Today someone opened a thread about the Falcon Lake Incident in the UFO section of the German board Allmystery.de

I'll briefly summarize how it went:

We read in a bit and started to discuss the case. I quickly came to the conclusion that the investigator was about right, who had stated:
"...the man had suffered a booze-induced hallucination, and perhaps injured himself in some clumsy, probably hilariously slapstick, manner." Source

This triggered an association in the user inv3ert that I think might be capable of solving the entire case in its essentials in one swoop. He succinctly wrote: "Gloves, goggles, burns, smell of sulfur – knocked off his feet by copper still."

Key points: A distillery still has perforated plates. And the pattern on Michalak's torso was the only real mystery to me. Then there's the sulfur smell, which he himself actively worked into his story. Here is a forum post by a hobby whisky distiller:
Source

"Mysterious smell of sulfur in the distillate.
I have now with much blood and sweat produced my 8 liters, high-proof young whisky. The tears came to my eyes at the first smell and taste test after 3 months of storage. A distinct smell of sulfur/sulfide and vulcanized rubber overlay the fine malt aroma.(...)"

An expert replies:
"(...)Fermentation can produce hydrogen sulfide, it smells like rotten eggs, burnt rubber and sulfur.(...)"

Now let's put this template over the testimony of Stan Michalak's son, as quoted in Chris Rutkowski's book:
"When I walked into the bedroom there was a huge stink in the room, like a real horrible aroma of sulphur and burnt motor. It was all around and it was coming out of his pores. It was bad." Source

And now a photo of a small distillation apparatus, as it is available as a kit for everyone. These perforated plates would have to be scaled up a bit....

image source

Any further questions?

I won't go into any more detail at this point. But with this simple but convincing version, as far as I can tell with today's knowledge and a little further thought, all main questions can be answered.

By the way, I am not convinced that he was only intoxicated with alcohol during the encounter with the patrolman. There could have been other substances - drugs - involved that caused his only partially desolate state without him smelling strongly of alcohol.

I am strongly inclined at the moment to accept this version as true.

What do you think?

P. S.: This is my first post on Metabunk. Please forgive me if I am not familiar with the forum software right away.