UFORN: UFO Research Network

THE TRUTH ABOUT GULF BREEZE 2020

Gulf Breeze - Ed Walters - MUFON.  A lesson in gullibility.

In 1987, Gulf Breeze, Florida (USA) resident, Ed Walters, claimed he was being harassed by UFOs flying over his home.   Of course no one but Ed, his wife Frances, the co-author of their book, The Gulf Breeze Sightings, and their children, ever actually saw the UFOs Walters claims he took photos of.

I never believed Walters.  I looked at the photos, no, I SAW the photos.   One day as I was looking through GBS I realized that Walters had not credited, nor did he have permission, to use photos he claimed came from two other witnesses one allegedly calling himself Bill and one anonymous witness Ed named Jane.  (Ed also claimed to have a telephone conversation with Jane...an entire chapter in the book.)

I requested his copyright applications from the Library of Congress and discovered that Walters claimed, on the copyrights, that he was the photographer of ALL photos in the GBS and that included the Bill and Jane photos. (See: Becker: Copyright.)  Morrow Publishing confirmed this.

Are you getting this? Ed Walters admitted legally, to the Library of Congress, that he took ALL of the photos used in the Gulf Breeze Sightings, even the photos he claimed were taken by other people and left for him at his house. These people did not exist.

Ed Walters pulled a good one.  I think GB can be best summed up by Walters himself in this quote from a Compuserve conference held with Don Ware, December 4, 1988: 

DON WARE: Ed, you have a reputation as "enjoying" a good joke?

ED WALTERS: They have tried to twist practically every part of my private and public life. There is a difference between a joke  and a malicious prank. I deny emphatically ever perpetrating a prank. 

Somewhere in Walters' warped brain he somehow separates a joke and a malicious prank. Walters did not perpetrate a "(malicious) prank" no, in his mind it was just a joke. Just a joke pulled on a bunch of gullible MUFON investigators. (See: Whistleblower)

Even though Gulf Breeze happened almost 21 years ago, (35 years ago as to the update on this article) it is still an important UFO case, mainly because it demonstrates what unchecked belief can do to promote a lie. 

Please continue reading the articles. This is a piece of UFOlogical history.

B. Becker

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UFORN, or the UFO Research Network, began in 1990 as a part of the Darkside BBS or "Bulletin Board System".