In the spring of 1975, a quiet corner of Wisconsin became the setting for a UFO encounter that would eventually grow into something much stranger.
In Part One of UFOs Over Wisconsin, we travel to Elmwood, Wisconsin, and meet George Wheeler—a local police officer who reportedly considered himself a skeptic when it came to UFOs.
That changed one April night.
While on patrol, Wheeler encountered an enormous orange object in the sky—something unlike any conventional aircraft he knew. What began as a single unexplained sighting would leave Wheeler watching the skies, camera and binoculars close at hand, wondering if whatever he had witnessed might return.
But Wheeler wasn't the only one seeing strange things over Wisconsin.
In this first installment, we explore the setting surrounding the Elmwood encounters, the reports beginning to emerge from the region, and the first chapter of a case that would eventually become one of Wisconsin's strangest UFO stories.
And George Wheeler's most extraordinary encounter was still to come.
In Part Two: More sightings. Strange effects on vehicles and electronics. A second encounter involving Wheeler. And the events that would transform a local UFO report into an enduring Wisconsin mystery.
From the Void explores the strange, unexplained, and unknown—from UFOs and unsolved mysteries to paranormal encounters and the stories that exist somewhere between fact, folklore, and the void.
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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.
00:17 --> 00:20 [SPEAKER_00]: But I recently got to see my cousin Ben for the first time in years.
00:20 --> 00:27 [SPEAKER_00]: Now Ben works in Major League Baseball for the Baltimore Orioles, which means we don't get to see him nearly as often as we'd like.
00:27 --> 00:31 [SPEAKER_00]: But back in July, the Orioles were in Cincinnati playing the reds.
00:32 --> 00:34 [SPEAKER_00]: And my family got a chance to meet up with him before the game.
00:35 --> 00:38 [SPEAKER_00]: And Ben did what Ben does, he took care of everybody.
00:39 --> 00:46 [SPEAKER_00]: He got us down on the field for batting practice, he made sure all the kids at baseballs, he helped them get some of those baseballs signed by players.
00:47 --> 00:50 [SPEAKER_00]: And watching how excited they were, it meant a lot.
00:50 --> 00:52 [SPEAKER_00]: because Ben is a phrasier.
00:53 --> 00:56 [SPEAKER_00]: And if you know the phrasures that statement probably explains everything.
00:57 --> 00:59 [SPEAKER_00]: If you don't, I should probably explain.
00:59 --> 01:04 [SPEAKER_00]: The phrasures are one of those families that seems to exist and it's own little universe.
01:05 --> 01:07 [SPEAKER_00]: Ben is the oldest of three boys Ben, Josh and Sam.
01:08 --> 01:11 [SPEAKER_00]: Their parents are my uncle Brad and Aunt Liz, my mom's older sister.
01:12 --> 01:16 [SPEAKER_00]: And between the five of them, there are enough stories to fill an entire podcast.
01:17 --> 01:20 [SPEAKER_00]: And Liz has this incredibly quick sharp sense of humor.
01:20 --> 01:23 [SPEAKER_00]: She's one of those people who can find the funny and a moment almost instantly.
01:24 --> 01:29 [SPEAKER_00]: The kind of person who drops a perfectly timed line that captures you off guard and gets the whole room laughing.
01:30 --> 01:32 [SPEAKER_00]: Uncle Brad is a born storyteller.
01:33 --> 01:35 [SPEAKER_00]: He was once mistaken for a professional wrestler.
01:35 --> 01:43 [SPEAKER_00]: He has a comic book collection that could probably qualify as its own branch of the Smithsonian, and then there are the boys.
01:43 --> 01:47 [SPEAKER_00]: At one point after few beers, they decided to re-enact scenes from the movie Troy.
01:48 --> 01:55 [SPEAKER_00]: Not for a party, not because anyone asked them to, just because, apparently, sometimes you're sitting around drinking beer and somebody has to be a killie.
01:56 --> 02:00 [SPEAKER_00]: Josh went through a period where he memorized the Major League Baseball standings.
02:00 --> 02:06 [SPEAKER_00]: You could ask him about some completely random team and he'd immediately tell you how many games they were out of first place.
02:07 --> 02:10 [SPEAKER_00]: Sam once decided that a perfectly reasonable way to wake up the
02:14 --> 02:14 [SPEAKER_00]: And there's been.
02:15 --> 02:20 [SPEAKER_00]: Somehow in the middle of all this chaos, he ended up actually working in Major League Baseball.
02:20 --> 02:23 [SPEAKER_00]: The weird and truly wonderful phrases.
02:23 --> 02:27 [SPEAKER_00]: They're funny, they're strange, they're endlessly entertaining.
02:28 --> 02:30 [SPEAKER_00]: And that's not really why I love them.
02:31 --> 02:34 [SPEAKER_00]: They're the kind of family you hope you're lucky enough to be born into.
02:35 --> 02:38 [SPEAKER_00]: Because when things aren't funny anymore, they're still there.
02:39 --> 02:42 [SPEAKER_00]: When my mom died from cancer a few years ago, they were there.
02:43 --> 02:45 [SPEAKER_00]: No jokes were quiet, and I haven't forgotten that.
02:46 --> 03:00 [SPEAKER_00]: So when I finally got to see Ben again this summer, watching him with her kids, heading them baseballs and giving them a memory they're probably going to carry around for a very long time, I was reminded just how lucky I am that these people are part of my life.
03:01 --> 03:03 [SPEAKER_00]: Now there's one other thing you should know about Ben.
03:04 --> 03:20 [SPEAKER_00]: When he's traveling with the Orioles, he listens to the show, which means that somewhere between ball parks, hotels, airports and long stretches of highway, my cousin occasionally puts on from the void, and listens to me tell stories about strange things.
03:21 --> 03:26 [SPEAKER_00]: Disappearances, ghosts, unexplained encounters, and of course, UFOs.
03:27 --> 03:29 [SPEAKER_00]: So Ben, this one's for you.
03:30 --> 03:36 [SPEAKER_00]: Because before baseball took you all over the country, you came from a place with more than a few strange stories of its own.
03:37 --> 03:41 [SPEAKER_00]: A place of dark forests, quiet country roads, tiny towns.
03:42 --> 03:49 [SPEAKER_00]: And for a brief period in the 1970s, something very strange happening in the skies overhead was constant.
03:50 --> 03:51 [SPEAKER_00]: Tonight we're going back there.
03:52 --> 03:54 [SPEAKER_00]: To a series of encounters separated by miles,
03:57 --> 04:05 [SPEAKER_00]: Stories told by ordinary people who looked up, or out, across a lonely road, and saw something they couldn't explain.
04:06 --> 04:08 [SPEAKER_00]: Some of those stories have faded into local folklore.
04:09 --> 04:15 [SPEAKER_00]: Others left behind witnesses, reports, and details that are considerably harder to dismiss.
04:16 --> 04:22 [SPEAKER_00]: And when you start putting them together, you begin to wonder whether Wisconsin's UFO stories are really separate stories at all.
04:24 --> 04:28 [SPEAKER_00]: So wherever you're listening tonight, Ben, consider this a few stories from home.
04:29 --> 04:31 [SPEAKER_00]: This is from the Void.
04:32 --> 04:34 [SPEAKER_00]: And tonight, we're looking up.
04:41 --> 04:46 [SPEAKER_00]: It was just before 11 o'clock on the night of April 22nd, 1976.
04:47 --> 04:49 [SPEAKER_00]: Elmwood was caught and had gone quiet.
04:50 --> 04:57 [SPEAKER_00]: The little village in Western Wisconsin sits among rolling farmland, wooded hills and narrow roads that twist through Pierce County.
04:58 --> 05:04 [SPEAKER_00]: At that hour, there wouldn't have been much traffic, but George Wheeler was still working.
05:05 --> 05:08 [SPEAKER_00]: Wheeler was a reserve police officer for the village of Elmwood.
05:09 --> 05:14 [SPEAKER_00]: He was 71 years old, a veteran of the Second World War, and a former combat pilot.
05:15 --> 05:22 [SPEAKER_00]: That night he was alone in his patrol car when something caught his attention, an orange glow.
05:23 --> 05:32 [SPEAKER_00]: It appeared to be coming from the direction of Tuttle Hill, a wooded rise just outside town where a limestone quarry cut into the landscape.
05:33 --> 05:36 [SPEAKER_00]: From a distance, Wheeler couldn't tell what he was looking at.
05:38 --> 05:41 [SPEAKER_00]: Maybe something was burning, so he drove toward it.
05:42 --> 05:49 [SPEAKER_00]: As Wheeler got closer, the globe became brighter, and whatever was producing it wasn't a fire.
05:51 --> 06:00 [SPEAKER_00]: According to the account Wheeler would give investigators only days later, there was something hovering near the quarry, something enormous.
06:01 --> 06:07 [SPEAKER_00]: Wheeler estimated it was roughly 250 feet across and perhaps two stories high.
06:12 --> 06:20 [SPEAKER_00]: Along the side, were six bluish white illuminated areas, and behind them, Wheeler thought he could see something moving.
06:21 --> 06:25 [SPEAKER_00]: Shadows, figures, he couldn't tell.
06:26 --> 06:29 [SPEAKER_00]: Beneath the object were structures he would later struggle to describe.
06:30 --> 06:38 [SPEAKER_00]: Something resembling partially extended legs, an open panel containing what appeared to be a slowly revolving mechanism.
06:39 --> 06:43 [SPEAKER_00]: and hanging beneath it, a long, dark, hose-like appendage.
06:45 --> 06:46 [SPEAKER_00]: Wheeler stopped his patrol car.
06:47 --> 06:51 [SPEAKER_00]: He was approximately 500 feet away, then he reached for his radio.
06:52 --> 06:55 [SPEAKER_00]: He contacted the Pierce County Sheriff's Department.
06:56 --> 06:59 [SPEAKER_00]: There was something near Tuddle Hill, something he couldn't identify.
07:01 --> 07:02 [SPEAKER_00]: And then, it moved.
07:04 --> 07:06 [SPEAKER_00]: Wheeler said the object shot almost straight upward.
07:07 --> 07:09 [SPEAKER_00]: There was a flash of blueish light.
07:09 --> 07:11 [SPEAKER_00]: His headlights went out.
07:11 --> 07:12 [SPEAKER_00]: His radio died.
07:13 --> 07:14 [SPEAKER_00]: The engine stopped.
07:17 --> 07:18 [SPEAKER_00]: Silence.
07:19 --> 07:20 [SPEAKER_00]: And then nothing.
07:22 --> 07:26 [SPEAKER_00]: George Wheeler would later say he couldn't remember what happened next.
07:27 --> 07:31 [SPEAKER_00]: The next thing he knew, someone was standing near his patrol car asking if he needed help.
07:32 --> 07:35 [SPEAKER_00]: Within hours, Wheeler would be in the hospital.
07:35 --> 07:47 [SPEAKER_00]: And within days, a university professor would begin knocking on doors around Elmwood, trying to determine what, exactly, had happened near Tuddle Hill that night.
07:48 --> 07:58 [SPEAKER_00]: He would find another person who had seen an unexplained orange light, a nearby television that inexplicably lost its picture, dogs behaving strangely.
07:59 --> 08:07 [SPEAKER_00]: People who had reportedly heard Wheeler's radio transmissions as the encounter unfolded, and people who had seen absolutely nothing.
08:08 --> 08:13 [SPEAKER_00]: But perhaps the strangest thing about George Wheeler's story wasn't what he claimed happened that night.
08:18 --> 08:25 [SPEAKER_00]: almost exactly one year earlier, Wheeler had seen something else in the skies above Western Wisconsin.
08:25 --> 08:28 [SPEAKER_00]: And that time, he was on a loan.
08:29 --> 08:38 [SPEAKER_00]: Because during the spring of 1975, people scattered across the quiet corner of Wisconsin began looking into the night sky.
08:39 --> 08:41 [SPEAKER_00]: And seeing things, they couldn't explain.
08:42 --> 08:48 [SPEAKER_00]: Families, farmers, children, police officers, sheriff's deputies.
08:49 --> 08:52 [SPEAKER_00]: Sometimes it was a light, sometimes several.
08:53 --> 08:57 [SPEAKER_00]: And sometimes, witnesses said that they could see something much more disturbing.
08:58 --> 09:03 [SPEAKER_00]: A structure, a craft, something hovering just above the trees.
09:05 --> 09:07 [SPEAKER_00]: Tonight, we're going back to the beginning.
09:08 --> 09:20 [SPEAKER_00]: Before the festivals, before the alien costumes, before 50 years of retellings blurred the line between what witnesses actually reported, and what eventually became legend.
09:21 --> 09:35 [SPEAKER_00]: We're going back to Western Wisconsin in 1975, and to a series of encounters that would transform one tiny Wisconsin community into one of the strangest UFO hotspots in the Midwest.
09:42 --> 09:47 [SPEAKER_00]: To understand this story, you need to understand just how small the world we're talking about really is.
09:48 --> 09:49 [SPEAKER_00]: Elmwood is in Milwaukee.
09:50 --> 09:51 [SPEAKER_00]: It isn't Madison.
09:52 --> 09:54 [SPEAKER_00]: It isn't even particularly close to either of them.
09:55 --> 09:58 [SPEAKER_00]: This is Western Wisconsin near the Minnesota border.
09:59 --> 10:05 [SPEAKER_00]: A landscape carved by rivers and valleys with wooded hills rising between farms and small communities.
10:06 --> 10:11 [SPEAKER_00]: There's Elzworth, Plum City, Durand, Elmwood.
10:12 --> 10:16 [SPEAKER_00]: Places separated not by hundreds of miles, but sometimes 10 or 15.
10:18 --> 10:24 [SPEAKER_00]: And in early 1975, people living amongst these communities began reporting something unusual.
10:26 --> 10:27 [SPEAKER_00]: Not all of the reports were good.
10:28 --> 10:29 [SPEAKER_00]: That's important.
10:30 --> 10:32 [SPEAKER_00]: UFO sightings are notoriously difficult evidence.
10:33 --> 10:42 [SPEAKER_00]: A light in the sky can be almost anything, an airplane, a planet, a meteor, a satellite, a distant tower, and atmospheric effect.
10:43 --> 10:46 [SPEAKER_00]: And once people start talking about UFOs, something else happens.
10:47 --> 10:49 [SPEAKER_00]: People start looking for them.
10:50 --> 10:51 [SPEAKER_00]: And that matters in this story.
10:52 --> 10:57 [SPEAKER_00]: Because eventually Western Wisconsin would become caught up in what UFO investigators
11:00 --> 11:03 [SPEAKER_00]: a sudden concentration of sightings within a particular region.
11:04 --> 11:08 [SPEAKER_00]: But before that happened, someone had to see something first.
11:10 --> 11:27 [SPEAKER_00]: One of the earliest reports associated with what was coming occurred near Durand, a January 21st, two men, Mitch Doverspeck and Scott Fettie reportedly encountered large brilliant object hovering relatively low in the sky before rapidly departing.
11:28 --> 11:36 [SPEAKER_00]: The surviving documentation isn't nearly as strong as what we're going to encounter later, so we shouldn't make more of it than the evidence allows.
11:37 --> 11:39 [SPEAKER_00]: But the date matters.
11:40 --> 11:42 [SPEAKER_00]: January 21st, 1975.
11:43 --> 11:48 [SPEAKER_00]: Because over the next several weeks reports would begin moving through this part of Wisconsin.
11:49 --> 11:55 [SPEAKER_00]: And then on March 2nd, a school teacher named Carol Forster was driving home with her children.
11:57 --> 11:59 [SPEAKER_00]: It was around 8 o'clock at night.
12:00 --> 12:01 [SPEAKER_00]: Carol had three of her children with her.
12:03 --> 12:08 [SPEAKER_00]: As they traveled through the countryside near Elmwood, one of them noticed something bright in the sky.
12:09 --> 12:11 [SPEAKER_00]: At first, nobody panicked.
12:12 --> 12:17 [SPEAKER_00]: My wood day, it looked like a star, a particularly bright one.
12:18 --> 12:25 [SPEAKER_00]: And that detail is important because there really was an obvious possible explanation in the evening sky around this period.
12:25 --> 12:25 [SPEAKER_00]: Venus.
12:27 --> 12:31 [SPEAKER_00]: Venus is responsible for and astonishing number of UFO reports.
12:32 --> 12:41 [SPEAKER_00]: Under the right conditions, it can appear startlingly bright, particularly to someone driving through dark country side with few other visual reference points.
12:42 --> 12:46 [SPEAKER_00]: So perhaps that's what the Force drew family noticed, a planet.
12:47 --> 12:52 [SPEAKER_00]: Except according to the account published locally shortly afterward, the light didn't
12:55 --> 12:59 [SPEAKER_00]: As they continued driving, Carol became increasingly aware of the object.
13:00 --> 13:01 [SPEAKER_00]: It seemed to be following them.
13:03 --> 13:06 [SPEAKER_00]: Eventually, she stopped at the home of Roger Weber.
13:06 --> 13:10 [SPEAKER_00]: The Weber's came outside, and they could see the light, too.
13:11 --> 13:14 [SPEAKER_00]: Whatever it was, Carol wasn't the only person looking at it.
13:15 --> 13:18 [SPEAKER_00]: Still, that doesn't eliminate Venus.
13:19 --> 13:22 [SPEAKER_00]: Several people can misidentify the same astronomical object.
13:24 --> 13:27 [SPEAKER_00]: Carole eventually got back into the car and continued toward home.
13:29 --> 13:31 [SPEAKER_00]: And that's where her story changes.
13:32 --> 13:36 [SPEAKER_00]: Because what she described next wasn't a light sitting far away in the sky.
13:37 --> 13:38 [SPEAKER_00]: She said it came down.
13:40 --> 13:43 [SPEAKER_00]: According to Carole, the object descended toward the road ahead of them.
13:44 --> 13:47 [SPEAKER_00]: Suddenly, she believed she could see its shape.
13:48 --> 13:51 [SPEAKER_00]: Two sections resembling saucers joined together.
13:52 --> 13:55 [SPEAKER_00]: Lights or illuminated openings around the structure.
13:56 --> 13:58 [SPEAKER_00]: And protusions, extending beneath it.
13:59 --> 14:04 [SPEAKER_00]: The object appeared close enough, and threatening enough, the carol stopped.
14:05 --> 14:07 [SPEAKER_00]: Then she put the car in reverse.
14:09 --> 14:11 [SPEAKER_00]: She backed down the road toward the webber property.
14:12 --> 14:18 [SPEAKER_00]: When the Weber's came outside again, they reportedly still saw luminous object above the trees.
14:19 --> 14:21 [SPEAKER_00]: And eventually, it disappeared.
14:24 --> 14:27 [SPEAKER_00]: So what happened was the first light Venus?
14:28 --> 14:36 [SPEAKER_00]: Possibly, did darkness, fear, and expectation transform an ordinary point of light into something much closer in Carol's perception?
14:37 --> 14:38 [SPEAKER_00]: It's possible, too.
14:39 --> 14:43 [SPEAKER_00]: But if Carroll's account is accurate, Venus presents an obvious problem.
14:44 --> 14:46 [SPEAKER_00]: Planets don't descend into roadways.
14:46 --> 14:51 [SPEAKER_00]: They don't display structures, and they don't hover above trees while a second family watches.
14:52 --> 14:57 [SPEAKER_00]: The Forster account therefore leaves us with a question that will repeat throughout the story.
14:58 --> 15:00 [SPEAKER_00]: Where does ordinary misidentification end?
15:01 --> 15:03 [SPEAKER_00]: And the unexplained begin.
15:05 --> 15:10 [SPEAKER_00]: Twelve days later, another group of people would confront exactly the same question.
15:11 --> 15:14 [SPEAKER_00]: Only this time, they wouldn't think they were looking at a star.
15:15 --> 15:17 [SPEAKER_00]: They would think they were looking at a car.
15:19 --> 15:27 [SPEAKER_00]: It was approximately 10.30 at night, William Gibson and his wife were out with Michael Kitchener and his wife near Plum City.
15:27 --> 15:31 [SPEAKER_00]: The four were traveling by snowmobile through the rural landscape when they noticed
15:33 --> 15:36 [SPEAKER_00]: Again, nobody's first thought was a UFO.
15:37 --> 15:41 [SPEAKER_00]: They thought they were looking at headlights, a car coming over a hill.
15:42 --> 15:43 [SPEAKER_00]: And it's worth remembering that.
15:44 --> 15:52 [SPEAKER_00]: Because when people tell stories like these decades later, witnesses are sometimes transformed into people desperate to see something extraordinary.
15:53 --> 16:00 [SPEAKER_00]: But repeatedly, in these early Wisconsin reports, the witnesses themselves reach for the mundane explanation
16:02 --> 16:06 [SPEAKER_00]: Carol Forster saw a star, the Plum City witnesses saw a car.
16:07 --> 16:13 [SPEAKER_00]: And what bothered them wasn't that the lights looked alien, it was that a car shouldn't have been there.
16:15 --> 16:16 [SPEAKER_00]: There was no road in that direction.
16:18 --> 16:22 [SPEAKER_00]: The lights continued toward them, and as they got closer, the witnesses said they could
16:26 --> 16:32 [SPEAKER_00]: and elongated or oval structure, two prominent lights toward the front, a smaller red light.
16:33 --> 16:37 [SPEAKER_00]: The object reportedly descended until it was near the tops of the trees.
16:39 --> 16:45 [SPEAKER_00]: One of the witnesses, Mrs. Gibson, thought she could make out four structures beneath it, resembling landing legs.
16:46 --> 16:48 [SPEAKER_00]: Then, the object moved away.
16:50 --> 16:58 [SPEAKER_00]: Years later, investigator Jack Bostrak would remember the Plum City encounter as one of the stronger reports from that strange spring.
16:59 --> 17:17 [SPEAKER_00]: Not because someone had seen a mysterious light, there were plenty of those, but because the witness is claimed they had seen structure, something with shape, something occupying space, something close enough to be mistaken first for an approaching automobile, and there were
17:20 --> 17:23 [SPEAKER_00]: Still, four witnesses can be wrong.
17:23 --> 17:27 [SPEAKER_00]: People traveling together can reinforce one another's perceptions.
17:28 --> 17:30 [SPEAKER_00]: Distance at night is notoriously difficult to judge.
17:31 --> 17:35 [SPEAKER_00]: An aircraft viewed from an unusual angle can appear stationary.
17:36 --> 17:39 [SPEAKER_00]: Lights can obscure the shape of whatever is carrying them.
17:40 --> 17:47 [SPEAKER_00]: And unlike some of the events we're about to encounter, the surviving contemporary documentation for Plum City is incomplete.
17:48 --> 17:52 [SPEAKER_00]: So it belongs in our story, but it doesn't solve anything.
17:54 --> 18:04 [SPEAKER_00]: What it does tell us is that by the middle of March 1975, unusual reports were beginning to accumulate within a remarkably small portion of Western Wisconsin.
18:05 --> 18:08 [SPEAKER_00]: And soon, people began talking.
18:08 --> 18:13 [SPEAKER_00]: Stories moved between farms, between families, between towns.
18:14 --> 18:15 [SPEAKER_00]: People began watching the sky.
18:17 --> 18:22 [SPEAKER_00]: Some reportedly started driving around at night, specifically hoping to see one of these objects themselves.
18:24 --> 18:28 [SPEAKER_00]: Which creates a problem for anyone trying to investigate what happened next.
18:29 --> 18:36 [SPEAKER_00]: Because once a community begins expecting to see UFOs, they usually start seeing more UFOs.
18:37 --> 18:41 [SPEAKER_00]: Ordinary lights become suspicious, stars seem to move.
18:42 --> 18:44 [SPEAKER_00]: Aircraft suddenly look unfamiliar.
18:45 --> 18:48 [SPEAKER_00]: Every strange glow on the horizon becomes part of the story.
18:49 --> 18:55 [SPEAKER_00]: And that may explain some of what happened in Western Wisconsin during the spring of 1975.
18:56 --> 18:57 [SPEAKER_00]: Maybe even most of it.
18:59 --> 19:01 [SPEAKER_00]: But then came the night of April 6th.
19:03 --> 19:10 [SPEAKER_00]: And sometime around 11.25pm, the Pierce County Sheriff's Department received another call.
19:14 --> 19:20 [SPEAKER_00]: Deputies were dispatched, more calls followed than another, and another.
19:21 --> 19:25 [SPEAKER_00]: Over the next two hours, reports would come from different locations across the county.
19:26 --> 19:28 [SPEAKER_00]: One object would become several.
19:29 --> 19:34 [SPEAKER_00]: A police officer would report something enormous, moving silently through the darkness.
19:35 --> 19:41 [SPEAKER_00]: And before the night was over, some of the sheriff's deputies sent out to investigate the UFO reports.
19:45 --> 19:47 [SPEAKER_00]: Sunday, April 6, 1975.
19:48 --> 19:51 [SPEAKER_00]: For most of Pierce County, the day had been unremarkable.
19:52 --> 19:55 [SPEAKER_00]: Temperatures had climbed only into the low 40s.
19:56 --> 19:58 [SPEAKER_00]: There had been no significant precipitation.
19:59 --> 20:05 [SPEAKER_00]: And as Sunday became Monday, the community scattered across Western Wisconsin began settling in for the night.
20:07 --> 20:08 [SPEAKER_00]: Then, at approximately 11.25,
20:14 --> 20:18 [SPEAKER_00]: James and Donna Kohler lived approximately 12 miles south east of Ellsworth.
20:19 --> 20:23 [SPEAKER_00]: That night the Kohler's reported something unusual near their home.
20:24 --> 20:30 [SPEAKER_00]: And here we immediately encounter one of the problems that comes with investigating and event almost 50 years later.
20:31 --> 20:36 [SPEAKER_00]: The earliest newspaper accounts don't describe what happened in exactly the same way.
20:37 --> 20:44 [SPEAKER_00]: One reported that a large luminous object appeared near the color property, illuminating their home in the property of a neighbor.
20:45 --> 20:49 [SPEAKER_00]: Another described three undedentified objects hovering above the family's trailer.
20:50 --> 20:56 [SPEAKER_00]: We don't know which description is more accurate, so we're not going to choose one simply because it makes a story better.
20:57 --> 21:02 [SPEAKER_00]: What we do know is that the colors believed something unusual enough was happening
21:07 --> 21:10 [SPEAKER_00]: The Pierce County Sheriff's Department received the report.
21:10 --> 21:12 [SPEAKER_00]: Deputies were sent to investigate.
21:20 --> 21:22 [SPEAKER_00]: When they arrived, they found nothing.
21:23 --> 21:29 [SPEAKER_00]: No space craft, no obvious physical evidence, no mysterious object waiting above the house.
21:30 --> 21:32 [SPEAKER_00]: But according to the contemporary reporting,
21:37 --> 21:38 [SPEAKER_00]: The Colors German Shepherd.
21:39 --> 21:42 [SPEAKER_00]: The dog was reportedly extremely frightened.
21:43 --> 21:50 [SPEAKER_00]: Now dogs get frightened, storms, animals, unfamiliar vehicles, sounds humans don't notice.
21:51 --> 22:01 [SPEAKER_00]: The behavior of a frightened dog is not evidence of UFO, but it was one of the details recorded almost immediately after the event, so we keep it, and we move on.
22:03 --> 22:08 [SPEAKER_00]: because whatever prompted the colors to call the sheriff would not be the last report that night.
22:10 --> 22:14 [SPEAKER_00]: More than an hour later, Elmwood police officer George Wheeler was out on patrol.
22:15 --> 22:18 [SPEAKER_00]: This was the same George Wheeler we met at the beginning of our story.
22:19 --> 22:22 [SPEAKER_00]: But this was one year before a total hill.
22:23 --> 22:27 [SPEAKER_00]: And at this point, George Wheeler wasn't famous for seeing UFOs.
22:28 --> 22:30 [SPEAKER_00]: He was simply a police officer driving
22:33 --> 22:34 [SPEAKER_00]: Then he saw something.
22:35 --> 22:40 [SPEAKER_00]: At first, Wheeler apparently thought he knew exactly what it was, in airplane.
22:41 --> 22:43 [SPEAKER_00]: But not in airplane peacefully crossing the sky.
22:45 --> 22:48 [SPEAKER_00]: Wheeler thought he might be watching an airliner on fire.
22:49 --> 22:52 [SPEAKER_00]: Something enormous and orange appeared to be moving through the darkness.
22:53 --> 22:56 [SPEAKER_00]: He later compared his first impression to a burning 747.
22:56 --> 22:56 [SPEAKER_00]: Wheeler watched.
23:00 --> 23:04 [SPEAKER_00]: The object made no sound, and that bothered him.
23:05 --> 23:10 [SPEAKER_00]: A commercial jet apparently low enough to look enormous should have produced a noise.
23:11 --> 23:13 [SPEAKER_00]: Instead, nothing.
23:15 --> 23:21 [SPEAKER_00]: According to the Contemporary newspaper account, Wheeler saw the object moving rapidly toward the east.
23:21 --> 23:24 [SPEAKER_00]: He drove toward higher ground trying to keep it in view.
23:25 --> 23:31 [SPEAKER_00]: When he saw it again, he described something elongated, cigar shaped, glowing.
23:33 --> 23:38 [SPEAKER_00]: With what appeared to be blue illumination, or perhaps something resembling a blue flame toward the rear.
23:40 --> 23:41 [SPEAKER_00]: Wheeler reported what he was seeing.
23:42 --> 23:45 [SPEAKER_00]: Another UFO report had reached law enforcement.
23:46 --> 23:48 [SPEAKER_00]: Only this one was coming from a police officer.
23:50 --> 23:52 [SPEAKER_00]: Then the object moved away.
23:53 --> 24:01 [SPEAKER_00]: If this had been the only report that night, Wheeler's encounter would be interesting, but not particularly extraordinary by UFO standards.
24:02 --> 24:10 [SPEAKER_00]: A single observer laid at night and unidentified light, possibly an aircraft viewed under unusual conditions.
24:11 --> 24:13 [SPEAKER_00]: Maybe Wheeler badly misjudged its distance.
24:14 --> 24:19 [SPEAKER_00]: Maybe he saw something conventional from an angle that made it appear anything but conventional.
24:23 --> 24:27 [SPEAKER_00]: Except, 10 minutes later, someone else called the sheriff.
24:29 --> 24:31 [SPEAKER_00]: Her name was Nancy Thies.
24:31 --> 24:38 [SPEAKER_00]: She lived approximately two miles south of Ellsworth along County Road Sea, and she was seeing something too.
24:39 --> 24:40 [SPEAKER_00]: A glowing object.
24:41 --> 24:43 [SPEAKER_00]: Now we don't have a recording of Nancy's call.
24:44 --> 24:45 [SPEAKER_00]: We don't have a voice.
24:46 --> 24:50 [SPEAKER_00]: What survives is the chronology preserved in contemporary reporting.
24:51 --> 24:54 [SPEAKER_00]: And according to that chronology, Nancy didn't make one call.
24:55 --> 24:58 [SPEAKER_00]: She kept watching, and then she called again.
25:00 --> 25:01 [SPEAKER_00]: Seven minutes.
25:02 --> 25:07 [SPEAKER_00]: That's approximately how much time passed before Nancy Thief's contacted the Sheriff's Department again.
25:08 --> 25:09 [SPEAKER_00]: Something had changed.
25:10 --> 25:13 [SPEAKER_00]: There was no longer just one object.
25:13 --> 25:14 [SPEAKER_00]: There were more.
25:15 --> 25:21 [SPEAKER_00]: The surviving accounts disagree slightly about exactly how many she reported during this particular call.
25:22 --> 25:24 [SPEAKER_00]: Two, possibly three.
25:25 --> 25:27 [SPEAKER_00]: It's a small discrepancy, but it matters.
25:28 --> 25:34 [SPEAKER_00]: Because we're trying to reconstruct what actually happened, not manufacturer precision, that the historical record doesn't contain.
25:36 --> 25:40 [SPEAKER_00]: What we can establish is that the number of objects Nancy reported increased.
25:41 --> 25:44 [SPEAKER_00]: And within minutes, she was reporting four.
25:46 --> 25:48 [SPEAKER_00]: One large object and three smaller ones.
25:49 --> 25:52 [SPEAKER_00]: The objects were described as displaying orange and blue illumination.
25:53 --> 25:59 [SPEAKER_00]: And according to one of the contemporary accounts, they were moving rapidly toward the east.
26:00 --> 26:10 [SPEAKER_00]: Four objects, which creates an immediate question, was Nancy watching aircraft, because suddenly that becomes a very reasonable possibility.
26:11 --> 26:17 [SPEAKER_00]: Multiple aircraft traveling together can produce exactly the kind of confusion that fuels UFO reports.
26:18 --> 26:21 [SPEAKER_00]: At night, you can't easily judge distance.
26:22 --> 26:24 [SPEAKER_00]: You may not see the body of an aircraft at all.
26:25 --> 26:25 [SPEAKER_00]: You see lights.
26:26 --> 26:32 [SPEAKER_00]: And if those lights are approaching you, they can appear nearly stationary for surprisingly long periods.
26:33 --> 26:36 [SPEAKER_00]: So perhaps that's what Nancy Thies was watching.
26:42 --> 26:47 [SPEAKER_00]: By this point Pierce County law enforcement had been receiving reports for more than an hour.
26:47 --> 26:57 [SPEAKER_00]: The Colors, George Wheeler, Nancy Thies, and according to the Contemporary newspaper coverage, calls were coming from elsewhere in the region as well.
26:58 --> 27:07 [SPEAKER_00]: Elmwood, Ellsworth, Maiden Rock, people were looking up, and now, so were the people responding to the calls.
27:09 --> 27:18 [SPEAKER_00]: The deputy stepped outside, and according to the account published in the St. Paul Pioneer Press within days of the event, they saw them.
27:19 --> 27:22 [SPEAKER_00]: Four objects, one large, three smaller.
27:23 --> 27:26 [SPEAKER_00]: The same general configuration Nancy Thies had reported.
27:27 --> 27:32 [SPEAKER_00]: This is the moment when the April 6 story becomes significantly harder to dismiss.
27:33 --> 27:39 [SPEAKER_00]: Not impossible to explain, not proof of anything extraterrestrial, but harder.
27:40 --> 27:48 [SPEAKER_00]: Because now we're dealing with people in different locations, reporting unusual things within the same, relatively narrow window of time.
27:49 --> 27:55 [SPEAKER_00]: And some of the people tasked with investigating these reports, apparently became witnesses themselves.
28:01 --> 28:06 [SPEAKER_00]: because it's tempting to combine every report from that night into one enormous event.
28:06 --> 28:12 [SPEAKER_00]: To imagine four spacecraft sweeping across Pierce County, while terrified residents called the sheriff.
28:13 --> 28:15 [SPEAKER_00]: But the evidence doesn't allow us to say that.
28:16 --> 28:19 [SPEAKER_00]: We don't know that the color saw what Wheeler saw.
28:19 --> 28:22 [SPEAKER_00]: We don't know that Wheeler saw what Nancy Fee saw.
28:23 --> 28:27 [SPEAKER_00]: And we don't know that the deputies were looking at the same objects Nancy was watching.
28:28 --> 28:36 [SPEAKER_00]: Their observations occurred at different locations, at different times, and the descriptions aren't identical, and that's important.
28:37 --> 28:39 [SPEAKER_00]: But there's something else we can't ignore.
28:40 --> 28:46 [SPEAKER_00]: They happened on the same night, in the same small region, within approximately two hours.
28:47 --> 28:51 [SPEAKER_00]: And several witnesses independently described objects moving in the same general direction.
28:52 --> 28:52 [SPEAKER_00]: East.
28:58 --> 29:02 [SPEAKER_00]: or perhaps, we're looking at something else, entirely.
29:03 --> 29:19 [SPEAKER_00]: A group of aircraft, an astronomical object being interpreted differently from different locations, an unusual atmospheric effect, or simply a community already talking about UFOs, beginning to see them everywhere.
29:20 --> 29:25 [SPEAKER_00]: Those possibilities deserve serious consideration, so let's start with the easiest explanation,
29:29 --> 29:34 [SPEAKER_00]: Bright planets are remarkably effective UFO generators, Venus, in particular.
29:35 --> 29:38 [SPEAKER_00]: It can be so bright that pilots have altered course toward it.
29:38 --> 29:40 [SPEAKER_00]: Police officers have pursued it.
29:41 --> 29:43 [SPEAKER_00]: Drivers have stopped their cars to watch it.
29:44 --> 29:52 [SPEAKER_00]: And under certain atmosphere conditions, bright astronomical objects can appear to shimmer, change color, or even move.
29:53 --> 30:01 [SPEAKER_00]: So for trying to explain a group of glowing objects over Wisconsin in 1975, Venus and Jupiter should be among the first suspects.
30:02 --> 30:04 [SPEAKER_00]: But there's just one problem.
30:05 --> 30:11 [SPEAKER_00]: By the time George Wheeler was making his report around 1245 in the morning, Venus wasn't there.
30:12 --> 30:13 [SPEAKER_00]: It had already set.
30:15 --> 30:21 [SPEAKER_00]: And Jupiter was positioned too close to the sun during this period to be hanging prominently in the Midnight Sky.
30:22 --> 30:32 [SPEAKER_00]: that doesn't eliminate every astronomical explanation, stars remain, other celestial objects remain, human perception remains notoriously unreliable.
30:33 --> 30:40 [SPEAKER_00]: But the two usual suspects, Venus and Jupiter, are poor fits for the most important part of the April 6 encounter.
30:41 --> 30:44 [SPEAKER_00]: So let's try something remarkably more obvious.
30:46 --> 30:50 [SPEAKER_00]: This part of Western Wisconsin was an isolated from aviation.
30:51 --> 30:55 [SPEAKER_00]: Redwing Regional Airport was already operating northwest of the sighting region.
30:56 --> 30:58 [SPEAKER_00]: General Aviation aircraft crossed the area.
30:59 --> 31:01 [SPEAKER_00]: Commercial traffic existed farther overhead.
31:02 --> 31:06 [SPEAKER_00]: In George Wheeler's own first reaction was that he was watching an airplane.
31:07 --> 31:07 [SPEAKER_00]: And that matters.
31:08 --> 31:10 [SPEAKER_00]: At night, aircraft can look bizarre.
31:11 --> 31:15 [SPEAKER_00]: Navigation lights can create impressions of shape that aren't really there.
31:20 --> 31:23 [SPEAKER_00]: multiple aircraft can seem to move together.
31:24 --> 31:29 [SPEAKER_00]: Distance becomes almost impossible to estimate accurately against an empty sky.
31:30 --> 31:35 [SPEAKER_00]: And if an aircraft is farther away than a witness believes, it may appear completely silent.
31:36 --> 31:42 [SPEAKER_00]: So aircraft could explain quite a lot, maybe even some of what happened that night.
31:43 --> 31:44 [SPEAKER_00]: But it leaves questions.
31:45 --> 31:49 [SPEAKER_00]: Why did Wheeler describe something that looked like a burning aircraft but produced no sound?
31:50 --> 31:55 [SPEAKER_00]: Why did Nancy Fees apparently perceive the number of objects changing while she watched?
31:56 --> 32:00 [SPEAKER_00]: Why were residents from multiple communities contacting law enforcement?
32:01 --> 32:06 [SPEAKER_00]: And why did deputies apparently find the objects unusual enough to report them themselves?
32:07 --> 32:13 [SPEAKER_00]: None of those questions eliminate aircraft, but neither does the presence of an airport
32:14 --> 32:15 [SPEAKER_00]: so we keep going.
32:16 --> 32:19 [SPEAKER_00]: There was no major storm raging over Pierce County that night.
32:20 --> 32:24 [SPEAKER_00]: No obvious severe weather event jumps out of the historical record.
32:24 --> 32:28 [SPEAKER_00]: That makes thunderstorms and ordinary lightning, poor candidates.
32:29 --> 32:31 [SPEAKER_00]: But the atmosphere can produce stranger effects.
32:32 --> 32:34 [SPEAKER_00]: Temperature inversions can bend light.
32:34 --> 32:36 [SPEAKER_00]: Distance sources can appear displaced.
32:37 --> 32:40 [SPEAKER_00]: Bright lights below the horizon can become visible
32:42 --> 32:48 [SPEAKER_00]: Under unusual circumstances, observers can see distorted images of objects many miles away.
32:49 --> 33:01 [SPEAKER_00]: There are even rare luminous phenomena associated with atmospheric electricity that remain difficult to study, ball lightning, plasma-like events, transient luminous phenomena.
33:02 --> 33:07 [SPEAKER_00]: And these ideas matter because investigators haven't voked them in other famous UFO cases.
33:11 --> 33:18 [SPEAKER_00]: We don't currently have evidence of an atmospheric event on April 6th that neatly produces what these witnesses reported.
33:19 --> 33:22 [SPEAKER_00]: So again, possible, not demonstrated.
33:24 --> 33:26 [SPEAKER_00]: There is another explanation.
33:27 --> 33:31 [SPEAKER_00]: An unlike aliens or exotic atmospheric physics, we know this one exists.
33:32 --> 33:38 [SPEAKER_00]: People influence one another, story spread, expectations shape perception.
33:39 --> 33:42 [SPEAKER_00]: Once someone tells you there's something strange in the sky, you start looking.
33:42 --> 33:47 [SPEAKER_00]: And once you start looking, you notice things you've ignored your entire life.
33:47 --> 33:52 [SPEAKER_00]: A bright star, a distant airplane, a tower light, a satellite.
33:53 --> 33:56 [SPEAKER_00]: Things that were always there suddenly become suspicious.
33:57 --> 34:02 [SPEAKER_00]: UFO investigators themselves saw this happen elsewhere in Wisconsin during the same era.
34:03 --> 34:13 [SPEAKER_00]: In another wave of reports, investigators and sheriff's deputies were able to identify supposed UFOs as ordinary objects, including Jupiter and distant lights.
34:14 --> 34:19 [SPEAKER_00]: In some instances, witnesses were completely convinced that they were looking at something extraordinary.
34:20 --> 34:22 [SPEAKER_00]: They weren't, and that's also important.
34:23 --> 34:29 [SPEAKER_00]: because by the spring of 1975, people around Elmwood were talking about UFOs.
34:30 --> 34:34 [SPEAKER_00]: Some were reportedly going out at night specifically hoping to see one.
34:35 --> 34:39 [SPEAKER_00]: That is almost the perfect environment for a sighting wave to feed itself.
34:41 --> 34:43 [SPEAKER_00]: So maybe that's what happened April 6th.
34:44 --> 34:48 [SPEAKER_00]: One person sees something, calls the sheriff, someone else hears about it.
34:49 --> 34:51 [SPEAKER_00]: They look outside, now they see something.
34:52 --> 34:55 [SPEAKER_00]: Another call, another witness, another light.
34:56 --> 35:01 [SPEAKER_00]: Until eventually half the county is staring into the darkness, trying to find something strange.
35:02 --> 35:04 [SPEAKER_00]: It's plausible, it's happened before.
35:05 --> 35:09 [SPEAKER_00]: And it almost certainly accounts for some UFO waves.
35:11 --> 35:12 [SPEAKER_00]: But there's a problem.
35:13 --> 35:22 [SPEAKER_00]: For that explanation to account for April 6th, we have to explain why some of the people seeing the objects were the very people sent out to investigate the reports.
35:23 --> 35:25 [SPEAKER_00]: That doesn't make them immune to suggestion.
35:26 --> 35:34 [SPEAKER_00]: Police officers misidentified things too, but it means the answer can't simply be, people heard a UFO story and panicked.
35:35 --> 35:37 [SPEAKER_00]: Something was apparently visible.
35:37 --> 35:39 [SPEAKER_00]: The question is what?
35:42 --> 35:45 [SPEAKER_00]: By daylight, Pierce County looked exactly as it had before.
35:46 --> 35:52 [SPEAKER_00]: No wreckage, no spacecraft, no extraordinary physical evidence discovered by the deputies who responded that night.
35:53 --> 35:56 [SPEAKER_00]: Nothing lying in a field that could answer the obvious question.
35:57 --> 36:01 [SPEAKER_00]: The objects were gone, but the story wasn't.
36:02 --> 36:05 [SPEAKER_00]: Within days, newspapers were reporting what had happened.
36:12 --> 36:17 [SPEAKER_00]: George Wheeler was interviewed about the enormous object he said he'd watched moving silently through the night.
36:18 --> 36:21 [SPEAKER_00]: For Wheeler, something had changed.
36:22 --> 36:28 [SPEAKER_00]: Before April 6th, he had been another person hearing strange stories coming out of Western Wisconsin.
36:29 --> 36:31 [SPEAKER_00]: And now, he was part of one.
36:32 --> 36:40 [SPEAKER_00]: And unlike many people who have frightening encounters they never want to repeat, George Wheeler apparently wanted another chance.
36:41 --> 36:44 [SPEAKER_00]: He began keeping binoculars nearby, a camera.
36:44 --> 36:45 [SPEAKER_00]: He watched the sky.
36:46 --> 36:48 [SPEAKER_00]: Weeks passed, then months.
36:49 --> 36:51 [SPEAKER_00]: The spring UFO wave eventually faded.
36:52 --> 36:54 [SPEAKER_00]: Western Wisconsin returned a normal.
36:55 --> 36:58 [SPEAKER_00]: Summer came, then fall, then winter.
37:01 --> 37:02 [SPEAKER_00]: Nearly one year passed.
37:03 --> 37:11 [SPEAKER_00]: And somewhere west of Elmwood, just across the Mississippi River, something else had quietly changed during the months immediately proceeding the UFO wave.
37:12 --> 37:15 [SPEAKER_00]: A second nuclear reactor had begun operating.
37:16 --> 37:17 [SPEAKER_00]: Prairie Island.
37:18 --> 37:23 [SPEAKER_00]: And depending on what you believe about the history of UFOs, that may mean absolutely nothing.
37:24 --> 37:29 [SPEAKER_00]: Or, it may be one of the strangest coincidences in this entire story.
37:30 --> 37:37 [SPEAKER_00]: If you stand in Western Wisconsin and travel toward the Minnesota border, eventually, you reach the Mississippi River.
37:38 --> 37:43 [SPEAKER_00]: Follow it northwest from the communities we've been talking about, and you'll come to Redwing, Minnesota.
37:44 --> 37:50 [SPEAKER_00]: And just north of there, on the banks of Mississippi, sits an island, Prairie Island.
37:51 --> 37:55 [SPEAKER_00]: Today, part of that land is home to the Prairie Island Indian community.
37:55 --> 37:57 [SPEAKER_00]: It's also home to something else.
37:58 --> 38:00 [SPEAKER_00]: the Prairie Island Nuclear Generating Plant.
38:01 --> 38:06 [SPEAKER_00]: Two pressurized water and nuclear reactors sit beside the Mississippi.
38:07 --> 38:10 [SPEAKER_00]: And in 1975, both of them were operating.
38:12 --> 38:16 [SPEAKER_00]: Prairie Islands first reactor began commercial operation in December of 1973.
38:16 --> 38:17 [SPEAKER_00]: Then came unit two.
38:20 --> 38:27 [SPEAKER_00]: It reached criticality and December 1974, and entered commercial operation later that month.
38:28 --> 38:43 [SPEAKER_00]: And then, one month later, January 21st, 1975, the Duran Report, March 2nd, Carol Forster, March 14th, Plum City, April 6th, Pierce County.
38:44 --> 38:48 [SPEAKER_00]: Now, before we go any further, we need to make something very clear.
38:49 --> 38:53 [SPEAKER_00]: There is no evidence that Prairie Island caused the UFO reports.
38:55 --> 38:58 [SPEAKER_00]: We haven't found evidence of a nuclear emergency corresponding with the sightings.
38:59 --> 39:03 [SPEAKER_00]: We haven't found documentation showing that anything unusual was happening inside the plant.
39:04 --> 39:11 [SPEAKER_00]: And we certainly don't have evidence that something was visiting Western Wisconsin because it was interested in nuclear power.
39:12 --> 39:15 [SPEAKER_00]: What we do have is geography and timing.
39:16 --> 39:20 [SPEAKER_00]: Prairie Island sits only a few dozen miles from the heart of the sighting region.
39:21 --> 39:27 [SPEAKER_00]: And its second reactor had become operational only weeks before the first reports in our timeline.
39:28 --> 39:29 [SPEAKER_00]: That might be coincidence.
39:30 --> 39:38 [SPEAKER_00]: Statistically given enough UFO reports and enough nuclear facilities, some of them are inevitably going to occur near one another.
39:39 --> 39:42 [SPEAKER_00]: But Prairie Island becomes difficult to ignore for another reason.
39:43 --> 39:47 [SPEAKER_00]: because UFOs and nuclear technology have a history.
39:47 --> 39:51 [SPEAKER_00]: Or at least, people have been reporting one for decades.
39:53 --> 39:56 [SPEAKER_00]: Modern UFO history and the nuclear age were born almost together.
39:57 --> 40:02 [SPEAKER_00]: The first atomic bomb was detonated in New Mexico in July 1945.
40:03 --> 40:06 [SPEAKER_00]: Two years later, the modern flying saucer era began.
40:07 --> 40:17 [SPEAKER_00]: and over the decades that followed, unusual objects would repeatedly be reported around places associated with nuclear weapons and nuclear technology.
40:18 --> 40:35 [SPEAKER_00]: Los Alamos, Oak Ridge, Nuclear Weapons Storage Facilities, Missile Fields, Military Paces, Nuclear Power Plants The pattern has become one of the most persistent claims and UFO research, but persistence isn't proof.
40:36 --> 40:56 [SPEAKER_00]: Military installations contain aircraft, restricted airspace attracts attention, nuclear facilities employ large numbers of people, they're heavily monitored, and once UFO researchers begin specifically searching for sightings around nuclear installations, confirmation bias becomes a serious problem.
40:57 --> 41:01 [SPEAKER_00]: If you're looking for a pattern, eventually you're going to find one.
41:02 --> 41:05 [SPEAKER_00]: Still, some cases are difficult to dismiss casually.
41:07 --> 41:16 [SPEAKER_00]: March 1967, Montana, Malstrom Air Force Base Underground across the surrounding landscape were minute-minute nuclear missiles.
41:17 --> 41:27 [SPEAKER_00]: Former Air Force personnel would later describe unusual aerial objects near missile facilities during a period when multiple missiles unexpectedly went offline.
41:28 --> 41:35 [SPEAKER_00]: Exactly what happened and whether unidentified objects had anything to do with the missile failures has remained fiercely disputed.
41:36 --> 41:43 [SPEAKER_00]: But the case became part of a much larger body of reports involving strange objects and America's nuclear arsenal.
41:44 --> 41:46 [SPEAKER_00]: And those stories didn't end with the Cold War.
41:47 --> 41:54 [SPEAKER_00]: Former military personnel have continued describing unusual aerial activity near sensitive nuclear installations.
41:55 --> 42:03 [SPEAKER_00]: Again, none of the establishes that UFOs are interested in nuclear weapons, but it does establish something much narrower.
42:04 --> 42:11 [SPEAKER_00]: People responsible for nuclear infrastructure have reported UFOs, repeatedly, for decades.
42:12 --> 42:15 [SPEAKER_00]: And that makes the location of Prairie Island interesting.
42:17 --> 42:18 [SPEAKER_00]: Nothing more, nothing less.
42:20 --> 42:21 [SPEAKER_00]: So let's come back to Pierce County.
42:22 --> 42:25 [SPEAKER_00]: Prairie Island sits west of much of our sighting area.
42:26 --> 42:32 [SPEAKER_00]: And remember one detail from April 6th, George Wheeler reported his object moving rapidly toward the east.
42:34 --> 42:38 [SPEAKER_00]: Nancy Thies later described the object she was watching moving rapidly east as well.
42:39 --> 42:41 [SPEAKER_00]: that does not mean they came from Perry Island.
42:42 --> 42:44 [SPEAKER_00]: We don't know where they originated.
42:44 --> 42:52 [SPEAKER_00]: We don't have sufficiently precise bearings to draw a clean trajectory from the nuclear plant through every witness location.
42:53 --> 42:59 [SPEAKER_00]: And the timing doesn't support the simplistic idea of one spacecraft traveling from witness to witness.
43:00 --> 43:08 [SPEAKER_00]: But if the reports are accurate, something people found unusual was apparently moving eastward through portions of Pierce County.
43:09 --> 43:12 [SPEAKER_00]: and sitting to the west was Prairie Island.
43:13 --> 43:16 [SPEAKER_00]: That's the evidence, anything beyond that is interpretation.
43:18 --> 43:24 [SPEAKER_00]: Ironically, Prairie Island could point in exactly the opposite direction, toward an ordinary explanation.
43:25 --> 43:29 [SPEAKER_00]: A nuclear generating station is not invisible at night.
43:29 --> 43:31 [SPEAKER_00]: It's an industrial complex.
43:32 --> 43:39 [SPEAKER_00]: Lighting, electrical infrastructure, transmission lines, steam, buildings, vehicles, activity.
43:40 --> 43:45 [SPEAKER_00]: Depending upon atmospheric conditions, distant industrial lighting can look strange.
43:45 --> 43:48 [SPEAKER_00]: Temperature and versions can distort light sources.
43:49 --> 43:51 [SPEAKER_00]: Steam plumes can reflect illumination.
43:52 --> 43:55 [SPEAKER_00]: Lights can appear above the horizon where observers don't expect them.
43:56 --> 44:05 [SPEAKER_00]: So if some witnesses were looking toward Prairie Island, perhaps the nuclear plant wasn't attracting UFOs, perhaps people were seeing the nuclear plant.
44:09 --> 44:14 [SPEAKER_00]: The same piece of geography can be used to support completely opposite explanations.
44:15 --> 44:19 [SPEAKER_00]: And without precise viewing directions from every witness, we can't resolve it.
44:20 --> 44:27 [SPEAKER_00]: So Prairie Island remains where much of this story remains, somewhere between relevant and coincidental.
44:29 --> 44:33 [SPEAKER_00]: Now there was also another piece of Cold War history in the region.
44:34 --> 44:42 [SPEAKER_00]: Northwest of Pierce County near Roberts, Wisconsin, the United States Army had operated a Nike Hercules missile installation.
44:43 --> 44:50 [SPEAKER_00]: The Nike system was designed to defend American cities from Soviet bombers, and Hercules missiles were capable of carrying nuclear warheads.
44:51 --> 44:53 [SPEAKER_00]: But here again, restraint matters.
44:54 --> 45:00 [SPEAKER_00]: The Roberts installation had closed in 1971, four years before the Elmwood sightings.
45:01 --> 45:11 [SPEAKER_00]: And while the night curculey system itself was nuclear capable, we've not established through primary documentation exactly what warheads were stored at that specific installation.
45:12 --> 45:17 [SPEAKER_00]: So there's no good reason to turn Roberts into some secret nuclear UFO connection.
45:18 --> 45:21 [SPEAKER_00]: It's simply another reminder of what this landscape has been part of.
45:22 --> 45:36 [SPEAKER_00]: Cold War America, nuclear infrastructure, air defense, military aviation, radar, and only a few years earlier, people across the same landscape began reporting strange things in the sky.
45:37 --> 45:40 [SPEAKER_00]: Now maybe those things were connected, maybe they weren't.
45:41 --> 45:48 [SPEAKER_00]: But there's one person for whom the events of 1975 had become very personal, George Wheeler.
45:51 --> 45:57 [SPEAKER_00]: After his April encounter, Wheeler had something he'd never had before, a reason to look up.
45:58 --> 46:03 [SPEAKER_00]: He had reportedly been skeptical of UFOs before seeing the enormous orange object that night.
46:04 --> 46:07 [SPEAKER_00]: Afterward, he wasn't so sure.
46:08 --> 46:14 [SPEAKER_00]: And according to accounts from the period, Wheeler began keeping things nearby that he hadn't necessarily carried before.
46:15 --> 46:17 [SPEAKER_00]: a camera, binoculars.
46:18 --> 46:25 [SPEAKER_00]: Things you keep close when you've seen something impossible once, and you're beginning to wonder if you might see it again.
46:26 --> 46:33 [SPEAKER_00]: Because Wheeler's experience wasn't over, and neither was whatever was happening in the skies over Wisconsin.
46:34 --> 46:41 [SPEAKER_00]: In fact, the strange object Wheeler witnessed that April night would become only one piece
46:43 --> 46:48 [SPEAKER_00]: Over the coming months, people across the region would report lights in the sky.
46:49 --> 46:51 [SPEAKER_00]: Objects behaving in ways they couldn't explain.
46:52 --> 46:56 [SPEAKER_00]: Cars and electronics seemingly malfunctioning during encounters.
46:57 --> 47:01 [SPEAKER_00]: And eventually, another sighting involving George Wheeler himself.
47:02 --> 47:05 [SPEAKER_00]: One that would become considerably harder to dismiss.
47:07 --> 47:12 [SPEAKER_00]: But before we get there, we need to understand what was beginning to unfold around him.
47:13 --> 47:19 [SPEAKER_00]: because Wheeler wasn't the only person looking up, and Wisconsin was about to get very strange.
47:20 --> 47:23 [SPEAKER_00]: I'm John Williamson, and this is from The Void.
47:24 --> 47:27 [SPEAKER_00]: You've been listening to part one of UFOs over Wisconsin.
47:28 --> 47:41 [SPEAKER_00]: In part two, we'll return to George Wheeler and follow the story into the encounters that transformed a strange sighting over Elmwood into one of Wisconsin's most enduring UFO mysteries.
47:42 --> 47:44 [SPEAKER_00]: Until then, keep looking up.