By Owen Sexton / owen@chronline.com
Believers and skeptics alike attended the third Chehalis Flying Saucer Party Saturday In the city’s downtown area to celebrate the 76th anniversary of Kenneth Arnold’s historic UFO sighting in 1947.
No longer are UFO sightings easily dismissed, with the U.S. Department of Defense officially classifying UFOs as unidentified aerial phenomenon (UAP) and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) tracking sightings.
Since they’ve started tracking, DNI has cataloged 510 UAP reports, according to its 2022 annual report.
While some sightings are explainable, many are still a mystery, which concerns Department of Defense officials, as many of the sightings occur in sensitive or restricted airspace, according to the report.
“The majority of new UAP reporting originates from U.S. Navy and U.S. Air Force aviators and operators who witnessed UAP during the course of their operational duties,” the report stated.
Back in Chehalis, many who attended the Flying Saucer Party believe they know the answer to the mystery behind many of these sightings, though there are varying theories even among those who believe we are being visited by extraterrestrials.
This year’s party — focused on the 90s UFO craze — was organized by the Lewis County Historical Museum and featured the first ever Northwest Flying Saucer Film Fest, special displays and vendors at the museum, musical performances and a screening of “Mars Attacks!” at McFiler’s Chehalis Theater, and presentations from various paranormal investigators at Chehalis City Farm.
Vince Ynzunza, director of the Pacific Northweird YouTube channel and a paranormal investigator who helped organize the Flying Saucer Party, shared how media in the 90s transformed how the nation viewed UFO sightings and abduction reports.
The 90s UFO craze
Prior to the 90s, those who came forward with UFO sightings or abduction reports were often dismissed as just seeing things or having a bad dream. Most faced ridicule and risked careers sharing their stories.
With shows like The X-Files and Sightings to UFOs being mentioned in music and movies such as Independence Day and Men in Black, the public’s view of the UFO phenomenon began to shift, Ynzunza explained.
One major prompt of that change were investigators taking alien abduction reports seriously, with efforts led by Harvard psychiatrist John Mack.
“He collected hundreds of case studies,” Ynzunza said.
Some of Mack’s patients were even featured during a 1994 episode of Oprah when the talk show host interviewed them about their abduction experiences. UFOs and the mystery behind them weren’t just being talked about on television, but on the radio as well.
Ynzunza talked about one famous radio broadcast that occurred in 1997 during an open line session Art Bell was holding on his show, Coast to Coast, where he had a special line reserved for any Area 51 worker.
“He broadcast his show out of a second bedroom in his double-wide trailer in Nevada, which was right over the hills from Area 51,” said Ynzunza.
Bell received a call from a distraught man claiming to be an employee from the top secret military installation — which at the time the Department of Defense still denied existed — who claimed to have recently received a “mental discharge.”
Struggling to keep composure, the caller began to warn Bell, and millions listening live on the air, of a coming catastrophe the government knew of but was not trying to prevent.
Suddenly, the call was cut and listeners were hearing an interview Bell did a week prior discussing the OJ Simpson trial.
“We are now on the backup system everybody,” Bell said upon returning to the live broadcast. “That one caller that I had on the air, I guess we were about in the middle of his talk on call … and the entire transmitting system by satellite went down here and we were off the air, and it would appear to be from this end.”
Skeptic to believer to skeptic again
As for what was happening on television concerning UFOs, Scott Schaefer was directly involved as a writer and producer on the show Sightings. He spoke at the Flying Saucer Party and shared his journey from skeptic to believer to skeptic again.
He originally worked alongside Bill Nye during the 80s on the Seattle sketch comedy show Almost Live! and even helped Nye develop his “science guy” character, but eventually moved to California where he worked on many shows including Sightings.
One particular story for Sightings drastically altered his views on UFOs — a string of cattle mutilations around Fyffe, Alabama.
Schaefer interviewed multiple ranchers, who were confused and angry about losing cattle and all shared the same story of men in black suits in unmarked helicopters visiting the mutilation sites.
“Why would a crew in a military helicopter be wearing black suits? I still don’t know the answer,” Schaefer said. “(What) really blew me away, was I interviewed seven different ranchers over a three county area … interviewed them all separately, they didn’t know each other, but they all told corroborating stories about the helicopters.”
Why the helicopters were at the mutilation sites to begin with was never discovered.
During police investigations, pathologists confirmed the existence of high heat used on the tissues of the mutilated cattle, including a white flaky substance composed of aluminum, titanium, silicon and oxygen.
Eventually, Schaefer decided to move back to Seattle after getting an offer from Nye to come work for him, as Nye had just sold his show, Bill Nye the Science Guy, to Disney. Things were going well until Schaefer brought up his prior work.
“I foolishly brought up my recent work on Sightings. He was asking, ‘what have you been working on before you came up here?’ said Schaefer. “Oops. Might not have been the best subject to broach with a hardcore science guy skeptic. And of course, Bill proceeded to mock me… now I was the nutjob.”
Even at a recent production crew reunion with Nye, Nye still made fun of Schaefer, even when he brought up how the Department of Defense is now tracking UAPs.
“He still is not open to talking about UAPs,” Schaefer said.
While Schaefer himself is a believer, he still holds skepticism toward many paranormal claims as he feels many are simply trying to make money off of hoaxes.
“People are trying to exploit the public’s interest in this for their own gain,” said Schaefer.
The “paranormal ranger”
Another speaker was Jonathan Dover, a veteran law enforcement officer with a 31-year career with the Winslow, Arizona police department, the National Parks Service, the Navajo Historic Preservation Department and the Navajo Nation Rangers.
While he’s investigated his fare share of UFO sightings, he’s also investigated a number of other paranormal phenomena he’s encountered on Navajo land, including the legendary cryptid known as the skinwalker.
Dover told the audience while skinwalkers have been getting a lot of attention from paranormal investigators on television, especially with shows like The Secret of Skinwalker Ranch, the media has no idea what they look like.
Simply, they look like people who are painted white and can shapeshift.
“Skinwalkers can change into animals, they use (animal) hides, we think they use DNA from the hides, to affect a change,” Dover said. “They appear as dogs, as coyotes, as wolves, in one case we had one show up as a mangy dog … They also show up as owls or as birds.”
One story he shared involved a couple who encountered what they thought was a coyote trying to get into a sheep pen. The man shot the coyote and injured it.
He watched the animal crawl toward some brush with its back legs dragging behind it, and the man went out to finish the coyote off.
“He grabs the leg with one hand and the rifle in the other, and starts pulling it out so he can finish it off, and he said the leg turned into a human leg in his hand,” said Dover. “He looked down and this guy was painted white, like someone took a sponge and just blotched it all over, even his hair, and it started to crack. That’s what he looked like, a skinny guy wearing a loincloth.”
Dover has met plenty of people who have had UFO encounters on Navajo land, too. One particular case involved a man who reported seeing what he described as a “vertical torpedo” hovering and spooking his horses.
“He takes his pellet gun, fires it at this thing and hears it go ping, and as soon as he hit it, this thing just took off. He said he looked up and in a split second, it was a quarter of a mile away, sitting outside of another house,” Dover said.
While he’s officially retired from paranormal investigations, Dover still advises producers of many paranormal investigation shows ongoing and is also a regular guest on Unsolved Mysteries, Alien Highway, Ancient Aliens and Beyond Skinwalker Ranch.
Kenneth Arnold’s famous sighting
Kenneth Arnold’s granddaughter, Shanelle Schanz, shared her grandfather’s story with the Flying Saucer Party.
When Arnold took to the skies over Southwest Washington on June 24, 1947, he had no idea his flight would be talked about well beyond his own lifetime.
What was supposed to be a routine flight from Chehalis to Pendleton, Oregon, in his single-engine CalAir A-2 airplane turned into anything but routine, when about 20 miles west of Mount Rainier he saw a bright flash in the northeast.
Initially, Arnold thought it was light reflecting off the metallic wings of another aircraft, but after more flashes appeared, he got a better look and quickly realized he wasn’t witnessing any known conventional craft.
Arnold saw nine metallic objects flying in an echelon formation stretching nearly 5 miles. From his observations, each object appeared to be circular, roughly 100 feet in diameter, with no discernable tail matching conventional aircraft. The objects would periodically perform various aerial maneuvers including flips, banks and weaves.
Though it was only an estimate, Arnold knew the distance between Mount Rainier to Mount Adams and timed the objects as they traveled between the peaks. He calculated their airspeed to be at least 1,200 mph, more than twice as fast as any aircraft in 1947.
In fact, the sound barrier had yet to be broken still until later that year in October when Chuck Yeager broke it for the first time flying his Bell X-1 at 767 mph.
Arnold co-authored a book titled “The Coming Of The Saucers” in which he detailed his sighting, but despite the book and a lifetime of investigation, he never discovered what those objects were. Schanz has recently republished her grandfather’s book, which is available on Amazon.
To this day, nobody knows what Arnold saw in the skies above Mount Rainier, which eventually came to be known as “flying saucers” after an East Oregonian article used the words “saucer-like aircraft” to describe them the day after Arnold’s encounter.
For more information on the Chehalis Flying Saucer Party, visit https://www.flyingsaucerparty.org/.
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