Saturday, June 17, 2017
OFF PAGE ONE
UFO: Arnold believed flying saucers CONVENTION: 18th annual UFOfest
brought in nearly 10,000 people for parade
were some kind of living organism
Page 14A
East Oregonian
Continued from 1A
Continued from 13A
Brown reported chasing a
bright ball of fire, according
to Clem’s account, but could
never catch the thing, which
after a few moments zoomed
toward Seattle and off radar.
Hastings said the story
was one thing, but documents
in The National Archives
and Records Administra-
tion, Washington, D.C.,
confirmed Clem’s report of
“bogies” over Hanford. The
things raised such a concern,
Hastings said, the military
considered bringing in a
special night squad of fighter
planes to protect Hanford.
He also said he was not
surprised the story never
made it to the public in 1945.
Even today, he said, what
government official would
want to admit objects were
zipping over U.S. military
bases and no one could do a
thing to stop them?
He saw much more
Arnold
investigated
subsequent UFO sightings
and people who claimed that
they had contact with aliens.
Kim Arnold said her mother
put her foot down and had
her father stop because it
cost too much money and
took up too much time.
She said her father also
believed he was supposed
to talk about what he had
seen and share it with other
people, she said. He decided
to do speeches and sell a
self-published booklet he
called, “The Flying Saucer
As I Saw It.”
“Government men,” she
claims, immediately stopped
the speeches.
She also said her father’s
sighting that summer day in
1947 was the first of eight
during his life. While she
has never seen one, she
said people who have one
sighting often end up seeing
others.
“It just seems to kind of
follow you,” she said.
A sighting he had with
others from the ground in
Idaho Falls also made news,
and one of his sightings
the story and Trent’s photos
on the front page under the
headline “At Long Last—
Authentic Photographs Of
Flying Saucer[?]”
“As a historian, I was like,
we have to so something for
that and to recognize it,”
Hills said.
But he knew nothing
about UFOs or even who to
talk to for a UFO festival.
“I did a lot of reading in
the library and historical
society,” he said, which lead
him to Bruce Maccabee of
Maryland.
Maccabee is a ufologist
and an optical physicist who
used to work for the U.S.
Navy. He analyzed photo-
graphs. He even studied the
negatives of the Trent photos
and determined they show
a real object hovering in the
sky.
Hills said he didn’t let the
lack of a budget stop him
from inviting Maccabee to
travel across country to give
a presentation at the Hotel
Oregon on the photos.
Maccabee has name
recognition among UFO
enthusiasts, Hills said, and
he’s “a scientist’s scientist”
who talked “over almost
everybody’s head” but was
believable. That first presen-
tation filled one of the hotel’s
halls beyond capacity.
“People were literally
standing on the sidewalk
trying to hear and see, the
crowd was so big on the
inside,” Hills said.
The event was “meant to
be a one-off thing, really,”
but the number of people
interested in UFOs caught
McMenamins’ attention. The
company grew the event,
adding speakers and events
and drawing more interest.
Last month, McMenamins
Hotel Oregon celebrated
its 18th annual UFOfest,
which brought nearly 10,000
people for a Saturday parade.
The fest had six featured
speakers along with emcee
Peter Davenport, director of
the National UFO Reporting
Center. The speakers drew
EO file photo
Former EO reporter Bill Bequette holds a copy of the
June 25, 1947, East Oregonian in which he broke the
story that began the UFO craze.
changed his perception of
the objects.
He was flying over
Susanville, California, when
two saucers passed under
his plane. The first was “as
solid as a Chevrolet car,” she
said, but he saw pine trees
through the center of the
second. She said her father
compared that to jellyfish
that appear solid one minute
and transparent the next. Her
father concluded the saucers
could change density.
“He never believed that
the flying saucers were
mechanical in any way at
all,” she said, “but some
kind of living organism.”
In his later years, she said
her parents believed flying
saucers were the connection
between the living and the
dead.
“It gave them hope of the
reality of other dimensions,”
Kim Arnold said, “and
perhaps death was not the
end but a new beginning that
we live on into other worlds
full of all kinds of activity.”
UFOs pose big riddles
Davenport posited a more
concrete hypothesis about
the nature of UFOs.
“My suspicion is, we
are being visited routinely,
probably daily, by these
objects we call UFOs,” he
said. “We presume they are
alien spacecraft.”
But what, he said, could
the relationship be between
those craft — and presum-
ably the creatures inside —
and human beings?
“I suspect there is some
fundamental
relationship
between us and them,” he
said. “We just don’t know
what it is.”
Kim Arnold is retired.
She was 30 when her dad
died at the age of 68. She
said in some respects she
has taken on the mantle
of protecting her father’s
legacy.
“He was an ordinary man
who had an extraordinary
experience,”
she
said.
“Whatever happened on
June 24, 1947, was an elab-
orate show for him.”
That first sighting then
raised the question that
remains unanswered: Why
was it Ken Arnold?
———
You can find more
information on the National
UFO Reporting Center at
its website, www.nuforc.org
and for more on Robert
Hastings and his work, see
www.ufohastings.com.
———
Editor’s
note:
Kim
Arnold agreed to participate
in an interview for this
story if the East Oregonian
provided her 10 copies of
the paper the story appeared
in. The EO agreed to the
unusual request.
If you see something, report it
If you see a UFO, Peter Davenport says to write
down what you saw as soon as you can.
Davenport is the director of the National UFO
Reporting Center. Maybe 15-20 reports a day come into
the center, he said, but out of roughly 20,000 “adult,
competent, clear-thinking Americans who see a UFO,
only one has written it down.”
He encouraged anyone who sees a UFO to write
down a “factual, objective description” of what they
saw and submit it to his organization, or to the Mutual
UFO Network, or another credible UFO organization.
The National UFO Reporting Center at www.nuforc.
org and the Mutual UFO Network at www.mufon.
com have online forms to make reports. You also can
call MUFON headquarters at 949-476-8366. And the
NUFORC has a hotline for sightings within the last
week: 206-722-3000.
200-400 attendees each, and
those people paid to get in
the door.
Hills said finding speakers
with integrity is paramount,
and he is not interested in
giving space to someone
who would mock the topic.
Yet the fest also has a serious
sense of fun about itself.
McMinnville downtown
businesses set up displays of
air-filled flying saucers and
green aliens. The fest has
“alien lasertag and dodge-
ball,” the “Abduction Dash
5K and Kids’ Fun Run,” and
of course, the UFO Parade
and “Alien Pet Costume
Contest.”
James Clarkson, director
of the Washington State
Mutual UFO Network, gave
a history of UFOs in the
Northwest. He said the fest
is his favorite UFO event
because it has such a sense
of humor about it all. And
the parade in particular, he
told his audience, serves
to show youth that talking
about UFOs is OK.
Hills said the combination
of whimsy and serious-mind-
edness evolved organically,
and folks who came for the
fun sometimes took in the
presentations, and the true
believers joined in the fun.
Kennedy said he was not
able to find the right person
to put a Pendleton UFO
event forward, but he came
close.
He had his sights on
something for 1998 and the
50th anniversary of Arnold’s
sighting. Arnold’s daughter,
Kim Arnold of Idaho, would
have been the main attrac-
tion.
Arnold was working on a
biography about her father.
According to emails and
faxes Arnold and Kennedy
exchanged at the time, she
was going to introduce the
book in Pendleton as the
hook to draw crowds and
national attention. But she
and her ghostwriter, Greg
Long of Oregon, ended up in
a legal dispute that blew past
the anniversary.
Arnold said she did not
want to talk about the book
situation. Kennedy said the
whole thing just fizzled out.
But he remains hopeful
for a UFO event. Pendleton
has plenty of hotel rooms and
facilities for presentations
and seminars, he said, as
well as entertainment. And it
has the roots in UFO history.
“From the marketing
standpoint, that’s gold,” he
said.
New convention center
manager Pat Beard agrees
Pendleton is “hallowed
ground in some ways”
in UFO culture. But, like
Kennedy, he said he does
not want to go it alone devel-
oping a UFO event.
Someone else, he said,
needs to step in to head the
project and turn believing
into doing.
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