Seattle Sun Newspaper - Vol. 8, Issue 4, April 2004
Copyright 2004 Seattle Sun. Please feel free to use the article below in your research. Be sure to cite the Seattle Sun as your source.
Stan's Lookout:
The mysterious airship over Green Lake
BY STAN STAPP
(Editor's note: This column originally appeared in the May 25, 1961 edition of the North Central Outlook.)
All of the talk about outer space, now that man has actually been there, reminded me the other day about one of the most frightening experiences of my life. I'm not referring to my ride on the Octopus at Playland a couple of years ago, which I'm sure provided all of the sensations, plus a few, encountered by (astronaut) Alan B. Shepard and (cosmonaut) Yuri Gagarin in their historic rocket-propelled trips.
My fear was more from the possibility of being strung up or ridden out of town by unsympathetic readers following publication of a feature story in The Outlook which backfired.
The story was supposed to have been somewhat humorous in vein, tongue-in-check variety, with perhaps a subtle message of protest. But most readers missed my humor, and in taking the story to be fact, rather than fiction, likewise missed the message.
This incident occurred 13 years ago, at a time when flying saucers were first being dreamed up, but had not been dubbed as such. Daily papers though were full of headlines such as: "Flame-Spouting Wingless Craft Reported By Two Pilots," "Mysterious Machine Is Man-Made," "Speeding Lights Seen Over City," "Flying Carpet Replaces Discs in Spokane Skies," "Phantom Plane," "Wingless Two-Decker," etc.
Straight faced
What burned me up was that the daily papers were having all kinds of fun (with a straight face), printing interesting stories about these fictitious events all over the country, while The Outlook had to sit idly by because no one in the North End, up until then, had come up with any such phenomena.
This got under my skin, till one day I relieved the itch by dreaming up a little story myself and publishing it in the July 30, 1948 issue of The Outlook.
"MYSTERY SHIP OVER GREEN LAKE" read the page one headline. "EXCLUSIVE: FIRST AND ONLY PHOTO OF MYSTERIOUS AIRSHIP!" read another head. And sure enough, readers had an actual "photo" of the space craft to "convince them."
The story said, in part: "An alert Outlook photographer has come up with the first actual photo of one of the phantom airships that have been reported seen in various parts of the country ... the photographer, William H. Randolph, was driving north on East Green Lake Way last night when he noticed a bright light reflecting on the lake and heard a 'whirring noise' overhead. He leaped from his car, grabbed his Speed Graphic (camera) and had time to take but one picture of the mysterious object before it disappeared to the northwest."
(Randolph, you may recall, was a fictitious character on The Outlook staff associated with gag photos from time to time.)
The rest of the story detailed a description of the aircraft which "spewed many dazzling white curved streaks of flame" from its rear end, comparing its description with one reported seen over Alabama the previous Saturday, and pointed out that other newspaper offices and police headquarters knew nothing about the incident.
Actually, I felt that the "photo" of the aircraft was rather crudely done and might be the main giveaway. It seemed likely that readers, on a second look, would recognize that the background of "spewing flames" was in reality a burst of Fourth of July fireworks over Green Lake, similar to a photo used in The Outlook three weeks previously.
I had merely turned the photo sidewise and painted the mystery ship in the proper position to take advantage of the fireworks, basing my design on the ship "seen over Alabama."
The first inkling that my story was being taken literally dawned on me shortly after the paper was being delivered to our readers. While shopping at Verne's Fine Foods, I overheard several conversations among housewives and they were all talking about the "mystery ship."
Naturally, I eavesdropped a little harder. When I found that, without exception, they believed the story to be true and not "just for fun," I became worried, paid for my groceries, and slunk out of the store.
Afraid to return to The Outlook office, I phoned in, and found my worst fears justified. The staff had been swamped with phone calls and was busy trying to explain to readers the meaning of the story.
Word of mouth
One of the main problems that developed was that housewives, excited about the news, were calling their husbands at work to be the first to tell them about the mysterious Green Lake visitor.
The husbands, not having heard of any such thing by any other source, tended to be a little more dubious. The two would get into arguments about its authenticity, so then one of them would call The Outlook for verification, and no matter how it was explained, feelings were going to be hurt for having been put into such an embarrassing position. No one likes to be the "fall guy."
Coward that I was, I told those on phone duty to do the best they could, and went home and hid.
I don't know how many hundreds called, but early the next morning a Seattle Times reporter got me out of bed and wanted to know what was going on. It seems that as the news spread, both by printed word, and word-of-mouth, even the Times switchboard was getting "dozens of calls" asking if the story was true, or "how did you happen to get scooped?"
By now, I could feel that noose tightening around my neck, as former loyal Outlook readers rebelled against the dirty trick that had been played on them.
I pleaded with the Times reporter not to treat this story as a hoax, but only an innocent feature story that had somehow backfired, and that, "Really, I'm not a bad guy at heart."
Luckily, the reporter was in a good mood that day, and I got a break in that the Times story was handled in a lighthearted vein.
But in the meantime, readers had been coming into our office or calling on the phone, relating how they, too, had seen the mystery airship, and several interesting eye witness accounts were given us. How could you tell them point blank that the story wasn't true?
Two boys told us later that they stayed up all night Friday, waiting to see if the ship would come back. Another enterprising lad somehow got hold of some Outlooks and was selling them on Stone Way for three cents a copy.
A local restaurant owner called up and asked for a half dozen more copies. "Everybody's fighting over our one copy trying to read it at once," he told us.
Many other similar instances came to our attention, but little by little I could see that the tide was changing, that readers were beginning to see that the story had been intended in fun. Thankful was I that most of them displayed an amazing sense of humor, once the effects of the first blow of realization had passed by.
The following week we explained the whole story in great detail, including the reactions of many readers, and ran a picture of some of the daily paper headlines to prove our point that they had been reading this type of story all along.
Of course, by then I felt much better, as nearly anyone would who had narrowly averted being hung.
Looking back now, I can see that this one story made a powerful demonstration of the responsibilities of the press, and of the dangers inherent where the dissemination of news is controlled by one person, or one group. For had there been no other sources of information than The Outlook, this purely imaginative story would have been believed by the majority of people in our area, and they would have had no way of disproving it.
Close to home
Likewise, it pointed up how much greater is the impact of an event which happens close to home, than that same event when it occurs in a distant city. And also how much more vulnerable a weekly newspaper editor is to irate