A pastor writes to Hoover about four beams converging on the Cascades and a 10,000-ft "explosion" (May 1948)
On 31 January 1949 the Rev. Charles C. Barnes, a Presbyterian pastor, wrote to J. Edgar Hoover. One afternoon the previous May he had seen four narrow beams cross the sky from the northwest to the southeast and converge on the Cascade Mountains. Small clouds formed in the beams, and where they met there was a great "explosion effect" that rose to about 10,000 ft. It lasted at least ten minutes. He linked it to pre-war articles on radio-beam rain-making and to the 1948 Columbia River flood. He mentioned that one son was in the Air Corps and another worked for the AEC at Hanford. The reply, logged as mailed on 10 February 1949, is barely legible in the scan. *Method note: war.gov blocks this server. The file was read from the original PDF served by the ufotransparency.com mirror. Page 1 has a usable OCR layer; the reply on p. 2 is badly garbled and was not quoted.*
How plausible · Moderate
A named pastor's letter to Hoover, preserved in an FBI file, careful to offer his own mundane guess.
- ●●No gain sought A private letter.
- ●●Restraint Suggests a weather experiment himself.
- ●●Checkable details check out In the released FBI file.
- ●○Access Watched from a distance.
- ●○Cost of speaking Signed his name to the FBI director.
- ●○Character record A Presbyterian pastor.
- −Lone source, no corroboration No one else on record.
Plausibility weighs how well an account fits where secrecy hides the documents by design, so missing records never count against it. Strength measures what is documented. Assessed 2026-10-23.
On the record
- "Last May one afternoon I saw four beams in the sky passing from the northwest to the southeast and converging in the Cascade mountains." (FBI-UAP-D011, p. 1; OCR slips in the text layer corrected)
- "And where the beams met apparently against the mountains a great explosion effect was to be seen. I would say that they were visible for at least 10 minutes or longer." (FBI-UAP-D011, p. 1; OCR slips in the text layer corrected)
- "The explosion effect seemed to rise to a height of about ten thousand feet." (FBI-UAP-D011, p. 1; OCR slips in the text layer corrected)
- "The Columbia River flood of last summer and the unusual precipitation this winter have forced me to feel that this observation of mine should be sent somewhere in the interest of national security." (FBI-UAP-D011, p. 1; OCR slips in the text layer corrected)
- He writes that he has "one son in the Air Corps and another working with the A.E.C. at Hanford". The letter is signed "Rev. Charles C. Barnes, Pastor". The reply bears a mail stamp of 10 February 1949 (p. 2; the text of the reply is illegible in the scan).