June 21, 1947, began as a particularly warm summer day on Maury Island, Washington. It ended with Harold Dahl encountering six unidentified flying objects in the sky. That’s according to Steve Edmiston, a business and entertainment lawyer and micro historian. Almost 77 years later — on a cold, cloudy afternoon in Lynnwood — the Sno-King School Retirees organization heard Edmiston explain why he believes the sighting was anything but a hoax.

The Humanities Washington Speakers Bureau partnered with the retirees’ organization to bring Edmiston from Iowa to the Pacific Northwest. During his presentation, he recounted what is now called “The Maury Island Incident,” drawing from declassified FBI documents and highlighting the individuals who made retelling Dahl’s story possible.

In the Maury Island Incident, Harold Dahl, his teenage son Charles, two crewmen and his dog Sparky went out on Harold’s boat to scavenge logs. During their work, Dahl reported seeing six objects, with holes in the middle, flying directly over his boat. According to his report, the group was showered with molten-like material, burning Charles’ arm and killing Sparky before the rest of the men could steer the boat offshore to find shelter. 

Even stranger than the reported UFO sighting, Edmiston said, were the events that followed. As stated in Dahl’s report, the day after the sighting a man in a black suit threatened Dahl to keep quiet about what he saw. This was the first recorded encounter with an entity dressed in all black, inspiring the phenomenon of men in black — including the popular movie series Men in Black. Nine days later, on Aug. 1, 1947, a B-25 bomber – allegedly carrying slab-like artifacts from the reported molten shower Dahl encountered – crashed. 

According to the National UFO Reporting Center, Washington state leads the nation in UFO reports per capita. With 88 sightings per 100,000 citizens, Washington residents are no stranger to UFO stories. So how was this compelling piece of Pacific Northwest folklore lost? According to Edmiston, the story fizzled out when Harold Dahl retracted his claims, “stating that the story was a hoax.” But was it? Edmiston doesn’t think so. 

“FBI investigative records make it clear that he wasn’t confessing to a hoax,” Edmiston said. Instead, “he wanted to invent the idea that he made it up.” Edmiston said that according to an FBI record, Dahl had also confessed that he’d rather be known as a liar and a hoaxster than a crazy person. Edmiston then highlighted the involvement of FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover and the courageous efforts of FBI Special Agent Jack Wilcox, who both challenged the official narrative by asserting that Dahl’s confession to a hoax was fabricated.

Along with his legal career, Edmiston co-wrote and produced The Maury Island Incident, a short film that dramatizes what Dahl allegedly encountered. Edmiston’s work has been recognized for preserving this sliver of unique history, and was even honored with a resolution on the floor of the Washington State Senate.

And while the story of the Maury Island Incident is still not widely known, Edmiston and his researchers are working hard to establish its legacy. “Whether it was true or not actually doesn’t matter,” he said. For Edmiston, it’s the legacy of the first documented sighting of a UFO and encounter with the first recorded man in black that people deserve to know.