He's come to be know as 'Balloon Man' after attempting to fly over the Calgary Stampede on a lawn chair attached to dozens of massive balloons.

Dan Boria, from Calgary, has since been arrested and charged with mischief and endangering lives, but before this bizarre story went viral, Boria's balloons and chair were found in a farmer's field near Blackie.

Justin Jamison, who lives in the area, was driving when the unusual sight made him pull over.

"I saw something in the ditch, and when I got closer I saw it was a big pile of balloons with one of our neighbours already sitting on the road right beside it," he says. "So I got up there and started chatting with them and the one 12-year-old neighbour said she went about 100 metres out into the field and pulled the chair with all the balloons attached to it into the ditch."

Jamison says when he first saw the balloons and chair, he was worried someone had fallen off the chair and died, and thought they should arrange a search party for this person.

"Then we started hearing about all the articles about a guy jumping off near the Stampede, so we didn't really think otherwise."

After 'Balloon Man' jumped off his homemade aircraft, he landed in an open-grass area and rolled his ankle, but Jamison says it could have been a lot worse.

"The chair could have landed on a kid, or landed on a power line and knocked something out, or maybe some of these balloons would have landed in a farmer's field and the cows would have ate them, and then you'd have some dead cows."

He says the whole concept is just so bizarre and surreal to him.

"It's just a quite, little country town and then something like this happens," he laughs.