(Original headline: Think aliens are coming? Actually, we're already here )
One small move for Peter B. Davenport.
One giant leap for flying saucer research in the Inland Northwest.
Davenport, who directs the National UFO Reporting Center, is in the process of relocating his operation from Seattle to a rundown Cold War missile site he recently purchased in Lincoln County.
This is stellar news. It's like having a piece of the spaced program right in our own backyard.
Davenport won't set a target date for physically moving into the massive underground bunker, which is about five miles south of the city of Davenport. (How about that for a cosmic coincidence?)
The new digs are dirty and decrepit. The site is in dire need of a serious makeover before it is elevated to a West Sider's standard of habitation.
But Davenport says he is up to the task. Plus, running a UFO clearinghouse out of a defunct missile site has a lot of promotional sizzle. It certainly grabbed my attention.
As long as we're talking drawbacks, it must be mentioned that this is the same place where a state tax auditor was ambushed, shot and dismembered in 2002. Ralph H. Benson, a creepy long-haul trucker, was convicted of murdering Roger Erdman when he showed up at the missile site to audit the trucker's books. Benson died in prison in 2004.
Davenport, who says he bought the property from Benson's son for $100,000, is not given to silly superstitions like bad karma or ghosts.
He is a well-educated, serious-minded guy who believes "our planet is visited by other intelligent creatures on a regular basis."
That was just one of the fascinating things I learned the other day during a lengthy telephone interview. Interview is a poor choice of words. It's more like receiving a lecture.
Davenport, who says he saw his first UFO as a 6-year-old in 1954, is loaded with facts, figures and theories that all point to a few dramatic conclusions:
1. UFOs are real.
2. The government is covering it up.
3. The press ain't doing diddly-do about it.
I took a liking to Davenport despite his pontificating. He has one of those measured, mellifluous radio voices, which is understandable since he is a go-to UFO expert for chat shows.
His IQ is probably stratospheric, too. According to his bio, Davenport has an M.B.A. in finance and international business and an M.S. in the genetics and biochemistry of fish. He was once a Russian translator, too.
There's a lot more, but you get the idea.
Davenport took over the National UFO Reporting Center in 1994. The organization was founded 20 years earlier by Robert J. Gribble, a retired Seattle firefighter. Since its inception, the center's hot line and online report form has logged untold thousands of UFO sightings of all shapes and sizes.
Take this report filed out of Florida:
"A woman awakens and walks to her screened bedroom window. She sees a self-luminous spherical object hovering above the ground. A cat notices objects, which suddenly streak away."
