Alien Vacation in Gulf Breeze, Florida

You’d think a Florida beach community on the Gulf of Mexico, where aliens are reported to have buzzed Hardee’s, Food World and the Naval Live Oaks Visitors Center, would have cashed in on that media circus. But Gulf Breeze, 9 miles from Pensacola on the Florida Panhandle, looks rather normal.

Hey, this is supposed to be Florida, and the town with “the most astounding multiple sightings of UFO’s in U.S. history” witnessed by thousands of people. So where are the flying saucer fast-food joints and the “I Was Abducted by Aliens” Tee-shirts and all that tourist clobber?

Admittedly, I’m arriving in Gulf Breeze some years after the amazing “Skywatch Era” of 1987-88, when crowds of locals gathered nightly for “UFO picnics” along Soundside Drive, bringing shrimp and strawberries and saucer-shaped “UFO cookies,” a local treat. With video cams pointed skyward, there’d be silence, and then a rush of excited shouts and screams: “There she is, oh my god! What is that baby doin’? I see two of ‘em. Three of ‘em! Moving to the west, slowly, oh whoa whoa whoa whoa! Y’all see that green halo? Go baby go!”

These were the days when every kid in town carried a camera, and ABC, FOX and Nippon and Fuji Japanese TV cameras were rolling at marathon vigils in Skyline Park; when busloads of UFO “tourists” —five at a time—came from all over to see the landmarks—the circle of fried grass on the Gulf Breeze High School playing field, the lonely stretch of the “Miracle Strip Parkway” where the photo of the hovering UFO was shot, and the picnic table at Skyline Park where Ed Walters was “zapped.”

You’d think a Florida beach community on the Gulf of Mexico, where aliens are reported to have buzzed Hardee’s, Food World and the Naval Live Oaks Visitors Center, would have cashed in on that media circus, with simulated abductions, rides in saucer-shaped hot air balloons and Emerald Coast tourist kiosks serviced by little green men. At the very least, a museum documenting the Gulf Breeze drama (witnesses vs. debunkers) and hands-on computer exhibits which let you hoax your own UFO photos and virtual aliens to go with them. But Gulf Breeze, nine miles from Pensacola on Florida’s Panhandle, with its K-Mart Country “downtown” and Leave-It-To-Beaver surburban backyards, looks rather normal.

The sugary white sand beaches of the Gulf Island National Seashore offer spectacular swimming and surfing. And should you want to go hunting with muzzleloaders for skunk or armadillo (yes, Florida cuisine can be weird.) Eglin Airforce Base, the largest in the world, There’s a territory consecrated just for weapons development, and another devoted to outdoor recreation and nature preservation, i.e. kill the humans and save the manatees.

Eglin Public Relations propaganda calls this schizoid mandate: “Enhancing Environmental Quality while Maintaining National Defense Capability”—and if I remember my UFO lore, rumour has it that crashed saucers are stored in Eglin’s hangars.

Gulf Breeze looks normal. But there’s a twilight zone feel about it, as if what was happening above ground went underground.

It all started when the weekly Gulf Breeze Sentinel published the light-blasted laboratory-analyzesd Polaroids of a UFO taken on November 11, 1987 at 5p.m. by a local building contractor. (Hundreds of other witnesses reported sighting similar crafts.) The contractor eventually revealed that his family life was being turned topsy-turvy by very close repeated contacts with a UFO and its occupants. He described strange voices and humming sounds in his head, abduction attempts, and being zapped with a blue beam by the craft that buzzed his house.

Ed Walters and Frances Walters finally broke their silence and anonymnity and “came out” with the meticulously documented story and photos in The Gulf Breeze Sightings, a disturbing page-turner that actually gave me a migraine headache when I read it.

These days Gulf Breeze UFO sightings have died down to a mere two a week, but sky watchers still gather at Skyline Park, and the local Chamber of Commerce still gets calls from tourists asking about the UFO’s. Boots Eckert, a retired high school teacher who is not Abductee Support Group Chairman for MUFON (Mutual UFO Network) once gave free informal tours of Gulf Breeze, and still enjoys showing people around.

Boots is as spunky and likable as her name. She’s committed to her work with MUFON but she doesn not go sky-watching every night. (“Honey, I got a life!”) Nor does she talk about her counseling work with those suffering from apparent abduction syndrome. It’s not her concern to substantiate abduction stories—as if anyone could—but to facilitate meetings for those who feel the need to share their experiences.

First off, Boots cruises by Gulf Breeze High School to show me her old classroom and the house where Ed Walters used to live. Between the classroom and the nice suburban house with swimming pool is the school playing field where the 12-foot circle of dead Bermuda grass appeared one May morning in 1988. From that day on, her pupils talked about nothing but UFO’s that they or their parents or friends of friends had been seeing—in the sky or zipping up out of the Pensacola Bay.

“Shark zapped by Unidentified Diving Object” I joke, with a touch of irreverence.

Boots tells me about how the University of Florida’s nematode assay of soil samples taken from the circle of grass showed no trace of disease, chemicals or burning. “It was a year and a half before anything new grew back there (amazing in Florida!!!) — even with fertilizers. The debunkers argued that a hoaxer made the circle by jumping up and down all night long on a trampoline!”

Call me an open-minded skeptic when it comes to UFO stuff—”seein’ is believin”—but the trampoline theory is positively zooey.

Next stop on Boots tour is the isolated stretch on Route 191-B where on January 12, 1998 at 5:45 p.m. Walters snapped a photo after his truck was “stopped” by a hovering craft that “lit up the road and shot down blue beams.” As a special souvenir, Boots gives me some first generation copies of the Polaroids made in 1988 by Ed Walters, of the crown-shaped UFO in the sky over the road, beaming down a bluish light, then hovering only a few feet over the yellow dividing line on the highway. Whether they are real or not, I feel a certain amazement at having the photos in my hands.

Boots and I get out of the car and walk over to the blue spiral painted in the middle of the road to mark the spot where the UFO supposedly hovered. The blue spiral looks eerie, yet oddly mundane, as if someday it could figure in our repetoire of road symbols along with bicycles and wheelchairs. I step inside the spiral and Boots takes a souvenir snap of me, chuckling about the landing pad for UFO’s that somebody has built in Elmhurst, Illinois. But as we get back in her car she says, “I never ever drive here at night.”

The UFO House in Pensacola Beach

Driving back from the most beautiful place to go sky-watching that Boots knows of—Santa Rosa Island (45 miles of white quartz sand beach and emerald green breakers) my eyes pop out at the strangest dwelling I’ve ever seen. It’s straight out of Plan Nine From Outer Space, Ed Wood’s 1959 black and white cult sci-fi flick featuring alien UFO’s hoaxed with paper plates. Before me was a house shaped like a flying saucer!

The weird thing is that this fiberglass “spaceship” perched atop a concrete block structure at 1304 Panferio Drive was built in the 1968 before all the multiple sightings began. As if ET energies had been floating around Gulf Breeze even back then… I learned that it was a pre-fab “Futuro” house designed by Finnish architect Matti Suuronen and it may very well be the most-photographed house in America. And it’s pretty hurricane proof as well.

The porthole curtains are flapping in the breeze. I walk up the strange launch pad ramp and look for a door to knock. Round and round I go, until I finally spot a discrete keyhole and a hatch. What a weird door to come home to every night. What furniture goes with round walls? I knock on the metal hull. No answer.

An hour later Boots and I meet some of her MUFON friends for dinner at Chris’ Seafood Grille. Over coleslaw, French fried sweet potatoes, alligator tails—yes!—and iced tea. Art Hufford, a chemical engineer, is showing me his photo album of Gulf Breeze UFO’s. The talk is about “sky quakes” and “hyperjump” phenomena—a sort of pre-briefing before heading out for a sky watch at Skyline Park.

Skyline Park is on the waterfront, at the edge of. spooky forest of live oaks shrouded with Spanish moss, frequented by snakes and alligators. The gathering this chilly night is congenial, and I’m happy to meet Ann, Mary, Ginny, Carol, Kent, Tom and Hi-I’m-Ray-I’m-New. I ask what they do for a living, and get answers like “servicing UFO’s when they land,” “UFO traffic controller” and “alien spy.” I’m regaled with stories of UFO’s and flashing lights sighted—yikes!—only 50 feet away. But all I have to describe, I say, is the bright red thing I saw today flying high over a kid on the beach on Santa Rosa Island, tied to a string.

Boots is driving me back to my hotel at Fort Walton Beach when suddenly she throws caution to the wind and heads for the lonely road and the blue-painted spiral, so I can see it at night. I know that nothing will be there, but my heart is pounding anyway. Just as we approach the long dark stretch of the blind bend, a bright yellow light flashes out at us through the trees and we scream—at the YIELD sign!

After saying our reluctant goodbyes, I take a restless midnight walk on the beach in front of my hotel to ponder it all. The March moon is full. With the crunchy squeak of crystal sands under my feet, I walk down to the water’s edge. I pace for a while, then looking up from the softly lapping waves, I see reflected in the moonlight what I didn’t see on the way down: hundreds of silvery luminous discs landed on the sands. And I scream again—at the jellyfish.