NORTHSHORE MINE— Soudan resident, Nate Dostert got the scare of a lifetime back in about 2009 when he was working for Cleveland Cliffs-Northshore at the Peter Mitchell Mine near Babbitt. He was employed in the Railroad Operations Department. Part of his job was to load train cars with coarse taconite rock then transport the rock to Silver Bay for crushing, processing and shipping from the port. On this particular fall night he was working a midnight shift and was alone at the loading site. “It was around ten or eleven p.m. and I had just pulled my train in to be filled.” he said. The loading site has a wide dirt stockpile about forty feet high with a train track on each side with a large loading bin. After pulling his train into the bin he got out of the cab and looked towards the loading platform. He could not believe what he was seeing. Slowly and silently rising from behind it was a large, triangle shaped UFO. “I know I wasn’t dreaming and I was immediately scared to death,” Nate said.  He froze in his footsteps unable to move or speak as he watched the ominous craft slowly rising up skyward with its lights starting to strobe. He recalls seeing a glass dome at the top center of the craft and could see figures moving inside. Fearing for his life, he was finally able to engage his legs and run towards the shelter of the loading bin office where he could get inside to make a phone call to the pit dispatcher to see if anyone else had seen what he just saw. He immediately called a couple other co-workers in the crusher to see if any of them had seen it and they had not. Nate then stepped back outside and discovered the craft was no longer there. Within moments a couple of co-workers arrived at the site and they all stood studying the night sky where they could see the lights of the craft zigzagging away from them and finally disappearing from view. “It was really a scary experience and my voice was shaking when I called my girlfriend to tell her what had happened.” He recalled talking to his male co-worker the next day and learned the man’s wife had also seen the same craft at their home in Embarrass that night. Nate said he got some flack from some of his co-workers who teased him about imagining the entire thing. However, one offered the comment, “but if you really know Nate, he’s not one to make up stories or lie.”
Nate said he had a hard time working night shift for a long while afterward.