UFO sightings puts Gulf Breeze on extraterrestrial map

Residents recall flashing lights in the sky, while skeptics attribute them to nearby Eglin AFB.
Dusty Ricketts | Northwest Florida Daily News
January 22, 2008

GULF BREEZE - Santa Rosa County Commissioner John Broxson was always a skeptical person.

He never believed the stories of Bigfoot, the Loch Ness Monster or unidentified flying objects.

But something happened about 20 years ago to make him change his mind on at least one of those phenomena.

Broxson was entertaining friends at his home in the Villa Venyce subdivision when something outside caught his attention. He went out for a closer look.

Something bright was hovering above his home: a parade of lights of different colors and intensity. He quickly had his wife, Christina, and their friends come out to see it for themselves. No one knew what they were watching.

The unidentified flying object hovered for several moments before quickly flying straight until it was out of sight.

"Frankly, I saw something that blew my mind," Broxson said. "It's a mystery to me. It just looked like something I wasn't expecting to see."

Broxson was not alone in having an unexplained sighting. It was about 20 years ago when former Gulf Breeze resident Edward Walters first saw a UFO flying above his yard, launching a period of sightings, seekers and fame for the area. Skeptics say the UFOs were part hoax, part imagination and part misidentification -- Eglin Air Force Base is nearby -- but believers are undeterred.

Walters has said his Nov. 11, 1987, sighting was the first of more than 100 sightings and abductions he experienced over a six-year period. He wrote three books on UFOs and the Gulf Breeze sightings, but he has since moved to Pensacola and no longer speaks to the media.

While Walters was the most outspoken person at the time to report seeing UFOs in Gulf Breeze, he was not the only person. People from around the world visited in hopes of seeing something unexplained after The Gulf Breeze Sentinel ran a story and photo about Walters.

Many of those people were not disappointed, said Don Ware, a Fort Walton Beach resident who retired from the Air Force in 1982 and has spent much of the past 25 years investigating UFO activity.

Between 1987 and the end of 1993, when most of the sightings ended, Ware said hundreds of people reported seeing UFOs in Gulf Breeze. Walters and others took more than 125 photographs of supposed UFOs between Nov. 11, 1987, and May 1, 1988, Ware said.

The Gulf Breeze sightings set off a media frenzy, and the community of about 6,000 residents became one of the country's UFO capitals.

Phillip Klass, an investigator for what is now known as the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry, studied the Gulf Breeze sightings and wrote his own book declaring them a massive hoax.

Klass died a couple years ago, but CSI executive director Barry Karr said he believes the accuracy of his former colleague's work.

"I really don't think there's any question the Gulf Breeze sightings were a hoax," Karr said. "There are things in the sky that can't be identified, especially near an air base." The biggest piece of evidence pointing to a hoax was a UFO model constructed from drafting paper and paper plates reportedly discovered in Walters' former home after he had moved out.

Ware said he believes CSI workers planted the model and then informed the media of its location to debunk the validity of Walters' sightings.

Karr laughed at the idea. Karr said he believes after word of the UFO sightings in Gulf Breeze started to break, everyone wanted to see one so much they let their imagination get carried away.

During the late '80s and early '90s, UFOs became synonymous with Gulf Breeze. Businesses up and down the Emerald Coast took advantage of the UFO sightings to profit off the experience.

Club 51, the adult-entertainment club on U.S. Highway 98 in Wynnhaven Beach, was originally called Area 51 after the supposed hidden military base in Roswell, N.M. UFO Motors was a used-car dealership that operated in Midway for several years. A 1993 Associated Press article reported that Gulf Breeze restaurants sold a four-scoop UFO sundae and a UFO vegetarian pizza. Stores also sold UFO jewelry, watches and books.

Nearby Pensacola even hosted the International UFO Symposium in 1990.