SEATTLE — Our state has, once again, ranked as a hotspot for unexplained sightings. So we decided to take videos from KIRO 7 viewers to the National UFO Reporting Center, to try to make sense of what you’re seeing – as we dig into our state’s past, and present, with the peculiar.
It comes in a flash – bright lights, distinct shapes, erratic movement… And just as quickly, it’s gone.
It’s a mystery that has boggled minds for millennia. Staring into the night sky, looking for just one answer.
Are we alone?
Well, what once went the way of conspiracy theorists and tin foil hats, is now taking center stage in a galaxy not so far away.
“There are unexplained aerial phenomena that have been cited and reported by pilots, Navy and Air Force,” said John Kirby, National Security Council Coordinator for Strategic Communications.
“We don’t have the answers about what these phenomena are,” Kirby continued.
A reinvigorated interest in Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena, or UAPs, better known as UFOs, fueled by declassified military videos, government documents, and senate hearings.
Beaming up controversy amid stunning claims from former military leaders that the U.S. government is running secret UAP programs.
“The American people deserve to know what is happening in our skies,” David Grusch, former Air Force Intelligence Officer and UFO Whistleblower, testified before a Senate committee.
But for Washingtonians, the search for the unexplained isn’t just a national trend. It’s part of our past.
“This is where it all started,” said Mark Everton, President and CEO of Seattle Southside Regional Tourism Authority.
“We’re the centerpiece of strange UFOs and strange occurrences that are going on,” said Everton.
The year is 1947 – pilot, Kenneth Arnold, spotted 9 circular craft flying in formation near Mount Rainier. It would become the first widely reported UFO sighting in the U.S., dubbing the term “flying saucer.”
A few days earlier in Des Moines, the first report of a “man in black,” in what is now called the Maury Island Incident.
“So, June 21st, 1947, Harold Dahl is on his fishing boat… spacecraft appeared overhead, and one of those spacecraft was in distress and was dropping molten metal down into the (Puget) Sound and onto the boat,” Everton explained as he told the story of the Maury Island Incident.
“The next day, June 22nd, Harold Dahl was approached by a man in black who was very aware of the occurrence the prior day and encouraged him to forget all about it and not speak with anyone,” Everton said.
Conspiracies ran wild after army intelligence officers came to interview Dahl, but their report – and alleged evidence – never made it back.
Tragically, their aircraft crashed on its way back to California,” said Everton.
From there, Dahl cried hoax.
And the FBI reports were sealed for 50 years. The story, lost to the cosmos.
But Seattle Southside still believes in the extraterrestrial encounter, and they want another one.
“I don’t think anybody else is inviting Aliens,” Everton said.
Seattle Southside RTA has launched a new campaign – they’re marketing to Martians, so to speak.
Even creating a welcome video, triggered by QR codes on cows.
“Greetings aliens! If you’re seeing this right now it means you’ve activated one of our bait cows! We know you love abducting this land species, so we figured they were the best way to reach you. You came here in 1947 and now we want you back!”
“We’ve done some amazing things with this little community since they were last here,” said Everton. “And we’d love to show it off to them.”
Seattle Southside, hoping promises of cows, food, and fun will entice any gray-skinned humanoids to return to earth.
Then again… perhaps, they already have.
Washington state has long been a hub for paranormal peeping – with thousands of sightings on record, and more than 100 so far this year. According to data compiled by the National UFO Reporting Center, Washington State ranks second in the U.S. for UAP sightings per capita.
And it’s not just civilian scouting. The Department of Defense also lists the PNW as a hotbed for UAP reports among pilots in its newly released annual report on Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena.
Even KIRO viewers are captivated by their own caught-on-camera curiosities.
“I look up at the sky and I see this line of like 20, like little steady dots flying in the sky and I’m like, that’s weird,” said Makena Treichel, a Des Moines Resident who sent KIRO 7 her video of strange lights aligned in the night sky.
Another viewer in Grays Harbor sent in a video of a small, bright bubble, seemingly floating across the horizon.
And the last, three lights floating along Highway 7 near Elbe.
“It was like 40ft, this thing was huge, and it was three big lights and it had these red lights cascading from it,” said Morton Resident, Danielle Zinck-Yusko, as she described her video.
“It made no noise whatsoever… It was hovering kind of right above our vehicle. It was nuts. And then it just went away,” Zinck-Yusko continued.
“This is real. It’s real,” she states.
So where does one take glimpses of the galaxy? The National UFO Reporting Center.
“We were actually founded in Seattle in 1974,” said Christian Stepien, CTO of the National UFO Reporting Center (UFORC).
A one-stop shop for worldwide reports on the stunningly strange and unexplained.
“After having looked at, you know, hundreds of thousands of reports for years and years and years, we can see things that are commonly misidentified,” Stepien explained.
“What we try and do is both educate people on what these misidentifications are, as well as point out the cases that we get, and we get a lot of them, where we just say, look, this is not anything that came from us. We did not make this thing. We don’t know what it is,” Stepien added.
When asked for an example of something truly anomalous, Stepien described a large craft, 50-100 feet in size, with red pulsing lights, hovering completely silently and then accelerating away instantaneously.
When asked to look at the KIRO 7 viewer videos, Stepien was quick to explain the first two.
Makena’s video in Des Moines? Starlink Satellites.
The second video from Grays Harbor? Likely a blown-out bug.
And the last… a potential mystery.
“They said this is the best of the batch. Can’t explain it. Possibly a drone or an aircraft of some type. But could you ask the witness to file a report with us on this one?” KIRO 7′s Elle Thomas said as she read the email from the UFO Reporting Center to Danielle Zinck-Yusko.
“Really? Awesome! We will definitely file a report!” Zinck-Yusko exclaimed.
“It makes me feel like see the proof is out there, and we got some of it,” she said.
So, are we alone?
The truth is out there.
We’ll just have to keep our eyes on the skies, probing the possibility that there is, in fact, something verdant in the void.
See something strange? File a report with the UFO Reporting Center HERE.
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