Perhaps the most prominent modern social and cultural phenomena is the unidentified flying object or unidentified aerial phenomena. Today, belief in aliens is at an all time high, and there are numerous reports of UFOs from countless credible witnesses. But where did the modern belief in UFOs come from? Shows like Ancient Aliens and Others lead us to believe that humans have always seen strange things in the sky.
And that is true today, though, pop culture mixes with science and hoaxes in this identifications. All of these things combine like a stew of ideas to influence our beliefs about intelligent life out in the cosmos. But we can actually trace the beginnings of the modern UFO to one event. On June 24th, 1947, tonight, we look at a man named Kenneth Arnold who accidently inspired the birth of the term flying saucer.
In the few weeks that followed, saw the entire country and parts of the world have a flurry of flying saucer sightings and nothing has been the same since. This is a study of strange. Well, welcome to the show. I'm Michael May. And today my guest is Carrie Kina. Carrie. You're married to Tim, my former partner in crime, an autobiography. And I wanted to have you on this episode because I was at your house, like, a month or two ago. And you did mention some UFO thing.
And I was like, Oh, well, I do want to do a UFO story. So I just I had you in mind when I finally decided on one. What do you believe in terms of UFOs? Do you believe that aliens have visited Earth? That's a huge question. Yes, it is. I guess my answer is maybe. I feel like there's a lot of evidence, but I'm at my heart a very skeptical person. I'm definitely in that. I want to believe club and I want to believe it's happened.
But it's a lot of time when I go case by case and I look at stories, it's it's easy for the skeptic to come out, but it is my favorite in the world of strange. It is my favorite topic to explore. Oh, nice. Well, I'm excited to have you on for this then. I. Yeah, I'm just my own personal belief is I'm very similar where I'm like, maybe like if I believe in any weird thing out there, it's that there. I believe there's definitely intelligent life somewhere in the universe.
I just don't know of Dave for sure. Visited and flown by, and they're like, Hey, what's up, guys? You know, wave it down to us. But there is there's a lot of evidence to point to strange things. There's a lot of unidentified flying objects. And yeah, anything else you have to explore? Like what? When someone says a UFO. Well, what are you talking about? Is it just a craft you don't you can identify?
Or is it do you really think that, hey, this came from 100 million light years away and they're just saying that they just go in and out or and yeah, I'm into basically any new theory I hear about UFOs. I'm down that rabbit hole. I've had enough of that. It's just it's my favorite topic. So I'm so stoked to talk about this with you. Well, thanks. Now, have you ever heard of the Kenneth Arnold story before I brought it up?
I feel like I have heard a version of it, but I knew it might have been on like a read it or somewhere deep. So I'm really curious to hear your research version of what. Okay, well, now the pressure's on. Pressure's on. Yeah, the pressure is on. Yeah. The Kenneth Arnold story it's in takes place in 1947, and I was looking at a bunch of different topics to potentially do with an unidentified flying object or unidentified aerial phenomena, as a lot of people are calling it now.
And I looked at like Roswell and I looked at some less famous, strange stories and there's they get so bogged down like there's so many different versions of it. There's so many people that are hardcore conspiracy theorists that they have that argument of, Oh, that's just a cover up, there's a conspiracy. And it's like, Well, you're not debating it, right?
And the thing that stood out to me about Kenneth Arnold story is historically, it's very significant because it it started the term flying saucer and started this craze almost like a mass hysteria that happened immediately after it that I think we still feel the the effects of in sort of like society and pop culture and how we think about UFOs or alien intelligence. It's kind of reverberated down the line and is connected to everything.
But also because he was immediately interviewed by lots of people the day after the two days after this sighting. We're not we don't get as bogged down in his in his reports as you do with other things, like Roswell. It was days or weeks before the guy, like, brought some stuff in and there's time there. And then no one talked about it again for 30 years. And then that Kenneth Arnold story is suffice to say, is far simpler but almost more important than some of these other like UFO stories.
And I don't think anybody's ever had a good theory to say what he actually saw in terms of like debunking it might being some sort of alien technology. So it leaves the door open for almost like whatever you want to believe. So I just I find it very fascinating with that and one in a long tangent there. Want one away from my notes? I'm sorry. No, I think it's a good story too, because it is it's a very simple story. It's really difficult to debunk.
I think I have read a couple of theories of what he potentially could have seen, but I mean, they just feel like guesses. They just feel throwaway. And it's like, okay, sure, we can do that with anything. But oh, that's yeah. That's a good point. And we'll get into that a little bit. So let me give a little context for the time this happens, because I think that's really important to them.
It's 1947 and it is like a perfect storm of paranoia and also just it's the atomic age as the Cold War is starting. Atomic technology is is big on everybody's mind. Weapons are being developed by the United States government, plus our potential enemies overseas. And the Truman Doctrine was announced in 1947, which essentially ramped us up to the Cold War. The Air Force was formed in 1947 as well.
Wow. Okay. Yeah. And people around the country were very aware of like massive amounts of weapons development, development of jet planes, of rocket technology. People are aware of it like they're not privy to the details, like all of that's classified, but they know that it's going on. The UFO phenomena wasn't what it is today. It was not a hugely popular topic today. I read 25% of Americans believe that we've been visited by aliens. But back in 1947, there's no number on this.
But like it was probably a solid guess is maybe like 3% like right? Very few people just because it wasn't thought about it wasn't what everybody did. And even after War of the Worlds, that was broadcast in 1938, like famous radio program and from the book and people thought Martians were attacking it. That was popular, but it still didn't like stick on people's imaginations from a cultural way that UFO was kind of due today.
Yeah. Let's let's get into the story so everybody can actually hear it. This is the Kenneth Arnold story of seeing a flying saucer or as he would say, it's not a flying saucer. So it was June 24th, 1947, and 32 year old Kenneth Arnold, he was a businessman. He sold like firefighting equipment out of Boise, Idaho, and he would travel for business in his own private plane. It was a call air aid, too, which is a two seat single engine.
This was important for his business because now he could he could approach clientele all around the Pacific Northwest of the States instead of just Boise. And he had around 9000 flying hours, which means he's very experienced as a pilot and I would imagine very experienced seeing things held outside of the cockpit. And on this day, he was flying to Yakima, Washington, from Charles Washington, and he was passing through the Cascade Mountains, which includes like Mount Rainier and Mount Adams.
And he deviated from his. Sorry, everybody. I actually I have COVID right now. I'll announce it to everybody. So my voice is just a little weird. So I'm trying my best. And Carrie is not in the room with me. We are separate. So Arnold deviated from his flight path to search for a downed Marine Corps plane. And this happened about six months earlier. It was part of a six plane convoy from San Diego to Seattle, and the plane was a Curtis r5c1, also known as a C 46.
And this simple short version of the story is weather got bad for planes diverted to Portland, Oregon. Two kept going, but one never made it. And the pilot had actually checked in via radio on the way to Seattle and was requesting to fly above the weather. But the plane was unpressurized, so I'm not sure actually how much above the weather he could have gone in and it disappeared and had three crew and 29 Marines that were lost in this crash.
Yeah. And Arnold, I actually heard in a radio interview, I've listened to a number of them. I've been able to find the one he gave later on. He actually mentioned that he had looked for this plane before, like it was a well known thing. There was a $5,000 reward, which is, you know, that's a lot of money today and especially back then. And so because he was going by the area where it was thought that it crashed, he was like, oh, I'll just take a little bit of time and do a sweep.
And if I get lucky, I'll find the plane, and if not, I'll just carry on. So he had actually done this before. This wasn't out of the ordinary for him to look for this plane, and it was a clear, beautiful day. So it was kind of like perfect conditions to actually search for this plane. He made a turn at 9200 feet and a flash in his eyes kind of got his attention. And it came from about 15 miles away. He thinks this is just before 3 p.m., by the way.
And then sort of he kept getting these flashes of light in his eye and he's looking around. He did notice another plane in a different direction, kind of further off, I think a DC five. And then he noticed where the flashes came from and he saw nine straight objects in flying in some sort of formation which they would flip or bob up and down and they would reflect when they made this movement, they would reflect the sunlight back into his eyes and helped him actually see these things.
And now I'm going to read a quote from one of the plethora of articles that have him talking about it. So I'll just kind of read from his own words what he what he went through and what he saw. I noticed to the left of me chains, which looked like a tail of a Chinese kite, which were weaving and going at a terrific speed across the base of Mt. Rainier. At first I thought they were geese, but they were going too fast.
I immediately changed my mind and decided they were new jet planes flying information. I thought I would clock them because it was such a clear day due to the fact that I had Mount St Helens in Mount Adams to clock them by, I thought I'd see how fast they were going. They seemed to flip and flash in the sun like a mirror.
In fact, I happened to be at an angle from the sun that it seemed to hit the top of these peculiar looking things in such a way that it almost blinded you when you looked at it through your plexiglass windshield. It was about a minute to three when I started to clock them on my second hand clock, and as I looked at them, I kept looking for their tails, but they didn't have any tails that something was wrong with my eyes.
So I'd turn the plane around and open the window and sure enough, I couldn't find any tails on them. They looked something like a pie plate that was cut in half with a convex triangle in the rear. I thought maybe they're jet planes with tails painted green or brown, and you couldn't see them and didn't think too much of it. So that's his description of what he saw. The whole experience lasted only two and a half minutes. Like this is a quick a quick thing.
And when I the common story is that he you know, he's using the mountains, Mt. Rainier, Mount Adams. And so he has these visual references to see, okay, they're passing this mountain now. They're in front of that mountain. So he can use the distance between the two mountains to kind of calculate how fast they're going. And when I started reading about the story, I kept thinking, he's doing the calculations in the plane. Right? He's doing a break there. He did it.
And that makes way more sense to me. He actually it wasn't till he got to his final destination that they that he actually like did the math. He just sort of got got the reading on it. And he estimated that they were going 1200 miles an hour. He know later on some other people came out and said, oh, he was incorrect about the distance between the two mountains. So they were actually going 1700 miles an hour. So regardless, 1200 or 1700. Why. No planes went that fast at that time, no jet planes.
They were testing the speed of sound. I think it's 760 or thereabouts miles per hour. We hadn't broken the speed of sound yet, so planes didn't even go that fast. And I also read in some interview later on, Arnold gave, he said, even if you take the low end of the calculation that he had and he said 800 miles an hour at the low end, which is still faster than anything else that was flying at the time.
I kept reading that he calculated or assumed the wingspan of these flying things to be 50 feet, but when he landed, he kept saying 100. So I don't know where I kept where people. Maybe he gave a range in some interviews, but it's somewhere between 50 to 100 feet in Wingspan. And I said it in the story and I'll say it a million times tonight. He never said they were flying saucers. Right? Right. That's kind of the famous part of this. He never once describes them as saucers.
He always talks about pie plates or cut in half with a point, or he talks about saucers. Skipping on water is a story that he would tell a lot of reporters because he meant it in the way that they flew. Not in their shape and shape the way that they move. Exactly. So he landed in Yakima, Washington, right after all this, and he told his story to the aircraft manager.
And then he headed off to his next destination because he was just refueling, which was Pendleton, Oregon, which where he was going to stay. He was there for like an air show or something like that. And when he landed in Oregon, word had already gotten out from when he first landed in Yakima and told his story. So people were there asking him questions about what he saw, so much so that there was enough interest that he had to go by the East Oregonian newspaper the next day.
So a lot of times the common story is like he lands in Oregon and there's press all around and they're asking him questions. That's not the case. He didn't talk about press to land to the press until the next day, but people were asking him questions that night when he landed. So the next day he meets in the East Oregonian offices. And at this point he had done his calculations for the speed and build biggish.
And the editor, Nolan Skiff, were in the office, and they thought it was, you know, an interesting mystery. But they were like, this is intriguing for readers. Like, we got to do an article on this. So they The East Oregonian puts out that afternoon, there was a headline in the newspaper that said Impossible maybe. But see, in his believe, it says Flier, which is such a 1940s.
Headline, I love. Yeah. And so if that newspaper were the only newspaper to publish the story, we might never really know about Kenneth Arnold. But within a day he was being approached by every news organization in the country. Pretty much everybody wanted to talk to the guy. So now, now here's the fun part. Did you get those the scenes that I sent you earlier? I did, yeah. Yeah. Are you in them? But I didn't. I didn't. Deep dove, because I'm like, maybe it's more fun to be surprised.
That's right. I normally don't even send up till right before, so. No, you don't have to do a deep dove. But if you can pull up, if you're able to the first scene, I think it's Arnold. One is what I guess. In terms of the scene I wrote, all of his quotes are real quotes from interviews he gave, but I kind of wrote it like a press conference. There was no press conference.
He was talking to press via the telephone and letters and telegrams. But I just thought just for for for dramatic purposes, it's a press conference. So why don't you read Arnold and I'll read descriptions in the new newspaperman. Okay. Are you going to give me are you going to give me if I, like, stumble, am I going to get multiple takes or. No, it's all one take. But stumbles are natural. I mean, did you ever listen to Tim's episode? I you're going to think that I'm the worst wife.
I can tell you the only one I haven't felt like. Yeah. I think in Tim's episode, I think I was the one that couldn't do an accent. And he actually did pretty good because he was doing like a Boston accent and kind of nailed nailed. It because of me. I don't know. Maybe he was trying to do the Kennedys, I think. But yeah, I kept messing up. So no stumbling. Stumbling is fine. There's no. Pressure. This is this is. All supposed to be fun.
So, yes, again, this is a dramatization of a nonexistent press conference with Kenneth Arnold's in the East Oregonian newspaper offices. During the day. Kenneth Arnold is taking Kenneth Arnold is talking see irony messed up do a lot to a large group of old timey reporters shouting to get their questions answered. Photographers, flashbulbs, clack each time Arnold begins to speak. Mr. Arnold. Mr. Arnold, you said you saw a flash. What exactly did you see? It startled me.
I assumed it was some military lieutenant out with a shiny P-51, and they caught the reflection of the sun. But what did they look like? Well, it looked like a chain of sorts, nine of them in total. And they were sort of oval, like a pie plate cut in half. But with a convex point at the back, the one up front. Could it have been the Russians? Should we be worried? I can't say if if it's not from our government. I hope the military investigates.
They were in a formation, but not of any type of formation. Our military flies. Mr. Arnold, over here. What were they flying like? Couldn't these have been just new fangled jet planes? Well, they flipped last as they flew erratically, like boats on rough water. They would skip and sail and give off flashes like you take a software and ship it across the water. That's how they flew. I've done the math and when I clocked them, they were going roughly 1200 miles per hour.
That's faster than any jet plane. I'm so sorry. 1090 news. Yeah, yeah. Okay. That's an old fashioned jet plane. That. Yeah, I love it. I love it. I could spend my life talking. I should just start talking like that. Absolutely. Yeah. Just bring it back. Yeah. So the point of this scene is to show that the media, they went crazy, like they ate up this story.
The AP newswire was talking to him and sending out reports and in articles, various other agencies and distribution services in the news game where we're calling him and sending letters and talking to him and it is the 1947 equivalent of going viral. Yeah. And no one knows exactly who coined the term flying saucer, but it came out in the papers after these interviews. And again, he described it as a pie plate or saucer sipping a water, stuff like that.
And so he he called the flying saucer term just a really bad misquote. Yeah, but it caught on, you know, that was the de facto term for UFOs for decades. So it's such a quick visual. If someone does flying saucer, it's it's there in your head right away where I feel like I've seen the the drawings or the images of what he's claimed he saw and it's yeah. It's not a saucer, it's more like almost like a bat wing or. Yeah. Boomerang or something. Yeah. It's like a click. It's a quick visual.
I can see why somebody might throw it in and a headline and it caught on. Absolutely. And I hadn't thought of it that way, but it is a very just a simple describe Dave saying it is very catchy and it makes you visualize it and see it where UFO, which was a term that was not used yet at the time or even UAP, there's a lot of people are using that's more broad. It's broad on purpose. But like it doesn't make me I think of a million different things.
I mean. Think about anything. Yeah. Hey, everyone, I wanted to take a second to let you know about Audible. This is an advertisement. I may make a tiny commission, but I'm only going to promote things I use and I love and audible fits that require it. I use it literally every day. Audible is an audio book and podcast service that lets you enjoy all of your listening entertainment in one place.
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All you have to do is visit audible trail dot com slash strange again it's audible trail icon slash strange or see our show notes for a link. Thank you. So the influence of these reports coming out, they it's huge. I mean the influence it affects pop culture. You see, like all the B-movies of the 1950s and sixties, all the alien movies are all in flying saucers through today, even, but even in like pulp magazines and comic books. Suddenly that is the that's the image that everybody likes.
It's become such a like kitsch, Americana, classic story of its own. And that's where it started. Yes. Any old timey alien story, you think even if you're thinking of like Roswell or alien autopsy, you have that this is where this is the true birth of it. This is where it came from. That's right. And again, just the I think the descriptive nature of it and it being so visual by the end of the week, this kind of had started a craze. Right.
All these other people are now thinking that aliens are on flying through our atmosphere and they think they see things. And Arnold story kind of broke the ice. Like suddenly hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of stories come out of people seeing these unidentified flying objects. But for the most part, they're describing them as saucers and like I saw saucers and I'll give some examples on the 27th of June.
So this is three days after his sighting, the Portland Oregonian published a report that a woman in Bremerton, Washington, sold the same mysterious saucers. But she's thinking of fully round saucers. A Chicago man, I think, in the same day. So also nine saucers. A railroad engineer in Illinois called in with seeing nine flying pans, as he called it. And then two weeks later, a man named Rhodes in Arizona took a picture of an object that Arnold later said looked kind of like what he saw.
That's a deeper story that I'm not going to go into. But RHODES. He's one of. These, like, conspiratorial kind of stories because the FBI apparently showed up and took the photos and no one. Knew the negatives. Right? Yeah. And those are just examples. Those are very limited examples. But this is happening all the time and I usually think I have some dates written down and look at my notes. Yeah. So the total number of reports are debated because it's hard to actually track each one in.
Some newspapers are picking up the same story or reporting on the same like a story they saw in another newspaper. So it's actually it's really hard to figure it out exactly, though. But between June 25th and July 3rd, there's roughly between like 12 to 24 reports on most most days by Independence Day that year, July 4th, the sightings rose really sharply. There were 160 reports on July 4th and fifth. And then between July 6th and seventh, there were 300 reports.
So it's just going, going, going up, going up. Also, at this time, a little event called Roswell happened just two weeks after it. And again, I'm not going to go into Roswell today. There's there's not enough time in the world for you tonight to go into Roswell witness as well. But that's the big story that everybody knows and thinks about when they think of UFOs back then. But that's, you know, the supposed crash landing. Yeah. Do you have. Questions for the questions?
So here is my takeaway was we we got our boy here who is he? He has the sighting. And he's credible. He's credible to everyone as an eyewitness because, yes, he's a pilot. He knows this guy really well. It was a really clear day. He's a trustworthy person. I think part of what makes his story so convincing is because he seems very considered and thoughtful about how he, even in the moment, is trying to debunk this. The whole thing is, what, 2 minutes?
The whole thing is like 2 minutes that he's he's measuring in his head the distance between two mountains. He's familiar with the area. I had known that there was he was there looking for a plane that had gone down. And I didn't know the story of the plane that had gone down. So part of me was like, well, is that part of it? Yeah, the first plane down. So that he knew this area. But, you know, he's there looking for a plane crashes. They're looking for where a large group of people died.
So his his symptoms are heightened. He's he's on the lookout for something. And my thought was that because he was so credible, that's kind of why the story got took off and had legs. But am I wrong in my understanding that the guy who had the Roswell crash stuff on his property didn't he hear the story and be like, Well, wait a minute, maybe that's what all that garbage in my yard is from.
Yeah. So that that is, that's one of my favorite parts about the Roswell story and Ufologists are going to hate me because I haven't done enough research to get really specific on it. But I think the the story that people that don't believe it's a UFO stick to is he found like debris on his ranch on the property and it was just plastic and some pieces of wood and stuff like that.
And he kind of brushed it underneath some bushes or something and he didn't have not TV, of course, but he didn't have a radio. He wasn't getting newspaper because he's out out in the boonies and he didn't know all these stories coming out. And then when he went to town one day, he started seeing them or reading about him or hearing about it and was like, Oh, I found this stuff out here. Maybe. Maybe that has something to do with it.
Yeah. Yeah, but it's I. I personally don't believe Roswell was a UFO crash. I, I'm. I'm a sucker. For what? The gut for the what the government says. So I'm part of the problem for the people that do believe it. But like it was, again, Cold War 1947. This is like the ramp up and the declassified information that came out in the nineties about Roswell was that it was a balloon that had sensors on it, trying to see if we could sense if Russia was testing nukes.
So of course, they're not going to want people to know, but that's what it is. So I believe that again, UFO people, please tell me I'm wrong, right? In a study of strange edema dot com let me know and maybe we'll do a Roswell episode one day. But just from the surface that makes sense. Also the fact that it happened two weeks after Kenneth under like you were saying, like the guy read about this and was like, wait a second. Nope, I'm making sense with that.
No, I didn't mean it. Yeah. And I mean, I'm I consider myself like a UFO person a little bit. Sure. I don't want anyone to come for me. I met with Roswell. It's like my big thing is what you said is like, I'm so ready to be wrong about this. That all the the debris that seemed to be collected was like, I feel like I've read like tinfoil and rubble and I'm just like, that's not a spacecraft. That's like a fifth graders STEM project.
Like, it's just or, you know, you know, like, I'm just not convinced that that was I just maybe if you had found some metal that was like, yeah, or something like, I need more to believe it again. I'd love to believe it. I'd love for that to be. But it's so much. Yeah, I just, I feel like there's better stories out there. That are stories out there. And like, if you are a believer in aliens visiting the planet, I think there's there's just better stories than that.
I really don't think that that is a massive, weird cover up like a lot of people believe. That's just me. That's just me. Happy to be Kenneth Story. I feel like, listen, there's in terms when you're talking about when this took place, you're not going to have cell phone footage. The odds of you even having a photograph, all a reliable person giving an account. And I am I wrong that I feel like other people claimed they saw the same thing at the same time thing, right?
Yeah. There's a there's two that I know of and I apologize because I don't have their exact information in front of me. But there was a prospector working on the mountains that said he saw the same thing. There was also somebody in the fire watch on the mountains. That sort of thing. I think there was also an actually they think there's a third I think there was a woman nearby that also said she saw things that could have been the same. But those all came out later.
Like I you know, some sometimes you're like, is someone just saying it because they want to say it? They want to be part of the story. Yeah. So, so it was corroborated. And also where we're humans, I'm going to believe somebody that comes off as like I thought they were jet planes at first. I'm going to believe that person more than just I want to be like found UFO in my yard.
There's something to be said about the way that we judge people, rightly or wrongly, with how they approached these things. Yeah, no, it's so interesting. And the military, they were encouraged enough or influenced enough by all these reports to start investigating it. That's what's so interesting about the Arnold thing is this actually does make everybody want to look into it.
Again, Cold War kind of feeds into this because we're worried that the Russians are making weapons or flying new things over our country. So there was a big effort by the government to try to figure this stuff out. Aliens or not, they want to know. Yeah, and. Read it exactly what is it? So everybody's heard of some of these organizations or groups or studies, whatever you call it. But there was Project Sign was started after this.
Then it became Project Grudge and then Project Blue Book, which a lot of people have heard about because they're in so many movies and documentaries and stuff. But they did they did look at it. And including two weeks after Arnold saw this, he actually had a right of report to military intelligence. And that's where he drew some of the sketches and stuff that you've probably seen, because he wanted to share those with the military and they actually said they kind of wrote it off.
They thought it was a mirage or a misidentification, but they did say he was credible, like in their report. It's like this guy's a credible guy. He's not making it up. He should be a writer. That's what they were saying. He should write for Buck Rogers. Yeah, but they they said he was very credible.
If you see as your reports, I feel like if you read the interview transcripts, you're like, this sounds like a person who is measured, who is considering different possible explanations, who feels very detailed in what they saw. I mean, it's been proven that when you are in an experience where you're afraid or you're trying to evaluate, time almost like slows down for you.
And that seems to match of kind of what happened to him because he's able to gather so much data and pick up so much detail in that short two minute window. Yeah. And he experiences it deeply enough that he can go back and say, well, let me figure out the distance between these mountains. I can. I timed how fast it went between. You know that takes a lot of quick thinking in in the moment. Yeah yeah.
It's it's it's really hard to hear somebody that measured and and really doubt them whatever he saw. He I feel like he absolutely saw exactly what he described. Yeah. And that's that's one of those things that just made me love this so much because I do believe him. And even just it had to be so intriguing to make him want to look at it more because he's seen so many things up there. You do see weird things in the sky. There are natural occurrences.
And the fact that he was like, wait a second, let me make note of this. Let me see how fast they're going. It had to be very intriguing for him. And Arnold ended up also saying, you know, a lot of people think people do this for attention. But remember, at the time, UFO stories were not something that people did to try to get attention or make money. He never wrote.
He didn't try to write a book the year after this or sell a radio special or something that and he actually claimed it hurt his business like he would go on meetings and then people wouldn't want to work with them because they were like, this is the weirdo that saw Martians. Yeah, yeah. So it did kind of hurt his thing. And he shied away from the UFO crowd for years after the initial flurry of activity. And he didn't attend his first UFO convention for 30 years.
So he had a yeah, he was not like ingrained in the community and he did claim to have seen some other strange objects later on in his life. I don't know exactly when because the details were a little fuzzy, but I think at least two times he saw some other unidentified things, whatever they may be, and. I didn't know that. So he did go and just see more. Do you know if it was while he was flying or. I think it was while he was flying.
But I actually had a really tough time finding details about that. You just hear it mentioned a few times like, Oh, you saw something a few other times. It was like, that is the basis. So I'm sure again, there's ufologists people that are spend their lives looking into this that may know. So right in let me know a study of strange edema that I'd love to actually hear about. There are other sightings he had and he passed away in 1984. So he lived and lived a nice life.
That's I mean, it's such a short version of a very kind of, again, very historically impactful experience. But that is the that is the Kenneth Arnold story. What do you think? So had he one never had that sighting or two just decided on taking this to the grave? Nobody's going to believe me.
You kind of have to wonder if flying saucer has was taken out of the vocabulary, if that image was never put in people's place to begin with, how does that then impact one just UFO culture in the narrative around it and to media films? Yeah, so I because a lot of people that might have been the first time in pop culture they were hearing these things. I mean, War of the Worlds and stuff, of course. But this is really engaging in it and bringing it.
Okay, this isn't just a story that we're listening to for entertainment that seems to be happening in the real world. And you know what's how did he shape things without even realizing it? Yeah, it's I think he shaped things, like I said, up top it more than he I think more than he ever probably realized.
And I think more than most people realize because again, to me, that is what is the most important part of this story, is seeing how we were impacted, whether UFOs are, real or not, or aliens visited us or not. The social kind of phenomena of this is what fascinates me the most, and which I think is very strange. And a lot of people have actually studied the craze of 1947, which started with Arnold story as like the birth of the modern myth and religious studies.
People have like studied it and folklorist because humans were highly suggestible and suddenly there's this craze and there's all every newspaper is reporting. Flying saucers. Flying saucers, mantle. Flying saucers. This person saw a flying saucer, doesn't it? It makes other people want to see flying saucers. So as soon as they see something they don't recognize in the sky, they're going to see their mind is going to create the image of a flying saucer.
And that's what I find fascinating, because the misquote led to this very specific thing. And all these people I'm not saying people didn't see unidentified things in the sky, but I do think they're misidentifying something or their imaginations kind of filling in holes and making it really hard to actually find out if they are aliens. Flying Sky. In 1947. But yeah, it's so I don't have an exact answer for a lot of those questions.
But I do know that this is a an amazing example of how us as humans can can be basically our imaginations can be affected by everything around us. And I'm a big believer in how pop culture becomes like fact and becomes history. So this is an example of that, of like this one thing happened in even though it was misquoted, it turned into fact over time because now we imagine aliens and flying saucers so. Yeah. Yeah yeah. So series I would love to hear some of the theories you came across.
But for Arnold sighting. For Arnold Saturday sighting. Sorry, I, I switched gears there really quickly. I know there's there's a there's a lot no one I mean, a lot of people just think he misidentified, but that's a very general thing. But if he didn't see aliens, people have suggested like reflections, water on the window which we can debunk because we actually would. They debunked how. He opened up his window when he flew by again. It was a little thing.
Yeah, he he took it straight through. Okay. So he didn't that I thought I saw one theory of like I want to say, like pelicans or some big bird that could have been reflective because they were wet or something, which sounds a little insane to me. Yeah. Somebody had a report after Arnold's sighting, and I can't remember who it was that talked about this. It's like a weather event or phenomena, but it makes the tops of the mountains look like they're almost floating.
And he could have seen that because they're reflective on the snow and whatever. But he said they're moving and he was able to track them moving between the two. Well, it just doesn't make sense because they're not moving. Yeah. And even. Oh, this is interesting. So Jay Allen Hynek, who's famous for he's an astronomer that worked on the project Blue Book and investigated UFOs for the Air Force.
He actually had a calculation after the Arnold event as he studied it, that said they were only moving 400 miles an hour because is I guess he assumed because of the visuals that Arnold was able to see the objects actually had to be closer to him. And because it's the way our eyes can actually distinguish certain details at a distance. So if they were at the distance that Arnold says Hynek doesn't believe that he could have seen those details. Interesting. So he estimates them to be closer.
And that changes the rate of speed. He calculates 400, which is possible, especially because they were testing jets, flying them around, including in Washington. So he actually thinks they could be jets or rockets. I think later on in his life, Hynek changed his mind and was like, Oh, no, there's maybe I was wrong about that. But it is it is an interesting theory. That's a really interesting theory. Yeah. Because he he could have miscalculated like you can, especially at that distance.
Like I misjudged distances in my driveway. I can imagine flying. I know he's a pilot, so he has experience, but still, you know, your eyes can deceive you. Some people have suggested jets, jet planes as well, because their exhaust can make can create sort of like bright shapes that could look like these these images he saw. Yeah. So those are those are kind of the basic ones. Some people say, like balloons, but they're not really looking at the case. There's gosh, just the balloon.
And it's like, well. It's none of this feels like, okay, I guess some of these if that was truly what it was. Okay, weird. But we got a smart guy who flies all the time who who is smart enough to say maybe this is a reflection or something in the plexiglass. Let me look at let me open this window and take a look. He's considering a lot of different things. I don't know. None of it to me is like that's the answer. It was just pelican. Yes. Or or like, yeah.
And that's where this this case to me kind of takes or keeps it doesn't take a strange turn, but it keeps being strange after all this time is that I don't think there is one good theory that points to it being a mistake for, being a manmade thing. And again, I'm a skeptic. Like I'm not somebody that just jumps to UFOs being there all the time, but like, I just have yet to come across something that's like, Oh, yeah, yeah, it had to be jet planes. Like, I was.
Like, Yeah, maybe it could be, but I can't, I can't just jump on board with that 100% be like, Oh yeah, it's totally jet planes. Then it's like, no, there's, there was enough strangeness to it. And he even talked about the formation. Was it right in the way they kind of flipped and bobbed? I don't think jet planes would have been doing so. I do think the the question still remains, what did he see? And that's me. That's the only question, because I feel like whatever he saw, he described it.
You described it. I believe he saw what he says he saw. And the question is, okay, but then what was it? Yeah, but what was it? Carrie, you're the guest. You have the answer. I have the answer. I should have more than just like. Well, it's not birds. It's not. Birds. It's I will say this just because to get most of the details he did kind of change his description later in life.
And so in the initial drawings he had for military intelligence, it is like half a plate with the point that the I can't do with my fingers for you, but a point at the end. And then later on it became that boomerang thing where people if there's a famous photo of him holding that like silver boomerang ish object high point in the middle. So it became like more of this pie shaped that then turned into a boomerang later on in his life.
I don't I don't sort of turn against him because of that, because I do think our memories do change over time. I agree. And it's not big enough to it's not like a drastic enough change or like, oh, he's making it up. Also, he said in some interviews, you don't hear this very often. And this is kind of like one of the things that gets dropped sometimes. He actually said they weren't all the same shape. Oh. But like most of the time you don't hear that.
But he claims that they were all slightly different shapes and sizes. I mean, that's really weird. Isn't that weird? So he could have seen when she was alive. So for us to ask him, but he could have seen both that like pie, pie plate cut in half with a point and a boomerang, you know. So that's really interesting. And I'd never heard that. And I also don't feel like you get a lot of UFO stories where if there's multiple objects that they're different shapes. Yeah, you're right. Right. I did.
I didn't think about that. Yeah. So that's right. So Yeah. Saying that is it. I didn't know that and I didn't know that there was ever a discrepancy really of how he was describing the shape. So but yeah, anytime somebody even if it's like the smallest inconsistency, it does start to crumble the story a little bit. But I still feel like it's very credible. I still feel like he saw exactly what he said. He saw. That. Yeah, I agree. I agree.
And again, just the this story I'm I mean, we can't figure it out, but this story, again, has this historical significance to it where I actually think it helped, even if not directly, but indirectly, I think it helped inspire minds at the time. Like we're getting into the space age, I think thinking about aliens and UFOs and flying saucers. It's inspiring people to get into physics and science and astronomy and also fiction. Like, I think this helped inspire all the movies.
I mean, it obviously inspired all the movies, but eventually, like TV shows like Star Trek and all this kind of stuff, and we still use the term flying saucer today. So like it it really historic connects to us in a much more significant way than Roswell than some of the other, like famous UFO stories. I think it connects to so much of what our lives are and sort of the culture and society we live in, thinking about fiction and alien technology and everything else.
So that's really what drew my attention to this as a story, just to kind of Matos and the UFOs. But I just yeah, I'm really fascinated by that. And I do I have a quote here that I actually thought was really interesting, too.
This is from an article in Wired, and the writer says, maybe during either kind of crest, more people really do truly excuse me, really do see truly strange things as could be the case if spaceships or air forces are actually descending, or maybe the upsurge happens because of what social scientists call perceptual contagion, a catching disease whose sole symptom is that you suddenly notice things that have always existed and interpret them differently.
So that's in relation to the craze that happened where everybody is suddenly seeing flying saucers. So there is a social can tejan that can happen and a lot of people have even connected it to like the dancing disease. Have you ever read about that or heard about that? So there is it's in the Middle Ages.
Some time I've listen to a podcast on it, but there's like a couple of towns that this has happened to historically where suddenly someone starts dancing and then someone else start dancing, and then suddenly the whole town is dancing. They don't know why and they can't stop and people will die. They'll fall over after days of dancing. And. And it's this weird. It's almost like a virus kind of thing. We're just like we feed off each other, and that's that social contagion thing.
We're like, Yeah, it is a social phenomena. How we how we can be affected by each other and what everybody else says or sees or talks about. This area you also brought up earlier in the episode of the fact that there was so much going on that was causing people to look at the sky in a new way. Yeah, I guess, you know, before it's like, what was the sky? It was stars, it was whatever and that.
And now it's a threat and when you're looking at the sky looking for threats, maybe certain things stand out to you in a different way. Yeah, yeah. You see things slightly differently because you're thinking about it or it's also related to like, my son can what a Honda is because he saw, I guess he learned the like H logo from somebody. And so now he he points out Honda is on the road.
And I keep saying to myself, I thought I never saw Honda's or rarely saw Honda's in my neighborhood and now I see them every other car. And so it's thing if you put it in the mind and then suddenly now you're seeing. Oh, really? Oh, yeah. So do you have any other theories or comments or questions about Kenneth Arnold? I do have one more thing to do before we wrap up, but I just wanted to see if you had anything you wanted to bring up.
I guess I don't I guess my my final takeaway of this story is what I repeated multiple times is that I do believe what he is saying. I don't think he's making it up at all. There is enough credibility there that I want to give him the benefit of the doubt. And I feel like he lived a whole life. I mean, how old was he when he died? Oh, I haven't done the math. In 84. He was 32 and 47 and he died. So there you go.
So, I mean, this whole full life, he had plenty of chances to flush his credibility down the toilet and he didn't. And so, yeah, I think that's the reason why the story is enduring because yeah, it was really probably pretty true. Absolutely. And it also doesn't it really doesn't make us or allow us to debunk potential alien visitations, which is a it's fun, fun to think about it. You know, it's good for our imagination, but also interesting and strange
like it is. Yeah. So before we we finish up, we have one more scene that I wrote. So this is the Arnold too thing. So this is a, a kind of a recreation of an interview excuse me, of an interview between Edward Murrow, the famous newsman and reporter, and Kenneth Arnold. They had an interview over the phone years later. I don't know how many years later I should have written that down, but it is I don't know. It just it's interesting. It puts a nice little, little period on the story.
So do you want to just keep being Arnold? I would love to keep being Arnold. Okay. I'm not going to do an impression of Edward Murrow. I can't really do that. All right. Here we go. Flying saucers was a historic misquote. Well, Mr. Arnold's original explanation has been forgotten. The term flying saucer has become a household word. Arnold says that some pilots in the Northwest have reported seeing them on eight separate occasions. We asked for his personal opinion.
I don't know how to best explain that. I more or less have reserved an opinion as to what I think. Naturally, being a natural or natural born American. Some that later, if it's not made by our science or our army air forces, I am inclined to believe it is of an extraterrestrial origin. Extraterrestrial origin? You mean you think there's a possibility they may be coming out of space from another planet? I suppose that's hard for people to take seriously. Well, I'll tell you this much.
All the airplane pilots, none of us have appreciated, appreciated being laughed at. We made our reports because we thought that if our government didn't know what it was, it was only our duty to report it to our nation and to our Air Force. I think it's something that is of concern to every person in this country, and I don't think it's anything for people to get hysterical about. That's just my frank opinion on it. So that is how it all began. That was the trigger action.
Kenneth Arnold's story went scurrying over the news, wires, radio and newspapers, picked it up, and then within days the country broke out into a flood of flying saucer observation. Ba ba ba ba ba. Yeah, yeah. So, yeah, we can, we can wrap it up there. That is considering I have COVID right now, I think I didn't do too terrible of a job trying to remember things. I think you did a really good job of asking why and it's such a tip of the iceberg.
I think this is a great this is a great way for you to get your toes into this world. Yeah, I need to do it more. I am. Sure. I'm fascinated. I'm not going to lie. I am so intimidated to do UFO stories because people are hardcore into it and I'm like an armchair fan. Like, I know weird other strange things so much better than I know UFO and Alien and UAP stories. That's going to make you be a great person to explore because you're looking at it in the eyes.
You're like, Yeah, allies on this stuff. We need new theories. Oh, well. Thank. You. So I think I think this is it. This is a great start. I think. Do you have any suggestions on on one or any any that I should look at? I mean, are you into anything that Tom from Blink 182 is is on because he's he's into so he's. I only know that just that he's like got some stuff I don't actually know the details so. Maybe I should look at the videos. Yeah, it's going to blow your socks off. Let me tell you.
Now, you I know that you've done some some writing and stuff, like articles and things. Did you ever write anything remotely close to, like, a UFO or some sort of sighting type of article or story or. Anything I've never been paid to? Okay, that stuff exists, but I've never been paid. People tend to pay me for for fashion advice and yeah, what to buy and stuff like that. But I, I have yeah, this is one of my favorite topics.
I just, I don't know, I don't know where I could go to actually write this stuff for fun. Yeah. No. Hey, I'll let you know if I come across. I mean, I got samples. Yeah, there was no the story you told me or you brought up when I was with you a few months ago. I think there was a video that had recently been passed around with people in it. Was it the one in Santa monica? Do you even remember what the video was that you talked about? I think it was. I want to say Santa monica. That sounds right.
I can find a video and send it to you. But yeah, that was going around. If It's the one thing. No, it wasn't debunked was it. Oh if it's the one I think it is I, I, I debunked it as well as I think many other people. It is if it's the same one because it may not be. So we'll have to look. But I think it's the Santa monica Pier. There's a group of people up in the sky and there's this like triangle. I think it's like three different lights, but they form like a triangle together, I think.
And, and it's like flies down above. And I looked at it and when I first saw it, it was just like a quick social media setting. I was like, Oh, that's cool. And then didn't think anything of it until I went back to look at it again. And the first thing I noticed was everybody's got their phones up filming it. So I'm like, Well, this is interesting because I don't see any of their footage also on YouTube and stuff. Was it that one?
And then you notice people filming all of their screens have the same angle as like they all have the same angle. Of the object. But then when they're like, you know. Where they're like bringing it down to the ground, you can still see the screen and it's not moving. So it's obviously just a visual effect. And nowadays people be careful if you are trying to. Find. UFO videos nowadays. Yes, everybody has a phone which should make it easier to like see an alien in the sky.
But there's so many even like simple plug ins, like visual effect plug ins that like a six year old on the computer can put everything in and make it look like an aliens flying above. Yeah, so, so just be careful of, of stuff out there. Look for the little details like the screens and that video. But yeah, it's the same video. I don't think it's a big one. I would like to give myself some credit that I would have. Yeah, it did. It did take me a few times so I didn't see it right away.
But but yeah. No, I would love to see, see more. I love them. Well, thank you. Do you want to tell people where they can find you? Do you have like do you want people to find you on social? You know, I mean, I'm out there if if we cross each other's path and that's great. Well, we're good. I'm really I'm really hoping that you do more of this and we can exchange info because this is really fun. Oh, I would love to. Yeah. I mean, from now on, you're my UFO specialist and will love it.
Yeah, that would be amazing. So cool. Well, thank you. This was a lovely excuse to get to hang out with you and not your husband, so that was good. Okay. Well, yes. Thank you, Carrie, so much for being on and listening to the story of Kenneth Arnold. And that's our show. Thank you so much for listening. In my delirium of Being Sick, I forgot to give any sort of call to actions at the top of the show. So if you're enjoying this series, please subscribe rate and leave a review.
If you want your review read, send me an email. A study of strange at gmail.com on the subject of emails and UFOs. If you've seen an unidentified flying object or an identified, submerged, submerged object or anything of that nature, please send me your stories. I do want to compile and do an episode in the future with the people's personal accounts. A Study of strange at gmail.com. You can also follow us on Instagram.
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And finally, on our next episode, if COVID doesn't slow me down too much is a mystery that's haunted a family through multiple generations. Now it's the case of the solder children. I've been reading about this case for probably 15 years or so, and I'm excited to say that I've learned some new things over the last few weeks researching this. So I'm looking forward to sharing those details until next time. Thank you and goodnight.