Additional Information

Gulf Breeze Florida & UFO’s

On November 11, 1987, Ed Walters, a contractor in Gulf Breeze, Florida, was allegedly immobilized “briefly by a blue beam”, after which he took five Polaroids of an object in the sky outside his home. Walters reported seeing the object hover about 200 feet (61 m) above the ground, describing it as being “‘right out of a Spielberg movie’”. He claimed to have made multiple subsequent visits to the UFO, recording videotape and taking 32 photographs of the object.

Walters further reported witnessing the craft land on Soundside Drive and “deposit five aliens on the road”. He stated that one of the aliens stared into his window, at which point the aliens communicated with him in English and Spanish via telepathy and presented him with a book showing pictures of dogs. A blue beam of light then caused him to be lifted three feet (0.91 m) off the ground. Walters stated that the immobilization in the blue beam happened again on December 2, 1987.

On February 7, 1988, Walters allegedly photographed his wife attempted to outrun the blue beam. Walters also claimed to have communicated further with the aliens; he or his family reported nineteen sightings or encounters over time. On May 1, 1988, Walters reported feeling the alien presence while he was at Shoreline Park after midnight, saw the UFO and took a photo of it, then “lost consciousness for an hour”. Walters stated that the UFO leaked some kind of liquid that continued to boil even nineteen days after he captured it.

After the Sentinel published Walters’ photographs, both the paper and the Mutual UFO Network (MUFON) received dozens of reports of sightings in the Gulf Breeze area. Various reports described an orange glow, orange or blue beams of light, and an oval or oblong craft. One woman reported being awakened at 2:00am to find an orange-lit UFO in her yard. In July 1988, Fenner McConnell and his wife Shirley claimed to have seen an “disc-shaped” airplane with no wings flying over water, with landing lights shining on their pier. Shirley later recognized the alleged craft from the Sentinel articles.

Brenda Pollak, a Gulf Breeze councilwoman and acquaintance of Walters, reported seeing an orange light along the treetops while driving across the Pensacola Bay Bridge on March 17, 1988. When she got home to tell her husband Buddy, she learned he had been at Shoreline Park where he and others were looking at Walters’ photographs. When the group left to get hot chocolate, leaving Walters alone at the park, they saw flashes of light and rushed back to find that he had taken Polaroids of a UFO. Brenda denied that Walters was the sort of man who would perpetuate a hoax. She reported another sighting on January 8, 1990. Another local dignitary, Santa Rosa County Commissioner John Broxson, claimed that he and several acquaintances saw “something bright … hovering above his home: a parade of lights of different colors and intensity.”

Art and Mary Hufford claimed to have seen “something gray, oval and silent fly over the treetops” that stayed in view for several minutes when they were driving in early November 1987, recognizing the object in Walters’ photographs. Jeff Thompson reported that he and his 12-year-old son watched a three-foot-wide (0.91 m) and two-foot-high (0.61 m) craft for about ten minutes outside his Tiger Point residence on February 8, 1989. He approached the craft with a flashlight and when he was “within 30 feet (10 yd; 9.1 m), the top of the craft turned white and made a crackling noise” and then “‘just dissipated’”. Thompson also stated that he watched a UFO being chased by two military jets on the same day as Walters’ alleged UFO encounter. A tollbooth operator, Jerry Thompson (no relation), said that he and a group of people watched thirteen pink-lighted objects blink in a pattern that he could not identify. Residents reported seeing eight helicopters chasing a UFO on January 8, 1990, something the United States Navy denied.