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Good evening. In 1947, American pilot Kenneth Arnold reported seeing objects flying in formation

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at nearly 2,000 miles an hour. The media leapt on two words he used to describe what he saw,

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flying sources. And so began the modern UFO phenomenon. Today there is one small town in

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America where UFO mania has swept through the local population, sparking off an unprecedented frenzy

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of reported sightings and bizarre claims. Could hundreds of witnesses be mistaken,

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or is there really something out there?

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The town of Gulf Breeze spends its time basking in the subtropical sun of the Florida Panhandle.

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Separated from the mainland, it wallows in the superheated waters of the Gulf of Mexico. Nothing

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much used to happen in this small, atlantic town, but on November 11, 1987, a new storm hit town

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that would change the lives of some of the residents forever.

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My thoughts were to catch a picture of it as it went overhead.

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We're seeing something that we're obviously seeing, but we have no concept of what it is

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that we're seeing.

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It was a reader's contribution to a local Gulf Breeze newspaper, which sparked off a unique

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phenomenon which would draw in tens of thousands of people.

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I returned to the office one day, and my secretary said that a man had brought in some UFO photographs

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taken in Gulf Breeze. I looked at them and there were polaroids, and I felt, how do you fake a

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polaroid? My folks stopped in the office and I said, you're not going to believe what we're

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getting ready to run the paper this week. And they looked at the photographs and they said,

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where'd you get these photographs? That's what we saw. And it turns out that they saw the same

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night, the same crowd. I lost all inhibitions about going big with the story because if you

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can't trust your mother, who can you trust? The story had a major impact on the town. TV and

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newspaper reporters flocked to the area to investigate. They weren't the only ones looking

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into it. Don Ware, a retired colonel in the US Air Force, and Charles Flanagan were sent by MUFON,

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the international UFO organization, to investigate the origin of the polaroids.

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In those photos, there were two key details that was of primary interest to me. One was an

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electrical junction box that sets high on the pole. And the other was where the photographer had to

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have been standing behind a cedar tree. The photos have been delivered by a local man,

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Ed Walters, who said they'd been taken by a neighbor who wanted to remain known only as Mr. X.

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We were kind of concerned about finding out exactly which neighbor of Ed's was Mr. X and where the

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pictures were taken. We drove streets at all times of the day looking for those two key objects,

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eventually after seven or eight days we found the location. Long behold, it turned out to be

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Ed's front yard. Ed Walters was a well-known man in Gulf Breeze, a pillar of the community. He

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employed over 200 people in his successful building firm and had a good reputation, something he

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didn't want to lose. I was concerned the UFO stigma would stick and certainly you just don't want

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to be known as the general contractor who sees UFOs. So when I first went to the newspaper I said,

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oh, a friend of mine, you know, but of course, you know, the friend of mine story just never does hold

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up. With Ed Walters admitting he had taken the Polaroids, the move on investigators moved up a

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gear. Had no idea at all at that point how big this case may may become. January 7, 1988. But

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as with all investigations, we must remain skeptical but with an open mind. Mr. Walters,

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you mind telling us how you came to take these photographs? Our ideal in concrete and steel and

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real life and to look out my window at my office at my house and see something unusual

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didn't necessarily bother me because normally you would explain it away.

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And I got up from my desk and kind of looked through the window and just behind the trees.

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So I grabbed a camera, a little Polaroid camera I use on job sites. The more time I looked at it,

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which this was all happening very quickly, the more I realized that this was not something I could

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explain away. A lot of thoughts went through my mind. Oh my goodness, could I really be looking at a UFO?

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This was a very magnificent looking craft. Silent, wingless.

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The UFO turned and started in my direction. My thoughts were to catch a picture of it as it

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went overhead. This strange blue beam came out of it and struck me. Having said that,

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you must realize that that sounds bizarre to my ears. So I know that somebody listening to me say

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I was struck by a blue beam. Their eyes have got to roll back in their head and go, oh my goodness,

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this is true. From the initial meeting with Ed Walters, he was extremely cooperative. I found

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him to be a very detailed individual and I enjoyed working with him. I would ask Ed the same question

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two or three times only. I would word it in different ways and always it came up with the same conclusion.

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Ed Walters' pictures also attracted the interest of Dr. Bruce McAbee,

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an optical physicist with the U.S. Navy. He's worked, among other things, on the Strategic

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Defense Initiative or Star Wars project. He spent over 30 years investigating UFO sightings.

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A lot of time was spent on the first photograph to determine whether or not it could have been

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created as a simple double exposure seemed to be a, if not a legitimate photo, if it was a hoax,

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it was extremely difficult. George Lucas could probably do with the strange light company that he

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runs, but Ed Walters couldn't do with his little Polaroid. But not everyone was impressed.

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Ed was accused of hoaxing and publicly ridiculed in the press. The story might have ended there

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until another witness came forward, Church Elder Art Hufford. They were putting front page

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headlines about UFO experts declaring Gulf Breeze photographs of hoax and claiming that it was

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something that somebody had done in a dark room with trick photography. And that made me a little

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angry because I knew there was no trick photography or mirrors on the windshield of my car.

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Art claimed to have witnessed the same UFO as Ed photographed just a few miles away on the same day.

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My wife and I had been in town and setting up tables at our church. As we were driving towards

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our home, suddenly up ahead, I saw this craft hovering above trees and I pointed out to my wife

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and we watched this thing as I drove toward it. It looked like nothing we had ever seen before.

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This oval crown shape looking craft had a very bright white light on the top.

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And the base of the craft was emitting a bright white light as well.

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That's not a helicopter, that's not a point. And it was just hovering there above trees,

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probably two, maybe three blocks in front of our car. My concept at the time of people who

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had reported UFO sightings, I always thought that was probably somebody who had had too much to drink

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or something. It became apparent that it was not just Ed Walters UFO because many, many other

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witnesses came forward. City council people, ministers, so many people that we felt like it

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was a whole community wide thing. From November of 1987 to July of 1988, there were probably

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well over a hundred sightings with several hundred witnesses involved. The floodgates had opened.

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It seemed that everyone had a UFO story. I saw what I thought was a shooting star and it went

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like this and just stopped. And then all of a sudden another one came like this. The red light

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came in and it pulsated for a while and then it turned bright white. And there was this huge

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orange globe hanging there. It was about like four stories high and it was hovering over the water.

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I was walking and looked up and I saw a big shining green oval shining right through the

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cloud. It was very vivid color, very bright neon green. It was a very bright red light,

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most like a traffic light up in the sky almost all by itself and it just came in from nowhere.

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It terrified me because I was afraid to keep on walking but I didn't, there's nowhere I could

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go and nobody could hear me if anything was going to happen to me. My wife was driving me to the

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post office, that's where it was. And she noticed something shooting in front of our car and she

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said, Ken did you see that? And I could only yell at him saying look out the window, look out the

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side window, there's something out there, look out there, there's a plane or a helicopter.

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It appeared like you could see through some layers of it although it wasn't totally

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transparent like a marble would be, okay. And inside there appeared to be some swirling gas or fluids.

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Around the center of it there was one light that was chasing around you like Christmas tree lights

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and this object was just hovering. I wasn't really afraid, I couldn't use that term just sheer

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amazement because I just couldn't believe, you know you can't believe your eyes.

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I spent seven years in the Air Force, I've seen many different aircraft.

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We're seeing something that we're obviously seeing but we have no concept of what it is that we're seeing.

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The atmosphere in Gulf Breeze started to reach Fever pitch with people desperate to see their own UFO.

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Residents started to congregate on the beaches at night and became known as the sky watchers.

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Oh my god!

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Shoot her up, shoot her up, shoot her up.

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Something's pointing down now.

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Oh, a big red. It's coming towards us, isn't it?

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You can see that with my naked eye.

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And it's shooting out to the white.

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They started going out on watches and from there on it's just been a wild and crazy ride of watching UFOs in the sky around here.

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There's two of them! Did you see the white? Did you see the white light spot in the middle with the ring on it?

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Look, look, look!

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Oh, look, it's a rider rider!

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Oh my god!

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Yo, look! It's right there!

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Yo, baby, yo, come on over here and show us some more.

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Come on, mama!

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Oh, don't go back, come back.

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That baby went in warp drive.

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They did strange things, moved around strange motions in the sky.

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Sometimes they would fall and disappear, sometimes they would stop and turn rip.

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At times you could see the object revolving.

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Lully, what's going on up there?

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If this is a model, it's a model.

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Cut something hanging out the side!

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Damn!

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Good lord!

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What is that baby doing?

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And one of the things we were trying to do was to see if we could get some sort of interaction with the UFOs themselves.

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Two waves of UFOs, bright cherry red lights appeared.

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They had this handheld 500,000 candle power light and by flashing that light three times at the UFO, the UFO blinked back three times.

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Look, look, look!

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Very profound to have that interaction.

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So there's some intelligence on the other side of this thing that's aware of us and is responding to us.

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So what were the sky watchers seeing?

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They believed that they were UFOs, but was there another answer?

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They wanted to be a part of the crowd or to be a part of what's going on and I think this may have something to do with some people's experiences.

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There are some people on the periphery of the experience that will feel like they have a need to be a part of what's actually happening.

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We were getting calls of people seeing a very bright red light or a very bright white light and it disappears.

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We were getting calls and these people say, okay, it's over by the park.

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So we go there and we look up in the sky and try to see if it was there or not and of course when we got there it wasn't there.

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If people really had seen something, could the answer be found closer to home?

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Gulf Breeze has one of the world's highest concentrations of air bases which makes it almost impossible not to see an aircraft when you look up at the sky.

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A large number of people, perhaps even as much as 80% of the more people observed, crafted in the area, are simply observing misidentified objects such as the planet Venus or meteorite or simply airplanes.

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Observed by an untrained eye and we identify a lot of reports as being aircraft.

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But ex-USFF pilot, Bland Pugh, believes he has pictures which prove otherwise.

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I started out taking fast photography, if you will, using a thousand millimeter film.

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All I was getting, no matter what I did, was a red light and or a red light with an orange center.

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I knew there had to be something else there so the only thing that I could think of was to go to a time exposure.

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We noticed that there was some movement left to right, left to right.

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We could see that these oscillations were in a set pattern.

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Bland also photographed airplanes comparing their straight flight patterns with the erratic path of the UFOs.

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I spent almost five years in the military, in the Air Force.

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I've seen enough airplanes, I've been in enough airplanes, I was a pilot at one time.

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You know, I'm sorry, they're not airplanes.

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More intriguing are a set of pictures taken of a reported incident in January 1994.

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These three F-15 Eagle fighters were claimed to have approached an unidentified craft hovering over Santa Rosa Sound Gulf Breeze.

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There are three jets, two high and one low, coming in towards this object.

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And it turns out that the photo shows the jet actually blocking part of the image of the UFO.

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This jet flew along and actually made a little bit of a turn around the thing indicating the guy must have seen it.

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If the picture isn't faked, could there be a more down-to-earth explanation for the object in the sky?

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I am now convinced that some major contractors in the US of A are building vehicles that appear similar to some of the UFO sightings.

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Gulf Breeze has a population of 30,000 people. I don't think that the military is going to use a populated area of this size to experiment.

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The military remained tight-lipped on the affair.

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Their only comment is that all investigations into UFOs ceased in 1969.

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Their silence has been fueled for the conspiracy theorists.

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Top of their list was an incident involving six soldiers from the 701st Army Intelligence Unit based in Augsburg, West Germany.

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Their job had been to decipher highly sensitive and top-secret radio and satellite transmissions.

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A group of people who turned out to be military intelligence people who had just plain left their observation post in Germany.

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And come to the United States, they were missing in action for five days. The government didn't know where they were.

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No one knew why on July 9, 1990, the unit deserted, all where they'd gone, until one of them turned up in Gulf Breeze and was arrested by patrol officer Donald Stevens.

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We talked to this guy, interviewed him, and he just kept telling us, you know, you just don't know what you got.

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And finally, he gave in and told us that him and five other deserters from the Army had stolen some computer chips and some high-classified documents involved in UFOs, documents that the government had, and these guys were going to just blow this whole thing open.

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The rest of the deserters were rounded up at a nearby house. The question on everyone's lips was, what did they know?

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The NIA was involved, Naval Intelligence, CIA was involved, the FBI was involved, the Army Intelligence, you know, and we had, I bet you, at least 10 to 15 different federal agencies in our police department interviewing these people at the same time.

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An anonymous letter was sent to the Army and the media demanding the release of the soldiers. If not, documents linking the government with UFOs would be released.

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Four days later, the soldiers were freed and given an honorable discharge. Conspiracy theories, thousands of sightings. Were they just a product of the imaginations of people brought up on Star Trek and ET?

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There has been a suggestion that many of the sightings are a result of people sort of, I wouldn't say mass hysteria, but the excitement of seeing things in the sky.

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Wow! What is that?

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I was riding my bicycle and a craft did come down and take me and they were doing surgery on my knees.

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Whether the stories are true or not, it certainly seems that many people in Gulf Breeze believe they've had a close encounter. This has led to the foundation of a most unlikely support group.

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I started this support group about three years ago for people who felt that they had been abducted by aliens and taken aboard a craft and had medical procedures formed on them, then brought back.

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What I was was I was standing at my kitchen window and one of the little fellows was outside the window, eye-high, even though he was really a short fellow. Somehow he was eye-to-eye with me and I'm pounding on the blinds and just screaming at him.

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Go away, you can't come in. And all his reaction was just kind of thinking to me, well gee, I thought we had some kind of a relationship here. He was surprised that he thought I would ask them in.

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People can come together and talk with each other about their experiences. So many times if they talk to other people about it, people tell them that they're crazy. This helps them to talk with each other without fear of ridicule.

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The little short black ones took us to the ship and one of the beings came and put their hand on my forehead and the pain just totally went away. It was like a feeling of euphoria. It was the most wonderful feeling.

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The support group shows just how far UFO mania has snowballed in Gulf Breeze. But there's an even more startling barometer of the locals' belief that there is something out there. They're joining 5,000 people across America who have taken out insurance against alien abduction.

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If you find that difficult to believe, take a look at this. It's a policy form issued by the American UFO Abduction Insurance Company of Altamonte Springs, Florida.

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Motto, beam me up, I'm covered. For $20, your relatives have the comfort of knowing that they will get $10 million if you're carried off. And the only proof required is the signature of the abducting alien. Good night.

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.