I15 South / Helena, MT being encounter — February 22, 1976

The contemporary Great Falls Tribune account identifies the witness as a twenty-nine-year-old East Helena man driving home from Conrad with his wife and two children at about 10 a.m. on 22 February 1976. It places the sighting near Interstate 15 south of Great Falls, beside the Missouri River. That differs from the Atlas’s compressed Helena locality: East Helena was the witness’s home, not necessarily the encounter site. The man reported a large, broad, upright creature covered with brownish-black hair. He left the car and pursued it, then retreated when it stopped walking and turned toward him at an estimated distance of seven hundred feet. The March 11 Tribune article compared his description with a separate sighting by two boys near Ulm on the previous day. Those boys and their experiences are separate witnesses and must not be inserted into the family’s encounter. Sheriff’s Captain Keith Wolverton described an investigation of creature reports and also appealed for information about unusual airborne objects at night. The article does not establish a hovering craft alongside this daytime creature. Hatch’s nearby-UFO detail is therefore retained as a later catalogue claim, without inventing its shape or occupants. The illustration follows the contemporary family-and-creature account and labels that limitation.