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outside by a peculiar noise similar to "knobby tires on a wet pavement." Stepping into his yard, he
faced a silvery saucer-shaped object, "brighter than chrome," which appeared to be hovering close
to the ground without actually touching it. The object was about twelve feet high and thirty feet in
diameter. A hatch opened about five feet from the ground, and Simonton saw three men inside the
machine. One was dressed in a black two-piece suit. The occupants were about five feet tall.
Smooth-shaven, they appeared to "resemble Italians." They had dark hair and skin and wore outfits
with turtleneck tops and knit helmets.
One of the men held up a jug apparently made of the same material as the saucer. His motioning to
Joe Simonton seemed to indicate that he needed water. Simonton took the jug, went inside the
house, and filled it. As he returned, he saw that one of the men inside the saucer was "frying food on
a flameless grill of some sort." The interior of the ship was black, "the color of wrought iron."
Simonton saw several instrument panels and heard a slow whining sound, similar to the hum of a
generator. When he made a motion indicating he was interested in the food one of the men, who
was also dressed in black but with a narrow red trim along the trousers, handed him three cookies,
about three inches in diameter and perforated with small holes.
The whole affair lasted about five minutes. Finally, the man closest to the witness attached a kind of
belt to a hook in his clothing and closed the hatch in such a way that Simonton could scarcely detect
its outline. Then the object rose about twenty feet from the ground before taking off straight south,
causing a blast of air that bent some nearby pine trees.
Along the edge of the saucer, the witness recalls, were exhaust pipes six or seven inches in
diameter. The hatch was about six feet high and thirty inches wide, and, although the object has
always been described as a saucer, its actual shape was that of two inverted bowls.
When two deputies sent by Sheriff Schroeder, who had known Simonton for fourteen years, arrived
on the scene, they could not find any corroborative evidence. The sheriff stated that the witness
obviously believed the truth of what he was saying and talked very sensibly about the incident.
Food From Fairyland
The Eagle River case has never been solved. The Air force believes that Joe Simonton, who lived
alone, had a sudden dream while he was awake and inserted his dream into the continuum of events
around him of which he was conscious. I understand several psychologists in Dayton, Ohio, are
quite satisfied with this explanation. So were most serious amateur ufologists of the time. Alas!
Ufology, like psychology, has become such a narrow field of specialization that the experts have no
time for general culture. They are so busy rationalizing the dreams of other people that they
themselves do not dream anymore, nor do they read fairy tales. If they did, they would perhaps take
a much closer look at Joe Simonton and his pancakes. They would know about the Gentry and the
food from fairyland.
In 1909, an American researcher named Walter Evans-Wentz, who wrote a thesis on Celtic
traditions in Brittany, devoted much time to the gathering of folk tales about supernatural beings,
their habits, their contacts with men, and their food. In his book The Fairy-Faith in Celtic
Countries, for example, he gives the story of Pat Feeney, an Irishman of whom we know only that
"he was well-off before the hard times," meaning perhaps the famine of 1846-1847. One day a little
woman came to his house and asked for some oatmeal:
Paddy had so little that he was ashamed to offer it, so he offered her some potatoes instead,
but she wanted oatmeal, and then he gave her all that he had. She told him to place it back in
the bin till she should return for it. This he did, and the next morning the bin was
overflowing with oatmeal. The woman was one of the Gentry.
It is unfortunate that Paddy did not save this valuable evidence for the benefit of the U.S.
Department of Health, Education, and Welfare's Food and Drug Lab. Perhaps the lab would have
explained this miracle of the multiplication of the oatmeal, along with other peculiar properties of
fairy food; for it is well known in Ireland that if you are taken away by the Gentry, you must never
taste food in their palace. Otherwise, you never come back; you become one of them.
It is interesting that the analysis performed for the Air Force did not mention the presence of salt in
the pancakes given to Simonton. Indeed, Evans-Wentz was told by an Irishman who was quite
familiar with the Gentry that "they never taste anything salt, but eat fresh meat and drink pure
water." Pure water is what the saucer men took from Simonton.
The question of food in one of the points most frequently treated in the traditional literature of the
Celtic legends, along with the documented stories of babies kidnapped by the elves and of the
terrestrial animals they hunt and take away. Before we study this abundant material, however, we
should supply some background information about the mysterious folks the Irish call the Gentry
and the Scots call the Good People (Sleagh Maith): "The Gentry are a fine large race who live out
on the sea and in the mountains, and they are all very good neighbors. The bad ones are not the
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