Maury Island Incident

On June 21st, 1947, Harold Dahl claimed six donut-shaped objects appeared over Maury Island on the Puget Sound. The next morning, a man in a black suit showed up at his door, and recited the entire incident back to him word for word with a warning: stay quiet or else. What followed was a chain of events nobody could have predicted. 

Was it a hoax? A government cover-up? Or did something genuinely unexplainable happen that summer?

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Intro music by Don Edwards

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Okay, welcome back to the podcast. Happy Thursday and eerily beloved, we are gathered here today with Just the Pizzler. Just Garrett. Solo episode today. And because Garrett is the only one on the podcast today, we're gonna be talking about his favorite paranormal thing, Bigfoot. Just getting out of the way.

SPEAKER_01 0:19

I was gonna say that we sell for real.

SPEAKER_00 0:20

Not Bigfoot. We're gonna be talking about aliens, UFOs, and Men in Black.

SPEAKER_01 0:25

You almost turned this into a real solo podcast.

SPEAKER_00 0:28

My bad. I thought it was funny.

SPEAKER_01 0:32

The Squatch Family?

SPEAKER_00 0:34

Squatch Family. Nope. Nope. Men in Black. You're a huge Men and Black fan, so indeed.

SPEAKER_01 0:39

Good movies.

SPEAKER_00 0:40

Yep. Okay, let's let's get into it because there's kind of a lot, so keep up. Okie dokie. When I say men in black, automatically you probably think of Agent J and Agent K from the movie franchise with Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones.

SPEAKER_02 0:59

Yep.

SPEAKER_00 1:00

The comedic duo tackling extraterrestrial invaders while working for an undercover government operation was a box office hit in the 90s through the early 2010s. And while men in black were new to the big screen at the time, conspiracy theories about covert government agents hiding proof of alien activity had existed for decades. All of which can be traced back to Maury Island in the summer of 1947.

SPEAKER_01 1:22

Yep.

SPEAKER_00 1:23

Do you know what I'm talking about?

SPEAKER_01 1:25

Nah, but I'm pretty sure Oswell was in like 47 too.

SPEAKER_00 1:29

Mm-hmm. Yep. Yes, it was. So the incident. On June 21st, 1947, Harold Dahl, his son, their family dog, and two other crewmen set off in Harold's boss's boat, the North Queen from Tacoma, Washington. The group is forging for logs to resell to lumber companies along Maury Island's East Bay around noon. So Maury Island is located in the Puget Sound, and today it's attached to Vashon Island. So it just it's north of Tacoma in the Puget Sound. Okay. But like in the south, the southernmost part of it. So according to Harold in the book They Knew Too Much About Flying Saucers by Gray Barker, the event that followed went like this. He, Harold, was patrolling in his boat at Maury Island near Tacoma when he and his crew saw six huge donut-shaped objects in the sky. They appeared to be about a hundred feet in diameter of bright metallic coloring. Portholes were spaced around the outside of the things, and inside the holes of the donuts were dark circular, continuous windows. Five of the objects were circling around a six, which seemed to be in mechanical trouble. Suddenly they heard a muffled explosion, and the sixth object discharged a great quantity of metallic residue, something like lava rock, which fell around them. Some of the fragments hit his boat, causing considerable damage. Trigger warning for animal death. One of them killed a dog, and another injured doll's son. The five remaining objects flew off.

SPEAKER_01 2:58

Wow. Donut-shaped objects. I don't think I've ever heard flying saucers referred to as donuts.

SPEAKER_00 3:03

Right. So according to Harold, about 20 tons of material had fallen from the flying objects, and either they fell into the boat, the bay, or the shore that they were close to. At first it seemed like newspaper material, but then he described it as being lava rock, and then again as white metal. So maybe a variety of those two. And that as it fell into the water, they were hot and produced steam. The group was so frightened they ran the boat aground and hid on land until the saucer objects had left the vicinity. Afterwards they all agreed to keep this to themselves as no one would believe such an outlandish tale. However, Harold told his story to his boss, Fred Christman. It's unclear why, but potentially because there's no other explanation for the extensive damage the boat had received. And it was his boat, remember.

SPEAKER_01 3:53

Yeah, that's valid.

SPEAKER_00 3:54

So after this, Fred Chrisman went to the site of where the accident occurred and collected slag and other materials consistent with Harold's story that appeared to have come from this saucer. While doing this, Fred Chrisman reported having his own experience where a flying disc descended from the clouds and behaved in a manner similar to the ones that Harold had reported. An agent note in the FBI file went on to state that it was incredibly unlikely that in broad daylight, near a largely populated city, would this happen on two occasions without other people mentioning it at all.

SPEAKER_01 4:27

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 4:28

Fred and Harold sent some of the fragments they had collected to Ray Palmer, who worked for a magazine publisher in Illinois, along with their story claiming the fragments enclosed were from a flying disc.

SPEAKER_01 4:39

I mean, this is.

SPEAKER_00 4:43

So three days later, on June 24th, the summer of the saucers, as the media had depped it, started with Boise, Idaho businessman and pilot Kenneth Arnold on a flight over Mount Rainier. A report released in 1949 titled Project Saucer revealed what Kenneth told investigators. He said they were approximately 20 or 25 miles away, and I couldn't see a tail on them. I watched them for about three minutes, a chain of saucer-like things at least five miles long, swerving in and out of the high mountain peaks. They were flat like a pipe pan and so shiny they reflected the sun like a mirror.

SPEAKER_01 5:16

Five miles long.

SPEAKER_00 5:17

So Kenneth's Kenneth Arnold's aerial encounter gained widespread media attention and introduced the concept of flying saucers. This is kind of like the first time. Yeah. So this is like the first in American history that this had come up.

SPEAKER_01 5:32

Good lord, bro. They had like an alien aircraft carrier.

SPEAKER_00 5:36

Yes. So after he reported this encounter and the media kind of went crazy with it, he was contacted by publisher Ray Palmer for more details about his report. In his letter, Ray Palmer told him about what happened on Maury Island, and because of his personal interests and recent experience, wanted Kenneth to look into the validity of Harold and Fred's story and write an article about it. He said, I want someone who will get the truth to find out if these boys are on the up and up. I think you can do that.

SPEAKER_01 6:04

If these boys are on the up and up.

SPEAKER_00 6:06

Yep. So Ray Palmer sent Kenneth $200 and after much public scrutiny and ridicule from coming forward with his own experience, had something to prove and accepted the offer.

SPEAKER_01 6:15

Yeah. 200 bucks by then you can buy a house.

SPEAKER_00 6:18

Right. Well in the Mari Island encounter had happened three days prior. It was not immediately reported. And when it was, Kenneth Arnold's experience had already taken the media by storm with thousands of reports of UFO sightings across the U.S. in the following weeks, specifically in the Pacific Northwest area. Kenneth flew to Tacoma to meet with the men on July 30th and found that every hotel was already booked as the city was going through a housing shortage. When he called the nicest hotel in town, he was surprised to find that a reservation had already been made under his name when no one other than his wife knew of his plans to go to Tacoma.

SPEAKER_01 6:52

Yeah, no thanks. I think I'll stay out in the street.

SPEAKER_00 6:55

Like Harold and F Harold and Fred had not known at this point that they were meeting. Because Kenneth contacted them when he had already arrived and said, Can you meet with me? I'm here. So he contacted Harold and Fred, and they met him the next day in room 502 at the Winthrop Hotel in Tacoma. Also in attendance at this meeting was United Airlines pilot Captain Emile Smith, who had reported his own um experience with the seeing flying objects, and Captain Davidson and Lieutenant Brown on the Army A2 intelligence from Hamilton Field, California.

SPEAKER_01 7:29

Whoa. So the government's already involved.

SPEAKER_00 7:33

Kind of. Not officially. He just called these guys and said, Oh. I think you should look into this.

SPEAKER_01 7:40

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 7:42

And initially during the meeting, Harold refused to talk about the incident and claimed that ever since he went public with this story, he's had a major streak of bad luck. Allegedly, the following morning after the incident, a man showed up at Harold's house in a black suit. The man then proceeded to tell the entire account in detail back to Harold and warned him to keep quiet about what happened on Maury Island, or else bad things will happen to him and his family. According to the book mentioned earlier, written by Gray Barker, the man said, What I have said is proof to you that I know a great deal more about this experience of yours than you will want to believe. What? So of course he did up telling the men in the hotel room his story, including detailed that he had taken photographs of the incident as it occurred, with the agreement that nothing will be published until two weeks after the meeting.

SPEAKER_01 8:31

So he has time to prepare.

SPEAKER_00 8:33

Yeah. So notably, while he was hesitant to share a story due to public blowback, he never said what had happened was untrue. The FBI files even report that Harold stated that his story was not false or funny, but that what he had seen and what had happened to him was so unusual and fantastic he wanted to forget about the disc fragments. The intelligence officers in attendance weren't completely sold with the tales from both Harold and Fred Chrisman, but offered that with so many reports there must be a grain of truth somewhere. Samples that were collected from Mari Island were handed over to the two men, and Captain Davidson and Lieutenant Brown returned to their B-25 bomber. Which they just like casually flew up to Tacoma. It's kind of crazy. So in the manifest were the alleged saucer samples listed as top secret cargo on the planes manifest. Yes. Which kind of interesting. So it was official in some capacity. Yeah. Yeah. In the early hours of August 1st, the following day, en route to Hamilton Field, the B-25 bomber crashed in Kelsa, Washington. And while two other occupants managed to escape, Captain Davidson, Lieutenant Brown, died in the accident.

SPEAKER_01 9:45

Oh yeah, nah.

SPEAKER_00 9:46

And this was the very first military air accident after the separation of the Air Force, which was that day, August 1st, 1947.

SPEAKER_01 9:56

Dang. So they had to take the the accident since separation from zero to one?

SPEAKER_00 10:01

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_01 10:02

Dude, that is fishy.

SPEAKER_00 10:04

So during their meeting on July 31st through October 2nd, a reporter at the Tacoma Times received five anonymous calls about the meeting taking place in the Winthrop Hotel regarding flying disc, which involved Army intelligence officers. It's unclear how they learned that information, as only the men in the room knew that, and therefore some in the group must must have been feeding the press information.

SPEAKER_01 10:26

Yeah, somebody turned into a Navy SEAL, had to write a book.

SPEAKER_00 10:29

But why? And later, both Harold and Fred denied making any of those calls.

SPEAKER_01 10:35

I mean, I would deny it too.

SPEAKER_00 10:37

Paul Lance, a writer for Tacoma Times, published the names of the two men who died in the crash before the army had officially released them. He stated his source was a mystery, was a mystery teleph telephone informant which corroborated the information about the meeting from previous phone calls they had received.

SPEAKER_01 10:53

No way. A real life Deep Throat.

SPEAKER_00 10:57

What did you just call him?

SPEAKER_01 10:59

Deep Throat.

SPEAKER_00 11:00

What's that?

SPEAKER_01 11:00

That's the the guy in the X-Files who feeds Oh. Who feeds an information?

SPEAKER_00 11:06

Yeah, I don't know. Sure. This is like the very first X-File tech media.

SPEAKER_02 11:12

Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 11:13

So according to the story published by the Tacoma Times on August 2nd, the plan was shot down by a twenty 20 millimeter cannon or sabotage because of the contents that it was transporting. What? Potentially unrelated, but two weeks after this article had come out, the guy who published the articles with the names of the two men who died before it was actually confirmed later died under mysterious circumstances.

SPEAKER_01 11:34

Dude, they'd just be killing anyone back then.

SPEAKER_00 11:37

Unrelated though.

SPEAKER_01 11:39

Dang, you sneeze at a government car, you get your house getting blown up.

SPEAKER_00 11:43

So Kenneth called Ray Palmer, the guy who had hired him to investigate this. Scrub my name from him of the conversations the men had had that night before, had the night before, and then revealed the deaths of Captain Davidson and Lieutenant Brown. He stated that he wanted nothing more to do with the disc or a potential public interest story, and he would gladly return the $200 Ray had sent him to the state.

SPEAKER_01 12:05

Yes, dude, with interest. I'll give you $400 back.

SPEAKER_00 12:10

So still wanting some answers on the morning of August 2nd, Kenneth met up with Harold and Captain Smith for breakfast before before heading towards the boat to be taken to see the spot on Maury Island. Oh nah. And before they departed, Captain Smith asked about seeing the photographs Harold had taken of the flying objects. Originally he claimed they were in his glove box, but after searching, he was unable to provide the proof that he claimed to have had. Of course. When they met up with Fred Chrisman on the boat, the men were a little bit shocked to be standing in front of a small fishing boat with minimal damage. Completely different from the patrol vessel that had suffered from dog killing level damage. They were told it happened. Additionally, the engine wouldn't turn on, and Kenneth and Captain Smith parted ways with the two other men realizing that the whole situation was becoming increasingly suspicious.

SPEAKER_01 12:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 13:01

So an FBI investigation into the B-25 bomber crash began on August 5th. And on August 7th, Harold Dahl and Fred Christmas signed a quote unquote confession. So this is what the they signed. In the early part of June 1947, we picked up some strange rock formation from a gravel pit on Maury Island, Washington. We sent a box of these fragments to Ray Palmer of Adventure Magazine at Evanston, Illinois to have it analyzed. Later, Palmer wrote and asked for additional samples, stating he had failed to have them analyzed. Around the later part of June, a few days after the first disc story started, Palmer contacted us by phone. He told us not to tell newspapers about the fragments and he would pay for an exclusive story if the fragments could be from a flying disc. One of us told him that the fragments could have been from a flying disc. After our phone conversation, Harold Dahl wrote a letter to Ray Palmer, setting out some notes regarding the fragments and indicating they could have come from the flying disc. The next thing we heard about was the first of July when we got a Transocean Press Telegram from Chicago asking about these fragments. We told them to forget the entire matter. The next we heard of these fragments was when we were called by Kenneth Arnold to meet him at the hotel on July 31st, 1947. We told them exactly how we found the frag fragments and had forwarded them to Palmer to be analyzed. The above is the entire and true story as regards our connection with the flying disc stories, etc., which originated over the ore samples we sent to be analyzed.

SPEAKER_01 14:29

Huh.

SPEAKER_00 14:32

So with a confession slash not confession signed, the FBI obviously kind of wants to wrap things up. And they concluded the crash was caused by a burned-out exhaust stack, which then set fire to the wing. It wasn't caused by it being shot down by a cannon to prevent further investigation into the samples they were transporting.

SPEAKER_01 14:53

I mean, even if it was foul play, I doubt anyone would aim a cannon at a shit at a at a plane like that. It would be way easier to just kind of sabotage it.

SPEAKER_00 15:05

Right. And one article I read even noted that no planes or like military vehicles were outfitted with that specific weaponry at that time. Anyways.

SPEAKER_01 15:16

So somebody just pulled it out of their bones.

SPEAKER_00 15:18

Mm-hmm. Yep. On August 14th, FBI Assistant Director Ladd sent a memo to J. Edgar Hoover, asserting that Dahl admitted the Maury Island story was false. When Hoover responded and said no further investigation was necessary, special agent Jack Wilcox responded directly to Hoover with Dahl did not admit his story was a hoax, but only stated if he was questioned by authorities, he was going to say it was a hoax because he did not want any further trouble over the matter. Never in the signed confession did he say the events that had occurred on Gary Island did not occur.

SPEAKER_01 15:53

Yep. Yeah, he even said that they could have been from a flying saucer.

SPEAKER_00 15:56

Right. It was just the confession that they had signed was only about the samples that they had sent.

SPEAKER_01 16:01

I guess I'm kind of confused though. Because like if he says it comes from a gravel pit, isn't that already a lie? Because it didn't happen over the ocean because the water was boiling and and then they ran aground.

SPEAKER_00 16:13

Well, it could have been the samples that Fred, his boss, had taken were from a gravel pit and not unrelated to the situation because he wasn't there.

SPEAKER_01 16:22

Yeah, it could be, yeah. So he doesn't know exactly where it happened.

SPEAKER_00 16:26

How did Kenneth Arnold get roped into this? Because remember, Ray Palmer wrote to him. Fred Chrisman suggested to Ray Palmer that Kenneth's celebrity after he came forward with his UFO story would add credit credibility to their tale and make it more valuable to sell. Fred Chrisman was no stranger to one of Ray Palmer's publications, Amazing Stories. Not even a month earlier, he had his letters recounting his own adventures of being shot down in Burma in World War II, going to battle with invisible creatures in a cave system, and other extravagant tales published. Chrisman is a very odd character. He hosted a conspiracy theory radio show out of Tacoma and had connections to the JFK assassination trial. He was even subpoenaed to New Orleans in the trial of Clay Shaw, who is charged with conspiring in the assassination. And Fred Christman is very strange. You go down an entire rabbit hole about this man. He like repeatedly comes up during conspiracy theory events.

SPEAKER_01 17:30

He's like the Alex Jones of that time period.

SPEAKER_00 17:33

Basically.

SPEAKER_01 17:33

But like not politically activated, just kinda spewing whatever.

SPEAKER_00 17:38

Yeah, I mean, just very, very weird that he always shows up. And a book Air Force officer Edward J. Ruppelt published in 1956 titled The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects. He referred to the Maury Island incident as the first, possibly the second best and the dirtiest hoax in UFO history. According to him, an intelligence officer had met with the two men when they were returning to Hamilton Field on the evening of July 31st. So like before they had taken off. They had left shortly after their arrival, and this is in quotes, because they had quickly determined the entire thing was a hoax.

SPEAKER_01 18:13

I mean, that's one insane coincidence, though.

SPEAKER_00 18:17

Yeah, so officially the Murray Island incident was determined to be a hoax, but numerous run-ins, of course, with the men in black have been reported and UFOs have been spotted since the publication of these encounters.

SPEAKER_01 18:29

Was it like insurance fraud or I mean if the boat was fine, but they said like the boat, like what happened to the dog? You can't you can't really hide that.

SPEAKER_00 18:39

So according to Harold, he had dumped the dog in the water.

SPEAKER_01 18:45

What?

SPEAKER_00 18:45

Yeah, after had been struck by a rock and died. But then other reports say that there was no family dog.

SPEAKER_01 18:54

Awesome. Okay.

SPEAKER_00 18:56

Very strange.

SPEAKER_01 18:58

Lots of lots of weird coincidences, lots of Yeah, I mean that timeline is definitely suspicious, but man, that publication, what was it? Like like people or whatever? Just some junk publication saying plane was shot down by a by a cannon.

SPEAKER_00 19:15

It was the Tacoma Times. It was like because they were the ones getting fed information from their inside source. Inside source. And so because they believed they knew that some of the information that they were getting from this person was true, like the names of the officers, what was being talked about in the hotel room, etc. So they believed everything that they were being fed as fact.

SPEAKER_01 19:40

Yeah, I mean the hotel room part is kind of suspicious. I wonder who flipped into a seal and like wrote a book wrote like a tell-all book, sold it off to some e News publication dude.

SPEAKER_00 19:52

Well yeah, and why? They weren't calling Ray Palmer back at the other publication in Chicago. They were calling local local publications. And for what purpose?

SPEAKER_01 20:04

Just to make a quick buck?

SPEAKER_00 20:06

I guess. Also, I guess Kenneth Arnold reported his account in the first place because the Cold War had just started. And so he was like, Well, if there's stuff going on in the air that people need to know about, I gotta report this.

SPEAKER_01 20:22

I mean a five-mile-long saucer.

SPEAKER_00 20:25

Keep in mind he was like in the air moving. The other things were allegedly moving. I don't know. I don't know. Five miles long would be quite large in the sky then.

SPEAKER_01 20:38

A saucer too? Like that thing would have to be thick.

SPEAKER_00 20:41

Right. Yeah, and then the guy showing up the next day. Some reports say that the man showed up and took Harold to a diner.

SPEAKER_01 20:49

Wow, okay.

SPEAKER_00 20:51

But that wasn't in the FBI report.

SPEAKER_01 20:54

There's no like FBI expense report of a diner.

SPEAKER_00 20:59

Mm-mm. Also, this entire report was like fully hidden until 2007, I believe. Right. What do they have to hide? And then it wasn't unredacted until recently. So very weird, very strange to read through. There's like drawings of what they thought these things looked like. There's diagrams, there's many other reports. J. J. Edgar Hoover was very interested in UFOs, flying discs, flying saucers.

SPEAKER_01 21:27

Interested in like redacting him?

SPEAKER_00 21:29

No, he was just wanting to keep tabs and the the reports of them.

SPEAKER_01 21:33

I mean, I would too.

SPEAKER_00 21:34

Like there's a lot of memos that go directly to him and then he responds directly to the person that sent it to him. Like he was very much Need more details. Yeah, he was very much involved in all the all the happenings.

SPEAKER_01 21:48

We should make a show about this. I mean, I guess he kind of has to be involved in that kind of stuff because that's like national security.

SPEAKER_00 21:54

And a UFO could just be well, and once and once the the plane had gone down and like people.

SPEAKER_01 22:00

were actively killed and like the FBI had to get involved and then well but a UFO to them especially during the Cold War could also just be an advanced enemy aircraft.

SPEAKER_00 22:10

Yeah. Adversaries with advanced technology. Yep, exactly.

SPEAKER_01 22:16

Maybe they reverse engineered a UFO and they have anti-gravity propulsion.

SPEAKER_00 22:21

I should have added let's get our tin hats on at the beginning of this episode.

SPEAKER_01 22:26

That would have been kind of nice.

SPEAKER_00 22:28

I mean this just is like is an unfortunate accident. Those two men, the FBI almost charged Fred and Harold with conspiracy.

SPEAKER_01 22:36

Hell nah.

SPEAKER_00 22:38

Because two men were killed. Obviously it wasn't their fault so they didn't pursue it but I was gonna say bro they're not the ones flying the plane. Imagine you come up with this huge conspiracy theory hoax like you're trying to you just want to get a quick buck essentially but then it's snowballs so yeah.

SPEAKER_01 22:56

So good.

SPEAKER_00 22:57

But again Harold Dahl never said what happened didn't happen to him. I highly doubt Fred Christman went to that same spot and also saw UFO.

SPEAKER_01 23:08

Yeah I mean real life's kind of disappointing like that sometimes like the X-Files it's always it's always a real thing man what a good show.

SPEAKER_00 23:16

I mean this is the X-Files.

SPEAKER_01 23:18

Yeah but none of the X-files he he does a good job of like keeping the the fake stuff off off the docket and then just kind of dealing with the beefy like real cases.

SPEAKER_00 23:29

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 23:30

There is some fake ones but it's not like Scooby-doo where it's just yeah just some dude who wants money all the time lake monster or something yeah and it's just like oh yeah I just want to mine like the the undersea minerals like I go at it bro.

SPEAKER_00 23:45

So yeah men in black and UFOs both originated in Washington state.

SPEAKER_01 23:50

Yeah I don't know if that's a claim to fame or well in a lot of I didn't know that did you know that no yeah learn something new every day I kind of figured if anywhere it'd be like Washington like like Watergate or something oh Washington DC yeah yeah yeah Washington State I mean there is videos of I guess you if you can call my real UFOs that like the Air Force has like tick like the the flying Tic Tac is a pretty famous one some Tic Tac shaped object object that just like flying beside a ship or flying beside a um plane and then it just takes off. Unfortunately no donut shaped ones though.

SPEAKER_00 24:28

Yeah I wonder if these reports of like flying discs flying saucers at that somehow influenced what we think of UFOs as today.

SPEAKER_01 24:36

Imagine seeing like a like the B-2 bomber for the first time.

SPEAKER_00 24:39

No I feel like that'd be flying Dorito.

SPEAKER_01 24:42

Yeah talk about black Dorito of death opposite of undercover well it's not opposite it go it goes up way too high for you to even see it but I mean that would be that would be alien like for anyone who hasn't seen it before.

SPEAKER_00 24:56

I guess that's true. Especially if the military is like keeping it secret but again like the report stated both of these incident both of these incidents happened midday it was nice out yeah it was summer they're next to Tacoma which is presumably a very large city at that time as well to have other people not report it not come forward not make a phone call not tell anybody interesting I mean that one makes more sense than the five mile long saucer because at least those were like smaller more contained well and Kenneth Arnold still I don't know if he's still alive today but he still as early as okay so this article is from 1976 he still claimed 29 years later that what he saw was legit. Like he wasn't making that up I mean he wasn't making it up and then as far as the weirdness that happened around the circumstances of him looking into the Murray Island incident he doesn't know why that happened but like still weird the hotel room thing.

SPEAKER_01 25:59

Yeah very strange I mean I wouldn't want to be seen as a public liar though if I was him like into retirement I like I wouldn't want to be seen as a liar but he's not he's not a liar not on the stand but like no but if he walked back his statement and said like yeah I never saw that then that would kind of ruin his credibility.

SPEAKER_00 26:22

Yeah I guess that's true.

SPEAKER_01 26:23

But five miles has to be like that is kind of crazy the worst eyeball measurement in history if anything.

SPEAKER_00 26:32

One Harold Harold Dahl he had said like I'm okay with being the biggest liar that ever lived I just want to get I don't I don't want to deal with this anymore. If I have to say that it's a hoax and like because I'm tired of bad things happening to me. His I guess his son ran away and like ended up in Montana and he couldn't remember why very weird very weird stuff happening around there.

SPEAKER_01 26:58

Yeah I mean that's like the best of both worlds saying that if I have to say it's a hoax to get the government off my back then I will because that's just you're kind of protecting yourself and your credibility at the same time. Pretty genius. Okay so what do you think it was do you think it was a hoax or a hoax hoax the hoax was a hoax I don't know I mean I can see the FBI going in and going through the effort of stealing the photo out of the guy's glove box.

SPEAKER_00 27:29

Really?

SPEAKER_01 27:30

That seems pretty feasible killing I mean that's way way more feasible than killing two people two like military service members too yeah I mean that would be the lowest budget lowest effort job ever like they walk to the boat you just get in get out or his car is always on the street like dude I'm sure it's like it's like taking candy from a baby picking a lock back then. Picking a car lock okay so but that's all just the photos dude like a hairpin well that's that's like the evidence the boat is weird too just pristine condition and again it was a small fishing boat.

SPEAKER_00 28:14

It wasn't like a larger boat that you would assume they're forging for logs like obviously you gotta Yeah that part was crazy. You know so like that is also a little strange.

SPEAKER_01 28:26

I mean again that would be a pretty low budget thing for the government to go buy a new boat though.

SPEAKER_00 28:31

But also it was a month later the incident happened on July 21st. Okay. Yeah they couldn't and then they they weren't in Tacoma having this meeting until July 30th so it's also understandable that they would fix up the boat.

SPEAKER_01 28:46

Yeah if that's what they're doing to make a living or just get a new one or government just gives you a new one the next day I mean the motor not working even though the ship looked in like pristine condition is suspicious. Like why go through all the effort to tell people like yeah come out like I'll take you out and then right at that point just make up make up an excuse why you can't go there.

SPEAKER_00 29:12

Oh my car broke down like why would you make get it all the way there?

SPEAKER_01 29:15

Yeah you get all the way to your boat and then all of a sudden it's oh yeah my Ferrari's in the shop like I actually can't take you there. I mean it is kind of hard to go against a confession regardless of how like coerced it could have been yep and I also understand the the witnesses wanting to like be out of it so they would kind of say whatever to throw people off but I don't know if it was an actual UFO I mean they might have seen like some some test flight some air show some something yeah I mean donut shape thing is definitely nothing that the US Air Force flies I don't think maybe they just saw things that I don't know.

SPEAKER_00 30:01

Yeah I don't either okay but creepy level one to ten.

SPEAKER_01 30:06

I mean I'd be pretty creeped out if I was on a boat and all of a sudden it started raining metal I would also be pretty creeped out if the meeting I had with some people that no one should have known about got leaked out to the press and then knowing that I had some affiliation with two people that died like a couple days later. Mm-hmm yeah I mean if I was one of them I'd be pretty creeped out. If it was 1947 and I'm on the other side of the country hearing about this I but a scale of one to ten what's your number I'll give it like a four.

SPEAKER_00 30:44

Okay. And then believability in the Maury Island incident itself.

SPEAKER_01 30:56

That's really tough.

SPEAKER_00 30:57

Obviously we know the investigation from the FBI it did happen. I mean we're basically just going off what three people said two people I guess if you I know I try the first instance I'd love to hear from the crewman or the son like why did they never they never hear from the dog bro rip rip the dog if it existed. If it yeah if it existed that's weird if it didn't just a weird weird detail to add if it didn't exist.

SPEAKER_01 31:25

But yeah belie believability score what do you I almost want to say it's like insurance fraud or some kind it's like pretty elaborate though.

SPEAKER_00 31:33

Also like those things hadn't existed then it's not like people were making those up all the time yeah aliens or UFOs hadn't existed to this point? Not really.

SPEAKER_01 31:45

Like flying saucers?

SPEAKER_00 31:47

Huh yeah okay that makes it a little more believable now like didn't exist to the point where they didn't even have the term UFO yet yeah so yeah I mean I feel like UFOs are almost like a folktale for advanced enemy aircraft surge advanced aircraft in general yeah unknown not necessarily alien but I feel like it's pretty believable. The po the the fact that they tried to sell the story makes it a little less believable for me but I mean the witnesses weren't the ones trying to sell it though.

SPEAKER_01 32:20

Right the guy's boss was yeah and they only told their boss because obviously if their boat hey dude your boat blew up like you gotta tell him something aliens cause the black yeah you have to tell him something so I mean that part makes sense like the first two witnesses I feel like they saw something and something happened.

SPEAKER_00 32:39

Okay so your believability score uh that the first two dudes saw something I'll give it like an eight okay that's pretty high pretty high that the second dude saw something the boss um I'll give that like a two yeah I'd also give that I'll give it a one and I feel like that's generous like what are the odds the same spot bro was looking for a payout I guess same spot like a what a week later no the next day same spot the next day where a crash happened there was they were like up doing their things again up doing a little dance in the sky flashing lights yeah I don't believe that I guess what do you think of the first Ben and Block story?

SPEAKER_01 33:20

It's probably the best episode yet really better than the mouth's hole way better than the squatch people or whatever we're gonna talk about Sasquatch Silent Forest we're gonna talk about Sasquatch species but we'll get there at one point.

SPEAKER_00 33:37

Yeah I thought that was good yep this isn't the only obviously more aliens to come but this incident just kind of sparked it all kicked it I saw someone on Reddit talking about it and I was like what is this? I'd never heard of it boom oh this wasn't like a recommendation yeah boom rabbit hole boom I'm 27 27 pages deep in the FBI file. Yeah all right well if you like this episode please rate and review it I would really appreciate it and be sure to follow us on everything Early Beloved Podcasts YouTube Instagram TikTok threads all the places and if you have a story or a case any weird thing like this send me an email tweet me thread me um whatever they're called early belovedpodcasts at gmail dot com I love looking into new things learn something new every day every Thursday this is a learning podcast thanks for listening bye bye