Investigate famous and fascinating UFO sightings in Minnesota, including the Val Johnson Incident.
A few X-Files episodes take place in Minnesota, the most notable of which does not involve aliens, but we still want to believe! That means the freakiest UFO sightings in Minnesota are all real (well, at least not straightforwardly works of fiction).
Some of the strangest Minnesota sightings involve a sheriff’s mysterious crashed car, a cereal company doing government research, and a flight crew’s encounter with the unknown in the skies above the Twin Cities.
Read on to learn about declassified FBI files, flights of fantasy, and “unidentified anomalous phenomena” from the North Star State.
The Val Johnson Incident
Minnesota’s most famous UFO sighting is known as the Val Johnson Incident.
In the wee hours of the night one August in 1979, Sheriff Val Johnson saw a light in the distance. He thought it might have been a plane making an emergency landing, so he decided to check it out.
But the light moved abruptly toward him instead. By his account, the light collided with his car, and he heard glass shatter, then lost consciousness for 39 minutes. When he came to, he called for help saying that something attacked his car that “wasn’t a vehicle,” but he didn’t know what it was.
Sheriff Johnson received treatment for his eyes, which appeared as though they had sustained welder’s flash. His vehicle suffered substantial, mysterious damage to the hood, antennas, and one headlight. A Honeywell engineer investigated the car and determined an electrical “force” or “thing” damaged the vehicle.
Today, the Marshall County Museum has the banged-up squad car on display, drawing Mulders and Skullies who want to see it for themselves.
Not those flashing lights
As recently as 2025, the FBI documented “unidentified anomalous phenomena” (UAP) activity in Minnesota—for example, an Anoka sighting by a group of police officers. This information was recently declassified as part of the Pentagon’s Presidential Unsealing and Reporting System for UAP Encounters (PURSUE) initiative.
The officer who reported the sighting said he and two others witnessed an object hovering in the sky, flashing changing colors, as it rapidly ascended and descended. One of these police officers drove toward the object while the group observed the UFO for an hour and a half.
The UAP was caught on video, captured with a camera through a pair of binoculars, and a news station in Fargo aired the footage.
The officers first noticed the object from the Domino’s parking lot where they were posted up, around 1 o’clock in the morning. That’s the last time I order mushrooms on my pizza!
Flying saucer on film
An iconic, early photograph of a supposed UFO was taken by Arthur Strauch on his way home from a trip up north, near New Ulm. He saw a silver object in the sky, blazing with orange light as it caught and reflected the rays of the evening sun. Strauch said the object had a dome, windows, and a rotating ring. Now if that’s not a picture-perfect description of a flying saucer, I don’t know what is.
He snapped photos of the spacecraft with his Kodak camera, and mailed them, along with a letter, to the local division of the Air Force. In response, he received a photo analysis report by an intelligence research specialist, but the results were inconclusive.
Dancing lights in flight
More than 2,200 UFO sightings in Minnesota have been reported by the National UFO Reporting Center (NUFORC)—one of the foremost databases of UFO sightings and UAPs available to the public. NUFORC vets each report, taking into consideration alternate explanations and assigning them a rating.
Tier 1 classifications are reserved for the most remarkable, unexplained reports. One of the most notable Tier 1 instances in Minnesota is NUFORC UFO Sighting 183521 from 2024.
As a plane traveling from Toronto to Las Vegas flew over Minneapolis, several pilots and two flight attendants noticed lights maneuvering strangely in the sky ahead. Together they watched four objects move in the night sky. A flight attendant recounts how the objects seemed to chase one another, form a triangle, and swirl up, down, and around in unpredictable, yet synchronized, patterns.
One of the pilots took a series of photographs, capturing a stop-motion animation of the mysterious lights dancing around the night sky and its stationary stars. The footage is beautiful and eerie at the same time.
More than hot air?
Project Blue Book is the real-life X-Files. These government UFO investigation files contain information on hundreds of sightings documented between 1947 and 1969—including a few in Minnesota.
Did you know General Mills developed more than just your favorite breakfast cereal? The company operated its General Mills Aeronautical Research Division in the 1950s, which aided in military research and developed balloons for the Navy.
While three researchers were observing a balloon in 1953, they noticed what looked like white smoke in the sky. The “smoke” appeared to travel at 900 mph, then dove straight down, glowing as it did.
The engineers thought it was a jet, but the Project Blue Book report notes that the speed was unusual, as was the lack of sound, and also the craft’s strange maneuvering. The only air traffic at that time was the General Mills balloon, and the sighting was classified as “unidentified.”
Boys vs. machine
Another strange Project Blue Book report from1948 involves a case from the western suburbs. A farmer reported that his two sons had seen a metallic object drift into their backyard, ricocheting off the ground and leaving a mark, before it quickly shot up 20 feet and made a whistling noise, then rose further into the air and flew out of sight.
The FBI took photographs and samples of the dirt where the sighting occurred, and where the UFO left a dent when it made contact with the ground. Even after questioning the family, examining the site, and testing the dirt, the incident remained inconclusive.
