1999 Washington State Elk Abduction
A diagram of the 1999 Washington state elk abduction by UFO by Robert Fairfax
On Thursday 25th February 1999 a team of 14 forestry workers witnessed an elk being lifted off of the ground and carried off by a peculiar flying disc shaped object. A few days later the body of the elk was found a few miles away.
The 1999 Elk Abduction Report
One of the witnesses points to where he saw the elk be abducted by a UFO. Photo credit: MUFON Journal
The National UFO Reporting Center (NUFORC) received a call through its UFO hotline from a forestry worker in Washington State. The caller left a message explaining how he, along with 13 other forestry workers, had witnessed an Elk being whisked away by a strange flying disk just a few days prior.
The Director of NUFORC, Peter B. Davenport, got in touch with several of the men who witnessed the incident and interviewed them over the phone. NUFORC doesn’t usually carry out investigations so Davenport contacted the Director of Investigations for the Washington State Chapter of the Mutual UFO Network, Robert A. Fairfax.
Davenport and Fairfax travelled together to the site of the incident to gather more information. They interviewed all 14 witnesses and thoroughly investigated the site. They managed to piece together the following sequence of events:
The Elk Abduction Incident
An artists rendering of the described UFO that abducted the elk. Graphic by Robert Fairfax via FATE Magazine.
On the cold winter morning of February 25th, 1999, fourteen forestry workers employed by a large company were planting trees about 20 miles west of Mt. St. Helens in the Cascade Mountains of Washington State.
Three of the men had been admiring a heard of wild elk grazing in a nearby valley for most of the morning. Suddenly, a flying disc object with two stripes on its back appeared from over the top of a nearby ridge and began floating in a northeast direction. The men first thought it might be a parachute or a hang-glider but it didn’t appear to be losing any altitude with time.
The object turned to move toward the herd of elk and the three men called out to the rest of the work crew to come and have a look. All fourteen men stood and watched as this strange object flew down towards the elk.
The object moved silently and was able to get quite close to the herd before they noticed it. When they saw it coming the elk were startled and ran to the east towards the forest. One elk got separated from the rest and ran down a logging road to the north. The flying object flew after this lone elk.
The elk suddenly was lifted off of the ground by some invisible force. The object then flew off with the slowly rotating beneath it. It moved up the ridge, just clearing the tree line and then down into the next valley and out of sight. A few minutes later the craft reappeared without the attached elk and took off at great speed into the sky.
The witnesses reported that after the incident the herd of elk remained in the same area but were huddled closely together.
Fairfax and Davenport investigated the body of a female elk that had been found north of the site. They were unable to determine if it was the same elk that was seen floating with the UFO.
Theories
Skeptics would claim the incident has to be a hoax because its simply not possible for an aircraft to pick up an elk via some invisible forcefield.
Most of the witnesses had been with the company for years and they were generally deemed to be reliable and unlikely to lie about something like this.
Believers would claim this was a textbook account of an alien abduction. Others claim it could have been an advanced experimental military aircraft that still has not been released to the public.
If you enjoyed this article you may also be interested in the story of Vladimir Bastl or the disappearance of Frederick Valentich.
