The realm of UFOs and aliens is one ripe with ridiculously strange tales. We’ve seen that already with the story of the Ririe Carjackers (which we covered in 2019’s Decemystery), the aliens who decided to try and sell a random man on their delectable pancakes (which we covered last year), and the Dade City flower alien encounter (which we also covered last year).
Those three stories were all quite bizarre in their own unique way (though I think the Ririe Carjacker story is the weirdest of the bunch). So for this year, I decided to try and find one that could rival such a story. Needless to say, it was actually quite hard—and it’s not because there weren’t any stories that rivaled it. No, it’s actually because there are an insanely large amount of them, so picking just one was incredibly difficult.
Lucky for me though, I managed to come to find one, but I decided I would save it for the tail-end of this month. For now, though, I think we should talk about the Long Prairie Cans. Grab a beer (if you’re old enough to drink) too, because it may just be an alien!
The Story
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| A rendition of the Long Prairie Cans as done by Monster-Man-08. All credit goes to him. |
And last, but certainly not least, Mysterious Universe. I love that website!
Anyways: no one website was used primarily, I went through all three of the linked articles and tried to piece together what I believe to be the most straightforward summary of this close encounter of the Budweiser kind.
Our story takes place in Minnesota. On October 23, 1965, 19-year-old James “Jerry” Townsend was driving on Minnesota State Highway 27 from Little Falls to Long Prairie. The time was 7:15 P.M., though this—as far as I’m aware—has absolutely no bearing on the story whatsoever. The only reason I decided to mention it is that the three sources I cited above felt compelled to bring it up. If I had to hazard a guess, they wanted us to know that it was 3 A.M. somewhere.
That’s a really bad reference. I’m sorry.
Anywhoozle: Jerry—as I’ll refer to him from here on out—was a radio announcer and a devout Christian (this is actually very important to know). During his trip, he noticed something in the middle of the road, and it wasn’t an animal, Bigfoot, or some quack on LSD who thought the road was a part of Candyland. No, it was something much, much weirder.
It was a giant frickin’ rocket.
That isn’t me trying to be silly either. According to Jerry, this rocket stood at somewhere between 30 and 40 feet (9.1 to 12.1 meters). If we judge the average school bus as being about 20 feet in length, this thing was akin to stacking two of those bad boys upright. Anyways, the ship was also 10 feet (3 meters) in diameter. Suffice to say, this wasn’t something one would expect to see in the middle of the road—unless NASA decided to relocate to the middle of a highway.
This rocket was standing/resting on what he described as “three legs or fins”. Jerry also stated that, as he drew closer, his vehicle’s engine stalled and both the lights and radio went out. This is very common when a UFO is anywhere near a car for the record, though I digress. Jerry slammed on the breaks so he wouldn’t collide with the rocket.
Now motionless and sitting before what I can only guess was one of the most mind-boggling things he’d ever seen in his life, Jerry got an idea: he should knock the thing over with his car and take a piece of it as evidence. However, when he attempted to restart his car, it wouldn’t—real shocker if you somehow forgot when it was just stated that the engine stalled.
Undeterred by his vehicle being inoperable, Jerry decided to get over and try to push it over. I’m guessing that back in 1965, people thought that “silver, metallic rockets that are as tall as two school buses” weighed as much as a few cardboard boxes stacked on top of each other. Though who am I to judge? I’m just some blogger who pads out his works with rambling.
Getting back on track, Jerry got out of his car, only to stop before he could even get past the hood. It was then that he saw “tin cans on tripods” come out from behind the rocket. They stood at about 6 inches (15 centimeters) in height.
At least, that description of them is what Beforeitsnews says. Ufologie and Mysterious Universe both state that the aliens resembled “beer cans”. Maybe it’s just me, but I find those two descriptions to be moderately inconsistent. So, for the sake of consistency, I’m going to go with the idea that they resembled beer cans. The majority of the sources say that’s what they looked like and dang it, I think it’s a lot funnier.
Picking up with where we left off: Jerry, at this point, stopped dead in his tracks. He claimed that these aliens had three arms that were akin to matchsticks, walked with “legs” or “fins”, and that he felt like they were staring at him—in spite of them not appearing to have eyes. All things considered, these aliens looked like something designed by a child gluing random things to their dad’s beer can and saying it’s a robot that’s gonna get its metallic butt kicked by G.I. Joe.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, Jerry had no desire to go through with his plan to topple the ship over like it was a cow. Instead, he just froze and looked at the group of extraterrestrials. They stared back; all of this went on for an unknown amount of time (though Jerry has since stated that he believed it to have been about three minutes). Eventually, the aliens decided that this staring contest was getting very boring, so they got into their ship and blasted off like Team Rocket, leaving behind one very confused man.
After the ship had left, Jerry’s car restarted; the radio, headlights, and all. He got back into his car and drove over to the Todd County Sheriff’s office. After giving his story, the Sheriff—at some point—went over to the site and stated he found an oil-like substance where the rocket had been. However, there was no indication it had ever been there.
Now, as far as I can tell, this is where the story ends. No one has seen these beer can aliens since Jerry did, and it doesn’t appear any real effort has been made to prove or disprove the sighting. At the most, “strange lights” were seen in the sky, but these can always plausibly be chalked up to planes or satellites (I know that may seem very arrogant of me, but it’s a very serious possibility). As such, it’s time for us to head on over to the theories section. Tally ho, let’s see if we can come to a reasonable conclusion ourselves!
Theories
1. They were aliens
The first and most prevalent theory is that these were, in fact, aliens. I know, a real shocker given they fled the scene in a rocket; here I thought they were Soviet spies trying to figure out what life was like in Minnesota so they could work to subvert us dirty, good for nothing Yanks.
Anyways, the evidence pointing to this theory being true is… well, there really isn’t any. As far as I’m aware, that “oil-like substance” that was found was never tested anywhere—nor does it appear that it was even collected. Why did that happen? I have no idea, but I feel like I wrote about something like this in the past. I’m too lazy to go check if I did, so maybe I’m just having a weird sense of deja-vu.
I digress though. One other thing that points towards this being aliens is something that’s admittedly more tied to UFO lore. There have been reports of robotic ETs in the past; plenty of them. Some abductees claim to have seen robotic humanoids and straight-up robots that look like something from Lost In Space (the original one that is). Danger, danger, you’re gonna get your ear holes probed.
Given those sightings, some see these weirdly shaped ayy lmaos as not being anything out of the realm of normality. At the most, they just so happen to be shaped like beer cans. Though if you’re a skeptic and looking for hardcore evidence—like a photo, videos, or anything else exceptional, I’m sorry to report that you’re going to look elsewhere.
2. It was a hoax
As is the case with any story like this, there’s always the theory that it was all a hoax; all made up for some purpose known only to the person[s] behind it.
As is also the case with any claim that it was a hoax, we have to take into consideration why the person[s] would have perpetrated such an act. In this case, I’ve never found any reason or theory. The most obvious would be something like fame and/or fortune, but it doesn’t appear that Jerry ever got either of those out of this. This case isn’t something widely known like the Rendlesham Forest Incident or the Roswell Incident. Heck, the Falkville Metal Man is more well-known than this story.
Because of this, I find it very hard to really believe that Jerry would’ve made this up. Still, it remains a rather popular theory among skeptics and I guess I can’t blame them. The idea of walking beer cans is something I’d laugh off as a low-grade attempt at trolling nowadays.
3. Ehh… it was… a case of misidentification?
Earlier, I told you to remember that Jerry was a Christian. The reason for this is he was quoted as stating he does not drink because of his beliefs. As such, it’s hard to believe that he was drunk and somehow mistook someone—or something—for these supposed aliens. Likewise, I doubt he also used any sort of hallucinogenic substances, so I find it exceedingly hard to imagine he mistook anything for what he saw. However, I thought it was worth at least mentioning this as a theory so we could address that fact.
My Take
I have absolutely no clue as to what happened on that fateful night. While this isn’t the strangest alien-related story I’ve ever heard of, it’s certainly one of the hardest I’ve ever tried to draw a concrete conclusion on. I can’t see any realistic reason for Jerry to have made up his story (after all, he had nothing to gain from it).
Something I also never mentioned before, but will now, is that people who knew Jerry were interviewed in the wake of the incident. This included former teachers of his, and all of them stated that Jerry was nothing but an upstanding, truthful man. So it feels weird that he would suddenly make up something as fantastical and weird as this.
While it isn’t implausible for him to want to cover up the fact he had been drinking, I imagine the officer[s] who spoke to him would be able to smell alcohol in his breath. If he hadn’t been drinking, then I cannot think of any good reason as to why he would suddenly decide to pull a prank as strange as this.
I also find the description of the aliens to be something too silly to buy into (even if they aren’t the craziest alien species to have ever been reported—trust me on this). If we’re to believe that, yeah, he did decide to pull a prank, why not just say they looked like regular old aliens; tiny green men or tall, grey humanoids? Why go through the effort of crafting something as ludicrous as beer can aliens?
I guess if I absolutely had to pick a side, I would say that yeah, I think it was a real sighting of extraterrestrials. Maybe they were drones sent down by some species of aliens to do research, or maybe there’s some bizarre race of ETs out there that look like beer cans. I don’t know for certain, but that’s my take. Sorry, that it’s short.
Conclusion
Crack
Siiiiiiiiiiiip
Yup. Alien cans. That was a good story. Anyways, see you tomorrow friends.
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