JOURNAL OF POSSIBLE PARADIGMS
Issue 4, Summer '96

Why was Joe Simonton

Given Pancakes?

Peter Stenshoel

Robert Larson's article, "Flying Saucers, the Mind, and Other Absurdities," in the first issue of The Excluded Middle, concludes with a question. The question concerns one Joe Simonton, a Wisconsin chicken farmer near Eagle River who encountered a UFO landing on his property on April 18, 1961. The entities within it gave Joe a "silver-colored jug," which he filled with water and returned to them. They then fixed and gave him food. The food consisted of four pancakes. This has always been one of the more colorful UFO encounters on record. The surrealist juxtaposition of such harmless everyday stuff as pancakes presented by "scientifically impossible" entities in a flying machine is one inducing high humor and a kind of humorous high. The more astute among us will recognize that the claim of being given pancakes is exactly not what one would expect were the story a hoax. Especially in that time period, a hoaxer would likely invent a fancy sounding name of a concoction that tasted "out of this world!" On the contrary, Mr. Simonton stated that the pancakes "tasted like cardboard."

This has long been my favorite UFO report, but it was not until Larson's challenging question that I delved into it deeply. His question is, "Why was Joe Simonton given pancakes?"

Here is my answer. The name "Joe" is synonymous with "the common man." Politicians speak of "Joe Six-pack," meaning the every day worker. "Simonton" is more interesting: "Ton" can mean "town," or "the place from." "Simon" is, of course, Simon Peter, the apostle of Jesus, the rock (Peter means rock) or foundation of the Church, the man to whom Jesus, as Christ, gave "the keys to the Kingdom." Therefore, "Simonton" is, broadly, the Christian Church, that which is "from Simon." Joe Simonton would mean, "your average human raised within the Christian milieu."

Now we get to the crux of the matter. A pancake is, yes, bread of a kind. But it is the appearance of the name, "Pan," the god of the Earth, the god of paganism, the dweller of Findhorn and other magical spots upon this planet-arguably the child or consort of Gaia-that provides us with the key to this scenario. In UFO reports, visits, abductions, contacts, and what-have-you, Pan is giving us a gift, his own version of the bread of life, a communion wafer. This particular report gives us our own key to understanding the phenomenon. Pan rules the Earth Kingdom. Simon Peter has the keys to the Kingdom of God, or the Next World, if you prefer. The churched of the Earth are being given a new sustenance from Pan, a cake to chew on. The real meaning of Whitley Strieber's book, Communion, is thus explicated. When the world of the Air and the world of the Earth are joined (through vehicles of Fire) by means of a bread made with Water, then are two worlds joined together by means of a sacrament involving the four magical elements.

Eagle River, the nearby town, is a wonderful name in that it conjures up divinity of the Air and the chi of Water. Eagles are known as sacred creatures, and according to some traditions, rivers are natural carriers of chi (kundalini) energy. Here again we see the confluence of Earth and Spirit, the sky-god meeting the earth-goddess, a yang and yin balancing. The sorry footnote to this splendid story is that NICAP, the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena, who actually obtained one of the pancakes, could not be bothered to analyze the contents, since "the affair had had too much publicity." J. Allen Hynek, then with Project Blue Book, also got a pancake, but I am not aware what he did with it.