by Charles Lear, author of “The Flying Saucer Investigators.”
In 1975, after the Travis Walton Incident on November 5, because of the attention it received in the press and among the UFO community, there were two flaps in Florida that fell through the cracks and have all but been forgotten. The first one was in the area of Miami- Dade County that started on the same day as the Walton incident, and the second was a little over a month later around 50 miles south of Jacksonville in the small farming community of Hastings. The Miami-Dade reports received a good amount of local press, as did the Hastings reports. The Hastings reports were looked into by the Aerial Phenomena Research Organization, and there is an article on the case in the January 1976 APRO Bulletin.
The Hastings flap got started on November 5, with sightings reported by six Highway Patrol Troopers in Miami. There is an article (page 12 of pdf) by Ian Glass describing the reports headlined “Troopers Spot ‘Flying Objects’ Over Miami” in the November 5, 1975 issue of The Miami News. According to Glass, troopers in different parts of the county reported seeing as many as five “mysterious flying objects.” Trooper Thomas Leis, who spotted three objects at 4:39 a.m., is quoted as saying, “I’m not going to say they were UFOs, but they were certainly unnatural phenomena.” Leis said he watched two of the objects for around 90 minutes and a third one that disappeared before the others. He described them as having flashing red and blue lights that alternated, and one white light that was constant. He said he radioed patrol headquarters and was told that another trooper, John Lelikis had seen what he had as well as two additional objects near the airport. Four other troopers also said they’d seen the objects. Leis said there were as many as five altogether.
Drawing 3An article (page 11 of pdf) by Bob Getz in the November 6, 1975 Boca Raton News headlined “UFOs Spotted in Area” has the name of another witness, Leslie A. Butcher, who said that he and his wife saw red, green, and white lights east of Boca at around 4:00 a.m. on November 5. He said the lights were as bright as a magnesium fire. According to Getz, seven people in the area reported seeing an extremely bright oval object that was blue-white, much like the color of a welder’s arc, just before dawn on November 7.
In the November 8, 1975 Miami Herald, there is an article (page 11 of pdf) headlined “Callers Describe Quiet UFOs.” According to the article: “Police dispatchers in West Palm Beach and Lake Worth late Friday reported a flurry of breathless phone callers, all describing flashing ovals hovering over eastern skies.” A Lake Worth policeman said that one man called saying he saw what seemed to be portholes, “but he wouldn’t give his name, because he said his neighbors were already laughing at him.”
Drawing 5 APROThe Hastings reports got started at around 7:00 p.m. on December 12, 1975. According to APRO Field Investigator Jim Jones in his article, “Repeating Reports in Florida,” on the front page of the January 1976 APRO Bulletin, Patricia Beck Goodman was on her way home on State Road 13 about two miles south of Hastings when she saw an object described as about 30 feet long, 10 feet high on one end, and 25 feet high on the other. It’s said to have glowed “with a luminescence like a t.v. screen when the set was [sic] been turned off,” and to have been “ringed with bright red and orange lights around the edges.” Goodman is said to have watched the object, which seemed to be hovering in the sky, for about 10 minutes before losing sight of it as she went around a turn.
Drawing 3Jones reports that at 9:30 p.m. in Hastings, Richard and Betty Beck, along with their 20-something daughters, Patricia and Sandra, observed a pulsating, glowing saucer-shaped object, as large as a DC-8, with bright orange-red lights around its edges. According to the report, they moved towards it as it came down behind some trees, with the idea that it might be a plane going down. When they got within 200 yards, the object went dark as if something had been switched off, and then something lit up a quarter mile away “which was described as a huge fire explosion with no noise.” The light is said to have remained for a few minutes before suddenly going dark.
The next report describes a sighting at 11:00 p.m. by Marcus Barnes, who was on State Road 13 southeast of Hastings, heading for his hunting camp. He is said to have seen what seemed to be the woods on fire, which turned out to be bright red-orange and amber lights “coming from what looked like windows, [sic] in the side of a dome shaped [sic] object, [sic] behind the trees.” According to the report, when he got to the hunting camp, 10-12 others told him about lights they had been seeing throughout the night.
Charlotte Shearer is described as having seen something similar at 10:45 p.m. about 15 miles southeast of Hastings. According to the report, she saw a dome-shaped object about 200 feet in the air, which she first thought was a house on fire. She described it as looking like a castle in the air with every widow lit and Jones reports that within 15 minutes, “the lights just flipped off and nothing could be seen.”
The next report, dated December 13, 1975, is another one involving Marcus Barnes who is said to have been headed home with his wife, Edith, after closing their restaurant in Hastings. According to the report, on State road 13, just before they got to their house in the 10,000 acres area, they saw the same sort of lights Barnes had seen before. They headed towards the lights, and when they got to within a quarter mile of them, the lights switched off. The Barneses turned around to continue back towards their home, the lights came back on, and they turned around again and followed them.
They described seeing a dome-shaped object 300 to 400 feet in diameter, 75 to 100 feet high, with possibly 8 rows of windows radiating intense, pulsating, fire-orange lights. As it drifted back and forth, lighting up an area of several hundred yards, they followed it as far as they could, which was about 10 miles, on dirt roads. According to the report, it stayed a quarter to a half mile in front of them, and when they could go no further, they watched as it moved off towards the south and went out of sight behind some trees.
The next sighting report described by Jones was featured in many of the local papers, along with some other reports that same night, December 14, 1975, that Jones didn’t cover. According to Jones, at 9:10 p.m., Larry and Mary Ellen Masters were having an oyster roast at their farm on State Road 13 with their friends, Leighton and Tedra Middleton and 3 children aged 10, 11, and 13, when they saw what looked like a house on fire around one mile away towards the 10,000 acres below the tree line. As they watched, a huge dome-shaped object with lit up widows, like the one described in the previous reports, rose up, hovered for several minutes above the trees, and then went back down again. Mrs. Middleton ran inside to call the St. Johns County Sheriff’s Department and the two men ran to a truck and then drove towards the object.
When the men got to where the object was, it rose up again until three rows of windows were above the trees. It then went back down again, and this time, all the lights switched off. Nothing more was seen of it by any of the witnesses.
The two men had access to a crop-dusting helicopter and within fifteen minutes were in the air. They traversed the area but saw nothing unusual. A ground-air search was conducted the next day “by units of the Florida Highway Patrol, St. Johns County Sheriff’s Department, Flagler County and Putnam County Sheriff’s Departments, with nothing out of the ordinary being seen.”
The last sighting described by Jones is that of Donna Scranton. According to the report, that same night at 9:15 p.m., Scranton came home to find four family members standing on the back porch looking up at a group of 10-12 fire-colored lights that she estimated were about 1000 feet above them. They are described as having been the size of a basketball held at arm’s length.
The December 14th sightings were reported extensively in several local papers including the Palatka Daily News, the Daytona Beach News, the Florida Times-Union, and the St. Augustine Record. An article in the December 16, 1975 Palatka News headlined “UFO Sighting Has Residents Buzzing” by Kathy Kelly and Marvin Clegg focuses almost entirely on the sighting at the Masters’s farm and contains additional details. These include Larry Masters recalling that the family hunting dogs “started raising the roof” before the lights were seen and that a total of six children (ages 10-13) who saw the UFO were put into separate rooms and told to draw what they had seen. The drawings are said to have been similar.
Four drawings, that are indeed similar, three by the children and one by Leighton Middleton, were published along with the article headlined “No Clues on the County Sighting” in the December 17, 1975 Orange Park, Florida, Clay Today.
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