UFO Abducts Elk: Forestry Workers Bear Witness in Mount St. Helens (1999)
Reports of UFOs interacting with animals, including livestock and wild animals like elk, are relatively rare but do exist within the realm of UFO literature and eyewitness accounts.
On a Thursday morning, just minutes before 12 PM on February 25, 1999, three forestry employees planting young trees in the Mount St. Helens region of Washington State experienced an event they couldn’t easily explain. Initially, the trio spotted what they assumed was a parachute meandering through the sky. Realizing their mistake, they called over their eleven team members who were working on a nearby hillside. Together, all fourteen of them focused their attention on the descending object for an estimated duration of 3 to 5 minutes.
The disc-shaped object moved in what seemed to be a deliberate manner, even displaying a slight instability in its flight pattern. Not long after the first sighting, the workers noticed the object was making its way toward a herd of elk they had been monitoring throughout the morning. The object advanced until it was alarmingly close to the herd, which seemed oblivious to its presence until the last moment.
Panic erupted among the animals, sending most of them sprinting up a nearby slope. However, one lone adult elk appeared to trot away from the group and was rapidly positioned directly below the mysterious object. Witnesses say the object then lifted the elk into the air. Remarkably, there was no visible mechanism supporting the animal as it ascended.
After capturing the elk, the object’s flight seemed less stable, displaying greater instability than before. Moreover, the elk, which was suspended upright, slowly rotated underneath the object, appearing to inch closer to its underside. The object also seemed to expand in size slightly at this point.
Beginning its ascent with the elk still dangling below, the object moved upward along a treeless slope facing east. Witnesses say it grazed the treetops before reversing its course to move westward. The object then executed a complete 360-degree left turn, possibly gaining some altitude during the maneuver.
Following its full rotation, the object increased its speed and shot upward at a sharp angle, disappearing from the line of sight of the onlooking crew. Once it had reached a height beyond their viewing capabilities, the elk was no longer visible beneath the object. The crew assumed the animal had been integrated into the interior of the craft, despite not seeing any doorway or opening in the object where this could have happened.
This puzzling event has left all the witnesses baffled and questioning what they had seen that fateful Thursday in February 1999.
One of the most well-known types of animal-UFO interactions are cattle mutilations, where livestock are found with surgical-like incisions and missing organs, often with no clear explanation. However, these do not typically involve witness accounts of the cattle being abducted by a UFO.
