Rambling Lemurian

Did you ever hear the story about the Wisconsin Pancake UFO incident?

Back in 1961, Joe Simonton was at his rural Wisconsin home near Eagle River eating a late breakfast when he saw a flying saucer shaped craft hovering over his house. He watched this UFO land gently in his backyard and three 5-foot tall “Italian-looking” beings came out. The occupants of the craft then managed to communicate to Joe that they needed water by handing him an empty container. Joe, being a true Midwesterner, obliged and fetched some water for the visitors. The aliens, or whatever we should call them, then began cooking something on a strange appliance. When they were done, they handed Joe the pancake-like food, apparently thanked Joe for the hospitality, got back into their spaceship, and flew away.

Joe told some people about his encounter and showed them the remaining “pancakes”. He tasted one and said it was terrible, tasting like cardboard. This sounds like a completely made up story but he did really keep those pancakes, even giving one or two to some local UFO investigators for testing, and another to the US Air Force and J. Allen Hynek, of Project Blue Book fame. Results concluded that the ingredients of the pancakes were most likely terrestrial in nature, and there was no abnormal radiation readings or anything that would suggest they had traveled through space. But there was nothing about Joe Simonton’s character or background that would suggest he’d make up this story. He didn’t attempt to monetize this or seek fame. He was just a regular midwestern and isolated man. Curiously, other people in the area reported a UFO in the sky at around the same time as Joe Simonton’s encounter. But Project Blue Book still concluded that the most likely explanation for this incident was that Joe was hallucinating or experiencing a waking dream. Perhaps he slept-walked his way into making terrible pancakes and the rest of it was a dream? Who knows.

This is one of my favorite UFO stories. It’s unique, bizarre, and adorable. And it most likely isn’t a straight-up hoax. It could very well be unintentionally made up by Joe as part of some kind of unexplained hallucination or he’s the victim of a strange prank. And as a UFO enthusiast, I understand that at least 99% of UFO/UAP records are either hoaxes or misidentified aircraft or natural phenomena that people don’t recognize because they don’t look up at the sky nearly enough. Or the “experiencer” has just completely lost their marbles. But I can’t help but wonder, what if some of these are real? If this story is true, and aliens did land in a random person’s backyard and share their breakfast with an Earthling, then that honestly gives me hope for the future.

But whenever I’m reminded of this story, one question reigns in my mind. Would I eat an alien pancake? It’s kind of a crazy thing to do, right? If some strangers in an RV parked in front of your house and made odd-looking pancakes on a Coleman stove in your front yard, would you take a bite if offered? I’m sure we’ve all been conditioned since birth not to take candy from a stranger. But is a pancake from an alien better or worse? It’s gotta be worse, right? You don’t know what’s in it. Luckily Joe’s pancakes were made of Earthly ingredients, but what if they weren’t? I have a pokeberry shrub in my yard, and I know that the berries are poisonous to humans, but I let that thing grow because native birds really like them. There’s just no way we can assume that something that is nutritious to a humanoid alien wouldn’t immediately kill an Earthling. Or at least give us the shits.

But on the other hand, maybe we should just trust the alien to know it’s ok for us. If a group of aliens can fly a spaceship from wherever the hell they came from all the way to Earth, land gently in the Wisconsin countryside, and confidently convince a local Earthling to fetch some water for them, then maybe it’s fair to assume that they know all about us already. Just the fact that they can visit other planets as if they’re on a picnic means their technology far exceeds anything we have. They’ve most likely been here before, which means that they’ve likely been studying us the same way biologists study frogs in the Amazon. So following that logic there’s a decent chance that these visitors know more about our bodies and tolerances than we do.

That line of reasoning though assumes that the aliens are benevolent. It’s a fair assumption to make, since you’d think hostile aliens wouldn’t bother with the charade and just start blasting us with lasers. But it could still be a trap. Maybe they’re testing us to see if we’re dumb enough to eat whatever they offer. Maybe there’s some kind of tracking or implant device hidden in the food. Or maybe they’re just trying to lure us onto their ship one at a time and take us away to do some hellish experiments or sell us to an alien circus. They were small in stature, after all. So maybe they knew they’d need to use a bit of trickery to get a Wisconsin man onto their ship. Sure, as an advanced civilization with the technology to travel the stars they’d likely have some badass weaponry. But perhaps the reason their civilization evolved to the point of having this technology readily available is because they didn’t focus on weapons and violence, so they don’t have that weaponry on hand. Hmm, but if they aren’t inherently violent like humans, then does that mean they’re more like to be nice and just offering the pancake as a thank you for the hospitality?

As you hold an alien pancake in your hand, considering if you should eat it, do you think you would go through all those steps of thinking? Do you just take a bite? Do you give it back? I’m not sure what I’d do. When I’m walking my dog on a clear night, as I will be right after I finish writing whatever this is, I spend a lot of the walk looking up, wondering if there’s anyone or anything there. I look for the familiar constellations and planets, convincing myself that I’m seeing faint meteors and not just tricks of the faint light of stars and my imperfect eyes. Maybe catching a glimpse of a passing satellite or the International Space Station. And one day, I hope to see something that scares me a bit. Something I can’t explain away as an odd plane or shooting star or Starlink satellites or swamp gas. I haven’t seen one yet. But whoever’s up there watching us, if you’re there, I’d like to think I’d get you water for your pancakes. And if you offered one to me, I’d give it a nibble, even though I’ve heard they taste like cardboard.