So beautiful in fact that, it was perfect weather for the filming of, Tthe Maury Island Incident - a short film concerning the goings on over and on Maury Island, back in June 1947.
I had wanted to be an extra in the film but unfortunately casting selection was the day of my auto accident and abruptly broken knee! OH Phooey!
For those not familiar with the first modern flying saucer event:
Seaman Harold A. Dahl, out scavenging for drifting logs, claimed to have seen six UFOs near Maury Island on June 21, 1947. Dahl, his son Charles, an unnamed hand and Dahl's dog were on the boat. Dahl reported seeing "doughnut-shaped objects" flying in formation over the area where his boat was. He said he could see blue sky through the holes in the center of the discs, and that there appeared to be port holes lining the inside of the ring. One of the craft appeared to be malfunctioning and another craft edged up to it. At this point the troubled craft began ejecting objects through the inner port holes. Slag-like material began hitting the boat and damaged the windshield, the wheel house and a light fixture, and killed his dog on the deck. He said his son was also slightly injured by falling debris. Dahl claimed to have taken a number of photographs of the UFOs, and recovered some type of slag ejected from the craft that malfunctioned. Dahl also recovered samples of sheaves of lightweight white sheets of metal that fluttered like "newspapers" out from the inner ring of the troubled UFO to the ground.
The next morning, Dahl reported a man arrived at his home and invited him to breakfast at a nearby diner; Dahl accepted the invitation. He described the man as wearing a black suit and driving a new 1947 Buick; Dahl assumed he was a military or government representative. Dahl claimed the man told him details of the UFO sighting while they ate, though Dahl had not related his account publicly. The man also allegedly gave Dahl a non-specific warning which Dahl took as a threat that his family might be harmed if he related details of the sighting.
In spite of the threat, Dahl had reported the incident to his employee at his sawmill operation, Fred Crisman, who had long claimed to have experience with unusual phenomena (and who was later alleged to be linked to the John F. Kennedy assassination ) and who also was the owner, or co-owner, of the boat used by Dahl. Crisman and Dahl also had a joint-venture to retrieve drifting logs from Puget Sound as a source of raw lumber. Crisman sailed to the island the following day and said he spotted a craft briefly, but it went behind a cloud. He gathered more of the slag which he found littering the beach area. He then sent a sample to Chicago with a request it be tested. According to the FBI report, Crisman either sent it to Ray Palmer, science fiction writer and editor of Amazing Science Fiction, or sent it to a friend at the University of Chicago who failed to identify the material and then sent it on to Ray Palmer. While the "rock formation" was being passed around in Chicago, the famous sighting by Kenneth Arnold took place at Mount Rainier in Washington state. Palmer contacted Arnold and asked him to investigate the incident for the story Arnold was writing for one of Palmer's publication.
And now it gets weird.
The US Air Force took custody of the objects ejected by the flying saucer, which were put on a flight, which then crashed outside of Kelso, Washington. The Air Force then denied the entire incident but finally admitted it had happened in 1987 when the crash site was rediscovered. The official report also told of two people parachuting from the plane just prior to the crash.
Alarmed by the air crash and deaths of those involved in the investigation, Dahl disappeared, although the FBI report mentions his son, allegedly injured by the slag from the malfunctioning UFO, had run away from home to Montana for some reason. Other witnesses would also die suddenly, survive other air crashes or die mysteriously during a two week period.
Weird eh?
So, first modern sighting, physical evidence gathered by the US Government and then lost, the damaged boat - confirmed by both the Air Force and the FBI, deaths of most of those involved in a short period of time, two people hospitalized at Tacoma General and a dead dog. And then came the "men in black" - nameless men, whom refused to show credentials yet knew all of the details before the stories had spread, only to be followed by the best conspiracy theory events possible!
Yup all the makings of a mystery movie. Will it make it to Cannes or Sundance? Probably not, but it was fun watching the filming and enjoying the day ..... and wishing they needed a man in black with a limp .....
