Coast To Coast AM - 1.16.2012 - UFOs and Kenneth Arnold

Host: George Noory
Guests: Paola Harris, Kim Arnold, Steve Alten

Hour 1 - Author Steve Alten talked about his latest work looking at the Mayan calendar and doomsday prophecies. The last "k'atun," a cycle of around 20 years, in the Mayan calendar ending in December 2012, predicts a time of great change. Alten cited a number of possible cataclysmic events that might arrive this year, including experiments at the Large Hadron Collider going seriously awry, the eruption of the Yellowstone caldera, and a landslide/tsunami originating in the Canary Islands.

Hours 2, 3 & 4 - UFO researcher Paola Harris talked about the state of ufology in the second hour. In the latter half of the show, she was joined by Kim Arnold, the daughter of Kenneth Arnold, the pilot who coined the phrase "flying saucer," after he witnessed a series of strange tailless craft flying in formation near Mt. Rainier on June 24, 1947. A United Airlines crew reported seeing similar disk-like objects 10 days after Arnold's sighting, but in the famed Roswell Incident which occurred in early July 1947, the crashed ship was said to have a different shape, Harris noted.

Kim Arnold revealed that her father actually had seven UFO sightings following the initial one, including 25 brass-colored objects that flew in a pattern that he saw while flying to Tacoma. He also had a 1952 sighting over Susanville, CA in which two craft flew underneath his plane-- one appeared solid, the other partially transparent. "He realized at that time, they had the ability to change their density," she explained. In the initial '47 incident, Arnold observed the craft pulsating from their centers, similar to the beating of a human heart, and came to believe the objects were alive, and was later surprised when ufology focused on the idea of mechanical/metal craft and extraterrestrials.

Arnold outlined some of the difficulties her family faced, including ridicule and intimidation, as her father gained a great deal of attention for his UFO encounters. He ended up writing a book with Ray Palmer on his UFO sightings, and also did some lecturing and presentations. However, as he grew older, he became an embittered recluse, disgruntled over inaccurate reports the press made about his experiences, Arnold detailed. Interestingly, a couple years before his death in 1984, he revealed his belief that UFOs were the link between the living and the dead, she continued. Kim Arnold will debut her book, Kenneth Arnold, The Man Who Started it All, at Paola Harris' Women's UFO Symposium (to be held in May in Glen Rose, TX), where she will be the keynote speaker.