With the theme for this year’s Chehalis Flying Saucer Party being “disclosure” as government agencies around the world continue to offer up evidence of unexplainable encounters, the Flying Saucer Party disclosed this year’s speakers last month.
The announcement was made on the 77th anniversary of Chehalis pilot Kenneth Arnold’s historic UFO sighting on June 24, 1947.
Additionally, tickets to the event — scheduled for Sept. 13 and 14 in downtown Chehalis — are now on sale, and an art show has also been added to the list of Flying Saucer Party events.
It was during Arnold’s fateful flight from Chehalis to Yakima when he saw what he described as a string of nine, shiny unidentified flying objects flying past Mount Rainier toward Mount Adams at speeds he estimated to be at least twice as fast as any man-made aircraft at the time.
After his sighting, Arnold was interviewed by the East Oregonian for a story about the sighting where what he saw was described as “saucer-like aircraft flying in formation,” which helped coin the term “flying saucer” and set off the modern UFO craze.
Following his sighting, Arnold came under criticism by skeptics and lived with the negative stigmas applied to many who came forward with sightings throughout the rest of his life, though he maintained his efforts to get disclosure and find out the truth about what he saw in 1947 until his death in 1984.
The Chehalis Flying Saucer Party, first held in 2019, commemorates Arnold’s historic sighting.
Speakers for this year’s party include:
• Kevin Day, a U.S. Navy veteran who will discuss his time aboard the USS Nimitz in 2004 when the ship encountered the now-famous “Tic Tac” shaped object off the California coast. The object was seen in footage recorded by F-18 pilots from the Nimitz and disclosed by the Department of Defense in 2020
• Connie Willis, guest host of the radio variety talk-show Coast to Coast AM where she has discussed UAP and other paranormal phenomena, will talk about her own personal experience with the paranormal along with her research and views on disclosure
• Steve Edmiston, a lawyer and indie filmmaker who produced The Maury Island Incident, which chronicled Harold Dahl's alleged UFO sighting over Puget Sound in 1947 and the first reported encounter with Men in Black, will talk about FBI records exposing how the government shaped current UFO narratives and how Washington spawned the Men in Black.
• Charlton “Chuck” Hall, a retired psychotherapist and author, will talk about Tin Foil Aliens, his new book recounting his youthful adventures in the 1970s creating UFO pranks and hoaxes, how it shaped his own hopeful skepticism, and how to identify hoaxes among modern disclosed sightings.
With the modern disclosure movement, the term UFO was recently changed to UAP, or unidentified aerial phenomena, but that definition has now been changed to unidentified anomalous phenomena, according to the 2023 Office of the Director of National Intelligence annual UAP report.
This change was made as UAP reports now include sightings of anomalous objects observed not only in the air but in the water, as well as transition from the water to the air and vice versa. Airborne UAP reports still dominate the majority of sightings.
The 2023 annual UAP report stated that from Aug. 31, 2022, to April 30, 2023, 291 total UAP reports were received, with 274 of them occurring within that timeframe and the remaining occurring between 2019 and 2022.
While most of these reports came from U.S. military personnel having sightings around sensitive or secure areas, over 100 of the reports came from commercial pilots through the Federal Aviation Administration showing “a more diverse demographic distribution of UAP sightings across the United States.”
According to the 2023 annual UAP report, many sightings were attributed to sensor artifacts or equipment error, or user misidentification or misperception. However, some reports remain unsolved.
Back in Chehalis, along with disclosing the speakers, a Flying Saucer Party art show was also announced by event organizers to go along with the Alien Invasion parade being added to the Chehalis Flying Saucer Party.
Submissions for the show are now being accepted. All art must be family friendly, ready to hang, and fit the disclosure theme of this year’s party, according to a Chehalis Flying Saucer Party Facebook post.
Submissions are due by Aug. 31 and can be turned in at the Lewis County Historical Museum, located at 599 NW Front Way in downtown Chehalis.
All art will be displayed at Mint City Coffee Roasting — located at 539 N. Market Blvd. in downtown Chehalis — from Sept. 7 to Sept. 21. Art can either be for show or for sale, with 30% of proceeds going towards the Lewis County Historical Museum.
For more information on the art show, call the museum at 360-748-0831 or email museum director Jason Mattson at director@lewiscountymuseum.org.
As for tickets, a VIP package including tickets for all four speaker presentations and all other Chehalis Flying Saucer Party events is on sale for $85. Individual tickets to Hall’s and Edmiston’s presentations can also be purchased for $15 each, or $25 each for tickets to Day’s and Willis’ presentations.
To learn more and to purchase tickets, visit https://www.flyingsaucerparty.org/fsp-schedule-2024.
For more updates on this year’s Chehalis Flying Saucer Party, follow the event’s Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/flyingsaucerparty.
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