Somewhere in the Skies - Just Another Tin-Foil Hat | Joe Simonton and the Alien Pancakes

Starting point is 00:00:02 Welcome to Just Another Tinfoil hat with your host, Zilia Edgar. Join Zilia as she walks us through some of the most bizarre UFO cases and incidents of high strangeness. Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. I'm just another tinfoil hat. Welcome to my show. Today, we are going to be discussing one of my all-time favorite cases of UFO occupant contact, and that is the Simon Tin Encounter, or as Dr. Heinek remembered it, the man from Wisconsin with the pancakes.

Starting point is 00:00:35 Yes, I did say pancakes and Wisconsin. Seriously, I am just so thrilled that one of my favorite cases of the weird happened in my state. And again, I know it's a weird state, but as you'll see from this upcoming story, it gets even weirder. So this case happened in Eagle River, Wisconsin, April 18th of 1961.

Starting point is 00:00:56 Around 11 in the morning, Joe Simonton, a chicken farmer, was eating breakfast. breakfast when he heard a noise outside which he described as sounding like knobby tires on a wet pavement. Of course, wondering what the heck of this, the source of this noise could be, he went outside and take a look and saw a bright silver object, about 12 feet tall and 30 feet in diameter, shaped like two inverted bowls, with little exhaust pipes, the exhaust pipes about six or seven inches in diameter spaced around the rim, hovering slightly over the ground.

Starting point is 00:01:31 He's staring at this thing. A hatch opens up on the side of it and he looks in and sees three men. Not just any men, he described them as looking like Italians, each one about five feet tall, and wearing black turtlenecks and knit helmets. So one of these Italian-looking UFO occupants, closest to the hatch, passes a container out to Simonton that appears to be made out of the same material as the craft itself, and somehow conveyed that they needed water. It's interesting because across, I've listened to one interview with Simonton, and of course he was interviewed many times by many different people, and it's never entirely sure whether

Starting point is 00:02:11 this communication was telepathic or simply body language, but however it was, he understood that they needed water. So Simonton, and this is just, again, Wisconsin's a weird state, but this is just cliche weird. It's like, okay, there's this, for lack of a better term, flying saucer, this craft hovering outside of my house. There's these Italian-looking occupants inside, and they're asking for water. And Simon who is just like, hey, sure thing, man, let me get you that. And that's exactly what he did. He went inside, got the water, and came back out.

Starting point is 00:02:47 Now, when he came back over with the water, he was able to get a better view of the inside of the ship, and he said that the interior was dark about the color of raw. iron. There is no discernible light source, which is common with people who see the inside of UFOs. And it was filled with instrument panels and there was this generator like hum present. But not only that, one of these entities appeared to be frying something on a flameless grill. So Simon in motion that he was just interested in what this guy was doing and perhaps mistakenly thinking that he wanted a sample, one of these entities who was dressed at the The Besta liked the other two but had a slight difference, he had red trim on his pants,

Starting point is 00:03:32 handed him three of the now infamous Alien Pancakes. So then this entity, closest to Simon Tin, attached some sort of hook to a belt on his clothing, and I guess sort of moved away as the hatch closed. And when the hatch closed, it left absolutely no impression on the side of the object, rose 20 feet and then kind of took off in a southern direction, apparently even bowing some of the nearby pine trees. Now Simonton contacted the sheriff, a man who at this point in time he had known for 14 years. And this is a really good spot to mention that Simonton was really well respected in his community.

Starting point is 00:04:12 He wasn't the sort of person that would be making stuff like this up for attention or fame. And like many witnesses, he says that after the whole thing, the media frenzy that ensued, he really wished that he hadn't come forward with his experience at all. Because not only was there a police investigation, but there was an Air Force investigation as well. Jay-on-Hineck actually was involved with this investigation, and Heinek is an interesting study in and of himself, and that whole thing is just such a can of worms, because he worked with projects, Sine, Grudge, and Blue Book, and was even the person to utter the infamous swamp gas statement. But the gist of it is that after so many years of looking at the UFO problem,

Starting point is 00:04:58 he really came to the conclusion that there was something to it after all. And I'd say he'd started out kind of more as a skeptic, but yeah, definitely as he worked through so many of his cases, it became apparent to him that there's more than, you know, misidentification or mental imbalance to a lot of sightings. So anyway, in the case of the Simonton encounter, however, the official Air Force conclusion was that Simon Tid had inserted a waking dream on the reality around him. And here's the trick is that this idea suited both conventional scientists

Starting point is 00:05:36 who typically really don't want much to do with the UFO problem in general. And the hardcore euphologists who always have a hard enough time appearing legit without such problems as interstellar breakfast foods. And the big nail in this coffin is unfortunately the pancakes themselves. I mean, it's ridiculous. There's a picture of Simonton holding the pancakes, and I'm not going to lie, they don't even really look like pancakes. They look awful. They're these like, they're about this big, these like porous sort of, I don't know,

Starting point is 00:06:11 like hard cracker like objects. And, you know, they look terrible. Apparently they were. Simonton barring any concerns about radiation or alien virus. or anything, actually ate one and said that it tastes like cardboard. So, Simonton tried one, and then he sent another one out to be tested by the Food and Drug Laboratory of the U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare. And I'll cut the suspense. The pancakes came back as ordinary terrestrial materials.

Starting point is 00:06:45 So this brings up somehow even more questions than the same thing. simple fact of alien pancakes. Because if we are to believe Simonton's encounter, which, barring the Air Force explanation, in every official capacity, he proved to be a legitimate witness who really believed in what he had observed and experienced, and honestly had evidence, trace evidence in the form of these pancakes to boot, then why were they made out of earthly materials? I mean, did the aliens just, you know, drop in, pop out to the store, grab some Crisco, and wheat bran, and buckwheat hulls, and fry up some pancakes. It just really doesn't make any sense. So, it is a really funny thing to note, but when I first came across this encounter, I was very much

Starting point is 00:07:34 into the strictly flesh and blood extraterrestrial biological entity theory for UFO occupant encounters. And that being said, when I heard that the Air Force was involved, you know, the only the explanation I could find for the pancakes coming back as being of earthly materials was, you probably guessed it, cover up. This is the biggest news since Roswell, the case of the alien pancakes. And that's kind of the issue using conventional models is the further along you get on any line of reasoning, honestly, the more ridiculous it tends to become. And barring anything else, you still have the question of, do aliens eat pancakes? There's, Also the issue of how, like in many reports, they had no sort of protective gear on.

Starting point is 00:08:23 They were wearing just turtleneck two-piece suits and knit caps. I mean, how do they breathe our air or exist in our atmosphere? And if they were prepared enough to have ingredients, why did they need the water from Joe Simonton? Really, to look at the Simonton case in its totality is to see patterns of a very much older phenomenon, that of fairy lore. Most people, many people, made connections between current UFO occupant encounters and fairies. Inso much as to say that what people used to consider fairies are, get this guy's actually aliens. And, you know, we were mistaken what we thought were else, fairies, gnomes, the good folk, the gentry, whatever you want to call it. You know, no, that's not it.

Starting point is 00:09:06 They're actually space aliens. We just couldn't get that back in the dark ages. That's what we came up with this fairy lore. But now we got it. you know, Marvin, we got your number, it's actually those craft aliens with their spacecraft. However, I always kind of get to this point then where I wonder what it's going to be called when the current model of UFO occupants from other planets becomes outdated. Because really, currently, there's a problem. Most, I shouldn't say most, but many different

Starting point is 00:09:36 sightings of this, what we consider a single phenomenon, don't fit this current model. I mean, using only the Eagle River incident as an example, we have many of the problems easily presented here. When Joe Simonton was handed pancakes from supposedly another world or occupants of another world, why were they made out of buckwheat and soybean hulls and hydrogenated oil? Why were the radiation readings normal? Why did they need water? Why did they give him food? Why did he come into contact with beings that looked like Italians instead of, I don't know,

Starting point is 00:10:09 crystal and silicon-based life forms or something like that. I mean, even if you subscribe to the idea that mankind was either planted or altered by similar life forms. As the Krispy Chicken sandwich from 7-Eleven, people always call me loud. And I'm like, yeah, I know. I'm crispy. Did you expect me to whisper? If you want quiet, go eat some soup and reflect. Like, I know I'm a handful. I'm bold, I'm juicy. Throw some pickles and barbecue sauce on me, and baby, I'm a whole meal. And with 7 rewards, I'm just $4. Quiet.

Starting point is 00:10:41 No. Krispy, saucy, and $4? Very. Only at 711. Valley through 62326 participating stores only well supplies lastly app for full terms. The possibility of them breathing our air and drinking our water,

Starting point is 00:10:55 it just really doesn't make that much sense. And even if they could, you know, then I have serious concerns as to why such as seemingly or supposedly advanced society if they created us and apparently are concerned with us, spend their time handing out pancakes to chicken farmers and common earth rocks to farm wives. It really, it doesn't neatly follow this idea of the alien presence model that has been popular

Starting point is 00:11:26 for most of this past century and what fits our frame of reference for this time. Yet Simonton was a reliable witness. All of these things that don't make sense and points that don't add up are present in his encounter, which pretty much everyone who investigated it claims he believed he experienced, and he had physical evidence to back that up. I mean, it can't follow, yet if we dedicate ourselves to really understanding the problem of UFO encounters, we kind of have to follow it.

Starting point is 00:11:58 So this whole case is covered extensively in Passport to Magonia, which of course was Jacques Valet's groundbreaking book about the ties between fairy lore and current alien encounters. And Kiel discussed this in some length in most of his works as well. And surprisingly enough, the point that really launches the Simonton encounter right into Fairyland is the famous Blapjacks. For some bizarre reason, baked goods feature prominently across mythologies and religions worldwide. I mean, from the importance of unleavened bread in the Judeo-Christian tradition, traditions to many documented encounters of fairies giving people all manner of bakery items across Europe. For some reason, there seems to be a special connection between specifically flat cakes and supernatural encounters.

Starting point is 00:12:48 And again, this was covered in passport to Magonia. Ridiculous as it sounds, a very well-documented case of what was considered demonic torment in the 1600s began with a mysterious pancake. So this also kind of brings up a point that Keel uncovered, which is that most contactees, people who believe they're being contacted by other intelligences or outside influences, have a high starch diet. And another side to Keel's work is another anomaly from the pancakes, and that is the absence of salt. So as was pointed out in Passport to Megonia, there is a precedent in fairy lore for that fairies

Starting point is 00:13:30 cannot eat or do not like salt. On the flip side, however, through keel's work, we have many reports of the men in black downright devouring salt. The strange case covered in the Mothman prophecies was one even asked for salt to take a pill. So as we eventually get to with all of these different encounters, what does it all mean? I mean, here you have Simonton's entities which came from the sky in an object that looks a heck of a lot like, what we consider to be a flying saucer, giving him unsalted pancakes, thus in line with the older tradition of fairy lore. To the opposite point, you have the decidedly unearthly men in black, also known to come down from the sky and flying saucers, in addition to their black

Starting point is 00:14:14 Cadillacs, making a point to request salt. I mean, in trying to establish patterns between these two different types of phenomena, these two different entities, it's almost as though points arise simply to confound other points. Another bizarre point is the request for help or the implication that help is needed. This is a really huge commonality between current paranormal encounters and fairy lore. I mean, it's easy enough to see even in fairy tales, and the current model of UFO's crash landing also fits this theme. Even religious apparitions like Our Lady of Guadalupe often fall into this category as well. And it gets even creepier. I've read cryptid reports where people are under the assumption that the literal monster that they are looking at needs help or somehow hurt

Starting point is 00:15:07 or injured and they want to go help it. It's to the point where this seems like more than just your basic human empathy, it seems like to be a genuine impression somehow attached to these sightings. So I guess the point here, amid all these contradictions and paradoxes and pancakes, is that while Simonton's encounter is considered an outlier in the current model of UFO sightings, it's most certainly not in regards to a far older model of contact. And again, I really do. I just wonder what people will call it a couple hundred years from now when we're being laughed at for calling these entities aliens and extraterrestrials.

Starting point is 00:15:47 So with that said, I'm just another tin foil. Hat. Signing all. This has been just another tinfoil hat with Zelia Edgar. Be sure to rate and review wherever you get your podcasts. For full video versions of these episodes, be sure to subscribe to Just Another Tinfoil Hat on YouTube. Thank you for listening. Lots of places can expose you to identity theft.

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Somewhere in the Skies - Just Another Tin-Foil Hat | Joe Simonton and the Alien Pancakes

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