The latest "trick" in Ed's effort to fool people using a video camera. (frame grab from youtube)
Ed continues the hunt: 1993 to present
©Tim Printy October 2008
Despite the critics, Ed continued on and now began to record UFOs on videotape and film during daylight hours. Many of these had already occurred prior to 1993. These included a video of about 3-4 seconds of a UFO in February 1991 and a series of still photographs of a UFO that flew into the sun in July 1991. In both cases, Dr. Maccabee performed his usual analytical support for the images. Unfortunately, the actual distance to the UFO could never be determined and the actual size could have been as small as a button close up or the size of a house far away. The images were essentially meaningless but Ed continued on to try and record images that were better.
The next opportunity did not happen until 1993, when on August 6, Ed noticed a UFO out on Santa Rosa sound while looking through his picture window. Ed managed to record several images of the UFO low on the waterline but then, when the UFO shot up into the air, the camera automatically took another photograph! Even more curious is that Ed reported a thumping sound that appeared to be coming from the window. There was even a black spot on the window glass that appeared to be moving in time with the thumping noise. When the UFO disappeared, the black dot also left. Ed was back into the swing of things in recording UFOs.
Dr. Maccabee performed some analysis on these photographs and noted that he could not, again, determine the distance to the UFO. However, the maximum size was set at 20 feet if the UFO was all the way across the sound. However, since there were no UFO reports from that side of the sound to support this conclusion, the UFO must have been much closer meaning it was much smaller in size. As in previous cases, analysis of these photographs tends to leave it up to the reader to determine what to believe. The UFO could easily have been a small model outside the window.
On the sixth anniversary of Ed's initial UFO encounter, Ed managed to photograph the UFO while driving across a bridge that was devoid of traffic because of the Veteran's day parade. This image was out of focus and showed no significant details. It was another in a long line of impossible to analyze images where Ed had to be believed in order to support his claims of photographing another UFO!
Only four days later on the 15th of November, Ed had another one of his "chance" encounters. This time, the UFO appeared hovering over the sound. Ed managed to record some of this on his video camera and after a short period, the UFO disappeared into a cloud. Dr. Maccabee writes:
The video image is, unfortunately, very tiny although it is quite evident as a dark dot silhouetted against the clouds and sky. For forty-four seconds of the video the UFO is motionless against the cloud background and, based on the video alone, one might accept the helicopter explanation. Then it zooms away and bye-bye helicopter explanation. Unfortunately Ed moved the camera slightly just before the UFO accelerated, which makes the analysis of the motion a bit difficult. However, by comparing the UFO position with fixed points in the scenery I find that the UFO suddenly took off upward to the right (east), traveled in a slight arc and disappeared in about 1/3 of a second ... At a distance of 1 mile this corresponds to a travel distance of about 0.037 miles in 1/3 second or about 0.11 miles/sec for an average speed of about 400mph. Hence this UFO was undergoing immense acceleration as it departed. (Walters and Maccabee 91-2)
Of course, Dr. Maccabee ignored the problems if the UFO was much closer. At a half mile, it would be 200 mph and at 100 feet it would have been less than 10 mph! His conclusions are based on assumptions that can not be established.
Ed continued to monitor the skies and it seemed he was reliving the 1987-88 episode all over again. He began to leave his camera on to monitor the UFO he started to see zipping around the sky outside his window (that nobody else managed to report). This did record the UFO as expected. According to Dr. Maccabee it only "appeared as a small darkish object" (Walters and Maccabee 93). It zipped across the screen in a straight line. Bruce then concludes that if the object were across the sound, it was moving at 200 mph. However, he does not enlighten us as to what size such an object must have been. Considering that it was apparently a small dot, it could not have been too large. A few minutes later, Ed was able to zoom in as it hovered over the water. For several minutes the UFO was there but it was hard to see because, according to Dr. Maccabee, "it is an optical fact that silver/grey-colored objects tend to fade into the sky" (Walters and Maccabee 93). Of course he also mentioned that the object was small even when the camera telephoto had been zoomed in all the way. With a 200mm lens, Ed managed to look at the UFO (although this is only about 4X magnification) and note, "It looks like an egg on the top and an egg on the bottom ... huh! ... a bunch of ball-like things around the outside" (Walters and Maccabee 94). The UFO then simply "disappears" from the video. This is another case of a UFO that was not seen by any other witnesses, which Ed managed to see and record.
A few days later, Ed performed another recording feat by videotaping a UFO hovering over the beach. While Ed was recording this hovering UFO, it suddenly disappeared. The video does not show much in the way of a shape or size. Dr. Maccabee states that one can see an elliptical shape but I could not see it when it was shown on TV so one has to take his word for it. The disappearance was not the matter of the camera being turned off since Bruce noticed that a person in the distance does not break stride. However, the camera was shifting when the UFO disappeared bringing into question if the motion was not timed to disturb the scene to hide the removal of what was producing the image. Again, despite the UFO being visible to Ed, nobody else reported it.
By January, Ed had gotten back into the swing of things and on the 12th, he finally was able to implicate the US Air Force, UFOlogy's whipping boy, into hiding the secret he was trying to reveal. Ed 's attitude as well as Dr. Maccabee's is made clear in their book:
What qualifies as one hundred percent proof, especially with UFO photos, is debatable. But the two photographs I took on that Wednesday afternoon leave almost no room for doubt, and the photographic analysis conclusion was clearly stated by Dr. Bruce Maccabee: "These two photographs prove two things, UFOs are real and the military knows it." (Walters and Maccabee 51)
What happened is best explained by Ed:
Clear and unmistakable, the UFO was hovering motionless over the Gulf Breeze horizon. The sun glinted on its silver body, and that's what caught my eye ... My 220 mm lens revealed an extraordinary sight ... Its center looked like a vertical elongated ball surrounded by a ring of seven or eight smaller elongated balls or tanks. Before snapping the shutter I was distracted by the roar of jets and looked up to see three military jets streaking toward the UFO from the northeast ... I eased up on the zoom, increasing the field of view, hoping to include the jet as it got closer to the UFO. A few seconds passed before I could see both the jet and the UFO through the lens and that's when I hit the shutter. I pushed the zoom lens to its maximum and momentarily lost sight of the UFO, but within three or four seconds once again managed to steady the camera on the UFO ... To my surprise the jet was moving into the zoomed-in field of view just as I pressed the shutter button ... I watched as this jet continued flying southwestward and then made a wide circling turn, finally meeting up with the two other jets ... The jets were in delta formation ... It looked like they were going to attack! Suddenly the UFO just disappeared ... All three broke off their straight intercept approach with a sweeping right hand turn that took them directly over the houses a block to the west of me ... Wing rockets, painted white with red tips dominated the underside of two jest that passed closest to me; the other appeared to have orange wingtips. (Walters and Maccabee 51-2)
Interesting to note is that Ed now spins a tale about strangers trying to break into his home to steal these negatives. Unfortunately, despite being skilled at breaking into Ed's home, they were unable to find them. If they were part of the government and knew about these photographs, why wouldn't they have intercepted them at the photo lab rather than trying to do so at Ed's home? There is nothing like making the story more interesting by introducing a conspiracy.
Analysis revealed the jets were F-15 Eagles although I question some of the specific conclusions reached by Ware and Reid (both of whom were ex-AF). Dr. Maccabee concluded from his examination of the image that the right side of the UFO was partially obscured by the jet. Perhaps it is the quality of the image in the book but I don't think this is the case. The undercarriage of the jet's nose appears to be obscured by the UFO in this image. I also do not see the obscuration of the UFO in the manner that Maccabee suggests. The spheres of the UFO are whole and none are partially obscured. It is true that the right most sphere appears to be missing and this may be why Bruce feels that there is an obscuration. However, this apparent hiding of the sphere is contradicted by the underside of the fuselage being hidden by the middle spheres. Dr. Maccabee's conclusions are based on this assumption for which I feel he has misrepresented his case.
The UFO's balloon shaped structure indicates this could just have easily been a cluster of balloons floating over the sound. Nobody can tell and Dr. Maccabee's bold claims that this is proof and the USAF knows about it is more based on wishful and biased thinking than actual evidence.
Ed was able to get another photograph of a UFO on April 26, 1994. Again, Ed was able to see the UFO outside of his window arriving out of the sky in the direction of Shoreline Park. It then hovered and Ed was able to pull out his trusty Polaroid 600 camera to take a photograph. The UFO looked like the one that Ed had photographed with the F-15 and was now sucking up a column of water. This must have created a lot of commotion on the far shore but, again, it seems there were nobody who managed to report any related events. The UFO then left. The photograph is a blurry object against the far shore with a white shaft connecting beneath it to the water. According to Maccabee, there are no structures on the far shore that could have produced the image and therefore the object was a UFO. However, did he check for temporary structures/barges/etc that could have produced the image? One must continue to wonder how Ed, over a mile away, is able to see these objects but people who are closer (the objects are always near the opposite shore), seem to ignore them.
About the same time that Ed was recording these images, he sent to Dr. Maccabee another photograph of a UFO he took back in February 1988. According to Dr. Maccabee, Ed did not want to show this picture because he had experienced "missing time" and did not recall taking it. Of course, this picture (now titled #40) is important because it shows part of the UFO obscured by a distant tree. A poor quality image of it is presented in the book UFOs are real and here's the proof. Yet this image seems to not line up with the daytime shot that Ed produced as well. Of course, Dr. Maccabee implies that the daylight shot was not taken at the same point but after examining the two frames, I think there are some problems with the image. It may be that the image quality is poor but the tree appears to curve upwards towards the left but the blocking feature of the UFO seems vertical in nature. Could it be that during a double exposure, Ed used a straight object to block the UFO model and then positioned the UFO in the direction of the tree to give the desired effect. Then Ed may have noticed some problems and decided not to present the image at the time. Since he now knew that Dr. Maccabee would endorse just about any picture he took, he could then present this picture as more evidence for a book. Since high quality copies of these images are not readily available for analysis by third parties, we are stuck having to accept that what Dr. Maccabee and Ed say are true and factual.
Ed's made one last recording of a UFO on July 18, 1995. Ed's describes the video:
I witnessed the UFO as the video camera recorded my reaction and captured the UFO as it sped into camera view, made a "scientifically" impossible reverse urn, and retraced its own path, disappearing in the direction from which it came ... Clearly defined on the video are the forty-foot-tall pine trees that line the distant shoreline. A white sandy beach separates the green forest from Santa Rosa Sound's blue water and there, crossing over the sunlit beach and against the bright green trees, the UFO's shadow can be seen darting into view with the UFO. A major detail that confirms the size and distance of the UFO. There can be little debate among the scientific community. The shadow moves at the same rate as the UFO .... (Walters and Maccabee 235-6)
This is a video that Dr. Maccabee champions with a lot of analysis and calculations. Of course it is the shadow that makes the video seem realistic. Could it be faked somehow? Dr. Maccabee again concludes that Ed is just not bright enough to pull off such a stunt but John Shirley was not convinced. He asked Scott Billups, a special effects expert and movie director, to look at the video. Shirley states:
Billups looked at the Walters reverse-motion UFO many times and concluded (tentatively, as he did not have the original, just a copy of a blurry video) that it was "the old pane of glass trick". This "hack" (to use the term he said UFO hoaxers use), he said, was as simple as painting an "alien craft" on a pane of glass, moving the glass -- in this case quickly forward and back -- in front of the camera. The shadow also was painted on the glass. (Shirley)
Ed's video, as always, is unsupported by any witnesses who populate the far shore where the UFO was closest. In none of the pictures and videos he managed to capture of UFOs buzzing the far shore outside his window do I read of witnesses making independent reports. Ed never had any independent witnesses (other than those suspected of assisting him hoax these images) who saw him photograph any UFOs or saw the UFOs he actually imaged. Such a contradiction is not even addressed by Dr. Maccabee.
Ed probably is still recording UFOs for Dr. Maccabee, who is more than willing to accept them as authentic. I am sure that Bruce can always produce a mathematical model that explains these images and how real they truly are. Doctor Maccabee also continues to hold the opinion that only a genius, which Ed is apparently not, could have created such a hoax that could fool him. Perhaps Rex Salisberry put it best in referring to the publication of the latest book UFOs are real and here's the proof:
After reading the new Walters/Maccabee book, it seems to me to be `deja vu all over again', to borrow a trite phrase. Mr. Ed (Walters) makes some pictures, writes a story about them, and sends them to Maccabee (otherwise known as Dr. Edsez). Dr. Edsez states that the photos are valid and the story true because he believes Mr. Ed. Mr. Ed then gloats that his pictures and stories have been validated by Dr. Edsez, and the circle is complete. They both then giggle all the way to the bank! (Salisberry)
Works Cited
Salisberry, Rex. Letter. Saucer Smear. 5 Aug. 1997. Available WWW: http://www.martiansgohome.com/smear/v44/ss970805.htm
Shirley, John. "Listen. I DONT CARE ABOUT SHIRLEY's LAST WORD On UFOs, It's His POMPOUS OPINION and SCREW HIM (and Besides, I'm Not Even Reading This Column)". On line posting. Available WWW: http://www.darkecho.com/skepticalbeliever/listen.html
Walters, Ed and Bruce Maccabee UFOs are real: Here's the proof. New York: Avon Books 1997.
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