The original story is posted with an update following (5/4/95)

By Rick Swart
and Barbara Kriley
of the Wallowa County Chieftain

Imnaha residents this week witnessed what they believe may have been an alien space craft hovering above their home near the confluence of Horse Creek and the Imnaha River.

Diane Baquet, 50, and her son, Bryan, 23, say that on Monday night they observed an incredible light show for about an hour.

The Baquets were reluctant to talk about the experience and did so only at the prompting of Mrs. Baquet's husband, Russ, and employer, Imnaha area rancher Don Hubbard, after Hubbard overheard the family's account of the event Monday morning.

"Bryan told me not to tell anybody because nobody would believe us," Mrs. Baquet explained after we caught up with her along the road to Dug Bar. "But I'm getting old, and I don't care if anybody believes me. I know what I saw."

At first what they saw looked like a meteor. Only the streaking light stopped over the middle of the river above their place, where it hovered for nearly an hour.

Mrs. Baquet described the image as a round circle of white light with a column of light rising straight up from the center and two other columns of light extending out of the bottom in a triangular pattern. In addition, she said, the white ball was emitting bars of white toward the ground and around the walls of the canyon and red, blue, and white light from what appeared to be some sort of beacon.

Bryan Baquet said that from a distance the image looked like a saucer but through binoculars it looked "more round above the lights." His mother described the magnified appearance of the image "like a brain ... with veins running over the top of it."

"With the reflection from the lights we couldn't see the bottom but could see a round dome, just like an outline, above the lights," Bryan Baquet said. Both Baquets said the image moved from point to point at lightning speed, including at right angles. They also said there was no motor noise associated with the lights.

"It would come forward, then back off real fast," she described. According to separate accounts from both witnesses, the image darted over a knob on the west side of the Imnaha River referred to locally as "Crazyman's Point," where it seemed to hover for another five minutes or so before all signs of light disappeared.

At 11 p.m., the image was gone and Bryan decided to leave for his house, located about three miles down river at the Corral Creek Ranch. Mrs. Baquet said she worried that what they had just witnessed may have been an alien spacecraft and that it might follow Bryan's headlights.

Bryan reported that as he was leaving his mother said, "If they come back and chase you, shut off your lights and crawl under the pickup."

"It's an eerie feeling," she later described the incident, "'cause it's like something you have no control over ... you know what you see but your mind doesn't want to accept it."

At one point, Mrs. Baquet said, she considered going back into the house and turning off the kerosene lamps but decided that if the object was an alien craft its occupants were already aware of her family's presence.

She estimated the object was about the size of a helicopter, and in fact a helicopter crew under contract with the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife has been working in the area this week, conducting surveys of salmon spawning areas, or redds, in the Imnaha River.

Vic Coggins, ODFW area biologist, said his crew had gone out in the chopper on Monday morning but had not flown after dark on Monday.

If the object witnessed by the Baquets was indeed some type of air- craft it is unlikely it would have been detected by any of the radar systems which cover the region, according to Andy Plamondon, an air traffic controler at Felts Field in Spokane, Wash.

He said that most control towers have a radar umbrella of less than 40 miles, so the only place where such an event might show up is on the radar screens of aircraft who were flying in the area at that time.

The Imnaha area, like much of the Pacific Northwest, has had its share of alleged encounters with unidentified flying objects (UFOs) over the years and is not all that unusual, according to various sources interviewed.

"It's a common experience at lookouts, and I would not be surprised that a couple living out in the sticks would have that experience," said Tom Bates, a reporter for The Oregonian who has written about UFOs. "It doesn't surprise me ... it doesn't surprise me a bit." Bates once worked for the Forest Service at one of its lookout towers and logged his own eyewitness account of a UFO sighting on his official logbook.

Bates as a reporter for The Oregonian, subsequently attended a convention of former lookout station guards and was amazed by the "number of people who testified that they had seen a number of spectacular obser- vations around the Northwest." It was striking, he said, to hear these stories in great detail years after the fact, in some cases, from more than one source.

UPDATE 5/4/95

Portland T.V. station coming to Imnaha to do Town Hall program on UFO sightings

A Portland television station will be at Imnaha next week to talk to people who have eyewitness accounts of what they believe are alien spacecraft or unidentified flying objects (UFOs).

KATU, the ABC affiliate in Portland, will conduct the interviews at the Imnaha Store and Tavern beginning at 8 p.m. Tuesday May 9, 1995. Local residents will be linked up with a studio audience in Portland. The interviews will be conducted via satellite by Jeff Gianola, moderator for KATU's "Town Hall" program.

The program was prompted by an alleged UFO sighting reported on March 3 by the Wallowa County Chieftain. The newspaper quoted Imnaha residents Diane Baquet and her son, Bryan, as saying they had watched what they believe may have been a UFO hovering over the lower Imnaha River near their home for nearly an hour on March 26.

The station plans to interview not only the Baquets but several other Wallowa County residents who have come forward with UFO stories since the Chieftain report was published.

KATU producer Liza McQuade said the public is welcome to watch the taping, although there is room for only about 50 people in the tavern. McQuade asks that persons with personal accounts of UFO sightings who are willing to tell their story on T.V. please contact Rick Swart at the Wallowa County Chieftain.

The program will be broadcast at 6 p.m. Sunday, May 14. However, KATU is unavailable in Wallowa County. Sally Tanzey, proprietor of the store and tavern, said she plans to get a copy of the tape and play it for area residents at a later date.

"Maybe we'll have a UFO night," she said.

Wallowa County Chieftain BBS 503-285-8016 Portland, Ore. or 503-569-2326 Lostine, Ore.

Rick Swart, editor Wallowa County Chieftain (voice) 503-426-4567