Tag: Val Johnson

The Val Johnson Incident of 1979 in Northern Minnesota

Article by Hannah Shirley                                                 May 4, 2021                                               (duluthnewstribune.com)

• In the early morning of August 27, 1979, Marshall County Sheriff’s deputy Val Johnson was driving his squad car down a dark highway about 16 miles outside Stephen, Minnesota, near the Canadian border. Johnson saw a bright orb of light, about a foot in diameter and hovering 3 or 4 feet off the ground ahead of him. He drove right into the orb which crashed through his windshield and then traveled back out of the car. Johnson apparently blacked out.

• When Johnson came to at about 1:40 am and called his dispatch to report the crash, he realized that he had been unconscious for about a half hour. Both his wristwatch and his car’s clock were 14 minutes slow. “I don’t know what happened,” he said over the radio while he waited for an ambulance. “Something hit me.”

• The incident left the car’s windshield and one headlight smashed, and both antennas bent. Skid marks from the vehicle could be seen for 800 feet. After being examined by a physician, Johnson was diagnosed with “welder-type” burns on his eyes similar to those suffered by people exposed to bright lights. But investigators could never determine the cause of the crash.

• In the forty years since the “Val Johnson Incident”, the patrol car has become a permanent exhibit and the biggest attraction in the Marshall County Historical Society Museum. In recent years, interest in the car and Johnson’s story have only grown, according to Kent Broten, president of the historical society. However, Johnson has never actually claimed that he saw a UFO. He maintains that he doesn’t know what he saw.

• Chad Lewis, a self-described “researcher of the weird” has written extensively about the Val Johnson incident and spoken about it on numerous occasions at the museum. “Some said they were around at that time, and it was all blown out of proportion,” says Lewis. In 1979, “everybody had UFO fever.” But Lewis says that other people in the community were “down to earth, rural people, [who] weren’t quick to make up a ruse for publicity”, and believed that Val had seen something.

• Eventually, the world moved on and the Val Johnson Incident faded from a sensational headline to a quirky part of local history. The new, younger fans of the Val Johnson Incident aren’t as interested in Val Johnson himself so much as they are in the paranormal and unexplained. Some make the trip every year just to see the car.

• Today, the Val Johnson Incident is considered one of the more significant events in ufology due to the facts that the incident left damage to the vehicle, that the reporting party was someone as credible as a sheriff’s deputy, and that independent investigators examined the car and failed to come up with any explanation. The hallmarks of the case – the loss of time, the faded memory, Johnson’s strange injuries, the bright light – would all become common elements of future UFO “sightings”. “If [Johnson] was looking to make this up, he would have been hard-pressed,” said Lewis. “[U]nless he was very interested in UFO literature and folklore, [but] he probably wouldn’t have known that.”

• Many skeptics at the time pointed out other plausible explanations, even if none could be proved. Some believed that Johnson was hot-rodding his vehicle out on the county road that night, and made the event up to cover his misconduct. Others believe he actually encountered a plane smuggling drugs into the state from Canada. Lewis says that people would be surprised how often people in rural northwest Minnesota notice strange things in the night sky. “Most of the people that talk to me said, ‘I’m not saying what it was, it was just really weird…something I’ve never seen.’ I think people are not aware of how common these reports have become.”

 

WARREN, Minn. — Whatever you believe happened the night of Aug. 27, 1979, one

                              Val Johnson

thing is certain: Val Johnson’s police cruiser hit something.

In the moments after the Marshall County Sheriff’s deputy awoke in his car in the middle of the night on a dark road, the front of his vehicle bearing obvious damage, that was the only thing he knew for certain, too.

“I don’t know what happened,” he said over the radio to a county dispatcher while he waited for an ambulance. “Something hit me.”

Johnson’s call to dispatch came at about 1:40 a.m. about 16 miles outside Stephen, Minn. Johnson didn’t know it yet, but he had been unconscious for about a half hour. The deputy was known for carefully setting his watch to match the dashboard clock in his cruiser b

                Val Johnson’s patrol car

efore every shift – but when he awoke, both his watch and the clock were 14 minutes slow.

The details of the crash only got stranger. Johnson told the dispatcher that just before the crash, he saw a bright orb of light, about 8 to 12 inches in diameter and hovering 3 or 4 feet off the ground. The last thing he remembered was driving into the light, and seeing the orb enter the car through his windshield before going back out.

The incident left the car’s windshield and one headlight smashed, and both antennas bent. Skid marks from the vehicle could be seen for 800 feet. After being examined by a physician, Johnson was diagnosed with “welder-type” burns on his eyes similar to those suffered by people exposed to bright lights.

Investigators were brought in, but could never determine the cause of the crash.

Those who were directly involved in the night’s events couldn’t be reached – some loved ones told the Grand Forks Herald that after 40 years of cold calls, they had grown reticent about discussing what has come to be known as the “Val Johnson Incident.”

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UFO Or No? Forty Years Later, a Minnesota Town Still Wonders

Listen to “E85 9-5-19 UFO Or No? Forty Years Later, a Minnesota Town Still Wonders” on Spreaker.
Article by John Reinan                           August 23, 2019                        (startribune.com)

• August 27th marks the 40th anniversary of “The Marshall County Incident” when in 1979, Marshall County deputy sheriff Val Johnson had a mysterious encounter that some have called one of the Top 10 most significant UFO encounters ever recorded. Marshall County is located in Northwest Minnesota near the North Dakota and Canadian borders.

• At the time, the Marshall County Incident drew national attention to a town of only 1,500 residents. Today, the county commemorates the incident with a museum and a festival featuring a re-enactment, an interview with the original sheriff’s radio dispatcher involved in the incident, a costume contest, live music, and appearances by several ufologists.

• In 1979, deputy sheriff Val Johnson, age 35 at the time, had been with the Marshall County Sheriff’s Department for almost three years. In the early morning of August 27th, he saw a bright light in the sky visible for miles across the flat prairie. Thinking it could be an aircraft from the nearby Air Force base in Grand Forks, N.D., he drove toward it to investigate. Johnson said he saw a bright light about a foot in diameter hovering about 3 feet off the ground. Suddenly the light “went at” him and white light engulfed his squad car.

• Forty minutes later, Johnson woke up. His eyes and face were burned and he had a lump on his forehead. The windshield on Johnson’s squad car was cracked in a spiderweb pattern.  There was a hole in one of his red flashers and a dime-sized dent in the hood. Two antennas were bent. Both the electric clock in his car and his windup Timex wristwatch had stopped for 14 minutes. At 2:19 am, Johnson radioed in to headquarters saying, “Something just hit my car… It wasn’t a vehicle. I don’t know what the hell it was.”

• The County Sheriff Dennis Brekke called in experts to investigate. A Honeywell engineer speculated that the deputy had encountered “a highly charged electrical ‘thing’ with enough mass and momentum to create the effects.” The investigation was closed without reaching any conclusions.

• Johnson is now 75.  He has given dozens of interviews and has appeared on the TV show “That’s Incredible”. But Johnson has declined further interviews and has rarely spoken publicly about the incident. Said Johnson, “For the first three years, it was on my mind daily. After that I went on with my life.” “This is what happened to me. If you choose to believe, great. If you choose not to believe, that’s OK, too.”

Sounding groggy but calm, the Marshall County deputy sheriff radioed in from his patrol car at 2:19 a.m. on a lonely country road in northwest Minnesota.

Val Johnson standing with his squad car from 1979

“Something just hit my car,” said Val Johnson. “I don’t know how to explain it. Strange. … Something attacked my car.”
He’d seen a bright light in the sky, he said, visible for miles across the flat prairie, and drove toward it to investigate.

Fellow officers listening in quickly got on the radio and began speculating about what had happened. Perhaps he’d been hit by a small car, one suggested.

Johnson cut them short.

“It wasn’t a vehicle,” he snapped. “I don’t know what the hell it was.”

Four decades later, nobody else knows what the hell it was, either. But that won’t keep Warren from celebrating the biggest mystery to hit this town as far back as anyone can remember.

Tuesday marks the 40th anniversary of Johnson’s brush with a UFO, which drew national attention to this town of 1,500 residents near the North Dakota border, some 320 miles northwest of the Twin Cities. The incident has been called one of the Top 10 most significant UFO encounters ever recorded.

The county historical museum, where Johnson’s rust-colored Ford LTD squad car is the star attraction, will host a presentation featuring a re-enactment of his radio call that night. Several ufologists will be on hand, as well as the dispatcher who spoke with Johnson that night.

There will be an alien costume contest for the kids, and the Jensen Sisters from Thief River Falls will perform their original song “The Marshall County Incident.”

 Val Johnson’s cracked squad car windshield

Sherlyn Meiers, the museum director, says interest in the event has been strong.

“I have been getting phone calls almost every day for the past month,” she said. “Maybe we’re gonna have a bigger crowd than we thought.”

The light ‘went at’ him

Johnson, 35 at the time, had been with the Marshall County Sheriff’s Department for almost three years. Quiet and well-respected, he’d been making a routine patrol on rural roads when he saw the light in the night sky, just across the Red River from Grafton, N.D. He wondered if it might be an aircraft from the nearby Air Force base in Grand Forks, N.D.
Johnson drove toward the light. The next thing he knew, some 40 minutes later, he woke up. His eyes and face were burned — doctors later described them as welder’s burns — and he had a lump on his forehead.

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The Most Credible UFO Sightings and Encounters in Modern History, According to Research

by Callum Paton              April 17, 2019              (newsweek.com)

  • Unidentified flying objects (UFOs) have been recorded since ancient times. But it was Kenneth Arnold’s sighting of flying saucers near Mount Rainier in 1947 that launched the modern era of UFO sightings. The U.S. military immediately moved to discredit Arnold’s claims, along with any other claim of the existence of an extraterrestrial UFO. “The (Arnold) report cannot bear even superficial examination, therefore, must be disregarded,” the Air Force Materiel Command wrote.  With Project Blue Book, the Air Force went on to discredit every single UFO sighting until the project’s end in 1969. 
  • However, the civilian scientist who helped to run Project Blue Book, Allen Hynek, claimed that the Air Force had underplayed the credibility of UFOs. He went on to devise a classification system for grading UFO sightings – ‘close encounters of the third kind’, etc. 
  • Taking its cue from Hynek, Newsweek magazine created its own rating system for UFO sightings on a point-based system. They points are awarded, or subtracted, based on factors such as witness credibility, photographic/video evidence, flight attributes, proximity, physical effect, and discredit by the government/military.  The writer also used input from the Scientific Coalition for UFOlogy (SCU) composed of 45 UFO ‘experts’. 
  • SCU board member Robert Powell says that some 6,000 UFO encounters are reported every year. “Ninety-eight percent or more of sightings are basically misidentifications of airplanes or Chinese lanterns, or a variety of different things,” Powell told Newsweek. Chiming in, Seth Shostak, the Senior astronomer at the SETI Institute, told Newsweek, “Could the rest be alien craft?  Maybe, but that’s like saying that the 40 percent of homicides committed in New York City that are unsolved could be due to alien murderers. Possible, but not likely.” 
  • Here are 25 UFO sightings and their ‘credibility rating’ according to this Newsweek writer: 
  1. Roswell Incident – Roswell, New Mexico July 1947: Hundreds of witnesses claim an alien craft crash landed near a ranch with one or more dead extraterrestrial beings inside. In 1997, the Air Force released a report denying everything, and declaring “case closed”. Credibility Rating: -2
  1. Kenneth Arnold UFO Sighting – Mount Rainier, Washington June 1947: Pilot Kenneth Arnold witnessed nine “circular-type” objects flying in formation at twice the speed of sound. It was dismissed out of hand by an Air Force investigation. Arnold maintained his account until his death in 1984. Credibility Rating: 0  
  1. Levelland UFO Case – Levelland, Texas November 1957: Multiple witnesses reported seeing an egg-shaped object or a large flash of light moving across the sky in the small Texas town. The sighting was later discredited by the Air Force’s Project Blue Book, claiming the phenomenon had been caused by severe electrical storms and ball lightning. Credibility Rating: 0 
  2. Stephenville, Texas Sighting – Stephenville, Texas January 2008: Multiple witnesses reported seeing inexplicable objects moving through the sky or bright lights. Naval Air Station Fort Worth at first said that no planes had been active from that base that night. Then they retracted and claimed that those were their planes after all.  Credibility Rating: 0
  1. NASA Curiosity Rover Photograph – Mars March 2019: Ufologist Scott C. Waring claims to have spotted a UFO on Mars in images beamed back from NASA’s Curiosity Rover. Credibility Rating: 1 
  2. The Washington, D.C. Flap – Washington, D.C.  July 1952: On two separate occasions Air Force F-94s were scrambled over Washington after UFOs were sighted on radar at Andrews and Bolling Air Force bases. The bogeys cruised at between 100 to 130 mph before zooming off at incredible speed, outrunning the military jets. Credibility Rating: 3
  1. Valensole UFO Sighting – Valensole, Alpes-de-Haute-Provence, France
    July 1965:     Maurice Masse claimed he saw two humanoid aliens land a spherical UFO in a field and exit the craft. The French farmer said he was left paralyzed when one of the beings pointed a cylindrical instrument at him. The pair then flew away after briefly inspecting the surroundings. Credibility Rating: 3
  1. Delphos Ring Incident – Delphos, Kansas November 1971: Sixteen-year-old Ronald Johnson claimed to have seen a glowing object hovering over a specific area close to his family farm in the early evening. When he went to fetch other witnesses the object had vanished. However, an eerie glowing ring was found where the UFO had been. Another witness corroborated to police the sighting of the strange flying object. Credibility Rating: 3
  1. Loring Air Force Base Sighting – Loring Air Force Base, Maine October 1975: On two successive nights service members reported seeing a cigar-shaped UFO hovering over Loring Air Force Base, which was also seen on radar. The government attributed it to “unidentified helicopter(s) flying out of Canada.” Credibility Rating: 3 
  2. Val Johnson Incident – Marshall County, Minnesota August 1979: On the morning on September 11, 1979, Marshall County sheriff’s deputy Val Johnson encountered what he described as a white ball of light hovering a few feet above the ground while driving on a rural section of a State Highway.  “[S]uddenly it was in the car with me”. Johnson woke up in a ditch half an hour later. His patrol car had suffered superficial damage and he had burns around his eyes.  Credibility Rating: 3 
  3. Cash-Landrum Sighting – Dayton, Texas December 1980: Betty Cash, Vickie Landrum and Colby Landrum claim they were followed by hovering disc with a single fiery thruster as they drove home in eastern Texas. When the trio abandoned their car they felt intense heat generated by the UFO. All three claimed to suffer health problems in the aftermath of the encounter.  Credibility Rating: 3 
  4. Trans-en-Provence Case – Trans-en-Provence,Var, France  January 1981:  Renato Nicolaï, a 55-year-old farmer, observed a saucer-shaped UFO land on his property at a distance of about 50 yards. The lead-colored vessel then lifted off from the ground and flew towards a nearby tree line. The case is considered remarkable because of scorch marks left by the machine, documented and extensively analysed by French authorities. Credibility Rating: 3
  1. Belgian UFO Wave – Belgium March 1990: Over a number of days, scores of individuals reported seeing strange lights in the sky over Belgium. Belgian Air Force F-16s claimed to have seen nothing.  But the European media   exploded when an image of one of the triangular UFOs emerged, which was then revealed to be a fake. Credibility Rating: 3 
  2. Phoenix Lights Phenomenon – Phoenix, Arizona March 1997: Hundreds of witnesses saw “otherworldly” lights move across the night sky over Arizona, Nevada and northern Mexico. The sighting consisted of a giant V-shaped craft with lights and a series of stationary orange and red lights hanging in the sky. Arizona’s governor at the time, Fife Symington, said. “It was bigger than anything that I’ve ever seen. It remains a great mystery.”  Credibility Rating: 3 
  3. McMinnville UFO Photographs – McMinnville, Oregon  May 1950:  Paul Trent captured images of a UFO on camera after his wife spotted a slow-moving metal disk near their farm. The images were printed in Life magazine. The pair maintained their account until their deaths. Credibility Rating: 4
  1. Shag Harbour Sighting – Shag Harbour, Nova Scotia, Canada October 1967:  Multiple witnesses, including pilots, reported to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police that they had witnessed a UFO with many flashing lights flying over the shoreline. A dozen or so witnesses said they saw a glowing orange sphere crash into the water and then slip beneath the surface. No wreckage was ever found.  Credibility Rating: 4 
  2. The 1976 Tehran Incident – Tehran, Iran September 1976:  Two Iranian F-4 interceptor aircraft reported their equipment jammed as they approached a star-shaped UFO over the Iranian capital. Ground control equipment at Mehrabad International Airport was also affected by the strange craft. The pilot Parviz Jafari said he attempted to fire on the UFO but was unable to cause any damage. “My weapons jammed and my radio communications garbled.” Credibility Rating: 4
  1. Coyne, Mansfield Helicopter Incident – Mansfield, Ohio October 1973: Four crew members of an Army Reserve helicopter recorded a near collision with a UFO near Charles Mill Lake. The incident was corroborated by witnesses in Richland and Ashland counties who described an object or a ball of light moving in a manner inconsistent with human flight. The crew on the helicopter, piloted by Lawrence Coyne, reported seeing a 60-foot-long, cigar-shaped object with a bright green light.  Credibility Rating: 4 
  1. Nancy France Sighting – Nancy, Grand Est, France October 1982:  A biologist, M. Henri, and his wife observed a UFO that hovered for 20 minutes over their garden. The egg-shaped vessel had a shiny metallic appearance. Henri attempted to photograph the craft but found his camera had jammed. After the UFO regained altitude it moved at a speed and trajectory impossible for man-made aircraft. Credibility Rating: 4
  1. Japan Airlines Flight 1628 Incident – Alaska November 1986:  The pilot, Kenji Terauchi, and crew of a Japan Airlines cargo flight from Paris to Tokyo reported seeing strange flashing colorful lights that followed their aircraft over Alaska while the plane cruised at 35,000 feet.  Credibility Rating: 4
  1. Chicago O’Hare Airport Sighting – Chicago, Illinois November 2006: On an overcast day, United Airlines staff and pilots at Chicago O’Hare Airport reported seeing a flying saucer hovering over the airport terminal. The vessel then shot up into the air so quickly that it punched a hole in the clouds. The FAA called it a “weather phenomenon” and did not further investigate the incident.  Credibility Rating: 4
  1. Rendlesham Forest Incident – Suffolk, England December 1980: Between December 26-28, 1980, U.S. Air Force personnel stationed at RAF Bentwaters reported seeing strange lights near Rendlesham forest. The incident was never investigated. However, radar operators at the base recounted how they had observed a UFO moving too quickly for normal human flight.  Credibility Rating: 5
  1. Aguadilla Airport Incident – Aguadilla, Puerto Rico April 2013:  A UFO was seen flying at low altitude across the Rafael Hernandez Airport runway in Aguadilla, Puerto Rico. A U.S. Customs and Border Protection aircraft captured infrared video of the episode that was given to the Scientific Coalition for UFOology (SCU). The video shows the vessel travelling without lights below tree-top altitude, at speeds close to 100 mph.  Credibility Rating: 6
  1. USS Nimitz Tic-Tac UFO Incident – California Coast November 2004:  U.S. Navy pilot Cmdr. David Fravor recalled seeing “something not from this earth” – a tic-tac shaped vessel moving at great speed – while commanding a U.S. Navy strike fighter squadron during exercises some 60 to 100 miles off the coast of Baja California. He recounted observing. A separate Navy jet crew tracked the object and filmed it for more than a minute. The footage was publicized by the New York Times following following the Pentagon’s acknowledgement of its Advanced Aviation Threat Identification Program, a recent study of UFO sightings.  Credibility Rating: 6
  1. F/A-18 Super Hornet GO FASTER Video – East Coast 2015:  The third video recently released by the Pentagon shows the high-speed flight of an unidentified aircraft at low altitude by a U.S. Navy F/A-18 Super Hornet off over the Atlantic off of Virginia.
  • [Editor’s Note] All of these UFO incidents, with the exception of Scott Waring’s UFO on Mars, are credible and true, and are excellent accounts to look into.  This arbitrary rating system, however, is simply the mainstream media’s way of assuring the public that they are on top of the UFO phenomenon, and, as usual, there is nothing here to be concerned about.  But should anything new happen that might change this perspective, the mainstream media will be there to tell the people what to believe.

 

The modern era of UFO sightings began in 1947 when Kenneth Arnold, a businessman and pilot from Idaho, spotted what he believed was a formation of flying saucers near Mount Rainier in Washington. Encounters with unidentified flying objects have been recorded since ancient times, but Arnold’s sighting hooked the American public. It was the encounter that launched a thousand theories.

The U.S. military attempted to discredit Arnold’s claims. “The report cannot bear even superficial examination, therefore, must be disregarded,” the Air Force Materiel Command wrote in a now-declassified document.

As reported sightings increased and UFO obsession spread like wildfire, its flames fanned by the notorious Roswell incident, the military attempted to douse the issue. A series of UFO studies commissioned by the U.S. Air Force culminated in Project Blue Book, which wrapped up in 1969 and found no evidence of the presence of extraterrestrial vehicles on Earth or in the skies above.

The Air Force clearly hoped to put an end to the UFO craze—but the studies had the opposite effect. Josef Allen Hynek, who had overseen the Air Force efforts, broke with the military, claiming the importance of UFOs had been underplayed. His scientific analysis forms much of the basis of modern UFOlogy and his close encounters classification system is the benchmark in grading the credibility of UFO sightings.

In devising our own credibility rating system for UFO sightings, Newsweek built upon Hynek’s foundations. The astronomer and preeminent UFOlogist valued sightings that involved multiple or highly credible witnesses. We have also incorporated advances in technology into our scale. The advent of cameras and infrared devices on aircraft have presented new kinds of evidence for sightings.

The credibility scale works on a point-based system. One point is given for sightings with multiple witnesses, another for an expert witness (a pilot, air traffic controller, military or government official). One point is awarded for picture evidence and an additional point for film of a moving UFO. Unidentified flying objects can often be explained away as foreign aircraft, so an additional point is given for UFOs seen to be flying in a manner inconsistent with flight as humans know it.

Hynek also prized close encounters. Close encounters of the first kind—sightings of an object less than 500 feet away—are given one point. Close encounters of the second kind, a UFO event where a physical effect is felt (a car light breaks, extreme heat is felt, scorch marks on the ground), are given two points. Finally, close encounters of the third kind, instances where an animated pilot is seen, earn three points.

A system for removing points has also been incorporated to account for cases where military or government bodies have discredited the sightings. Three points are removed in these cases, as the baseline for credibility in the scale begins at three.

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The Val Johnson Incident: A UFO encounter that made Marshall County famous

by Hannah Jones                  May 24, 2018                      (citypages.com)

• On August 27, 1979, Marshall County (Minnesota) Deputy sheriff Val Johnson was driving in a road about ten miles outside of Stephen MN on a clear night when he saw an 8- to 12-inch ball of light floating about three-and-a-half feet off the ground, zooming along the road. He sped up, following the glowing orb down a dark stretch of road. Suddenly the bright light was upon him, and he remembered the sound of glass breaking and the brakes seizing up.

• Johnson woke up 39 minutes later with his head on the steering wheel. His car was sitting on its side, halfway off the road in the opposite lane. His head hurt. His eyes hurt. But he managed to radio headquarters to say that something hit his car. The windshield was shattered and the hood dented. (see image above) The patrol car’s antennae were bent backward and one of the headlights was busted. An ambulance took Johnson to a hospital. He was treated and released for eye burns, the kind welders get from staring at the sparks.

• During questioning, they noticed his watch was 14 minutes behind. Johnson had always been fastidious about syncing his watch and his car clock with headquarters when he started his shifts. They also discovered the clock in his car was 14 minutes slow.

• They called in Allan Hendry, an investigator with the Center for UFO Studies in Illinois. Hendry studied the car and the circumstances, and determined that it wasn’t a hoax. Other experts were called in but none could explain the incident. Johnson and his family were inundated in calls from the press. But as time went on, other headlines crowded the front page and the event fell into relative obscurity. Then along came the internet. “There’s probably more interest in [Johnson] now than there was 20 years ago,” says Kent Broten, president of the Marshall County Historical Society. The Marshall County Museum still has Johnson’s car, and it’s one of their most popular exhibits.

• To this day, the incident remains unsolved.

 

It was late August in Marshall County, 1979. Deputy sheriff Val Johnson was on patrol in his Ford LTD at 1:30 a.m., heading out on County Road 5. He got about 10 miles away from Stephen when he saw a light through the driver’s side window.

It was an 8- to 12-inch ball of light floating about three-and-a-half feet off the ground, zooming along the road. Johnson thought it had to be a truck with a busted headlight. But it was too bright for that. Whatever it was, Johnson decided to follow it.

He sped up to 55 mph, following the glowing orb down a dark stretch of country road. He’s not certain what happened next. One second the light was dead ahead, and the next it was upon him, painfully bright. All he remembers is the sound of glass breaking and the brakes seizing up.

He woke up 39 minutes later with his head on the steering wheel. He raised it to take in a sideways view of the world. His car was sitting on its side, halfway off the road in the opposite lane. His head hurt. His eyes hurt. But he managed to radio headquarters.

When they asked what was wrong, he told them he honestly didn’t know. All he knew was that something hit his car.

Rescuers found his car in a sorry state. The windshield was shattered, and there was a hefty dent in the hood. The antennae were folded neatly backward, with all the desiccated corpses of careless insects still attached. One of the headlights was busted.

An ambulance transported Johnson to a Warren hospital. Doctors determined he’d sustained eye burns, the kind welders get from staring at the sparks shooting off their instruments. He was treated and released.

He told Sheriff Dennis Brekke what he saw. He had no explanation for it. During questioning, they noticed his watch was 14 minutes behind. This was strange for Johnson. He had always been fastidious about syncing his watch and his car clock with headquarters when he started his shifts. They also discovered the clock in his car was 14 minutes slow.

The department was dumbfounded. They had no idea how any of this could be explained. That’s when Brekke called the Center for UFO Studies in Illinois. UFO investigator Allan Hendry turned up in Warren the next day.

Hendry was an astronomer, ufologist and advocate for the “scientific study of UFOs.” His book, “The UFO Handbook: A Guide to Investigating, Evaluating, and Reporting UFO Sightings” was all about being comprehensive and critical of supposed encounters, and separating tricks of the mind from the truly unexplained. Hendry studied the car and the circumstances. He came to only one conclusion: whatever happened, this wasn’t a hoax.

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