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Date: January 21, 1968 7:00PM
Location: Stoughton
County: Dane
Source: The W-Files book by Jay Rath, pages 50-51.
Details of Incident:
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Chased By A Saucer In Stoughton
Did a damaged flying saucer make an emergency landing in Stoughton in 1968?
At 7 p.m. Sunday, Jan. 21, Shirley Kortte and Mrs. W.W. Knipfer were driving along Interstate
90 near Janesville. In the back seat were their daughters, Judy Kortte and Ida and Stephanie
Knipfer.
"We had just come from Janesville," Kortte told me. "The girls were in a dance recital." Now
they were asleep, except for one girl who looked out and saw a UFO.
As the witnesses approached the County N interchange near Stoughton, they stopped, "because I
was driving and very scared," Shirley Kortte said. The large, round, dark-gray object then
appeared to drop sparks and flaming debris - a rare but not unknown UFO behavior. The object
was about the size of a hot-air balloon, and was about as far away as "the top of a barn" might
be when observed from a barnyard. The UFO came so close that it seemed as if it might even
strike the car. "You could almost see the bottom of it," Kortte said. "Then, of course, these
sparks came out of it, so you couldn't see real clear. By this time we had some screaming girls.
Knipfer said that the object continued its pursuit even as she pulled into the driveway of her home,
near the east shore of Lake Kegonsa. "I didn't quite get in the driveway, I was shaking so."
The object then crossed the Yahara River to the east, and seemed to land north of the Oscar Berge
farm. Sheriff's deputy Robert Shaffer was already on hand. With three more witnesses - apparently
neighboring youths - he, too, watched the object disappear from view. Shaffer's search for additional
witnesses was unsuccessful.
Kortte remembers that someone went to the Berge farm and did see something on the ground there. More
than that, no one knows. However, I believe that physical evidence was recovered, as we shall see in
a later chapter. (See below for that excerpt - Jim)
Disturbing? Certainly. And add to that the testimony of 30 others, including four Freeport, Ill.,
police officers and three Stephenson County, Ill., sheriff's deputies who saw a similar UFO on
Nov. 9, 1967, just two months earlier. Two men reported that while they drove on Highway 20 very
early that day they were followed for 28 miles by a bright object that was flying 500 to 1,000
feet above the ground. The Associated Press reported that Freeport police were alerted, and after
the responding officers had driven just three miles, they also saw the highway gremlin. They kept
it under observation from 4:15 to 6:30 a.m. The county sheriff's deputies watched, too - from their
office. At Freeport Memorial Hospital, 25 patients and staff also observed the object.
In the above account Jay Rath refers to evidence of physical evidence of this incident in a
"later chapter" of the book. Here's what he was referring to:
A couple of less pleasant MIBs broke into a Madison hotel room. Sometime in the 1970s freelance
journalist Warren Smith came to Madison in regard to a UFO sighting -- a farmer had seen a UFO in
his orchard. I believe this is probably the Stoughton 1968 sighting, as that would put the event
near Madison, and because that was the sighting where the UFO gave out a shower of sparks. It was
also reported to a law enforcement agency, which, as it turns out, is a prerequisite for the
sighting's tracing.
Anyway, Smith came to Madison and checked into a Holiday Inn. He made arrangements to visit the
farmer and found that the man had recovered a piece of metal, apparently from the UFO. The farmer
gave the metal to Smith. Smith came back to Madison. Then the farmer spoke with Smith again, and
said that a fertilizer salesman had been out, asking a lot about the UFO and the metal but not
working too hard to sell fertilizer. The farmer needed to see Smith again.
No stranger to the paranoia of UFOlogy, Smith took the back off the TV in his hotel room and tied
the metal sample to the inside. "I asked the maids and hotel maintenance man to watch my room during
my absence," Smith told British UFO researcher Timothy Good, as recounted in Good's book, Above Top
Secret.
As soon as Smith left, two men with a room key went in; a maid saw it all and went in a minute
later, pretending to check the room. She saw the two going through Smith's suitcase.
Meanwhile, Smith was talking to the farmer, who had since met with some representatives from the
government who wanted the metal. The farmer had agreed, he said, based on "national security, a
danger to the world, and the government's desire."
Well, Smith went back to Madison, back to the hotel, back to his room, and there encountered his two
visitors. One was at the desk, the other was stretched out on the bed. Some small talk was made, and
then one of the men said, "You have something we want. A farmer gave you a piece of metal the other
day. Our job is to pick it up."
Smith asked to see some identification.
"Name the agency and we'll produce it," the man said. "Would you like Air Force, FBI, or maybe
NORAD (North American Aerospace Defense Command)?"
Smith was growing increasingly uncomfortable, and he had only been loaned the metal in the first
place. The farmer wanted it to go to the government. Smith agreed to turn over the fragment if the
men would answer a few questions. They agreed, and all adjourned to the hotel coffee shop. There,
of course, the men didn't really offer any information, other than that "UFOs involve more than you
or any civilian can realize. They're the most important thing and perhaps the greatest hazard that
mankind has ever faced."
Smith turned over the metal and saw the men off. Their car had Illinois plates. He immediately
called Brad Steiger, the well-known paranormal investigator who resides in Iowa. Some years afterward
Steiger recalled that Smith sounded "genuinely frightened" about the event.
Smith said later that he traced the plates to a Chicago man with "CIA links," after which Smith
apparently went underground, as he cannot be located today.
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