Restaurant beat Local UFO investigator invites ‘curious’ minds to share stories UFO investigator and Birch Bay resident Mike Massey is inviting others to share their UFO stories 1-2 p.m. Saturday, November 15 at Blaine Public Library. Photo by Nolan Baker Wednesday, November 12, 2025 5:30 pm By Nolan Baker UFO investigator and Birch Bay resident Mike Massey said his encounters with those who claim to have seen unidentified, possibly alien, objects flying through the sky often start the exact same way. “A lot of times people say, ‘I know this sounds crazy, but …’” Massey said. “I’ll say something like, ‘That’s consistent with what a lot of people in the county have seen.’” Massey, a recently-minted UFO investigator with the national Mutual UFO Network (MUFON), has a standard procedure for collecting information . He sits down with the witness and interviews them to find out what they saw before he begins a diligent process of reconstructing weather patterns, public flight logs and even using celestial data from the exact time of the event. When a report comes into MUFON’s website originating in western Washington, the 62 year-old retired IT professional and former Bellingham Technical College teacher of 25 years is soon out in the field, trying to find out the truth. Massey said about 10 other investigators work with MUFON in the state and about 70 percent of reports he responds to can be explained through rigorous testing. Sometimes, Massey said, sightings logged on MUFON’s website can be disproven by the alignment of the planets causing a peculiar light in the sky. Other times, people can mistake a low-flying Cessna for something more alien. And other times, there are things Massey and his sources cannot explain. “We get more sightings in Washington than in other states,” Massey said. “I think it’s because we live in a beautiful place and people are outside, and they see stuff. I think, as much as anything, people are aware and they’re outside.” Massey has never laid eyes on a UFO himself, “and I’m not sure I want to,” he said. But growing up in Daytona Beach, Florida, Massey’s curiosity for things out of this world grew as he watched Apollo rocket launches with his father, who worked in the aerospace industry. After learning about MUFON through the hit ’90s science fiction TV drama “The X-Files,” Massey started researching. It wasn’t until retirement when he had the time to fully devote himself to UFO investigations. MUFON requires all investigators to pass an official test, which meant Massey was studying from a massive MUFON textbook that could have been mistaken for an electrician’s apprentice handbook. Now over a year into his journey, Massey responds to multiple field interviews per month from people around Whatcom County and Washington reporting unexplained phenomena. While nothing he has seen so far keeps him up at night, Massey said what troubles him the most is not the things he is unable to explain or measure, but the impact sightings can have on the witnesses themselves. “The things that bother me are people who have had negative experiences and it continues to haunt them,” Massey said. “None of those experiences have been your traditional UFO sighting. Most of those experiences people tell me about are usually some sort of interaction that has an emotional component. I have no way of establishing if that’s happening inside or outside of a person, but it is definitely affecting a person.” MUFON field investigators, dubbed the “Experience Resource Team” usually respond to “direct, profound experiences,” Massey said. With so many people in Whatcom County responsive to his work, Massey is hoping to get more people into UFO investigations – at whatever level they want to dip their toe. Massey will host “UFOs Over Whatcom County” 1-2 p.m. Saturday, November 15 at the Blaine Library, 610 3rd Street, as an opportunity to learn about and discuss UFO sightings. For more information on the event, or to report a UFO sighting, email mikemassey.mufonwa@gmail.com. Massey also is starting a monthly UFO enthusiast meetup, which will take place on the third Wednesday of every month at Round Table Pizza in Bellingham, 1145 East Sunset Drive. The first meeting will be 5:30 p.m. Wednesday, November 19. “I believe in human interaction as much as possible,” Massey said. “And this stuff is really fun.” Source: http://www.thenorthernlight.com/stories/local-ufo-investigator-invites-curious-minds-to-share-stories,41514