St. Helens, Oregon: Police see orange-red light over Columbia River, its hum is recorded
Early on 17 March 1981 police officers in St. Helens, Oregon, saw a bright orange-red light about 80–100 feet above the Columbia River, while a CB radio user across the river in Ridgefield, Washington, transmitted its humming sound, which an officer recorded on cassette.
Background
At 4:03 a.m. Sgt. Russell Yokum of the St. Helens, Oregon, police was on patrol on US Highway 30 at the edge of town when he saw a bright light apparently above the Columbia River. He drove to the Columbia County Courthouse for a better view, where other police joined him, but the object was no longer visible. Meanwhile they were talking by CB radio with Donald Atkins in nearby Ridgefield, Washington, who was watching a stationary light over the river; Atkins transmitted the faint humming sound the object was making through his CB radio to officer Ricky Cade, who captured it on a cassette recorder. Yokum and Cade then looked south and saw a bright orange-red light about 80–100 feet above the river, apparently the one Atkins was watching. The Vancouver Columbian and the Portland Oregonian reported the case on 18 March 1981; J. Allen Hynek and Howard R. Schechter later published an acoustic analysis of the recording. The account follows the entry in George M. Eberhart's chronology UFOs and Intelligence (CUFOS) and the sources cited there; it is not an independent determination by From Beyond Space.