What happened
On April 18, 1961, at around 11:00 a.m., Joe Simonton, a 60-year-old plumber and chicken farmer, heard a strange sound and saw a silver object about nine meters (30 feet) in diameter landing in front of his house. A dark-skinned man in a black outfit looked out through a hatch and showed him a jug, as if asking for water. Simonton filled it and saw inside two other crew members cooking something on a grill. As thanks he received four small, round, perforated cakes. The object flew off after a few minutes. The case was investigated by the sheriff, and then by Air Force investigators and J. Allen Hynek. One of the cakes was sent for analysis.
Witnesses
Joe Simonton; no one else saw the landing, although neighbors reported strange objects in the sky that day.
Explanations and hypotheses
A Food and Drug Administration laboratory determined that the cake was an ordinary pancake made of buckwheat flour, wheat flour, and fat – interestingly, without salt. The Air Force concluded that Simonton, sincere and respected locally, may have had an experience on the borderline of sleep. The witness himself never changed his account and never profited from it. The case is considered one of the strangest close encounters on record.
Disputed A likely explanation exists, but some of the facts are still disputed.
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