What happened
In November 1987 the weekly Gulf Breeze Sentinel printed Polaroid photographs of a glowing, many-windowed craft with a bright ring on its underside hovering over a quiet Florida bayside town. They came from a local building contractor, at first identified only as 'Mr. Ed', later as Ed Walters. He said the craft had paralysed him with a blue beam, that he saw beings and was lifted off the ground, and over the next six months he and his family reported about nineteen encounters, producing dozens of photographs and a video. The Mutual UFO Network's director called it the best case the group had ever had, optical physicist Bruce Maccabee thought the photos might be real, and Walters published a book on the sightings in 1990. Other residents began reporting lights. Then in June 1990 the Pensacola News Journal revealed that the new owners of Walters' former house had found a small model under attic insulation, made of foam plates and drafting paper with cut-out windows, which its photographers used to recreate the pictures closely.
The official explanation
The model, about nine inches across, matched the craft in Walters' photos; the drafting paper used for its windows carried house-plan dimensions for a street where Walters had built homes, in what the News Journal said appeared to be his handwriting. The paper's photographers reproduced several of his images with it. A family friend, Tommy Smith, later came forward at a press conference to say he had seen Walters fake the pictures. CUFOS researchers noted unevenly spaced windows and a waviness suggesting reflections, JPL image analyst Robert Nathan suspected double exposures, and forensic photo expert William Hyzer reached the same conclusion. Walters denied making the model, signed a sworn statement to that effect, and said it had been planted.
The anomalous case
Walters has always denied making the model and suggested it was planted by debunkers or the government after he moved out; he signed a sworn statement denying any knowledge of it, and the new owner did not report finding it until a journalist came asking. He passed a February 1988 polygraph in which the examiner concluded he believed his photos were real, and Bruce Maccabee had him photograph with two Polaroid cameras on a beam to allow measurement, and argued that other residents' sightings mattered more than the photos. Dozens of local people, including a city councilwoman and a county commissioner, reported lights or objects in the area during the same period, and MUFON's director at the time considered those sightings proof the phenomenon was real. Those reports are independent of any single model.
The strongest argument that this was something genuinely unknown or classified, with each claim attributed to the person who made it.
Sources
- Gulf Breeze UFO incident Wikipedia
- The Gulf Breeze UFO (Gary P. Posner) gpposner.com
Witness reports elsewhere
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