Editor's note: To read a related article, click here.
UFOs and discussion of sightings, long discredited and mocked in the mainstream, have become more widely accepted.
In 2022, the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) even established the All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) to investigate sightings reported by DOD personnel or near sensitive military installations.
Here in Lewis County, there have been plenty of sightings reported by civilians, too, as I recently discovered thanks to a public records request.
When I first took this job at The Chronicle in 2023 and moved from Arizona, I had heard Kenneth Arnold’s story. But I finally learned the details of his famous flight from Chehalis in 1947 where he saw nine metallic objects flying in an echelon formation near Mount Rainier.
I also began researching other sightings in the region. That included former Lewis County Sheriff and current Chronicle columnist John McCroskey’s sighting of something unidentifiable in the county’s skies. His sighting, which occurred before he was elected sheriff in 1995 while he was still serving as a Lewis County Sheriff’s Office deputy, was detailed in a 2017 commentary he wrote for The Chronicle.
McCroskey’s account is as follows: “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.”
Following the incident, McCroskey learned similar sightings occurred during that time along the Columbia River. I reached out to McCroskey to see if I could gather more details about the incident.
While he couldn’t remember much else, he did recommend checking with the sheriff’s office to see if they still had the UFO sighting form Logan made him fill out.
Hence, my public record request.
Given he filed that form decades ago, I was doubtful it was still there, so I also requested any reports or documents the Lewis County Sheriff’s Office had pertaining to UFOs.
As I suspected, I was unsuccessful in obtaining McCroskey’s form. However, I did get Lewis County Communications reports, featuring callers reporting strange things in the skies above Lewis County going back to 1996.
What follows are the dates, times, locations and descriptions of what was seen by reporting parties, along with names if provided.
• On July 19, 1996, at 9:26 p.m., Genie Dunaway, of Glenoma, called in to report “a possible UFO sighting,” but gave no other details. Less than two hours later on the same night at 11:12 p.m., Norma Dunaway, also of Glenoma, also requested contact about a “UFO she sees.”
• On Oct. 3, 1997, at 10:38 p.m., June Perkins, of Ethel, called to request a callback within 30 minutes after seeing unidentified objects in the Ethel hill area on U.S. Highway 12. “She saw two bright lights fly down the highway,” at a high rate of speed, and described seeing two separate “saucers type” objects. Perkins was given the number of a UFO report hotline.
• On Dec. 14, 2001, at 5:45 p.m., Deseray Porter, of Adna, called in to report seeing lights “making a circle above the mountains in the sky.” Porter, who was 10 at the time, was in a family home alone with her 13-year-old uncle who was babysitting, and two other younger children, a 5-month-old baby and 4-year-old. Porter told the dispatcher her aunt and grandmother had left to go Christmas shopping. While they had tried contacting the adults, their calls had gone to voicemail. Both Porter and her uncle observed four white lights, which frightened Porter, although her uncle seemed to accept that they were seeing UFOs. Porter told the dispater she “does not believe in aliens.” The dispatcher also suggested Porter and her uncle might have seen spotlights being shined from a nearby church parking lot, but Porter maintained she had never seen lights like this before.
• On Oct. 13, 2002, at 8:42 p.m., Rian Bell, of Centralia, called to report “strange lights to the southwest” he saw from the Roosevelt Avenue area. He believed the lights were hovering above the nearby Lewis County Solid Waste Transfer Station. Bell was asking for someone to investigate as he observed two “white lights that separate with a blue light in between,” and claimed to have seen the same lights the previous night.
• On Jan. 2, 2004, at 7:36 a.m., Chris Brady, of Onalaska, called in to report seeing a possible “UFO hovering above a field nearby.” He described seeing a “glowing object changing shapes,” and believed he saw it picking objects up. His girlfriend also told dispatchers she was seeing the object. At 7:42 a.m., Brady called back reporting an object with the “shape of a star with orange lights” was now making its way down state Route 508 through “the intersection in downtown Onalaska at the end of Larson Field.” The object then appeared to pick up something green before “floating away.” Brady told the dispatcher he saw “a bright green head and the (star) shaped thing was hovering above it and was trying to pick it up,” ultimately succeeding.
• On Feb. 16, 2010, at 7:59 p.m., a caller living on Brockway Road in Chehalis who wished to remain anonymous reported that, about an hour and a half earlier, they observed what they initially thought was a shooting star but thought “it might have been a UFO.”
• On Nov. 12, 2011, at 6:50 p.m., Robert Sandbeck, of Centralia, called in to report seeing “a bunch of lights in the air,” and wanted help identifying the lights. A resident on Harrison Avenue, Sandbeck told the dispatcher the lights were really bright and appeared to be near TransAlta’s coal-powered Centralia generation station. The lights had been stationary for around 15 minutes, and Sandbeck was surprised nobody else had called in to report seeing them either.
• On April 15, 2015, at 9:04 p.m., Robert Holland, of Chehalis, called in to report an unidentified white light had just travelled over his house at a high rate of speed. The light had just been seen two minutes before the call and was eastbound. Holland stated “it had no blinking lights on it like a plane,” and he did not believe it was a satellite or the International Space Station passing overhead.
• On March 28, 2019, at 9:01 a.m., Craig Nelson, of Randle, called to request guidance as to what to do with both photos and videos he captured of what he believed was a “possible UFO” in the two months prior to the call. He had contacted the Air Force Office of Special Investigations at Joint Base Lewis-McChord, who advised him to contact local law enforcement. The dispatcher told Nelson, “if time allowed, I would come out and look at his video.”
• On May 13, 2023, at 9:47 p.m., Michael Noel, of Packwood, called in to report seeing a strange “amoeba” shaped object stationary at around 20,000 feet in the atmosphere above Mount Rainier. The object appeared to have between nine and 12 “different colored flashing lights,” and hadn’t moved in around 20 minutes, remaining hovering over Mount Rainier. The dispatcher advised Noel to call back if the object landed within Lewis County, and the last thing Noel reported was a plane had just flown under the object.
Although these reports are interesting, and some did have follow up conducted by law enforcement, they are all ultimately still just reports, with no hard evidence to substantiate them.
Except for Nelson’s report.
I would love to get a chance to see the photos and video he captured. I imagine there are probably hundreds, if not thousands, of other sightings here in the county that go unreported.
Being raised near Davis Monthan Air Force Base in Tucson, Arizona, I have a love for anything flying and naturally keep my eyes on the sky.
I grew up watching A-10 Warthogs, C-130 Hercules and F-16 Falcons flying from Davis Monthan and the Arizona Air National Guard’s 162nd Wing at Tucson International Airport.
And despite being a former crayon eater in the U.S. Marine Corps, I somehow ended up working as a mechanic on F/A-18C/D Hornets and deployed on a Nimitz-class carrier.
There, I got up close and personal looks at many other U.S. Navy aircraft. So, needless to say, I’m fairly familiar with modern military conventional aircraft propulsion, flight control and lighting systems.
Because of that, I have even greater interest in investigating UFOs, or UAPs — unidentified anomalous phenomena — as they are now referred to by the AARO.
If you haven’t visited the AARO’s website yet, you should take a peek. Knowing the DOD’s affinity for Latin mottos like the Marines’ famous phrase “semper fidelis,” seeing the AARO’s logo feature the latin phrase, “Universum mutatio est. Vita nostra est quod cogitationes nostra facere est,” is certainly interesting, to say the least.
Roughly translated, it reads “The universe is change. Our life is what our thoughts make it.” It is a quote attributed to the ancient Roman emperor and philosopher Marcus Aurelius.
Ironically, the AARO still seems solely focused on debunking UAP sightings — not that debunking isn’t important, especially when dealing with strange things in the sky.
But by its own admission on its website, there are sightings that still can’t be debunked, listed only as “unresolved.”
This makes me all the more curious as to just what kind of propulsion and flight control systems are on these UAPs being sighted. Some of these UAPs being sighted possess both maneuverability and speed even our most advanced fighter jets, like the F-22 Raptor, can’t come close to matching.
The AARO’s website can be found at https://www.aaro.mil/.
