Washington state near top in UFO sightings
It's one of the best places to see alien objects, according to reports
By Sean L. McCarthy / Scripps Howard News Service
BREMERTON, Wash. -- James Clarkson is searching for E.T.
He investigates UFO sightings in the Bremerton, Wash., area for the Mutual UFO Network Inc., an international volunteer organization studying the phenomenon of unidentified flying objects.
The husky 48-year-old retired police officer hasn't seen a UFO yet, but about once every six months he gets a call from someone who has.
Based on reported sightings to the National UFO Reporting Center, one of the best places to see a flying saucer is Puget Sound. In fact, Washington state trails only California in the number of reported UFO sightings since December 1996 (382 and counting).
It was in the skies near Mt. Rainier 52 years ago that a private pilot, Kenneth Arnold, helped give birth to the term "flying saucer" when he saw nine shiny disks skipping through the air.
About two weeks after Arnold's sighting made headlines, reports out of Roswell, N.M., changed the way many of us think about extraterrestrial life.
The International UFO Museum and Research Center makes its headquarters in Roswell because that's where the first documented UFO crash "occurred."
To put it another way, Roswell is where many believe the U.S. government retrieved the first wreckage from an alien spacecraft -- including alien corpses. For those of you who haven't already run to your audio-visual library for tapes of "The X-Files" and Art Bell to verify our accuracy on this, here's the quick recap on Roswell:
In early July 1947, a New Mexico rancher noticed pieces of strange metallic debris strewn along his property. His neighbors suggested he take his find to the sheriff. The sheriff, in turn, reported the debris to the intelligence officer at the nearby Air Force bomber group. The military blocked off and cleared the site.
Then a curious thing happened. First, the Air Force dispatched a press release saying it had recovered the wreckage from a downed disk or flying saucer. Hours later, after callers bombarded the base from around the world, the Air Force "corrected" its earlier release, attributing the wreckage to a weather balloon. But the damage had been done. As the front page of the Roswell Daily Record screamed, "RAAF Captures Flying Saucer On Ranch in Roswell Region."
Thus began the public's distrust of the military -- at least when it comes to the possible existence of UFOs.
Peter Davenport, director of the National UFO Reporting Center since 1994, believes the government knows about the presence of UFOs and chooses not to acknowledge it. Or, as others believe, what people think are UFOs in fact are experimental military aircraft. In either case, the government refuses to cooperate, Clarkson said.
"Part of the problem is they have some really good reasons to not tell the truth," he said.
Pentagon spokeswoman Susan Hansen said the Defense Department has no policy regarding UFOs and doesn't answer questions about them. "No, we have people watching The X-Files instead of asking us these questions," Hansen said.
The Air Force did investigate 12,618 UFO sightings from 1947 to 1969 in an operation called Project Blue Book. The project, headquartered at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio, still had not identified 701 sightings when it was terminated on Dec. 17, 1969 -- a few months after humans first landed on the moon, our own "alien" invasion.
**
To report sighting
The National UFO Reporting Center accepts calls on recent sightings through its 24-hour hotline at (206) 722-3000.
Sightings more than a week old should be reported via the Internet at
or by mail to: National UFO Reporting Center, P.O. Box 45623, University Station, Seattle, WA 98145.
Reports should include an exact time, date and location of the sighting, along with a full description.
Copyright 1999, The Detroit News