Part 25 (1/2)

The people in the photo lab made a few calculations and measureraphed froun caust, Project Blue Book was back to normal

Lieutenant Flues's Coca-Cola consumption had dropped from twenty bottles a day in ht's sleep and it was now a rare occasion when ht to report a new UFO

But then on theready to go to work, when one of these rare occasions occurred and the phone rang--it was the ATIC OD An operational ione over to the ht that it was iht out For soh it was not classified I decided that if he said so I should come out, so I left in a hurry

The as froence officer at an air base in Florida The previous night a scoutmaster and three boy scouts had seen a UFO The scoutmaster had been burned when he approached too close to the UFO The ent on to give a few sketchy details and state that the scoutmaster was a ”solid citizen”

I ience officer He confirmed the data in the wire He had talked briefly to the scoutather it was no hoax The local police had been contacted and they verified the story and the fact of the burns I asked the intelligence officer to contact the scoutmaster and ask if he would subine the rumors that could start about the scoutood, so I told the intelligence officer I'd get down to see him as soon as possible

I iave hio down to Florida as soon as possible and offered to try to get an Air Force B-25, which would save tier counter at Wright Field, then check out a camera I calledthe, and in two hours he and I and our two pilots, Captain Bill Hoey and Captain David Douglas, were on our way to Florida to investigate one of the weirdest UFO reports that I caence officer arranged for the scoutmaster to co, so he arrived at the base in a few minutes He was a very pleasant chap, in his early thirties, not at all talkative but apparently willing to co-operate

While he was giving us a brief personal history, I had the i the truth He'd lived in Florida all of his life He'd gone to a private e, and then had joined the Marines He told us that he had been in the Pacific most of the war and repeated soh After the war he'd worked as an auto ia for a while to work in a turpentine plant After returning to Florida, he opened a gas station, but so as a clerk in a hardware store Soanize a boy scout troop and he had offered to be the scout had broken up early He said that he had offered to give four of the boys a ride home He had let one of the boys out when the conversation turned to a stock car race that was to take place soon They talked about the condition of the track It had been raining frequently, and they wondered if the track was flooded, so they drove out to look at it Then they started south toward a nearby town to take another of the boys home They took a black-top road about 10 hway that passes through sparsely settled areas of scrub pine and pal when the scoutht off to his left in the pines He slowed down and asked the boys if they'd seen it; none of theain This time all of the boys saw theo back into the woods to see as going on, but that the boys were afraid to stay alone Again he started to drive on, but in a few seconds decided he had to go back

So he turned the car around, went back, and parked beside the road at a point just opposite where he'd seen the lights

I stopped him at this point to find out a little bit o back People nor off into palht He had a logical answer The lights looked like an airplane crashi+ng into the woods some distance away He didn't believe that hat he saw, but the thought that this could be a possibility bothered him After all, he had said, he was a scoutmaster, and if somebody was in trouble, his conscience would have bothered hiated and it had been sora to go into the woods, and that if he wasn't back by the tiram ended they should run down the road to a farot out and started directly into the woods, wearing a faded denihts One of the lights was a spare he carried in his back pocket

He had traveled about 50 yards off the road when he ran into a palmetto thicket, so he stopped and looked for a clear path But finding none, he started pushi+ng his way through the waist-high tangle of brush

When he stopped, he recalled later, he had first become aware of an odd odor He couldn't exactly describe it to us, except to say that it was ”sharp” or ”pungent” It was very faint, actually more like a subconscious awareness at first Another sensation he recalled after the incident was a very slight difference in te by a brick building in the evening after the sun has set He hadn't thought anything about either the odor or the heat at the time but later, when they beca no attention to these sensations then, he pushed on through the brush, looking up occasionally to check the north star, so that he could keep traveling straight east After struggling through about 30 yards of pale in the shadows ahead of hiht farther ahead of hi or into one of the many ponds that dot that particular Florida area It was a clearing

The boy scouts in the car had been watching the scout around Occasionally he would shi+ne it up at a tree or across the landscape for an instant, so they knehere he was in relation to the trees and thickets They saw hie of the open, shadowed area and shi+ne his light ahead of him

The scoutmaster then told us that when he stopped this second time he first became consciously aware of the odor and the heat Both beca In fact, the heat became al it hard to breathe”

He walked a fewthat so him He took another step, stopped, and looked up to find the north star But he couldn't see the north star, or any stars Then he suddenly saw that ale dark shape about 30 feet above him

He said that he had stood in this position for several seconds, orof being watched had overcoed to step back a few paces, and apparently got out froe of it silhouetted against the sky

As he backed up, he said, the air beca hie of the object and got a quick but good look It was circular-shaped and slightly concave on the bottorayish color He pointed to a gray linoleuence officer's room ”Just like that,” he said The upper part had a doe of the saucer- shaped object was thick and had vanes spaced about every foot, like buckets on a turbine wheel Between each vane was a s, like a nozzle

The next reaction that the scoutmaster recalled was one of fury He wanted to harm or destroy whatever it was that he saw All he had was a machete, but he wanted to try to ju at No sooner did he get this idea than he noticed the shadows on the turret change ever so slightly and heard a sound, ”like the opening of a well-oiled safe door” He froze where he stood and noticed a sin to drift toward him As it floated down it expanded into a cloud of red ht and machete, and put his arms over his face As the mist enveloped him, he passed out

The boy scouts, in the car, estione about five , then walk on in They saw him stop seconds later, hesitate a few ht up in the air They thought he was just looking at the trees again The next thing they said they saas a big red ball of fire engulfing him They saw him fall, so they spilled out of the car and took off down the road toward the farmhouse

The far the story out of the boys, they were so excited All they could get was so in trouble down the road

The farhway Patrol, who relayed the e to the county sheriff's office In a few minutes a deputy sheriff and the local constable arrived They picked up the scouts and drove to where their car was parked

The scoutuely re of wet, dew- covered grass, and suddenly regaining his consciousness His first reaction was to get out to the highway, so he started to run About halfway through the palhway He ran toward it and found the deputy and constable with the boys

He was so excited he could hardly get his story told coherently

Later the deputy said that in all his years as a law-enforcement officer he had never seen anyone as scared as the scoutmaster was as he calare of the headlights As soon as he'd told his story, they all went back into the woods, picking their way around the palht, still burning, in a clurass was flattened down, as if a person had been lying there They looked around for the extra light that the scoutone