◆ SpookStack

‘men, said that any object have nothing to do “7 “ae poecalied saucers; Tl] swear ti... a stack of Bibles, if you like. Sec 5 we don’t have any secret new ty; 8 of aircraft that could have started all this comma- tion, Third, nobady, in or opinion, has spotted space ships from some other planet. Fourth, everything our investi- gators learned has heen made available o the public.” HE first saucer incident occurred onthe afternoon uf June 24, 1947, when Kenneth Arnold, on a business trip for a Boise, Idaho, firm that makes fire-contro] equipment, was fying his private plane from Chehalis, Washing- ton, to Yakima, Washington, The re- flection ef a boghe flash on one wing caught his eye. He turned and, at a distance he theught was about twenty miles, sy what he took te be nine tail- Jess aireraft Themline toward Mount Rainies, “Deoutdl see theit outhines quite pliumdy against the show,” Aur qeorce Tntcligence quoted him as saying. “They flew very close to the mountain- tops, directly south to southeast, down the hag’s-hack of the range, Aying bike geese, ina diagenal, chaintike line, as if they were linked together... chain of stuverlike hits at least Ave aniles long, swerving in and out ef the Ligh mountain peaks. “Phicy were flat... and so shiny that they reflected the sun dike a mirror.” Are nald said he watched the saucers for three miiimites and estunated their speed it about twelve hundred miles an hour. Air Force technicians, consulted by newspaper~ moving that fast would be invisible to the naked eye at Arnold's estimated distance. The press scoffed at) Ar- nold’s story, and he was re- sentful. “Even if [ sce a ten-stary building flying throueh the air, Lo won't say aaword about it,” he de» clared, and when be sot dock fo Boise dre wate aoseries af are ticles about his caperience for at anit azine called Fate, No seaner were the skeptical news- paper accounts printed than dozens of people turned up with simular re- ports. Another resident of Boise sported a dise over that city, “a half circle in shape, clinging to a cloud and just as bright and silvery-looking as a mirror caught in the rays of the sun.” Lieu- of idaho, disclosed that ev ip he had seen a comcteshaped onjecs piling over the western part of the —. It finally dipped below the ho. i, he said. (Later on, the personnel of Proj- ect Saucer decided that the Licutenant Governor had been Jooking at either Saturn or Mercury.) Four cops in Port- land, Oregen, saw a group of dises “Wwabbling, disappearing, and reappear- ing.” Reports of ether phenomena having been seen in the skies appeared in the papers almost daily, Two Army officers at Fort Richardson, Alaska, reported weing a spherical object fying through the air at incredible specd and leav- ing no vapor trail; same fishermen off Newfoundland saw a) series of aerial flashes, silver to reddish in colors a lady in Orevon watched a group of saucers spell out “p--res-t,? and alerted her acizhbers to the presence of foreign eens pracheing aseeret code in aur skies; tn Okbithonie City man sew a saucer “the balk of six B-29s;"" and a prospector in the Cascade Moun- tains of Oregon saw six saucers in a group, hanking in the sun—“fround, silent, and not fying in formation.” On the Fourth of July, there were twelve reports of saucers in’ widely separated parts of the United, Stues. One of these saucers, sighted at “Treaten, New Jersey, was traced to a fireworks display. Dr. Paul Fitts, an Ohio State Uni- versity psychologist who was fora time attiched te Project Saucer, considered this crawded condition in the holiday skies the result of mass sugvestibility, the sume jumpy trait tht caused Americans to $¢e Zeppelins overhead during and after the First Waeld War. “Our graphs show that suicer incidents al- ways increase dramatically after publicity,” he has since toh! me. “The sky, you know, has been a source af exciting: visions from time troneciorid, and its atirace lion is particulirly strong ti amie jitery moments.” ROM the beginning, the officers in charge of Project Saucer recognized a peculiar difficulty in their assignment, “Tf you look out the window and see something, how can I prove or disprove what it was if F didn’t see it and you can’t tell me much about what you nace 64 i ae