Flying Ball Report Puzzles Authorities in U.S., Canada

HOGANSBURG, N.Y. (AP) - Four northern New York residents claimed yesterday to have seen a fantastic flying ball, powered by a motor-driven propellor, land near St. Regis and Hogansburg, then take off and vanish in the air over Massena.

They described the ball as a dark brown rubber or plastic sphere about four feet in diameter, with no appendages other than a propellor and a two-foot brass shaft. They said it bore no markings.

Alex Lafrance, 20; Peter Phillips, 40, and Francis Arquette, 16, told police they saw it land in a field near this Canadian border Indian reservation, bounce about three times and stop. They said the sphere took off with a humming noise at about 25 miles an hour.

Mrs. Angus Cook, 26, a housewife, told a reporter that she heard a sound like a motor and saw the ball about 400 feet up in the sky. She said it landed about 200 yards from her home.

Checks with the United States weather bureau and the civil aeronautics authority appeared to dispel the possibility that the object could have been a weather balloon.

James Mason, chief communicator at the Massena airport CAA station, said the wind velocity at the time was three miles an hour, hardly strong enough to whip a balloon into the air from the ground.
______

In Ottawa, A. D. McLean, controller of Canadian civil aviation, said: "I don't know of any Canadian machine that corresponds to that description."

"Fantastic is all I can say."

Martian Visitors at Garson
Police Scoff Women Scared

GARSON - On July 2, the planet Mars was closer to earth than it ever has been in past. On July 2, three men, all about 13 feet tall, with strange, hypnotic powers visited earth.

This is the story told by a Garson Mine employee to men at the mine First Aid station after he recovered from a dead faint. It is also the story he related to Garson provincial police and R.C.A.F. Radio station investigators at Falconbridge.

Ennio LaSarza, 770 Charlotte St., Sudbury, who claims he saw the three men descend from the space ship fainted at the First Aid station after he had been "released from the hypnotic stare" of one of the Mars men and ran for help.

"He was white as a ghost and passed out when he got to the station," one of the employees there said.

According to the first aid employee's story LaSarza described the space ship as being 25 feet in diameter, had two electronic ear-like spurs on its "head"; it had three sets of arms with claws and six legs. The centre of the "ship" was described as square with a telescopic projection. LaSarza said the men were built in much the same manner.

LaSarza told fellow employees that the machine sent out radio messages - there was some confusion as to whether or not they actually spoke to him.

Provincial Cpl. Bill Cook said that Garson provincial police conducted an investigation into the report, but nothing had developed from it. First reports that LaSarza was still hospitalized were denied with the information that he had returned the same day to finish his shift.

Cpl. Cook said that police received the report shortly after 5:30 p.m. and investigated it. "LaSarza is in his 20's," Cook said, "and there didn't seem to be too much the matter with him when we spoke to him."

Sqdn. Ldr. King at the RCAF radio station said that he conducted an investigation into the report and "actually found it to be fictitious. It just didn't corroborate with anything of what it should be," he commented.

When asked what it should be, King commented that that is "classified information."

One woman on Skead road said that she was actually afraid to go outside at night since reports of what has been dubbed "the monster" have circulated through Garson.

She asked to remain unidentified but added that she was not the only one who held these fears.

However, reports now circulating throughout the townships of Neelon-Garson have snowballed by leaps and bounds with some sincerely believing that the earth was scorched where the men had stood and limbs were broken from trees along the path the space ship took on its trip to earth. Police, however, claim there is no evidence to back up the reports.

SAW GLOWING "SAUCER" IN FIELD TAKING OFF

WINDSOR, Ont. (CP) - A Windsor man told today of seeing a luminous disc-shaped "object" 30 feet in diameter in a field south of this city.

Gabriel Durocher said he was walking home about 1:30 a.m. when he saw the object in the field. "It was sort of blue all over and glowed like phosphorus."

He ran to within 30 feet of the object and "started yelling at it," he said.

"Then I saw these sparks come out of one part of the sides. They were blue and yellow and red. The saucer started spinning and there was a sort of blue mist formed under it and it went straight up and away."

Four other persons said they saw "something" hovering over that area of the city where Gabriel said he saw his object.

North Bay, Ontario, DAILY NUGGET, 10 September 1956, Page 9

Captured Red Flying Saucer, Irishman Claims

MONEYMORE, Northern Ireland - (AP) - An Irishman named Thomas J. Hutchison swore to police today that he captured a flaming red flying saucer - but it got away.

"I had difficulty in holding it down," he explained.

Hutchison said he was sitting at home with his wife Maud about noon Friday, when an object dropped from a low cloud to the only dry piece of ground in the middle of a bog 200 yards from his front door.

He and his wife sloshed across the bog and found the object lying motionless. It was egg-shaped, about three feet high and 18 inches in diameter.

"It was bright red," said Hutchison, "with two dark red marks at the end and three dark red stripes. It had a saucer-shaped base."

BEGAN TO SPIN

"I kicked it over," said the Irishman, "but it returned to its original position."

When he got down on his hands and knees to examine the baffling object more closely, it started to spin.

So he put a hammerlock on the saucer.

"The police station," said Hutchison, "was the only place for such a wicked looking thing as this and I started to carry it there."

But on the way to the village of Loup, Hutchison had to get through a thick hedge.

"I put the saucer down for a moment." he said, "and what do you think? It started spinning again."

Before he had time to throw himself on the queer colored invader, it rose quickly and disappeared into the rain laden clouds.

Police at Loup called RAF station at nearby Aldergrove.

The commander said the object did not belong to the RAF. When the police sergeant asked the air force officer for his opinion as to what the gadget might have been, he replied.

"I would not even hazard a guess."

'Four Little Men in Grey' Frighten French Village

AMIENS, France (Reuters) - A Hungarian refugee claimed today that he was nearly attacked by "four little men dressed in grey" who landed in a flying saucer.

His story of the men and saucer was backed by six residents of Beaucourt-sur-Lande.

Gendarmes investigated tracks on a road near the village and said they found lumps of a black, lava-like substance.

Michel Sekete, 29-year-old Hungarian refugee, told police he sighted the saucer just after midnight as he was cycling home. He said he was "dazzled by a strange projectile," hid behind a telegraph pole and saw "four little men" walking along the road.

"The four little men came towards me in a threatening manner," Sekete claimed. He climbed on his bicycle and pedalled as fast as he could toward the local railroad station.

"Let me in quickly," he shouted at the watchman. "A flying saucer has landed and I am being attacked."

Six persons, including the station watchman and his wife, said they saw the saucer and the little men. They said the saucer was a reddish color and that after it took off it hovered for several minutes above the village before disappearing.

Boy Spots 'Saucer,' Footprints Nearby

GALT (CP) - A 15-year-old boy says he saw a flying saucer hover close to the ground for 40 minutes near here.

Ted Stephenson said Friday he was about 300 yards away from where the object touched down Tuesday in a gully four miles northeast of Galt.

He described the craft as round, about 35 feet in diameter and 10 or 12 feet high, and of a dull aluminum color.

Reporter Ray Frances of the Galt Reporter went with the boy to the spot Friday. Frances said he found what appeared to be huge footprints and a series of burned patches on the ground.

He said the several footprints were 17 or 18 inches long and that the yard-square burned spots were scattered over an area 20 feet across.

Says Crater Shows Landing
Craft From Another Planet?

LONDON (CP) - The story of the crater in a Wiltshire farmer's potato field is unfolding like the first chapter of H. G. Wells' War of the Worlds.

Australian astro-physicist Robert Randall is convinced the hole was caused by a 600-ton, 30-man flying saucer from "somewhere in the region of Uranus," the solar system's second most outward planet.

Army bomb disposal experts now investigating the crater are inclined to believe it was caused by a 30-year old bomb eight feet under the surface which recently exploded because of deterioration.

Flying saucer or bomb, the experts admit discovering strange samples of crystallized carbon in the hole and the presence of some agent that produces weird readings on their detection instruments.

Nobody paid much attention when farmer Roy Blanchard of Charlton first reported the hole more than two weeks ago. "Just another meteor," was the general comment.

COW STRICKEN

Then Blanchard's neighbor reported that a nearby cow of his was suffering from an unusual skin disease. The cow he said, was flaking as if it had been exposed to immense heat or radiation.

Dr. Randall decided to investigate and formed the theory that a space craft made an emergency landing bounced across three fields and then righted itself.

The forced landing with its tripod suction feet caused the 10-foot wide crater, he announced, and a 50-foot circle of flattened barley in another field was evidence of the first "hop."

"If this was following a definite pattern," he said, "there were similar authenticated landings in Australia in 1954 and 1955 and in France in 1957 and 1958."

He believes the spacecraft would take about two years to complete the journey from Uranus and thinks the visit is peaceful and exploratory.

Mysterious Flying Object Prompts Probe by Expert

SOCORRO, N.M. (AP) - An astronomer from the Dearborn Observatory at Northwestern University was here today to examine the secluded hill where a Socorro policeman reported seeing a mysterious, egg-shaped flying object.

Dr. J. Allen Hynek was sent to New Mexico after a rash of reports that unidentified flying objects had been seen in the state.

Policeman Lonnie Zamora said the object he saw Friday was brilliant white. He said there was a red marking on it like an upside down V with three lines across the top, through the middle and at the bottom. He said that from a distance there appeared to be two figures in white coveralls outside the object. It flew off with a roar when he approached, he said.

Since Zamora's experience at least six reports have been made to authorities including one from a youth who said he fired several shots at something about 100 feet in the air near Moriarty.

Landing Reported By Glowing Object

An unidentified flying object shaped "like a 10-gallon hat" was reported over oil tanks on Shannon Road, Friday night, by a 15-year-old girl.

Darlene Wagner, a Mount St. Joseph student, was alone in her home at 640 Shannon Road when she heard her German Shepherd dog barking outside. Thinking someone was coming in, she went to the window and saw the object slowly descending to the top of an oil tank across the road.

According to Darlene, the object was shaped like a hat. The crown of the "hat" glowed red and the rim, blue. There were blue and white flashing lights at each edge of the brim.

"It flew really low," Darlene said, "never any higher than the oil tank". She said the object was in sight only "about a minute".

Calling a friend, Darlene was met with scepticism and decided not to report what she had seen until she talked to her parents.

City police said this morning, they had received no reports of the sighting.

Darlene, today, was emphatic in saying that the object was "definitely not lightning or an airplane".

Soo Girl Sees UFO Land, Leave

SAULT STE. MARIE, Ont. (CP) - A 15-year-old girl says she saw an unidentified flying object shaped like a "ten-gallon hat" land and take off again near her home.

Darlene Wagner, 15, said she saw the object about 10:20 p.m. descend to the top of an oil storage tank, and then take off about one minute later.

A reporter investigated but found no evidence of a landing. Police said there were no other reports of unidentified flying objects.

Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, DAILY STAR, 24 May 1967, Page 7

Winnipeg Mechanic Claims Space Visit

WINNIPEG (CP) - Steve Michalak, a 50-year-old mechanic, insisted Tuesday he saw two strange objects drop from the sky and that he can "still feel a sort of foul smell coming from inside me" when he recalls the incident.

Mr. Michalak claims he saw the objects last Saturday near Falcon Lake, a resort area 75 miles east of here. One of them landed.

"I've lost 12 pounds in the last two days and I've been laughed at, but I thought it was my duty to report what I had seen," he said at his home.

The objects were described as being about 35 feet long, eight feet high, with a three-foot protrusion on top. While they bore a surface resemblance to stainless steel, they gave off a glaring red light.

His son, Mark, 19, said that when the craft took off, his father received burns on his chest. The burns resemble a pattern, similar to a checker board. "One square has a number of dots in it while the next one is bare," the son said.

The father said he saw a door open on the craft, emitting a brilliant violet color. There were noises of air hissing and what sounded like human voices.

When the object took off, it disappeared on the horizon within a minute.

"I examined the spot where the craft had settled down and I couldn't see any prints that might have been left by legs of any kind. All I saw was a bare spot, circular in shape, with all the leaves and grass removed by the heat, I presume."

Official UFO Findings
Claims Government Holding Report

WINNIPEG (CP) - Stephen Michalak has suggested that government fears of causing "national panic" are behind refusals to release official findings on his 1967 claim of seeing and touching an unidentified flying object.

In an illustrated, 40-page pamphlet he had published after what he called his "ordeal," Mr. Michalak, 52, said he believes that results of the inquiries would "never be made public."

"As for the government, it is possible that they are afraid that they will cause national panic if they reveal all they know, but it seems to me that they should say something definite," he wrote.

Barry Mather, NDP MP for Surrey, asked Wednesday in the Commons for the tabling of RCMP, air force, welfare department, geological survey and National Research Council reports on the incident.

VISIT SITE

In his pamphlet, Mr. Michalak, 52, gives an account of what members of various teams told him when they accompanied him to where he said a strange craft landed May 20, 1967, in the Falcon Lake area 80 miles east of Winnipeg.

He said he pieced together what members of various official teams said had caused his burns and ill health following the incident.

"One official said my shirt and body was burned by ultrasonic waves, while another feels that it was a thermal reaction caused by a blast of hot air under pressure," he wrote.

"Radiologists have said that radiation found at the scene was a product of nuclear fission, like that emitted from an atomic reactor."

Mr. Michalak, an amateur prospector, said he spotted two cigar-shaped objects shortly after noon while working a bush area near the resort centre. One hovered and the other landed. The airborne object flew away a few seconds later.

FAMILIAR SOUNDS

After he overcame his initial fear, he said, he thought he heard sounds similar to someone speaking English and concluded the craft was a United States vehicle. He said he called out but received no reply.

Mr. Michalak says he touched the craft, which he described as about 40 feet in diameter, and burned his glove, stuck his head inside a hatch and saw a profusion of flashing lights.

The hatch closed and he was burned as the craft took off.

Investigators later found a circular area where the craft landed, he said. Vegetation in the immediate vicinity had died. His burned shirt and glove also were found.

Quebec Farmer Says Saucers Landed Near Town

CHAPEAU, Que. (CP) - Flying saucers have landed near this town 100 miles north of Ottawa, according to a local farmer.

Leo-Paul Chaput, 54, says "we were sitting in the kitchen 'round the back when we saw this big white light that lit up the field. It was just like day."

Chaput's wife and eight children agree. Strange machines have visited their 10-acre farm several times.

Three large circles of apparently singed or matted grass are Chaput's evidence. The circles, each 27 feet in diameter with a perimeter about one foot wide, look as if an object with legs inside landed on the grass:

Two small singed trees, growing inside one of the circles, are being analysed by the Ontario lands and forests department to identify the possible origins of the burns.

Sudbury, Ontario, STAR, 13 April 1974, page 3

Strange sphere baffles U.S. navy

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. (AP) - The United States Navy says it is mystified by a metal sphere found by a family here.

"There's certainly something odd about it," CPO Chris Berninger said after initial attempts at identifying the 25-pound object that the Antoine Betz family says appeared outside their home here recently.

(In the picture above, 12-year-old Wayne Betz wonders if the sphere is some kind of bugging device.)

"We're going to use a more powerful machine on it and also run spectograph tests to determine what metal it's made of," Berninger said.

The family said the ball moves strangely, apparently of its own volition, and throbs as though a motor were running inside.

The sphere, slightly smaller than a bowling ball, appears to be made of stainless steel.

Sudbury, Ontario, STAR, 11 September 1974, page 30

Doesn't think saucer sighting is hoax

LANGENBURG, Sask. (CP) - RCMP Constable Ron Morier says he doesn't think a district farmer is trying to pull a hoax with his claim of seeing saucer-shaped objects hovering about a foot over a slough near his rapeseed field six miles north of here.

Edwin Fuhr, 36, claims five stainless steel objects stayed for 15 minutes before leaving. He says there were depressions in the foot-high grass about 11 feet in diameter where they had been.

Constable Morier visited the farm Monday in this community 120 miles northeast of Regina.

"They took me out to where they'd seen these things in the grass," he said. "I saw the rings."

"Something was there and I doubt it was a hoax. There's no indication anything had been wheeled in or out and Mr. Fuhr seemed genuinely scared."

Constable Morier took photographs and measurements and sent his information to the National Research Council in Ottawa.

"Some farmers are afraid to work their fields," the constable said. "At least that's what I hear on coffee row."

Mr. Fuhr says he got down from his swather and moved to within 15 feet of the objects.

"All of a sudden I noticed the grass was moving . . . turning near this thing. I just watched it for about two minutes and then noticed that the whole thing was turning."

"I backed up slow. I wasn't going to turn my back on the thing. When I got back to the swather, I noticed there were another four to the left of me, all revolving. I just froze on the seat and didn't move."

"I was terrified. I froze. I couldn't do anything."

Muskoka visitor from circular ship
Almost runs over a 'space creature'

BRACEBRIDGE, Ont. (CP) - Robert Suffern of Three Mile Lake says a spaceship landed about 13 miles northwest of here Tuesday night and he almost ran over one of its occupants with his car.

Mr. Suffern said Wednesday the ship was about 12 to 14 feet across, nine feet high, and circular in shape.

Mr. Suffern said he found the ship while driving around to investigate "a glow in the sky" seen by his sister, who lives nearby and telephoned him to say she thought his barn might be on fire.

He said that a few seconds after he saw it, the ship lifted straight up from the road in front of the car.

Mr. Suffern said that, on returning home, he had to slam on his brakes to avoid hitting "some sort of creature."

The creature, he said, was the height of the car fender and dressed in silver. It had two legs, two arms, a globe-shaped helmet and walked "sort of like a midget."

The creature turned, took three or four steps, vaulted over a fence and disappeared.

Mr. Suffern said he raced back to his house and arrived in time to see the spaceship hover near his home before crossing the lake.

Mr. Suffern said he was badly shaken by the incident.

"It's all right to think what you would do if you came face to face with a situation like this," he said, "but when it actually happens, you are scared because you are dealing with the unknown."

"I mean what do you do if they come to the door . . . offer them a beer?"

Bracebridge is about 30 miles north of Orillia, in the Muskoka district.

Sudbury, Ontario, STAR, 12 June 1976, page 1

Suggest ground displaced by landing gear
Suspect UFO landed near Belleville

COOPER, Ont. (CP) - A Toronto organization says evidence collected by its researchers indicates that one or more unknown, unconventional, aircraft are present in the area of this community about 35 miles north of Belleville.

Neptune Research, a private group that investigates unidentified flying objects, sent researchers last weekend to the farm of Reginald Trotter, who reported that three large pieces of earth had been mysteriously displaced in a field sometime during the last week of April.

Harry Tokarz, co-ordinator of the research group, said members of the group found three large triangle-shaped holes in the field. Soil had been pulled from the depressions to a depth of eight inches and placed neatly about 20 feet away, he said.

Mr. Tokarz suggested the earth was displaced by a disc-shaped object at least 75 feet in diameter.

He said his group assumes some type of heavy aerial craft, possibly fitted with a tripod form of landing gear, moved the chunks of earth as it attempted to land on an angle in the field.

Mr. Tokarz said rock and soil samples have been recovered from the field and have been submitted for analysis. The group sends its samples to private laboratories because it is conducting private investigations, he said.

A spokesman for the Ontario Provincial Police at nearby Madoc said CFB Trenton asked an OPP officer to take photographs and measurements at the Trotter farm.

A spokesman at the military base said earlier this week that the OPP report was forwarded to the Meteorite Observation Centre of the National Research Council in Ottawa where the information will be filed for reference purposes.

Mr. Tokarz said investigators will remain in the Cooper area until early next week to record information and do research on other reported sightings of UFOs in the area.

Soviet news agency reports UFO landing

MOSCOW (AP) - The official Soviet news agency Tass said Monday that scientists have confirmed the landing in Russia of an alien spaceship carrying giant people with tiny heads.

The report was the latest strange tale in the official Soviet media, which under the policy of glasnost, or openness, have recently told of other sightings of unidentified flying objects and alien creatures.

"Scientists have confirmed that an unidentified flying object recently landed in a park in the Russian city of Voronezh," Tass said in a dispatch from the city, some 480 kilometres southeast of Moscow.

"They have also identified the landing site and found traces of aliens who made a short promenade about the park."

Tass said Voronezh residents saw a large shining ball or disk hovering over the park. They reported that the UFO landed and up to three creatures similar to humans emerged, accompanied by a small robot, Tass said.

"The aliens were three or even four metres tall, but with very small heads," the news agency quoted witnesses as saying. "They walked near the ball or disc and then disappeared inside."

The report was similar to a story last summer in the daily newspaper Socialist Industry, which told of a purported "close encounter" between a milkmaid and an alien in central Russia's Perm region.

More aliens visit Soviets

MOSCOW (AP) - A three-eyed alien with a robot sidekick landed by UFO and made a boy vanish by zapping him with a pistol, a Soviet newspaper reported this week, in a second day of strange tales in the state-run news media.

But as the story unfolded from the city of Voronezh, a scientist who had been quoted in support of the initial report raised reservations.

"Don't believe all you hear from Tass," Genrikh Silanov, head of the Voronezh Geophysical Laboratory, cautioned in a telephone interview.

The staid official news agency told the world Monday that scientists had confirmed that an alien spaceship carrying giant people with tiny heads had touched down in Voronezh, a city of 800,000 about 500 kilometres southeast of Moscow.

As many as three aliens four metres tall left the spacecraft, described as a large shining ball, and walked in the park with a small robot, Tass reported. A Tass duty officer stood by the story.

Monday's report spawned rumors in Moscow, including one that the aliens told Voronezh residents the Earth would be destroyed by 2000 if people didn't stop polluting it.

Nonetheless, a Communist party paper whose beat is culture was the only major national daily to print anything about the UFO on Tuesday. Sovietskaya Kultura said its coverage was motivated by "the golden rule of journalism: the reader must know everything."

It quoted witnesses as saying the UFO flew into Voronezh on Sept. 27. At 6:30 p.m., it said, boys playing soccer saw a pink glow in the sky, then saw a deep red ball about three metres in diameter. The ball circled, vanished, then reappeared and hovered, it said.

A crowd rushed to the site, Sovietskaya Kultura said, and through an open hatch saw a "three-eyed alien" about three metres tall, clad in silvery overalls and bronze-colored boots, and wearing a disc on his chest.

The newspaper, quoting witnesses, gave this account:

The UFO landed. Two creatures, one apparently a robot, exited. A boy screamed with fear, but when the alien gazed at him, with eyes shining, he fell silent, unable to move. Onlookers screamed, and the UFO and the creature disappeared.

About five minutes later, they reappeared. The alien had a tube about 50 centimetres long, which he pointed at an unidentified 16-year-old, making him disappear. The alien went inside the sphere, which took off. At the same time, the youth reappeared.

"Children and eyewitnesses of the abnormal phenomenon have been questioned by police workers and journalists," wrote Sovietskaya Kultura's Voronezh correspondent, E. Efremov.

"There are no discrepancies in the description of the sphere itself, or the actions of the aliens. Moreover, all the children who became witnesses to this event are still afraid, even now."

Silanov, meanwhile, disputed the Tass report quoting him as saying the aliens left behind two rocks of an unknown type. "The rock they described as extraterrestrial is in fact a piece of iron oxide which could easily have originated on Earth," Silanov said.

A Tass editor said two reporters have been sent from Moscow to Voronezh to check on the report filed by the local Tass correspondent, a "very serious" journalist.

Mysterious circles found on farms

ARGYLE, Man. (CP) - There's a mystery on Ray Crawford's land and stumped investigators say anything from bizarre weather phenomena to visitors from outer space could have put it there.

Sometime in the last year, an almost perfect circle was gouged out of a remote patch of the elderly cattle farmer's property, about 30 kilometres north of Winnipeg, on the edge of the rock-strewn scrub and bush that comprises the region between Lake Manitoba and Lake Winnipeg.

There is no sign that anything human had a hand in its creation.

"When I first saw it, I thought 'Is that all there is?,'" recalls weekly newspaper reporter Sheila Morrison, asked by Crawford to check out his odd discovery.

"But the more you look at it, the more you think how it got there. It becomes very puzzling."

Crawford's ring is not unique.

Unexplained circles have been found elsewhere in rural Manitoba. One was accompanied by what looked like the marks of a large tripod, said Ed Barker, an investigator with the Winnipeg Planetarium's Centre for UFO Studies. It's the only organization of its kind in Canada.

Similar circles have also been discovered in Manitoba and throughout England and one physicist believes they may be caused by strange weather.

In his book, The Circle Effect and its mysteries, British physicist Terrence Meaden theorizes they're caused by spinning balls of air highly charged with electricity, which plunge downward, leaving a uniform mark.

"They are still mysterious - nobody has come up with a really good explanation that covers them all," Barker said.

Crawford's sons found the ring in the midst of a field of naturally growing hay, 16 kilometres along dirt and gravel roads from their Hereford cattle farm.

It didn't exist last year and there were no tracks leading into it.

"I don't know if it's man-made or what it is," said a puzzled Crawford, standing in the kitchen of his farm house. "If it's man-made, they must have gone to a lot of trouble to fool someone."

Barker, who has no scientific credentials and writes scripts at the planetarium for shows on astronomy, said the ring was too trampled by the time he saw it to draw any firm conclusions.

So it could be anything from a weather oddity to a landing pad for aliens.

Overlapping rings of swirled grain have been found just south of Riding Mountain National Park in western Manitoba and a 24-metre circle of dehydrated grain, with three tripod-like impressions in the ground, was discovered in an otherwise healthy field near Halbstadt, Man., on the Canada-U.S. border.

Another Manitoba farmer found a near-perfect circle close to a barbed-wire fence, which had been partially melted by an intense heat.

In England, more than 600 mysterious circles have been discovered since 1980.

Nothing unusual was spotted in the sky near the latest Manitoba ring.

But people in Winnipeg and Langenburg, Sask., have sighted several strange flying objects lately and some are convinced they were spacecraft.

What does Crawford think of the idea his field is an alien parking lot?

"I guess it's possible," he suggested with a slightly bemused smile. "I wouldn't say it's not right. How can you?"

A great deal of excitement was generated in the community of Galt, Ontario, Canada, in July 1957, when a group of frightened teenagers came within inches of a "spaceship."

Jack Stephens, a very trustworthy young man, according to his parents and teachers, said the party of five had accidentally stumbled upon the object, complete with portholes, as it rested on two ball-shaped "landing gears" in a field outside town.

Additional proof of the incident came after an analysis was made of the scorched earth discovered on the spot. Paul Hartman, a writer for the Galt Reporter, says the change in soil composition at the site was incredible. Topsoil dug up from the landing area glowed in the dark. Also, when grain samples from the burned patch were studied under a microscope, it was found that they were healthier and sturdier than the samples taken from elsewhere in the field. Finally, the insects there had undergone a certain instability and peculiarity in character. Ants, where the saucer had touched down, were larger and stronger-looking than their counterparts in untouched areas. The ant hills themselves, according to Hartman, were much higher than usual and a spider which had accidentally found its way into a jar containing soil from the Galt UFO landing site, had grown to about 10 times the normal size for this particular species.