Recently, an Oregon MUFON site reader sent your Assistant State Director an email. In it, MM, a currently 60 year old member of the Oglala Sioux Tribe of South Dakota, described his encounter in 1979 with "high strangeness" northeast of Lincoln City, OR, near the Van Duzer Corridor on the Salmon River Highway (Highway 18).  See the map below.

I also became aware this year of an extensive series of UFO events of high strangeness including video and photographic evidence that took place in the hills just to the east of Devils Lake in the 2000s. Currently, we cannot share details of these encounters, however, because the witnesses are not comfortable with this. Perhaps at some future date, they will tell their story.

Note that Devils Lake just to the east of Lincoln City is considered a place of high strangeness in local Native American lore and legend. (http://www.devilslakeor.us/history.html)

Here is MM's recounting of what happened to him:

What I saw was something that I have been basically keeping to myself for quite a while. I was only 26 in 1979 and working as an itinerant day laborer in Northern California, Oregon, and Washington. 

[At this point in my life, I want] to share with your organization my account of that strange morning.

I cannot remember the exact date, but it was in late June of 1979 when I managed to get a ride out of Portland with a guy named "Gino," a 30-something Italian-American from the East Coast. Gino said that he wanted to check out Lincoln City for a few hours. When I encountered Gino earlier that day, he said that he was going to Sacramento, but once in Lincoln City he started drinking at a bar, so I decided to travel back to Portland where I could work for a while and save money for a bus ticket to Oakland (where I had planned to spend that summer).

All I had was $20 and some change, so I started walking along the road that would lead me back to Portland. I tried hitchhiking, but no one stopped for me as it was dark before too long. In those days, I often walked for miles, once walking for 12 hours non-stop in the winter in South Dakota. That night (in June, '79) I had a 40-pound duffel bag with a shoulder strap that slowed me down somewhat.

I walked at about one mile every 15 minutes, so I estimate that I was perhaps 16 miles out of the Lincoln City limits when this event took place.

There was next to no traffic and the entire universe seemed to consist of just the road and the trees that loomed as an eternal canyon before me. The sky was totally clear and the stars were exceptionally bright that far away from any manmade light sources. The only sounds were of crickets chirping away.

Shortly after midnight I needed to take a break, so I ventured into the forest about twenty yards off the road. My plan was to rest for a half-hour and then journey on.

I lay down against my duffel bag and lit a cigarette and just looked up at the beautiful night sky.

After I finished my cigarette, I noticed that the crickets were completely silent. Then I heard something moving through the woods to the north of my position, maybe 70 yards away. I thought that whatever it was it had to be a large deer, so I was not at all alarmed by the sound of brush being disturbed. And I also sensed that the deer had to be running.

In the darkness, I tried my best to visually locate the deer, so I stood up and took several steps forward. As soon as I stood up, the deer stopped its movements and there was dead silence.

Then I heard a sharp electronic buzzing coming from the direction of where the deer was, followed by a sound similar to that of a very muffled explosion but several seconds in duration. I also sensed that the air all around me was somehow being "pulled" in the direction of these sounds.

To my amazement (and horror), a vehicle, at approximately 120 yards away, suddenly began a slow ascent. It displayed lights that manifested a definite, flat (isosceles) triangular shape against the sky. There was a red light at the vertex point and white lights at the base angles. This craft rose to about 200 feet and then instantly and silently vanished (meaning with no sound of any kind of propulsion). Perhaps ten seconds later, the crickets made noise again.

This was by no means any sort of conventional aircraft. The horror I felt upon seeing this thing was soon replaced by the most powerful sense of awe and wonder I have ever experienced. I knew then that humanity is definitely not alone in the cosmos and that there is an advanced intelligence among us.

Elated by what I had just seen, I started to walk back towards town. After less than an hour I became strangely exhausted and felt an overwhelming urge to just lie down anywhere and sleep. I walked over to a house in the woods and found a place to sleep behind some garbage cans. I slept a dreamless sleep and that morning walked back to Lincoln City where I took a bus to Portland.

This is my account of what occurred then, described to the best of my ability to do so. I have not seen anything like it since then.

 Oregon MUFON thanks MM for taking the time to write up his UFO encounter of long ago.

 Lincoln City/Devils Lake/Van Duzer Corridor