Script

What happened to the 71-year-old farmer, Jan Wolski, inside an alien UFO?  Join me to learn the most famous Polish alien abduction story in that country's history.   There are many potential explanations for his story – in addition to the possibility that it might be an alien abduction.  Yet, there's also a crazy conspiracy that might explain what Wolski experienced.

Hi! I'm MF Thomas, and this is My Dark Path, where we explore conspiracies, the paranormal and the unexplained.  And so, my friends, let’s begin.

The late '70s and '80s in Poland were a UFO enthusiast's dream. After the Gdynia incident in 1959, which I covered in another video, the skies seemed to light up with unexplained phenomena. But one encounter stood out from the rest - the Emilcin incident.  It's one of the rare UFO cases with a memorial – one I visited during a My Dark Path research trip to Poland late last year.

In 1978, 71-year-old farmer Jan Wolski claimed he hadn't just seen a UFO but had voluntarily entered one!  And until Wolski died in 1991, no one was able to prove that he was either lying or hallucinating or lying.  People who knew him described the elderly man similarly - honest, straightforward, reliable, and straight-talking.

Wolski's wild tale might have opened the floodgates of UFO reports. From '78 to '89, as the communist system started to collapse, UFO reports skyrocketed. That’s over 400 official sightings, with 1979 being the peak year for extraterrestrial activity. And remember - that's just the reported cases. Who knows how many other encounters went unshared?

These weren't just lights in the sky. We're talking about close encounters of the second and third kind. Some mimicked Wolski's experience, while others were even wilder - though sadly, many of these stories have faded into obscurity over time.  The Emilcin incident is one of the few Polish UFO close encounters published outside Poland.

Part 1 – The Event

On Wednesday, May 10, 1978, Wolski woke up at 5 am, harnessed a four-year-old mare to a cart, planning to drive her to the town of Dabrowa Kusmierska.  They would visit a local farmer with a stallion that would breed with Wolski's mare.

Jan Wolski was born in 1907. After his elementary education, he started farming, living in the village of Emilcin – a heavily agricultural area with 74 farms and only one shop.

Until 1978, Wolski had never traveled far from his home, other than a brief trip to the Ukraine before World War II – a distance of about 200 miles.

After completing their task, Wolski and the mare started their home.  The hour was still early, about 7:20 am.  They had taken the trip along dirt roads, for he had not had the time to get the mare shod and didn't want to make her walk on the paved road – today, this is the Lublin highway.

Our extraterrestrial encounter started at this moment, as Wolski and the mare traveled along the dirt road beneath the trees, approaching a meadow. It was the first time the mare had walked most of this route. At this moment, Wolski observed two persons walking in the same direction as he was going over the right-hand side of the meadow.  At this moment, they were about 120 feet away.

At first, Wolski thought they were hunters.

As the cart entered the meadow, he noticed that these figures were walking in a way that made him think they were waiting for Wolski to get near them.

As he watched the two figures, Wolski started to change his opinion about the two figures he had deemed to be hunters.   As he drew closer, he thought the figures had an unusual greenish tinge to their faces.

He also noted something odd about their movement – their walking reminded him of a film he’d seen about how scuba divers and how they moved when walking on the ocean floor.  The figures would rise with each footstep before slowly settling back down. 

Wolski described the situation like this:

When they heard my horse and cart rumbling along, the figures began to turn and look back toward me, and when I got closer, I saw their faces, which appeared green in color. I was surprised, but I continued to drive the cart. There is a small stream there, though, at that time, it was no more than a muddy pool. They tried to jump over the stream but one of them landed in it.

As he drew up to the two figures, they each stepped aside, one on the right and one to the left of his cart to let him through.  And now he heard their voices.  Wolski said:

They were not speaking to me but rather to each other, and their language was very bizarre. I don’t know how they could understand one another. When we talk, we do it slower, but if we were to talk in that manner, we would never be understood."

As his cart started to pass the figures, they walked alongside it momentarily.  Then, without warning, they jumped aboard the moving cart and sat behind the now-startled Wolski.  They continued to talk unintelligibly but gestured to Wolski to continue driving the cart.  One report stated that the mare struggled to pull the cart with the added weight. 

Today, any one of us would be fearful of someone who leaped into our car.  But Wolski said that he wasn't initially afraid of the beings.  And it was the first time he could observe them up close.

The aliens were around five feet tall. As he’d seen earlier, they were slim and dressed in elastic, one-piece suits of a greyish-black hue that resembled rubber.

This suit covered the entire body except for the face and the hands. At the lower end, it included the feet.  The suit adhered closely to the body except in the waist region, which was less close-fitting.

Their suits didn’t have buttons, pockets, or a belt. The ends of the sleeves fitted closely round the wrists.

Their heads were large. Their faces were, in fact, green and sported high cheekbones.  Their eyes were almond-shaped and very long.  Their eyes were also wholly dark and did not have what we would call a white of the eye. In the place of the nose, there was only a slight bulge with two small vertical openings. Their mouths were straight and thin.

Later, Wolski noticed that the figures grimaced periodically, which was unpleasant. The movement of their mouths could have just been smiles.  Sometimes, their mouths would twist to one side.

They had no lips. Their teeth were white. No hair was visible on the face. The hands, green, were slim.  They had five fingers, and a membrane caused each finger to be webbed. The membrane was green and elastic, connecting each contiguous two fingers except the space between thumb and index finger, and it began at the level of the first joint of the fingers. Wolski did not see that they had fingernails.

At their shoulders, the beings had a "hump", as though a rolled up blanket had been slipped in under their one-piece suits. Wolski could not see if this was due to their anatomy or was a part of their suit.

Lastly, their legs were long, and seemed thicker than the legs of a man.  Their footwear and the legs of the trousers were fully integrated.

When the creatures were sitting in the cart, with their legs hanging down, the legs were curved in such a semicircular fashion that they looked like prehensile limbs. Wolski couldn’t see any characteristics that would identify their sex. These two beings were identical to each other.

As they sat on the back edge of the cart, they behaved politely, allaying Wolski’s concern that they meant him harm.  And so, surprised but not fearful, Wolski drove the cart another 100 feet or so until they entered clearing.  At this moment, one of the aliens signaled to him to stop.

In the clearing, the subsequent discovery shook Wolski.  In front of him, a large white object hung in the air about 50 feet above the ground, framed by a row of trees.

Part 2 – the Craft

Perhaps the wise farmer who had seen his share of wonders over his 7 decades, could have shrugged off the presence of these two odd beings.  But this hovering craft cemented in his mind that he was experiencing something extraordinary.

In his own words,

“I drove the cart to the bushes and as we passed them I noticed a ‘bus’ in

the air! I was extremely surprised. I said to myself: ‘What’ going on!” It (the

bus) was easily visible and was entirely white like a crystal. The road led me

towards the craft, so I tried to speed up and avoid it. At around 60 ft in

front the craft one of the beings gestured me to stop. I wasn't afraid. I stopped

the horse, but it's an animal with such a character that it won't stop unless it

wants to. So, the being grasped the reins of the cart and helped me stop it.

Not surprisingly, the horse then became a bit uneasy..."

At this moment, it's worth understanding Wolski in more detail.  Rather than judge him by the standards of the 2020s, consider that he had only finished 3 grades at elementary school, supplemented by education a village school and some private home tutoring. And, he lived a lifestyle typical of any Polish farmer of the time.  He and his family did not have a TV or even a radio. Farm duties filled his day with occasional holidays and visits to the local catholic church.  And I share this not to deride his simplicity, but to remind us how blessed we are with a life of relative ease and convenience.  And recall that the virtues of hard work and patience are, sadly, all too rare in the modern world.  Anyone who tells you, posturing on social media, how difficult their life is today wouldn't have survived a week working alongside Wolski. 

When Wolski entered the clearing, the farmer heard a faint humming sound emitted by the object.

At first the mare did not want to stop, and one of the beings leapt forward and seized the reins, pulling on them to bring her to a halt.  And here, the figures jumped from the cart, motioning for Wolski to follow. One of them helped him to get down.  Wolski found their skin was soft to the touch, yet quite cold.  Wolski also remembered being surprised by the strength that the small being possessed in its wrists.

The object was approximately 15 feet long, 9 feet wide, and about 8 feet tall. Wolski likened it to a short bus with a barn-like roof.  It had no windows. The object’s surface was pristine, free of seams, rivets, or welds.  It appeared to him as if it had been cast from a flawless piece of material.  It also gleamed as if nickel-plated.  It hovered against a backdrop of tall birch trees, remaining stationary just below their peaks, which ranged between 20 to 30 feet high.  Even though the craft was glowing in a ‘transparent white,’ it did not cast shadows against the trees behind it.

At each corner of the object, about halfway up, were four barrels with black rods running through them. These rods spun rapidly, and their motion produced a faint but constant hum that Wolski first heard from 30 meters away. As he approached, the hum grew louder, resembling the buzzing of bees in flight. The barrels emitted spirals of color, giving the object an ethereal quality, but curiously, the fast-spinning rods stirred no air.

The craft hovered gently, rising and falling a foot or so.   Lastly, a lift platform hovered a few feet off the ground, held by four thin, transparent cables, which also shimmered with a pearly, nickel-like effect.

After being helped off the cart, Wolski followed the two beings toward the object. 

When they arrived nearly beneath it, the lift, held by the four cables, lowered noiselessly to the ground. One of the beings stepped onto the lift and indicated that Wolski should do the same, showing him that he should also grab the cables.  The other being did not board the lift but returned to the horse.

The lift rose rapidly into the air, stopping before the opening in the craft. Wolski had felt nothing as it moved, and it was unclear what made it rise.

The being who was accompanying him signaled to him to enter.  Reportedly, Wolski felt some unknown mental prompting that helped him decide to go inside.  But before doing so, he stopped before the craft door and turned around.  From the air, he saw the other being, who had remained in the clearing, studying his horse.

Before stepping through the opening, Wolski paused and braced himself with his right hand against the entrance.  It was square, with rounded corners, and about six feet high. At the point where it connected with the wall of the craft, the wall and the door had no visible seam or connection. The door rolled up inside the craft, towards the right-hand side.

As he stepped in, Wolski’s right hand gripped the opening. He recalled that the walls were at least one and half inches thick – but might have been even thicker.

Now inside, he was greeted by two more beings indistinguishable from the first two. One of them was eating something that looked like an icicle.

The being broke the food apart like a biscuit, offering some to Wolski.  He declined as he gazed around at his surroundings.

The chamber was rectangular. There was no internal lighting other than the daylight from the open door.  The walls, floor, and ceiling were a greyish-black. The floor, though, shinned as though it were polished. The walls were smooth and hard to the touch and made of a material resembling glass.

Seats were fastened against each wall, attached by two black cables. Reports differ about the number of seats in the cabin but there were undoubtedly more seats than the four aliens Wolski observed.

Wolski does not know whether this chamber was the only one in the craft or whether there were others. The height of the ceiling from the floor was almost 6 feet high.  Two black "tubes" ran from one wall to the other.  Later analysis emphasizes that there must have been something above the ceiling as external height of the craft was about 9 feet.  And Wolski wondered later what might have been “up in the loft.”

Aboard the ship, the humming noise that Wolski had heard outside was far less perceptible. The creatures made no sound as they walked about on the cabin floor.

Now acclimated, Wolski turned back to the aliens.  The one who had come in with Wolski indicated to him to undress. Wolski took off his coat, his jacket, and his shirt. The intruders were in a hurry, for one of them helped Wolski to unbutton his shirt.  The being observing his mare, came into the cabin several minutes later, arriving while he was undressing.

Wolski stopped after removing his outer clothing.  Then one told him to undress completely, and he started to comply.  While he did so, an expression appeared on the faces of the unknown beings containing, at the same time, something of both a smile and grimace.

With Wolski now completely naked, one of the beings produced two disc-shaped objects, holding one in each hand.  It seemed to Wolski that they were attached to its palm by something like a suction pad.

These grey discs vibrated, emitting a dull humming sound with no metallic tone.

The being who had brought Wolski up the lift started positioning him in front of the being holding the discs. First, he presented one side, then with his back towards him, and finally, with the other side, followed by his front. When Wolski presented a side, he had to raise the corresponding arm.

Later Wolski said that this made him think that the aliens were photographing him from the front, the back, and both sides.  Some reports state that the being with the discs moved around Wolski rather than having him turn.  But either way, during this activity, Wolski suddenly became aware that the aliens gave off a powerful smell – much like burning sulfur.

The smell was so strong that, even two days later, his coat still smelled strongly of the sulfur.

While undressed, the aliens looked at his clothes, spread out on the floor around him. They were particularly interested in his leather trouser belt, alternately unbuckling and buckling it, talking together as they did so.  And unlike the physical probing which, for better or worse, have become almost a joke in alien abduction stories, the only physical exam the aliens performed was a superficial view one took of the inside of Wolski's mouth.  With this oral exam complete, his chaperoning alien indicated that he could now put his clothes on again.

Inside the alien craft, Wolski felt the temperature was somewhat warmer than it was outside.

Wolski recalled two other significant events from his time inside the craft, estimated to be about 12 minutes.

First, one alien who had not been participating in his examination had been walking up and down in the chamber, occasionally putting a small black rod into two holes in one of the walls. The length of the rod has been reported differently – everything from about the size of pen up to a foot in length.  But all reports state that it had little black knob at one end. Periodically, the alien would like the rod into a hole in the wall, then turned it like a key in a lock before moving it to another hole and repeating the action.

Second, Wolski saw that the ship’s floor was covered black birds; he thought about 10 total. He thought they were either crows or rooks.  They appeared to be alive, their heads and their eyes moving, but otherwise, they seemed paralyzed. While in the cabin, the beings paid no attention to the captive birds.

I'll make an aside here.  I've read dozens of accounts of Wolski's story and, until this moment, I've always assumed that the aliens caught the birds deliberately for examination or inadvertently stunned by the power of the alien craft.  But, what if, like the meme of birds aren't real, these birds were not real birds, but alien drones ready to be released in the area.  Wolski observed they were not dead, but only their heads and eyes were active.  Perhaps they were simply in a low power mode before being activated for their mission?

When Wolski was dressed again, the aliens showed him the way out. Then he doffed his cap and bowed, saying "goodbye".  Likewise, the aliens smiled, or, rather grimaced.

The same lift took Wolski down, but not to the ground, but nearly to it: he had to jump, and when he braced himself against the platform to jump, it seemed to him that it neither moved nor shook.

Wolski returned to his horse and cart.  He found that the mare had been grazing and had eaten quite a lot of grass while waiting.  He sat down in his cart and looked at the UFO, where he’d just spent the most unusual moments of his life.

Standing in the entrance to the object, he saw two or three of the entities watching him.  Back at the reigns, they started off, horse, now seemingly anxious to depart, galloped along dirt track towards home.

And in about ten minutes, they arrived back at their farm.  Wolski unhitched and cared for the mare before entering his home.  Nobody was at home except his wife. His sons would arrive a little later.  When he told them of his experience, they ran to find some neighbors and then to the clearing.

Later reports said that Mrs. Wolski had said her husband had fallen asleep for several hours upon returning home before telling his story.  Later, Wolski was experiencing symptoms of shock at this time.

When Wolski's sons and neighbors arrived at the clearing, they found it empty. But, searching the site, they discovered traces that something had been there.  They found the imprints of strange footwear at three places - twice in the meadow, and one set near the curtain of trees that masked the meadow from the road.  Six people, including two members of the Wolski family, verified the presence of these footprints there.

The footprints were trapezoidal, almost rectangular, in shape. The underneath part of the sole was convex. The two long sides of the footprint went down into the soil to a depth of an inch or so. Each print was slightly longer than an average human footprint.

His sons and neighbors also found corn stalks that had been uprooted and holes in the ground that gave the impression that samples had been taken.   Lastly, they found one bizarre artifact – a group of black feathers, all of precisely the same length.

Finally, the ad hoc group inspected the area where Wolski’s horse had grazed.  While Wolski claimed he was inside the craft for about 12 minutes, different analysts argue that the amount of grass consumed indicate that the horse could have been grazing for up to two hours. 

But, other than these observations, there remained no other evidence of the aliens and UFO.  But the event, even in the tightly controlled communist state of Poland at the time, would not stay secret for long.

Part 3 - Investigation

As I mentioned, Poland had experienced a spate of hundreds of UFO sightings in the 1970s – and these had led to the rise of many ufologists.  And so, about 2 weeks after the event, Witold Wawrzonek (va-jon-ek), who lived in nearby Lublin, was the first Ufologist to speak to Jan Wolski.  He arrived at the farm around May 26, 1978. Then Dr Bigniew Blania-

Bolnar, of Lodz, also arrived in Emilcin, where he and his team started to investigate the event and witness.

Blania’s team conducted several tests and examinations of Wolski's mental and physical condition. Their findings all pointed to one thing – that Wolski was in excellent physical and mental shape given his age and that he was very objective in how he saw the world.  He was not delusional.  Blania’s researchers also found he was not easily suggestable and did not have a tendency toward lying.  The medical tests showed that Wolski's sight and hearing were good, and all his reflexes were normal.

According to Dr Kietlinski, a psychologist in Dr Blania-Bolnar's investigation group, Wolski is telling the truth.  Or, at the very least, Wolski believed he was telling the truth as he understood it.

With this established, some of Blania-Bolnar’s team started to ask: was Wolski the only person who saw the UFO and the aliens?

There were other witnesses in the area. At approximately 8:00 AM on the morning of Wolski’s experience, an unusual event unfolded in another part of Emilcin on a farm about ¾ of a mile west of Wolski’s encounter. Adas and Agnieszka Popiotek, siblings aged 6 and 4, were playing in their backyard when they observed something extraordinary passing overhead.

Their mother, Janina, was preparing breakfast inside the house when an unusual and loud noise caught her attention. When interviewed later, she noted the explosion: "You would have said that it came from the ground". Concerned for her children's safety, she checked on them but found them safe and playing.  She returned to her tasks, but young Adas came to her moments later with a startling story.  He told his mother that an aircraft resembling a bus had just flown over their farm at about the height of their barn. He said  aircraft had only one window, and Adas had seen the pilot through it.

According to the researchers who interviewed the family, Adam could not have invented this story based on rumors of Wolski’s encounter.  His sister was too small to be interviewed. Their reports, in Blania-Bolnar’s opinion, described the same craft. Adam, for example, told insisted that the pilot’s outfit was dark grey and had a green face.

Although Wolski's account seemed sincere as the story leaked, many assumed that he had been tricked or had dreamt of the alien encounter. The press proposed several theories. The first one involved a deliberate prank on the old farmer. The second was that Wolski had misidentified a helicopter.  The third scenario was that Wolski had vivid alcoholic hallucinations.  And the fourth theory, although not promoted by the press, was that Wolski’s experience was real.

Blania-Bolnar stayed in the area, observing Wolski and conducting interviews with members of the local community who knew him. As a result, he was convinced that Wolski would not misidentify a helicopter and he was not an alcoholic. He determined that there were no helicopter flights in the area on the day of the event in May.

But Wolski, despite the support for his story from Blania-Bolnar, became frustrated with the constant reporting and questioning of his story.  He said of the experience:

“You should know that I came to the conclusion that I should have kept my mouth shut about it, but my neighbors spread the rumors that then went nation-wide...”

Despite his reluctance, Wolski spoke at the 5th Polish UFO Conference years later. Unfortunately, I can't find any direct transcript of his remarks at that conference – instead, this script is based on reports of people attending it.  However, reports about him validated that he was a stalwart community member.  Other investigators found him solid, sincere and honest, fully worthy of confidence.  Interviews of his neighbors in Emilcin noted that he had never been seen drunk, did not smoke, and had no bad habits. His upbringing and continued faith in the Catholic church also reinforced for some investigators that he saw God as his witness to the veracity of his statements.

And this leads us to a fascinating, conspiratorial angle on this story.  But before we do so, I’ll offer one more hypothesis about what Wolski saw and experienced.

If we accept, for a moment, the idea that the aliens and the UFO were real, what explains the need for the simple yet unsophisticated exam of Wolski?  Why would aliens, capable of interstellar travel, do something as rudimentary as this exam of Wolski?  Here’s my hypothesis – could the aliens be autonomous robots and their exam of Wolski simply a bootup routine to calibrate their sensing capabilities. 

A second hypothesis, again accepting for a moment that the experience was genuinely extraterrestrial, would be this.  While the anatomy of amphibians, like frogs, is extraordinarily well understood and documented, how many middle school students will learn about their anatomy by physically dissecting a frog during a biology class?  Didactic experience is a critical part of the learning process.  Therefore, if aliens visit, could their hands-on experiences require each to have personal experience with the humans that inhabit earth?

Again, these are arguments that might be used to explain why Wolski's experience might be a reasonable event, if it was indeed a close encounter of the third kind.

All evidence showed he was not a drunk or a liar.  The debate about the truth of Wolski will likely never be answered satisfactorily.  Yet, there may be another explanation for his experience involving an extraordinary conspiracy.

Part 4 – Rivalry & Conspiracy

The UFO researcher Blania-Bolnar was a mysterious and rather unpopular person and ufologist.  His fellow Polish ufologists thought him to be arrogant.  Some even called him an agent of the Polish government.  Given what we know about the FBI's involvement in infiltrating public UFO societies in the US, this is a very reasonable hypothesis. Still, Blania-Bolnar’s connection with the communist state security apparatus remains very unclear.  Many researchers may have been jealous and attempted to defame him with the equivalent of calling someone a Nazi or racist in today’s society. Blania-Bolnar did not allow these slights to go without a response.  He frequently refuted these claims, calling one researcher ‘an ape’.

And his role in promoting the Emilcin story would be brought back to the forefront in 2013 when researcher Bartosz Rdułtowski published a book titled, when translated to English: Secret Operations of the Polish People's Republic and UFOs.  With the tenacity of a detective, he had acquired Blania-Bolnar’s archives after his death. As he pored over the yellowed documents and faded photographs, a different narrative began to emerge that might explain the whole Wolski abduction. 

Bartosz’ hypothesis sounds like an almost Shakespearean tale of two ufologists: Blania-Bolnar and his rival, Witold Wawrzonek (va-jon-ek)  – the two ufologists who had first researched Wolski’s claims.  Bartosz claimed that, about a month before the Wolski encounter, the two ufologists made a bet: Blania would have someone hypnotise Wawrzonek to remember something that never actually happened.  Wawrzonek thought this was ludicris.   Eventually, they arranged a time and place to settle the bet , and hypnotist Lech Stefański managed to put Wawrzonek in a trance-like state, and the ufologist woke up with some demonstrably false memories. Of course, he felt humiliated and decided to get revenge on his rival Blania.

Wawrzonek planned his revenge using Jan Wolski, a simple farmer, who lived in nearby Emilcin.  The plan was elegantly simple: implant an unbelievable story of alien encounter, let Blania-Bolnar run with it, and then reveal the truth, humiliating his rival once and for all.  How this was all to have occurred is unknown.  I don't know how a man could kidnap someone, erase those memories then implant some selective memories about an alien abduction.  But still, the account from Rdułtowski is worth considering.

But fate has a sense of humor. Blania-Bolnar, when presented with this extraordinary tale, didn't just run with it - he sprinted. His passionate promotion of the Emilcin incident as a genuine close encounter caught fire in the UFO community. Before Wawrzonek could unveil his grand deception, the story had taken on a life of its own, growing beyond any possibility of simple debunking.

As Rdułtowski pieced together this intricate puzzle, he faced more questions than answers. He did find that Blania had manipulated the Popiotek children's testimony.  But in the end, despite his exhaustive research, he was forced to conclude that the truth of what happened in Emilcin might never be known.

And we reach the end of this story.  The Emilcin incident, whether a genuine brush with the unknown, an elaborate hoax, or something in between, is a testament to the power of belief and the complexity of human nature. It serves as a reminder that in the search for extraterrestrial truth, we must never underestimate the terrestrial capacity for deception - even self-deception.

As the sun sets over Emilcin's fields, the mystery lingers, a whisper in the wind. And somewhere, perhaps, Jan Wolski's otherworldly visitors watch and wonder at the curious ways of earthly beings.  And maybe those alien drone crows are still watching us today, sending their findings back to aliens on another world.

Thank you for joining me in this episode of My Dark Path.  If you enjoyed this episode, please like and subscribe if you haven’t already.  If you didn’t enjoy it, I'm grateful you've made it this far.  Thank you, dear friends, for walking the dark paths of the world with me.  Until next time, good night.