By KEN KORCZAK
About 25 years ago, I tried an interesting experiment.
I took out a classified ad in several small-town newspapers here in conservative, rural northern Minnesota. Here is what the ad said:
“Have you seen a UFO, ghost, or anything you can’t explain? Please call me: 555-5555. Confidentiality guaranteed.”
I was expecting nothing, or maybe a few prank calls, but my phone started ringing almost as soon as the ads hit the streets. None of them were prank calls. It turns out that a lot of ordinary, everyday people had a lot of paranormal encounters and experiences to get off their chests. Many calls started with something like:
“I’ve never told anyone this before, not even my own family, but …”
The very first caller was a sheriff’s deputy for Roseau County which borders Canada in northwest Minnesota. As it turns out, this local small-town cop had a doozy of a story to tell. This event occurred while he was previously serving as a deputy in neighboring Marshall County a few years earlier.
He asked me not to use his real name because he felt this strange tale wouldn’t be exactly great for his job security as a police officer.
NOTE: I opted to depart this time from writing this true account in my usual news-journalism style for a prosier style simply because it relates the story in a way that flows better.
MARSHALL COUNTY COPY CHASES ORANGE ORB
The woman was trembling as she walked into the Marshall County law enforcement headquarters. Everyone could see she was scared. In a subdued voice, she asked to speak to a police officer — alone. She wanted a private room and requested that only one officer be present.
Deputy David Randall (not his real name) looked up from his desk and felt a riffle of goosebumps shimmer down his back. He suspected he knew what the woman wanted to talk about. That’s because just the night before, he had encountered something unexplainable in a remote countryside area near the tiny town of Grgyla, Minnesota.
It was about 11 p.m. The summer night was cloudy, humid and dark. Randall was cruising on Marshall County Highway 6 when they saw what at first looked like a sudden appearance of the full moon. But he quickly easily discerned that this obviously was not the moon — it was a flying globe of light, glowing bright red-orange, and moving along without a sound.
“What in blazes is that!” Randall yelled to himself in his squad car.
Randall reports that the object was the size of a basketball, but it was difficult to judge. It was definitely three-dimensional, however — there was just something inexplicably bizarre and unreal about it.
“Oh, it was something abnormal, that’s for sure,” Randall said. “Definitely not fireworks or the moon, or conventional aircraft, nothing like that. I could rule it all out immediately. I had the instant conviction this was something that didn’t belong here.”
Randall decided to follow the object. When he moved toward it, the object seemed to sense that and react. It moved away from him. It hovered away to the east just above the tree lines not far from the road. Officer Randall gunned the squad car, determined to keep the glowing orb in sight as it sped up.
After a few miles of thrilling chase, the object appeared to land behind a small grove of trees in a pasture, not more than 100 yards from him. Randall got out of their squad car, scrambled over a fence and ran toward where the object had descended to land behind the trees. He admits to being “extremely uneasy,” but a powerful curiosity and a sense of duty as a police officer compelled him forward.
But when he reached the other side of the trees — nothing. No eerie glowing object. No sign of it in the sky or on the ground. Randall played his flashlights across the dewy grass but saw no marks or any indication something had set down in this peaceful sleeping pasture.
The Minnesota summer night had become ordinary again.
Randall returned to his squad car and finished his shift. Before he signed out of the law enforcement center, Randall took his curiosity a bit further and checked with nearby airports and the U.S. Air Force base west of Grand Forks, North Dakota. He checked to see if the base had any military aircraft in the Grygla area, or if they noted anything unusual on radar.
All reported nothing.
A WOMAN WITH A HARROWING TALE TO TELL
Randall thought that would be the end of it… until the next day when Marge Conner (not her real name) walked into sheriff’s headquarters.
She had a hair-raising story.
Officer Randall said he had an almost “psychic knowing” that this woman brought a connection with the strange object he had pursued and lost into the woods the night before. That turned out to be true.
When she walked into the Marshall County sheriff’s headquarters, Marge Conner of rural Grygla had the look of a woman who had not slept all night. Her eyes were puffy and her manner was subtly agitated.
After Mrs. Conner requested a private room, Randall stepped forward and introduced himself. He directed her to a small interview room.
She told him this story:
At about 11:10 the night before, Conner, who lives alone on a small farm just a few miles outside of Grygla, was sitting up reading. A flashing light in a window caught her eye — as if portending far-off lightning.
She walked over to a window that looked out to the west. She saw no sign of lightning, but something flickered at the corner of her eye. She turned to look at her south window and saw a glow playing about there on the panes.
She stepped quickly over to the south window and looked out and up. She gasped. She was stunned to see a pulsating, orange-red globe floating in the sky above her house.
It was like nothing she had ever seen before. Definitely not the moon or star or any kind of airplane or helicopter — this was a sphere of light that might have been solid, or pure energy.
Conner’s throat constricted. She was gripped by fear, but she couldn’t take her eyes from this astounding orb hovering above her house. She followed the object, walking from window to window as it danced around in the sky. Suddenly, it was gone from her sight, but something — just a tingling feeling — told her the night’s events were not over.
Standing at her south window, Conner felt an urge to whirl and look behind her. Just as she did, she saw something shocking! On the west side of the house was a wide porch. It was accessed by large glass sliding doors to there was an unobstructed view of the outside
There on the floorboard of the porch outside she saw scuttling past a group of what she described as “little alien men.”
They moved past the window with freaky speed and not with a normal walking or running motion. They appeared to “walk-float” along in a herky-jerky manner. Ms. Conner described them as having “big heads and tiny, frail bodies.” As odd as that is, it was that eerie way they moved that penetrated her psyche. It was movement that seemed unnaturally fast, almost as if they defied gravity.
The “little alien men” were three, possibly four feet tall. They had dark bodies and lighter-colored heads.
Conner’s wanted to scream but the sound seemed trapped in her throat! She did not want to make a sound alert “those things” to her presence inside the house. She was numb with terror. Could this really be happening?
Suddenly, a commotion sounded outside. Forcing herself to move away from where she was standing, Conner hurried across the living room.
She looked out a window toward her pasture where she kept a few sheep, some small horses and chickens in small a small barn/shed. This structure was enclosed by a fence. The gate doors of the fence were open and flapping, and her spooked animals were scattering across the dark countryside.
Conner’s instinct was to run outside and herd her animals back home but going out into the black night with those “things” outside was out of the question!
She thought about calling 911 — but tell them what? That little green men from a flying globe were chasing her animals around through the Minnesota night? She was sure she would not be believed — she wasn’t sure she believed it herself!
Thus, Ms. Conner decided to sit tight and wait for dawn. It was the longest night of her life, she said. Although nothing further happened, she slept not a wink. The next morning, she decided she should at least report the mischief that had been played on her livestock. As she drove to the law enforcement center, she self-debated telling the truth, or simply reporting an act of vandalism.
But by the time she arrived, Conner felt a great need to share her experience. She told Deputy Randall her story, fearing she wouldn’t be believed. To her amazement and relief, Randall told her of his own close encounter with the flying globe the night before.
“I might never have believed her if I had not seen the UFO, or whatever it was, the night before,” Randall said. He added:
“The fact this woman had this experience convinced me all the more that what we saw was something completely unexplainable.”
ADDITIONAL NOTES:
After listening to her story, Deputy Randall told Mrs. Conner there was likely little the police could do in this situation. He said she felt better after telling her story, however. As far as he knows, Mrs. Connor experienced no further incidents.
Amazingly, these events happened in Marshall County, Minnesota, the same location of one of the most famous UFO events of all time — the case in which Marshall County Deputy Val Johnson’s squad car was “rammed” by a globe-like UFO in 1979. I recently completed an extensive re-investigation of the Val Johnson case, and you can find my 5-Part series published here on Medium starting with:
Minnesota’s Most Mysterious UFO Case Solved After 40 Years?
This was not the first time Officer Randall had encountered a UFO. He went on to tell me about two other incidents, one including the sighting of a classic silver-metallic “flying saucer.” I’ll write about that here: LOCAL COP SEES MORE THAN ONE UFO
NOTE: For more first-had accounts of UFO & alien encounters, please visit here: KEN-ON-MEDIUM