Seven thousand, two hundred and thirty — that’s how many total UFO sightings (or, what’s now being called Unidentified Aerial Phenomena) — in Washington state, according to NASA.

That’s the second-most in the country, just about a thousand less than Florida.

Seattle appears to be the largest hotspot, but other parts of the region have their share. Bonney Lake resident Jeff Kindle, who has been interested in UFOs since he was young but only started to get heavily into researching phenomenon when he retired in 2018.

A year ago, after becoming a Mutual UFO Network (MUFON) field researcher, he really dove into local sightings — specifically in a 30 mile radius around Mount Rainier, on which he presented about in Buckley on June 3.

“What really caught my attention is, a buddy of mine sent me an article… about a place near Bonney Lake, and all the mysterious surroundings of this plane crash, because the pilots had been hit by something in midair,” Kindle said.

Kindle is referring to a less-widely reported incident in 1959 when a pilot was doing “touch and go” trainings at McChord Air Base.

According to MyNorthwest, the plane crashed near the Pierce County city. The official story was that the pilot accidently clipped some treetops in the dark, but the Seattle Times reported that the pilot, Colonel Robert Booth, said, “We’ve hit something or something hit us,” before the crash.

Locals recalled a series of sonic booms and strange lights in the area, which led to speculations of the plane hitting a UFO instead.

Bellevue pilot Kenneth Arnold also supposedly saw nine UFOs while flying past Mt. Rainier just days after the Maury Island incident, according to the National Air and Space Museum. (Interestingly enough, the less-known Maury Island Incident occurred just a few days before, and the famous Roswell incident occurred just a few days after.)

These incidents were included in Kenneth Arnold’s 1952 book, “The Coming of the Saucers,” which coined the term “flying saucers” and forever shaped how people think about UFOs.

These events, and more, are the crux of Kindle’s presentation.

“The 19 communities that I cite, there’s 168 documented UFO sightings on record that relate to Mt. Rainier,” Kindle said.

His favorite, he continued, was when a National Park Service security camera supposedly captured an image of a UFO in just last year.

Why are UFOs supposedly attracted to the mountain?

“I don’t necessarily subscribe to this theory, but some people say all of these mountains are potential UFO bases,” Kindle said, referring to activity near Mt. Shasta and Mt. Adams. “Now what does that mean? … I can’t tell you.”

Some of these incidents have plausible; others, less so. And which are UFOs? Who knows.

But for Kindle and his work, “It’s just making people aware that there’s a big question — ‘What goes on in the woods?’”

Image courtesy The National UFO Reporting Center (NUFORC) An alleged UFO was spotted at Mt. Rainier on Feb. 3, 2024, via a Paradise parking lot webcam. You can see the shape above the building; according to the reporter, the shape was gone when the photo was refreshed a minute later.

A Feb. 13, 2024 reporting of a “red disk shaped ‘aura’ spotted moving in Graham. Jeff Kindle, a UFO field researcher, said Graham is often a good place for UFO sightings. Photo courtesy The National UFO Reporting Center (NUFORC)