Jerry Townsend's Beer-Can Beings, Long Prairie, Minnesota

Autumn 1965. UFO reports were sweeping the United States. In Long Prairie, a small town in Todd County, Minnesota, James F. "Jerry" Townsend was 19 and a beginner announcer at radio station KEYL. He was a devout Christian who did not drink. Teachers and friends said he had a reputation for honesty.

Saturday, October 23, about 7:15 p.m. Townsend was driving his 1956-model car toward Long Prairie on Highway 27. Four miles east of town, he came round a curve. The engine, headlights and radio went dead. He skidded to a stop about 20 feet from something standing in the road.

It looked like a rocket. Silver and metallic, like stainless steel, 30 to 40 feet tall and about 10 feet across, standing on three legs or fins. A bright, colourless light glowed from its base onto the blacktop. He tried the starter. Nothing.

Then three beings came out from under the craft, each about six inches tall. "They were like tin cans. The size of a beer can," he said. "They had no eyes or anything. Just those tripod legs and the matchstick arms." They walked awkwardly on two legs. When they stopped, a third leg came down from the back to steady them.

They lined up and faced him for about three minutes. He felt watched. "I was going to knock one over and try to grab it, but that's when I got scared." His legs "were like rubber."

Then they scooted back under the craft, into the light. The light grew more intense. A hum rose until it hurt his ears. The rocket lifted off like a glowing flashlight and climbed to a height he cautiously estimated at 400 meters. There, the light on its base went out, and his engine, lights and radio came back on by themselves.

Townsend drove back to Long Prairie and reported to the Todd County Sheriff's office, where Sheriff James Bain found him "excited, nervous, and shaky." Officer Lavern Lubitz said he was "not his natural color." At the site the two men found three parallel strips of an oil-like substance, each about a yard long. "I don't know what they were," Bain said, "but I've looked at a lot of roads and never saw anything like them before." Then they saw an orange or yellowish light moving in the northern sky.

Project Blue Book logged the case as No. 10035 and evaluated it as "psychological." A record card, a two-page witness statement and a drawing survive, but the investigation report appears to be missing. J. Allen Hynek, Blue Book's science consultant, wrote that the Air Force filed it without an official investigation. Hynek looked into it privately and found the witness "pretty frightened." Coral Lorenzen of APRO heard the same: a young man with a good reputation, visibly scared.

No hoax confession has ever surfaced. The doubts are simpler. Only one person saw the beings, and the road marks were never collected or tested. Brad Sparks still counts the case among Blue Book's unexplained reports.

The Minneapolis Star ran the story two days later under the headline "'Space Things' Stop His Car." Fate, Flying Saucer Review and Jacques Vallée's Passport to Magonia followed. In 2015 Long Prairie marked the 50th anniversary of its "Tin Can Alien" with a paranormal conference featuring Jerome Clark. No later account from Townsend has been found.