The Elmwood UFO Incident: Officer George Wheeler on Tuttle Hill

Elmwood, Wisconsin, was a village of 737 people in Pierce County, with a limestone quarry on Tuttle Hill just outside town. In the mid 1970s, western Wisconsin was living through a UFO wave.

George Wheeler had already seen one. He was the village's relief policeman, a 30-year police veteran of New York and Wisconsin and a former World War II combat pilot. In April 1975 he reported a flaming ball the size of a football field north of Elmwood, silent and turning at right angles. "I'm dying to get another chance at seeing one," he told the Eau Claire Leader-Telegram.

Thursday, April 22, 1976. About 11 p.m. On patrol, Wheeler noticed an orange glow near Tuttle Hill. He assumed it was a fire.

From higher ground he saw a craft hovering about 100 feet up, some 500 feet away, between the quarry and the O'Bryan farmhouse. The body was silver. The top glowed orangish-white, "like looking into the sun." Six bluish-white lights or portholes showed shadows moving inside. An open panel revealed a "slowly revolving turbine-like object." Legs protruded underneath, and a long black hose hung down into the trees.

He radioed the sheriff's department in Ellsworth. "My God, it's another one of these UFOs or spacecraft." He watched for about 45 seconds. Then the craft rose "straight up at extremely high speed" with a whooshing sound. A bluish flash. His squad car's lights, radio and engine went dead.

Nursing home administrator Paul Fredrickson watched "an orange glow, like a half-moon" for three to five minutes. Mrs. Miles Wergland saw a "bright orange moon-shaped" object over Tuttle Hill. At the O'Bryan farm, the television lost reception. Dairy farmer David Moots reached Wheeler first and found him dazed, struggling to get out of his car. Asked if a car had hit him, Wheeler replied, "No, one of those UFOs!" Police Chief Gene Helmer had heard the call on his scanner. He said he had never seen a man as frightened.

Dr. Frank Springer, Wheeler's doctor of 25 years, gave him a sedative. A three-day hospital stay found nothing. An 11-day stay followed, for severe, continuous headaches and nightmares. The cruiser had just had a full tune-up. Afterward it needed new points and plugs, and its starter began to fail. Wheeler repeatedly told doctors he was dying from internal injuries caused by aliens. He died soon after, though accounts disagree on exactly when.

APRO investigators Bob Pratt and Jack Bostrak, a biology professor at the University of Wisconsin-River Falls, took up the case, and APRO published it in its Bulletin. Pratt's "Terrifying UFO Attack" ran in the National Enquirer in June 1976. Project Blue Book had closed in 1969. Howard Blum's 1990 book Out There claimed a federal UFO Working Group investigated the Elmwood sightings, but no documents from such a group have been found.

Skeptics point to the gaps. Only Wheeler saw the craft up close. No garage or medical record confirms the effects, and the story grew in retelling, with the bluish flash becoming a ray that struck the cruiser. The car trouble may have been an unrelated fault. Milwaukee Magazine noted that the story's veracity has never been confirmed.

Since 1978, Elmwood has held UFO Days on the last full weekend of July. It has been called the UFO capital of Wisconsin. In 1988 CBS Evening News reported from the village, and businessman Tom Weber proposed raising $50 million for an illuminated UFO landing site. Behind all of it stands one policeman on Tuttle Hill, watching a craft go straight up.