Pensacola News Journal from Pensacola, Florida • 19

Pensacota News Journal 17A Author suspects UFO abduction in Gulf Breeze Saturday, May 21 1 088 Dave Richardson remembers adjusting the mirror and still not seeing the lights. Jim said he stopped along the road and got out. There was a strong light coming toward him, bright, like the headlight of a motorcycle, he says. Jim got back in his car and the light lifted off the road in front of him. He says the whole inside of his car lighted up.

Five or six hours later time that is missing he realized that morning traffic was passing him. Jim said that until he talked with Hopkins, he just dismissed the three instances when time was missing from his life. Now, he hopes a clinical hypnotist can find out just what happened, then and perhaps in Gulf Breeze. legs, cuts or scooped-out areas where tissue samples were removed. He said there was no pain, no bleeding, no scabbing, and little or no conscious memory of this exploratory surgery.

But under hypnosis, victims can recall the events, Hopkins said. Hopkins believes Jim and believes he is not unique in Gulf Breeze. "I'm convinced that a number of the other sightings are genuine sightings. "I don't understand this because it is quite different from what we usually get, almost as if the phenomenon, whatever it is out there, has sort of decided to reveal itself more. "I don't pretend to be an expert on this case, but after 13 years of UFO investigations, I think I'm a the polygraph, Hopkins says.

"I am convinced that a hoaxer, who is ultimately going to be exposed, would never in a thousand years have turned down that book contract. He would have taken the money and run. "He would never have said, 'I will agree to wait until I take a lie detector test? Until the photographs, until the originals are handed off to a very tough-minded photo analyst (Bruce Maccabee, a physicist for the Navy). I mean it's ridiculous. I can't imagine anybody who had anything to hide doing that.

It would be totally self defeating." But Hopkins suspects more has been happening in Gulf Breeze than just sightings and visits by strange craft. Recently, sitting in a Pensacola pretty good judge of witnesses. "So far, I haven't seen a single solitary flaw in his story or the case, except that it is very bizarre. "I'm the first one to admit that anything could be a hoax, anything," Hopkins says, but still, he can't fathom why Jim would concoct such a deception. "A man's reputation is at stake.

His family is at stake. If this were ever shown to be a hoax, his career is finished. His life here is finished. The family would leave. I can't imagine the family ever holding together after a thing like this, if it were in fact a hoax." Hopkins advised Jim to reject a "six-figure offer" to write a book and to search for a different publisher.

He also advised Jim to take a lie detector test. Jim rejected the book offer and passed restaurant, Hopkins said he suspects there was an abduction in Gulf Breeze, perhaps more than one. Not only Jim, or members of his family may have been abducted but others from Gulf Breeze or the area. Jim said he remembers three times in his life when time was missing meaning there was time he could not remember or account for. Once was during a canoe trip when he blamed heat stroke; another time was during his youth that he passed off as lack of sleep or a nightmare.

A third time is much more vivid. This time he remembers driving home through a lighted area sometime after midnight. There were lighted street lamps and businesses along the road, but he could see no lights in his car's mirrors. He lews Journal Budd HoDkins is an artist and author of "Missing lime ana tne best-selling "In-ruders." books about neonlfl whn have been temporarily abducted iy aliens. He has talked at lenrth to "Jim," the anonymous Gulf Breeze nan wno claims to have seen and hotographed UFOs.

Jim also wonders whether he has been abducted and said he will igree to hypnosis to find out. Hopkins. 56. based his hooks on Interviews with 180 persons who have told him they were abducted, Examined. Derhans followed hv tht ialiens since childhood.

Hopkins claims some of these people are left with scars on their Gulf Breeze UFO The often-photographed Gulf Breeze craft emits a beam in this photograph taken by the anonymous Gulf Breeze businessman known as "Jim." Sev eral people have reported seeing the beam. This Dhoto. a I copy of the original, was reportedly taken in December. Councilwoman among Elusive aliens of Gulf stump scholars, UFO By Michael Burke News Journal GULF BREEZE A city councilwoman is among scores of Gulf Breeze residents who say they have seen a brightly lighted UFO cruising low over the city. Council member Brenda Pollak said that March 17, she was crossing the Pensacola Bay bridge when she saw a strange orange light pulsating over Gulf Breeze.

Pollak said the object was moving just above the tree tops and it was larger and brighter than any aircraft light she had ever seen. Pollak lost sight of the object as she got off the bridge, but she saw it again as she drove along Shoreline Drive. She said she pulled over and watched the object for three or four seconds before it suddenly disappeared. Upon returning home, she found a note from her husband, Buddy, saying he had gone to Shoreline Park. When she got to the park, she said, she found her husband and several others examining photographs under the headlights of a truck.

She was told that "Jim," the Gulf Breeze businessman who says he has taken 37 photographs of UFOs over the past six months, had just snapped two simultaneous photographs. Jim, who has asked to remain anonymous, said he photographed a UFO about the same time Mrs. Pollak observed the object over Gulf Breeze. He said he joined Buddy Pollak and several other people that evening at Shoreline Park to look for the UFO. In an interview with the News Journal, Jim said others he joined at the park told him they were leaving to get hot chocolate.

Less than a minute after they left the area where Jim had set up GOING ON NOW! NO ITEM OVER $6 a double camera, he heard a hum he claims to have heard before previous sightings. Three or four minutes later, Jim reported, the craft blinked in and he took the photographs. The flashes of the cameras brought the others, still in the park, running back. Jim said he took the Polaroids to his truck and watched them develop in front of the truck's headlights. He said those photographs were sent to Dr.

Bruce Maccabee, an optical physicist in Maryland who is analyzing Jim's photographs. Buddy Pollak said the double camera took two Polaroids simultaneously. The images that appeared on two photographs appeared to be oblong saucer objects, he said. Carlos E. Hill 55, a mechanical engineer from Gulf Breeze, also said he went to Shoreline Park that night to look for UFOs.

He was in his car when he saw two flashes go off. When Hill learned from Buddy Pollak that Jim had taken a photograph, he ran down and saw Jim looking at Polaroids in the lights of the truck. "I saw the film develop in front of my eyes," Hill said. The two photographs of the object showed the same UFO shown in other photos taken by Jim, Hill said. Brenda Pollak said she has known Jim, whose photographs began the UFO controversy, for four or five years.

She said she does not believe he is perpetrating a hoax. "He's not the type of individual to do that," she said. "I have no doubt about his veracity." The Gulf Breeze Sentinel, a weekly newspaper, has published dozens of descriptions from residents of all ages, some of them anonymous, who say they saw a Six Star AAAA. A GREAT SELECTION OF NOVELTY PRINTS FACTORY OUTLET (Hnra witnesses silent object moving in the sky. The object has most often been described as having an orange glow.

Some objects were described as circular, spinning craft. Others said the object they saw was an oval craft or an oblong-shaped light. Reports of sightings have continued since the Sentinel published photographs of a hovering spaceship submitted by Jim in November 1987. Donald Ware of Fort Walton Beach, state director of the Mutual UFO Network, (MUFON), said his research group has reports of 68 sightings of unidentified objects in the Gulf Breeze area. Ware said the reports, made to MUFON and the Sentinel, involved 135 witnesses.

Three witnesses from the Gulf Breeze area Jim, Mrs. Joseph Zammit and Truman Holcomb have told UFO investigators that they saw a blue beam of light that came down from the UFO. Investigators for Mutual UFO Network, a private group that researches UFO sightings, said that Holcomb, 57, saw the blue beam on the night of April 28. He told investigators the beam came from a circular object with a bright orange light on the bottom. Jim claims he was immobilized briefly by a blue beam Nov.

11 and again on Dec. 2, 1987. According to the UFO group, Zammit told group investigators from Pensacola she also saw the blue beam Nov. 11. She was awakened about 2 a.m.

by her dog. She said she walked a few feet on her back lawn when she saw a round object with a yellow to orange color emitting a pathway of blue light down to her dock. She became afraid and took her dog back into the house, the UFO group reported. GOING ON NOW! NO ITEM OVER $6 FOR tz) SIX FLAGS SHOPPING CENTER 408 SW. Milton 623-6279 MARINER MALL 789 Ferdon Blvd Cresrview 682 7070.

4 I 1 I I Breeze seekers photos were fabricated. They, too, say the windows on the space craft aren't spaced evenly, implying that an alien would probably space the windows evenly. In an April CUFOS bulletin, Boyd and Mark Rodeghier, scientific director for the group, question other imperfections in the photos a waviness in the photos suggesting they were taken near, or reflected off, water; "the obvious non-symmetrical shape of the UFO and the flaw in its bottom rim. CUFOS also says the other UFO group bungled the investigation. The other group, the Mutual UFO Network has not pronounced the photos real or fake.

Walter Andrus, international director of MUFON, says, "The case, as far as we're concerned, is still wide open." He calls the case either the best they have worked on, or the best orchestrated hoax. He adds that the case is holding up well under scrutiny. LIE DETECTOR TEST: Jim says he is speaking out, and originally delivered the first five photos to the Gulf Breeze Sentinel, to tell my community, 'Look at the skies. There's something out Since then he has lost work, faced devastating ridicule, read out-of-town journalists' "selectively remember" facts, and been called crazy. In February, he voluntarily took a polygraph test in Pensacola that lasted nearly six hours over two days.

He paid $450 for it out of his own pocket, up front. "The polygraph," he says, "was complete hell." The chair he sat in resembled an electric chair, the operator was a total skeptic, Jim was "totally intimidated." "I knew I was telling the truth," he said, "but you don't know that machine knows you're telling the truth." Among the questions asked by polygraph operator Harvey McLaughlin, Jr. were: 1. "Did you lie or falsify the information you have furnished me concerning the UFOs you have seen? 2. Did you in any way falsify or lie about the photographs you have presented concerning these UFOs?" 3.

"Did you in any way falsify or lie about the humanoid beings that you saw or any other physical evidence that you have presented?" McLaughlin's opinion: "With the information that is available to this examiner at this time, it is felt that (Jim) truly believes that the photographs and personal sightings he has described are true and factual to the best of his ability." WHY HE SPEAKS OUT: Debunkers anger Jim. He is adamant. He says, "I know what is true" so he keeps talking. But Boyd, Rodeghier and Smith also are adamant. Jim counters: "When you know the truth, how do you ignore it?" Still, he really doubts that anyone will "prove" there are UFOs or even that his claims are not crazy.

Without some kind of proof, he has no idea what will happen next. the skeptics." Jim says Nathan has told him that if he can show the photos or the videotape to be fakes, he will blast Jim publicly with that information. 'PHOTOS ARE PHONY': One physicist who flatly calls them fakes is Willy Smith, co-founder of UNICAT, an international UFO information-gathering group. Smith claims he can see a support under the UFO in one photo, and the sizes and spacing of the windows is suspect, indicating that the object is a model that was painted. "I am absolutely convinced the photos are phony," Smith says.

Jim claims the support is an emulsion streak on the film and has pointed out that Smith made some wrong assumptions in reaching his conclusions. Jim sticks to his guns, but he is concerned about debunkers who refuse even to consider his claims and his photos. "Debunkers are not going to accept," Jim says. He also is concerned about the government. Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Nathan's employer, is a huge laboratory within the U.S.

space program. "I hope the government is on our side. I hope the government doesn't come in here and squash me like a bug," he says. OTHER SIGHTINGS: Maccabee plays down the photos and plays up sightings by others. He claims more than 100 witnesses have reported 60 sightings in and around Gulf Breeze within the last six months.

"This isn't just all based on (Jim)" Maccabee says of the UFO interest. But it started with Jim the evening of Nov. 11, 1987, when he took the five photographs from his front yard. He also claims he photographed the object 32 more times over the next months, videotaped it, and watched it land on Soundside Drive. It was on Soundside that he says he watched it deposit five aliens on the road.

Jim says he stopped, dived under his truck, then, as the aliens approached, he got back in and drove off. But he photographed a hovering object that illuminated the roadway with a bright circle of light. He claims to have been startled by an alien face peering through a window of his home. He says the aliens have communicated to him, at times in Spanish, and that their craft has shot down a blue beam. Once, Jim says, the blue beam immobilized him and lifted him three feet off the ground.

Another time, he says he photographed the beam outside his back door. UFOLOGISTS AT ODDS: The sightings have provided a field day for ufologists those who study reports of UFOs, abductions, missing time, car engines mysteriously shutting off, weird electrical interruptions and the like. But the two major UJ5. groups of ufoloigists are at odds over whether to believe Jim and his photos. Robert Boyd, an investigator in Mobile for one of the groups, CUFOS, the Center for UFO Studies, says the photos are "most probably a hoax." CUFOS has not said how the FROM1 A top three.

Amateurs have fired salvos both for and against the truth of the photos and sightings. But a clash of experts is at the center of the question: Are these UFO photos real? Maccabee says, "good chance." Klass, says, "no way," there is only a "one in a jillion chance" the photos taken by the Gulf Breeze businessman are authentic. "I have not personally investigated (the Gulf Breeze sightings)," Klass says from his home in Washington, D.C. "I wouldn't waste the time. I only investigate those that might be genuinely impressive to the public." Maccabee, for one, is genuine-lyimpressed.

He has written a single-spaced, 60-page report on the Gulf Breeze incidents. He will present the report to a UFO symposium in Lincoln, next month and he plans to keep its contents secret until then. Maccabee's work includes having someone analyze the Gulf Breeze photos by computer, and this could take weeks or months. He declines to say who is doing the analysis, only that it will take place in Washington and Boston. the man who first saw the object in the late evening sky last Nov.

11, and took five Polaroid photos of it, knows the scientists will probably never say they have proof of a UFO. But "Jim," the pseudonym he prefers so he can continue to shelter himself and his family, says that in Maccabee's report it "will be very clear that indeed there is, or was, something in the skies over Gulf Breeze. Then it's up to somebody else to show it was of a military nature, or extraterrestrial or something else." Using dual, automatic Polaroid cameras attached to a bar so they could shoot at the same time and triangulate the object cameras built by Jim to Maccabee's design Jim photographed the object. In the photo from one camera, the image was clear. The photo from the other angle shows it partially hidden behind a tree.

Jim said Maccabee has said that if these photos were faked, they represent a bizarre level of capability." Likewise with a night shot Jim took on Soundside Drive. It shows the craft just above the ground, lighting a part of the roadway. The craft, Maccabee calculated, is 13 feet in diameter. To light it and have it illuminate the ground, he says, would require a crane to hold it, plus 1,000, 100-watt light bulbs powered by a 100-kilowatt generator. Even if Maccabee pronounced the photos real, that still would not prove the existence of UFOs.

But to Jim it would help. Help also could come from Dr. Robert Nathan, a scientist with NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California. Nathan has a one-and-a-half minute videotape taken by Jim that he plans to analyze, but Nathan won't say when he will get around to it. He has had the tape, Jim says, for three months.

Nathan also has seen the original still photos and Jim says, "he guaranteed that the photos were not superimposed. Other than that, he's staying in the comer of AT THE BRAND NEW LOCATION OF OUR PENSACOLA MARINER MALL STORE HUNDREDS OF GREAT GRAND RE-OPENING SPECIALS AT 50 TO 75 OFF LIGHT SPECIAL! No nonsense PANTYHOSE Ipi BULBS pull-up Q-isrn pjfj exerciser 60W75W 1COW SOLD ELSEWHERE FOR $19.95 jC3 FOR "IN" SCENTS 'M latest disposable lighters iSj'V FASHION 2 PACKS VPl1 SUNGLASSES UfpS-D00 ff off! Soofgp TABUIOUS SELECTION 1" TO 3 AND SAVE! ttSJ AND SUMMER DESIGNSi TOYS, TOOLS, HOUSEWARES, CLOTHING AND MORE! Six Star FACTORY OUTLET SAVE STOREWIDE ON TRAOEWINDS SHOPPING CENTER fc625 Davis Hwy. MARINER MALL 4335 Fairfield Or. 45S4209 cum All u-CKmm, mku oooe 4T six sru loummt items available while supply lasts Hurry'.