UFO wave from Gulf Breeze

US County Santa Rosa with red highlighted location of Gulf Breeze.

As Gulf Breeze UFO incident or Gulf Breeze incident refers to the ufology a series of controversial UFO -Sichtungen above the town Gulf Breeze in the US state of Florida . The wave of sightings took place from November 1987 to February 1989 and initially attracted local and later worldwide media interest . The UFO wave from Gulf Breeze is the subject of intense discussion in the para and pseudosciences .

Place of events

The center of the UFO wave was the small town of Gulf Breeze, which is located near Pensacola Bay on the extreme western tip of Santa Rosa County in the US state of Florida and is a suburb of Pensacola . At the time of the UFO sightings, Gulf Breeze had a population of around 6,000.

Description of the incidents

Ed Walters

The evening of November 11 , 1987 is considered to be the beginning of the wave of sightings. The main witness of the sightings was the local building contractor Ed Walters. According to Walters himself, from home he observed an unusual light in the sky that appeared behind a nearby pine tree. To be able to photograph the object, Walters hurried back to his office, got his Polaroid camera and ran out into the street. He took four pictures, then - according to his own statement - he was caught by a foul-smelling, cobalt blue "beam of light", paralyzed and released again in the driveway of his house. On November 17th, Ed Walters went public with his photos. However, his name was initially withheld in the newspapers because Walters feared public ridicule and damage to his reputation and wanted to protect his family.

In the following weeks Ed Walters photographed very similar UFOs, whereby both he and the press noticed that some UFOs differed slightly in their basic shape. Some of them were more lantern-shaped , others tended more towards the classic saucer shape. The recurring sightings culminated in two outstanding incidents: On the night of December 2, 1987, Walters was ostensibly woken up by the barking of his dog, and when he opened the blinds to the bedroom, he saw a humanoid being about four feet tall in front of his window dressed in some kind of silvery armor. The creature should have left the house immediately. When Walters ran after him, he was caught by the beam of light already mentioned and made immobile. The UFO and the alien are said to have disappeared afterwards.

The second, outstanding incident is said to have happened on the evening of January 12, 1988: When Walters was driving his pickup truck home from his construction company , one of the UFOs allegedly blocked the street. Walters photographed the floating object. This Polaroid photo (registered as Photo # 19 ) achieved worldwide fame and is considered a sample photo in connection with the UFO wave from Gulf Breeze. It shows a clumsy, lampion-shaped object that hovers about half a meter above the asphalt and illuminates the ground. Walters claims that an extraterrestrial being reappeared and approached immediately after the capture. Walters drove away in a panic.

Walters also photographed floating objects that were very small and torpedo-shaped . He also got video recordings of two apparently chasing UFOs over his property. There are a total of 38 color photographs, including 36 night shots and two day shots.

More witnesses

In the course of the further waves of sightings it turned out that Ed Walters was not the only one who had observed unknown objects in flight in and around Gulf Breeze. After Walters went public, other Gulf Breeze and Pensacola citizens volunteered. Some of them submitted photographs themselves showing ring-shaped or rounded lights. Some witnesses even claimed that they were downright followed by UFOs while they were driving.

Description of the UFOs

Depiction of one of the typical UFOs that have been sighted over Gulf Breeze.

The shape of the UFOs that Ed Walters photographed was reminiscent of paper lanterns; they were plump-cylindrical, had a flat dome with a stick-like attachment on top and two thick rings on the underside. Around the mostly dark gray hull there was an alternating arrangement of brightly lit, diamond-shaped as well as black, square windows. The thick, ring-like appendages under the trunk often glowed blue or orange, on the underside the UFOs seemed to be open and a bright, whitish to bluish light shone from them. Or it was just a glowing ring. Most of the images show only one object, only one image shows three very similar UFOs flying in formation. The size of the UFOs was estimated to be about 5 m in diameter and about 3 m high.

Investigation of the Incidents

Investigations by MUFON and CUFOS

Due to the surprisingly sharp and convincing-looking images, the incidents quickly gained media and public interest. The first articles were published in the Gulf Breeze Sentinel . In 1989, during the wave of sightings, the UFO organizations MUFON ( Mutual UFO Network ) and CUFOS ( Center for UFO Studies ) initiated a detailed, public investigation into the incidents.

Both organizations initially agreed that the photos and video recordings were unusual and remarkable. With regard to the credibility of the reports and statements by Ed Walters, however, the organizations split: While MUFON was downright enthusiastic and Ed Walters initially certified credibility, CUFOS was suspicious of the photos and reports from the beginning and suspected that at least a not inconsiderable part of the recordings (if not all) were forged by means of double exposure and material manipulation. CUFOS also criticized that it was strange that Ed Walters alone had so many sightings and was able to present photos.

Walters 'credibility and reputation were severely damaged when a paper mache model of the Gulf Breeze UFO was allegedly discovered in Walters' home in 1990 . Ed Walters had sold his house due to the rampant press coverage. The subsequent owner, Robert Menzer, claims to have found the model during installation work in the roof structure. In addition, a certain Tom Smith Jr. got in touch, claiming that he had observed and assisted Ed Walters in staging and falsifying alleged UFO photos. In addition, Ed Walter claims to have accepted large sums of money for interviews , talk shows, and photo purchases from the press, which further fueled public distrust. Members of the CUFOS had also succeeded in producing double exposures with the help of a UFO model and Polaroid cameras, the images of which were amazingly similar to those of Ed Walters.

A member and expert of the MUFON, Jerry Black , also had serious doubts about Ed Walters' credibility. He found that Ed Walters had paid the well-known, independent physicist Bruce Maccabee large amounts of money for his research and analysis . Therefore Maccabee's objectivity and neutrality should be called into question. Black continued to criticize the fact that many of the experts participating in the investigation were newcomers to their subjects and that they failed to investigate the person of Ed Walter and instead relied solely on public statements and photos published in the press. Ed Walters also admitted to photography experts that he had a basic understanding of the process of double exposures - Walters had apparently withheld this detail from the public and the media. Finally, Black pointed out those photos that did not show the familiar, lantern-like UFO, but one that was shaped like a torpedo.

The photos had been shot with a special lens camera, which in turn had been sealed with wax before handing them over to Ed Walters to prevent mechanical manipulation. The photographed object turned out to be unusually small (compared to the estimated size of the usual UFOs), it was just under 1 m long and approx. 30 cm in diameter. It was also only an estimated 2 meters from the camera. Ed Walters' assertion, made before developing the photos, that he had photographed a mother ship, as well as Bruce Maccabee's later statement that the object was merely a probe or drone , aroused disbelief in the media and the public. For many people, the credibility of the Gulf Breeze UFO wave was finally dismantled with this camera experiment.

Investigations by authorities and the military

Both the military and state authorities such as the CIA and the FBI initially expressed a keen interest in the incidents, but were unimpressed or skeptical and early on expressed their suspicion that the photos were fake. The local air force base of Gulf Breeze and Pensacola, the Naval Air Station Pensacola , announced in response to inquiries from the press and investigation experts that there were no special incidents in the local airspace at any time of the sighting wave.

Reactions of the main witness

Ed Walters protested his innocence and countered the allegations with the results of the investigation by MUFON expert Walt Andrus and the analyzes by Bruce Maccabee. Both had examined the photos and video recordings more closely and, according to their own statements, could not find any traces of double exposures or similar traces of manipulation. Andrus also alleged that Menzel's claim that the UFO model had been found was contradictory and therefore unbelievable: Menzel had claimed to have discovered the hiding place of the model when he was looking for a connection valve for the central water supply to the house - there was such a valve but not in the attic, so Menzel couldn't have found the model there either. Furthermore, it is very unlikely that a forger (such as Ed Walters allegedly was) would leave his models behind in his own house. It is also noticeable that Menzel only reported about the find several months after the discovery, when a journalist mistakenly visited him to interview Ed Walters.

Smith Jr.'s claims were also challenged when it was revealed that his father was practicing a private legal battle against Ed Walters as an attorney . Walters, in turn, was convinced that the Smith family were deliberately trying to damage his credibility. He also voiced conspiracy theories that the authorities and the military tried to damage his credibility from the outset, despite the fact that the local military had shown itself to be cooperative and reluctant.

UFO Wave Impact on Gulf Breeze Community

Despite the strong doubts, the UFO wave from Gulf Breeze is the subject of numerous, divergent discussions and a much-cited topic in talk shows, documentaries and (para) science magazines. Due to the wave of sightings, the Gulf Breeze community gained a previously unknown level of awareness. Even during the wave of sightings, this led to real tourism , which no longer only included journalists and TV camera teams, but also countless UFO believers and onlookers . The then incumbent Mayor of Gulf Breeze, Darryl Gray , and Sheriff Jerry C. Brown , repeatedly expressed their growing displeasure with the onslaught. Their outrage finally went so far that in 1990, leading to Gulf Breeze Three-Mile Bridge ( Engl. Three-Miles Bridge ) has been temporarily suspended. In the para sciences and among ufologists, Gulf Breeze is still today, along with other world-famous locations such as Roswell and Hessdalen , as the “UFO Mecca”. Annual member conferences of MUFON or CUFOS do not take place in Gulf Breeze.

literature

Craig R. Myers: War of the Words . Xlibris Corporation, 2006, ISBN 1465326774 .
William J. Birnes: Aliens in America: A UFO Hunter's Guide to Extraterrestrial Hotspots Across the US Adams Media, Avon 2010, ISBN 1440508720 .
William J. Birnes, Harold Burt: Unsolved UFO Mysteries: The World's Most Compelling Cases of Alien Encounter . Hachette UK, London 2008, ISBN 0446554693 , pp. 102-110.

Web links

Individual evidence

^ ^A ^b ^c ^d ^e William J. Birnes: Aliens in America . Pp. 94-102 & 106.
↑ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f ^g ^h ⁱ ^j Review article on the UFO wave by Gulf Breeze on ufocase.com ; last accessed on January 1, 2014.
↑ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f ^g ^h ⁱ Interview with Jerry Black at the Community Program Center in Covington, Kentucky ; last accessed on January 1, 2014.
↑ Craig R. Myers: War of the Words . P. 153.

[WJB-1] A ^b ^c ^d ^e William J. Birnes: Aliens in America . Pp. 94-102 & 106.

[UCB-2] ↑ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f ^g ^h ⁱ ^j Review article on the UFO wave by Gulf Breeze on ufocase.com ; last accessed on January 1, 2014.

[CIB-3] ↑ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f ^g ^h ⁱ Interview with Jerry Black at the Community Program Center in Covington, Kentucky ; last accessed on January 1, 2014.

[CRM-4] Craig R. Myers: War of the Words . P. 153.