With the start of this year’s Chehalis Flying Saucer Party — officially called FSP2026 — now less than three weeks away, organizers announced this year’s speaker lineup and full event schedule in a social media post on Monday, Aug. 24.
First held in 2019, the Chehalis Flying Saucer Party commemorates pilot Kenneth Arnold's historic 1947 “saucer-like aircraft” sighting, which sparked the “Summer of the Saucers” and the modern UFOlogy movement.
FSP2026 events will be held at multiple locations in downtown Chehalis including the Lewis County Historical Museum, 599 NW Front Way, The Loft, 547 NW Pacific Ave., and McFilers, 543 NW Pacific Ave.
Starting at 5 p.m. on Friday, Sept. 11, FSP2026 kicks off with the “Crash Landing Ceremony” at the museum’s parking lot along with activity announcements.
Then, on Friday from 6 to 8 p.m., Jason Hassler, host of KXRW Vancouver’s Hassling the Paranormal radio show and his group Big River Paranormal will host a town hall event at the museum, where attendees are welcome to come share their own unexplainable sightings and other paranormal experiences.
Friday’s festivities conclude with the “Agents and Aliens Karaoke Costume Contest” at McFilers, starting at 8 p.m.
On Saturday, Sept. 12, the FSP2026 vendor market opens at 10 a.m. at the museum, along with a live musical performance by Richard Peterson, a musician originally from Lewis County described as a “well-known savant Seattle trumpet player/piano player/composer,” according to his Bandcamp page.
At 1 p.m., Kenneth’s granddaughter, Shanelle Arnold, will preside over the traditional Saucer Drop’n Dance Party, with music by DJ Ashwave. 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 each one having a prize taped to it. Prizes are typically deals or free items at local businesses — and this year may even include Lego sets.
Throughout the day at The Loft, starting at 10 a.m., speakers will be giving presentations as well, including representatives from the Washington state Mutual UFO Network branch, or MUFON for short. MUFON is a collective of scientists who investigate UFO sightings and catalogue them into a database available for researchers world-wide.
Speaker times are as follows:
• Doug Meacham, an American Board of Hypnotherapy-certified hypnotist who has helped people recall paranormal experiences, starting at 10 a.m.
• Washington MUFON field investigator Aleta DeBee, starting at 11 a.m.
• Washington MUFON field investigator Janice Perkins, starting at noon
• Washington MUFON section director Kathleen Wyer, starting at 2 p.m.
• Shannelle Arnold, sharing her grandfather’s story and her own beliefs, starting at 4 p.m.
Then, at 5 p.m., The Chronicle will host a roundtable and Q&A session with all the speakers, followed by a screening Brad Abrahams’ documentary “Love & 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.
Although the documentary is not rated, Love and Saucers is still recommended for only mature audiences, as Huggins’ paintings contain depictions of nudity and sexual situations.
Also on Saturday night at McFilers, a second costume contest will be held at 7 p.m., followed by the Contactee Dance Party and Karaoke event at 9 p.m.
All events, including the Love and Saucers screening, are free to attend, though donations benefiting the Lewis County Historical Museum and next year’s party are welcome. Donations of canned and other non-perishable food items for local food pantries are also welcome.
For more information, follow the Chehalis Flying Saucer Party on its Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/flyingsaucerparty/.
This year marks the 79th anniversary of Kenneth’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 — which described 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 1940, titled “The Coming of the Saucers,” which Shanelle has now republished and made available on Amazon.
