Gulf Breeze UFO incident

Gulf Breeze UFO incident

Type	Case (photographs; widely considered a hoax)
Date	11 November 1987 – 1 May 1988; local sightings into 1991
Place	Gulf Breeze, Santa Rosa County, Florida
Main witness	Ed Walters, local contractor (published as "Mr. X", "Mr. Ed" or "Jim")
Evidence	32 photographs and videotape; 19 claimed sightings or encounters by Walters or his family
Key event	Foam-plate UFO model found in Walters's former attic, reported 10 June 1990
Book	The Gulf Breeze Sightings (Ed and Frances Walters, 1990)
Also known as	Gulf Breeze
On the Timeline	2 events, 1987–2014

The Gulf Breeze UFO incident was a series of claimed UFO sightings in Gulf Breeze, Florida, in late 1987 and early 1988, which began when a local contractor, Ed Walters, said he had photographed a UFO outside his home. His pictures, published in the community newspaper the Gulf Breeze Sentinel, became one of the most famous and controversial UFO cases of the late 1980s. Researchers such as Bruce Maccabee and the Mutual UFO Network (MUFON) believed them genuine, while others strongly suspected a hoax, and many other residents came forward with sightings of their own.^[1][2]

In 1990, after the Walters family had moved, the new owners of their house found a styrofoam UFO model hidden in the attic, and Pensacola News Journal photographers used it to closely reproduce Walters's photos. Walters said the model had been planted. Most investigators concluded the case was a hoax.^[1][3]

Walters's account, 1987–1988

On 11 November 1987, Walters said, he was briefly immobilised "by a blue beam", after which he took five Polaroid photographs of an object in the sky outside his home. He said it hovered about 200 feet (61 metres) above the ground and looked "right out of a Spielberg movie". He went on to claim many further encounters with the craft, recording videotape and taking 32 photographs in all.^[1]

Walters also said he saw the craft land on Soundside Drive and "deposit five aliens on the road". One stared in at his window, he said, and the beings communicated with him telepathically in English and Spanish and showed him a book of pictures of dogs; a blue beam then lifted him three feet (0.9 metres) off the ground. He said he was immobilised by the blue beam again on 2 December 1987, and on 7 February 1988 he said he photographed his wife, Frances, trying to outrun it. He claimed further communication with the beings, and he or his family reported nineteen sightings or encounters in all.^[1]

On 1 May 1988, Walters said, he sensed the aliens' presence while at Shoreline Park after midnight, saw the UFO and photographed it, and then "lost consciousness for an hour". He said the UFO leaked a liquid that was still boiling nineteen days after he collected it. He also claimed earlier episodes of missing time: once on a canoe trip, once during an apparent nightmare, and once while driving at night, when he saw a bright light approach, felt his car lifted off the road and found himself five hours later beside morning traffic. Under hypnosis, he said, he learned he had been "abducted by aliens on several occasions".^[1]

Investigation

Walters gave his photographs to the Gulf Breeze Sentinel under the names "Mr. X", "Mr. Ed" or "Jim", saying he feared ridicule and wanted to protect his family, but by 1989 he openly admitted being the photographer. He took a polygraph test in February 1988, and the examiner concluded that "Walters believes his photos are real". The Sentinel was later bought by the Pensacola News Journal and closed. The News Journal reporter Craig Myers, who investigated the case a few years later, criticised the Sentinel's coverage as "uncritical" and "sensationalist".^[1][2]

Supporters

The optical physicist and ufologist Bruce Maccabee examined five of the Polaroids and said, "I think there is a good chance it's the real thing". He had Walters photograph with two Polaroid cameras mounted on a beam so the images could be triangulated, and argued that other witnesses' sightings mattered more than the photos. The abduction researcher Budd Hopkins interviewed Walters several times and believed him, citing his polygraph and the fact that he had supposedly turned down a $100,000 book deal. In June 1988 MUFON's director, Walter Andrus, called Gulf Breeze the "best case we've ever had", and its Florida director, Donald Ware, said he was convinced Walters had been given so many photo opportunities "because the aliens wanted us to see those photos". According to figures compiled by Willy Smith, MUFON's membership grew fourfold after the case was publicised.^[1]

Doubters

The paranormal investigator Ray Stanford studied the clouds in the photos and at first believed they could not have been taken on 11 November 1987, because of wrong weather data; once he had the correct data he accepted the date, but still thought the photos a hoax. Robert Nathan of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory said "many of these images are double exposure photographs" and that he had a "feeling that there is some kind of a cut and paste on some surface". Willy Smith of the UFO group UNICAT said he could see a support under the object, "indicating that the object is a model that was painted". The Mayor of Gulf Breeze, Ed Gray, analysed the photos at length and also concluded they were fake. The skeptic Philip Klass said there was "no way" they were authentic, though he had not studied the case closely because it was not "genuinely impressive to the public".^[1]

The Center for UFO Studies (CUFOS), founded by J. Allen Hynek, judged the photos fake because the craft's windows were unevenly spaced and because of a "waviness" suggesting they had been taken near or reflected off water. CUFOS's Mark Rodeghier and Robert Boyd were told by friends of Walters that he was "known as a practical joker and prankster" who had said he would "pull off 'the ultimate prank'"; they also pointed to "curious parallels" between his story and Whitley Strieber's book Communion, published a few months before the first sighting.^[1]

Eglin Air Force Base

Eglin Air Force Base, a vast military installation, lies directly east of Gulf Breeze. Its Director of Public Affairs said there was no record of unusual activity or "strange radar blips" at the time of the sightings. Gulf Breeze's police chief, Jerry Brown, thought locals were mistaking activity at the base for UFOs, which he blamed on a "domino effect of hysteria that began with Walters' photos".^[1]

Other sightings

After the Sentinel published Walters's photos, the paper and MUFON received dozens of reports from the Gulf Breeze area describing an orange glow, orange or blue beams of light, and an oval or oblong craft. One woman said she woke at 2 a.m. to find an orange-lit UFO in her yard. In July 1988 Fenner and Shirley McConnell said they saw a wingless, "disc-shaped" aircraft fly over the water with lights shining on their pier, and Shirley later recognised it from the Sentinel articles. Art and Mary Hufford said that while driving in early November 1987 they saw "something gray, oval and silent fly over the treetops" for several minutes, which they recognised in Walters's photos.^[1]

Brenda Pollak, a city councilwoman and acquaintance of Walters, said she saw an orange light along the treetops while crossing the Pensacola Bay Bridge on 17 March 1988. At home she learned that her husband, Buddy, had been at Shoreline Park with others looking at Walters's photos; when the group left Walters alone to fetch hot chocolate, they saw flashes of light and rushed back to find he had taken Polaroids of a UFO. She denied Walters was the sort of man to stage a hoax, and reported another sighting on 8 January 1990. The Santa Rosa County Commissioner John Broxson said he and several acquaintances saw "something bright ... hovering above his home: a parade of lights of different colors and intensity".^[1]

Jeff Thompson said that on 8 February 1989 he and his 12-year-old son watched a craft about three feet wide and two feet high for ten minutes outside his home at Tiger Point; when he came within 30 feet with a flashlight, "the top of the craft turned white and made a crackling noise" and it "just dissipated". He also said he had seen a UFO chased by two military jets on the day of one of Walters's encounters. A tollbooth operator, Jerry Thompson (no relation), said he and others watched thirteen pink-lit objects blinking in an unfamiliar pattern, and residents reported eight helicopters chasing a UFO on 8 January 1990, which the U.S. Navy denied.^[1]

The model

On 10 June 1990 Craig Myers reported in the Pensacola News Journal that a model closely resembling the UFO in the photos, made of "four plastic foam plates and some drafting paper", had been found in Walters's former home. It was 9 inches (23 cm) across and 5 inches (13 cm) deep, with a blue plastic gel, a six-inch orange paper ring, a 3.5-inch plastic tube, a two-inch paper ring between the plates, and electrical tape at the bottom. "Carefully drawn and punched out 'windows'" ran around two-thirds of it. On the back of the drafting paper were handwritten dimensions for a house on Jamestown Drive, in what the paper said appeared to be Walters's handwriting; county building permits showed he had built at least two homes on that street. News Journal photographers experimenting with the model were able to "nearly duplicate" some of the photos in Walters's book.^[1][3]

The model had been under insulation in the attic since the family moved out in 1988, and the new owner did not mention it until a journalist interviewed him about UFOs; he signed a sworn statement that he did not know who made it. Walters refused a polygraph but signed a sworn statement denying any knowledge of it, saying "UFO debunkers" or the U.S. government had planted it. He later told the News Journal that a former neighbour had told his wife that a stranger with out-of-state licence plates had entered the garage, pulled down the attic stairs, gone up and left suddenly. Gulf Breeze police said no break-ins had been reported at the house.^[1]

Fallout

The discovery split the UFO community, with Walters's supporters repeating that the model was planted. Robert Boyd, formerly a MUFON director, later said he was forced out of the group for doubting the photos, and the News Journal columnist Mark Curtis wrote that two MUFON investigators who confirmed the hoax were "literally chased out of MUFON by its remaining 'true believers'". Contrary to his supporters' claims that he had refused money, the News Journal reported that Walters had received a $200,000 book advance and been offered $450,000 by ABC for miniseries rights. Ed and Frances Walters published The Gulf Breeze Sightings in 1990. The paper also reported that Walters had served eighteen months in prison for a 1967 forgery and car theft charge; Governor Bob Martinez pardoned him in March 1990.^[1][2]

In a February 1993 column revisiting the case, Curtis reported that a friend of the Walters family, Tommy Smith, had come forward saying he had "witnessed Ed faking the UFO pictures" as a practical joke. Curtis also reported that the Walterses had divorced in November 1992, splitting $2.5 million in assets that he believed came from the hoax.^[1][4]

Later interest

UFO sightings around the Pensacola Bay Bridge continued into 1991, drawing crowds of skywatchers with cameras and microphones. MUFON held its first annual UFO symposium in nearby Pensacola in 1990, attracting hundreds of people, and the conference continued for the rest of the decade; a local travel agent said she booked 600 flights for it. Gulf Breeze's tourism director said the free publicity drew tourists and UFO sightseers, and merchants began selling UFO goods. MUFON disconnected its Gulf Breeze hotline in 2000 after the sightings stopped. The "Gulf Breeze Six", a group of U.S. military deserters, were in the area around the time of the conference, though it is not clear any of them attended.^[1]

In the media

The case was featured on Unsolved Mysteries on 5 October 1988 and in the TV special UFO Cover-Up... Live!, and in 1989 Shirley McConnell described her sighting on A Current Affair; Unsolved Mysteries, Inside Edition and A Current Affair filmed more UFO segments there in July 1990. In a 1994 episode of The X-Files, Fox Mulder tells Dana Scully that the first time he saw the Gulf Breeze photos he knew they were fakes. The Gulf Breeze singer Ken Manning won Best Music Video at the Florida Motion Picture & Television Association's Crystal Reel awards in 1999 for his song "Gulf Breeze UFO".^[1]

On the UAP Timeline

• Bruce Maccabee's CIA talk (1987) (7 July 1987) — Navy physicist Bruce Maccabee says he lectured about UAP at CIA headquarters.
• Oechsler on Navy EMP experiments (18 August 2014) — Bob Oechsler links Navy EMP experiments to UAP recoveries.

References

Facts in this article are drawn in part from the Wikipedia article “Gulf Breeze UFO incident”, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.