Kenneth Arnold shows what he described as a flying saucer.
A robot toy from the TV show Lost In Space is part of the exhibit at the Lewis County Historical Museum this Saturday.
Chehalis Fest in the past was called Krazy Days, and included the fire department taking its big ladder into the sky and dropping off small cardboard flying saucers which spinned down to awaiting kids, and included discount coupons and candy giveaways taped on the bottom of the “UFOs.”
The saucer drop will be back on Saturday, starting at 12:15 at the McKinley Stump, as part of the ambitious Chehalis Flying Saucer and Party celebrating the 1947 summer of the saucers. Speakers will soar down into City Farm, Chehalis Theater will feature spacey movies, and live music will take place at McFiler’s and The Shire. The Lewis County Historical Museum transports into the event with exhibits on saucer sightings in Lewis County and flying saucers in pop culture.
The speakers vary from a UFO eyewitness and host of Pacific NorthWEIRD, an alien abduction hypnotherapist, the granddaughter of the pilot who flew out of Chehalis and witnessed “flying saucers” over Mount Rainier (considered the first sighting of UFOs in the modern era), and a UFO investigator and author.
Jason Mattson, executive director of the Lewis County Historical Museum and his partner in crime Vince Ynzunza, a Rochester resident and director of the Pacific NorthWEIRD YouTube channel and Facebook presence, came up with the idea after reading about UFOs in a column in The Chronicle penned by columnist and former Lewis County Sheriff John McCroskey.
McCroskey wrote in Dec. 22, 2017:
“Lots of UFO stories are swirling around recently, and I feel now that fellow columnist Bill Moeller has come out last week, there’s enough ‘safe space’ for me to as well.
“Years ago as I traveled west on U.S. Highway 12, I saw cars stopped along the roadway on the Ethel hill. I didn’t see anything obvious, so I stopped to investigate further.
“As I got out, I noticed people were staring up at an object in the sky. Bright like fire, shape changing, and a noise that sounded like a lot of wind, it was just a hundred yards or so above me. As we all watched, the bright ball of what looked a lot like fire moved around and suddenly took off and disappeared into the night. The whole thing probably lasted 30 to 45 seconds after I arrived.
“After it was gone, we looked around at each other not really sure what to do next. One of the drivers came over to my car to ask me if I saw it, and I mumbled something — I’m not sure I admitted seeing anything.
“Later, Sheriff Bill Logan heard about it and put a UFO sighting form in my box to fill out. I ignored it, not wanting to be in ‘that’ database, but eventually I had to fill it out. The sheriff could be pretty persuasive.
“Later, I learned there were sightings similar to mine along the Columbia River by a number of others. The explanations given didn’t really match what I’d seen, but they were offered by UFO experts, so they must be right.
“I haven’t seen any other UFOs, and I don’t spend much (any) time considering whether life exists elsewhere (or if Bigfoot is real for that matter). There are plenty of smart people already worrying about things like that.”
Our history in Lewis County via Mount Rainier runs even deeper than that.
In the summer of 1947, in what many consider was the first official report of unidentified flying objects, pilot Kenneth Arnold, flying from Chehalis to Yakima on June 24, 1947, upon landing said he saw nine shiny “flying saucers” zipping past Mount Rainier at speeds he estimated at 1,200 miles an hour.
This resulted in nationwide headlines and is credited with the first in the modern era of UFO sightings and coined the popular term “flying saucers.
Mattson, a Centralia native and graduate of Centralia High School, said the museum located in Chehalis aims to bring a historical perspective to the event on Saturday, as well as entertaining the masses and supporting local businesses. The party is also a fundraiser for the museum.
“We’re celebrating the history of what got started here,” Mattson said. “I think it’s something a lot of people weren’t aware of and serves partially as a new fun festival that can incorporate Chehalis businesses.”
Mattson said as soon as he got his job at the museum in the summer of 2017, he dreamed of some sort of UFO festival. He said the reception has been humming.
“People I wouldn’t expect have come up to me and told me about their sightings,” he said. “People I wouldn’t expect.”
Just last week, for example, in discussing the upcoming UFO event, Major Logan, a journalist at radio station KELA, mentioned on air a personal sighting of a UFO.
“It’ll just be a fun event for people that believe and want to believe,” Mattson said.
His partner in the event Ynzunza said he has been attracted to the abnormal since childhood.
“I watched Unsolved Mysteries and I remember being delightfully frightened,” he said. “The idea that there are things out there that we don’t understand. Absolutely there are definitely things flying through the sky that we cannot identify.”
He personally saw UFOs at a camp at the base of Mount Adams.
“I saw things that I could not explain,” he said. “They looked like satellites but would move in ways satellites shouldn’t. … Lights would kind of slide to the side, stationary but lazily adrift.”
Ynzunza said the Kenneth Arnold sightings in 1947 changed the way Americans perceived outer space and extraterrestrial visitors.
“I’ve been finding a lot of people surprised they didn’t know Kenneth Arnold’s story and the Chehalis connection,” he said. “They’re very excited we’re bringing this back and shining a light on it.”
