Mysterious Debris at Maury Island
Some sources suggest that ABC-television’s The Invaders (1967–68)—the ongoing agonies of a saucer witness who can’t convince authorities that fiendish extraterrestrials are here—was based on the experiences of Harold Dahl, a local searching for salvage logs near Maury Island in Puget Sound, Washington, on June 21, 1947, three days before the nearby saucer incident that made businessman Kenneth Arnold famous. Dahl, his teenage son, their dog, and a pair of crewmen observed a silent, saucer-shaped craft—perhaps momentarily gripped by a mechanical malfunction—dip low and then spray the shoreline with a mysterious substance that suggested chips of metal. Hot debris injured the arm of the Dahl boy and killed the dog. Another five saucers hovered at a higher altitude. The craft departed, and Dahl immediately related his experience to the local harbormaster, Fred Lee Crisman.
A day later, Harold Dahl received a visit from a somber man dressed in black, driving a black ’47 Buick, who instructed Dahl to keep quiet about what he had seen. (Some sources date the mysterious man’s visit with Dahl as June 24, three days after Dahl’s sighting.) Dahl later recalled that the man in black actually said very little. He answered none of Dahl’s questions, and seemed oddly impassive.
But he did tell Dahl this: “I know a great deal more about this experience of yours than you will want to believe.” After that, the man made an implied threat that was barely implied at all.
Meanwhile, Fred Crisman contacted Amazing Stories editor Ray Palmer. The Chicago-based magazine wanted the Maury Island story, and commissioned Kenneth Arnold to investigate and prepare a piece. Arnold flew into Seattle and located Dahl, who described the spray as irregularly shaped pieces of metal, thin enough to flutter to the ground. Arnold took a sample and sent it to Palmer.
Analysis done at the time (and again, years later) suggested nothing particularly novel about the material’s composition, though the stuff didn’t exactly seem indigenous, either. (Samples examined during latter-day tests had been stored in Crisman’s garage.) Although Dahl assured Arnold he had snapped images of the UFOs, Dahl never produced a photograph. Further, when Arnold pressed to see the precise spot Dahl had been on June 21, Dahl gave him the runaround. Arnold never saw the site.
Arnold was puzzled later, when Dahl insisted that Crisman had been spirited away on a military plane. Unable to verify that, Arnold nevertheless set up another meeting with Dahl. The meet was to be at Dahl’s home, but when Arnold arrived there, he found the house deserted.
