William Bosak encounter

On the evening of December 2, 1974, around 10:30 p.m., dairy farmer William Bosak was driving along a rural road near Frederic in Polk County, Wisconsin. He had just attended a Farmer’s Co-op meeting in Frederic and was heading home through thick patches of fog that made him slow his car considerably. Accounts give his age as 68 or 69. About one mile from his farm, his headlights illuminated an object sitting on the left side of the road ahead.

Bosak slowed nearly to a stop as he approached the motionless object, which he would later describe as between 8 and 10 feet tall. It was not self-luminous but reflected his headlights. The upper portion had a transparent, glass-like section that tapered to a peak like a bullet. Accounts differ on whether it was lit: APRO said the object was not lighted at all, while later retellings describe a lighted or brightly lit compartment. Through that glass, Bosak said, he could see an occupant with its arms raised above its head.

The figure had a square face that was hairless except for stiff hair sticking straight out from the sides of its head, Bosak told reporters. Its eyes were large and protruding. Long, narrow ears extended about three inches from the sides of its head and resembled those of a calf. No beard or facial hair was visible on the chin. The occupant’s arms and upper body appeared to be covered in dark tan fur or what looked like a tannish-brown, skin-tight garment resembling a diver’s suit with no collar, seams, zips, or buttons. The lower portion of the figure was obscured by fog.

Bosak later told APRO Field Investigator Everett E. Lightner that the creature looked “just as scared” as he was. After roughly ten seconds of what he described as a visual standoff, fear overcame him and he accelerated away from the object. As his car passed the craft, he said the inside of his car became dark and he heard a swishing sound like tree branches brushing against it. Some later accounts say his headlights dimmed instead.

He reached his home unharmed but was shaken. From a window on his property, he tried to look toward the encounter area but could see nothing through the dense fog. He told reporters he was “so goldarned scared” he was afraid to go out at night for several days. The next morning, Bosak returned to the location to search for landing marks or physical evidence. Accounts of what he found differ: some sources say he found nothing, while others report a flattened circular area in a nearby field approximately six feet in diameter.

Bosak, who had operated his 450-acre dairy farm for about 40 years, had been skeptical of UFO stories before that night. He kept the encounter to himself for nearly a month, not telling his wife or son, until Christmas 1974 when their concern over his changed demeanor prompted him to finally speak. Word eventually reached the St. Paul Pioneer Press, which published an account by reporter Dewey Berscheld on January 19, 1975, under the headline “Driver Yields to Visiting UFO.”

APRO investigator Everett E. Lightner interviewed Bosak about the encounter. He found Bosak to be sincere and a man with a good reputation in the community. Some neighbors questioned his story and a local editor disbelieved it; Bosak insisted he was telling the truth and offered to take a lie detector test.

In the weeks after the encounter, Bosak reflected that he should have stopped and tried to communicate with the occupant rather than fleeing. He told reporters, “I wish I could meet up with it again.”

UFO case files list it as a close encounter of the third kind. Some researchers have since asked whether the creature was more of a Bigfoot, but Bosak told one author it was “a different kind of character than you’d see on this earth,” with “a kind of a cow-looking face.”