Oregon UFO Festival reaches 10-Year Mark

**Below is one of my first forays into freelance writing.

In July of 2009 I persuaded my best pal, Dennie Chong, to take a road-trip with me to McMinnville, OR to cover the 10nth annual UFO Festival sponsored by McMenamins brew pubs. It was a blast. Dennie took some awesome pictures. I talked with some amazing people. But when it came to finding a home for this piece, takers were non-existent. After nearly six months of pitching, I grew despondent. Early on, my dream was for this article to find a home with THE FORTEAN TIMES or, perhaps, FATE MAGAZINE.

This hope never materialized.

As a last ditch, I submitted the piece to TAPS PARAMAGZINE (a publication loosely affiliated with SYFY CHANNELS's GHOST HUNTERS reality-TV program). I sent an email with my article text, a sampling of Dennie's pictures, and a request for the publication's submission guidelines.

This publication, not unlike all the others, did not respond to my inquiries.

In October of 2009 I went to the coffee shop located above the University Village Barnes and Noble here in Seattle to meet someone.

It was a first date.

Arriving early, I decided to browse the magazine racks and spied the latest edition of TAPS PARAMAGAZINE. Upon taking the copy from the rack, I spied a cover article blurb noting the OREGON UFO FESTIVAL. I thought, "Shit, no wonder publishers have been so reticent, someone else beat me to it..."

Imagine my shock and dismay when I peeled back the cover and discovered it was my own article with my own byline. Dennie's pictures were not present, just some lousy stock photo images.

That day I called the offices of the publication. Upon reaching a live person, I advised them they had no right to publish my article without notifying me. The woman I spoke to said that because mine was an unsolicited article, TAPS PARAGAMAGZINE was in no way responsible for compensating me--not even with a complimentary copy of the magazine.

I checked with the by- laws of the Freelancer's Writer's Union and found that, yes, they were obliged to pay me because, technically, my work IS copyright under my name once I put word to paper. I sent a threatening letter, certified, to TAPS PARAMAGAZINE advising them of this and quoted to them, line and verse, the union by-laws but it to no avail.

I never heard back.

My heart broke a little.

...I had the best time with Dennie on this road trip. I spoke with some amazing people. Dennie took some equally amazing pictures--but, then, he does that quite often.

I mourn that we didn't make any money off from our efforts.

...bastards.

Boycott SyFy's GHOST HUNTERS. Read my article.

And a VERY special thanks to Richard Schulte and Julie Hoverson for their invaluable help as proof readers and editors.

Oregon UFO Festival reaches 10-Year Mark

UFOs: Still a resilient cultural phenomena once you can get past the doggy costumes and deely boppers.

McMinnville, Oregon, nestled in the heart of Oregon Wine Country, home of the UFO Festival (May 15^th and 16), is a tiny town of roughly 30,000 souls. Having been raised in this region, it shocks me the provincial rural Willamette Valley culture would tolerate an event like this, let alone sustain it for ten years.

Upon our arrival my photographer Dennie Chong and I gravitate to the nexus of UFO Festivities, the McMenamins Hotel Oregon pub. Our waitress greets us sporting springy antenna capped with little gray alien heads. “Nice deely boppers,” I say. She looks at me askance, she’s never heard the term, and she thinks I’m flirting. “Are you here for the UFO Festival?” the plucky young thing asks. We nod. “Oh, good—you guys are my favorite!”

A couple enters and slides into a booth ahead of us. Tall and lean, they are dressed identically, sharing an affect for spade shaped bangs teased over exceptionally high foreheads. They move in sympathy, almost rehearsed. I wonder, are they genuine “visitors”, or simply devoted to the belief they are.

For the first day, festivities are light and décor is sparse; a few colored Mylar balloons shaped like gray aliens drift about and one spies the occasional spacecraft painted across shop-front windows, but little more. We’re feeling a little let down.

I ask our antennaed waitress about the lack of decoration, this is a festival, after all. She assures me things become more colorful come tomorrow with the parade, costume ball, and the alien pet costume contest wherein participants tempt fate by dressing their animal companions as otherworldly creatures.

Tim Hills is staff historian for McMenamins Hotels, Pubs and Breweries. He conceived of the festival 10 years ago while pursuing a promotional angle for the opening of the newly renovated McMenamins Hotel Oregon. Deep in the stacks of the Yamhill County Historical Society, Hills came across a story from 1950 about Paul and Evelyn Trent’s UFO encounter and its series of famous photographs, images still considered to be some of the most significant evidence of flying saucers.

Kicking things off in 1999, Hills invited noted ufologist, and authority on the Trent photos, Bruce Maccabee as guest speaker. “We had no expectations, as it was supposed to be a one-off thing to mark the 50^th anniversary of the Trent sighting.” Hills did not anticipate Maccabee’s draw within the UFO community, and McMenamins was overwhelmed by the turnout. “We held it in what’s now our dining overflow room … and people just packed out into the lobby and into the restaurant.”

So a one-off event became an annual one, with a parade following two years later. “We realized very early on that we had to maintain the integrity of the serious speaking part of the festival or else the whole thing would just fall apart into something really silly and that’s not what we wanted to do,” says Hills. “We’ve been very fortunate that some of the bigger name speakers [have drawn] people to the serious side of the festival.” Since its modest inception, the festival has grown exponentially, drawing such notable names as Budd Hopkins, Richard Dolan, Dr. David Jacobs and Jesse Marcel Jr.

This year the UFO Festival welcomed Kathleen Marden, niece of Betty and Barney Hill, and former MUFON director of field investigator training, speaking with physicist and researcher, Stanton Friedman. The two brought to light heretofore-unknown facets of the Hill abduction case found in their new book, Captured! The Betty and Barney Hill UFO Experience.

Also present were UFO witnesses Kris and Marc Bales sharing their 2000 encounter in the wilds of Northern Idaho. Peter Davenport of the National UFO Reporting Center in Seattle discussed a roundup of 2008 UFO cases.

But it was keynote speaker Linda Moulton Howe’s presentation of one family's 1974 eyewitness encounter between military and UFO in Albuquerque, New Mexico that brought in an unprecedented number of listeners, filling each and every one of the McMinnville Community Center stadium seats and spilling the audience onto the center floor.

Come Saturday afternoon and the quiet streets of McMinnville are alive. It seems the town’s entire town population, and large percentage of those neighboring, crowd the sidewalks. I lose my photographer in a squad of clone troopers and klingons. The parade rolls by in fits and starts; cub-scouts dressed in surgeons garb fling candy plucked from the body cavity of a prone eight-foot alien made of green cellophane and aluminum wrap, a performer in a grotesque paper mache head, barefoot and clad in coveralls, runs in terror from silver suited aliens, and zombies wielding light sabers tumble and pirouette to Michael Jackson’s Thriller.

The day becomes more dynamic, with live musicians, crafts people, and a brilliant live recreation of Orson Welles 1938 broadcast of War of the Worlds performed by the Willamette Radio Workshop. The Alien Pet costume contest features a box tortoise with a felt flying saucer strapped to its back. Looking about, one wonders what UFO contactees and hardcore researchers of old must think. Is this festival the future of ufology? Has it been reduced to parades and Pug puppies in silver lame? Is ufology dying a slow death?

“Some of us are getting old, there’s no denying that,” says veteran researcher, Stanton Friedman, “I cannot say that I’m getting any younger. I wish I could, I wouldn’t be talking about flying saucers if I could say that.” Friedman says UFOlogy is far from tumbling into a death throe and the proof is in the numbers. “I think [critics] are short-sighed…I’ve been out there. I’ve given over 700 lectures in all 50 states, nine provinces and 16 other countries. I do loads of radio and television programs. I come to a place like this and everybody is swarming all over me because they’ve seen me in all of these television shows and they’re exited.”

Freidman looks past the Mylar balloons and cardboard saucers to the core benefit of an event like UFO Fest – it inspires the need to wonder and the need to question. “I’ve been here before and was very impressed with the attitude of the sponsors and the people who came to the event.” One must concur. The enthusiasm at UFO Fest is buoyant, and in Friedman’s eyes, this breeds a degree of hope for the future of ufology and its potential for growth and expansion, “I talk to lots of people and I find that I provide inspiration for other people to spend perspiration.”