With the Chehalis Flying Saucer Party — officially called FSP2026 this year — set to kick off Friday, Sept. 11, believers and skeptics alike are set to descend upon the Mint City to discuss not only “flying saucers,” but many other paranormal theories and topics, too.
All events, including the “Love and Saucers” documentary screening, are free to attend, though donations benefiting the Lewis County Historical Museum (LCHM) and next year’s party are welcome. Donations of canned and other non-perishable food items for local food pantries will also be accepted.
As one of the co-organizers helping to put on FSP2026, I’d like to thank all of the speakers who are coming for agreeing to this on short notice, along with the other volunteers and LCHM interim director Doug DeVany. The Chronicle is also sponsoring FSP2026.
Additionally, for those interested who can’t make it to FSP2026 this weekend but still want to listen to the discussions, all speakers will be live-streamed on the event’s official Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/flyingsaucerparty.
For those who are downtown for the party this Friday and Saturday, many downtown Chehalis businesses will have deals to help celebrate Kenneth Arnold’s historic June 24, 1947, sighting of unidentified objects over the weekend. Some businesses participating include the Northwest Salmon Smokehouse & Artisan Market, Book ‘n’ Brush and Diversified Games.
All FSP2026 events will be held at three locations in downtown Chehalis, including the Lewis County Historical Museum, 599 NW Front Way; The Loft, 547 NW Pacific Ave.; and McFiler’s, 543 NW Pacific Ave.
Speakers include Shanelle Arnold, Kenneth’s granddaughter, multiple members of the Washington state Mutual UFO Network (MUFON) and a certified hypnotist specializing in helping people recall paranormal experiences.
The full event schedule, speaker information and times for FSP2026 are as follows:
Friday, Sept. 11
• FSP2026 kickoff “Crash Landing Ceremony,” at the LCHM starting at 5 p.m., followed by the Big River Paranormal and KXRW Vancouver’s Hassling the Paranormal town hall hosted by Jason Hassler, where attendees are invited to come share their own unexplainable sightings or paranormal experiences
• The “Agents and Aliens Karaoke Costume Contest,” at McFiler’s starting at 8 p.m.
Saturday, Sept. 12
• FSP2026 vendor market, at the LCHM starting at 10 a.m., with vendors including Nuance Massage Chair Massages, Into the Backcountry - Between Worlds Research, FSP2026 Merch and Dye Station, Three Eyed Raven Craftworks, Tish’s Crafty Stitches, Savage J. Creations, To Dye For, Crass Glass, Big River Paranormal, Hassling the Paranormal and a MUFON merchandise booth.
• First speaker: Doug Meacham, starting at 10 a.m. at The Loft. Meacham is an American Board of Hypnotherapy-certified hypnotist who has helped people recall paranormal experiences for more than three decades and specializes in “ultra depth hypnosis.” He has been featured in shows like Discovery Channel’s “Expedition Bigfoot.”
• Second speaker: Washington MUFON field investigator Aleta DeBee, starting at 11 a.m. at The Loft. DeBee specializes in investigating cases with paranormal experiencers, along with helping them grasp at the philosophical questions their experiences leave them with. She has been featured in shows like Discovery Channel’s “Expedition Unknown.”
• Third speaker: Washington MUFON field investigator Janice Perkins, starting at noon at The Loft. An identical twin and experiencer whose first major UFO encounter was in 1980, she believes that experience helped awaken her clairvoyance, which she claims to have used to communicate with extraterrestrials.
• The Saucer Drop‘n Dance Party, starting at 1 p.m. at the LCHM, featuring Shannelle Arnold participating in the traditional Saucer Drop. This event goes back to Chehalis’ old Krazy Days Festival in the ‘60s and ‘70s, where “saucers” (mini Frisbees) are tossed out to the crowd for them to catch, with a prize taped to each one. Some of the saucers may have prizes too, including LEGO sets courtesy of Brick in the Wall in Centralia and the South Puget Sound and the Lewis County LEGO Users Groups, which will also have an “out-of-this-world” LEGO display set up in the LCHM.
• Fourth speaker: Washington MUFON section director Kathleen Wyer, starting at 2 p.m. A holder of a master’s degree in fine arts from Pacific Lutheran University, Wyer specializes in studying rock art, fossils and patterns found in archeological sites around the world.
• Final speaker: Shannelle Arnold, sharing her grandfather’s story and her own beliefs, starting at 4 p.m. at The Loft. Shanelle grew up close to Kenneth Arnold and remained close until his death in 1984. She is an Omnist, someone who believes there is truth in all religions, along with practicing astrology and researching reincarnation.
Then, at 5 p.m. at The Loft, The Chronicle will host a roundtable and Q&A session with all speakers, where attendees are invited to bring their own questions.
The round table will be followed by a screening of Brad Abrahams’ documentary “Love and Saucers,” which tells the story of artist David Huggins — who claims to have lost his virginity to an alien, along with a plethora of other extraterrestrial encounters, which he has chronicled in his paintings — starting at 8 p.m. at The Loft.
Although the documentary is not rated, “Love and Saucers” is recommended for mature audiences only, as Huggins’ paintings contain depictions of nudity and sexual situations.
Also on Saturday night at McFiler’s, a second costume contest will be held at 7 p.m., followed by the Contactee Dance Party and Karaoke event at 9 p.m.
This year marks the 79th anniversary of Kenneth Arnold’s historic June 24, 1947, flight. During that flight departing from Chehalis, he claimed to have seen nine metallic objects flying in an echelon formation between Mount Rainier and Mount Adams as he flew near Mineral toward Yakima to refuel on his way to Oregon.
Knowing the distance between the volcanoes, he used them as reference points and calculated their speed to be at least 1,200 mph, far faster than even experimental aircraft at the time, which still hadn’t broken the sound barrier.
Originally from Idaho, Arnold departed Chehalis that fateful day and flew into the history books, putting Lewis County on the map as the location of the first sighting that sparked the “Summer of the Saucers” in 1947.
Following an East Oregonian article detailing Arnold’s encounter after he landed in Pendleton, Oregon — describing what he saw as “saucer-like aircraft” — thousands of other sightings were reported nationwide, and the term “flying saucer” was coined.
Before Arnold died in 1984, he published a book detailing his own sighting along with others he helped the U.S. Air Force investigate in the late 1940s, titled “The Coming of the Saucers,” which Shanelle has now republished and made available on Amazon.
