||| FROM SAM GAILEY for ORCAS ISLAND LIBRARY |||
On August 1, 1947, the tragic crash of a B-25 bomber in Washington State triggered an FBI investigation of “The Maury Island Incident”—an infamous Northwest UFO sighting, and history’s first alleged encounter with the so-called “Men in Black.”
The FBI’s records from 1947, which were sealed for decades, reveal Cold War fears, jurisdictional disputes, cover-ups, false confessions, a courageous FBI Special Agent, and the hands-on involvement of FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover.
Relying on the FBI records, this talk exposes a Washington story that shapes our current UFO narratives, from 1950’s pulp magazines to the ubiquitous X-Files and Men in Black film franchises. Also examined: how the Northwest’s unique position in UFO history is challenged by others that assert contradictory narratives.
Sat. Sept. 13 @ 6pm @ the Orcas lsand Public Library
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“On the evening of March 13, 1997 a mile-wide, V-shaped formation of strange lights silently glided over the state of Arizona. They were witnessed by commercial pilots, air traffic controllers and thousands of citizens. The government denied their existence.”
The Phoenix lights documentary— https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HGS09LzpARs
13:56: (George Judson, Interior Graphic and Fine Artist) “I went outside must have been around 10ish and and I’m looking off towards the North, and kind of coming in directly at me are these three enormous lights, and they are moving incredibly slow and this really piqued my curiosity.”
14:45 (Trudy Guyker, Center for the Study of Extraterrestrial Objects) “It was very close to the ground, it was just like floating over the housetops.”
14:50 (Mike Fortson- former honor guard, U.S. Navy) “Pilots tell me when they make the left turn to go towards the Salt River to the north that the altitude is less than 3,000 ft. The object I saw and my wife saw went under this plane.”
16:15 (Terri Mansfield, Hospice Volunteer- CEO Az. Dept. of Peace) “We could not see the whole object from front to back from side to side it was so big.”
16:20: (George Judson, Interior Graphic and Fine Artist) “I would gauge this object to be several football fields, I mean like a mile maybe more than a mile, maybe even two miles, it was huge!
16:31 (Terri Mansfield, Hospice Volunteer- CEO Az. Dept. of Peace) “And it just kept going over our heads, and going and going and going, and it seemed like we could actually just reach up and touch it it was so low.”
16:39 (Mike Fortson- former honor guard, U.S. Navy) “I like to use the the old piece sign you know stretch it out, but it was something like this and as it passed all we could really see was the left wing of the craft as it passed in front of us, that was how low it was as it passed. And as it started pass in front of us I put my hand up to where the nose of the craft was and I took my other arm out to where the end of the wing was and it was well over 30 inches, and I said to my wife at the time, I said, “that’s a mile long.”
19:48 (George Judson, Interior Graphic and Fine Artist) “What absolutely struck me as being eerie beyond belief was the immense size of this thing. It would have to be controlled by something that had a pretty strong engine just to sustain flight. There was not a buzz, there was not a hum, there was not a jet engine, there was not a prop engine, there was not a jet prop engine, there was absolutely no sound at all.”
20:30 (Francis Barwood, Former Phoenix Councilwoman and Vice Mayor) “Everybody that called me said the same thing, “it was huge, it was slow, it was low it was totally silent, they could see some lights, somewhere between five and nine lights on it at any given time, the lights were not like spotlights they were more like glowing gaseous globes.”