Catalina Island, the California destination celebrated for its clear coastal waters and ties to Hollywood, is gaining attention for another reason: newly released government records describe a series of unsettling alleged UFO sightings in the area.
The Catalina reports are part of a larger collection of documents concerning UAPs, or “Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena,” released by the Trump administration on Friday.
Reporters from The Post were among a small group briefed by senior government officials on Thursday, one day before the files became public.
One Air Force intelligence report recounts an alleged encounter involving three Boy Scouts hiking near Camp Fox in Catalina’s mountainous interior. At about noon Pacific time on Aug. 25, 1952, the Scouts reportedly spotted a silver-colored object moving “faster than a conventional jet.”
The witnesses could not determine how high the object was flying, how fast it was traveling or how far away it appeared, the report stated. Skies were clear during the reported sighting.
Adding to the mystery is a missing drawing of the object. The sketch was reportedly made on the back of the original report, but searches of government archives over the ensuing decades have failed to locate it.
The newly released files also contain a handwritten letter dated May 1, 1947, describing a separate series of alleged aerial sightings.
“About 8 o’clock of the night of April 28th, my wife and a school teacher saw six objects in the sky, not in a group, but singly. A few minutes later after going to my daughter’s home, on the next street and corresponding block, she and my daughter and my grandson saw four more. All traveling in the same direction,” the letter stated.
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The writer, identified as Percy E. Mackey, added: “If you are still interested in flying disks, saucers etc., please let me know and I will write more in full.”
Officials ultimately determined that the account contained “insufficient data for evaluation.”
The letter was written during a period when reports of the alleged Roswell crash in New Mexico were drawing widespread public attention.
The Catalina material forms part of the Trump administration’s wider effort to make UAP records public through its Presidential Unsealing and Reporting System for UAP Encounters initiative.
Friday’s release was the seventh batch of documents issued under the effort, and additional files are expected to be made available.
Catalina’s UFO lore also includes a reported July 8, 1947, sighting in which three visiting Army Air Force veterans allegedly observed six “flying discs” moving in formation over Avalon, according to a historical account published by The Catalina Islander.
The objects were reportedly seen at about 1 p.m. before vanishing in the direction of East Peak. One witness, Alvio Russo, estimated that they were traveling at approximately 850 mph.
The account also identified former aerial photographer Bob Jung as a witness who said he captured one of the objects on film. A photograph claimed to show a UFO above Catalina was later published by the Los Angeles Examiner and remains preserved in the Getty Images archive.
However, the image has prompted skepticism because it appears to depict a star-filled nighttime sky, even though the reported sighting took place in daylight. The apparent contradiction has never been explained.
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