A perfect location
The National UFO Reporting Center moved from Seattle last year. It's new location is unique to say the least. From the Seattle
Post Intelligencer:
UFO Reporting Center operates out of former missile site
To find the new home of The National UFO Reporting Center, you must go several yards underground at a former nuclear missile site in Eastern Washington.
The National UFO Reporting Center, which moved to this sparsely populated farm country from Seattle last year, is basically a telephone, tape recorder and desktop computer run in an underground bunker by one man who collects and publishes UFO reports from across the country.
Director Peter Davenport took over the UFO center's work from founder Robert Gribble in 1994. It had been located for years in Seattle's University District, until Davenport decided he wanted a change and paid $100,000 for the former Atlas missile site about 50 miles west of Spokane.
"There was the allure of owning my own missile site," Davenport said.
Missile Site No. 6 now contains a large row of file cabinets and boxes, neatly organized by date, containing thousands of reports of UFO sightings stretching back decades. A typical file reads:"Longview, WA. February 25, 1999 1158 hrs. (Pacific) Description: Fourteen forestry workers witness a horseshoe shaped object lift an adult elk out of the forest and fly off with the apparently dead, or unconscious, animal."
The missile site covers 22 acres, and the massive concrete buildings are underground. The old Atlas E missiles rested flat, not upright in silos, in what were called "coffin launchers." In the event of war, a concrete lid would slide open, the missile would be hoisted upright and the engine fired.
The UFO files, along with some office furniture, are stacked in a dark, dank room the size of a basketball court, where the yellow missile hoist remains in place. A few bare bulbs provide lights.
Davenport is still cleaning out the missile site, which is pretty decrepit, and is living in an apartment in nearby Harrington while he works to make it habitable.
There is quite the market for used
Missile Bases
The National UFO Reporting Center's website can be found
here.
Posted by DaveH at October 29, 2007 9:09 PM