On the 18th of April, 1961, a man named Joe Simonton of Eagle River reported an encounter with a UFO, which is undoubtedly the strangest UFO encounter reported in Wisconsin history. Simonton said that he heard a loud screeching noise outside of his house, and exited his house to find a flying saucer hovering above his driveway. It was about 30 feet in diameter and 12 feet tall, and was made of a metallic material that was brighter than chrome.

A hatch on the craft opened and Simonton could see three of the craft’s inhabitants inside. They appeared as clean-shaven, short Italian men. One was wearing a two-piece suit, and the others wore turtlenecks. All three wore tightly-fitting, knit caps. One of the short men exited the craft with a pitcher made of the same brighter-than-chrome material as the outside of the saucer. Through miming and body language, the small man asked Simonton to fill his pitcher with water. Simonton obliged, and when he brought the pitcher of water back to the saucer, he could see inside of the craft, which appeared dark, like wrought iron.

And he also could see one of the small men cooking small pancakes on a griddle.

Through miming and body language, Simonton showed interest in the pancakes, and the small men gave him three of the pancakes in exchange for the water. The hatch on the saucer then closed, and the UFO took off flying south.

Simonton ate one of the pancakes, and said it tasted awful, like cardboard, and remarked “If that’s what they lived on, no wonder they’re small.” He then contacted the police with his story, who in turn contacted the Air Force, and soon Josef Allen Hynek and Major Robert Jones Friend of Project Blue Book, the Air Force’s project to investigate UFO sightings, went out to interview Simonton. The Air Force found Simonton to be a credible witness, stating that they believed that he was being honest and truly believed the encounter had happened.

They also sent off the two remaining pancakes to be tested by the Food and Drug Laboratory of the Department of Health, which found that they were simply two pancakes of terrestrial origin. The only qualities of the pancakes that could even be said to be unusual were that they were made with buckwheat, which was uncommon in the US at the time, and that they were made without salt.

The pancakes being of “terrestrial origin” does not necessarily discredit Simonton’s story, as he himself points out that he never once said or implied that he believed the UFO was of extraterrestrial origin, instead Simonton proposes a human origin for the craft.

This story, interesting as it is, would not warrant a mention in this bestiary if not for what would happen next. This story was picked up by Dr. Jacques Vallée, a computer scientist and well-known ufologist who had begun comparing and contrasting stories from European folklore against the findings of Project Blue Book.

The story of the UFO and its short, pancake-dispensing inhabitants caught Vallée’s interest, as he found within Breton mythology legends of fions, small gnome- or fairy-like men, often compared to the French lutin, and who would not infrequently gift humans with buckwheat pancakes. In one of the cited stories, a cow owned by a group of cave-dwelling fions tramples a woman’s buckwheat field, and as restitution, the fions offer her an unlimited, lifetime supply of buckwheat pancakes so long as she swears never to reveal the magical origin of her pancake supply. Additionally, within many fairy legends common to the British Isles, it is said that fairies detest salt and will not eat it or cook with it. Thus Vallée found a precedent for small men gifting saltless, buckwheat pancakes pre-existent in European folklore.

Through this, and other stories, Vallée would build his theory of “ultraterrestrials,” suggesting that UFOs were not from another planet, but were in fact made by earthlings, albeit earthlings who are hidden and which we remain unaware of, hence the name “ultraterrestrial.” According to the ultraterrestrial theory, all UFO sightings as well as stories of fairies and gnomes all trace back to and can be explained by ultraterrestrials. Vallée also suggests that the absurdity of the Eagle River pancake encounter, as well as the absurdity of many traditional fairy stories, is by design. When the ultraterrestrials need to make contact with a human, they will, he suggests, do something purposefully absurd, so that the human witness is reluctant to go public with his story, and if they do go public regardless, no one will believe the absurd tale anyways.

So, ultimately, thanks to Vallée’s research and theory, this particular UFO encounter is inherently linked with gnomes, with the theory suggesting that not only are gnomes real, but that they are the ones piloting the UFOs seen all over Earth.

These little men and their flying saucer are not the only UFOs to be linked with gnomes, however, as the Wauwatosa night visitors, who were described as “oversized gnomes,” were seen in Wauwatosa on the same night as many UFO sightings. This encounter is not the only encounter with little people in the area of Eagle River, with a dwendi encounter also reported in the area in 1998.