The Man on La Push Beach (1959)

Mrs Ruth Linhoff was walking a stretch of beach near La Push when she noticed a man some distance away. He was dressed in "neat sun tans" and carried a quantity of rope hung in loops from his arm. Then came "a series of brilliant flashes which she supposes emnated from the sky". Shortly after the flashes she heard "a swishing like blast reminiscent of the noise made by fourth of July sky rockets." Then she saw a parachute floating in from over the ocean. It appeared, she said, that the man on the beach had in some manner attached his rope to it. She described him as a white man over six feet tall with strong features and about thirty years old.

What is on the record

The account survives as a single FBI Seattle office memorandum, written by Special Agent James H. Sandusky on 17 July 1959 under the heading "Info re strange flying object". It sits in the FBI's Washington State UFO file, FBI-UAP-D013, released by the Department of War in June 2026. The memo records her name and the date of the walk, 7 July. It says nothing about what the flashes were, where the parachute came from or who the man was. No follow-up or evaluation appears in the released file. No outside account of the incident has been found.

The memo offers no explanation. A parachute and a noise like a sky rocket are ordinary things in themselves. The record does not tie them to any known source.

Why it sits where it does

L4 · OFFICIAL RECORD — a released government record names who saw it. The one witness is named and nobody else is recorded as seeing anything. No independent testimony sits beside the memo in the archive, and the tier measures sourcing rather than truth. What flashed over the beach is not resolved here.