Gulf
Breeze Sightings: Nimslo Camera Photo
Photo Source: Bruce Maccabee
Ken:
Ed
Walters is a person that became famous for his Gulf
Breeze, Florida, ufo photos. MUFON worked with him
to insure that his photos were genuine. I think that
they gave him a sealed camera, if I remember right.
Would you tell us about the photos and what MUFON had
done, if you know?
Dr.
Maccabee:
It
is such a monumental case to talk about, because there
are so many aspects to it. You have Ed Walters. He
and his whole family were witnesses at various times.
He took a lot of pictures, which is what attracted
everybody to the sightings. What is not known, or generally
ignored by skeptics, is that there were about a dozen
other people who say that they have seen exactly the
same thing and many others who saw strange lights in
the sky in the same time period. We are talking about
sightings that started in November of 1987. We are
coming up on the twentieth anniversary now.
Ken:
Time
flies.
Dr.
Maccabee:
Yeah
“Flime Ties.” The twentieth anniversary will be November
11th of this year and I haven't heard anything from
Ed in 5 or 6 years now, so I don't know what he is
doing. From November of 1987, for about the next 10
years, he had activity, that is sightings. From 1990
or so onward, the sightings were sporadic, like maybe
one or two a year. He, never the less, produced some
spectacular pictures, some of which have never been
published. The main activity in Gulf Breeze started
in November of 1987 and lasted through 1992. It could
be divided into two phases. One might be called the
Ed Walters phase form November of 1987 to July or so
of 1988, when most of the pictures were taken, especially
in the spring of ‘88, there were dozens of other witnesses.
Then the Red Bubba sightings that started in November
of 1990 and lasted until July of 1992. Ed was a witness
to those, but so were hundreds and hundreds of other
people. Gulf Breeze was so famous by the early 90s
that news media would send people there to video tape
sightings and very often they were successful. For
a period of time you could almost guarantee that if
you went down there for a period of 2 weeks, you would
see something. Anyway with reference to Ed himself,
because of the number of photos, I and many others
initially assumed that this was a big hoax. I knew
of 5 photos when I began my investigation in February
of 1988. By that time he had already taken a dozen
pictures. I had only known of 5 of them at that point.
I was flabbergasted to find out that there were more.
I went to his house and we grilled him and we spent
the whole day with him. The next day we borrowed his
truck and camera to look at the famous road shot area.
We scoped this out and thought, how can this be a fake
and if it is a fake it is going to turn out to be a
double exposure. I used his Polaroid camera and in
fact, with his camera I created a double exposure.
The picture I created looked like there was a lighted
object in the sky near his house. I showed it to him
and he didn't know what the hell was going on. Either
he was a great actor or he knew nothing about what
I had just done. I created a light right out in front
of his house, with his camera and he was wandering
around looking up in the sky and saying, gee they came
back again. Well as I said either he was a great actor
and extemporaneous, he could make up everything as
he was going along, or else he really didn't know what
was going on. It was my conclusion that after many
months of investigation, he didn't really know what
was going on. Furthermore, he was the first person
to ever take stereo photographs.
Ken:
Really.
Dr.
Maccabee:
You
mentioned this sealed camera. He had, by that time,
taken something like 20 pictures with an old Polaroid.
He had a dozen events, some of which produced more
than one picture. I forget, because it has been twenty
years since I have been thinking about this. Ten years
ago I could have recited the whole thing. At the MUFON
Symposium in 1988, it took me over 2 hours to report
about the sightings and events that had happened between
November, 1978 and June, 1988. And more happened after
that, a lot more! But anyway, he had a dozen or so
pictures taken by the time I got Involved in February,
1988. The big question was, were these faked by making
double exposures with his camera? The local MUFON investigators
gave him a sealed camera, with the understanding that
if he took ufo photos with this camera, we would know
they weren't fakes, or at least they weren't a double
exposure.
Ken:
Right.
Dr.
Maccabee:
Further
more they used what is known as a Nimslo camera, which
has 4 lenses on it. It is used for creating special
types of pictures, pseudo 3D pictures, where you tilt
a picture left and you tilt it right and you see the
same scene from fidderen points of view. The outer
2 of the 4 lenses were spaced about 21/2 inches. That
means that you have the opportunity for getting parallax,
which is viewing the same thing from 2 different directions
and getting an angle between the 2 different directions.
If you know the distance between your viewing points,
in this case 2 1/2 inches, you can measure the angle
in respect to each viewing point. The sightings lines
cross and where the sighting lines cross is how far
away the object is from you. We didn't tell him that,
all we said was “we have 4 different lenses and we
get 4 different pictures and we can send them to 4
different analysts". Ed always acted like he was
happy to have people analyze his pictures, because
he wanted people to know that he was telling the truth.
You could make the same judgment for a hoaxer wanting
to be told he was telling the truth, but a typical
hoaxer would not do anything that was likely to tip
his hand on how he was doing it. Ed, on the other hand,
was always open to do any experiment we wanted to do.
About two weeks after he was given the Nimslo camera
he and his wife had a sighting in a local park. He
saw something fly by and he took a series of 10 pictures
of it. All these pictures came out. The local press
was always interested in what was going on, because
of all the news media surrounding these photographs.
They opened the camera on a particular date in front
of the press, took the film out, had it developed and
it showed a strange collection of lights, which according
to Ed were moving from left to right and part of the
time were behind a tree.
It
took weeks to get that camera calibrated and do all
the calculations, but it turned out that this thing
was 2 1/2 feet long and 40 feet away.
Ken:
A
model?
Dr.
Maccabee:
Ed
told me where he was standing when he took the pictures.
There was a tree there and the top of the tree was
about 40 feet from the camera. It could have been 35
feet or something like that. He said that the object
went behind that tree. Well it turns out that the parallax
proved that this object was 40 or more feet away. You
couldn't be absolutely sure how far away it was because
2 1/2 inches is not a very big spacing for parallax.
But this object had a unique arrangement of lights.
It was not the shape of the ufo that Ed had become
accustomed to, with the so called power ring at the
bottom that looked somewhat like a lampshade almost.
Ken:
Yeah
right.
Dr.
Maccabee:
The
typical UFO Ed photographed had rectangular dark areas
around it that were called windows that probably weren't.
It had a light on the top and so on. Anyway, this thing,
taken with a Nimslo camera was different. It was clearly
21/2 to some feet in size, probably. An important aspect
of this is that because Ed was willing to do this with
a Nimslo camera. I told him this before we had the
analysis of the Nimslo camera results, I said Ed, you
know what would be really neat if you want to try and
prove that these objects are far away? Instead of doing
something with a camera that had a 21/2 inch spacing
of lenses, why not make a camera with a foot spacing?
Now, by this time he had bought himself a model 600
Polaroid camera. Previously he had been using an old
type of Polaroid where you take a picture, you pull
the film out a certain distance and you wait 60 seconds
for the film to develop. You open the back of the camera
and then pull the film out. That's the old original
Polaroid
Ken:
Oh
I remember those.
Dr.
Maccabee:
That
one was easy to take double exposures with, because
the first picture you take exposes the film and then,
if you click the shutter again it exposes the film
again. You can keep on clicking the shutter, as many
times as you want, before you pull the film out to
develop it, thereby creating a multiple exposure picture.
With the model 600 camera, which you can still buy
I believe, you push the button, it takes the picture
and a mechanism immediately ejects the film. In other
words there is no time to take another photograph,
to make a double exposure. He bought himself a model
600, which he thought would provide better evidence,
if he could get some pictures with it. By this time
he had actually taken a picture with it. I suggested
to him, that he get another one and put the 2 of them
1 foot apart and then we can get parallax measurements
of distance out to 20, 30, 50 or 100 feet, depending
on how accurate the cameras are.
Stereo
Camera Photo of May 1, 1988 showing
Left and right camera photos above a blow-up of One of them
Photo Source: Bruce
Maccabee
If
this had been a hoax guy, who had been creating double
exposures using a small model close up, which is what
the skeptics were saying, the idea of doing a stereo
photo would be a no no. It would immediately pick out
a foot sized model, twenty or so feet away, as opposed
to a large object, say, a hundred or more feet away.
To my great surprise he did me 1 foot better. He built
a camera that had a spacing of 2 feet between the cameras.
This gave us the possibility of resolving things out
to a several hundred feet. Over the next month or so,
he took stereo photographs during three sightings,
the most important by far being May 1, 1988, when apparently
an abduction occurred. He took pictures of the craft,
but not only did he get the standard Ed type craft
with the light on the top and the power ring on the
bottom and so on, but this photo also has the Nimslo
type craft in it. These photos were clearly taken overlooking
the Santa Rosa Sound. He was standing on the shore
of Shoreline Park in Gulf Breeze, he said. From where
he was standing you can see the lights on the bridge
that goes across Santa Rosa Sound from Gulf Breeze
to Pensacola Beach. You can see the bridge lights in
the pictures and they allowed for calibrating of the
camera. Everything worked out beautifully. For the
Nimslo-type ufo the parallax said that thing was about
130 feet from the shore and about 120 feet above the
water and about 2 1/2 feet in length. This size calculation
agreed perfectly with what had been found for the object
in the Nimslo photos. The typical “Ed type” ufo with
the bottom “power ring” and top light was found to
have been about 450 feet away, as I recall and about
150 feet above the water. So these things were out
over the water. Its kind of hard to imagine faking
that.
Ken:
Yes
it really is, unless it is some kind of flying model.
I know that they found a model, as a matter of fact,
in his house after he moved out. It was like 6 months
later. It sound like a put up job, doesn't it?
Dr.
Maccabee:
He
moved out of his house in December of 1988. He built
houses down there, so he would build one, live in it
for awhile and move out. He would build another one
and move out into the new house and sell the old one.
I think it was December ‘89, when he actually succeeded
in selling the house. It was essentially empty for
nearly a year, while he was trying to sell it. It gets
to be a very complicated story. The new owner, Robert
Menzer, wanted to install an ice making refrigerator
in the house. Ed had an ice making refrigerator, so
in the kitchen there was a pipe sticking out of the
wall. If you are at all familiar with ice making refrigerators,
they have to have a source of water.
Ken:
Yeah
I am familiar with them.
Dr.
Maccabee:
He
had a little pipe coming out of the wall and typically
you have a shutoff valve, I don't know whether you
do or not?
Ken:
Of
course I do.
Dr.
Maccabee:
You
have to have a shut off valve somewhere so you can
decouple the refrigerator and take it away, or you
would have water pour on the floor. Ed told me, "I
turned off my shut off valve, it was sticking out of
the wall, took the refrigerator off and moved out".
The house is now empty for a year. During that time
the house was open for inspection numerous times. The
new guy bought the house in December of 1989. In early
January or February, 1990, he decided to connect up
his refrigerator. He looked at the pipe sticking out
of the wall and saw that was crimped. Get this, Ed
left it with a valve on it, but the new guy finds the
pipe is crimped, so he figures there must be a shutoff
valve somewhere. He knows there is no piping underground,
under the floor in Florida. He goes up into the attic
to find the shutoff valve for this little pipe that
supplies the water for the refrigerator. He locates
a position that he feels is over the refrigerator and
he feels through the blown-in insulation between the
ceiling joists. He finds a pipe and starts feeling
his way along the pipe expecting to find a valve. As
he is feeling along the pipe, up pops this paper and
styrofoam type model of a ufo. He thinks, umm..., that
is interesting. He continues along the pipe and he
doesn't find any shutoff valve. This is up in the attic
over the house, but the stairway to the attic was actually
in the garage, so people could lock the doors to the
house and leave the garage doors open and somebody
could get up into the attic and not get into the house.
He
didn't throw the model away, he put it on a shelf for
safe keeping. He knew something about the sightings
before, but this had all happened more than a year
before he had actually moved in, so he just knew vaguely
about it. He thought, well somebody had built a model
of a ufo, I don't know what he thought, the bottom
line is he put it up on a shelf. He had to call up
Ed, but unfortunately he didn't mention finding this
model. If he had, this whole thing probably would have
been resolved at that point. He asked Ed, how do I
shut off the water and Ed said there is a shutoff in
a hole in the front yard. He had to turn off the water
for the whole house just to do this thing for the refrigerator.
The guy didn't mention anything about the pipe being
crimped and Ed didn't think anything about it. It was
essentially the end of it as far as Ed was concerned.
The guy was able to install his refrigerator.
Ed's
book, "The Gulf Breeze Sightings", came out
in late March of 1990. In a lead up to that, the Pensacola
newspaper, which had followed all these sightings,
with all the controversy over faking and so on, did
a big story on Ed's sightings and really emphasized
the other witnesses who had seen the same thing, including
the county coroner and his wife, who claimed that they
had seen this thing, early one morning, hovering over
the water, not far from their house. That's kind of
solid testimony right there.
Ken:
Sounds
like it.
Dr.
Maccabee:
I
was told by the author of the article in the newspaper,
that he was canvassing the neighborhood to see if there
were any sightings, besides Ed's. It turns out that
he canvassed one house, which was Ed’s former house.
Robert Menzer was in the house when the reporter appeared
at the door. Menzer reported as follows. A guy knocked
on the door. Menzer went to the door and the guy said
he was a reporter from the Pensacola News. He said
that there had been sightings around the area and he
would like some more information. The reporter asked,
have you seen any ufos? Menzer said no. The next question
was have you seen any photographs of ufos lying around?
Menzer's answer was no. The third question was have
you seen any models lying around?
Ken:
(We
both have a good laugh here)
(Said
in jest) That's just a coincidence, right? Don't they
always ask that question?
Dr.
Maccabee:
(Said
in jest) Oh yeah.
Ken:
(We
both laughed again here)
I
have taken up an hour and 15 minutes of your time and
believe me I could go on all day, but that wouldn't
be fair to you.
Dr.
Maccabee:
So
could I, but my voice would give out.
Ken:
Could
I ask you one or two more questions and then we will
end the interview?
Dr.
Maccabee:
Sure.
Clementine
Photographic Satellite
Photo Source:NASA
Ken:
Ah
great, thanks very much.
One
question that I wanted to ask you was about the moon
photos. A lot of people claim that we didn't land on
the moon, because in some of the photos the backgrounds
were the same even though the locations were different.
Have you ever looked at any of these photos?
Dr.
Maccabee:
I
have read some of the stuff that has been presented.
I didn't actually see the Fox show, the TV show that
presented these arguments, was it 2002 or something
like that?
Ken:
I've
seen it all over the internet basically. I've seen
shows on it too of course.
Dr.
Maccabee:
Well
there are also websites that, shall we say, debunk
the debunkers. First of all, I don't buy the arguments.
Second of all I don't know about the specific thing
that you are talking about, the background being the
same... They claim that you can't see the stars and
you should be able to see the stars, but there is glare
from the surface of the moon...
Buzz
Aldrin On Moon
Photo Source: NASA
Ken:
I
am talking about those mountains,or hills is a better
term for them, on the moon. They claim that some of
the pictures that were taken have the same hills behind
them, even though they were taken in different locations.
Dr.
Maccabee:
I
don't know about that. There are arguments about shadow
lengths, arguments about shadows seeming to come from
2 different light sources.
Ken:
Exactly.
Dr.
Maccabee:
As
I recall, if there had been 2 different light sources,
then each astronaut would have had 2 shadows, instead
of just one, In the picture you refer to, each astronaut
has only 1 shadow and the shadows don't seem to point
in the same direction. That can also be a phenomenon
of parallax. If you stand in the middle of the road
and you look at the sides of the road, the sides don't
seem to be parallel, as they go off into the distance
they converge. Parallel lines can appear to be non
parallel, depending on how you look at them.
Ken:
Right.
Dr.
Maccabee:
Trying
to refute all their arguments is probably not hard
to do. You can probably do a Google search on moon
hoaxes or something....
Ken:
Oh
there are tons of them. There are tons of them all
over the internet. My son believes that we didn't land
on the moon, as a matter of fact.
Dr.
Maccabee:
One
argument was that predictions of success were so low
that NASA decided, we'll do it on the ground.
Ken:
Yeah,
right.
Dr.
Maccabee:
We'll
send up a rocket, let it remain up in space, orbiting
around the earth. There won't be any astronauts in
it. It would have been an exceedingly difficult thing
to pull off under the glare of the press and all the
people who would have been involved and to make sure
that no one would come forward and said that Armstrong
was in Hoboken New Jersey, when he claimed that he
was standing on the moon.
Ken:
Yeah,
right.
The
last question. Have you ever seen any photos of the
ufo that was over O'Hare Airport?
Dr.
Maccabee:
I've
seen photos that they claimed, but so far nothing guaranteed.
I don't know that there are any, but I don't know for
sure that there aren't any either. I haven't been involved
directly in that investigation.
Ken:
I
know there was one and it was purchased by Dan Aykroyd.
Dan Aykroyd supposedly purchased it and he is going
to put it out on his next dvd.
Dr.
Maccabee:
I
don't know what it shows and I don't know anything
about it.
Ken:
Okay
and at this point I would like you to say anything
that you would like to say.
Dr.
Maccabee:
Well
I appreciate your interview and wish you success in
your future endeavors.
Ken:
Well
thank you and I wish the same for you.
