The Langenburg Saucer Nests: Edwin Fuhr's Five Spinning Discs

Edwin Fuhr, 36, farmed there with his family. On the morning of Sunday, 1 September 1974, he went out to swath a field beside a slough, a small prairie pond.

Around 10:30 a.m. he noticed something at the edge of the slough. At first he thought it was a prank. He came within about 15 feet of the nearest object. It hovered about a foot above the grass, metallic and dome-shaped, with a top like brushed aluminium or stainless steel and a dull grey lip around the bottom, "like a tire but metal."

"All of a sudden I noticed the grass was moving," he said. "I just watched it for about two minutes and then noticed the whole thing was turning." "I noticed there were another four to the left of me, all revolving." There were five objects in a semicircle, each spinning fast counterclockwise.

"I backed up slow. I wasn't going to turn my back on the thing." He got onto the swather, but "the engine was dead." He sat there for about 15 minutes, terrified and frozen because he "couldn't do anything."

Then they took off. Straight up. "There was a grey vapor coming from underneath them and a strong wind." There was no noise, and in one retelling they were gone in a second.

Where the objects had hovered, the grass held five circles. The RCMP measured two at 12 feet across and three at 10.5 feet. Each had a flattened band about 18 inches wide, swirled clockwise, while the grass in the middle still stood. Fuhr's brother Leo saw the marks too. Days later a sixth ring, about 6 feet across, appeared in line with the others.

The call reached the Langenburg RCMP detachment later that night. Ron Morier photographed and measured the rings and sent his findings to the National Research Council in Ottawa. His report described "five different distinct circles, caused by something exerting what had to be heavy air or exhaust pressure over the high grass." "There was no indication anything had been wheeled in or out," Morier said. "Something was there and I doubt it was a hoax." He called Fuhr "a teetotaller… a churchgoer, a very quiet, shy man."

J. Allen Hynek's Center for UFO Studies sent a specialist to the farm, who found "no reason to dispute Fuhr's report." Ted Phillips, who studied physical trace cases, also interviewed him.

Fairy rings were reportedly proposed through the National Research Council. Hynek rejected the idea on the strength of the photographs and pointed to similar traces in Australia, France and Spain. On Metabunk, commentators leaned toward hoax or hallucination. No formal hoax finding was ever made. Morier asked why Fuhr would want "thousands of people coming to his little place there and trampling all over his yard and his fields?"

Thousands did come. Cars lined up bumper to bumper from town to the farm, and Fuhr estimated he gave at least ten thousand interviews. Its swirled nests put the case beside the Tully "saucer nest" of 1966 as a close encounter of the second kind. In 2024 the Royal Canadian Mint issued a glow-in-the-dark silver coin, Canada's Unexplained Phenomena: The Langenburg Event, showing Fuhr in his field facing five objects over the slough. Speaking to CBC that year, Morier said it was still unclear "whether it was real or not."