The Man Who Shared Pancakes with Aliens
How a Simple Gesture in a Wisconsin Backyard Became the Strangest UFO Story of All Time
Have you ever heard the one about Joe Simonton and his alien pancakes? It’s a story that sounds like a setup to a joke, but it’s as earnest and strange as anything you’ll find in UFO lore. On an unassuming morning in April 1961, Joe, a 54-year-old plumber and part-time chicken farmer, was finishing up some dishes in his modest home in Eagle River, Wisconsin, when he heard a sound that would change everything—a metallic screech, like tires skidding on pavement. Looking out his window, Joe saw a gleaming silver craft descending into his yard, “brighter than chrome,” he’d say later, “shaped like two bowls, one flipped over the other.”
When a hatchway opened, three small beings emerged, dressed in snug, black suits and wearing expressions as inscrutable as their purpose. They looked Italian Joe would later say. Joe, baffled but cooperative, watched as one of the beings gestured toward his water pump, making a drinking motion. Without a word exchanged, Joe grabbed a silver jug they handed him, filled it with water, and brought it back to the craft. When he returned, the figures were busy cooking on what looked like a square griddle, smoke rising from it in thin, swirling threads. As Joe watched, fascinated, one of the beings reached into the griddle, pulled out a few small, warm cakes, and handed them to him.
Joe, polite Midwesterner that he was, took the strange offering, hot and greasy in his hand. Later, he would take a bite and find the taste disappointing, like cardboard or “a stale biscuit,” he’d say. But he saved the pancakes anyway, sharing them with investigators who analyzed them and found nothing out of this world—just buckwheat, flour, and a hint of grease. After handing over the pancakes, the beings made a simple gesture of farewell, touched their right hands to their foreheads, and closed the hatch. The craft rose silently, then shot away at a steep angle, leaving Joe standing in his yard with a handful of greasy, inexplicable pancakes and a mind full of questions.
And what do we make of this story? For some, it’s just another oddball anecdote; for others, it’s evidence that UFO encounters don’t follow a predictable script. But what strikes me most about Joe Simonton’s story is the quiet ritual embedded within it—a wordless exchange of water, a silent offering of food. There’s something universal here, something in how politeness and shared gestures bridge any divide, even between human and alien. The Joe Simonton story isn’t remarkable for its detail or drama. It’s remarkable because it touches that deep, simple place in us that knows to give the stranger a drink and accept the humble gift in return.