Charles Lear
Many readers may be familiar with the controversial case of the Gulf Breeze, Florida, UFO photographs taken in 1987 by local contractor Ed Walters. The photos were clear and detailed and stirred up a great deal of excitement within the UFO community. Some, such as former Navy optical physicist turned UFO researcher Dr. Bruce Maccabee, believed the photos were genuine, while others believed they were hoaxed.
Then, in 1990, after Walters and his family had moved from their home at the time, the new owners found a Styrofoam model of a UFO in the attic. Pensacola News Journal reporter Craig Meyers was able to closely duplicate Walters’s photos using the model, and Walters responded to hoax allegations by claiming the model had been planted after he left.
What readers may not be familiar with is a saga that unfolded around the Gulf Breeze incident involving six soldiers, all intelligence analysts, who went AWOL from a U.S. Army Intelligence unit in Augsburg, West Germany. They became known as “The Gulf Breeze Six,” and their story is… something.
The story of six missing soldiers, five men and one woman, being apprehended in Florida seems to have first appeared in the July 17, 1990 Pensacola News Journal. The story went national the next day and was covered in the July 18, New York Times. According to the Times article headlined “Six Soldiers Found in Florida AWOL From U.S. Spy Unit,” the soldiers were stationed at “a sensitive National Security Agency eavesdropping post” and were “the focus of a routine counterespionage investigation.” Pentagon spokesman Bob Hall described the investigation as “standard procedure” and said that it didn’t appear to the Army that this was a case involving espionage.
Then there is the first hint of weirdness in the story. According to the article, investigators in West Germany were told that all six of the soldiers belonged to a group called “The End of the World.” Pentagon officials said they didn’t know anything about the group or whether the soldiers’ involvement had any bearing on the case.
A worldwide alert for the soldiers was issued on July 9, and on July 13, police in Gulf Breeze stopped a van because its taillights weren’t working and discovered that the driver was one of the missing soldiers. According to the article, the rest of the soldiers were found at a nearby house (later disclosed to be the house of local self-described psychic Anna Foster) and a campground (the sole female of the group was discovered camping on the beach). All six were turned over to military authorities and they were flown to Fort Benning, Georgia.
More information came out in an article in the July 20, 1990 Chicago Tribune. Vivian Johnson, a friend of one of the soldiers, Kenneth Beason, said that Beason had told her that the group had travelled to Gulf Breeze to meet an alien craft. According to her, it “was supposed to be the Rapture time.”
That same day, the Northwest Florida Daily News carried the headline, “Six AWOL Soldiers Say They Aimed to Kill the Antichrist.” According to the article, the information came from an “unofficial military newspaper.”
Two weeks after the soldiers’ arrest, they were honorably discharged from Fort Knox, Kentucky, after no evidence was found of espionage. As punishment for being AWOL and forging leave papers, all were reduced to the lowest rank and had a half-month’s pay forfeited.
The soldiers remained silent for two years. Then, in 1992, one of the soldiers, Vance Davis, spoke to the press in order to clear up the facts of their adventure.
According to Davis, as reported in a July 27, 1992 Associated Press article, they had not travelled to Gulf Breeze to meet Jesus Christ in a UFO, which was another rumored reason for their being there. He is quoted as saying, “How ridiculous can you get? Jesus Christ is Jesus Christ. Why would he come in a flying saucer?”
The real reason Davis gives for the group’s going AWOL is that they were following advice given by spirits talking through a Ouija board. The group was told that their help would be needed during a coming world cataclysm. It was also because of a Ouija board message that Davis was coming forward. According to him, the race riots in Los Angeles were a signal for the group to go public and the others would follow him depending on the pubic reaction to what he was revealing.
Davis said the group had been experimenting with ESP, Tarot cards, and other esoteric practices to see “if there was something actually to it.” They “hit brick walls” until they tried a Ouija board and “someone showed up.” According to Davis, spirits predicted the Gulf War and the 1990 Iran earthquake. Then, in May, they were told to leave the Army and help guide people through the coming world changes that would involve the second coming of Christ and the Rapture. In the meantime, said Davis, the group might write a book, follow up on a movie deal or consider doing a commercial for Parker Bros., manufacturers of the Ouija Board.
While Davis may have ridiculed the idea of Christ arriving on Earth in a UFO, there is evidence that UFOs were at least a part of his mythos if not that of the entire group. In the 1995 book, “Unbroken Promises,” written by Davis with Brian Bladshaw, Davis reveals that he took Silva Mind Control classes and mastered self-hypnosis techniques. He claims that while in a trance he met a green-skinned female alien dressed in yellow named Kia. According to Vance, she told him “that she came from a planet forty-five light years away from Earth, that had been destroyed by another race.” Her people, called the “Kiasseions,” were traveling on five space ships carrying 3000 individuals each, and they were coming here to help the Alliance protect the human race. Kia’s husband had died and she had taken his place as commander of the armada due to arrive on Earth in 1992. Kia became Davis’s guardian.
Adding to the possibility of a UFO connection was the fact that the 21st annual MUFON symposium was held in nearby Pensacola, Florida, from July 6, to July 8, 1990. Stan Johnson, a friend of one of the soldiers, Kenneth Beason, is quoted in the July 19, 1990 Pensacola News Journal as saying that Beason had mentioned “going to Pensacola for a UFO convention.”
One of the speakers at the symposium was Ed Walters along with his wife Francis. Georgia MUFON State Section Director Larry Hebebrand wrote a letter (p77 of a 177 page pdf file on the case) to MUFON Director Walt Andrus saying that he got the information from a doctor at Fort Benning that the group believed that Ed Walters was the antichrist. If true, Walters was fortunate that none of the group took any action against him.
While the beliefs and actions of the Gulf Breeze Six may seem bizarre, this wasn’t the first time esoteric beliefs were associated with the Army Intelligence unit in Augsburg. Sgt. Lyn Buchanan was stationed there in 1984 when he experienced what he described as a “psychokinetic” computer-related anomaly. According to him, this caught the attention of Major General Albert Stubblebine, who assigned him to a remote viewing unit in Fort Meade, Maryland.
Stubblebine is featured in the first episode of the documentary series written and directed by Jon Ronson, “Crazy Rulers of the World.” In that episode, titled “The Men Who Stare at Goats,” Stubblebine, who had commanded the U.S. Army Intelligence and Security Command (INSCOM) from 1981 to 1984, describes attempting to walk through walls using the power of his mind. This was during a period when the Army was experimenting with New Age practices in specialized military training. The idea that the Gulf Breeze Six might have been influenced by those who had recently encouraged unconventional approaches to intelligence gathering and military tactics is an intriguing one.