Fringe Florida: Travels Among Mud Boggers, Furries, Ufologists, Nudists, and Other Lovers of Unconventional Lifestyles (35 page)

down. And then his brain was implanted with images of dogs. That’s

proof

right. German shepherds, Labradors, beagles. Man’s best friend. Ed’s

grainy photos were published in the local weekly, the
Gulf
Breeze
Sen-

tinel
, which had a circulation of nearly three thousand. That was also

about the population of Gulf Breeze in 1987.

Ed maintained he was being downright stalked by aliens. An array

of UFOs appeared at his home in various colors and shapes. He even

saw them at Gulf Breeze’s Shoreline Park. He pointed to dead circles of

grass in his yard and at the park as evidence they were there.

His stories became more bizarre. He claimed these gray creatures

communicated with him telepathically in Spanish, which would make

sense in multicultural south Florida but seems an odd choice in Flori-

a

da’s “Redneck Riviera.” They even tried to abduct him. Once, a four-foot

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gray alien carrying a wand of light showed up inside his house. All the

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while, his photos and stories continued to be published in the small

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weekly, and an increasing number of other UFO witnesses came for-

eil

ward to add their experiences.

a

Mainstream media picked up the sensational story. Major televi-

58

sion networks, reporters from as far away as Japan, and countless

1

UFO researchers descended on the town like flies on raw meat. Walters

even got a book deal, which allegedly paid him a $200,000 advance. The

book,
The
Gulf
Breeze
Sightings:
The
Most
Astounding
Multiple
Sightings
of
UFOs
in
History
, sold like tickets to an Elvis Presley concert.

By 1990, Gulf Breeze had become an intergalactic hotspot. The Mu-

tual UFO Network, MUFON, which claims to be the world’s largest

UFO investigatory association, held its International Symposium at

nearby Navarre Beach. But
Pensacola
News
Journal
reporter Craig My-

ers came up with what many consider the coup de grâce for Walters’s

credibility—a small UFO model made out of Styrofoam plates and pa-

per that the new owner of the ranch-style house had accidently discov-

ered in the attic. It looked almost identical to the UFOs in Walters’s

early photos. The newspaper’s following story was picked up around

the world. The model, along with a host of other unearthed details,

strongly suggested Walters had committed one of the biggest hoaxes

in UFO history.

You might think that would have put an end to the Gulf Breeze UFO

hysteria. But it didn’t. More people came out of the shadows to de-

fend Walters, claiming that they’d seen things, too. A local UFO group

formed and began hosting sky watches and regular UFO powwows. As

many as 150 people would show up at the end of the Pensacola Bay

proof

Bridge and at Shoreline Park in Gulf Breeze to search the skies for er-

ratically moving lights. A small group of diehards came out nightly, 365

days a year. They watched when it was muggy and hot and when chaff-

ing cold winds blew in over the water. They brought lawn chairs, brown-

bag dinners, coolers, and increasingly sophisticated camera equipment.

It became as much a social event as a scientific undertaking.

The local tourism board passed out fliers identifying places to watch

for aliens. Local entrepreneurs sold glow-in-the-dark alien T-shirts,

rhinestone UFO watches, bumper stickers, and anything else they

could peddle to fascinated tourists.

More than five hundred people officially reported seeing a UFO dur-

adi

ing that era, including a city councilwoman, a county commissioner,

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judges, lawyers, and teachers—respected members of the community.

lF

Dozens reported they’d been taken aboard spaceships. So many, in fact,

egn

that a newly formed UFO group brought in a psychologist to counsel

irF

them. When he died, a member of the group went back to school and

learned how to do hypnosis herself.

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It was close encounters of UFO mania.

But the sightings abruptly stopped in July 1992. Local UFOs stal-

warts could no longer guarantee tourists a sighting within a week’s

time. The media moved on. The excitement was gone. The aliens had

left town.

Yet they left behind quite a legacy. A robust metaphysical group, Un-

limited Horizons of the Emerald Coast, evolved from the local MUFON

chapter. Its monthly programs still focus heavily on UFOs, extrater-

restrials, and government conspiracies to cover them up. But members

are open to anything from past-life regression to telepathic communi-

cation with dolphins. A few even took a series of dolphin attunement

“pods” and opened their own dolphin healing center in nearby Fort

Walton. They don’t attempt to cure their finned friends; instead, they

try to channel the sea critters’ energies to heal humans.

I spoke with Alan Abel, Unlimited Horizon’s president, who says the

group has about 2,500 members. Between 100 and 150 typically show

up for the monthly presentations. Alan runs a small publishing busi-

ness selling books on Florida and aviation. He wasn’t around during

the heady days of Gulf Breeze’s UFO sightings, but after moving to

Florida he discovered that he may have been abducted by aliens.

Shortly after arriving in Destin, he took a seminar in remote view-

ing, a paranormal experience in itself. During it he realized that he and

proof

his twin brother had been taken aboard an alien spaceship when they

were children back in Indiana. “I always just thought I was dreaming.

They were very realistic and I was dreaming the same thing over and

over,” Alan says. “I dreamed I’m sitting on a stool in this small, round,

white room, wondering where I am. Then all the sudden these electric

doors open. The alien was standing in the doorway. During the seminar

they said that if you dreamt something over and over, it likely had hap-

pened. That hit me like a ton a bricks.”

Though still not 100 percent sure, Alan is thoroughly convinced that

if he was abducted, it’s because he and his twin brother are identical.

“You can’t have better subjects for DNA work than identical twins.”

a

Alan’s twin doesn’t remember any of it, but Alan says that’s not uncom-

re

mon. “Aliens have the power to erase your memory.”

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The Investigators

ila

Alan connects me with a couple of members, former MUFON offi-

78

cers, who investigated the UFO sightings. Heading to the meeting, I

1

half-expect to find people in black stargazer T-shirts and carrying L.

Ron Hubbard sci-fi novels.

But Art Hufford and Don Ware defy my stereotyping. Art looks like

the Presbyterian Church secretary and retired chemical engineer that

he is. His gray hair is close-cropped. He wears pressed khakis, a button-

down shirt, and a heavy Georgia Tech class ring emblazoned with the

Kappa Alpha fraternity symbol.

Don’s a retired lieutenant colonel and former Air Force fighter pilot

with college degrees in mechanical and nuclear engineering. Based on

his resume, I look for a man with extra starch and a deadpan demeanor.

Instead I’m greeted by a small man in a Hawaiian shirt. He has lively

eyes and a frivolity that fits his fascination with birds and other things

that fly. He hands me his business card with the title, “Truthseeker and

Bird Watcher.”

During the sightings era, Art was president of the local MUFON

chapter and Don was the organization’s state president.

Don tells me he saw his first UFO at sixteen, the well-documented

sighting over Washington, D.C., in 1952. He’s spent most of his retire-

ment researching UFOs along with collecting data on birds for the

Audubon Society.

Art, a Pensacola native, was the local MUFON president for eleven

proof

years. He comes across as reserved, speaking in a matter-of-fact tone

with a slight hint of a southern accent. He tells me his belief in UFOs

didn’t begin until he spotted one over Gulf Breeze in 1987, and even

then he didn’t think it was from outer space. He and his wife were rid-

ing back from church when they spotted something in the breaks in

the trees along Pensacola Bay. “We thought, ‘Wow!’ But at this point

I’m still convinced there has got to be some easier explanation. Due to

the limitations of the speed of light, I couldn’t fathom any exterrito-

rial life ever getting here from a faraway star system. So case closed. We

weren’t going to get involved.”

That changed after he saw Walters’s photos in the
Pensacola
News

adi

Journal
along with an article in which a photographic expert declared

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them a hoax. (The model space ship wouldn’t be discovered for another

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couple of years.) Art says Walters’s spaceship looked exactly like the

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one he and his wife spotted, and the photographs were supposedly shot

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on the same day. “I said, ‘I’ve got to come forward.’ Because I don’t

know what’s going on, but it’s not some guy in a dark room hoaxing

881

photographs. There were no double exposures on the windshield of my

car.”

When
Unsolved
Mysteries
came to town in 1988, Art says he began to

believe these glowing crafts were actually from another planet. Most of

the witnesses had never met until they were assembled for the televi-

sion show and yet they reported seeing similar phenomena.

Art bought his first book on UFOs and soon became a local MUFON

investigator. Though there is no academic institute for UFO analysis,

MUFON prides itself on being the next-best thing. They analyze re-

ports of UFOs as tenaciously as a medical diagnostician searches for

causes of a fever of unknown origin, a FUO. MUFON investigators in-

terview witnesses and carry a kit with everything from UFO flashcards

to protractors. They sometimes take samples of grass, soil, water or

even pavement if spaceships have allegedly appeared above. They at-

tempt to rule out sightings of man-made things like airplanes, helicop-

ters, weather balloons or, say, a wayward
Star
Wars
kite.

Art says he determined that most of the Gulf Breeze reports were

true UFOs or what UFOlogists refer to as TRUfos.

He also increasingly came across people who felt they’d been ab-

ducted by aliens. “One woman I talked to was so frightened that she

was unwilling to go into her bedroom at night. She would get in her car

proof

and ride around all night long and come back in the morning, at day-

light, and go to sleep. Her husband thought she was going wacko.”

Art went to the sky watches three or four nights a week. He says it

paid off with about eight to ten sightings a month, and he pulls out a

binder of 8" × 10" photos to show the fruits of his diligence.

The first photos are extremely blurry, and he explains that he ini-

tially used a rickety tripod and didn’t know much about photography.

They look amazingly similar to shots I’d taken of flying embers from a

campfire, colored streams of light zigzagged against a dark background.

But in all fairness, how can you expect to capture a moving light against

a night sky using still photography? Art also points out that at night,

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you can only see what’s illuminated, which rules out the likelihood of

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seeing much definition or gray aliens peeking out the windows.

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As Art leafs through his later photos, the patterns of squiggly lines

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become more defined. “Some of us would leave open our shutter to

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track the UFOs’ paths, because you can see some real interesting

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patterns.” He pulls out one showing three red lights in a triangular

981

Art Hufford in Gulf Breeze’s

Shoreline Park, where

he spent many evenings

watching for UFOs. Photo