44 years ago, a farmer from Emilcin near Opole Lubelskie encountered strangers from this world. Emilcin is the place of the most famous close third-degree meeting in Poland with representatives of extraterrestrial civilization. But did all of this really happen? According to one of the researchers, there was an exceptionally sophisticated plot in Emilcin with the use of parapsychology and mind manipulation ...
Jan Wolski was returning from the field on May 10, 1978. He was driving through the grove when he saw two tiny figures - maybe one and a half meters in size, with large heads, flat, slanted eyes and strongly defined cheekbones. The figures were dressed in black overalls with a red circle on the chest, and, as Wolski claimed, had membranes between the fingers ("fins").
The meeting with the aliens in a village in the Lublin region was considered credible and the best documented of all UFO incidents that took place in Poland.
These two individuals turned out to be very "familiar", like people from the countryside in the times of the Polish People's Republic. When Wolski was coming by, they jumped on his cart as if they wanted him to give them a lift. Wolski was surprised that the guests, despite their short stature, were quite heavy, and their language - as he put it - surprised them as well - the words were thin and dense.
A close encounter of the third degree
In any case, the cart rattled calmly with the travelers until they reached the clearing, where Wolski saw a spaceship hanging 5 meters above the ground, similar to a short bus . It was lifted in the air by the four vortices that were located at each corner of the machine.
The man realized he was to go inside. It was lifted up by a special levitating elevator. Inside the ship it was cold and sparse. Wolski noticed the birds lying on the floor, moving as if in convulsions. Two more newcomers were inside. The farmer emphasized that he felt safe all the time and that strangers were kind to him.
Even though he did not know their speech, he realized that he was to undress. The newcomers' attention was especially drawn to Wolski's belt. They watched him. They unbuttoned and fastened. Then the aliens examined the farmer with a device made up of what seemed to be small plates . After the examination, they invited Ziemianin for a meal that, according to Wolski, looked a bit like icicles. The Pole, however, refused to be served, and the hosts did not pressurize.
A clearing in Emilcin, a view from the north of the place where the ship was supposed to hover
After all, Wolski knew he could leave. He turned, took off his cap, bowed goodbye, to which the aliens also bowed his head. After this nice and familiar accent, he rode the elevator down to the clearing where his wagon was waiting. The strange ship, which looked like a small bus, was still hanging in the air as it pulled away.
Wolski was aware of the uniqueness of what he had experienced, so he wanted to share his revelations with his family as soon as possible. As soon as he got home, he started talking about strange "green people". His relatives immediately ran to the said meadow, where, according to the reports, they found traces of a strange plane imprinted on the ground.
The incident grew loud. Moreover, another witness began to talk about the alien visit. After returning from the yard, 6-year-old Adaś Popiołek claimed to have seen a strange plane similar to a bus in the sky.
Cosmic PRL
The case quickly gained momentum when Zbigniew Blania-Bolnar, a sociologist and UFO researcher, appeared in Emilcin. He approached the issue professionally. He interviewed witnesses and villagers, and brought psychologists to Emilcin to verify the truthfulness of Wolski and the boy. Dr. Ryszard Kietliński, who examined the farmer, stated that he did not show symptoms of mental illness and did not seem to be lying. The same was true for Adam Popiołek.
Television appeared in Emilcin. A documentary was made Emilcin - on the verge of a secret , and soon a comic book based on the story of Jan Wolski Przybysze . The author of the drawings was Grzegorz Rosiński himself, the famous creator of Thorgal's character from the comic book series, which gained popularity all over the world.
The meeting with aliens in a village in the Lublin region was considered credible and the best documented of all UFO incidents that took place in Poland. Blania-Bolnar published two books describing the event in Emilcin, thus becoming the star of his native ufology, while Emilcin himself began to attract crowds of tourists. In 2005, thanks to the Nautilus Foundation, a monument commemorating Wolski's adventure was erected on the clearing.
UFO Monument in Emilcin
It was only in 2013 that Bartosz Rdułtowski, a writer and researcher of mysteries related mainly to World War II, put a stick in the spokes of the story about Emilcin. He took the story from Emilcin into his workshop again. It reached, among others to the tapes of interviews with witnesses by Blania-Bolnar . He also contacted the participants of those events (including Adam Popiołek, who, as an adult, refused to comment).
Rdułtowski presented the results of his investigation in the book Secret operations. PRL and UFO . According to him, the events in Emilcin are an extremely clever hoax and the effect of a conflict between Blania-Bolnar and a certain Witold Wawrzonek, also a ufologist, and his associate to some point.
According to Rdułtowski, both, apart from aliens, were also fascinated by parapsychology, specifically the phenomenon of hypnosis. And it is hypnosis that is the key concept on which Rdułtowski built his explanation of the Emilcin incident. There was an intrigue behind him that was almost as incredible as the arrival of green men from outer space ...
False memories
Blania-Bolnar learned about the aliens visit to Emilcin from Witold Wawrzonek. The latter sent him a telegram informing him about the strange event and asking him to take a look at the case. One alien seeker, instead of going to the site himself and investigating the topic, gives such a revelation to another seeker?
This is one of many doubts. Rdułtowski established that Wawrzonek and Bolnar knew each other before Emilcin, incl. due to the fact that both were interested in hypnosis. And it was against this background that there were supposed to be a tension between seekers of paranormal phenomena, which resulted in a fraud.
Well, in March 1978, two months before Emilcin, Bolnar invited his colleague to a popular science program about UFOs in the Polish People's Republic. One of the topics was hypnosis. It was also attended by the then known hypnotist Lech Emfazy Stefański.
Bolnar intended to conduct an experiment on the vision, consisting in implementing a hypnotized person with false memories - e.g. an encounter with a UFO. The experiment was to be carried out in Wawrzonek, who was convinced that he would not be able to "put into his head" fictional memories . However, the hypnosis took place without his consent and was successful. According to Rdułtowski, the whole thing hurt Witold Wawrzonek's self-love. Therefore, he decided to get back and draw his colleague into an intrigue.
So he informed Bolnar about the alleged visit of a UFO in Emilcin. During the investigation, Rdułtowski established that Wawrzonek was to meet the Wolski family before the alleged ship with green men appeared. In any case, the case was a hoax aimed at ridiculing a colleague. However, this did not care at all to establish the truth. After arriving at Emilcin, he conducted his investigation with a flourish and extremely biased, in such a way as to ignore any doubts and confirm the visit of strangers.
Jan Wolski interrogated by policemen in May 1978 [photo from:"W Służbie Narodu", 30 July 1978]
According to Rdułtowski, who listened to the transcripts of Bolnar's conversations with witnesses, during an interview with 6-year-old Adam Popiołek, who allegedly saw a strange plane in the shape of a bus, it turned out that the boy told adults about these revelations when it was already loud in the village about Wolski's adventure . Bolnar ignored this fact. He conducted the interview with the boy in such a way as to force him into an appropriate relationship.As for Wolski - the conclusions after the psychological examination, which he quoted in his publications, were not presented reliably, but only randomly and biased. The farmer himself, presented as a person resistant to suggestion and manipulation, was supposed to have exactly the opposite personality - a man strongly susceptible to the influence of the environment.
Convicted aliens
But what was the plot about? Well, according to Rdułtowski, Witold Wawrzonek, who wanted to play cleverly on his rival, arranged for the arrival of strangers to Emilcinia. He did not, however, persuade Jan Wolski to lie and did not order the hired actors to dress up as green men. He didn't have to do this. Wolski, who in his memories of the unlucky day, returned from the field and took the newcomers to the spaceship, was fully convinced that this was exactly what had happened.
According to Rdułtowski, it was because Wawrzonek ... hypnotized the farmer and persuaded him to meet strangers. Sounds incredible? Not for the author of this hypothesis. In 2015 he said:
There is evidence for everything I mentioned, either in the correspondence or in the witness accounts. On the other hand, the mere fact of hypnotizing Wolski cannot be directly confirmed. Because and how? This is my hypothesis, but it is very probable .
According to Rdułtowski, Witold Wawrzonek intended to reveal the truth to Blani-Bolnar after a few days, but the case began to live its own life. Bolnar quickly attracted a lot of specialists to Emilcin - incl. doctors. They put their own name and reputation at stake. It was getting harder and harder to undo the hoax without consequences.
On the second day of his stay in Emilcin, Blania came there with a child psychologist who helped him to question Adam. Wawrzonek got scared by the turn of the matter, because suddenly many people were involved in it. The opportunity to reveal to Blani outright that it was a hoax has been lost .
Now Witold Wawrzonek was afraid that everything would be released. Out of fear, he stopped looking at the case and did not read the newspapers. This follows from the correspondence between him and Blania. Meanwhile, Blania was brilliant in marking the very serious research of the Emilian UFO .
As a result, the story of the "Polish Roswell" went to the world.
Fins from space
Rdułtowski's theory, which - as he himself admitted - lacks the most important proof, i.e. the confirmation of the hypnosis of farmer Jan Wolski, met with a great storm in the UFO milieu and among fans of the Emilcin story.
A number of allegations have been made against the author regarding inaccuracies and distortions in the reporting of the case. The Nautilus Foundation conducted interviews with Wawrzonek's son and his wife. Both strongly denied that Wawrzonek ever had any interest in hypnosis (The wife, however, admitted that she originally confirmed the case). In turn, the alleged episode of the TV program with the hypnotized Wawrzonek was never to be broadcast.
It cannot be denied that the story of Emilcin, however, has several shoals that seriously damaged its credibility. Well, Blania-Bolnar admitted that under his influence, Jan Wolski gave deliberately false elements of the appearance of strangers. It's about the unfortunate webs between the fingers and the red circles on the chest. This part of the alien appearance was made up. What for?
Bolnar came up with the idea. He meant to "screen out" all sorts of liars and "freaks" who would turn to him with UFO stories. At that time, when Emilcin became famous, Bolnar was supposed to be approached by a lot of people claiming that they had seen aliens. In order to separate the "grain from the chaff", the researcher invented a trap, namely these fictitious membranes between the fingers. If these films appeared among the elements of the alien appearance, it meant that the witnesses had simply made up the story and modeled it on Wolski's account.
UFO EMILCIN 1978
The idea, even if legitimate, had a weak point. Apart from pointing out the confabulators, he undermined the credibility of Wolski himself. Because if the main witness, under the influence of an outsider, weave fictional elements into his account, he did not actually present himself as assertive and not susceptible to influence.
On the other hand, Blani-Bolnar and Wolski are favored by the fact that the author of this "trap" did not hide with it at all, but he described it openly in his book Zdarzenie w Emilcinie in which he explained the meaning of the whole matter:
When we came up with our trap for ufo-liars with Dr. Kietliński, we knew that it was a tool with two functions:not only a means of falsifying reports, but also a means of verification. On the one hand, allowed us to strain imaginary accounts - if false elements appeared in them; on the other hand, he was giving convincing evidence - if, if the description of the creatures was identical, the false elements did not occur .
Helicopters instead of UFOs?
Could a simple farmer from a village in the Lublin region, not read in science fiction or ufological reports, at a time when not everyone had a TV at home, could so convincingly invent an encounter with strangers? Or maybe he wasn't lying, only people from the outside started adding fictional elements and imaginary interpretations to his story?
After Rdułtowski's book, another publication by Krzysztof Drozd appeared ( Emilcin. In search of truth ), a former policeman of the command in Lublin, who was close to those cases and who for several decades conducted his own investigation into a meeting with aliens. He pointed to gaps in the investigation of Zbigniew Blani-Bolnar. He emphasized, among other things, that Bolnar did not check helicopter flights from two local airports near Emilcin. One thing is certain:Emilcin's potential is so great that there will be more than one publication on that incident.
When it comes to Rdułtowski's theory about the hypnotized Jan Wolski and "encoding" in his mind false memories with aliens, it sounds like a ready-made script for a Hollywood movie bordering on crime fiction, thriller, fantasy and comedy. Who knows, maybe with time the representatives of the 10 muse will come down for such a gem, and we will see the adventures of a farmer from the Lublin region with green men on the big screen.