Mutual UFO Network holds meeting Friday in Walla Walla

Published 2:00 pm Thursday, August 18, 2022

WALLA WALLA — What exactly is in a UFO field investigator’s “go bag”? Walla Wallan Dan Nims is glad you asked.

He unzips the black duffel bag with MUFON printed in white on the side, for Mutual UFO Network, and pulls out the first few things on top: mask, disposable gloves and a Tyvek body suit.

Next he draws forth a large tape measure, the type you imagine archaeologists use to pace out a square for digging.

He has marking tape for flagging foreign objects, evidence markers, sanitary evidence containers, brown bags for non-liquid evidence, a small camera for photographing what he finds.

More exotic tools come next: a GMC-300E Geiger counter (to check for radiation) and a 3-in-1 electromagnetic reader, the EMF-390.

“There are two rules for field investigation,” Nims says. “Don’t contaminate the evidence, and don’t let the evidence contaminate you.”

The retired Air Force lieutenant colonel test pilot, who moved to Walla Walla 25 years ago, has no doubt that UFOs are real.

“They exist,” he says. “In my mind, that there are UFOs in the sky is not in question.”

We just don’t know what they are, the La Grande, Oregon, native says. The government knows about them and has for a long time — they admitted this last year when they released their report on UAPs, or unidentified aerial phenomena, Nims says.

This week, residents in the Walla Walla Valley will have a chance to learn more about UFO sightings.

Washington MUFON will have a meeting at the Walla Walla Senior Center, 720 Sprague St., from 6:30-8:30 p.m. Friday, Aug. 19.

Maurene Morgan, the state director of Washington MUFON, will join Nims to speak about the network, which was established in 1969 for the “scientific study of UFOs for the benefit of humanity,” according to the organization’s website.

The gathering is free, and light refreshments will be served. The senior center parking lot is under construction, so plan to park along the street or in open parking areas nearby, Nims says.

People will be able to hear about MUFON, find out more about joining and about becoming investigators. Attendees can also share their own experiences at Friday’s gathering.

“People can be reticent to talk about their UFO experiences, as you can understand,” Nims says. “But often they just want to talk to someone about what happened to them.”

The former pilot himself has had two sightings of unexplained aerial phenomena. The first was many years ago when he was flying out of the Florida panhandle as a weapons test pilot.

“I was taking off after sunset, so it was dusk on the ground, but the sun was still lighting up things at altitude, and as I was climbing out, I could see up above me,” he recalls.

“I was at about 25,000 feet, and the object would have been higher than that, probably more like 50,000 to 75,000 feet. It was a bright object in the sky, and I asked radar, ‘Is there a plane or weather balloon or something like that up there?’ And they said, ‘We’re not showing anything.’”

Nims had a jet full of fuel that was burning and needed to get on with his job, so he didn’t fly up and investigate the object. It could have been a variety of things, but he suspects it wasn’t anything easily explained away.

“What was it? I don’t know. An unidentified flying object.”

His second sighting, one he categorizes as “credible,” was more recent.

Nims has been a field investigator with MUFON for about five years, and in that time he’s only ever taken second-hand reports — noting what people tell him they have seen (no, he hasn’t had to use that “go bag” yet).

But he’s very interested in first-hand sightings, or trying to find UFOs himself.

“So I spend a lot of time on my back patio staring up at the sky,” he says. “I have a pair of night-vision goggles I use, telephoto night-vision goggles, 5-power, and I was watching one night, and something was coming overhead.

“I saw it flash, and I got it in my night-vision goggles and started recording. I recorded it for about, oh I don’t know, 45 seconds or so, moving through the sky, flashing brightly.”

Could it have been a “flashing” or “tumbling” satellite, where the sun glints on the metallic surface of the object? Maybe, but it didn’t behave like one because it was going in one direction, and then it turned 90 degrees and moved out of his vision in a perpendicular line — something a satellite won’t do, he says.

Sightings like his are not as rare as people think, and that’s how he deals with UFO skeptics, Nims says. He hits them with statistics.

“If you were to go out on the street and ask a stranger walking by, ‘How many UFO sightings are there in the United States in a year?’ they’d probably give you a number somewhere between a dozen and 100,” he says.

“But when you explain to them that there are actually 10,000 to 12,000 of them reported, and probably … several times that that are unreported, then they start to realize how impactful this is.”

In fact, just this year analysts at journoresearch.org concluded that Washington state ranks the highest in the United States for UFO sightings, based on data collected by NUFORC, the National UFO Reporting Center started by Peter Davenport in 1974 and headquartered near Spokane, according to a MUFON news release.

Washington has more than 88 sightings per 100,000 residents, according to this data.

“Washington is home to what is often regarded as the first UFO sighting of the modern age, which marked its 75th anniversary this year. On June 24, 1947, pilot Kenneth Arnold claimed to have seen a string of nine shiny objects pass Mount Rainier at impossibly high speeds during his flight from Chehalis to Yakima,” journoresearch.org stated in its release.

To find out more about MUFON or report a sighting, visit mufon.com, call 360-670-4213, or email mufon.investigates@gmail.com.

People can also submit a sighting to the National UFO Reporting Center at nuforc.com, call 206-722-3000 (for a recent sighting) or email director@ufocenter.com.