2 July 1987
(Republican Journal, Belfast, Maine)
Source: waterufo.net
The whole article:
“On the night of March 14, 1965, James W. Flynn, who
is a rancher and hunting dog trainer, was camped out for the night in the
Everglades. Just as he was settling down for the night, his dogs became restive
and upset. He looked around expecting visitors, but instead he sighted a bright
light silently and slowly descending about a mile away.
Thinking that perhaps an airplane had gotten into
trouble and gone down, he prepared his swamp buggy for the journey and set out
to render aid if needed. He was guided directly to the spot by the glow which
continued unabated. This worried Flynn as he expected to find a burning plane
and probably injuries or fatalities. He found neither.
Pulsating Glow
When about a quarter mile away, he grounded his swamp
buggy and continued on foot. Soon he found himself in a large clearing and he
wasn’t alone. Some twenty yards away he saw a circular, cone-shaped object with
a pulsating glow. It hovered just above the ground with a slightly perceptible
wobbling motion. He detected, after a bit of study, a sound he could only
describe as a hum. He estimated the size at well over seventy-five feet in
diameter and twenty-five to thirty feet thick. There were four rows of ports or
windows encircling the craft, each emitting a yellow light unlike the color of
the craft’s overall glow. A partition immediately behind the windows prevented
him from seeing any internal details or occupants.
For many minutes Flynn just stood there, amazed. He
had heard of such things, but, until now, had never really taken them seriously.
Overactive imagination, he’d thought. But this was not imagination. It was
real.
Curiosity overcame fear. He started to approach the
craft to get a better look. He never made it. A pencil thin blue light shot out
from ‘somewhere’ on the craft hitting Flynn on the forehead ‘right between the eyes.’
He was unconscious before he hit the ground.
When he regained consciousness, he was partially
blind, sluggish, had a terrific headache and a large, sore bruise on his
forehead. The craft was gone. Somehow he got his swamp buggy going and got to
his hometown of Ft. Meyers, Florida. He was rushed to a hospital for
examination and treatment.
Trees Burned
After he told his story, investigators went back to
the spot. They found a large circular spot in the clearing where the ground and
grass were charred. The tops of some nearby trees were severely burned. The
trunks and limbs of some of the trees were scarred.
The Air Force, at that time, normally debunked and
belittled UFO sightings and the people who reported them out of hand, but in
this instance, they did not reckon with Flynn’s standing in his community. On
this occasion the Air Force had to partially back off. They only took one shot,
that I can find, in that they labeled it by innuendo to be a hoax. Question is,
how did Flynn fake the charred circle of ground, how did he burn and scar the
trees and, most importantly, how did he self-inflict a bruise of such shape and
intensity?
One final piece of evidence helped exonerate James
Flynn. One of his physical injuries was atrophy of internal muscles. Medical
science tells us that one can’t be faked; period!”
NOTE: The UFO incident occurred on 15 March 1965, between
1:00 a.m. and 2:00 a.m., according to NICAP.org.
Wikipedia article: “Everglades”:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Everglades
Southern third of the Florida Peninsula, showing the
area
managed by the South Florida Water Management District,
Lake Okeechobee,
the Everglades, Big Cypress National Preserve, the Miami metropolitan area, the
Ten Thousand Islands, and Florida Bay (text by Wikipedia) (wikimedia.org)
(wikimedia.org image)
Sawgrass prairie in Everglades National Park (Florida)
north of Anhinga Trail (text by Wikipedia) (wikimedia.org photo)