Falcon Lake, Canada case - Final word?

[Creepy Green Light]

Where does the current UFO community stand on the Falcon Lake incident? Did this happen? Or is he another Billy Meier?

Thank you.

 

[Randall]

The falcon lake incident has more credibility than the Meier case or the Walton case, but Michalak was the only witness, so we don't have much evidence to go on. Still, it seems that most of the ufology community takes the case seriously. I haven't run across any ufologists who lean toward the idea that it's a hoax. I think Menzel ( the arch skeptic ) suggested it was a hoax because Michalak had difficulty relocating the site of the incident, and figured Michalak's illness was due to insect bites.

I find the insect bit theory weak, but nobody seems to argue that the site was difficult to relocate. However that doesn't mean much. In fact one could argue that because the site was difficult to relocate, it speaks to the veracity of the story. Had it been a hoax, any old spot out in the forest would probably have sufficed. It would make little sense to search and search insisting that the correct spot had not been found. That behavior speaks more to someone with a very specific spot in their memory that they genuinely want to find because something happened there that they want to investigate.

 

[Creepy Green Light]

That's what I was thinking as well. And while not impossible, how would one fake the burn pattern on his chest/stomach? It also seems unlikely he would burn himself on purpose. And also do it with some type of object to leave that pattern on him.

 

[Randall]

That's what I was thinking as well. And while not impossible, how would one fake the burn pattern on his chest/stomach? It also seems unlikely he would burn himself on purpose. And also do it with some type of object to leave that pattern on him.

Faking the burn marks could have been done by simply cutting some holes in something like cardboard or aluminum foil and then lying out in the Sun until the holes exposed to the Sun were sunburned. So not that hard really, and to do it on purpose would obviously remove all doubt about a hoax. But who wants to hoax a UFO encounter that bad? What was his motivation? The Iron Skeptic's page suggests it was simply an accident of some kind induced by a combination of alcohol and carelessness, or possibly even self-harm. I don't know. I have my doubts about that. But people have done crazier things. The final word IMO is that there's not enough evidence to be sure, or even reasonably sure, about what really happened.

 

[Burnt State]

Michalak was always pretty adamant about the case though it has some weird bits in terms of his inability to find the location on a return trip, the appearance of metals that were not there previously on a return investigation, and why there were no secondary witnesses. Still, for the amount of legwork that he put himself through the idea of a just doesn't fit the bill. I see this as one of those really odd, offbeat cases where it's obvious that something really bizarre has taken place and our evidence is simply limited. He's certainly no Meier that's for sure - that guy's a self-obsessed cult guru who sees himself as the second coming of Christ and an obvious & proven hoaxer.

Michalak falls into that other category of unique paranormal witnesses where something absolutely extraordinary appears to have taken place, never to be repeated for that individual. I always doubt the person who claims witness and then claims alien brother contact later, or claims binary codes later etc. - those ones are the suspicious ones. His one off case of really weird details is a case I rate as one of the most interesting in the annals of ufology - it's a shame there isn't more there to help prove it.

There's some discussion here on this thread about this case and a great review by Rutkowski about it posted by Sentry:
I didn't see it! Cases with puzzling witness deficits