Within Wisconsin UFOs
Did Eagle River's Space Pancakes Prove Anything?
Joe Simonton's claimed landing produced an unusual food sample, yet testing found ordinary ingredients and no independent proof of a craft.
On this page
- Joe Simonton's Account of the Encounter
- What Testing Found in the Pancake Samples
- Why the Case Remains Unresolved Testimony
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Introduction
The Eagle River “space pancake” encounter is memorable because it appears to offer what most UFO reports lack: a physical object that could be tested. On 18 April 1961, Wisconsin plumber and chicken farmer Joe Simonton said a silvery craft hovered near his rural home, three small men requested water, and one handed him several flat cakes cooked inside the vehicle. Yet the samples produced no extraordinary result. Investigators found recognisable food ingredients, no unusual element and no significant radioactivity. No independent witness saw the alleged landing, occupants or exchange.
The case therefore did not prove extraterrestrial contact. Its lasting importance within Wisconsin’s UFO history lies in the contrast between Simonton’s apparent sincerity and the weakness of the supporting evidence. The pancakes were real objects, but nothing established that they came from a craft rather than an ordinary kitchen. Later reporting added local sightings and arguments about Simonton’s character, but it never closed that central evidential gap.[Center for UFO Studies]cufos.orgCenter for UFO StudiesCenter for UFO Studies
Joe Simonton’s account of the encounter
Simonton lived several miles outside Eagle River in Wisconsin’s Northwoods. According to the account he gave local officials, he heard an unusual noise shortly before noon and went outside. A gleaming silver object, which he estimated at roughly 30 feet across and 12 feet high, was hovering close to the ground. He compared its brightness to chrome and described pipes projecting from its edge.[Center for UFO Studies]cufos.orgCenter for UFO Studies
A hatch opened and revealed three smooth-shaven men about five feet tall, dressed in dark two-piece clothing. Contemporary reports said Simonton thought they resembled men of Italian descent rather than the large-eyed “grey aliens” that later became common in popular culture. One occupant held out a two-handled container and communicated by gesture that he wanted water. Simonton filled it and returned it.[Center for UFO Studies]cufos.orgCenter for UFO Studies
Looking into the craft, Simonton said he saw instrument panels and another occupant preparing food on what appeared to be a flameless grill. After Simonton indicated that he wanted some, he was given three small, perforated cakes, generally described as about three or four inches wide and unusually thin. He later tasted one and compared it to cardboard. The encounter supposedly lasted only about five minutes. The hatch then closed, and the object departed rapidly, bending nearby pine trees with a rush of air.[Center for UFO Studies]cufos.orgCenter for UFO Studies
The first newspaper coverage appeared several days after the claimed event. Simonton told Vilas County District Attorney Calvin Burton, County Judge Frank Carter and local newspaper editor Dan Satran. Burton said Simonton sounded sincere and had a good local reputation. Satran and Burton also handled the cakes and described them as spongy. One sample was passed through Carter for examination.[Center for UFO Studies]cufos.orgCenter for UFO Studies
Those details help explain why the case was not dismissed immediately as a casual bar-room story. Simonton supplied named officials with a tangible object, allowed himself to be interviewed and did not appear to gain financially from the publicity. Reports also portray him as uncomfortable with the disruption that followed. Within weeks, he complained that attention from reporters and enthusiasts had prevented him from working and said that, should anything similar happen again, he would keep quiet.[Center for UFO Studies]cufos.orgCenter for UFO Studies
Sincerity, however, is not the same as accuracy. A person may honestly describe a dream, misperception, joke played on them or confused experience. Simonton was alone during every decisive part of the alleged encounter. There was no photograph, landing trace, measurement of environmental effects or independently documented observation of the occupants. Even the reported movement of the trees was remembered by Simonton rather than recorded by another observer.
What testing found in the pancake samples
The pancakes made Eagle River different from an ordinary lights-in-the-sky report because they could, in principle, contain unusual chemistry, isotopic ratios or manufacturing features. In practice, the testing found familiar food material.
Correspondence preserved in the case archive describes analysis of one sample’s fat using infrared and ultraviolet spectroscopy. The results showed nothing exceptional. The fat appeared to melt near body temperature and was considered consistent with an ordinary hydrogenated shortening rather than butter or a permanently liquid vegetable oil. The investigator who performed the work wrote that the spectra contained the expected features of common cooking fat.[Center for UFO Studies]cufos.orgCenter for UFO Studies
Other examinations reportedly measured broad categories such as fat, protein, carbohydrate and ash, checked the residue’s emission spectrum and looked for radioactivity. The surviving correspondence says that no unusual element was apparent and that no significant radioactivity was found. Two groups of analysts were said to have reached the broad conclusion that the object was an ordinary pancake.[Center for UFO Studies]cufos.orgCenter for UFO Studies
A later account within the Center for UFO Studies archive records results including low-protein flour, traces of sugar and salt, dry milk solids and hydrogenated cooking oil. Another food laboratory reportedly found common grain, fat and ordinary sodium chloride. The precise descriptions vary between documents—some accounts refer to buckwheat or a grain resembling hard durum wheat—but they agree on the important point: the ingredients were terrestrial and commonplace.[Center for UFO Studies]cufos.orgCenter for UFO Studies
The result did not logically prove that Simonton invented his story. Believers could argue that visitors might carry Earth food, reproduce it or use ingredients chemically similar to ours. That possibility cannot be disproved merely by finding flour and shortening. It is also not positive evidence. Once the sample proved ordinary, it ceased to support the extraordinary part of the claim. The simpler explanations—that the cakes were made locally, already belonged to Simonton or were introduced through some unrecorded route—required far fewer unsupported assumptions.
The testing itself was not ideal by modern forensic standards. The chain of custody was untidy: samples passed between Simonton, local officials, civilian UFO organisations, private analysts and Air Force-linked investigators. Judge Carter later wrote to the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena, or NICAP, seeking the name of a chemist who had supposedly received a sample because Carter had heard nothing about its fate. Surviving correspondence also discusses more ambitious isotope testing that was proposed but apparently not completed, partly because it was expensive and would consume much of the small specimen.[Center for UFO Studies]cufos.orgCenter for UFO StudiesCenter for UFO Studies
These shortcomings mean the pancakes were not examined under a single, transparent protocol with sealed evidence bags, documented controls and independent replication. They do not, however, turn an ordinary result into an anomalous one. Poor evidence handling weakens confidence in sweeping conclusions of either kind; it cannot supply the missing sign of extraterrestrial origin.
Did other sightings corroborate the landing?
The most frequently cited supporting witness was Eagle River insurance agent and Scoutmaster Savino Borgo. A contemporary newspaper clipping said Borgo reported seeing an object rise diagonally and travel near Highway 70 at roughly the time of Simonton’s encounter, about a mile from the property. Other residents later reported disc-like objects in the wider Eagle River and Rhinelander area.[Center for UFO Studies]cufos.orgCenter for UFO Studies
Borgo’s statement provides limited contextual support but not independent confirmation of Simonton’s full story. He did not report seeing a craft in Simonton’s yard, three occupants, a water jug or the exchange of cakes. The available account is also brief and lacks the kind of information needed to test an aerial observation: precise time, duration, angular size, direction, weather conditions and possible aircraft traffic. At most, it suggests that another person reported something unusual in the vicinity.
A more widely publicised sighting occurred on 27 April, nine days later, when several people near a farm east of Eagle River described an unusual aerial object. Their multiple-witness report is relevant to the atmosphere of local interest, but the time separation prevents it from corroborating the alleged 18 April landing. It could represent an unrelated aircraft, an unidentified observation or a report shaped partly by the enormous publicity surrounding Simonton.[Center for UFO Studies]cufos.orgCenter for UFO Studies
Claims that some of Simonton’s chickens became ill or died after the encounter are weaker still. Contemporary coverage says he asked the Vilas County sheriff to inform an Air Force radar station, but officers reportedly doubted the deaths would be investigated. No surviving veterinary examination establishes when the birds became ill, what killed them or whether their condition had any connection to the claimed object.[Center for UFO Studies]cufos.orgCenter for UFO Studies
Why investigators remained doubtful
The United States Air Force took an interest through Project Blue Book, its programme for collecting and evaluating UFO reports. Astronomer J. Allen Hynek, then serving as a Blue Book consultant, travelled to Eagle River and interviewed Simonton. The investigation appears to have separated two questions: whether Simonton was knowingly staging a hoax, and whether his interpretation of the experience was reliable.
Private correspondence from the period says Hynek gave Simonton a favourable assessment for personal reliability but considered whether a vivid dream or hallucination could explain the account. Under that hypothesis, Simonton might have confused ordinary pancakes already present in his home with a dream-like episode. A later summary of the Air Force paperwork cited inconsistencies and the lack of supporting evidence as reasons to suspect hallucination followed by delusion.[Center for UFO Studies]cufos.orgCenter for UFO Studies
That proposed explanation was speculative. The surviving material does not show a clinical examination establishing that Simonton was prone to hallucinations, and living alone is not evidence of a psychiatric disorder. Critics of Blue Book were justified in questioning an explanation that seemed to move from “no corroboration” to a medical-sounding conclusion without adequate medical evidence.
Yet rejecting the hallucination theory does not validate the landing. The case also permits other possibilities: a deliberate story, an elaborate prank, confusion between waking experience and dreaming, or an event embellished through repeated interviews. None can now be demonstrated. The important distinction is that Blue Book’s psychological suggestion was weak, while Simonton’s extraterrestrial interpretation was weaker still because it required an undocumented craft and occupants to explain cakes made of ordinary ingredients.
Civilian investigators were divided. NICAP initially expressed strong scepticism and decided that it lacked enough evidence to make an issue of such a sensational claim. Some individual correspondents wanted more sophisticated chemical and isotope work, while others regarded the samples as mundane. This disagreement has sometimes been presented as evidence that something was suppressed. The archived letters instead show a less dramatic picture: limited money, fragmented custody, differing investigative priorities and frustration over who possessed which sample.[Center for UFO Studies]cufos.orgCenter for UFO StudiesCenter for UFO Studies
Did later reporting strengthen the claim?
Later retellings strengthened the case as folklore rather than as evidence. Radio documentaries, books and local-history features preserved Simonton’s account and highlighted his reputation as a dependable working man. His consistent public manner made the story more human and arguably reduced the likelihood of a crude publicity hoax. Wisconsin media still treat the encounter as one of the state’s most distinctive UFO episodes.[wxpr.org]wxpr.orgA Northwoods Case for the X-Files | WXPRA Northwoods Case for the X-Files | WXPR
At the same time, repetition has blurred important details. Simonton’s age is variously given as 54, 55 or 60. Accounts differ over whether he received three or four cakes, whether the craft landed or hovered, and how quickly it disappeared. The occupants are sometimes inaccurately recast as later-style grey aliens, despite the early descriptions presenting them as short, dark-haired, human-looking men. These discrepancies do not automatically disprove the original report, but they show why modern summaries should not be treated as independent evidence.
No later laboratory result has established an exotic element, isotope ratio or manufacturing process. No photograph or instrument record has emerged. The supporting aerial sightings remain too imprecise or too distant in time to verify the claimed exchange. The central facts have therefore not improved since 1961: Simonton told a striking story, people who knew him considered him sincere, and ordinary flat cakes existed. Everything linking those cakes to a non-human craft rests on his testimony alone.
Why the case remains unresolved testimony
The Eagle River incident is best described as unresolved testimony with non-anomalous physical material. “Unresolved” here does not mean that an extraterrestrial explanation remains equally likely alongside ordinary ones. It means there is not enough evidence to reconstruct exactly why Simonton made the report or what experience, if any, lay behind it.
The cakes proved that Simonton possessed cakes. They did not prove where he obtained them. Their ordinary composition actively weakened their value as physical evidence because testing found no feature requiring an unusual source. Simonton’s reputation matters when judging whether he consciously lied, but good character cannot verify an event that nobody else witnessed.
Within Wisconsin’s UFO history, the space pancakes remain useful precisely because they demonstrate the limits of apparently tangible evidence. An object associated with a remarkable story may seem decisive, yet its value depends on documented origin, secure custody, meaningful anomalies and independent corroboration. Eagle River supplied none of those in sufficient form. The encounter survives as an intriguing and possibly sincere personal account, not as proof that a spacecraft landed in northern Wisconsin.
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Endnotes
1.
Source: cufos.org
Title: Center for UFO Studies
Link:https://cufos.org/PDFs/cases/1961_04_18_US_WI_Eagle-River_NICAP_Simonton-CE-III.pdf
2.
Source: wxpr.org
Title: A Northwoods Case for the X-Files | WXPR
Link:https://www.wxpr.org/arts-life/2019-07-24/a-northwoods-case-for-the-x-files
3.
Source: nicap.org
Link:https://www.nicap.org/chronos/1961fullrep.htm
4.
Source: cufos.org
Title: Center for UFO Studies Classic UFO Cases
Link:https://cufos.org/resources/classic-ufo-cases/
Source snippet
A thorough analysis was performed on one of the pancakes by the US Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, and the food was found t...
5.
Source: cufos.org
Title: ls Claim of Joe Simonton It was. 11 a.m.,
Link:https://cufos.org/PDFs/IUR%20issues/IUR%20Vol.%2021%20No.%201%20Spring%201996.pdf
6.
Source: cufos.org
Title: Hynek Archives
Link:https://cufos.org/hynek-biography/hynek-archives/
7.
Source: cufos.org
Title: About Us
Link:https://cufos.org/about-us/
8.
Source: cufos.org
Title: Project Blue Book
Link:https://cufos.org/resources/project-blue-book/
9.
Source: cufos.org
Title: Other Books
Link:https://cufos.org/resources/other-books/
10.
Source: cufos.org
Title: Classification Systems
Link:https://cufos.org/types-of-ufos/classification-systems/
11.
Source: cufos.org
Title: So You Want to be a Ufologist?
Link:https://cufos.org/resources/so-you-want-to-be-a-ufologist/
12.
Source: cufos.org
Link:https://cufos.org/
13.
Source: cufos.org
Title: Triangular UFOs
Link:https://cufos.org/types-of-ufos/triangular-ufos/
14.
Source: cufos.org
Title: Recommended Books
Link:https://cufos.org/resources/recommended-books/
15.
Source: cufos.org
Title: J. Allen Hynek Biography
Link:https://cufos.org/hynek-biography/j-allen-hynek-biography/
16.
Source: cufos.org
Title: UF O Catalogues
Link:https://cufos.org/resources/ufo-catalogues/
Additional References
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Source: washingtonpost.com
Link:https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2015/01/21/two-decades-of-mysterious-air-force-ufo-files-now-available-online/
Source snippet
“However the inconsistencies coupled with lack of supporting evidence tend to indicate that the witness suffered an (sic) hallucination f...
18.
Source: ufosunset.wordpress.com
Title: At this time NICAP was skittish about occupant reports because t
Link:https://ufosunset.wordpress.com/2024/04/28/ufos-4-lampshading-saucers-and-the-joe-simonton-case-april-28-2024/
Source snippet
# 4 – Lampshading Saucers and the Joe Simonton Case – Ufo SunsetApril 28, 2024 — Simonton gives one of the pancakes to Judge Carter, who...
Published: April 28, 2024
19.
Source: wuwm.com
Title: Four notable UFO sightings in Wisconsin to learn about | WUWM 89.7 FM
Link:https://www.wuwm.com/2021-10-26/four-notable-ufo-sightings-in-wisconsin-to-learn-about
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Four notable UFO sightings in Wisconsin to learn about | WUWM 89.7 FM - Milwaukee's NPR...
20.
Source: pursuitoftheparanormal.co.uk
Title: The Unconventional Ufologist Ep 6
Link:https://pursuitoftheparanormal.co.uk/episode/the-unconventional-ufologist-ep-6-the-1961-simonton-encounter
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The 1961 Simonton Encounter - Pursuit of the ParanormalNovember 2, 2025 — THE UNCONVENTIONAL UFOLOGIST EP 6 - THE 1961 SIMONTON ENCOUNTER...
Published: November 2, 2025
21.
Source: science.org
Link:https://www.science.org/doi/pdf/10.1126/science.135.3503.518.a
22.
Source: youtube.com
Title: We Found Missing Evidence from the Weirdest UFO Encounter
Link:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MaKZPy9NPYk
Source snippet
WEIRD WISCONSIN: Eagle River & Joe Simonton's BIZARRE UFO Pancakes...
23.
Source: timefordisclosure.com
Title: He reportedly r
Link:https://timefordisclosure.com/ufo-sighting-the-joe-simonton-story/
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UFO Sighting The Joe Simonton Story | Time For Disclosure | We have never been aloneApril 6, 2021 — UFO SIGHTING THE JOE SIMONTON STORY A...
Published: April 6, 2021
24.
Source: youtube.com
Title: Mindless Banter 139: Joe Simonton & the Alien Pancakes
Link:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a7MmWf8f_wc
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We Found Missing Evidence from the Weirdest UFO Encounter...
25.
Source: scribd.com
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