UFOs Over Wisconsin — Part 2
A police officer’s encounter on a quiet Wisconsin road was only part of the story.
In the conclusion of our two-part series, we return to Officer George Wheeler and the strange reports surrounding Elmwood. From accounts of malfunctioning vehicles and electronics to another reported sighting by Wheeler, we follow a trail of encounters that left witnesses searching for answers—and small communities confronting something they couldn’t explain.
What can these accounts tell us? Where does the evidence end and speculation begin? And why do these stories continue to haunt Wisconsin decades later?
In this episode:
- The continuation of George Wheeler’s story.
- Additional UFO reports from the surrounding region.
- Reported vehicle and electronic malfunctions.
- The unanswered questions surrounding Wisconsin’s UFO encounters.
New to the series? Listen to UFOs Over Wisconsin — Part 1 before stepping back into the void.
Thank you for your patience during our move and the setup of the new studio. More Halloween mysteries are on the way.
Enjoying From the Void? Follow the show, leave a rating or review, and share this episode with someone who’s drawn to the unexplained.
Strange skies. Real witnesses. Unanswered questions.
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00:02 --> 00:08 [SPEAKER_00]: from the darkest reaches of space to the deepest corners of your mind.
00:09 --> 00:11 [SPEAKER_00]: Welcome to From the Void.
00:16 --> 00:18 [SPEAKER_00]: Welcome back to From the Void.
00:18 --> 00:20 [SPEAKER_00]: I'm your host John Williamson.
00:20 --> 00:29 [SPEAKER_00]: Before we return to the strange skies over Wisconsin, I owe you an apology for leaving you on that cliffhanger and making you wait for the rest of the story.
00:30 --> 00:36 [SPEAKER_00]: We just moved into a new house and getting the new studio set up took a little longer than we expected.
00:36 --> 00:39 [SPEAKER_00]: So thank you for your patience while I got everything ready.
00:39 --> 00:43 [SPEAKER_00]: and with October upon us, I've got some Halloween goodies coming your way.
00:44 --> 00:49 [SPEAKER_00]: More mysteries, more unsettling stories, more reasons to leave the lights on.
00:50 --> 00:53 [SPEAKER_00]: But first, we have unfinished business in Wisconsin.
00:53 --> 00:57 [SPEAKER_00]: So let's pick up where we left off and step back into the void.
01:05 --> 01:14 [SPEAKER_00]: Eventually, April returned, almost one year had passed, and by then, the strange spring of 1975 had become part of Elmwood's history.
01:15 --> 01:18 [SPEAKER_00]: Whatever had crossed the skies that night was gone.
01:20 --> 01:22 [SPEAKER_00]: That is, until Thursday, April 22nd, 1976.
01:25 --> 01:27 [SPEAKER_00]: George Wheeler was back on duty.
01:28 --> 01:32 [SPEAKER_00]: A 71-year-old reserve police officer driving the roads outside Elmwood after dark.
01:33 --> 01:38 [SPEAKER_00]: The same man who had once watched something enormous and silent move across the Wisconsin sky.
01:39 --> 01:43 [SPEAKER_00]: The same man who had spent the year since, hoping he might get another look.
01:44 --> 01:46 [SPEAKER_00]: It was approaching 11 o'clock.
01:46 --> 01:48 [SPEAKER_00]: Wheeler was driving near Tuddle Hill.
01:49 --> 01:52 [SPEAKER_00]: And then, he noticed something.
01:55 --> 02:00 [SPEAKER_00]: And at first, Wheeler thought there might be a fire near the quarry, so he turned toward it.
02:01 --> 02:04 [SPEAKER_00]: And as he drove closer, the glow grew brighter.
02:06 --> 02:09 [SPEAKER_00]: Now if you've been paying attention, you already know what happens next.
02:10 --> 02:14 [SPEAKER_00]: But this time, we're not stopping the story when the lights go out.
02:15 --> 02:26 [SPEAKER_00]: because within hours of George Wheeler's encounter, people who had never seen his object would begin describing things that happened around them at almost exactly the same time.
02:27 --> 02:36 [SPEAKER_00]: And one of those details would connect Wheeler's story to a peculiar phenomenon that had appeared in some of the most famous UFO encounters ever recorded.
02:38 --> 02:39 [SPEAKER_00]: Cars that stopped running.
02:45 --> 02:51 [SPEAKER_00]: And on April 22nd, 1976, George Wheeler was about to experience all three.
02:54 --> 02:58 [SPEAKER_00]: As Wheeler approached the quarry, he realized the light wasn't coming from the ground.
02:59 --> 03:00 [SPEAKER_00]: It was above it.
03:01 --> 03:05 [SPEAKER_00]: Wheeler later estimated that he was approximately 500 feet away.
03:06 --> 03:09 [SPEAKER_00]: And now, he could see what was producing the light.
03:10 --> 03:17 [SPEAKER_00]: According to the account Wheeler gave investigator Jack Bustrack only days later, an enormous object was hovering near the quarry.
03:18 --> 03:24 [SPEAKER_00]: Wheeler estimated it was roughly 250 feet across, maybe two stories high.
03:25 --> 03:27 [SPEAKER_00]: Now those measurements were estimates.
03:28 --> 03:36 [SPEAKER_00]: At night, without a reliable reference point, human beings are notoriously bad at judging the size and distance of unfamiliar objects.
03:40 --> 03:42 [SPEAKER_00]: What matters is what they tell us about his perception.
03:43 --> 03:47 [SPEAKER_00]: George Wheeler believed this thing was huge.
03:48 --> 03:51 [SPEAKER_00]: Near the top was an intensely bright orange white light.
03:52 --> 03:56 [SPEAKER_00]: Along its side were six illuminated areas producing a blueish white glow.
03:57 --> 04:00 [SPEAKER_00]: Wheeler interpreted them as windows.
04:00 --> 04:04 [SPEAKER_00]: And behind those windows, he thought something was moving.
04:05 --> 04:07 [SPEAKER_00]: Shadows, figures.
04:07 --> 04:09 [SPEAKER_00]: He couldn't make them out.
04:09 --> 04:14 [SPEAKER_00]: He couldn't tell exactly what they were, but he believed something was inside.
04:15 --> 04:19 [SPEAKER_00]: Beneath the object, wheeler describes several additional structures.
04:20 --> 04:26 [SPEAKER_00]: Two things resembling legs that appeared partially extended, an opening or panel beneath the craft.
04:27 --> 04:30 [SPEAKER_00]: Inside it, something seemed to be rotating slowly.
04:31 --> 04:37 [SPEAKER_00]: and hang below the object was what Wheeler described as a long, black, hose-like appendage.
04:39 --> 04:46 [SPEAKER_00]: Now if you're picturing a flying saucer from a 1950 science fiction movie, you're probably not far from the image Wheeler described.
04:47 --> 04:53 [SPEAKER_00]: And that's important because by 1976, flying saucers were deeply embedded in American culture.
04:54 --> 05:04 [SPEAKER_00]: Movies, television, books, newspapers, comic books, UFO magazines, George Wheeler had already experienced one UFO sighting.
05:05 --> 05:06 [SPEAKER_00]: He'd been interviewed about it.
05:07 --> 05:09 [SPEAKER_00]: He'd spent the previous year watching the skies.
05:10 --> 05:13 [SPEAKER_00]: And all of that matters when evaluating what he believed he was
05:17 --> 05:19 [SPEAKER_00]: Wheeler didn't tell the story 20 years later.
05:20 --> 05:22 [SPEAKER_00]: He told it almost immediately.
05:23 --> 05:26 [SPEAKER_00]: And within days, someone began checking it.
05:27 --> 05:29 [SPEAKER_00]: But first, Wheeler called it in.
05:31 --> 05:34 [SPEAKER_00]: Wheeler contacted the Pierce County Sheriff's Department.
05:34 --> 05:37 [SPEAKER_00]: He reported an unidentified object near Tuddle Hill.
05:39 --> 05:41 [SPEAKER_00]: Now we don't have a surviving record of that transmission.
05:42 --> 05:45 [SPEAKER_00]: So we don't know exactly what Wheeler said.
05:46 --> 05:48 [SPEAKER_00]: but we do have reason to believe the radio call occurred.
05:50 --> 05:54 [SPEAKER_00]: Because people other than Wheeler reportedly heard it, and we'll come back to them.
05:55 --> 06:02 [SPEAKER_00]: For now, Wheeler was sitting in his patrol car, looking at the object, and then something changed.
06:03 --> 06:06 [SPEAKER_00]: According to Wheeler, the craft began to rise.
06:07 --> 06:09 [SPEAKER_00]: Slowly at first, then faster.
06:10 --> 06:12 [SPEAKER_00]: It climbed almost vertically.
06:14 --> 06:16 [SPEAKER_00]: Wheeler said he watched it accelerate upward.
06:17 --> 06:19 [SPEAKER_00]: And then there was a flash.
06:20 --> 06:22 [SPEAKER_00]: Blueish white, bright.
06:23 --> 06:24 [SPEAKER_00]: Then his headlights went out.
06:25 --> 06:27 [SPEAKER_00]: Then his radio stopped working.
06:28 --> 06:29 [SPEAKER_00]: And then his engine shut down.
06:31 --> 06:37 [SPEAKER_00]: Three systems, almost simultaneously, engine lights radio.
06:38 --> 06:40 [SPEAKER_00]: And then George Wheeler lost consciousness.
06:42 --> 06:44 [SPEAKER_00]: At least, that's how we remembered it.
06:45 --> 06:48 [SPEAKER_00]: Wheeler couldn't account for what happened immediately afterward.
06:49 --> 06:52 [SPEAKER_00]: The next part of the story comes from another person.
06:53 --> 06:56 [SPEAKER_00]: A local dairy farmer named David Moots.
06:57 --> 07:04 [SPEAKER_00]: According to a contemporary account, Moots was driving through the area only minutes after Wheeler's radio transmission.
07:04 --> 07:09 [SPEAKER_00]: When he encountered the patrol car, it was partially stopped along the roadway.
07:09 --> 07:14 [SPEAKER_00]: Its lights were out and inside, George Wheeler appeared dazed.
07:15 --> 07:16 [SPEAKER_00]: Moots reportedly stopped.
07:17 --> 07:21 [SPEAKER_00]: He approached the car and Wheeler gradually became responsive.
07:22 --> 07:28 [SPEAKER_00]: This is an important piece of corroboration, but we need to be precise about what it corroborates.
07:29 --> 07:31 [SPEAKER_00]: David Moots did not report seeing Wheeler spacecraft.
07:32 --> 07:35 [SPEAKER_00]: He did not see it to part, he did not witness the flash.
07:36 --> 07:39 [SPEAKER_00]: What is account, a potentially corroborate is something narrower.
07:40 --> 07:48 [SPEAKER_00]: Shortly after Wheeler, reportedly radioed that he was watching a UFO, another person found him and had disabled patrol car.
07:49 --> 07:50 [SPEAKER_00]: Apparently, disoriented.
07:51 --> 07:55 [SPEAKER_00]: And that's significant, but it still doesn't tell us why.
07:56 --> 08:00 [SPEAKER_00]: Within hours, Wheeler was receiving medical attention.
08:01 --> 08:03 [SPEAKER_00]: His physician was Dr. Frank Springer.
08:04 --> 08:06 [SPEAKER_00]: Springer reportedly knew Wheeler well.
08:07 --> 08:09 [SPEAKER_00]: He had been his doctor for decades.
08:10 --> 08:17 [SPEAKER_00]: And according to contemporary reporting, Springer described Wheeler as extremely nervous and disturbed following Dean Counter.
08:18 --> 08:21 [SPEAKER_00]: Wheeler was eventually hospitalized.
08:22 --> 08:25 [SPEAKER_00]: Again, we have to separate fact from interpretation.
08:26 --> 08:30 [SPEAKER_00]: Wheeler being disoriented doesn't prove something extraordinary happened.
08:30 --> 08:36 [SPEAKER_00]: A 71-year-old man losing consciousness laid at night raises plenty of ordinary medical possibilities.
08:36 --> 08:46 [SPEAKER_00]: Syncopy, a cardiovascular event neurological problems, stress, shock, even an episode occurring before the sighting could potentially alter perception.
08:48 --> 08:54 [SPEAKER_00]: We don't have enough surviving medical information to diagnose George Wheeler nearly 50 years later, and we shouldn't try.
08:55 --> 09:05 [SPEAKER_00]: What we can't say is that Wheeler's condition, following the alleged encounter, appears to have been serious enough that he received medical treatment and was hospitalized.
09:06 --> 09:08 [SPEAKER_00]: Something happened to George Wheeler that night.
09:09 --> 09:13 [SPEAKER_00]: Whether the thing he saw caused it is a different question.
09:14 --> 09:16 [SPEAKER_00]: Then there was the patrol car,
09:17 --> 09:22 [SPEAKER_00]: Wheeler claimed that when the object departed, the vehicle's engine, headlights, and radio failed.
09:23 --> 09:28 [SPEAKER_00]: Later, accounts say the car required repairs involving its ignition system.
09:29 --> 09:37 [SPEAKER_00]: Police Chief Jean Helmer was reportedly quoted as saying the vehicle had burned out spark plugs and points, despite having recently been serviced.
09:38 --> 09:43 [SPEAKER_00]: Now that sounds dramatic, maybe too dramatic, because we haven't found the maintenance record.
09:43 --> 09:48 [SPEAKER_00]: We don't have a mechanics report, and we don't have the damaged components.
09:49 --> 09:54 [SPEAKER_00]: So we're not going to tell you a UFO fried George Wheeler's patrol car, because we can't.
09:54 --> 10:00 [SPEAKER_00]: What we can say is that Wheeler reported multiple vehicle systems failing during the encounter.
10:01 --> 10:04 [SPEAKER_00]: And later accounts say ignition components required
10:06 --> 10:08 [SPEAKER_00]: and that detail matters for one reason.
10:09 --> 10:14 [SPEAKER_00]: George Wheeler wasn't the first person to tell a story like this, not even close.
10:17 --> 10:24 [SPEAKER_00]: November, 1957, level in Texas, almost 20 years before George Wheeler drove toward Tuddle Hill.
10:26 --> 10:31 [SPEAKER_00]: Over the course of a single night, police around Levelin began receiving strange telephone calls.
10:32 --> 10:35 [SPEAKER_00]: Motorists were encountering something on the road's outside town.
10:36 --> 10:40 [SPEAKER_00]: Descriptions varied, the glowing object, and egg-shaped light.
10:41 --> 10:44 [SPEAKER_00]: Something luminous sitting near or above the roadway.
10:45 --> 10:50 [SPEAKER_00]: But buried inside several of those accounts was the same peculiar sequence.
10:50 --> 10:52 [SPEAKER_00]: A driver approaches the object.
10:53 --> 10:54 [SPEAKER_00]: The engine starts to fail.
10:55 --> 10:56 [SPEAKER_00]: Headlights dim.
11:00 --> 11:03 [SPEAKER_00]: The object moves away, and the vehicle starts again.
11:05 --> 11:12 [SPEAKER_00]: One report might be coincidence, but that night police received multiple accounts, describing similar electrical problems.
11:14 --> 11:16 [SPEAKER_00]: Law enforcement went out searching for the object.
11:17 --> 11:19 [SPEAKER_00]: The United States Air Force investigated.
11:26 --> 11:33 [SPEAKER_00]: The Air Force favored a natural explanation involving severe weather and electrical phenomena, something resembling ball lightning.
11:34 --> 11:37 [SPEAKER_00]: UFO researchers strongly disputed that conclusion.
11:38 --> 11:50 [SPEAKER_00]: In arguments over leveling continue today, but whichever explanation you prefer, the reports themselves established a motif that would appear again and again in close encounter stories.
11:55 --> 11:58 [SPEAKER_00]: the object leaves, normal operation returns.
12:00 --> 12:01 [SPEAKER_00]: Then, there are aircraft.
12:03 --> 12:10 [SPEAKER_00]: October 18, 1973, an Army Reserve helicopter was flying near Mansfield, Ohio.
12:11 --> 12:12 [SPEAKER_00]: Four men were aboard.
12:13 --> 12:16 [SPEAKER_00]: During the flight, the crew reported a strange light approaching their aircraft.
12:17 --> 12:19 [SPEAKER_00]: The pilot, Captain Lawrence Cohen,
12:24 --> 12:27 [SPEAKER_00]: But according to the crew, something bizarre happened.
12:28 --> 12:34 [SPEAKER_00]: Despite the helicopters' controls being set for descent, the aircraft began climbing.
12:35 --> 12:40 [SPEAKER_00]: The crew also reported unusual behavior from its magnetic compass during the encounter.
12:41 --> 12:43 [SPEAKER_00]: Then, the object departed.
12:44 --> 12:49 [SPEAKER_00]: Again, the case is disputed, and it isn't identical to wheelers.
12:50 --> 13:02 [SPEAKER_00]: But by the time George Wheeler described his patrol car failing in 1976, alleged electromagnetic effects around UFOs were already part of a much older pattern.
13:03 --> 13:08 [SPEAKER_00]: Engines, radios, compasses, lighting, electrical equipment.
13:09 --> 13:15 [SPEAKER_00]: The phenomenon became so common in UFO literature that investigators eventually gave it a name.
13:16 --> 13:16 [SPEAKER_00]: EM effects.
13:18 --> 13:22 [SPEAKER_00]: electromagnetic effects, which raises in obvious question.
13:23 --> 13:26 [SPEAKER_00]: Could an electromagnetic field actually stop a car?
13:27 --> 13:35 [SPEAKER_00]: Well, in principle, strong electromagnetic fields can interfere with electrical systems, but that statement alone doesn't get us very far.
13:36 --> 13:43 [SPEAKER_00]: A 1970s automobile was mechanically simpler than a modern car, but it still depended upon
13:46 --> 13:51 [SPEAKER_00]: interfere with that system strongly enough, and theoretically you could stop the engine.
13:52 --> 13:55 [SPEAKER_00]: But Wheeler described more than an engine failure.
13:56 --> 13:59 [SPEAKER_00]: His headlights, his radio, his ignition.
14:00 --> 14:03 [SPEAKER_00]: All apparently affected at essentially the same moment.
14:05 --> 14:11 [SPEAKER_00]: Producing an electro-meagnetic field capable of doing that at distance raises much more complicated questions.
14:16 --> 14:19 [SPEAKER_00]: We have no measurement of any electromagnetic fields at Total Hill.
14:20 --> 14:24 [SPEAKER_00]: No instrument detected one, no physical readings survived.
14:25 --> 14:28 [SPEAKER_00]: We have Wheeler's account, and a disabled patrol car.
14:29 --> 14:30 [SPEAKER_00]: And that's it.
14:31 --> 14:35 [SPEAKER_00]: Except, something else happened nearby.
14:37 --> 14:39 [SPEAKER_00]: Not far from Total Hill lived a man named O'Brien.
14:40 --> 14:48 [SPEAKER_00]: When Investigator Jack Boastrack later interviewed him, a Brian did not report seeing a UFO, and that's worth emphasizing.
14:49 --> 14:51 [SPEAKER_00]: He didn't claim to see Wheeler's object.
14:52 --> 14:54 [SPEAKER_00]: He didn't describe lights over the quarry.
14:54 --> 14:57 [SPEAKER_00]: He didn't suddenly remember a flying disk.
14:58 --> 15:00 [SPEAKER_00]: What he remembered was his television.
15:02 --> 15:06 [SPEAKER_00]: Around the time of Wheeler's encounter, the picture reportedly went out.
15:07 --> 15:08 [SPEAKER_00]: Then returned.
15:10 --> 15:13 [SPEAKER_00]: Maybe the television simply malfunctioned.
15:13 --> 15:17 [SPEAKER_00]: Television reception in 1976 was hardly perfect.
15:18 --> 15:24 [SPEAKER_00]: Electrical interference happened, signal loss, happened, a passing vehicle could sometimes distort reception.
15:25 --> 15:31 [SPEAKER_00]: There is absolutely no way to establish that O'Brien's television had anything to do with what Wheeler reported.
15:32 --> 15:34 [SPEAKER_00]: But the timing caught both tracks attention.
15:40 --> 15:44 [SPEAKER_00]: One involving Wheeler's patrol car, one involving a television nearby.
15:45 --> 15:47 [SPEAKER_00]: At approximately the same time.
15:49 --> 15:49 [SPEAKER_00]: Coincidence?
15:50 --> 15:51 [SPEAKER_00]: Very possibly.
15:52 --> 15:55 [SPEAKER_00]: But Boastrak wanted to know if there was anything else.
15:56 --> 15:58 [SPEAKER_00]: So he kept knocking on doors.
15:59 --> 16:03 [SPEAKER_00]: The morning after Wheeler's encounter, Jack Boastrak heard about it.
16:03 --> 16:08 [SPEAKER_00]: Boastrak was a biology professor at University of Wisconsin River Falls.
16:09 --> 16:11 [SPEAKER_00]: he also investigated UFO reports.
16:12 --> 16:14 [SPEAKER_00]: And Wheeler wasn't a stranger to him.
16:15 --> 16:19 [SPEAKER_00]: Bostrak had already interviewed George Wheeler about his April 1975 sighting.
16:21 --> 16:27 [SPEAKER_00]: So when word reached him that Wheeler had apparently encountered another UFO, Bostrak went back to Elmwood.
16:29 --> 16:36 [SPEAKER_00]: This is one of the reason Wheeler's 1976 encounter is unusually valuable as a historical UFO case.
16:37 --> 16:39 [SPEAKER_00]: Bostrag didn't arrive 20 years later.
16:40 --> 16:42 [SPEAKER_00]: He didn't reconstruct the story from folklore.
16:43 --> 16:46 [SPEAKER_00]: He began investigating within days.
16:46 --> 16:54 [SPEAKER_00]: He photographed the area, he interviewed Wheeler, he visited neighboring farms, and he tried to locate witnesses.
16:55 --> 17:04 [SPEAKER_00]: And importantly, he found some things that supported Wheeler's story, some things that didn't, and some rumors that simply weren't true.
17:05 --> 17:07 [SPEAKER_00]: which is exactly what we want.
17:08 --> 17:12 [SPEAKER_00]: Because now we can do something UFO stories rarely allow us to do.
17:12 --> 17:19 [SPEAKER_00]: We can walk through the neighborhood, door by door, and ask, what did everyone else experience that night?
17:21 --> 17:31 [SPEAKER_00]: The first answer came from someone who hadn't seen Wheeler spacecraft, but he had seen something in orange light, in the direction of Tuddle Hill.
17:33 --> 17:35 [SPEAKER_00]: Jack Boastrack had a problem.
17:35 --> 17:41 [SPEAKER_00]: George Wheeler's story was extraordinary, an enormous object hovering near a quarry.
17:41 --> 17:49 [SPEAKER_00]: Lights, figures, mechanical structures, a blinding flash, a patrol car that suddenly stopped working.
17:49 --> 17:53 [SPEAKER_00]: And a 71-year-old police officer found disoriented along the road.
17:55 --> 17:57 [SPEAKER_00]: But extraordinary stories have a weakness.
17:58 --> 17:58 [SPEAKER_00]: They can grow.
18:00 --> 18:03 [SPEAKER_00]: One person tells another, a detail gets repeated incorrectly.
18:04 --> 18:09 [SPEAKER_00]: Someone remembers something they hadn't thought was important before, a rumor becomes a fact.
18:10 --> 18:13 [SPEAKER_00]: And eventually, everyone remembers seeing the UFO.
18:15 --> 18:17 [SPEAKER_00]: So both track needed witnesses who weren't George Wheeler.
18:18 --> 18:20 [SPEAKER_00]: People who had been nearby.
18:21 --> 18:25 [SPEAKER_00]: People who could tell him what they remembered before the story had years to become legend.
18:30 --> 18:34 [SPEAKER_00]: One of the people Boastrack spoke with was a nearby resident named Frederickson.
18:35 --> 18:39 [SPEAKER_00]: And Frederickson did not tell him, yes, I saw George Wheeler spacecraft.
18:39 --> 18:44 [SPEAKER_00]: He didn't describe windows, he didn't see figures, he didn't report landing legs.
18:45 --> 18:47 [SPEAKER_00]: What he remembered was much simpler.
18:48 --> 18:54 [SPEAKER_00]: In Orange Light, visible in the direction of Tuddle Hill, at approximately the same time.
18:56 --> 18:56 [SPEAKER_00]: That's it.
18:57 --> 19:00 [SPEAKER_00]: And because it's so modest, it's useful.
19:01 --> 19:10 [SPEAKER_00]: Frederickson's account doesn't corroborate Wheeler's description of a spacecraft, but it potentially corroborates one fundamental part of Wheeler's story.
19:11 --> 19:17 [SPEAKER_00]: That there was apparently an unusual orange light visible near the location Wheeler said he encountered something.
19:19 --> 19:22 [SPEAKER_00]: Maybe it was a distant aircraft, maybe something at the quarry.
19:23 --> 19:27 [SPEAKER_00]: Maybe a vehicle, maybe a fire, maybe an atmospheric effect.
19:28 --> 19:35 [SPEAKER_00]: Frederickson couldn't tell us, but Wheeler wasn't necessarily the only person sing light near Tuddle Hill.
19:36 --> 19:38 [SPEAKER_00]: So Boastrack kept going.
19:40 --> 19:42 [SPEAKER_00]: Another nearby resident was O'Brien.
19:42 --> 19:44 [SPEAKER_00]: We've already heard part of his story.
19:45 --> 19:50 [SPEAKER_00]: He saw no UFO, he didn't report an orange object, he didn't see anything hovering
19:52 --> 19:54 [SPEAKER_00]: What he remembered was his television.
19:55 --> 19:58 [SPEAKER_00]: At roughly the time we later reported his encounter.
19:59 --> 19:59 [SPEAKER_00]: The picture went out.
20:00 --> 20:01 [SPEAKER_00]: Then returned.
20:02 --> 20:06 [SPEAKER_00]: Again, maybe that's nothing, in fact, statistically it probably is.
20:07 --> 20:13 [SPEAKER_00]: Television again, you know, back in those days in World America in 1976 could be pretty temperamental.
20:13 --> 20:18 [SPEAKER_00]: And tennis signals faded, electrical interference happened, equipment malfunctioned.
20:19 --> 20:24 [SPEAKER_00]: There is no surviving measurement, linking, or brand's television to Wheeler's patrol car.
20:24 --> 20:29 [SPEAKER_00]: In no evidence demonstrating that either malfunction was caused by anything in the sky.
20:30 --> 20:32 [SPEAKER_00]: But, most track recorded it.
20:33 --> 20:41 [SPEAKER_00]: Because investigation isn't deciding which detail support your theory, it's recording what happened, and figuring out what it means later.
20:43 --> 20:45 [SPEAKER_00]: Then both track went to another nearby property.
20:46 --> 20:47 [SPEAKER_00]: The key will farm.
20:48 --> 20:51 [SPEAKER_00]: This visit is one of my favorite pieces of the entire investigation.
20:52 --> 20:56 [SPEAKER_00]: Not because Boastrack found another witness, but because he didn't.
20:57 --> 21:03 [SPEAKER_00]: There was apparently a story circulating that a child at the Kiel property had seen wheelers UFO.
21:04 --> 21:13 [SPEAKER_00]: Now that would have been useful, another independent witness, another person seeing the object near Tuddle Hill, except when Boastrack checked, it wasn't true.
21:17 --> 21:21 [SPEAKER_00]: And that's also important, because this is how UFO mythology grows.
21:22 --> 21:32 [SPEAKER_00]: A neighbor hears that someone saw something, someone repeats it, the story moves through town, and eventually the phrase, I heard their kids saw it too, becomes there was another eyewitness.
21:33 --> 21:36 [SPEAKER_00]: Both tracks stop that particular story before it could become evidence.
21:38 --> 21:42 [SPEAKER_00]: He also heard reports of dogs behaving and usually around the time of the encounter.
21:43 --> 21:45 [SPEAKER_00]: Again, interesting, but weak.
21:46 --> 21:48 [SPEAKER_00]: Dogs bark, dogs become frightened.
21:48 --> 21:53 [SPEAKER_00]: Dogs react to wildlife, vehicles, weather, sounds, and smells humans never notice.
21:54 --> 21:55 [SPEAKER_00]: So we record it.
21:56 --> 21:57 [SPEAKER_00]: But we don't build a case around it.
21:58 --> 21:59 [SPEAKER_00]: So Boastrat kept moving.
22:00 --> 22:03 [SPEAKER_00]: Because another lead was much stronger.
22:04 --> 22:09 [SPEAKER_00]: George Wheeler had reportedly contacted the Pierce County Sheriff's Department while watching the object.
22:10 --> 22:16 [SPEAKER_00]: If that transmission really happened, someone else might have heard it, and apparently someone had.
22:18 --> 22:24 [SPEAKER_00]: Both Stratklurned of Wheeler's encounter, the following morning, through one of his students at the University of Wisconsin River Falls.
22:25 --> 22:28 [SPEAKER_00]: The student at a friend reportedly heard Wheeler's radio traffic.
22:29 --> 22:32 [SPEAKER_00]: That matters enormously for one specific reason.
22:34 --> 22:37 [SPEAKER_00]: It means Wheeler's story wasn't invented days later.
22:38 --> 22:43 [SPEAKER_00]: There was apparently radio traffic about the encounter, while it was happening.
22:45 --> 22:48 [SPEAKER_00]: Unfortunately we don't have the recording, so we cannot quote Wheeler's words.
22:49 --> 22:52 [SPEAKER_00]: We can't know precisely what he described over the radio.
22:53 --> 22:58 [SPEAKER_00]: But the fact that other people reportedly heard the transmission helps anchor the encounter in real time.
22:59 --> 23:04 [SPEAKER_00]: George Wheeler believed something unusual was happening near Tuddle Hill, while he was there.
23:06 --> 23:14 [SPEAKER_00]: That doesn't tell us whether his interpretation was correct, but it makes a later fabricated UFO story considerably less likely.
23:16 --> 23:22 [SPEAKER_00]: The Sheriff's Department becomes important here too, because Wheeler wasn't simply telling friends what happened.
23:23 --> 23:26 [SPEAKER_00]: He was a police officer contacting another law enforcement agency.
23:27 --> 23:33 [SPEAKER_00]: The dispatcher received his transmission and shortly afterward, Wheeler was found in distress.
23:34 --> 23:37 [SPEAKER_00]: Again, notice what we are not saying.
23:38 --> 23:41 [SPEAKER_00]: The Sheriff's Department didn't confirm a spacecraft.
23:41 --> 23:43 [SPEAKER_00]: Deputies didn't photograph one.
23:44 --> 23:46 [SPEAKER_00]: No radar operator tracked it.
23:46 --> 23:48 [SPEAKER_00]: No piece of machinery was recovered.
23:49 --> 23:54 [SPEAKER_00]: There's no government document declaring that an unknown vehicle hovered over Tunnel Hill.
23:55 --> 23:58 [SPEAKER_00]: What law enforcement helps establish is something narrower.
23:59 --> 24:07 [SPEAKER_00]: Wheeler reported an encounter, his report occurred around the time he said it occurred, and shortly afterward, he was apparently not okay.
24:09 --> 24:12 [SPEAKER_00]: Then, Boastrak went back to the scene.
24:13 --> 24:16 [SPEAKER_00]: And daylight, Total Hill looked considerably less mysterious.
24:17 --> 24:23 [SPEAKER_00]: Trees, open ground, the quarry, roads, nearby farms.
24:24 --> 24:26 [SPEAKER_00]: So, most tracked photograph the area.
24:27 --> 24:28 [SPEAKER_00]: He stood where Wheeler said he had been.
24:29 --> 24:32 [SPEAKER_00]: He looked toward the place where Wheeler said the object had hovered.
24:32 --> 24:35 [SPEAKER_00]: Of course, there was no spaceship.
24:36 --> 24:39 [SPEAKER_00]: There was no scorch landing circle, no mysterious metal.
24:39 --> 24:41 [SPEAKER_00]: Nothing that could settle the question.
24:42 --> 24:53 [SPEAKER_00]: This matters because later versions of UFO stories have a habit of accumulating physical evidence, like burn marks, radiation, dead vegetation, strange impressions in the ground.
24:54 --> 24:59 [SPEAKER_00]: But when it comes to Wheeler's encounter, we don't have compelling physical evidence of that kind.
25:01 --> 25:08 [SPEAKER_00]: And elsewhere in the broader 1975 flap, later UFO catalogs would eventually mention alleged physical traces.
25:09 --> 25:17 [SPEAKER_00]: But the contemporary newspaper reporting from April 1975 said responding deputies found no physical evidence.
25:18 --> 25:22 [SPEAKER_00]: So unless better documentation appears, we leave the landing traces out.
25:24 --> 25:27 [SPEAKER_00]: Now, that may make the story less spectacular.
25:27 --> 25:29 [SPEAKER_00]: It also makes it more accurate.
25:30 --> 25:35 [SPEAKER_00]: And if we're going to take the unexplained parts seriously, we have to be willing to throw away the parts that don't
25:38 --> 25:45 [SPEAKER_00]: Let's stop for a moment, put everything on the table, forget aliens, forget flying saucers, forget what George Wheeler thought he saw.
25:46 --> 25:50 [SPEAKER_00]: What can we reasonably establish about April 22nd, 1976?
25:51 --> 25:54 [SPEAKER_00]: George Wheeler was on patrol near Elmwood.
25:54 --> 25:57 [SPEAKER_00]: He reported an unidentified object near Tuddle Hill.
25:58 --> 26:00 [SPEAKER_00]: Other people reportedly heard his radio traffic.
26:01 --> 26:06 [SPEAKER_00]: A nearby resident independently recalled an unusual orange light in that general direction.
26:07 --> 26:11 [SPEAKER_00]: Another resident reported television interference around approximately the same time.
26:12 --> 26:19 [SPEAKER_00]: A motorist reportedly encountered Wheeler shortly afterward, sitting in a patrol car that wasn't operating normally.
26:19 --> 26:21 [SPEAKER_00]: And apparently, disoriented.
26:22 --> 26:25 [SPEAKER_00]: Wheeler subsequently received medical treatment and was hospitalized.
26:26 --> 26:31 [SPEAKER_00]: And within days, Jack Boastrack began interviewing people and documenting the scene.
26:32 --> 26:36 [SPEAKER_00]: Now, let's separate that from what rests primarily on Wheeler.
26:37 --> 26:47 [SPEAKER_00]: The enormous size, the windows, the moving figures, the landing-leg structures, the rotating mechanism, the hose, the sudden vertical acceleration, the blue-white flash.
26:48 --> 26:50 [SPEAKER_00]: Those details all come from George Wheeler.
26:51 --> 26:53 [SPEAKER_00]: And that's where the case becomes frustrating.
26:54 --> 26:58 [SPEAKER_00]: because the parts we can corroborate don't prove the extraordinary part.
26:59 --> 27:06 [SPEAKER_00]: Fredrickson saw light, not a spacecraft, O'Brien lost a television picture, he didn't see an object.
27:07 --> 27:10 [SPEAKER_00]: Moots found Wheeler, he didn't witness the encounter.
27:11 --> 27:15 [SPEAKER_00]: The radio listeners heard Wheeler reporting something, they couldn't see what Wheeler was seeing.
27:17 --> 27:19 [SPEAKER_00]: Every piece circles the event without entering it.
27:24 --> 27:26 [SPEAKER_00]: So how much do we trust him?
27:27 --> 27:37 [SPEAKER_00]: Wheeler was 71, a reserve police officer, a veteran, a former combat pilot, and by 1976, someone who already believed he'd seen a UFO.
27:38 --> 27:40 [SPEAKER_00]: That last part cuts both ways.
27:41 --> 27:45 [SPEAKER_00]: A believer might be more likely to interpret and ambiguous light as extraordinary.
27:46 --> 27:52 [SPEAKER_00]: Wheeler had spent a year thinking about UFOs, watching for them, preparing for another encounter.
27:53 --> 27:58 [SPEAKER_00]: Perhaps when he finally saw something unusual near Tuddle Hill, his expectations filled in the blanks.
27:59 --> 28:00 [SPEAKER_00]: And that's possible.
28:01 --> 28:03 [SPEAKER_00]: But there's another way to look at it.
28:04 --> 28:08 [SPEAKER_00]: Wheeler's previous experience meant he was actively trying to observe carefully.
28:08 --> 28:09 [SPEAKER_00]: He carried binoculars.
28:10 --> 28:11 [SPEAKER_00]: He wanted photographs.
28:12 --> 28:16 [SPEAKER_00]: In his aviation background, meant aircraft were not completely unfamiliar to him.
28:18 --> 28:33 [SPEAKER_00]: Neither fact makes him infallible, experienced pilots misidentified things, police officers also misidentified things, scientists even misidentified things, all of us do, but Wheeler wasn't describing a fleeting light he saw for three seconds.
28:34 --> 28:43 [SPEAKER_00]: He believed he had driven toward something, stopped, watched it, radioed the sheriff, and then experienced a physical event.
28:44 --> 28:49 [SPEAKER_00]: If Wheeler was wrong, the question becomes, wrong about what?
28:50 --> 29:03 [SPEAKER_00]: An aircraft, a quarry light, a medical event, a hallucination, some combination of those things, or, did George Wheeler actually see something in the darkness that night that none of us can identify?
29:06 --> 29:08 [SPEAKER_00]: There is one explanation we have to take seriously.
29:10 --> 29:11 [SPEAKER_00]: What if the most important thing
29:13 --> 29:15 [SPEAKER_00]: happened inside George Wheeler.
29:16 --> 29:19 [SPEAKER_00]: He was 71 years old, he reportedly lost consciousness.
29:20 --> 29:21 [SPEAKER_00]: He required medical attention.
29:22 --> 29:25 [SPEAKER_00]: Those facts raised the possibility of a medical episode.
29:26 --> 29:31 [SPEAKER_00]: Syncopy, neurological disturbance, cardiovascular problems, and altered state of consciousness.
29:32 --> 29:34 [SPEAKER_00]: Any of those could potentially affect perception.
29:35 --> 29:42 [SPEAKER_00]: and if Wheeler experienced a medical event while driving, perhaps his recollection of what preceded it became distorted.
29:43 --> 29:46 [SPEAKER_00]: And that's not an unreasonable explanation.
29:46 --> 29:50 [SPEAKER_00]: In fact, it's one of the strongest mundane possibilities in the entire case.
29:52 --> 29:58 [SPEAKER_00]: But it has a problem, the orange light, Frederickson reportedly saw one too.
29:59 --> 30:02 [SPEAKER_00]: In Wheeler, apparently radioed the sheriff before
30:05 --> 30:10 [SPEAKER_00]: So even if Wheeler experienced a medical event, something appears to have prompted the encounter first.
30:11 --> 30:18 [SPEAKER_00]: That's something could still have been completely ordinary, but the medical explanation doesn't erase the entire event.
30:19 --> 30:25 [SPEAKER_00]: It may explain Wheeler's collapse, but it doesn't necessarily explain why he stopped the car in the first place.
30:27 --> 30:31 [SPEAKER_00]: There is also something almost unnervingly symmetrical about Wheeler's story.
30:32 --> 30:38 [SPEAKER_00]: April 6, 1975 Wheeler sees an enormous orange object moving silently through the sky.
30:39 --> 30:43 [SPEAKER_00]: Other people across Pierce County report strange objects that same night.
30:44 --> 30:45 [SPEAKER_00]: Law enforcement sees them.
30:46 --> 30:49 [SPEAKER_00]: Then April 22, 1976 Wheeler sees another strange orange object.
30:57 --> 30:57 [SPEAKER_00]: much closer.
30:59 --> 31:04 [SPEAKER_00]: If George Wheeler invented his second encounter, he chose a story that echoed his first.
31:05 --> 31:11 [SPEAKER_00]: If he misidentified something, his previous experience may have shaped what he believed he saw.
31:12 --> 31:18 [SPEAKER_00]: And if his account was accurate, then whatever had appeared over Pierce County in 1975 had apparently returned.
31:26 --> 31:28 [SPEAKER_00]: Elmwood had begun developing a reputation.
31:29 --> 31:32 [SPEAKER_00]: The UFO's stories were becoming part of the town itself.
31:33 --> 31:37 [SPEAKER_00]: And once a mystery becomes folklore, something strange happens.
31:38 --> 31:39 [SPEAKER_00]: The story begins changing.
31:41 --> 31:45 [SPEAKER_00]: Details grow, rumors become memories, memories become legends.
31:46 --> 31:50 [SPEAKER_00]: And eventually, little green men start marching down Main Street.
31:51 --> 31:55 [SPEAKER_00]: to understand what really happened over Elmwood, we have one final job.
31:56 --> 31:59 [SPEAKER_00]: We have to separate the mystery from the mythology.
32:02 --> 32:08 [SPEAKER_00]: Today, if you visit Elmwood, Wisconsin at the right time of year, you don't have to look very hard to find aliens.
32:09 --> 32:10 [SPEAKER_00]: They are everywhere.
32:11 --> 32:15 [SPEAKER_00]: Inflatable aliens, alien costumes, flying saucers, t-shirt, signs.
32:16 --> 32:23 [SPEAKER_00]: For one weekend each summer, this little village in western Wisconsin celebrates something that supposedly happened here half a century ago.
32:25 --> 32:25 [SPEAKER_00]: UFO days.
32:27 --> 32:33 [SPEAKER_00]: What began as a collection of strange reports in the 1970s eventually became part of Elmwood's identity.
32:34 --> 32:37 [SPEAKER_00]: And honestly, there's something kind of wonderful about that.
32:38 --> 32:43 [SPEAKER_00]: A small town took one of the strangest chapters in its history and decided to have some fun with it.
32:44 --> 32:51 [SPEAKER_00]: But for anyone trying to determine what actually happened here, there is a problem, because stories do change.
32:51 --> 32:54 [SPEAKER_00]: And UFO stories change a lot.
32:55 --> 32:58 [SPEAKER_00]: Every time a story is retold, something happens to it.
32:58 --> 33:04 [SPEAKER_00]: Details, disappear, others become more dramatic, uncertainty gets replaced by confidence.
33:04 --> 33:07 [SPEAKER_00]: I think it was around 11, becomes, it happened at 11.
33:08 --> 33:11 [SPEAKER_00]: It looked almost like becomes it was.
33:12 --> 33:20 [SPEAKER_00]: And a detail that appears in one book 30 years later can eventually find its way backward into the story until everyone assumes it was there from the beginning.
33:21 --> 33:26 [SPEAKER_00]: That's why throughout this investigation, we've kept returning to the earliest sources we can find.
33:27 --> 33:29 [SPEAKER_00]: Newspaper accounts published within days.
33:30 --> 33:33 [SPEAKER_00]: Investigations conducted while witnesses were still available.
33:34 --> 33:38 [SPEAKER_00]: Reports written before Elmwood became synonymous with UFOs.
33:39 --> 33:43 [SPEAKER_00]: And when we do that, some pieces of the legend begin falling away.
33:45 --> 33:47 [SPEAKER_00]: Take George Wheeler's first encounter, April 6, 1975.
33:50 --> 33:56 [SPEAKER_00]: The contemporary newspaper reporting says, Wheeler saw an enormous luminous object moving rapidly east.
33:57 --> 34:02 [SPEAKER_00]: That's the version closest to the event, but years later, another version appeared.
34:03 --> 34:05 [SPEAKER_00]: And now, the object was traveling west.
34:06 --> 34:06 [SPEAKER_00]: East?
34:07 --> 34:07 [SPEAKER_00]: West?
34:09 --> 34:13 [SPEAKER_00]: That's not a minor difference if you're trying to reconstruct a trajectory.
34:13 --> 34:16 [SPEAKER_00]: And it's a perfect example of why we can't simply combine
34:19 --> 34:20 [SPEAKER_00]: One of them has to be wrong.
34:21 --> 34:25 [SPEAKER_00]: Maybe Wheeler remembered it differently later, maybe an author misunderstood him.
34:26 --> 34:28 [SPEAKER_00]: Maybe somebody simply made a mistake.
34:28 --> 34:29 [SPEAKER_00]: We don't know.
34:30 --> 34:35 [SPEAKER_00]: But we do know which account was written closest to the event, so that's the one we've used.
34:36 --> 34:40 [SPEAKER_00]: Not because it makes the UFO story stronger, but because it's better evidence.
34:42 --> 34:44 [SPEAKER_00]: Then there are the alleged physical traces.
34:45 --> 34:54 [SPEAKER_00]: Later UFO catalogs contained references suggesting that unusual marks or traces were discovered following part of the 1975 Pierce County activity.
34:55 --> 35:01 [SPEAKER_00]: That sounds important, a strange object is reported then physical evidence appears, case closed.
35:02 --> 35:11 [SPEAKER_00]: Except, when we return to the contemporary reporting, deputies responding to the color property said they found no evidence of a UFO.
35:13 --> 35:15 [SPEAKER_00]: Now, maybe traces were discovered somewhere else later.
35:16 --> 35:17 [SPEAKER_00]: That's entirely possible.
35:18 --> 35:20 [SPEAKER_00]: Maybe documentation exists that we haven't recovered.
35:20 --> 35:21 [SPEAKER_00]: That's also possible.
35:22 --> 35:30 [SPEAKER_00]: But until we can establish what was found, where it was found, who examined it and when, we don't get to turn it into evidence.
35:31 --> 35:33 [SPEAKER_00]: So the physical traces come off the board.
35:34 --> 35:37 [SPEAKER_00]: Not this proven, just unsubstantiated.
35:37 --> 35:38 [SPEAKER_00]: And there is a difference.
35:40 --> 35:44 [SPEAKER_00]: Wheeler's patrol car presents the same problem, the core story is straightforward.
35:45 --> 35:49 [SPEAKER_00]: Wheeler said his engine stopped, his headlights failed, his radio went dead.
35:50 --> 35:52 [SPEAKER_00]: Those details appear very close to the encounter.
35:53 --> 35:58 [SPEAKER_00]: Later accounts add something more dramatic, burned out spark plugs, damaged points.
35:59 --> 36:03 [SPEAKER_00]: A vehicle that had supposedly been serviced shortly before the encounter.
36:04 --> 36:09 [SPEAKER_00]: Those claims were attributed to Elmwood Police Chief Jean Helmer, and they may be completely
36:10 --> 36:12 [SPEAKER_00]: But we haven't found the maintenance paperwork.
36:13 --> 36:14 [SPEAKER_00]: We don't have the mechanics report.
36:15 --> 36:15 [SPEAKER_00]: We don't have the parts.
36:16 --> 36:21 [SPEAKER_00]: And we don't know exactly what condition the vehicle was in before we learned drove it that night.
36:21 --> 36:24 [SPEAKER_00]: So again, we have to draw a line.
36:25 --> 36:28 [SPEAKER_00]: We'll have reported his patrol car malfunctioning during the encounter.
36:29 --> 36:30 [SPEAKER_00]: That's part of the case.
36:31 --> 36:37 [SPEAKER_00]: A spacecraft somehow blasted his ignition system with electromagnetic energy, that's interpretation.
36:41 --> 36:43 [SPEAKER_00]: And there's the Kiel family.
36:44 --> 36:49 [SPEAKER_00]: Remember the rumor Bostrak heard, a child at a nearby farm had supposedly seen Wheeler's UFO.
36:50 --> 36:54 [SPEAKER_00]: That would have been a fantastic corroboration, another eyewitness, another angle.
36:55 --> 36:58 [SPEAKER_00]: Another person independently describing the same object.
36:59 --> 37:02 [SPEAKER_00]: Except Bostrak checked, and the story wasn't true.
37:03 --> 37:04 [SPEAKER_00]: The child hadn't seen it.
37:05 --> 37:08 [SPEAKER_00]: This might seem like a tiny detail, but it isn't.
37:09 --> 37:14 [SPEAKER_00]: because it gives us a glimpse of folklore being created almost in real time, not 50 years later.
37:15 --> 37:16 [SPEAKER_00]: Days later.
37:17 --> 37:22 [SPEAKER_00]: Someone misunderstood something or repeated rumor and suddenly another witness existed.
37:23 --> 37:27 [SPEAKER_00]: Had both track not checked, we might be talking about that witness right now.
37:28 --> 37:32 [SPEAKER_00]: How many other UFO stories contain details nobody bothered to check?
37:33 --> 37:36 [SPEAKER_00]: We don't know, but this one, somebody did.
37:37 --> 37:44 [SPEAKER_00]: And ironically, every week claim Bostrak rejected, makes the things he couldn't explain a little bit more interesting.
37:46 --> 37:50 [SPEAKER_00]: Eventually the sightings became something larger than an investigation.
37:51 --> 37:54 [SPEAKER_00]: They became Elmwood's story UFO days began.
37:55 --> 38:01 [SPEAKER_00]: The town embraced the weirdness, and George Wheeler became inseparable from the legend.
38:02 --> 38:04 [SPEAKER_00]: There is something better sweet about that.
38:05 --> 38:08 [SPEAKER_00]: because Wheeler didn't have decades to watch the story grow.
38:09 --> 38:11 [SPEAKER_00]: Sadly, he passed away in 1977.
38:12 --> 38:20 [SPEAKER_00]: Only about a year after his Tuttle Hill encounter, which meant other people would eventually become the custodians of his story.
38:21 --> 38:29 [SPEAKER_00]: Investigators, authors, journalists, UFO enthusiasts, residents, and inevitably, the story evolved.
38:31 --> 38:33 [SPEAKER_00]: But Wheeler's death also means something else.
38:34 --> 38:35 [SPEAKER_00]: We can't sit down with him.
38:36 --> 38:38 [SPEAKER_00]: We can't ask in which version is correct.
38:39 --> 38:40 [SPEAKER_00]: We can't show him a map.
38:41 --> 38:43 [SPEAKER_00]: We can't ask exactly where the object appeared.
38:44 --> 38:47 [SPEAKER_00]: We can't ask whether his size estimate was literal.
38:47 --> 38:50 [SPEAKER_00]: We can't ask what he meant by figures.
38:50 --> 38:54 [SPEAKER_00]: We can't ask whether the rotating structure could have been something at the quarry.
38:55 --> 38:59 [SPEAKER_00]: We can't ask whether he experienced any symptoms before he saw the light.
39:00 --> 39:02 [SPEAKER_00]: George Wheeler can't clarify any of it.
39:03 --> 39:06 [SPEAKER_00]: All we have is what's survived.
39:08 --> 39:14 [SPEAKER_00]: So, forget UFO days, forget the alien costumes, forget every drawing of a flying saucer.
39:14 --> 39:18 [SPEAKER_00]: Forget the later books, forget the physical traces we can't substantiate.
39:18 --> 39:26 [SPEAKER_00]: Forget claims about alien occupants, forget speculation about extraterrestrials, monitoring, nuclear reactors, forget everything the story became.
39:27 --> 39:28 [SPEAKER_00]: So what happened?
39:33 --> 39:36 [SPEAKER_00]: Two men, near-drand, report something unusual.
39:37 --> 39:41 [SPEAKER_00]: March 2nd, Carol Forster and her children see a bright object while driving.
39:42 --> 39:43 [SPEAKER_00]: At first, they think it's a star.
39:44 --> 39:50 [SPEAKER_00]: March 14, four people near Plum City in counterlights, and at first, they think it's a car.
39:51 --> 39:56 [SPEAKER_00]: April 6th, the co-workers call law enforcement, George Wheeler reports an enormous silent object.
39:57 --> 39:59 [SPEAKER_00]: Nancy Thies calls, then calls again.
40:00 --> 40:06 [SPEAKER_00]: The number of objects increases, and eventually, Sheriff's Deputies' reports sing unusual objects, too.
40:07 --> 40:11 [SPEAKER_00]: Then one year later, George Wheeler reports another encounter.
40:12 --> 40:29 [SPEAKER_00]: He radios the sheriff, other people reportedly hear the transmission, a nearby witness sees in Orange Light, another household experiences television interference, a motorist finds Wheeler shortly afterward, disoriented inside his patrol car, and Wheeler ends up in the hospital.
40:31 --> 40:31 [SPEAKER_00]: that's the story.
40:32 --> 40:36 [SPEAKER_00]: Not aliens, not spaceships, not visitors from another planet.
40:37 --> 40:42 [SPEAKER_00]: Just events, reports, witnesses, and lots of questions.
40:44 --> 40:45 [SPEAKER_00]: So can we explain it?
40:46 --> 40:48 [SPEAKER_00]: Maybe parts of it almost certainly.
40:49 --> 40:54 [SPEAKER_00]: Carol Forster's first bright light could have been Venus, some of the weaker reports from the
40:56 --> 41:05 [SPEAKER_00]: Aircraft almost certainly account for others, once people began actively looking for UFOs, expectation probably created additional sightings.
41:05 --> 41:11 [SPEAKER_00]: The electrical effects around Wheeler could be coincidence, his collapse could have had a medical explanation.
41:12 --> 41:16 [SPEAKER_00]: His perception of the object could have been affected by whatever happened to him physically.
41:17 --> 41:22 [SPEAKER_00]: Prairie Island could be completely irrelevant, and 50 years of storytelling,
41:26 --> 41:33 [SPEAKER_00]: That's a lot of mystery removed, but certainly not all of it, because one night keeps refusing to disappear.
41:34 --> 41:36 [SPEAKER_00]: April 6, 1975.
41:36 --> 41:46 [SPEAKER_00]: Sunday night, Pierce County, 1125pm, that first call, then another 1245, George Wheeler.
41:46 --> 41:51 [SPEAKER_00]: 1255, Nancy Thies, 102, another call, more objects.
41:52 --> 41:57 [SPEAKER_00]: Different people, different locations, same small region, same night.
41:58 --> 42:01 [SPEAKER_00]: And eventually, law enforcement, looking into the
42:04 --> 42:06 [SPEAKER_00]: Maybe every one of those people saw aircraft.
42:06 --> 42:10 [SPEAKER_00]: Maybe suggestion cause unrelated lights to become part of one story.
42:11 --> 42:16 [SPEAKER_00]: Maybe an unusual atmospheric condition disoriented ordinary objects across the region.
42:17 --> 42:19 [SPEAKER_00]: Any of those explanations could be true.
42:20 --> 42:29 [SPEAKER_00]: But after stripping away everything we can't support, we still don't have enough evidence to choose one, which leaves us with a frustrating possibility.
42:30 --> 42:36 [SPEAKER_00]: Maybe the reason nobody has solved the L would UFO flap, isn't because the answer is extraordinary.
42:37 --> 42:41 [SPEAKER_00]: Maybe there's simply isn't enough evidence left to find the ordinary answer.
42:43 --> 42:48 [SPEAKER_00]: Or, maybe something genuinely unusual happened over Western Wisconsin.
42:49 --> 42:52 [SPEAKER_00]: We can't prove that either, and that's where the case should remain.
42:53 --> 42:58 [SPEAKER_00]: Not solved, not extraterrestrial, unidentified.
43:00 --> 43:04 [SPEAKER_00]: But before we leave Elmwood, there's one coincidence we need to return to.
43:05 --> 43:12 [SPEAKER_00]: Because just west of these communities, across the Mississippi, two nuclear reactors were operating at Prairie Island.
43:13 --> 43:16 [SPEAKER_00]: And the second one had come online only weeks before the sightings began.
43:18 --> 43:20 [SPEAKER_00]: And again, we already know that doesn't prove anything.
43:21 --> 43:23 [SPEAKER_00]: But the question raises is bigger than Elmwood.
43:24 --> 43:32 [SPEAKER_00]: because if you begin looking through the history of UFO encounters, Prairie Island isn't the only nuclear installation with strange stories nearby.
43:33 --> 43:34 [SPEAKER_00]: Not even close.
43:35 --> 43:46 [SPEAKER_00]: And some of those stories involve military officers, nuclear weapons, missile silos, and objects hovering directly above some of the most sensitive installations in America.
43:48 --> 43:52 [SPEAKER_00]: So before we decide what the nuclear connection was cons and means, if anything,
43:53 --> 43:55 [SPEAKER_00]: We need to ask a much larger question.
43:56 --> 43:59 [SPEAKER_00]: Why do UFOs keep showing up around nuclear sites?
44:00 --> 44:01 [SPEAKER_00]: Why nuclear sites?
44:02 --> 44:06 [SPEAKER_00]: It's a question that has followed the UFO phenomenon for decades.
44:07 --> 44:10 [SPEAKER_00]: And depending on who you ask, there may not be a mystery here at all.
44:11 --> 44:19 [SPEAKER_00]: Nuclear facilities are monitored, military installations have aircraft nearby, missile fields operate sophisticated electronics.
44:20 --> 44:24 [SPEAKER_00]: People working at sensitive installations are trained to pay attention to unusual activity.
44:25 --> 44:29 [SPEAKER_00]: And nuclear facilities themselves are visually distinctive environments.
44:29 --> 44:34 [SPEAKER_00]: Bright lights, steam, electrical infrastructure restricted airspace security.
44:39 --> 44:42 [SPEAKER_00]: There's another problem, selection bias.
44:42 --> 44:49 [SPEAKER_00]: If you search thousands of UFO reports specifically looking for encounters near nuclear installations, you'll find them.
44:50 --> 44:53 [SPEAKER_00]: That doesn't necessarily mean nuclear facilities attract UFOs.
44:54 --> 44:59 [SPEAKER_00]: It might simply mean America has a lot of UFO reports and a lot of nuclear infrastructure.
45:00 --> 45:02 [SPEAKER_00]: That's the skeptical case.
45:02 --> 45:03 [SPEAKER_00]: And it's a good one.
45:04 --> 45:08 [SPEAKER_00]: But there are incidents that make the question harder
45:10 --> 45:12 [SPEAKER_00]: March 1967, Montana.
45:13 --> 45:25 [SPEAKER_00]: Across the landscape surrounding Melstrom Air Force Base, sat minute-man, intercontinental ballistic missiles, nuclear weapons, hidden underground, maintained in a constant state of readiness.
45:26 --> 45:28 [SPEAKER_00]: Then something unusual happened.
45:29 --> 45:34 [SPEAKER_00]: Multiple missiles associated with one launch facility suddenly became unavailable.
45:35 --> 45:36 [SPEAKER_00]: They went completely offline.
45:38 --> 45:46 [SPEAKER_00]: Former Air Force personnel with later described reports of strange aerial objects around missile facilities during the same general period.
45:47 --> 46:00 [SPEAKER_00]: One of the most prominent witnesses, former missile launch officer Robert Salis, has spent decades arguing that a glowing object was observed near a security gate while missiles under his units' control became an operable.
46:02 --> 46:10 [SPEAKER_00]: The precise chronology, documentation, and relationship between the UFO reports and the missile failures have been heavily disputed.
46:11 --> 46:12 [SPEAKER_00]: And that's important.
46:12 --> 46:20 [SPEAKER_00]: There is no universally accepted evidence demonstrating that an unidentified craft disabled nuclear missiles at Malstrom.
46:21 --> 46:23 [SPEAKER_00]: But missile failures occurred.
46:23 --> 46:27 [SPEAKER_00]: UFO reports existed around nuclear installations during the Cold War.
46:32 --> 46:38 [SPEAKER_00]: Malstrom became one of the foundational cases behind the idea that whatever UFOs are.
46:39 --> 46:42 [SPEAKER_00]: They seem unusually interested in our most destructive technology.
46:43 --> 46:45 [SPEAKER_00]: But even Malstrom wasn't the beginning.
46:47 --> 46:55 [SPEAKER_00]: Reports of unusual aerial activity around sensitive American nuclear facilities stretch back toward the beginning of the modern UFO era.
46:56 --> 47:03 [SPEAKER_00]: Los Alamos, Oak Ridge Places connected directly to the production and development of atomic weapons.
47:04 --> 47:13 [SPEAKER_00]: During the early Cold War, an identified objects reported near sensitive installations weren't treated merely a stories about visitors from space.
47:13 --> 47:15 [SPEAKER_00]: They were potential security threats.
47:16 --> 47:20 [SPEAKER_00]: Soviet aircraft, reconnaissance, plant forms, unknown technology.
47:21 --> 47:25 [SPEAKER_00]: Whatever they were, military officials had very good reasons to care.
47:26 --> 47:30 [SPEAKER_00]: A decades later, people would still be asking the same question.
47:31 --> 47:32 [SPEAKER_00]: Why new killer sites?
47:34 --> 47:36 [SPEAKER_00]: Maybe because we're looking for the pattern.
47:36 --> 47:41 [SPEAKER_00]: Maybe because military environments produce unusual aircraft and unusual observations.
47:42 --> 47:47 [SPEAKER_00]: Maybe because nuclear facilities simply have more people watching the sky.
47:48 --> 47:56 [SPEAKER_00]: Or perhaps, if some UFO reports represent an unknown technology, nuclear installations genuinely attract its attention.
47:57 --> 47:57 [SPEAKER_00]: We don't know.
47:59 --> 48:01 [SPEAKER_00]: And that brings us back to Wisconsin.
48:02 --> 48:08 [SPEAKER_00]: December 1974, Prairie Island Second Reactor becomes operational.
48:09 --> 48:16 [SPEAKER_00]: One month later, January 1975, one of the earliest reports in our Western Wisconsin sequence.
48:17 --> 48:24 [SPEAKER_00]: Then March, Elmwood, Plum City, April, the largest concentration of reports.
48:25 --> 48:26 [SPEAKER_00]: Coincidence?
48:27 --> 48:27 [SPEAKER_00]: Possibly.
48:29 --> 48:32 [SPEAKER_00]: There is no evidence that anything flew from Prairie Island to Elmwood.
48:33 --> 48:34 [SPEAKER_00]: No radar track.
48:34 --> 48:39 [SPEAKER_00]: No document describing unidentified objects hovering over the reactor that we found.
48:40 --> 48:44 [SPEAKER_00]: No evidence of an emergency at the plant corresponding with the sightings.
48:45 --> 48:46 [SPEAKER_00]: Nothing establishes a connection.
48:48 --> 48:50 [SPEAKER_00]: But Prairie Island was there.
48:50 --> 48:51 [SPEAKER_00]: It was operating.
48:52 --> 48:54 [SPEAKER_00]: Its second reactor was brand new.
48:55 --> 49:04 [SPEAKER_00]: and several witnesses on April 6 described objects moving eastward, away from the general direction of the Mississippi and across Pierce County.
49:05 --> 49:09 [SPEAKER_00]: But that's where the evidence stops, and where interpretation begins.
49:10 --> 49:13 [SPEAKER_00]: So we're going to leave Prairie Island exactly where we found it.
49:14 --> 49:21 [SPEAKER_00]: On the map, a few dozen miles away, interesting, unsettling, and completely unproven as part of the story.
49:23 --> 49:35 [SPEAKER_00]: So, after everything we've looked at, we're left in an unusual place, because the deeper we dug into the Elmwood UFO flap, the story didn't become more spectacular, it became smaller.
49:36 --> 49:38 [SPEAKER_00]: Some details disappeared.
49:38 --> 49:40 [SPEAKER_00]: Some couldn't be verified.
49:40 --> 49:43 [SPEAKER_00]: Some changed depending on when the story was told.
49:44 --> 49:50 [SPEAKER_00]: And some reports have perfectly reasonable possible explanations, but something remained.
49:51 --> 49:58 [SPEAKER_00]: April 6, 1975, again, different witnesses, different locations, multiple cause to law enforcement.
49:59 --> 50:04 [SPEAKER_00]: Objects reportedly moving through the same small region over the course of roughly two hours.
50:05 --> 50:10 [SPEAKER_00]: And eventually, law enforcement officers reporting unusual objects themselves.
50:11 --> 50:14 [SPEAKER_00]: Then, almost exactly one year later, George Wheeler.
50:15 --> 50:26 [SPEAKER_00]: Total Hill, the radio call, the orange light independently reported nearby, the disabled patrol car, the television interference, Wheeler found disoriented, his hospitalization.
50:27 --> 50:36 [SPEAKER_00]: None of those things tell us what George Wheeler saw, and they certainly don't tell us who or what might have been behind those illuminated openings he described.
50:41 --> 50:43 [SPEAKER_00]: Something prompted those reports.
50:44 --> 50:47 [SPEAKER_00]: Something brought police officers out at a dark Wisconsin roads.
50:48 --> 50:52 [SPEAKER_00]: Something made people stop their cars, step outside and look up.
50:54 --> 50:57 [SPEAKER_00]: And whatever it was, we still don't have a name for it.
50:59 --> 51:01 [SPEAKER_00]: Today, Elmwood is still a tiny village.
51:02 --> 51:08 [SPEAKER_00]: A little over 800 people surrounded by the same rolling farmland and wooded hills that were there in 1975.
51:10 --> 51:12 [SPEAKER_00]: In every summer, the aliens returned.
51:14 --> 51:18 [SPEAKER_00]: They're inflatable now, plastic, painted on signs printed on shirts.
51:18 --> 51:21 [SPEAKER_00]: Sometimes walking down Main Street wearing costumes.
51:22 --> 51:27 [SPEAKER_00]: Elmwood eventually took one of the strangest chapters in its history and threw it a parade.
51:28 --> 51:31 [SPEAKER_00]: And again, there's something wonderfully human about that.
51:31 --> 51:35 [SPEAKER_00]: Something happens that frightens us, we tell the story, then we tell it again.
51:36 --> 51:40 [SPEAKER_00]: and eventually our children hear it, then their children, and the fear fades.
51:41 --> 51:45 [SPEAKER_00]: The mystery remains, and one day, we're selling t-shirts.
51:46 --> 51:49 [SPEAKER_00]: But underneath the fund, there's still a real story.
51:50 --> 51:59 [SPEAKER_00]: Before UFO days before the costumes, before decades of books, documentaries, and retellings, there were people standing outside in Western Wisconsin.
52:00 --> 52:02 [SPEAKER_00]: Looking at something they didn't understand.
52:04 --> 52:07 [SPEAKER_00]: and there is one night in particular that keeps pulling us back.
52:08 --> 52:11 [SPEAKER_00]: Sunday night Pierce County, 1125 pm.
52:12 --> 52:17 [SPEAKER_00]: The Sheriff's Department receives a call, something strange has been reported outside L'sworth.
52:18 --> 52:23 [SPEAKER_00]: Deputies are dispatched, more than at hour passes, then George Wheeler looks into the sky.
52:24 --> 52:27 [SPEAKER_00]: Something enormous and orange is moving through the darkness.
52:28 --> 52:34 [SPEAKER_00]: His first thought is into spaceship, it's an airplane, a 747 on fire.
52:35 --> 52:38 [SPEAKER_00]: Except, there's no sound.
52:39 --> 52:44 [SPEAKER_00]: 1255 AM, another call, Nancy Thies, one object, then more, eventually four.
52:45 --> 52:47 [SPEAKER_00]: Other reports come in from around the county.
52:48 --> 52:55 [SPEAKER_00]: Elmwood, Ellsworth, Maiden Rock, and somewhere during all of this, the deputies start looking up to.
52:56 --> 53:01 [SPEAKER_00]: The people who were sent out to investigate the UFO reports become witnesses themselves.
53:03 --> 53:06 [SPEAKER_00]: Fifty-one years later, we still don't know what they saw.
53:07 --> 53:09 [SPEAKER_00]: George Wheeler would see something again.
53:09 --> 53:13 [SPEAKER_00]: He would describe getting closer to it than anyone else in this story.
53:13 --> 53:19 [SPEAKER_00]: He would report Windows, movement, machinery, a brilliant flash, and then darkness.
53:20 --> 53:21 [SPEAKER_00]: But Wheeler died in 1977.
53:22 --> 53:26 [SPEAKER_00]: Whatever answers he might have been able to give us, died with him.
53:27 --> 53:31 [SPEAKER_00]: And over time, the people who experienced that strange spring disappeared too.
53:32 --> 53:46 [SPEAKER_00]: But what remains are newspaper clippings, investigative reports, names, times, places, memories, and a small Wisconsin town that still looks toward the sky every summer.
53:47 --> 53:50 [SPEAKER_00]: Remembering the year when something strange seemed to be moving above it.
53:52 --> 53:54 [SPEAKER_00]: Maybe the answer disappeared with the witnesses.
53:55 --> 53:57 [SPEAKER_00]: Maybe it's buried somewhere in an archive we haven't found yet.
53:58 --> 54:04 [SPEAKER_00]: Or maybe, somewhere out there, someone knows exactly what happened.
54:05 --> 54:10 [SPEAKER_00]: But until then, the lights over Almoid remain where they've been from more than half a century.
54:12 --> 54:16 [SPEAKER_00]: Somewhere between history, folklore, and the unknown.
54:18 --> 54:20 [SPEAKER_00]: Somewhere, from the void.