Last weekend, skeptics and believers alike came out for this year’s Chehalis Flying Saucer Party celebrating the 79th anniversary of Kenneth Arnold’s historic flight — including his granddaughter, Shannelle Arnold.
It was on June 24, 1947, when Kenneth took off from Chehalis in his CallAir A-2 — bound for Yakima to refuel before heading to his final destination — when he observed nine metallic objects flying in an echelon formation between Mount Rainier and Mount Adams while he was in the air near Mineral.
He used the volcanoes as reference points and estimated the objects’ speed to be at least 1,200 mph, far faster than even experimental aircraft, which had yet to break the sound barrier at the time.
After sharing what he saw in Yakima, an East Oregonian reporter was waiting at his final destination in Pendleton, Oregon.
Soon, his sighting of objects moving “like saucers skipping on water” hit news wires nationwide, coining the term “flying saucer” and sparking the historic “Summer of the Saucers.”
Joining Shannelle to speak at the Chehalis Flying Saucer Party were American Board of Hypnotherapy-certified hypnotist Doug Meacham, Washington state Mutual UFO Network (MUFON) Section Director Kathleen Wyer, experiencer and clairvoyant Janice Perkins and OPUS Experiencer Support Team member Aleta DeBee.
Chehalis Flying Saucer Party attendees also toured the Lewis County Historical Museum, attended the traditional “saucer drop,” made flying saucer art and shared their own experiences during a town hall hosted by Jason Hassler of KXRW Vancouver’s Hassling the Paranormal, all for free.
While this year’s party was not as big as it was over the previous few years — as the new organizers had barely a month to salvage the party after it was previously announced as cancelled earlier this summer — plans are already in the works to make next year’s party a big one for the 80th anniversary.
As one of the volunteers already helping put it together, this reporter can tell you that we intend to hold it starting on Thursday, June 24, 2027. So, mark your calendars.
Talks are in the works for a dance party at the Chehalis-Centralia Airport where Kenneth departed from. There are also talks of the possible return of the Northwest Flying Saucer Film Fest, started in 2023 to coincide with the party by one of the party’s original organizers, Vince Ynzunza.
This year’s party being smaller didn’t stop the paranormal discussions from being held, as local sightings in the region, hypnosis regression therapy, contactee stories and more were discussed by the speakers.
Kenneth’s sighting
Now residing in Portland, Oregon, Shannelle shared details of both her grandfather’s sighting, and what happened after.
Initially thinking he was seeing sunlight glaring off the chrome skin of another nearby aircraft, Kenneth was nonetheless surprised to see not one object in the air, but nine total, flying in formation.
“They had no tails like an airplane. They also changed their formation and flew at a high rate of speed,” Shannelle added.
After around three minutes, the objects disappeared in the skies above Mount Adams. As for the files Shannelle grew up with, due to Kenneth going public with his sighting, he gained worldwide fame and received thousands of letters and pictures from people sharing their own sightings with him.
Most people at the time didn’t even have to know Kenneth’s address to send mail to him, as the local letter carriers knew where he lived.
“All it had to say was ‘Flying saucer man, Kenneth Arnold,’ and he would get the mail,” Shannelle said.
While she grew up reading through those many letters, Shannelle has since donated the collection for Rice University’s Archives of the Impossible. The collection can be accessed at Rice’s website at https://tinyurl.com/3b4htp7v.
During a dig through The Chronicle’s archives at the Lewis County Historical Museum, a corroborating sighting of what Kenneth saw on June 24, 1947, was found.
On July 2, 1947, The Chronicle published a story headlined “Discs Sighted by Centralian.”
“Here’s another report of those nine shiny ‘things’ that have been seen in the sky lately, and this time it’s from Centralia, Sidney Gallagher, 114 W. Walnut St. Gallagher, who is a civil engineer for the Ladd Logging Company, said he saw the objects while working about 11 miles southwest of Mineral. ‘I was looking east about 3 p.m. Tuesday, June 24, when nine aluminum-covered objects that looked like Navy planes without wings suddenly appeared on the horizon heading north,’ Gallagher said. The time corresponds exactly to that reported by Kenneth Arnold, Boise, Idaho, who said he saw them directly in front of him at 2:59 p.m. on June 24 while flying east in his plane toward Mount Rainier. However, Arnold reported they looked like discs, while Gallagher said they appeared long and narrow to him. ‘Although I couldn’t estimate their speed, they were going much faster than an ordinary plane,’ he said. ‘Their terrific speed and the fact they were wingless led me to believe they were one of the new jet-propelled planes we’ve been hearing about.’ Gallagher, who was with four other men when he saw the shining objects, said they were flying in a regular formation, with five in front, then three, then one. ‘I really wouldn’t say they were flying; they were zooming, like large birds,’ he said. ‘I thought nothing of it at the time, and probably would have forgotten the incident if I hadn’t noticed reports of the objects in the newspapers.’”
To this day, it is still a mystery as to what both Kenneth and Gallagher witnessed in the skies above East Lewis County that day.
Other local sightings and hypnosis regression therapy
Representing MUFON, a volunteer-run organization of investigators dedicated to interviewing, cataloguing and investigating reports of sightings of unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAPs) — the new official name for UFOs at the U.S. Department of Defense’s All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) — Kathleen Wyer shared details from investigations in the region.
These included a Roy woman who claimed she was contacted by a non-human intelligence expressing anger about humanity’s carbon footprint; strange triangles seen in the skies near Mount St. Helens on the Spirit Lake Highway; and even a sighting in Lewis County in 1981.
“The witness turned left from Jackson Highway onto (state) Highway 508. They saw a light, on a cigar-shaped craft hovering 70 to 80 feet off the ground,” Wyer said. “The witness pulled over and stepped out of the vehicle to look at what they were seeing. The craft was approximately 85 feet long, made no noise, had no propulsion and had several white lights on the underside blinking sporadically.”
With no noise still, the UAP slowly moved west and was visible for about five minutes before disappearing.
Aleta DeBee, of OPUS, which stands for the Organization for Paranormal Understanding and Support, shared her distrust of government organizations like the AARO, stating she believed that Earth has had visitors from beyond the stars well before Kenneth’s sighting.
“One thing that’s often forgotten is to listen to the wisdom of the Native Americans and Indigenous people around the world, who are joining together to let us know. Listen to them. Just because we think we’re superior technologically, they have a lot of wisdom, and they tend to know what’s going on,” DeBee said.
Janice Perkins, who grew up with an identical twin sister named Janet who she claimed she shared a telepathic connection with, shared multiple personal encounters she has had throughout her life, including an encounter with three of the well-known “grey aliens” other contactees report meeting.
“I could see their chests pulsating, almost like their heart beating, but I saw no signs of internal organs,” Perkins said.
And although some still consider hypnosis therapy controversial, Doug Meacham shared how he approaches cases involving hypnosis regression therapy. He stated he does not have an opinion on whether what his clients recall during their therapy is the truth or not, and just wants to help them fill in the gaps.
He contrasted his form of hypnosis to police investigation techniques, where investigators sometimes lead witnesses to certain conclusions. Using a hypothetical situation of a witness seeing a suspect’s van drive away where the officer knows the color of the van, he showed how he avoids leading his own clients on to pre-conceived conclusions.
Instead, he simply asks the question, “what happens next?”
“‘So, you saw the van leave the parking lot.’ ‘Yes, I saw the van leave the parking lot.’ ‘So, was it a white van, or a grey van?’ In their subconscious mind, with the emphasis on the ‘grey,’ they say, ‘Oh they want me to say grey,’ so, ‘Oh, it’s a grey van,’ and then the entire account is contaminated,” Meacham said. “So when I say, ‘what happens next,’ it allows me that space to let them fill in. And I might say, ‘what’s that like, how does that feel?’ I don’t say, ‘So when you saw the ship, was it over the mountain?’”
Meacham currently runs the Gresham Hypnosis Center in Oregon and also offers hypnosis therapy for those looking to lose weight or quit smoking. For more information, visit his website at https://greshamhypnosiscenter.com/.
The Chehalis Flying Saucer Party was first held in 2019 to honor Kenneth’s sighting. To learn more, follow the party on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/flyingsaucerparty.
