brought that up, it was really at that time in 1967 and 68 the only thing that the public had access to with radiation in it. Follow me. So that's why so that's why it was radioactive paint without evidence of paint anywhere. And they went back to the site many, many, many times. The investigators, the military, the RCMP, the press, the media, including Stefan himself. He went back there many, many times after that. There were no samples of of paint revealed anywhere. They don't have a real explanation for all of the radiation on his body, on his clothes, and in the soil. They don't. They don't. Radioactive paint. Might as well say radioactive swamp gas. I'm just saying it's always something, right? It's always something where they just got it. Yeah. Yeah.

CRISTINA GOMEZ: You know, and then after after he went to the hospital, he called his family, his wife, and his kid to come check up on him, see how he was doing. And his son by the name of Stan remembered at the age of nine that his father reeked of sulfur. Like his skin just stenched of it. And he said it came out of his he he said he breathed sulfur.

JIMMY CHURCH: Yeah. That's that's disgusting. I went ahead and and I quickly looked up. I'm like, "Okay, well, what does radiation smell like? Maybe it smells like sulfur." The answer is no. It just smells metallic, burnt, or chemical like, but it doesn't have a sulfuric smell attached to it. But something that sulfur is attached to is actually a handful of different types of UFO sightings and also demonic sightings. Now, I'm not saying this is a demonic encounter, but it is worth noting that a sulfuric smell is attached to two of those things. Yeah. He said it came out of him everywhere. Talking about his dad. Came out of his pores, out of his nose, out of his ears. Everything. Sulfur was coming out of his body. Yeah. Very interesting. So, radiation smells metallic. It doesn't smell. I wonder what caused all of that. There's a lot of references to sulfur in this case. I mean, everybody did smell it. There is. There is. He also mentioned the sun stand also mentioned that it smelt like burnt motor oil as well. So you had burnt motor oil and this sulfur aroma attached to him. And also he Stefan went through a lot of what seemed like radiation poisoning. He dealt during and after the encounter with headaches, nausea, stomach aches, blackouts, and then these marks on his body that we're seeing on screen here, they would come and go throughout the months, appear and disappear, matching the ventilation system that was seen on that craft.

CRISTINA GOMEZ: But for me, when I first came across this image for the very, very first time years ago, to me, it looked like an allergy patch test.

JIMMY CHURCH: Oh, really? Yeah. I need one of those. I haven't taken one in in a long time. Is that what they look like? Are they They're not that big, though.

CRISTINA GOMEZ: They look similar. No, no, no, they're not. But they're gridlike and they're round and they're also a little bit reddish. Yeah. Very interesting. Very interesting. After all of these years that have passed, one thing stands out with this case that I have said repeatedly, I have never seen a cigar-shaped craft. All right? I've seen every It seems like I've seen every shape. I've never seen a cigar-shaped craft. And I want that experience. But I have also posited many many times that people that describe a cigar-shaped craft, are they looking at a disc shape, a flying saucer, right, from the side, right? I've often said that, you know, and that's exactly what happened here. He thought he was looking at two cigar-shaped crafts until the it landed and he was able to walk up on it and see the shape of the craft. There it is. So, yeah. Yeah. Isn't that interesting? And how many sightings, Christina? How many How many times do we have to read? Well, it was cigar-shaped. It was a cigar-shaped craft.

JIMMY CHURCH: So, I have always pictured this. This is a flashlight, right? This is a flashlight, everybody. But I've always pictured like a cigar-shaped craft, you know, with this kind of shape to it, right? And I've always That would be cool to see, right? but from the side. And so I'll pull up something else. Right? So you see it from the side. Right? You see it from the side and then right. So you see it from the side, but that's the actual shape. I how many what how many cases could be written or rewritten I should say throughout history if somebody who's seeing a craft from the side off in the distance but would have to change their encounter because then they see it from underneath and that it's round like this case here. I think about that all the time. Cigar-shaped craft. cigar-shaped craft when they're not really cigar that that is actually misleading. But that's what a witness sees. That's what they describe, but you're looking at an object that isn't actually that shape. Like this piece of quartz, right? That's cigar shape. Look at it from the side. You You know what I mean? Okay, we have the that's the shape. That would be really cool to see, right? But then when something then appears and you look at something like again I'm going to pull this up. So you see something like this come by right it's that shape. Follow me.

CRISTINA GOMEZ: I do. I do. It makes it makes great sense. It does. I think about it all the time. The viewpoint, the vantage point and the perspective and perception. It's all of these different things that play out that really affect how people view UFO sightings. And it's also really important to document it as soon as it happens. So again, we know that Stefan was drawing this while this craft was sitting for about 30 minutes just in its landing spot. And then 4 days later, he gives a very extensive interview to the Canadian police. And it's actually all written in the book When They Appeared Falcon Lake 1967 that was written by his son in 2017. I feel like that was just a little bit too long to go ahead and write the book, but there are extensive details in there. Some really great family photographs as well. and that whole interview in transcript format of the conversation that the Canadian police and Stefan had going into detail on what he saw, how he described the craft, how he attempted to speak to the beings inside in multiple languages, but they responded to absolutely none of them, and then how it affected his health as well. But for about 2 years, he and his family were never left alone. The media was always coming for them in knocking on their doors, following Stan to school when he was just 9 years old, peppering him with questions consistently. And Stefan had made it very clear that it seemed very much like a circus for his family because everyone wanted answers, which I completely understand, but simultaneously people want privacy as well. They they don't want to be bombarded 24/7 by either answering the exact same questions or by being ridiculed. And they were for that time frame.

JIMMY CHURCH: Yeah, for sure. And bullied. the Air Force, the Canadian Air Force, the United States Air Force, and whoever was involved with this, if it was us, right? A man-made craft. Some secret experimental craft want the UFO story, right? That's what they want. They let Let this go. Let this stay as UFOs because we were out there testing something. And the other side of this, which I think is readily apparent, and Shag Harbor, by the way, comes to mind when I speak of this kind of stuff, that if you're the United States, it's better for you to do this kind of testing outside of the United States. Makes sense? And if the manufacturer, the testing, all of that, keep it outside because then you are outside and outside of the purview of of anybody that wants to look into this case, which includes of a project, which includes the Senate, the government, our own agencies that are here, the public reporting this and things that are going on. and you have cost and you have everything else that's budgeted into these secret programs. Well, you have a chain and a paper trail that is there. But if it's outside of the country, it's it's outside of the United States government. No explanations. And that includes corporations and the Air Force. You don't have to explain yourselves. It's happening outside of the country. Well, and then something like this happens. Maybe one of the craft was malfunctioning. It appears to be remote controlled, intelligently controlled. He didn't see any aliens. He didn't see any humans. He heard voices. Was that radio chatter? Was that something else that was coming out of the craft? I don't know. He heard what he heard, but one of the craft came down and one flew away. So, was was it mechanically malfunctioning, right? Because it was being tested and then it flew away. Well, you would want that sighting, that interaction with Stefan to be a UFO sighting. You don't want it to be an official experimental craft of the United States being tested in Canada, right? The whole thing just blows up at that point. So, be a lot for sure. It does. It does. So, what do you do? You keep it an unexplained UFO alien encounter. There you go. And and that's how you do a cover up.

CRISTINA GOMEZ: Christina, another great show. You're the best. Keep doing it. Oh. Oh, by the way, you said something earlier. I think this is another t-shirt. You said, "Explore your own version of your rabbit hole." And that's such an everybody's got a different way of of getting into the crazy, right? And jumping down you. It's really well said. I didn't forget it. Christina, thank you so much. I I forgot it, so I'm writing that down. That's great. Yeah, that's a good t-shirt. That's a good t-shirt.

JIMMY CHURCH: Jimmy, thank you so much. Who do you have on Faded Black tonight? I have Paul Ramash on the show tonight and we're going to be actually kind of talking a little bit about what we're doing here which is law enforcement, the police, and the paranormal. Yeah, we're going to cover that. Yeah. Yeah, we're going to cover that from every angle tonight. So, it's going to be a fun show. So, thank you everybody. I'll see you tonight on Fade to Black. Christina, I have to skip next week, I think. have your people get in touch with my people and let's look at the schedules. But I think I have to play hookie next week, but I'll be back the week after that. Yeah, I think I think that's right. Okay, everybody, have a great weekend. I'll see you right back here on Monday. Rock on.

CRISTINA GOMEZ: Thank you so much. And if you enjoyed the show, hit that like button right down below. And if you enjoy UFO news updates, cases, and interviews, then I think you will like this channel. Hit that like button and subscribe if you haven't already so you don't miss any of the videos that happen right here. And lastly, did you know I write articles for all the shows right here? And I place all the sources in there. You can find it on my website at ufonewe.co. That link is in the pinned comments in the comments section on YouTube. That is it for today. I will see you next time. Be safe and remember, keep your eyes on the skies. If you enjoy the strange and the mysterious UFOs, the paranormal and crypteds, this channel is for you. So, make sure to subscribe as I do three videos right here every single week and hit that notification bell so you do not miss any of the bonus content I post right here.