When our UFO Granddaddy Kenneth Arnold's secret 'Cat Came Out Of The Bag'

If the cacophony of noise surrounding TTSA's activities is currently making you feel nauseous and want to leap from the tallest window, what better solution than to stretch our minds back to the lesser known aspects of Kenneth Arnold, who is arguably the granddaddy of why we're all here. His main story is known by most ATSers, but if you're green about his sighting from a private plane on 24th June 1947 of nine half-moon-shaped flying objects flying “like a saucer would if it skipped across water” over Washington State, here is a concise 10-year-old ATS thread that sets it all out nicely.



Not so well known are Kenneth's activities after that date, and his private beliefs about these objects. His daughter Kim Arnold (above), recalled her father reaching some fascinating conclusions about what these nine objects were, although he kept these thoughts to himself until near his death:

He was very perplexed and confused about everybody’s concept of aliens visiting from other planets – that type of thing. He didn’t really feel like that is what they were at all, not the ones he had seen.

I'll come back to what he really believed they were, but back in 1947, despite an initial honeymoon in the media spotlight, the rest of his life was blemished by disillusionment and harassment, but also blessed with SEVEN other UFO sightings. And it's important to realise that despite publications such as 'Amazing Stories', an extraterrestrial or other paranormal explanation was not in the public and media's mind at that stage, which also applies to Roswell the following month when the hasty USAF used Ken's story as a cover for recovered US tech. The so-called 'Battle Of LA' in early 1942 was similarly Woo-free, and a source for Spielberg's mega flop, '1941' (1979).

In other words, “saucers” and “discs” as potential foreign spy technology was a primary fear. Or, as Ken wondered, were they robotically controlled “guided missiles”? Poor 'ole ET hardly factored at all. Also, it's worth noting that Ken's 'skipping across water' description stems from 1950 interviews rather than 1947. Until then, and contrary to popular myth, he was indeed running with a 'saucer'-like description in own AFF report (see a rather verbose article here).

Ken became an investigator of such mysterious phenomena, including the infamous Maury Island case (detailed in an excellent ATS thread here). Some of us wait lifetimes, but Ken had his second sighting a few WEEKS later on 29th July 1947 whilst flying to Tacoma - up to twenty-five “brass-coloured objects that looked like ducks, coming at his plane at terrific speeds”. Having bought a 16mm camera, he only captured two tiny specks on film, but is it possible they WERE ducks and his first sighting was contaminating his own expectations?

In 1951, near Mt Lassen, California, he filmed two' objects racing under his plane, mantra-ray in shape, with rippling wings, one of which was transparent in nature, the other very solid. Although the footage was again very poor, he sent it to friend Ray Palmer who determined that 40 frames contained “something”, but after Palmer forwarded it to the USAF, it was returned with said 40 frames missing. Or so the tantalising story goes.

The only other reasonably detailed Arnold sighting occurred in July 1966, near Idaho Falls, Arnold filmed a triangular craft, also witnessed by hundreds of other witnesses and approached by a B-52 at 54,000 feet. The media believed it was a pyramidal weather balloon “probably released from Minneapolis”. Eleven years later, Ken conceded it probably was indeed a semi-inflated balloon. This time the film quality was good but, ironically, pretty worthless.




Meanwhile, his aforementioned daughter Kim (pictured above with Mum and Dad) began to tackle her father's World Of Woo for the first time in 1994, later declaring on 7th November 2011:

Well, I’d like to bring closure to my father’s sighting on June 24, 1947 and I just feel in my heart that I was the child born to do this. I just had to go through everything. And I had to read everything. I was on a spiritual mission. I had to try to figure out for myself why all this had happened to our family. Why was it my father that was chosen to bring this awareness of “Other Worlds” into human consciousness?

Looking back, she remembered the Arnold family had lived in the shadow of the 'saucers', Kenneth feeling he had been exploited over the years. Yet the original sighting had truly startled and frightened him due to the sheer brightness of the objects, “like a welder's arc light” - more then he bargained for whilst searching for a crashed C-46 Marine transport plane (a $5000 reward was in the offing).

Despite his perceived seriousness of the incident, the relentless publicity and perplexing nature of his sighting made him become a virtual recluse, describing it all as a “ridiculous circus” which clashed with his view of it as a “spiritual experience”...

… and that it had happened to him for some type of divine purpose. He truly believed that this was a very serious subject that should be studied in a scientific manner... After many years of reflecting about what he had truly seen, he believed they were alive, rather than anything made out of nuts and bolts... [He] believed that they were possibly from the world where we go when we die. That’s what he believed. He was only brave enough to tell this to a newspaper reporter two years before he died in 1982. He felt that the flying saucers were the link between the living and the dead. It took him his entire lifetime to let “the cat out of the bag” you might say, and be brave enough to state it the way he really believed.

Now that 'his cat is out of the bag', this feline Woo-ness sways us towards the inter-dimensional hypotheses espoused by Jacques Vallee since the late-1960s. Kenneth believed UFOs were just one method of transport when outside of our physical bodies, able to reach other worlds and dimensions. Indeed, he told a 17-year-old Kim that humans are indestructible beings of light energy (even comparing us to ice cubes that retain their identity whether frozen or melted).

Weirdly, Ken's wife claimed to have telepathic abilities that ran in the family, although Kim was reluctant to embrace this idea at first, but as she got older she seemed to have memories of past lifetimes, to the point where she called this process “the travels of the soul”.

Talking of theories, when Dr Allen J Hynek proposed his infamous Swamp Gas theory, Ken exploded with rage:

And, he simply lost it when Dr. Hynek said flying saucers or UFOs were some kind of swamp gas. I listened to my father’s angry ranting and raving about Dr. Hynek’s ridiculous theory of swamp gas for hours. I was pretty young then…but as we all know, Dr. Hynek quit working for the government and became a realist and sensible investigator on the subject.

However, that was not the last time that Hynek's career decisions infuriated our Ken...



***CONTINUED BELOW***

***CONTINUED***





When Hynek performed a brief cameo in Spielberg's 'Close Encounters Of The Third Kind' (1977), this only added fuel to Ken's bonfire:

My father just absolutely could not believe how they just created that movie and they didn’t even contact him, ask what had happened to him or anything. My mother and father talked about it quite openly that neither one of them could believe no one really cared about the real story of what really happened and how it really did begin... He was confused about not being consulted. After all, the movie depicted in a way, the actor, Richard Dreyfus having the same type of experience as my father did. In some respects the movie mirrored a little bit of the hysteria in our house. I mean, it did. You know it wasn’t our real family story. It did not reflect all the things that really happened to my father or our family.

Was Ken being unreasonably arrogant? Was he angry that he never made major money from being our UFO granddaddy? He also believed government men were monitoring him, so do we add paranoia to the mix?

Going back to the original objects, one final interesting 'private' description of Ken's was that:

They pulsated with blue/white light from the center of their surfaces similar to the rhythm and beating of our own human hearts.  So there you have it.  That is why my father believed they were alive, absolutely.  It was this reality that the pulsating light from the centre of their surfaces was similar to the beating of our human hearts.

Were/are they living beings of an unknown nature and origin, native to this planet and living alongside us and possibly long before us? Or were/are they from an alternative dimension? Or, as Ken concluded, are they simply ourselves in a sort of post-death transport highway? Personally, the first two notions hold more water, even if incredibly difficult to prove.

One last word from Ken himself, a few years before his death, making his feelings clear about the government's handling of UFOs. Which also begs the question: What would he think about TTSA? Perhaps we shouldn't answer that, lest we incur his spirit's wrath!

He thought the disc were alive?

I think if we could sufficiently explore the outer reaches of our own solar system we'd find it populated with various space animals. Creatures who live in the vacuum of space like fish live in water.

Probably plasma based. Who's to say that what we know of as life is the only type of life there is?

originally posted by: underwerks
I think if we could sufficiently explore the outer reaches of our own solar system we'd find it populated with various space animals. Creatures who live in the vacuum of space like fish live in water.

Probably plasma based. Who's to say that what we know of as life is the only type of life there is?

I have always been frustrated when scientists say if there is no water on a planet there can be no life.

Why is that necessarily true? It seems a bit closed minded.

a reply to: ConfusedBrit

Arnold was a bit late to the game.

World War II Pilots where seeing UFO's as early as 1941. They called them " Foo Fighters "

FOO FIGHTERS is the name given to the general body of spherical, circular, disc-like, or wedged shaped "bogies," sometimes seeming to glow, shine, or reflect a high degree of illumination seen mostly by World War II pilots or flight crews. They usually paralleled or followed aircraft and were seen by aviators on all sides of the action, being reported by American, British, German and Japanese crews. No Foo Fighter was known or reported to have made or attempted any sort of contact, interaction or attack. They were known, however, for their high rate of speed and agility, being much faster than any known aircraft at the time as well as being extremely manuverable, often exhibiting highly unconventional abilities such as instantaneous acceleration and deacceleration, rapid climbing and descent, and hovering in place

sped2work.tripod.com...

I like his line of thought that they are alive there is definitely something to this way of thinking about the crafts for even if they are not alive in the sense we might perceive alive to be they are indeed sentient even if that is because they are an absolute extension of their occupants...
Should any of you go beyond merely seeing one and actually make a connection where you are given information...
I can guarantee with almost complete certainty that should you ask” who are you?” The response will be “we are you”

Of course this can mean so many things and cause just as many questions as the rest of your experience unfortunately
I do not believe you will actually have the real answer... Not yet anyway....

originally posted by: 4891morfih

originally posted by: underwerks
I think if we could sufficiently explore the outer reaches of our own solar system we'd find it populated with various space animals. Creatures who live in the vacuum of space like fish live in water.

Probably plasma based. Who's to say that what we know of as life is the only type of life there is?

I have always been frustrated when scientists say if there is no water in a planet there can be no life.

Why is that necessarily true? It seems a bit closed minded.

I think it is closed minded. Here's a thread I did on lifeforms in space a couple years ago.

www.abovetopsecret.com...

It seems almost probable to me that there are creatures that live in between the stars. Maybe that's what some of the orb type glowing energy ufos are?

This and uso's are the most interesting part of it all to me.

I've known about Arnold's personal conclusion for years now and when I saw the article with his daughter the other day I was hoping some discussion of that aspect might come of it. Excellent addition to this forum, CB.

I'm with underwerks and Arnold: I think there's a good chance they aren't craft but lifeforms.

Here's my own sighting. Over the years I've thought it seemed more "alive" as opposed to a spaceship.

I was 14 and on a 5-day camp-out with about 20 other Boy Scouts in the foothills of Lookout Mtn---not far from Redstone Arsenal and the Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama. Not that far from Oakridge, Tn either now that I think about it.

Anyway 4 of the 5 days were spent in a relatively safe & easygoing pasture of a scout-friendly citizen. We had some badge classes and spent a lot of our leisure time in fierce competitions of mumblety-peg. One night we went to camp in the "mountains," better described as large foothills. After dinner we broke off in pairs and cliques and explored the various trails leading to the top which I estimate to be around 600 ft and situated among many foothills of similar size.

Two scouts had remained at the top longer than the rest of us and it was rather late in the evening when I and a friend were meandering a trail just below the peak when the two scouts up top called down to us in very excited voices to come up that they had just seen a ufo.

We scrambled up top and the two scouts indicated an adjacent and taller mount, maybe less than a mile away as the crow flies, and said they saw a big glowing orange ufo land there.

I was skeptical, but was intrigued by how excited they were, cutting each other off in their zealousness to describe what they saw. We settled in and continued talking all the while steadily looking at the adjacent mount top.

Maybe 20 minutes passed when there appeared a brilliant double-flash that emanated from and illuminated the entire top of the peak, a split second of darkness, and then maybe 100 ft over the tree tops "it" pulsed into life. Perspective wise, I would say it was about high-moon size in appearance. Perfectly globular. At full pulse it looked like molten metal or plasma swirling & sloshing around inside.

Then it would dim at about the same speed it lit. It would dim to nothing. We couldn't see anything and then a good bit higher in the sky it would pulse to life again a few seconds later. Not counting the double-flash of the apparent lift-off, it lit and dimmed 6 times, each time higher in the sky and after the 6th nothing. We watched for a long time, but that amazing glimpse was over but for the heavy-duty questions it raised in me.

It was a clear night and a clear phenomena of some kind. I was an Air Force brat and C.A.P. cadet with flight-time that never missed a Thunderbirds show or an opportunity to witness various test-flights. I knew it wasn't flares and it doesn't fit with any description of ball lightning that I've come across in the years since. Conventional craft was out of the question because of characteristics and size.

Even at that age, I knew what we saw couldn't be easily explained. Since the internet came along, I've searched for folk who have seen the same thing. I've came across many since then that were essentially the same and many more that were similar.

The late Father Corrado Balducci--a very educated and quite influential fellow--addressed this subject in what I find to be an interesting way. It's a viewpoint that he doesn't really address in a religious way as he describes his belief about the "others" in the vid below.

Balducci reportedly "defended the existence of extraterrestrial life, and invited the Catholic Church to reconsider its position on this issue".

Balducci told a 1998 magazine interviewer that he believed "UFO entities were not demonic" and that they should be investigated by science "and not the world of angels or the Virgin Mary or the demons...not as a divine or demonic incident, but a physical reality". Balducci's remarks were later misrepresented and distributed on the Internet by UFOlogists as "a Vatican announcement of UFO reality".

source

a reply to: The GUT


that's an interesting experience. It reminds me of this cattle mutilation I investigated back when I was in MUFON. It was in 2001 just before 9/11, a ranch hand had called me to take a look at a cow that had been damaged. The cow had been in a different field then where it was the night before, but it was accounted for the night before as well.

When I got out to the field where the cow was reported at the night before there were areas of the ground that were "Scooped up" and the scooped out area was similar to the dirt that was found near the cow in the other field. The cow itself had looked to have been crushed in the same distance that the scooping in the other field, both in size and spacing. It was clear that something scooped up the cow from one field, drained it of fluids and dropped it in the other field. Something that was using straps or large bands.

I had taken the opportunity to ask around the area for anyone that may have seen something. Nobody wanted to talk to me about anything, I personally think it was that they may not have been US citizens but that's a different matter. Finally I did get a couple of people to talk to me, one worked on the ranch and the other was on a neighboring field. They both describes what could only be called a jellyfish in the sky. Neither of the two were aware that the other had seen something, and yet they both described a similar enough thing that I could conclude that it was the same.

At the time I had dug into this story a little more, and had found some reports back in the 70's, and a few earlier (including a couple of reports that were supposedly from SkinWalker Ranch. Though I could never confirm those reports) that discussed these as "Skyfish". It's kind of a weird idea that there could be a creature in the sky that eats living things that can't be seen, but yet the evidence of that possibility seems to exist.

a reply to: ConfusedBrit

And cue the Mandela effect.

Many people believe Arnold came up with the term flying saucer, he didnt-he said they moved like saucers on water, and the journo who interviewed him took the ball and ran with it, and the flying saucer was born.

I don't know what Arnold saw but his description is accurate, when you see a UFO you do find it hard to explain what you just witnessed.

a reply to: Thecakeisalie

This is a real problem... how do you describe something that is beyond comparison from anything else you have ever known? why you can’t even begin to make sense of it for yourself let alone describe to others...
That which is alien is just that and you are not familiar with it... It is beyond you and your faculties absolutely in the realm of the unknown... The sensory overload is so overwhelming that the experience although fully awake is filled with dreamlike qualities...

My own research on this has led me to believe that these things are alive.

There are many cases that witnesses say "I felt this thing was watching me" or "I felt this thing was alive" etc.Also in Bob HAstings book on ufos and nukes theres another case in which ufos over nukes did their thing and the two officers "had" this feeling that the ufos were not going to harm them or "mess" with the nukes.


All in all i wonder when they went from ufos to uaps tptb knew what they were talking about.Makes one wonder.Nice thread s&f

a reply to: IMSAM

I can answer the UFO=UAP issue. Back in the 90's the term UFO had a very bad stigma to it (it still does, but not as bad). It could be a career ender just saying that you "may have" seen a UFO, so not a lot of people were willing to come forward about seeing them. The term UAP not only seemed more appropriate, but also didn't carry with it the negative stigma that UFO had.

UFO; Unidentified Flying Object
UAP; Unidentified Aerial Phenomena

Which would you claim to have seen?

originally posted by: The GUT
I've known about Arnold's personal conclusion for years now and when I saw the article with his daughter the other day I was hoping some discussion of that aspect might come of it. Excellent addition to this forum, CB.

I'm with underwerks and Arnold: I think there's a good chance they aren't craft but lifeforms.

Here's my own sighting. Over the years I've thought it seemed more "alive" as opposed to a spaceship.

I was 14 and on a 5-day camp-out with about 20 other Boy Scouts in the foothills of Lookout Mtn---not far from Redstone Arsenal and the Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama. Not that far from Oakridge, Tn either now that I think about it.

Anyway 4 of the 5 days were spent in a relatively safe & easygoing pasture of a scout-friendly citizen. We had some badge classes and spent a lot of our leisure time in fierce competitions of mumblety-peg. One night we went to camp in the "mountains," better described as large foothills. After dinner we broke off in pairs and cliques and explored the various trails leading to the top which I estimate to be around 600 ft and situated among many foothills of similar size.

Two scouts had remained at the top longer than the rest of us and it was rather late in the evening when I and a friend were meandering a trail just below the peak when the two scouts up top called down to us in very excited voices to come up that they had just seen a ufo.

We scrambled up top and the two scouts indicated an adjacent and taller mount, maybe less than a mile away as the crow flies, and said they saw a big glowing orange ufo land there.

I was skeptical, but was intrigued by how excited they were, cutting each other off in their zealousness to describe what they saw. We settled in and continued talking all the while steadily looking at the adjacent mount top.

Maybe 20 minutes passed when there appeared a brilliant double-flash that emanated from and illuminated the entire top of the peak, a split second of darkness, and then maybe 100 ft over the tree tops "it" pulsed into life. Perspective wise, I would say it was about high-moon size in appearance. Perfectly globular. At full pulse it looked like molten metal or plasma swirling & sloshing around inside.

Then it would dim at about the same speed it lit. It would dim to nothing. We couldn't see anything and then a good bit higher in the sky it would pulse to life again a few seconds later. Not counting the double-flash of the apparent lift-off, it lit and dimmed 6 times, each time higher in the sky and after the 6th nothing. We watched for a long time, but that amazing glimpse was over but for the heavy-duty questions it raised in me.

It was a clear night and a clear phenomena of some kind. I was an Air Force brat and C.A.P. cadet with flight-time that never missed a Thunderbirds show or an opportunity to witness various test-flights. I knew it wasn't flares and it doesn't fit with any description of ball lightning that I've come across in the years since. Conventional craft was out of the question because of characteristics and size.

Even at that age, I knew what we saw couldn't be easily explained. Since the internet came along, I've searched for folk who have seen the same thing. I've came across many since then that were essentially the same and many more that were similar.

The late Father Corrado Balducci--a very educated and quite influential fellow--addressed this subject in what I find to be an interesting way. It's a viewpoint that he doesn't really address in a religious way as he describes his belief about the "others" in the vid below.

Balducci reportedly "defended the existence of extraterrestrial life, and invited the Catholic Church to reconsider its position on this issue".

Balducci told a 1998 magazine interviewer that he believed "UFO entities were not demonic" and that they should be investigated by science "and not the world of angels or the Virgin Mary or the demons...not as a divine or demonic incident, but a physical reality". Balducci's remarks were later misrepresented and distributed on the Internet by UFOlogists as "a Vatican announcement of UFO reality".

source

You our sighting is somewhat similar to the sighting my husband and I had 2 years ago this summer.
It was a warm summer night probably around 10:00 or 11:00, and I was out in my backyard piddling around when I noticed in the sky due north from me a large, very bright light which due to the size and brightness I immediately assumed to be a helicopter search light...but the instant I thought that I realized that helicopter searchlights aren't orange and this was a very bright deep orange light heading directly...and I mean directly, towards me(though not descending thank goodness) so at this point I called to my husband to come out and see it. He got there just in time to see it slowly come to be a point directly over my head.As I bent my head back and stared (at this point it was about the size of a full moon) it was perfectly round, very bright, deeply orange colored and covered in reddish swirling undulating flamelike shapes. And it's moving so slowly that there is no sign of movement on the "flames"... they're not blown back at all and
I can see them perfectly and sharply. My husband was getting freaked out at this and he went back in the house but I stood there and watched it as it slowly continued on due south and out of sight.

Nice break away from all TTSA fuelled fervour in other threads indeed. Arnold was interviewed on June 25, 1947 the day after his sighting.



He seems a bit confused as he mentions here the craft went "down into a canyon, several instances, probably 100 ft". Then later claims here they "were flying at a level constant altitude, they weren't going up and they weren't going down."

He also didn't understand why the military weren't investigating and had not contacted him. Eventually submitting his own report in late July 1947.‘Project Sign’ the forerunner to Project Bluebook, eventually, concluded Arnold had seen a mirage.

Many people believed he'd seen a test of a variation on the Horton Brothers Flying Wing...who really knows. Maybe Zondo will reveal all in Uni.......aah no we'll leave that topic well alone. '

Arnold did seem to let this get to him and never found an answer.

Don't rule out "life as we don't know it" either : www.newscientist.com...

a reply to: The GUT

Woah, pretty interesting sighting! I find some of your descriptions eerily similar to my own sighting in 2008. The dimming down while the intensity of the light, as well as the "color" changing concurrently with the dimming effect is spot on. I might interpret too much in what you're writing, but I've been patiently waiting over the years to hear of people seeing similar stuff. And your account kind of validates my own sighting I feel. Man, I'm glad you shared that!

I think it's only fair that I share what I saw too, this is the short version.

What I saw though, when it dimmed down it didn't disappear, but the intensity of the ball of light was immense. It just turned from a big yellow ball of light to a small intense star-looking thing with the same clear/sharp intense light of a star. The color changed as it went from big to small, and small to big again. It did that a few times. Didn't notice that it changed altitude though, it just hanged in the air. When it was gone I just looked up to the starry sky, and it seemed a star was zig-zagging over large distances up there. Can't say that with 100 percent certainty, though.

originally posted by: alldaylong
a reply to: ConfusedBrit

Arnold was a bit late to the game.

World War II Pilots where seeing UFO's as early as 1941. They called them " Foo Fighters "

FOO FIGHTERS is the name given to the general body of spherical, circular, disc-like, or wedged shaped "bogies," sometimes seeming to glow, shine, or reflect a high degree of illumination seen mostly by World War II pilots or flight crews. They usually paralleled or followed aircraft and were seen by aviators on all sides of the action, being reported by American, British, German and Japanese crews. No Foo Fighter was known or reported to have made or attempted any sort of contact, interaction or attack. They were known, however, for their high rate of speed and agility, being much faster than any known aircraft at the time as well as being extremely manuverable, often exhibiting highly unconventional abilities such as instantaneous acceleration and deacceleration, rapid climbing and descent, and hovering in place.

sped2work.tripod.com...

The Foo fighters stories are indeed true and pre-date the Arnold sightings by 4 or 5 years. But I have never been able to source even one witness account from a German or Japanese pilot. At the time there were numerous theories from long lasting flares, the effect of high powered radar, even secret Axis weapons. But no one considered them to be from another planet back in the day.

This is perhaps why the Kenneth Arnold story prevails as the being the origin of the modern UFO era.

a reply to: ConfusedBrit

Thanks for the great read, I always wondered if Arnold had maybe seen secret captured Nazi aircraft. I imagine there could've been some possible outrage if Europe had found out that America were flying captured weapons of war, so decided to fly them secretly and not to tell it's Allies, they had captured V2 and jet aircraft, what else was taken to America after the end of WW2?
Also, it's now known that lots of the "Paperclip" Nazis were guilty of war crimes and had their stories doctored to allow them to live in America so as not to fall into soviet hands. If they did this with people, why not tech'?

a reply to: mirageman

But I have never been able to source even one witness account from a German or Japanese pilot.

This is a good point. Over the years there have been lots of stories of Foo fighters in books and so fourth, but they only ever say that they were also reported by Germans and the Japanese, I've never seen or read an eyewitness account from any of the "enemy".