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A few years ago, over the 4th of July weekend, I went backpacking with some friends outside of Mountain Home.

The area we went to is a developed campground, but the gate is closed until mid-July. We parked at the gate, loaded up our packs, and rode bikes down the dirt roads into the campground. We pretty much had the area to ourselves all weekend.

On the first day, we saw a mama moose and her calf in the lake. Later that day, there was a family – a dad and two young girls – camping somewhere else that came by the lake to fish for a few hours. On our second day, a Fish and Game Ranger drove up to the lake and stopped to chat with us and check our fishing licenses. He stayed for about 20 minutes, then was on his way. Other than that, it was just us, our dogs, and wide open Idaho mountains.

On the evening of our second day, we cleaned up after dinner and sat talking around the fire. One of my friends told a story about his first time seeing Starlink while camping, and how freaked out he was not knowing what it was.

It was time for bed. My husband and I got into our tent. It was a hot July weekend, so we didn’t have the rain fly on. Our other friends got into their tent next to us with the dogs. Everyone else was in hammocks strung amongst the trees surrounding the tents. I mention this because it just so happened that we were all looking up at the sky.

It couldn’t have been more than 10 minutes after getting into bed when everything started to get bright. It was like someone had a spotlight shining directly into our camp. My immediate thought was that the ranger was back and the lights were his headlights. Maybe he was warning us of something. But it kept getting brighter and brighter until it was so bright that it couldn’t have been headlights, or anything earthly.

“What is that?!” someone yelled. I sat up and grabbed onto my husband’s arm, looking every which way trying to make sense of what was happening. It was almost too bright to see anything, then we saw it. A massive fireball sailed across the sky above us. A ball of blue with hot white flames trailing it soared directly over the lake and behind the mountain.

About 20 seconds later, we heard the sound. Whom whom whom whom. Like a massive vibration, straight out of the heavens.

Then everything went silent.

No one made a sound. We sat listening, expecting to hear evidence of an explosion or impact. But it was just silent.

It wasn’t a UFO (that I know of), but it was a crazy, otherworldly experience. Most times while backpacking or camping, we talk about UFOs, aliens, and what else might be out there. And, Idaho is really the perfect place to see such a thing. After all, Idaho has over 21 million acres of forest land, covering nearly 40% of the state. It’s not too hard to get away from civilization and light pollution, and get an unbelievable view of the night sky above. We have the Central Idaho Dark Sky Reserve, Craters of the Moon National Monument & Preserve (an International Dark Sky Park), City of Rocks (an International Dark Sky Park), plus numerous other places that have little to no light pollution.

Perhaps this access to unobstructed night skies is why Idaho consistently ranks in the top ten for UFO sightings, which have been reported since the 1900s.

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1947 UFO sightings

Perhaps the most famous UFO sighting story in Idaho is the story of Kenneth Arnold.

On June 24, 1947, Kenneth Arnold was flying his private plane back to Boise from a business trip in Washington when he saw a string of nine flying objects near Mt Rainier. He claimed that the objects were moving at extremely high speeds and moving erratically, sometimes moving sideways so that the object seemed to disappear. He reported the sighting immediately when he landed in Yakima and it quickly became the most famous UFO sighting at the time.

More reports of UFO sightings followed in the weeks after. On July 1, 1947, forest ranger Hunter Nelson and Walter Nicholson, of Twin Falls, were out marking timber on South Cherry Creek about three miles south of Galena Summit. Nelson told The Times-News that “he heard a buzz, then looked directly overhead and noticed flying discs” flying above. The men reported that about 8-10 shining, disc-shaped objects made no noise and flew in a V-formation. They said the objects were flying very high and fast, and flew directly over the summit.

“It wasn’t anything like an airplane,” Nicholson told the paper. “At first I thought the reports of the discs were nothing but jet-propelled planes, but it is nothing like that.”

The very next day, July 2, 1947, a flying disc was seen over Malta, Idaho. Mrs. J. F. Meuser, of Twin Falls, reported seeing a solo disc while returning from a trip with her husband. They had not been aware of any other reports. Mrs. Meuser told The Times-News, “they noticed a big ball of fire in the sky. She described the flying saucer as about the size of the moon only it was much brighter and shone brightly.” Mrs. Meuser said the object was traveling fast and seemed to be flying quite high.

A third reported sighting came in on July 3, 1947. The Times-News reported that the sighting happened in early June, when a crew of seven railroad workers claimed to have seen nine silver colored objects flying silently in a V-formation. The paper also reported that the Air Force was investigating such sightings and

On Tuesday, July 8, 1947, The Times-News ran a front page story reporting 16 additional sightings in the Magic Valley, coming from residents in Twin Falls and Jerome. Some of the sightings matched other descriptions, while others were thought to be bats mistaken for UFOs. In the same paper, a story reports an aerial search for the “flying discs.” The story reports that the Idaho National Guard conducted a concentrated aerial search over Idaho, Oregon and Washington and failed to pickup any trace of the flying discs.

That same day, news broke of a flying saucer that crashed on a ranch in Roswell, New Mexico. The Roswell Army Air Field issues a press release stating the military has recovered remains of a flying disc. The next day, it was said that the debris was from a weather balloon.

Still, Arnold’s initial sighting paired with the Roswell crash sent the nation into a UFO-craze that is still going today.

1965 UFO sighting

This one comes from Barbara, a From Boise reader.

Barbara's UFO encounter happened in Halfway, Oregon, about 12 miles from the Idaho border. It was 1965 and Barbara was 14 years old.

It was a warm summer evening, the sun low on the horizon. Barbara and a friend went for a bicycle ride up to the elementary school, just up the road from her house. They pulled up to the school, dropped their bikes and ran to the back of the school where the playground was. Her friend went to the swing set and Barbara headed for the slide.

The slide was a huge thing, all metal. Barbara climbed up the ladder and stood on the platform at the top, looking around the valley. It was a beautiful evening and she was just enjoying the view when she heard screaming. Filled with fear, she initially thought her friend had climbed the ladder behind her and fallen off. It took her a second to get the nerve to turn around and look, thinking she was going to find her friend with broken bones. When she finally turned and looked down the ladder, her friend was halfway up, hanging onto the ladder and screaming her head off. Barbara was puzzled, so she followed her line of sight.

There were the UFOs.

A cluster of UFOs hovered about 30-40 yards away, maybe 150 feet off the ground. There were Ponderosa Pine trees close by and the objects floated about twice the height of the trees. The UFOs floated in formation – four on the bottom and three on the top – and staggered. They were oval in shape and looked like they were made out of polished chrome. The craft were also pretty big – about 60-70 feet across and 40 feet high. There was no noise coming from them at all. It was completely silent except for the screaming that was coming from the friend, who promptly fled the playground in terror.

Barbara was frozen. She stayed still and kept staring at the UFOs even though she was scared to death. She remembers that it felt like she looked at them for an hour, but she doubts it was for more than a minute or so. At the time, Barbara was not aware that there was such a thing as being abducted, so that thought didn't cross her mind. However, she does remember feeling that there was someone in the craft.

Then the UFOs started to move very slowly away from her, going back and up. They rose to probably 1000 feet and then started going across the valley. Then it was like a scene out of Star Trek – they warped into light speed and disappeared in front of her eyes.

Barbara said this experience changed her life forever. She didn't speak of the encounter for many years until she started hearing other stories from other people from her hometown who had also seen UFOs. Now she collects UFO encounter stories, and has dozens of stories from different people that have had a UFO encounter in Eastern Oregon and the mountains surrounding Boise.

Thanks for sharing this crazy story, Barbara!

Recent sightings

In 2020, Idaho was ranked #1 for UFO sightings per capita by SatelliteInternet.com, with 164 sightings in 2020. The reports ranged from Tic-Tac-shaped objects, glowing triangles and swirling balls of light. Much of these sightings ended up being Starlink satellites, which are a string of white lights moving in a perfect line across the sky. The uptick in reported sightings could very well be because more people were camping or outside than normal. But, who knows?

In 2022, a study released by MyVision.org found that Idaho had 420 reported UFO sightings per capita in the last five years – the highest of any other state.

That same year, 2022, a police officer from Oldtown, Idaho (a small town in Northern Idaho) reported a glowing, cigar-shaped object to MUFON (Mutual UFO Network). The following report was published in NewsBreak by Roger Marsh:

The officer was standing near his police vehicle on the side of the roadway. It was dark at that hour and 28 degrees with lots of snow on the ground and very cloudy. There were three street lights on to the officer’s north, but none to the south. No vehicles were in the area.

“As I grabbed something from inside my vehicle, everything went dead silent and I observed a bright orange, glowing, cigar-shaped object flying north towards me, and horizontally,” the reporting witness stated. “The object was below the clouds and approximately one-half mile south of my location.”

The witness said that the object emitted orange light across the entire front of it and had a very intense light in the center. As the object continued towards the location, the officer took a photograph with flash and the object suddenly stopped, made a 90-degree left turn, and flew west.

“Speeds were much greater than a plane or helicopter. I turned the flash off on the camera and captured one picture as the object flew out of sight. I only made out the shape of the object as cigar or rectangle when it changed direction.”

Unfortunately, the police vehicle was facing the wrong direction to capture the object on HD dash cam.

“This object was not a drone, plane, or helicopter, which I am all familiar with. It flew like nothing I have ever seen and was dead silent.”

The witness said the attached photos are from an older digital camera and a few copies were lightened. The witness included four images in the report, but they are all the same photo. The report was filed on December 10, 2022.

Do you believe?

It's only natural to wonder what else is out there. The universe is unimaginably large, and there's plenty of evidence and theories out there to suggest we are not alone in the universe.

If you ever see something strange in the sky, you can report it to MUFON and they will investigate it. Want to learn more about MUFON? Listen to City Cast Boise's episode with the MUFON Idaho Chapter Director, Jim Millard.

Perhaps us Idahoans have a greater chance of seeing a UFO or some sort of extraterrestrial evidence in our lifetime. But if you really can't wait to see a UFO, maybe you can get your fix by visiting this UFO-shaped chicken coop that a Boise couple built a few years back.

Have you ever had a UFO sighting? Reply to this email & let me know. I'm genuinely curious!

Thanks for reading!

With love from Boise (& beyond),

Marissa

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