What happened
Edwin Fuhr, 36, was swathing his rapeseed (canola) field north of Langenburg on a Sunday morning when he noticed something sitting just above the grass near a slough: a stainless-steel-looking dome, about a foot off the ground, spinning fast enough to stir the grass. He backed away slowly to his swather and saw four more of the objects to his left, all rotating. Frozen with fear, he watched for about fifteen minutes until they rose straight up together, trailing grey vapour and kicking up a wind that flattened the crop and nearly took his hat. Where they had hovered he found five circles of swirled, flattened grass roughly 11 feet across. RCMP Constable Ron Morier came out the next day, photographed and measured the rings, and told the Canadian Press he saw no sign anything had been wheeled in and that Fuhr seemed genuinely scared. His report went to the National Research Council in Ottawa.
The official explanation
Dr Allen McNamara, head of the National Research Council's upper atmosphere research section, said the rings matched descriptions of fairy rings produced by underground mushroom filaments, and that flattened dead grass could be pushed over by wind. A University of Saskatchewan mycologist added that some fungi glow and that rotting vegetation in the slough could give off mist. Mushrooms were reportedly found under one ring but discarded as unrelated.
The anomalous case
The fungal explanation was offered from a desk in Ottawa on the basis of descriptions, while the officer who actually stood in the field disagreed. Constable Morier found five rings matching Fuhr's account, saw no tracks or signs of anything brought in, and said he doubted it was a prank. Fairy rings are rings of altered growth, not fresh, swirled depressions appearing in a single morning, and they do not explain a daylight sighting of five spinning metallic objects, a downdraft that flattened the crop or the vapour Fuhr described. The same Saskatchewan mycologist conceded mushroom luminescence would be invisible in daylight. J. Allen Hynek, commenting on photographs of the rings he had seen, said he would discount the mushroom interpretation and that the rings resembled unexplained traces he had seen from Australia, France and Spain. The Royal Canadian Mint commemorated the case with a silver coin in 2024.
The strongest argument that this was something genuinely unknown or classified, with each claim attributed to the person who made it.
Documents
- Saucer sighted, RCMP constable reports (Star Phoenix, 10 Sept 1974) newspaper, ufology.patrickgross.org
- UFO may be 'fairy ring' (Star Phoenix, 27 Sept 1974) newspaper, ufology.patrickgross.org
Sources
- Star Phoenix, 10 September 1974 (Canadian Press) Patrick Gross, UFOs at close sight (press archive)
- Star Phoenix, 27 September 1974 (Canadian Press) Patrick Gross, UFOs at close sight (press archive)
- UFO sightings in Canada: 1974, Langenburg, Saskatchewan Wikipedia
Witness reports elsewhere
These archives can't be republished here, so we link to them instead.