Unidentified Flying Objects (UFOs) are nothing new in Central Washington.
In fact, the term, flying saucer, which is often applied to such objects, was first coined when, on June 24, 1947, civilian pilot Kenneth Arnold claimed he saw a strand of nine, glowing unidentified flying objects traveling past Mount Rainier at speeds he estimated exceeded 1,200 miles per hour.
Arnold, who lived in Idaho, was flying in a CallAir Model A-2 utility aircraft from Chehalis to an air show in Pendleton, Oregon, with a planned refueling stop in Yakima. He decided to make a slight detour to Mount Rainier after learning about a sizeable reward for anyone spotting a U.S. Marine Corps C-46 transport plane that had recently crashed near the mountain. He later recalled that the skies were clear and there was only a mild wind that day.
At about 3 p.m., Arnold said he was near Mineral, Washington when he noticed a flash of light. About a half-minute later, he saw additional flashes about 25-30 miles from him, just north of Mount Rainier. After scrutinizing them for a few minutes, he saw the reflections were coming from a pack of nine flying objects, flying in a line, that he could not readily identify.
The things moved in a way that Arnold later described as “like a saucer if you skipped it across water.” In fact, he said they were round and thin shaped, much like a disc, pie pan—or a saucer, except for the lead one, which was crescent-shaped. Thinking he was seeing some kind of new U.S. military aircraft, he continued to watch the objects and said they moved from side-to-side, like the “tail of a Chinese kite.”
Arnold wasn’t the only person to see the flying dishes that day. At about the same time, a woman in Yakima said she also had seen several shiny discs flying at incredible speeds near Mount Rainier. The story was also corroborated by a Richland man, who told his local newspaper that “I believe it may be a visitor from another planet.”
And with that, the state of Washington became a UFO hotspot. Since then, residents have reported more than 7,000 UFO sightings in the Evergreen State skies, according to the National UFO Reporting Center (NUFORC), a non-profit organizing devoted to receiving, reporting, and, to the extent it can, corroborating and documenting UFO eyewitness accounts. Not surprisingly, Kittitas County has been the location of a number of alleged UFO sightings over the years.
Among the earliest accounts to appear in the media was a report on August 6, 1965 in the Daily Record about a local businessman, his wife, his two children, and several other family members noticing a “white-glowing oval object” in the night sky. He told the paper that the object was just above the tree tops west of Ellensburg and appeared to hover, then maneuver up and down. It also rotated and emitted flickering glowing green and red lights. Intrigued by the object, the family drove to the top of Craig Hill, where they watched it until it disappeared over Mount Stuart.
About a half of a year later, on August 6, 1966, there was another sighting over Ellensburg, this time by two Washington State Patrol troopers. According to Spokane’s Spokesman Review, the men, Joe Williams and James Wade, reported seeing a UFO at 11:15 p.m. on the previous Sunday.
“Williams said the object was a round, bright light, brighter than the stars with no discernible features,” the newspaper said. “He said it made no sound, and that it moved, first slowly and then rapidly, from north to southeast, as the men watched it from their back yards about a mile southwest of here (Ellensburg).”
The two men said about 15 minutes later, a second, similar object appeared in the sky. After the objects disappeared, they reported the incident, which was later shared with officials at the McChord Air Force Base near Tacoma.
According to NUFORC, Ellensburg was the location of what was described as a “very large UFO sighting” on August 15, 1972. The unnamed observer, who waited until 2007 to file a report, said he was returning home from Yakima on Interstate 82, just south of Ellensburg, when he noticed a large number of lights in the sky that appeared to be moving below low cloud cover.
“My memory is of alternate red, yellow, green, and white lights in a circle with no specific pattern of appearance or distance between,” the report said. Thinking the lights might be helicopters from the U.S. Army facility located between Ellensburg and Yakima, the person pulled to the side of the road, turned off his car engine, and listened.
“There was a light wind blowing from the direction of the lights and I strained to hear any sounds. There was none except for the wind,” he said. “The UFO moved slowly on a level plane north of the ridge. Now as the lights got closer I could see it was large and I got more frightened as it got closer. Now I knew I was seeing my first UFO.”
Afraid of the object, the person said he stood still as the UFO hovered directly above him. He said got a good look at the thing, which he said was elliptical in shape with lights around its perimeter that did not blink. Finally, it moved away from him and he was able to jump back in his car in order to get home to Yakima.
Still not sure if the object had been a military aircraft, the man said when he got home he called the Army base and asked the duty officer if they were conducting some type of military operations that night. He was told they weren’t but that someone would be in touch with him. The man said he purposely didn’t mention the UFO because “they might figure I was a nut.”
“The following day I called and asked for the same officer [who I spoke to the night before] and was told there was no such person ever on that base. There was no record of my report and no investigation was noted,” he wrote.
One of the most compelling recent accounts filed with NUFORC came on July 31, 2005. A woman living on Wilson Creek Road reported, “It was just beginning to get dark and our driveway alarm buzzed so I thought the deer had come to graze, so I looked south down the driveway and saw nothing. From the kitchen I noticed 3 very bright lights well above Manastash Ridge and to the east of the pass.”
The woman said she grabbed a pair of binoculars to get a better look and saw that the three floating lights were in a kind of triangular pattern. “With the binoculars it was plain to see that each light was in fact several lights which formed a domed shape with a flat bottom. After a couple minutes, one of the forms dimmed and disappeared then so did the other two . . . I gotta tell you that they scared the hell outta me!”
Perhaps the most bizarre UFO report came on December 12, 2013, when several local residents told the Daily Record they had encountered, “a strange black blob floating in the sky above Ellensburg.” In the story, a local woman said she saw this black shape hanging about 1,000 feet from the ground just south of Bender Road between Alder and Walnut streets. She added that appeared to be moving toward Bowers Field.
“She said it expanded and contracted like some kind of jagged, geometric puffer fish,” the Daily Record noted. The woman also said her husband had been able to take a few photos of the black flying blob, which he shared with the newspaper. The image shows a jagged black object that resembled a dark, crystalline-like rock floating in the sky. The newspaper concluded that “balloons, trash bags somehow filled with helium or trash bags full of balloons were likely culprits.”
Flying trash bags, however, weren’t the last word on UFOs over Ellensburg. On May 6, 2014, a trio of observers told NUFORC that they had seen unusual lights in the sky in the hills south of Ellensburg. At between 8 p.m. and 9 p.m., the three who were traveling in car reported seeing a “massive orange, reddish almost circular light” above the ridges. “The light was immensely bright and looked to be hovering very low. A helicopter or plane was a suggestion but the lack of noise, light color, and also lack of movement were all wrong,” the observer said.
The object appeared to change shape to a sliver and then vanished. It reappeared a few minutes later and looked like was slowly descending and then was again gone. The observer said he continued driving and searching ahead for any sign of the light. He looked in his rearview mirror and saw it again. Then the car rounded a curve and the light was gone.
One of the most recent episodes occurred on October 5, 2020, when an observer reported to NUFORC that he had seen a “large oval metallic and shiny looking object in the sky between Ellensburg and Yakima near the military training center in the morning.” The observer said he was heading to work in Yakima at about 8 a.m. and was coming down Manastash Ridge near the military facility when “I looked up and sighted a large oval shaped metallic object in the distance in the air. Suspended and not moving at all.”
He said he looked for exhaust or chemtrails indicating some kind of propulsion system, but there were none. He said it hung there for about 20 seconds and then vanished into thin air. “The weather was blue skies with no clouds at all,” he wrote. “I know I saw something but can’t explain. I went to work and told co-workers and one said he had seen something also early in the morning, which tells me others have seen it and I’m not going crazy.”
So, is Kittitas County a UFO hotspot? According to NUFORC, the Ellensburg-Yakima corridor is ranked number seven for areas with the most UFOs sightings. Another ranking that appeared on a Yakima radio station website claimed the Ellensburg to Yakima route was number one in the state.
In 2021, the federal government released its first official report on UFOs, titled, “Preliminary Assessment: Unidentified Aerial Phenomena,” which listed 144 sightings of such incidents by U.S. military personnel. Since then, the Department of Defense has released several annual updates and reports on alleged UFOs. Last year, the government said it had recorded 757 new incident reports, included nearly a half-dozen for which they have no explanation.
Cue the “X-Files” music.
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