Hello and welcome to the program UFO Warning.
In this episode we're talking about the Val Johnson incident.
That's correct, the Val Johnson incident.
Now this happened back in 1979 up in Minnesota.
This article that we're looking at is from mnopedia.org.
Mnopedia.org Written by Lizzie Earnhardt Title Val Johnson
Incident 1979 One of the most credible UFO encounters in
American history unfolded in Minnesota in 1979.
Marshall County Deputy Sheriff Val Johnson never claimed that
he saw aliens or spaceships, merely that a force he could not
identify collided with his car, cracking its windshield and
leaving him unconscious. Johnson's reasonable testimony
and the evidence left behind on his vehicle made the event a
popular case among those who study unidentified Arrow
phenomena. On the night of August 27th,
1979, Johnson was on patrol in his squad car on a particularly
desolate stretch of County Highway 5 in Marshall County, 10
miles West of Stephen. At 1:40 AM, he spotted a light
in the sky and turn left on the State Highway 220 to
investigate. Thinking it might be a plane
making an emergency landing, he drove forward.
However, the light abruptly entered the car itself.
He heard the sound of glass breaking and then lost
consciousness. Just imagine this guy out there
in this lonely highway. He's by himself, He's a law
enforcement officer. He sees this light.
He turns to investigate and boom, it's on him.
In fact, it's cracked the windshield in his car and spent
the antenna on the car. It's damaged the front end of
the car. He's knocked out.
He's unconscious. When Johnson came to, 39 minutes
had passed. He had eye pain and a bump on
his head. But the car seemed to have
suffered worse, sustaining a dented hood, bent antennas, a
shattered windshield, a broken headlight and a broken hazard
light. Both Johnson's wristwatch and
the car's clock had lost 14 minutes.
Whatever impact had cracked the windshield had evidently also
sent the vehicle coasting 850 feet along the road before it
stopped at a 90° angle to oncoming traffic, Johnson told
the dispatcher who responded to his call for help.
Quote, something attacked my car.
It wasn't a vehicle. I don't know what it was.
Now think about this. He's out for 39 minutes, and
both the clock on the car and the wristwatch have lost 14
minutes. Both of them lost 14 minutes.
Isn't that strange to you? Wouldn't you think that they
would have just like quit working?
That's that's, that's just too much to be a coincidence to me.
And then so we have to ask ourselves, he's got missing
time. What happened?
What happened not just during those 14 minutes, but what
happened during those 39 minutes?
We lost, we lost consciousness. Just what happened to this guy?
Was he abducted? Was his car taken aboard a
craft? And remember these antennas that
were bent, Those are those great big tall antennas, you know,
that used to for the old CBS and radios and stuff just spent them
suckers over just the force of it.
Wow, really something, really something.
Now it says a doctor at a hospital in Warren treated
Johnson's eyes, which were injured as if by welders burns.
The Marshall County Sheriff's Office, led by Sheriff Dennis
Breck, then carried out an investigation into the incident.
The Air Force and Federal Aviation Agency both confirmed
that no aircraft had been scheduled to fly or were
reported in the area in the early hours of August 27th.
Brick also contacted the Center for UFO Studies in Evanston, IL,
which concluded magnetic testing on the car with no definitive
results. In November, a metal engineer
from Honeywell visited the Sheriff's Office to perform his
own test and concluded that an electrical force or thing had
caused the damage. Well, I guess that narrows it
down. Telephone calls flooded into
Burke's office and Johnson's home as news of the incident
spread. Many callers were eager to share
their own personal stories of UFO encounters with someone they
believed would offer a sympathetic error.
Johnson himself appeared on the television show Good Morning
America and told his story on radio shows across the country.
But the attention ultimately became a burden for him and his
family. Johnson's wife, Roseanne,
admitted to the Minneapolis Star in the in September That it's
completely disrupted our family organization.
We have a baby and that takes time.
We have one to get off to school and the phone keeps ringing.
The family later moved from Oslo to Claret, Wisconsin.
The Val Johnson incident brought national attention to rural
northwestern Minnesota and in particular to warn the county.
Cedar Marshall County. In 2019, Warren residents
celebrated the 40th anniversary of the deputy's encounter with a
public event featuring live music and alien costume contest
and a dramatic reenactment of Johnson's radio call.
The Marshall County Historical Society in Warren preserves
documentation of the event as well as the most dramatic
evidence. Johnson's squad car, the damaged
windshield, hood, lights and antennas remain as they appeared
in 1979. The museum's president, Mike
Johnson, no relation, told the Grand Forks Herald in 2013 that
more visitors come to see his institution to see the damaged
vehicle, known as a UFO car, than any other artifact.
Well, I think maybe that's because it's, it's there, it's
in your face, it's real. You have this car this guy was
in, he had his UFO encounter and then we have the damage done to
the car. I'll put the link at at the Kofi
site over there and I have you can look at the pictures at the
link and I put the picture of this car up with this smashed
windshield. Looks like somebody threw up, I
don't know, maybe a rock or something into this thing.
I mean, definitely the force of this phenomenon, whatever it was
coming through this car, I did a number on it.
Now the notion that this thing they say here coasted 850 feet,
kind of weird something would hit you from the front and then
you would goes forward. But I suppose, or maybe this
thing was just picked up in the air and placed her.
You know, it says it was placed it was found at a 90° angle in
in the incoming into oncoming traffic.
Once again shows these things have no regard for human life.
I have to wonder about the missing 39 minutes and
especially the 14 minutes where this watch and the clock on the
car stopped. Could be a situation where this
deputy is in this car unconscious.
Maybe a little time passes, this UFO or whatever it is comes
down, takes him in the car on board of craft somewhere.
They're there for this 14 minutes while the time stops
because, you know, maybe the speed you're traveling at,
whatever physical things happening is causing him to lose
time. So you have a 39 minute incident
of which 14 minutes, maybe this guy's a board of craft
somewhere. That's what I'm wondering, and
that might also explain some of his exhaustion on the subject,
maybe as he just relives this thing in his mind.
I would love to talk to this guy and find out if he's had any
kind of recovered memories, if he's had any sort of things come
back to him over the years, if there was any kind of
experience. And also, has he ever been
tested for implants? Now, let's go ahead and look at
one more article on this Val Johnson incident.
I think it's just one of the best UFO encounter cases that as
far as documentation goes, anywhere.
So we'll finish up with this last article from KARE 11.com.
KARE 11.com. It's written by Chris Haraskeby,
dated August 4th, 2021, so about three years ago.
The title says Minnesota's most notorious UFO sighting remains a
mystery. 4 decades later, a sheriff's deputy encounter with
a hovering light is still unexplained.
And it was more than hovering. I would say it's crashing.
Warren, Minnesota says UFOs are getting a ton of attention
lately after a recent Pentagon report admits to unexplained
aerial phenomena the government can't explain.
Of course, since then, they've come out, of course, and said
there's no such thing as UFOs. Story changes from one week to
the next, it seems like. It turns out what's widely
believed to be among the most significant UFO sightings ever
happened right here in Minnesota.
August 27th, 1979 in Warren, MN, about 20 miles from the North
Dakota border. So it's clear up there in
northwest Minnesota. Marshall County Sheriff's Deputy
Val Johnson was on a patrol early in the morning on Hwy. 5
when he saw a bright light to the South on Hwy. 220.
Johnson thought maybe a crashed semi or a downed plane, but as
he approached it, he said the light instantly jumped through
the windshield, hitting him like a 200 LB pillow, knocking him
out. His reaction was preserved in
the actual radio call to dispatch when he awoke.
It says Dispatch operator four O 7.
What is your condition, Deputy Johnson?
I don't know. Something just hit my car.
Dispatch, what's your condition? Are you OK?
Johnson? Something attacked my car.
I heard the glass breaking and the locks, the brakes locked up.
I don't know what's going on. According to the Sheriff's
Office investigation reports, Johnson's wristwatch and the
clock on the 1977 Ford Ltd cruiser stopped working for 14
minutes. Johnson said his teeth were
fractured at the gum line and his eyes burned.
Now this sounds like this thing had tremendous force to it.
Whatever it was, my eyes were extremely painful, as if I'd
been subjected to something like an arc welder burn or something,
Said Johnson during an interview on the 1980 TV show.
That's incredible. His story and injuries mystified
the nation, but there's another piece of evidence that still
brings the curious to Marshall County Historical Society
Museum. The squad car damage and all,
this is the big thing they come to see, said Sharon Meyer,
director of the Marshall County Historical Society.
While showing us the actual damage to the squad car,
Whatever hit him started with a broken headlight and up here
there is a weird dent on top of the hood, broke the windshield,
hit the reflector and bent both of the antenna.
The Sheriff's Office back in 1979 brought out experts from
Honeywell and Ford Motor Company to examine the damage.
Quote, I have not seen anything like this before.
It said Ford crash investigator merit in French and the that's
incredible show. They are extremely unusual.
Think about that. That's a Ford crash
investigator. You know, you think this guy's
seen it all, but he says no, never seen anything like this.
Dennis Breck, the Marshall County sheriff at the time, said
he took Johnson at his word. I feel that whatever Val told me
about the light and the strange incident was true.
I don't doubt Val in any way, said Breck.
In the video. The sheriff tried other means to
get an answer as to what happened to Johnson.
Investigative documents show that he reached out to Alan
Hendry, chief investigator with the Center for UFO Studies.
The biggest mystery about the Val Johnson case is trying to
find out one neat explanation for something that could behave
the way he described it, yet create the kinds of damage that
he discovered, said Henry. And that's incredible.
Report no one in 42 years has been able to explain what
happened, including Johnson. And then it has a statement from
Johnson, it says. Upon reflection, we have come to
the conclusion that perhaps the creator has made other things we
can't readily see or readily identify and perhaps this is one
of the things we encountered on the road, said Johnson to a
studio audience during the That's incredible.
Where is Deputy Johnson today? It says people in Warren said
he'd moved away and stopped doing interviews on this a while
ago. We searched online and found an
address for Val Johnson in Wisconsin.
So we drove there and it turns out it was the right man.
We spoke with him for 20 minutes, but he did not want to
go on record because of the stress and attention this has
caused his family for a long time.
He did, however, put it permit us to pass on the notion that he
hopes these new UFO sightings and government reports might
give people new perspective on his story.
What a fascinating case. It's too bad that, you know, you
couldn't come back and do some more interviews with the stuff.
Now they've got some images here also on this site of the
diagram. You know how this whole thing
happened? Looks like a statement from it.
Maybe the investigators. Really cool stuff.
A short report, but very well done.
The diagrams here are cool. Shows the damages.
That shows how it happened. They just did a really I think
stand up job on this investigative report and still
not able to determine what this thing was.
One of the best cases around I think.
Until next time, this is UFO warning over and out.