At approximately 7 pm April 1, the Old Town block in Burien was the landing zone for creatures from all over the galaxy. Some carrying space guns and all looking somewhat ominous these visitors seemed to like the street in front of the Tin Room. At least that’s where they all parked their vehicles.

But as it turned out it was The Second Annual Burien UFO Festival.

The event was created to draw awareness of the so called 1947 Maury Island Incident where allegedly a hovering craft of unknown origin deposited strange material off the south tip of the island in Puget Sound.

There were several people on hand willing to explain the event and what transpired after. One of them was Charlette LeFevre of the Northwest Museum of Legends and Lore. She told me that the incident is referred to as the Roswell of the Northwest (referring to likely the most well known UFO encounter in history) but that it actually happened two weeks before Roswell in June of 1947.

The other reason for the evening’s festivities was to promote the movie about the event, which has been in production for well over a year now. The backers are trying to have it all filmed in Burien. The title… you guessed it, “The Maury Island Incident”. But this isn’t just silliness. People allegedly died as a result of what transpired back in June of 1947.

The story synopsis is this. A worker collecting logs spotted six "disc shaped” objects hovering over the southern shore of the island. One of these discs dropped what was described as “lava like “ rocks into the water. The sighting was reported and the (at the time) US Army Air Force dispatched a B-25 bomber out of Hamilton Field, California to retrieve the “lava rocks”. That B-25 crashed near Kelso, Washington on its way back, killing the pilot William L. Davinson and co-pilot Lt. Brown. There are twists and turns about the actual event and what transpired in the days and weeks after that could make this and X-Files type of film.

The evening was a great success by all accounts and the live street music, provided by Pink Torpedo, kept alien and non-alien grooving to the very end where acknowledgements for costuming were doled out.

If you’d like to know more about the Murry Island incident you can go to the NW Museum of Legend and Lore at http://www.nwlegendsmuseum.com