June 21, 1947 — Eight discs fell with a dead-leaf motion and landed on the shore of the St. Joe River, Idaho, witnessed by ten people. thinkaboutitdocs.com.
THINK ABOUTIT UFO|UAP ENCOUNTER REPORT
1947: The St. Joe River UFO Landing: Ten Witnesses, Three Days Before Kenneth Arnold
On the morning of June 21, 1947 — three days before Kenneth Arnold’s sighting would make the phenomenon a national story — Mrs. Guy R. Overman watched eight shiny, disc-shaped objects cross the sky over Spokane, Washington, traveling an estimated 600 mph at 7,000 feet. Rather than continuing on, the discs began falling with a slow, wavering, dead-leaf motion, descending out of the sky to land on the shore of the St. Joe River in neighboring Idaho — in full view of ten witnesses gathered at the site. It’s one of the earliest reported UFO landings of the 1947 wave, and one of the few from this period with a witness count in the double digits.
Date: June 21, 1947
Sighting Time: 11:50-11:55 AM
Day/Night: Day
Location: Spokane, Washington (objects observed); landing site on the St. Joe River, Idaho
Urban or Rural: Rural (river landing site)
No. of Entity(‘s): Not Applicable
Entity Type: Not Applicable
Entity Description: Not Applicable
Hynek Classification: CE-I (Close Encounter of the First Kind — a landing observed at close range by multiple witnesses, with no physical trace evidence noted)
Duration: Several minutes
No. of Object(s): Eight
Description of the Object(s): Shiny, silvery, slim-bodied disc-shaped objects, one observed below the altitude of a passing aircraft
Shape/Size/Color of Object(s): Disc-shaped, silvery, slim-bodied; apparent size compared to a housefly at altitude (a relative visual comparison, not an actual measurement)
Distance to Object(s): Not specified beyond the landing site itself, viewed at close range by witnesses on the riverbank
Height & Speed: Approximately 7,000 feet and 600 mph in flight, before descending with a falling, dead-leaf motion to land
Number of Witnesses: At least eleven — Mrs. Guy R. Overman, who observed the objects in flight, and ten additional witnesses present at the landing site on the St. Joe River
Special Features/Characteristics: A distinctive falling, dead-leaf descent motion as the objects transitioned from level flight to landing; one object observed at an altitude below a passing aircraft, offering a rough relative size and distance comparison
Case Status: Unexplained
Source: Jacques Vallée, Magonia 57; FOIA; FUFOR Index; Ted Bloecher, Report on the UFO Wave of 1947
Source Status: VERIFIED — a named primary witness, a landing observed by ten additional people, and sourcing that spans a serious independent researcher (Vallée), declassified federal records, and Bloecher’s landmark compilation.
Summary/Description: Mrs. Guy R. Overman saw eight shiny, disc-shaped objects cross the sky near Spokane, Washington at high speed and altitude before they fell with a dead-leaf motion and landed on the shore of the St. Joe River, Idaho, in view of ten witnesses.
Related Cases: Occurred three days before Kenneth Arnold’s June 24, 1947 Mount Rainier sighting, documented in its own full report on this archive — part of the broader wave of Pacific Northwest sightings this archive’s June 1947 monthly index documents building in the weeks before Arnold’s own case.
Detailed Report
At approximately 11:50 AM on June 21, 1947, civilian witness Mrs. Guy R. Overman was in a position to observe the sky over Spokane, Washington, when she saw eight shiny, silvery, slim-bodied disc-shaped objects moving through the air. The objects appeared small at their operating altitude of roughly 7,000 feet — Overman’s own comparison likened their apparent size to that of a housefly — and were traveling at an estimated 600 mph on a southwest heading. At one point, one of the eight objects was observed passing below the altitude of a conventional aircraft, giving witnesses a rough point of reference for the objects’ actual altitude and scale.
Rather than continuing past Overman’s position and out of sight, the objects began to descend. Witnesses described the descent as a falling, wavering “dead-leaf” motion — a slow, side-to-side drifting fall rather than a controlled, level approach. The objects came down across the state line in Idaho, landing on the shore of the St. Joe River. Ten additional witnesses were present at or near the landing site and observed the objects on the ground. The full sighting, from initial observation through the landing, lasted several minutes.
The case is documented across multiple independent channels: Jacques Vallée’s Magonia case files, declassified FOIA records, the FUFOR Index, and Ted Bloecher’s 1967 Report on the UFO Wave of 1947 — the same landmark compilation that anchors the majority of this archive’s best-documented June 1947 entries. No further detail on the objects’ subsequent departure survives in the sourcing located for this report.
RESEARCHER’S NOTES
Why This Case Is Taken Seriously
- A double-digit witness count: Ten witnesses at the landing site, in addition to the primary observer in flight — a substantially larger corroborating group than the great majority of cases from this period, most of which rest on one or two witnesses.
- An actual landing, not just a flyover: Most 1947-wave cases describe objects in flight. A landing, witnessed at close range by a group, is a rarer and more specific category of claim.
- Multiple independent sourcing channels: Vallée, FOIA records, the FUFOR Index, and Bloecher’s compilation each document the case separately rather than one source being copied forward by the others.
- A specific, unusual flight detail: The dead-leaf falling motion during descent is a distinctive, repeatable description this archive has also seen used elsewhere in the 1947 record, suggesting a recognized visual pattern rather than an invented one-off detail.
- What the record does not include: The names of the ten additional witnesses, a photograph, any physical trace evidence at the landing site, or an account of the objects’ departure. The case’s strength rests on witness volume and multi-source documentation, not physical evidence.
The St. Joe River case stands out in this archive’s 1947 record less for any single dramatic detail than for its sheer number of witnesses to an actual landing — a combination this period rarely offers. This archive lists it as Unexplained, direct about what is and isn’t preserved in the surviving sourcing.
Falling with a dead-leaf motion, the objects landed on the shore of the St. Joe River before ten witnesses.
From the case record of Mrs. Guy R. Overman’s June 21, 1947 sighting, as documented by Jacques Vallée and Ted Bloecher.
