by UFO History Buff & Author, Charles Lear
While June 24, 1947, marks the beginning of the modern-day UFO mystery, claims of earlier encounters and incidents, Maury Island for example, are found throughout the literature. One such case is that of Udo Wartena, a Dutch immigrant working as a miner for the Northwest Mining Syndicate in Broadwater County, Montana. Wartena claimed that in 1940, an alien invited him to go on board a huge flying saucer.
The case came to light in the 1990s, and is based on the testimony of Wartena just before he died in 1989. Prior to this, he reportedly kept the story to himself, not even telling his wife. It was included in the 1993 book, Aliens and UFOs by James L. Thompson. Australian researcher Warren P. Aston looked into it after reading the book and presented his findings at the July 1997 Mutual UFO Network International Symposium in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
According to Aston in an account from the March/April 1998 UFO Magazine posted on ufoevidence.org, the story as told by Thompson “contained numerous factual errors.” Aston put his version together from accounts by Wartena, two of which that were handwritten and one that was typewritten, and interviews with Wartena’s friends and family.
The story starts off in May of 1940 with Wartena, then 37, working in his spare time looking for gold in a glacial deposit at the base of Boulder Mountain, not far from Canyon Ferry Lake, near the town of Townsend, Montana. At the time, he was clearing an old ditch running around the mountain so he could divert water from a nearby stream for his mining operation.
As he was working, he heard a humming, drone-like sound and assumed it was from an airplane from Great Falls Army Air Base to the north. As it continued, he thought it might, instead, be from a vehicle driving towards him, and he moved to higher ground.
According to Aston, Wartena then saw a 35-feet-high by 100-feet-diameter disk-shaped object that was the color of stainless steel, though not as shiny. As he watched, a circular stairway descended from the bottom, a “man” walked down it, and then came towards him. Wartena wrote (Aston never indicates which of the three written sources he’s quoting from), “As I was somewhat more than interested, I went to meet him. He stopped when we were ten or twelve feet apart. He was a nice-looking man, seemingly about my age. He wore a light gray pair of overalls, a tam of the same material on his head, and on his feet were slippers or moccasins.”
The man came up to Wartena, shook his hand, and apologized for the intrusion. He asked if they could take some water, and Wartena said “Sure.” The man signaled to the ship and a hose came down. While the man spoke English, according to Wartena, “he spoke slowly as if he were a linguist and had to pick his way.”
The man asked Wartena what he was doing and Wartena explained. The man then invited him to come on board the ship, and he went willingly and without fear. Wartena described the humming noise as “not loud, though it seemed to go through you,” and said it was hardly noticeable once inside the ship.
According to Wartena, “We entered into a room about twelve by sixteen feet, with a close-fitting sliding door on the farther end, indirect lighting near the ceiling and nice upholstered benches around the sides. There was an older man already in the room, plainly dressed, but his hair was snow white. I then noticed that the younger man’s hair was also white.”
According to Aston, Wartena asked the men how old they were and was told that the younger man was “about six hundred years old and that the older was “over 900 years old” in Earth years. They also told him that they knew over 500 languages.
Wartena asked why they wanted water from the stream and not the lake and they told him that it was free from algae and more convenient. Wartena told family members many years later that they extracted hydrogen from the water to use as fuel for their craft.
Warten asked about the noise and was shown the mechanism that powered the craft. They told him, “As you noticed, we are floating above the ground, and though the ground slopes, the ship is level. There are in the outside rim, two flywheels, one turning one way and the other in the opposite direction.” According to Wartena, “He explained [that] this gives the ship its own gravitation or rather overcomes the gravitational pull of the Earth and other planets, the sun and stars; and through the pull of the stars and planets…to ride on like you do when you sail on ice.”
Wartena asked why they were visiting Earth, and they explained that since they looked like us, they were mingling among us, monitoring us, and giving us instruction and help as needed. When Wartena asked if they knew of Christ and religion, they refused to discuss such things, and contradicting their statement that they gave us help and instruction, they said “we cannot interfere in any way.”
The men offered to examine Wartena for impurities and when he agreed, they passed a device over him. Wartena didn’t elaborate on this any further.
A light came on, and Wartena took it to be a signal that they were done taking on water and that it was time for him to leave. When he mentioned this, they invited him to come with them, and he declined. He wrote, “I said that I thought it would be interesting, but felt it would inconvenience too many people. Later, I wondered why I said that.”
As he left, they told him not to tell anyone as he would not be believed and then took off. He estimated he had spent around two hours with them.
When Aston talked about this case at the MUFON Symposium in 1997, the abduction narrative was still dominant, and Aston suggested that researchers should be open to other possibilities and that contactee claims, dismissed by most in the community since the 1950s, should be re-examined.
Aston’s presentation was written about by Townsend Star reporter Linda Kent in an article headlined “Alien Encounter.” We found it reprinted in the January 7, 1998, edition of The Independent Record out of Helena, Montana. Kent credits Aston’s presentation as “the first public exposure of the 50-year-old incident.”
According to research by the Star, Wartena did live in Broadwater County, Montana; did work for the Northwest Mining Syndicate; and did die in Clackamas County, Oregon, in 1989. Two “anachronisms” are mentioned: the encounter was said to have occurred near Canyon Ferry Lake, which didn’t exist until 1954; and construction of the Great Falls Army Air Base, now known as Malmstrom AFB, didn’t begin until 1942.
After the article, there is a section headlined “Alien Encounter Questions,” which describes the Star reaching out to Aston via express mail with some questions to which he responded from Australia by fax. He addressed the Canyon Ferry Lake issue saying it didn’t come from Wartena and was his mistake. The Great Falls Army Air Base issue isn’t addressed.
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