BY JACK CAMERON

A flash of light in the heavens catches your eye one night. Is it a star? A planet? A satellite? Or is it something else? If you’re on the lookout for UFOs then your likelihood of seeing one is pretty good in Washington State. In fact, Washington State has more UFO sightings than any other state according to the National UFO Reporting Center (https://nuforc.org/).

Sightings of UFOs or unidentified flying objects (now officially called UAPs or unidentified aerial phenomena) have a long history in Washington State.

On June 24, 1947, Idaho pilot, Kenneth Arnold had taken off from Chehalis, Washington in a small single-engine plane at around 2:00 p.m. intending to fly to Yakima. On the way there he helped search for a missing marine transport that was believed to have crashed near Mt. Rainier. During his search, he was momentarily blinded by a reflection of light. At this point, he noticed a string of nine saucer-shaped objects traveling at about nine thousand feet. He observed them for roughly three minutes as they followed the ridge of the mountains before eventually disappearing out of sight.

Kenneth Arnold made drawings of the craft and reported his sighting. The incident made nationwide news. The year 1947 would become known as the ‘Summer of the Saucers’. While Arnold’s story was reported first, there was one other story that allegedly happened in Tacoma just days earlier.

It was June 21, 1947. Howard Dahl was operating a salvage boat attempting to haul in some logs near Maury Island. He had his 15-year-old son Charles and his dog with him. He noticed six gigantic craft in the sky moving at a high rate of speed. He said they were at least one hundred feet in diameter, donut-shaped and flying in formation. He watched as one of them ran into another one, damaging it. It started spewing hot slag. The slag hit the boat as the craft crashed onto the beach on Maury Island. Howard’s dog was killed by the slag. His boat was damaged. His son received burns that had to be treated in the hospital.

Howard detailed what happened to a 27-year-old coworker named Fred Crisman. Fred was an avid fiction reader and a frequent writer of letters to Amazing Tales Magazine run by Ray Palmer. A few weeks after the incident, Fred wrote to Palmer to tell him what happened.

By the time Fred’s letter had reached Palmer, there was quite a bit of excitement about UFOs. Kenneth Arnold’s sighting was all over the news. On the night of July 7, 1947, two Tacoma police officers chased UFOs from Tacoma’s North End to the site of the fallen Narrows Bridge. On July 8, 1947, an incident in Roswell, New Mexico was initially reported as the crash of an alien spacecraft. By mid-July there were hundreds of reports all over the country of objects in the sky.

So when Palmer got Crisman’s letter, he had an idea. What if Kenneth Arnold, the guy who started this whole UFO craze, were to write an article about Howard Dahl’s story? He contacted Arnold. Arnold somewhat reluctantly agreed to do it.

Arnold flew out to Tacoma. He contacted Howard Dahl only to find that Dahl didn’t want to talk about it. When pressed, Dahl explained that a man in a black suit with a black hat driving a black 1947 Buick had visited him and told him that he should say nothing of the incident if he wanted him and his family to remain healthy. Arnold also talked to Crisman who was similarly reluctant to share information but eventually told him what happened.

It was at this time that Arnold decided he needed some help. He contacted the Army who sent the two investigators whom Arnold had previously talked to about his own incident. Their names were Captain William Davidson and Lieutenant Frank Brown. Arnold and the Army investigators interviewed Crisman. (Howard Dahl refused to talk to government agents.) At one point during the interview, both investigators stood up and announced they were leaving. Crisman and Arnold tried to convince them to stay, but they refused claiming they had to be at an air show the following day.

The intrigue increased when the B-25 plane that the two investigators boarded crashed and both men were killed. An investigative reporter looking into the crash also died, apparently from natural causes.

Both Crisman and Dahl told Arnold they had photos, but neither was able to produce them. One of them gave him a piece of slag allegedly from the damaged craft. A close look at the slag showed a square rivet.

Years later after some documents were declassified, it was revealed that Howard Dahl had in fact talked to a government agent about the incident. That person was an FBI agent, likely the man in black he reported talking to. During his initial interview with Dahl, Howard’s wife screamed at him to ‘stop making things up’ and threatened him with a knife. The FBI would also fail to find any evidence that Dahl’s son was harmed, that the boat was damaged, or that their dog was killed. In other words, the FBI found that there was absolutely nothing to back up Dahl’s story.

What to make of Dahl saying he was threatened? I would be willing to bet that what happened was the agent heard Dahl’s silly and unbelievable story and said something to the effect of, “If I were you I wouldn’t tell people about this,” the way one does when someone says something crazy like, “I talk to a monkey on the moon every night.”

Subsequent interviews with Dahl’s son and his sister revealed that neither of them had any recollection of anything remotely like what their father told investigators. It was found that the slag likely came from the Asarco copper smelter in Ruston. It is exceptionally clear that this incident which supposedly took place before any other modern UFO event never happened at all.

It is said that Fred Crisman took off to Alaska after the incident fearing for his life. There were rumors he was working with the CIA and other intelligence agencies. In 1968 Jim Garrison had him come to New Orleans because he thought that Crisman might have been one of the three men on the grassy knoll when John F. Kennedy was shot. (No, really.) In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Crisman would reinvent himself in Tacoma as ‘Jon Gold,’ a controversial and opinionated local radio host.

The Crisman’s UFO story became known as the Maury Island Incident in UFO circles. There was a short film and web series made about it. And it would just be a weird little local historical footnote except for one thing.

Howard Dahl’s mention of being visited by the FBI agents in a black car wearing black suits was the very first mention of Men In Black investigating UFOs. This is one of Tacoma’s own little contribution to American pop culture.

While the recent declassification of documents from the 1940s, the heyday of UFO sightings has gotten a lot of press, it’s worth noting that UFO sightings are not just a thing of the past. The National UFO Reporting Center says there have been over 145 sightings in Washington State just this year.

The Biden administration created the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) to investigate reports of UAPs. When asked by CNN, Sean Kirkpatrick, who heads the office, said most UAPs can be explained as drones, balloons, and other floating material. But about 2%-4% are unknown. Kirkpatrick was quick to point out that despite the public's fascination with UAPs as alien spacecraft he has "no evidence that suggests anything extraterrestrial in nature" in any of the sightings they've investigated so far. Some of these unexplained phenomena could also be foreign governments spying. Back in February of this year, a US fighter jet shot down a spy balloon believed to be sent by China.

In the coming months, the AARO will have a public portal for people to report sightings (learn more at https://www.aaro.mil/). This will undoubtedly lead to an influx of sightings. Most will be nothing spectacular. Some will be odd or interesting. Some may be hoaxes. But a handful just might turn out to be things from another world.