On Saturday, May 20, 1967, at about 3 p.m., Stefan Michalak flagged down an RCMP highway patrol constable on the Trans-Canada Highway near Falcon Beach. He said he had seen two glowing red, rotating "spaceships", that he had touched one, and that it had burned his hat and shirt. He warned the officer not to come close in case he carried radiation. That night he was treated in Winnipeg for first-degree burns.
Michalak told the Winnipeg Tribune that one of the objects landed. He described it as metallic and about 35 feet long, with a door that opened to show violet light, a hissing sound and human-sounding voices. He said he spoke to it in several languages and got no answer, and that when it lifted off, its exhaust burned him in a checkerboard pattern. He reported headaches, vomiting and weight loss afterwards.
The RCMP, the RCAF, the Department of National Defence and the Department of Health all looked into it, and the US Condon Committee reviewed it. A first aerial and ground search failed to find the site. In late June, Michalak said he had gone back with a friend and collected his burnt shirt and soil; one soil sample tested highly radioactive, and he then led officials to a spot where moss had been removed in a semicircle. Only trace radiation was found there, and chemists suggested contamination, for example from radium-based paint.
In January 1968 Michalak showed the press a neat grid of marks on his abdomen and said his burns had come back. A Mayo Clinic psychiatrist judged the new marks to be self-inflicted. Sceptic Aaron Sakulich argued the original burns were most likely an accident, and that the story kept rival prospectors away. Supporters, including Michalak's son, say a blue-collar mechanic could not have invented it. The Royal Canadian Mint put the event on a silver coin in 2018.