“What?” I ask.

“Well,” he says, looking at me carefully, “maybe that’s why I’m here.”

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Duane Cook is not alone. A lot of people are convinced that extraterrestrials are watching us. There are more than 200 UFO-oriented organizations worldwide, according to The UFO Encyclopedia, which bills itself as “a comprehensive A-to-Z guide to the UFO phenomenon” and which cheerfully and uncritically passes along all kinds of fascinating UFO stories. Here, for example, is an excerpt from the entry about a “contactee”—a person who claims to receive regular visits from extraterrestrials—named Howard Menger:

According to Menger, a rash of sightings around his New Jersey home was followed by regular social visits from the Space People. He performed favors for his alien friends and even acted as their barber, cutting their long blond hair in order that they could pass unnoticed among the earthlings. Menger was rewarded with a trip to the moon, where he breathed easily in a surface atmosphere similar to Earth’s. He brought back some lunar potatoes, which reportedly contained five times the protein found in terrestrial potatoes. Their nutritive value could not be proved, however, because Menger had supposedly handed them over to the U.S. government, which was keeping them a secret.

Not all the UFO believers, however, are Froot Loops. A lot of people who definitely qualify as Responsible Citizens have claimed they saw something strange in the sky. in 1973, Jimmy Carter, then the governor of Georgia, reported that he had seen a UFO in 1969, just before a Lions Club meeting (although we should bear in mind that, as president, Carter claimed he was attacked by a large swimming rabbit). Other celebrities who, according to The UFO Encyclopedia, have reported UFO sightings include: Jackie Gleason, Muhammad Ali, John Travolta, Elvis Presley, Orson Bean, and, of course, William Shatner.

Many “sightings” have turned out to be hoaxes. Many others have turned out to be man-made or natural objects—airplanes, weather balloons, satellites, planets, stars, etc. And some remain unexplained. The mainstream scientific community tends to believe these are probably ordinary phenomena that could, with sufficient information, be identified. The UFOlogists tend to believe they are evidence that extraterrestrials are here. The debate rages on.

The federal government has, reluctantly, played a major role in the UFO controversy. The Air Force, in an operation called Project Blue Book, collected and investigated UFO reports from 1948 until 1969, when the project was dropped because, the government says, it was a waste of time. Many UFOlogists, however, argue that the government wasn’t really trying to solve the mystery but to discredit the witnesses, and is now engaged in a massive conspiracy to cover up evidence of extraterrestrial visits, just as it has refused to release the lunar potatoes. Some of the conspiracy theories are pretty spooky, as we will see.

On my second day in Gulf Breeze, I drive out to Fort Walton Beach, about 40 miles east, to visit Donald Ware, the Florida state director for the Mutual UFO Network (MUFON). MUFON describes itself as “an international scientific organization composed of people seriously interested in studying and researching” in an effort to provide “the ultimate answer to the UFO enigma.”

Ware, who spent 26 years in the Air Force and flew two combat tours as a fighter pilot, appears to be a very straight arrow, a serious man with serious eyes. And he takes the Gulf Breeze sightings very seriously. After a MUFON field investigator—there are more than 50 in the state—examined the Polaroids and interviewed some of the witnesses, MUFON released a “preliminary evaluation” stating that the Polaroids show “an unknown of great significance.”

Ware tells me that this is going to be “an important case that will be discussed by UFOlogists all over the world.” As he talks, he backs up various points by pulling papers from his files, which he began amassing back in 1952, when he saw lights over Washington, D.C., in what turned out to be a famous UFO incident.

“After 12 years of study,” he says, “I decided that somebody was watching us. After 10 more years of study, I concluded that someone in our government has known this since 1947.”

Solemnly, Ware hands me a book containing a reproduction of what are alleged to be Top Secret U.S. government documents. These documents state that in 1947, near Roswell, New Mexico, the U.S. government secretly recovered a crashed flying saucer and four alien bodies.

And President Harry Truman set up a secret group of top scientists, called “Majestic 12,” to study the aliens and their craft.

And this whole thing has been kept secret ever since.

Ware is looking at me intently.

“Well!” I say brightly. “Thanks very much for your help!”

I’m sitting in my motel room, thinking. The more I think, the more it seems to me that, whatever is going on in Gulf Breeze, the Key Figure is “Ed.” He’s the one who brought the first set of Polaroids to the Sentinel, allegedly on behalf of the photographer. He’s the one, according to Duane Cook, who took the later Polaroid showing three objects. He’s the only photographer who isn’t totally anonymous. I decide I need to talk to him. I call Cook, the Sentinel editor, and ask him to ask “Ed” to please get in touch with me.

Less than an hour later, I hear a tapping at my motel window.

“Ed” does not introduce himself, except to say: “I’m the guy you’re looking for.” He’s about my age, 40. He’s articulate, mechanically inclined, and very sharp.

We talk for about an hour. Right away he admits he took the first set of Polaroids. He says he invented the story about being the intermediary because he was afraid that if his name got in the paper, he’d be ridiculed. “I have a family,” he says. “I’m a successful businessman. Everyone in this town knows me.”

“I know what I saw is real,” he says.

He becomes more agitated as he talks. He tells me he has seen the UFO six times. He says that what has been published in the Sentinel is only the beginning of the story.

“There is more,” he says. “But it’s scary.”

He leans forward.

“There is this thing,” he says, “and it can shoot a blue beam out of it. I got a picture of it doing it.”

He shows me the picture. It’s another Polaroid, showing the now-familiar object, with what appears to be a faint bluish ray of light coming out of the hole in the bottom.

Now the conversation gets weird. “Ed” says he was once trapped in the beam. Frozen. Paralyzed. Couldn’t move a muscle.

While he was in the beam, “Ed” believes, the UFO beings put some kind of “mental input” into his brain, so they could communicate with him, but something—jets, maybe—scared them off, and now the beings keep coming around because they’re trying to get the mental input back. He knows when they’re nearby. “I can hear a hum,” he says.

He also hears voices, speaking in Spanish and some kind of strange “consonant language.” He has heard the voices at night, near his house, out by his pool pump. He wishes that, whoever they are, they would hurry up and take their mental input back and leave him alone.

“This has f-ed up the last two months of my life,” he says.

I tell him that a lot of people would say he was crazy, or lying.

He says he knows that, but he has something that will shut everybody up.

He says he has a videotape.

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