1990: Gulf Breeze UFO Mystery

In 1990 the best-selling book The Gulf Breeze Sightings was published. It told the story of Ed Walters, who had produced clear color photographs of UFOs over the coastal town of Gulf Breeze in Florida. The Polaroid pictures were supposedly taken during November and December 1987.

With release of the book the case caused a furor in the UFO community. Were they genuine or crude fakes?

The pictures depicted close-up shots of circular structured objects featuring lights and windows. In one a blue beam is projected from the UFO towards Walters' house. Critics said that the objects resembled the reflection that sometimes occurs in a window from a lighted lampshade, but investigators from MUFON (The Mutual UFO Network) paraded the pictures as genuine.

The most interesting photograph featured an object hovering over a road, projecting a circle of light down onto it. Skeptics accused Walters of creating double exposures. Unfortunately, Polaroid film does not produce a negative, so no meaningful analysis could be carried out.

Dr Bruce Maccabee, an optical physicist, constructed a stereoscopic camera and gave it to Walters. In March 1988 he took several new pictures. Analysis by Maccabee indicated the objects were small. A sketch of a model UFO was found in Walters' house, suggesting foul play, but he passed a lie detector test, and many others in Gulf Breeze claimed that they too had seen and photographed UFOs. The case was never resolved.

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