The Gulf Breeze UFOtos

Summary

Hoax! Podcast – "The Gulf Breeze UFOtos"

Hosts: Dana Schwartz & Lizzie Logan
Release Date: April 27, 2026

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Episode Overview

This episode of Hoax! centers on one of the most infamous (and eventually debunked) UFO sighting sprees in American history: the Gulf Breeze UFO photographs taken by Ed Walters in late-1980s Pensacola, Florida. Lizzie and Dana explore not only the details of Ed's claims and the widespread excitement they sparked, but also the wave of skepticism and investigation that followed—culminating in a delightfully human (and very terrestrial) explanation. In their signature witty, conversational style, the hosts dig into the psychology of belief, how hoaxes gain momentum, and why some stories are just too fun to let go.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

Setting the Scene: Gulf Breeze, 1987

• Location & Culture: Gulf Breeze is a cozy, upper-middle-class community near Pensacola, full of "Reagan Republicans" who enjoy semi-vacation beach life. It is also home to a Naval air station and airport—lots of things flying overhead.

  "This isn't like a vacation destination." – Lizzie (07:47)
  "That seems relevant. People are going to be seeing things in the sky." – Dana (08:13)

The Sighting: Ed Walters and the Flying Saucer

• Ed Walters: A local contractor who claimed to have encountered and photographed UFOs multiple times starting November 11, 1987.
• His Story Evolves: Classic movie-style encounter: a flying saucer, blue beams, mind paralysis, mysterious voices, and even images of dogs telepathically beamed into his head.

  "In some accounts he will say it looks just like out of the movies. And in other accounts he will say it looks nothing like out of the movies. So his story is gonna change." – Lizzie (09:25) "And they beam pictures into his head of dogs." – Lizzie (10:36) "If this happened to you, what would be your next move?" – Lizzie (11:08)
  "I would go to a neurologist and try to get an MRI." – Dana (11:13)

The Photos and Their Impact

• Polaroid Evidence: Ed submits a series of remarkably clear Polaroid photos to the local tabloid, the Gulf Breeze Sentinel, under the pseudonym "Mr. X". Once published, others claim similar sightings, creating a local frenzy.

  "I've tried to take pictures of the moon with my iPhone, and they're bad. And this is the 80s." – Dana (12:09)

• Wave of Sightings: Hundreds of locals claim to witness UFOs, demonstrating the contagious effect of suggestion.

  "The power of suggestion is very strong and everybody everywhere in Gulf Breeze is claiming that they are seeing UFOs in such a number that it... has become the strongest piece of evidence. Because, like, how can 500 people be wrong?" – Lizzie (25:20)

Investigative Organizations React

• MUFON: The Mutual UFO Network, eager believers, accept Ed's story—and even loan him a tamper-proof camera for "indisputable" evidence.
• CUFOS and CSICOP: More skeptical organizations dig into the technical plausibility and, finding the photos suspiciously crisp (given the needed long exposure at night), start pushing for hard evidence.

  "To get basically anything late at night, outdoors, you would have to leave the shutter open on the camera for a long time... But the photo is super crisp." – Lizzie (27:00)

Escalation and the Kitsch Factor

• Media Circus: National attention follows—Oprah, Unsolved Mysteries, even a TV movie deal. Gulf Breeze goes UFO-mad; the mayor is exasperated by the influx of outsiders and "alien fever."

  "He [the mayor] is done. He a little bit like the mayor in Jaws where he's like, you know what it is? It's like if the mayor in Jaws was right and there wasn't a shark." – Lizzie (38:43)

The Debunking

• Craig Myers’ Investigation: Local journalists, notably Craig Myers (who provided background for this episode), decide to reverse-engineer the photos. They discover a styrofoam and paper model spaceship stashed in the attic of one of Ed's former homes—with Ed's handwriting inside.

  "It is a small model of a spaceship...It is the spaceship that appeared in the photos. Yep, to the best of my naked eye." – Dana (43:59)

• Confronting Ed: When shown the model, Ed claims it was planted by the feds, further entrenching his story in conspiracy.

  "He calls back two hours later and he's like, okay, that was planted, of course, in the attic..." – Lizzie (46:04)

• Confessions: A friend of Ed's son, Tommy Smith, admits Ed tried to recruit him to help fake the photos, and provides a step-by-step of the hoax's execution.

  "I'm friends with Ed's son, and three years ago Ed tried to get me to help him fake his UFO photos." – Lizzie (54:20)

UFO Belief, Group Dynamics, and Aftermath

• UFO Groups Fracture: After MUFON’s own top investigators call the case a hoax, the organization is torn between true believers and those convinced by the evidence.

  "If your group loses members every time there's a debunking, then all you're left with are the people who will never believe in a debunking." – Lizzie (58:59)

• Legacy: Ed makes money and enjoys fleeting celebrity, but the broader consensus (including both debunkers and many at MUFON) lands squarely on "hoax."

  "Lizzie and Dana will both be on the record as saying we believe a hoax." – Dana (59:34)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the contagiousness of sightings:

  "If 500 people see a thing, it's not 500 people all murder on the Orient Express getting together for a conspiracy." (25:37)

• On the debunking process:

  "We are going to try every way we can to figure out how these photos were faked. And if we can't do that, then we will take as our hypothesis that the photos are real." (42:50)

• On denial and conspiracy logic:

  "They will always move the goalposts. They will always just rewrite the truth to incorporate whatever evidence you bring forward." – Lizzie (52:57)

• Wisdom from astronomy professor Andrew Fracknoy:

  "No one can prove that we have not been visited by aliens. But negatives are always hard to prove. The thing scientists want is analyzable proof that we have been visited. And so far, not one shred of physical evidence exists that alien spacecraft have been or are here. And why would they come all this way, take a short dip into our atmosphere, just enough to be glimpsed, and then go away." (65:53)

• On the nature of UFOs:

  "Space is cool enough without us having to, like, make stuff up. And science is cool enough without us having to, like, make stuff up." – Dana (63:57)

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Important Timestamps

• [07:47] – Introduction to Gulf Breeze, Florida’s particular setting
• [09:19] – The first sighting and Ed's incredible story
• [12:09] – The suspiciously high quality of Ed’s photos
• [25:20] – Local UFO mania hits critical mass
• [27:00] – Details of the technical investigation into the photos’ authenticity
• [43:59] – Journalists discover Ed’s model spaceship
• [54:20] – Tommy Smith explains Ed’s method for faking the UFOtographs
• [58:01] – MUFON’s investigative report calls it a hoax, leading to schisms
• [65:53] – Professor Fracknoy explains lack of scientific evidence for alien visitation
• [63:57–65:47] – Final reflections: the enduring appeal of aliens and hoaxes, and the importance of critical investigation

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Conclusion

"The Gulf Breeze UFOtos" masterfully showcases why stories like Ed Walters’ spread, endure, and continue to ignite imaginations—even after being thoroughly debunked. The hosts blend humor and skepticism, offering both a satisfying narrative arc and deeper meditations on collective belief and the allure of the unexplained. The episode ends with a clear-eyed assertion: while it’s fun (and even important) to investigate the unknown, hoaxes like Gulf Breeze remind us to use our critical faculties—even when we want to believe.

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Sources Featured in the Episode

• Craig Myers, journalist and Gulf Breeze investigator
• Astronomy professor Andrew Fracknoy’s commentary (65:53)
• Research courtesy of MUFON, CUFOS, and CSICOP archives

Find the hosts:

• Instagram: @hoaxsthepodcast (for updates and behind-the-scenes content)
• Dana: @DanaSchwartzzz
• Lizzie: @LizzieLogan

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"Please Hoax responsibly." – Lizzie Logan (66:46)

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Transcript

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[Lizzie Logan]

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[Dana Schwartz]

IBM, you're listening to Hoax, a production of Iheart Podcasts folks. It's a hoax.

[Lizzie Logan]

How come no one ever seems to

[Dana Schwartz]

believe me when I swear I never was? To see this, I'm left wondering. Welcome to Hoax Apartment Podcast about the lies we wish were true and truths

[Lizzie Logan]

that sound like lies.

[Dana Schwartz]

I'm the ghost of Dana Schwartz.

[Lizzie Logan]

And I'm the evil twin of Lizzy Logan.

[Dana Schwartz]

Welcome to the show, Lizzie. Is there something you want to say before this episode begins?

[Lizzie Logan]

There's a couple things. This is our first time recording, but our second time talking about this particular hoax. Because yesterday we had this conversation and I had pressed the wrong button and we didn't record it.

[Dana Schwartz]

So now there is a missing podcast. Yeah, you can build your own hoaxes about.

[Lizzie Logan]

Uh huh. What we might have revealed.

[Dana Schwartz]

What we might have revealed. What we might have talked about What? Government secrets were silenced. Someone sabotaged our recorder.

[Lizzie Logan]

Yeah, that person was me. I sabotaged it. And it literally. Dana had been like, you've gotten so techy through doing this podcast.

[Dana Schwartz]

Yeah, it's true.

[Lizzie Logan]

You've gotten so good at running the recording, and then it jinxed me, and I didn't record it. All of which is to say that Dana now knows all of the information and is not gonna pretend like she doesn't know the information.

[Dana Schwartz]

But the good news is I wasn't really paying attention yesterday, so I didn't. I didn't retain any of that.

[Lizzie Logan]

There will still be surprises. She doesn't have it written down in front of her.

[Dana Schwartz]

Yeah, but.

[Lizzie Logan]

Yeah, so we're gonna go back through the story, but this is the second time we've talked about this.

[Dana Schwartz]

Can I just also do an annoying bit of housekeeping up front before I forget so I don't forget at the end of this episode? If you are a listener of the show, I beg of you, please pre order my new book. It's called the Arcane Arts. It's a sexy magic story about a professor and grad student. And pre orders are, like, the most important thing you can do to support a book. And so that would be. That would just be great. Let's dive into this episode that I know nothing about.

[Lizzie Logan]

You don't know anything about this.

[Dana Schwartz]

All right.

[Lizzie Logan]

We're gonna be talking about UFOs, which

[Dana Schwartz]

I genuinely am excited about, because that is just UFOs as a category is an area of hoaxdom that just like,

[Lizzie Logan]

I have not investigated an Area 51, you might say.

[Dana Schwartz]

But, you know, some people have their sort of pet subjects. Like, when you're a kid, you're like, oh, I went all in on the Loch Ness monster or whatever. I just have never really looked into UFOs, and it feels like every three months, there's like, a New York Times headline that's like, guess what? Aliens are real. I guess. And I'm like, oh, are they? And then I just sort of never look into it.

[Lizzie Logan]

Well, we're going to talk about all of that. I mean, the short answer is like, aliens are real. They're just not here. And UFOs are real if you stick to the rigid definition of ufo, which is Unidentified Flying Objects.

[Dana Schwartz]

So anything in the sky that's flying that we don't know what it is is real.

[Lizzie Logan]

Is a UFO, and is real.

[Dana Schwartz]

So UFOs do exist.

[Lizzie Logan]

Yeah, absolutely. So, like, technically, a goose, before you recognize that it was a goose, could be a ufo. When you are in like a paranormal circle or having like a conversation with a conspiracy theorist. Usually UFO is a synonym for flying saucer from outer space driven by an extraterrestrial. So we can use those terms interchangeably and we are trusting you, the audience to get via context, which one we mean. And so we'll also say right off the bat, like a lot of UFO enthusiasts, they will point to the fact that, you know, the government doesn't have files about leprechauns and it doesn't have files about fairies, but they do have files about UFOs.

[Dana Schwartz]

And you're like, well, yeah, they just have a file of unidentified Flying objects.

[Lizzie Logan]

Yeah. Because the government needs to know what's going on up in the sky. It doesn't mean that aliens are here. Like these are different phenomena.

[Dana Schwartz]

Yeah.

[Lizzie Logan]

But yes, technically, absolutely, UFOs are real. It's just that we haven't figured out what they are.

[Dana Schwartz]

Speaking of UFOs, my one and a half year old son Arthur has in fact begun to identify helicopters by saying, that's so cute.

[Lizzie Logan]

And also such an LA thing.

[Dana Schwartz]

And he says bye to every helicopter plane that he hears in the sky. If he hears like a plane or something come by, he just goes, bye.

[Lizzie Logan]

I love Arthur so much.

[Dana Schwartz]

So he would be delighted to encounter any ufo and he would probably just say bye.

[Lizzie Logan]

In our crop circle episode, this is sort of a, a good like two hander, two parter with the crop circle episode. We talked all about the crop circle phenomenon. We're going to just talk about one guy and his UFO pictures. And the reason that I chose this particular guy and these particular UFO sightings. Yeah. Is not because it is the most famous. It's not because it's particularly representative. It's not for any reason other than the journalist who debunked this hoax sent us an email and emailed us his book. And the early bird gets the worm. So that's how you get an episode of hoax about you is you send us an email and send us a PDF of your book. I love it.

[Dana Schwartz]

I also do think it actually is pretty indicative of the phenomenon.

[Lizzie Logan]

I also, yeah, we wouldn't do an episode about it if it didn't turn out to be like a good story.

[Dana Schwartz]

But tell us what this thing was.

[Lizzie Logan]

So this is the Gulf Breeze sightings. Okay. So Gulf Breeze is a community in Pensacola, Florida. It's a sleepy little bedroom community. We are in the late 80s right now. So these are like, you know, sort of Reagan Republicans. They're well to do, but you know, not rich people. It's very comfortable. It's sort of a small town.

[Dana Schwartz]

This isn't like a vacation destination.

[Lizzie Logan]

Not really a destination, but you could definitely have sort of a vacation y life there. Like, they go to the beach a lot. You could drive through for spring break. And there is an airport and a naval air station and I believe an Air force base. So there's a lot of stuff in the sky around Gulf Breeze.

[Dana Schwartz]

Okay. That seems relevant. People are going to be seeing things in the sky.

[Lizzie Logan]

So yes, there are UFOs all over the place, but you just have to

[Dana Schwartz]

be like, it probably is a government plane.

[Lizzie Logan]

Yeah. Or even a passenger plane because there's an airport. And there are people who like to go out to the beach at night and watch all of the goings on. And yes, some of the lights are perfectly mysterious. And it's as much a social thing as it is like a research group. It's a casual interest of these people.

[Dana Schwartz]

A gang of people just going to the beach to look at the pretty lights in the sky. Yeah.

[Lizzie Logan]

Like the way you might set up camp, like looking to see if the Loch Ness monster will show up tonight. But you're not like going out in a boat studying it. It's just like an excuse to go hang out by the lake or go hang out by the beach. Got it. And one of the main guys who does this is a man named Ed Walters.

[Dana Schwartz]

Ed Walters.

[Lizzie Logan]

Ed Walters. The evening of November 11, 1987, Ed is at home. He looks out his window and what does he see but a flying saucer?

[Dana Schwartz]

And is this like a movie flying saucer? Like he like, does it look like a movie flying saucer?

[Lizzie Logan]

Yes and no. In some accounts he will say it looks like just like out of the movies. And in other accounts he will say it looks nothing like out of the movies. So his story is gonna change.

[Dana Schwartz]

Well, to be fair to Ed, some movies have different looking spaceships.

[Lizzie Logan]

So true. He grabs his camera and he takes a couple pictures of it, and then he runs out into his backyard to take more pictures. But the aliens catch him in like a blue beam of light and he's frozen and he can't move and he's being slowly lifted off the ground.

[Dana Schwartz]

I feel like I've seen this in the movies.

[Lizzie Logan]

And it also can be traced back to a story in the Sci Fi periodical, Amazing Stories that came out in the 60s. And basically that's where everybody started seeing beams. But anyway, he starts fighting it with his mind and he's like, no, don't stop. And he, like. There's, like, a mental struggle.

[Dana Schwartz]

Good for him.

[Lizzie Logan]

And the ufo?

[Dana Schwartz]

Very Star Wars.

[Lizzie Logan]

It's very Star wars, which is a big movie at this time. And the UFOs, like, stop struggling with your mind. And they beam pictures into his head of dogs.

[Dana Schwartz]

Of dogs.

[Lizzie Logan]

Of dogs.

[Dana Schwartz]

That's kind of like a confusing message. What do they. It's like. What do you mean by that?

[Lizzie Logan]

I don't know. I don't totally know.

[Dana Schwartz]

I guess it's pleasant.

[Lizzie Logan]

Maybe it's like, obey the way, like, a dog would obey.

[Dana Schwartz]

Interesting.

[Lizzie Logan]

Be subservient to us. And then it. It drops him and flies away.

[Dana Schwartz]

Power of his mind. Thank you, Ed.

[Lizzie Logan]

So I asked you this last time. Yeah. You now have a. Knowing what Ed did. Yeah. And having a chance to revise your answer. Yes. I'm gonna ask you again.

[Dana Schwartz]

Yeah.

[Lizzie Logan]

You can answer however you want. Dana. If this happened to you, what would be your next move?

[Dana Schwartz]

I will stick with my original answer, which is I would go to a neurologist.

[Lizzie Logan]

Great.

[Dana Schwartz]

And try to get an mri.

[Lizzie Logan]

Okay.

[Dana Schwartz]

Or a scan of my brain, because if that happened to me, I would assume that I was having severe hallucinations.

[Lizzie Logan]

Yeah. Or like, did the aliens do something to you?

[Dana Schwartz]

Oh, yeah.

[Lizzie Logan]

You know what I mean?

[Dana Schwartz]

That's even part of it.

[Lizzie Logan]

There could be side effects. Yeah.

[Dana Schwartz]

If they're beaming dogs into my brain, I would want to know what they did.

[Lizzie Logan]

Yeah.

[Dana Schwartz]

So, yes, I.

[Lizzie Logan]

It's like, if you get a concussion, I would.

[Dana Schwartz]

I would go to a medical professional.

[Lizzie Logan]

Okay, well, that's not what Ed does. Ed decides the only reasonable thing to do is to go to the local tabloid, the Gulf Breeze Sentinel, and he drops off the photos that he took. And he says, these were taken by my friend Mr. X, who doesn't want to come forward because he doesn't want the attention, doesn't want the heat.

[Dana Schwartz]

Of course.

[Lizzie Logan]

And this is what happened to him. And these are his pictures. The pictures you've already seen.

[Dana Schwartz]

Yeah. But show me again. They're, like, pretty good. That's the crazy thing you'd expect. I mean, I've tried to take pictures of the moon with my iPhone, and they're bad. And this is the 80s. And he's taking a picture.

[Lizzie Logan]

I will say the moon is a little bit farther away than your backyard.

[Dana Schwartz]

Okay. These are very good pictures. It kind of looks like the space Needle, but without the needle part. Just like the top part lit up. And it does, I would say, looks like a flying saucer in the movies. Yep.

[Lizzie Logan]

It is very space age. Sort of classic.

[Dana Schwartz]

Like horizontal, you know, disk glowing blue. Good photos.

[Lizzie Logan]

Using anonymous sources is very tricky.

[Dana Schwartz]

Well, it's like you can have anonymous sources, but you, as the journalist, are supposed to know who the source is.

[Lizzie Logan]

Yeah. You can shield their identity from the public, but you should know where you're getting your information. So when Ed's just like, oh, my friend took these. Basically, it's just unattributed photographer, even for a tabloid.

[Dana Schwartz]

You're like, well, come on, give us something.

[Lizzie Logan]

Like, that's not. That's like. Just like printing, like, a random thing you found on the street. But fortunately, someone comes forward to corroborate that they also saw this UFO around the same time Ed did. And it happens to be the Sentinel's editor's stepdad.

[Dana Schwartz]

I mean, that's convenient if they wanted to publish this story.

[Lizzie Logan]

Yeah. It. In later, like, retellings of the series of events, it will change and become unclear, like, how this corroboration happened, because in some versions of the story, the stepdad who used to work at the paper comes into the office and sees the photos on the table where they were doing the layout and is like, oh, I saw that. Hmm. Which kind of makes sense. But also, why would they be doing a layout if they didn't already plan to print them?

[Dana Schwartz]

Yeah.

[Lizzie Logan]

And then in other versions of the story, they printed them. And then the stepdad saw them in the paper and was like, oh, I saw that.

[Dana Schwartz]

So either way, it seems like they were pretty happy to print this.

[Lizzie Logan]

They were gonna go and print them, but when asked about it, they're like, no, we got corroboration, so whatever. But this does set off a lot more sightings in Gulf Breeze. People are calling in writing, in saying, oh, I saw a ufo. I saw ufo. I saw a ufo. You know, maybe I wasn't wearing my glasses at the time, but I definitely saw a ufo. I could tell it wasn't from this world.

[Dana Schwartz]

I mean, it's glowy blue in the photo. So it's like, yeah, if something was weird, low glowy blue, I would be like that. Maybe an alien did it.

[Lizzie Logan]

Maybe nobody else is going to get a photo.

[Dana Schwartz]

Is anyone else getting images beamed into their head to our knowledge?

[Lizzie Logan]

Not from my research, but who am I to speak for the entire population of Gulf Breeze?

[Dana Schwartz]

Anytime you think of a dog, it's aliens.

[Lizzie Logan]

I know. Maybe it was just thinking about dogs. The Air Force is, like, happy to clear up their part in it. They're like, we don't have anything that looks like that. We weren't doing Any tests that day. And if we had sent out jets to chase away a ufo, that would be classified and we wouldn't tell you.

[Dana Schwartz]

I mean, great.

[Lizzie Logan]

Yeah. The aliens immediately come back to visit Ed again. There are new elements being added to this story all the time. Ed's head hums when they're near. He can hear that they have a man and a woman on board their ship. They.

[Dana Schwartz]

This is very Star Wars.

[Lizzie Logan]

It's very Star Wars. They're trying to take him. So he gets his camera, and the ship is like, don't. Don't take our photo.

[Dana Schwartz]

Hmm.

[Lizzie Logan]

Whoever's on board the UFO who's communicating with him has been speaking English with an African dialect, but then switches to Spanish and goes, los photos, son prohibidos.

[Dana Schwartz]

So I guess they're just trying everything. They're like, oh, clearly English isn't working. We're in Florida. Let's try Spanish.

[Lizzie Logan]

I mean, they could have just, like, beamed him a picture of, like, a camera with, like, a line through it.

[Dana Schwartz]

No photos. But no, they're being polite. They're telling him the rules. Yeah.

[Lizzie Logan]

I mean, this will go against, like, what other people will later theorize about, like, why they're coming, which is, like, to pose for photos, essentially. But this is what Ed says.

[Dana Schwartz]

They're telling Ed, no photos, but he is, in fact, continuing to take photos.

[Lizzie Logan]

I mean, basically, he's trying to. And a lot of this comes from the book he'll later write. He's trying to make himself. Make himself. Make himself seem, like, very heroic. For taking these photos.

[Dana Schwartz]

Yeah. Against the alien wishes.

[Lizzie Logan]

Because, like, he can't say that he fought an alien, because he didn't. But he's like, in taking these photos, I was actually, like, standing up for my rights or something.

[Dana Schwartz]

He did fight the aliens in his mind.

[Lizzie Logan]

He did. He argues with them about whether or not they're allowed to take people because he's like, this is America. You can't just kidnap people. And they're like, no. Like, rules of the universe. We actually are. At one point, he aims a gun at them. I don't think he fires it, which is good because it's actually illegal for him to own firearms because he is a convict from some indiscretions in his youth and he's not allowed to own a gun.

[Dana Schwartz]

Well, you never know when an alien is going to show up. So.

[Lizzie Logan]

Right. Like, that is. If that had worked, that would be. The NRA would have dined out on that for 50 years.

[Dana Schwartz]

Oh, my God. If he shot down an alien and it's like, see? And everyone should be having a.

[Lizzie Logan]

Everyone should have a pistol. On December 17, the aircraft drops a liquid in Ed's backyard, which he then sends to a lab. And it turns out to be, like, a very weird mixture of chemicals. But it's all stuff that we have on Earth.

[Dana Schwartz]

So they just. They basically. Dave Matthews banned his backyard.

[Lizzie Logan]

Literally. Like, it's just like some stuff came out of their ship. Mm. Mm. I guess.

[Dana Schwartz]

Good that he sent it to a lab.

[Lizzie Logan]

Yeah. At one point, like, a circle of dry grass appears in his backyard.

[Dana Schwartz]

Crop circle, I guess. But not like a cool crop circle.

[Lizzie Logan]

No, just a circle.

[Dana Schwartz]

Okay.

[Lizzie Logan]

The UFOs have this interesting habit of only coming out when Ed is around. Like when his friends have just left or right before they arrive, or when only Ed has a camera.

[Dana Schwartz]

It's very. As you were telling me, because I've never watched this television show, but very X Files.

[Lizzie Logan]

So this is a thing that happens on the X Files all the time. Is that. And I am gonna just digress here, spoiler for the X Files. I guess part of the conceit of the show is that Mulder is a believer and that Scully is a skeptic. And they have to every episode. Well, not every episode. Cause there's Monster of the Week episodes. But every conspiracy episode, they get closer and closer to making contact with aliens. And Mulder has to keep getting more and more evidence of aliens. But to keep the conceit of the show going, they have to have Scully never see the evidence so that she can keep being a skeptic. I don't know why she doesn't just take Mulder's word for it. Because she trusts him. But anyway, so there's all of these ruses that they come up with where, like, Scully's, like, multiple episodes where she's, like, unconscious when the aliens are there. Or she's, like, in the other room when the aliens are there.

[Dana Schwartz]

So that's what's happening to Ed. These aliens are just showing up.

[Lizzie Logan]

Right.

[Dana Schwartz]

When he's the only guy with a camera around.

[Lizzie Logan]

Occasionally, the aliens will allow themselves to be glimpsed by other people. Like, they'll just, like, real quick fly by. Yeah. And other people do see him having, like, the head hums.

[Dana Schwartz]

Sure.

[Lizzie Logan]

Like, freaking out and being like, ah, the aliens are nearby. He gets a.

[Dana Schwartz]

Sorry, I didn't mean to laugh at the head hums. But that is. That is a funny way to phrase it.

[Lizzie Logan]

It's funny. It's funny. He does get, like, a very short, very grainy videotape. Of a UFO flying through the sky. But mostly what he has is these photos and these are Polaroids. So I'm going to talk for a second about Polaroids, please. They're not exactly Polaroids as we think of them today with the white borders. They're a little bit bigger than that. He has what's called a Polaroid 108 land camera, which has sort of like a more intense lens, I think it has more settings and it prints a slightly larger print. But it is essentially the same technology in that it doesn't have a negative. It just creates the one copy of the photo and then develops instantly, which

[Dana Schwartz]

of course, without a negative, it's hard, harder to corroborate, like whether or not this photo had been manipulated.

[Lizzie Logan]

Exactly. So I couldn't find whether because, you know, a Polaroid sort of, as we think of it classically prints like automatically. You don't have to wind the film. I couldn't find if this camera did that or if you could tinker with it so that it wouldn't do that. But spoiler Ed will get it to not do that, but yeah. So basically you can think of like a sort of bigger, fancier, slower Polaroid camera is what he's using. There are no negatives to compare the prints to. There's just the photos as they appear.

[Dana Schwartz]

Okay.

[Lizzie Logan]

And Ed is going to claim that he doesn't know how a double exposure works or how to do one. This is completely, demonstrably, factually inaccurate. He has done it as a party trick for his, like, kids friends.

[Dana Schwartz]

And also double exposure is not hard. It's not a tricky thing to do. As we've learned in previous episodes on Spirit Photography and the Cottingly fairies, there are a number of relatively simple ways to manipulate photos that even children can do.

[Lizzie Logan]

It's really not hard at all.

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[Lizzie Logan]

The power of suggestion is very strong and everybody everywhere in Gulf Breeze is claiming that they are seeing UFOs in such a number that it the sheer number has become the strongest piece of evidence. Because like, how can 500 people be wrong?

[Dana Schwartz]

Yeah. If 500 people see a thing, it's not 500 people all murder on the Orient Express getting together for a conspiracy.

[Lizzie Logan]

I mean, they're not all in on it. They're all being influenced by the power of suggestion, but they're not all in on it.

[Dana Schwartz]

Or maybe they're all seeing something.

[Lizzie Logan]

They're all seeing something. But you would think that if even a third of these UFO sightings were real. And I don't even mean real as in aliens. I mean real as in like a plane that wasn't supposed to be there, that the government would be across it.

[Dana Schwartz]

Well, maybe they are and they're just not talking about it.

[Lizzie Logan]

Well, someone's talking about it. Dana, do you remember from when we talked about this yesterday what MUFON stands for?

[Dana Schwartz]

No, but I like, I like the cut of their. Their jib.

[Lizzie Logan]

Yeah. So MUFON is the Mutual UFO Network. Yep. They are a research organization of amateur scientists dedicated to the study of UFOs. And they have a newsletter and a membership and a methodology and a handbook for how to evaluate a UFO sighting. And you can report it and they'll put it in there, like register. And they are as objective as they can be.

[Dana Schwartz]

You know what, Someone has to be on this.

[Lizzie Logan]

Yeah, they are all in on Ed.

[Dana Schwartz]

So they hear this story and they're like, yes, real.

[Lizzie Logan]

They're like, yeah. And someone finally took a picture.

[Dana Schwartz]

Great. And it's a good picture. Uh huh.

[Lizzie Logan]

But they are not the only game in town. We also have Psycop, that is the scientific committee investigating claims of the paranormal.

[Dana Schwartz]

And this one is more scientific.

[Lizzie Logan]

They are the debunking club.

[Dana Schwartz]

Okay, Debunkers.

[Lizzie Logan]

They are the debunkers. So they notice some issues with the film. Mainly that the type of film that Ed uses in his camera, all of the pictures are taken late at night. And to get basically anything late at night, outdoors, you would have to leave the shutter open on the camera for a long time to get enough light to get a picture. Because, and I know you're thinking like, well, there's a lot of light coming from the spaceship. There's also other things in the picture. There's trees and whatnot. Yeah. So you would have to leave the shutter open for a long time or. Which would then create blur, blur, blur, blur, blur. It wouldn't be super in focus. So if your hand moved or the spaceship moved or anything else that's in the frame, like if wind rustled the trees, it would be blurry. But the photo is super crisp.

[Dana Schwartz]

It's crystal clear.

[Lizzie Logan]

We've also got qfo, that's the center for UFO Studies.

[Dana Schwartz]

Cufo.

[Lizzie Logan]

Cufo.

[Dana Schwartz]

Oh, yeah, cufo. Cufo, cufo.

[Lizzie Logan]

That's the center for UFO Studies, which came out of Project Blue Book, which was something in the government, I think, the Air Force, collecting stories of UFO sightings by pilots. That was a project that they ran for a few years. And they also think it's a hoax.

[Dana Schwartz]

So we have like, mufon, which is the most, like, they want to believe the most. The most believing, and then these two other more scientific debunker organizations, and they're all here.

[Lizzie Logan]

They are debunking organizations who still believe that this is like, something worth looking into. They're not dismissing it, but they are looking into it.

[Dana Schwartz]

Okay. Yeah, they're more skeptical, but they are investigating.

[Lizzie Logan]

Yes. So all of this is being debated, like in the local papers and in their newsletters. So I'm not going to go into all the minutiae of all the evidence, but this is not like a he said, she said where this guy printed photos. People either blindly accepted them or just recognized them for what they were. Like people were looking into. Could this be possible? How could this be possible? What are the physics? What are the. Like, how far away was it? What night was it? How long was it? Like, people are looking into.

[Dana Schwartz]

People are putting energy into figuring it

[Lizzie Logan]

out, all of the sort of evidence that they possibly can. Okay, yeah, I'm not gonna go through it because it's not that interesting. And spoiler, it's a hoax. But they're looking into it.

[Dana Schwartz]

They're spending time on it.

[Lizzie Logan]

Being scientific, MUFON comes out with sort of an incredible hypothesis, which is they say that the humming is the way that the aliens are telling Ed. Like, hey, we're on our way. Go get your camera.

[Dana Schwartz]

It's like when Motorola Razors before you got a phone call on old timey speakers. Like the speakers would vibrate before you got a call.

[Lizzie Logan]

It's exactly like that. Yeah. Because they want him to take pictures because they're trying to gradually introduce themselves,

[Dana Schwartz]

even though they said no photographias.

[Lizzie Logan]

Just one of the many ways that mufon Ed and Objective truth are not always in alignment.

[Dana Schwartz]

Sure. So the MUFON theory is they're gonna send him these brain signals to be like, hey, get your camera, we're coming. So that he could take a picture so that humanity would be more willing to. They would be more ready and prepared

[Lizzie Logan]

when the aliens came, I guess, coming for what reason? MUFON doesn't say.

[Dana Schwartz]

I mean, maybe they don't know.

[Lizzie Logan]

Maybe they don't know. I mean, who are they to know?

[Dana Schwartz]

I mean, it makes sense that aliens want to sort of ease us into it. It's a big, It's a big revelation.

[Lizzie Logan]

They also say that they put something into Ed's head and then took it out.

[Dana Schwartz]

Hmm.

[Lizzie Logan]

Yep. Around this time, Ed passes a polygraph, but declines a CAT scan.

[Dana Schwartz]

Okay, well, a thing about a polygraph that just kind of means that he believes it's not like a measure of objective truth.

[Lizzie Logan]

Nope.

[Dana Schwartz]

And he personally is like, no, thank you to a CAT scan.

[Lizzie Logan]

Yep.

[Dana Schwartz]

Which if someone was saying that there was an alien thing, even at one point in my brain, I would want that CAT scan.

[Lizzie Logan]

I also feel like even if his CAT scan came back completely normal, he would be like, oh, it didn't leave a trace. Like, I don't know what he really has to lose by undergoing free CAT scan. But yeah. So some questions naturally arise on this hypothesis. Why Ed? And you last time had a great answer for this.

[Dana Schwartz]

And I'm really. Cause you were like, why not go to the President of the United States? And I'm like, well, maybe to the aliens, everyone is just a person and Ed is the same as anyone, so why come to anyone?

[Lizzie Logan]

Yeah, I thought that was beautiful. Like, they just see us as all equal.

[Dana Schwartz]

They see us all as equal people. Any one of us is as worthy as any other person. And so they just chose edible because he's a human being.

[Lizzie Logan]

So I thought that was stunningly insightful.

[Dana Schwartz]

Why, why should the aliens believe in human hierarchies of, of worth and power?

[Lizzie Logan]

That is so true. Yeah. However, here on Earth, we do have said hierarchies.

[Dana Schwartz]

Yes.

[Lizzie Logan]

So again, if any of this is happening, where is the government? And I understand they, like, move in secret, but at some point they're going to make.

[Dana Schwartz]

Well, they'd want to talk to Ed, I imagine.

[Lizzie Logan]

Right. And I, I, I'm not saying that E.T. is a documentary, but, like, they show up in tent Elliot's house.

[Dana Schwartz]

Yeah. They, I think the EPA is the one who shows up to. There's a government agency that's coming and, you know, doing that fumigation tent.

[Lizzie Logan]

Well, according to the book that Ed later writes, he is visited by two government agents.

[Dana Schwartz]

Okay, that's something.

[Lizzie Logan]

Two men in dark suits with guns show up at his house, and they say, we have a warrant. Oh, give us the pictures. Oh, and Ed says, I gave them to A reporter. I don't have them.

[Dana Schwartz]

And again, these are Kodak pictures or Polaroid pictures. No, negative. So he's like, I don't have them.

[Lizzie Logan]

And the guys in the black suits are like, oh, okay.

[Dana Schwartz]

And they just leave and they leave. Hmm.

[Lizzie Logan]

Which doesn't really sound like the feds to me.

[Dana Schwartz]

No. And that also sounds like a story that can't really be corroborated. That you could just make up.

[Lizzie Logan]

No. It also doesn't really make sense that they would want photos that had already been in the paper.

[Dana Schwartz]

Yeah. They're like, why? Why do they care about these photos that have already been printed and publicized?

[Lizzie Logan]

I don't know. It's around this time, if you hadn't put it together yet, that Ed has been outed. Everybody knows that there's no Mr. X. Yeah, yeah. But honestly, nobody ever believed that There was a Mr. X in the first place.

[Dana Schwartz]

It was his friend. Yeah. Oh, sure.

[Lizzie Logan]

It's like when you go to the doctor and you're like, my friend can't get it up. February 1988. MUFON is like, all right, let's give you a tamper proof camera. No more of this Polaroid shenanigans. This is going to be a high quality camera and it is sealed shut with wax. You are not tampering with it. It is a 3D camera. It has four lenses of, like, various, you know, depths that all take a picture at the same time.

[Dana Schwartz]

That sounds cool.

[Lizzie Logan]

So you take it with you. You wait for the aliens to show up, and then when they do, you take a picture. Great. So he does. And when he's in, I think, the park with his wife, he spots a UFO and he takes a picture. And there is a big to do about the unveiling of the pictures. 30 reporters and photographers gather at the film development shop, which is advertising, as our regular customers already know, our services. Out of this world.

[Dana Schwartz]

Good on them.

[Lizzie Logan]

Yep.

[Dana Schwartz]

They're the real winners here.

[Lizzie Logan]

Things are slowly but surely getting kitschier and kitschier in Gulf Breeze.

[Dana Schwartz]

Yeah. They're taking advantage of the situation. I also find it very bright that they're all there for the photo unveiling. Clearly, Ed is confident in this photo.

[Lizzie Logan]

Well, he knows what he took a picture of. He was there.

[Dana Schwartz]

All right.

[Lizzie Logan]

And they unveil the pictures. And it is a UFO with a good camera.

[Dana Schwartz]

I mean, good, good on edge.

[Lizzie Logan]

It is a thing in the sky.

[Dana Schwartz]

I guess by that definition, yes, anything is.

[Lizzie Logan]

It is a thing. And it is. And it's a thing in the sky.

[Dana Schwartz]

An unidentified flying object.

[Lizzie Logan]

It is an unidentified flying object.

[Dana Schwartz]

All right, well, case closed. Not a host.

[Lizzie Logan]

Yeah. That spring, Ed is home brushing his teeth when he gets the head hums and a voice goes, zijas. Sleep and know.

[Dana Schwartz]

Ooh.

[Lizzie Logan]

Giving him a name.

[Dana Schwartz]

His name is Zijas.

[Lizzie Logan]

Yes.

[Dana Schwartz]

That's cute.

[Lizzie Logan]

And then later, someone will be like, oh, maybe that's because the Spanish word for eyebrows is, like, cejas.

[Dana Schwartz]

Oh, yeah.

[Lizzie Logan]

And maybe they were, like, giving you a nickname, like eyebrows, because the aliens don't have eyebrows. Oh, the aliens. He basically describes them as, like, looking like E.T. he's like, they're short and they're wrinkly and they've leather skin.

[Dana Schwartz]

He never sees them in person. He just sees them in, like, his mind.

[Lizzie Logan]

No, I think he meets them once and he says they have, like, a wand.

[Dana Schwartz]

Okay.

[Lizzie Logan]

But they. So they call him zeehus. But he's getting sick of this. So are they keep.

[Dana Schwartz]

Do they keep sending him mental images of dogs? No.

[Lizzie Logan]

At one point, they sent him mental images of pregnant women, which I, I, I am not even gonna touch. Yeah, great.

[Dana Schwartz]

Maybe they're just like, these are things about humanity we like. Maybe cute dogs, the beauty of human reproduction.

[Lizzie Logan]

Yeah. So he goes down to the beach, sees one of them alien spacecraft. He's like, stop it, you aliens. No more. I don't want to talk to you anymore.

[Dana Schwartz]

He says, no more.

[Lizzie Logan]

Well, I'm paraphrasing.

[Dana Schwartz]

Yeah. But he says he doesn't want this.

[Lizzie Logan]

He's done.

[Dana Schwartz]

Even though this is claim to fame.

[Lizzie Logan]

He's all done.

[Dana Schwartz]

All right.

[Lizzie Logan]

He's like, nuh. Stop doing whatever you're doing to me.

[Dana Schwartz]

And do they listen?

[Lizzie Logan]

Because he's had an adversarial relationship with these aliens.

[Dana Schwartz]

Yeah, they have a wand.

[Lizzie Logan]

They're dumping stuff in his backyard, killing all his grass.

[Dana Schwartz]

That's true. I forgot about the dead grass circle.

[Lizzie Logan]

There's a big flash, and then he wakes up. He's, like, flung several feet. He wakes up an hour later, and that's it. He doesn't hear from the aliens again.

[Dana Schwartz]

Wow.

[Lizzie Logan]

It's May 1988. He has had 20 interactions or sighting with the aliens, and he has taken 38 photos of four different, like, craft.

[Dana Schwartz]

Four different. So the aliens have multiple ships?

[Lizzie Logan]

Yeah. You know, it's like how you have, like, different cars or armies, different makes of tank.

[Dana Schwartz]

I guess someone does.

[Lizzie Logan]

Like, if we went on a trip, there's your car and my car.

[Dana Schwartz]

Yeah, yeah.

[Lizzie Logan]

Your husband has a car.

[Dana Schwartz]

That's true.

[Lizzie Logan]

Once again, the military is happy to clarify its position Here, which is we have no reason to invent something that just hovers in the air. We don't send our planes to people's

[Dana Schwartz]

backyards, to the best of our knowledge.

[Lizzie Logan]

But y' all are on your own with that.

[Dana Schwartz]

If they were doing something sneaky, they wouldn't say it.

[Lizzie Logan]

As you noted, this is happening at the exact same time that crop circles are popping up all over Wiltshire, England.

[Dana Schwartz]

Yeah. So people are like getting alien feed fever.

[Lizzie Logan]

They're getting alien fever. When I mentioned during that episode that alien fever has gripped the planet. This is a real thing in Florida.

[Dana Schwartz]

This is happening to Ed. Out in England, crop circles are happening. So everyone is like, oh, aliens are having a moment. Aliens are having a moment.

[Lizzie Logan]

It's the trend. So we've got Ed, we've got Mufon, we've got Kufo, we've got Cycop, and we've got all of GoF Breeze involved. The mayor is so annoyed. Really.

[Dana Schwartz]

He's not leaning into the kitch. Not at all.

[Lizzie Logan]

He wants these alien loving hippies off his beach. He is done.

[Dana Schwartz]

He is done.

[Lizzie Logan]

He a little bit like the mayor in Jaws where he's like, you know what it is? It's like if the mayor in Jaws was right and there wasn't a shark.

[Dana Schwartz]

That's true. And he's like, enough of this nonsense.

[Lizzie Logan]

He's like, shark hunters, enough. We need, we need order and we need fun and we are good military loving people here in Pensacola, Florida. We have like a minor league baseball team and we're just a nice bedroom community. Enough with these, with these crazies. And they are attracting some crazies. I mean, I didn't really like get into it in this, but all these new age types are coming to town and I think they're maybe bringing kind of a bad element with them.

[Dana Schwartz]

Well, you know, if you are a new agey alien loving person, you'd want to be where the action is.

[Lizzie Logan]

I mean, eventually like a small death cult made of like military deserters is going to come to town. But that's not part of our podcast.

[Dana Schwartz]

Yeah, but I mean, it's attracting.

[Lizzie Logan]

I don't think the mayor was wrong to be like, stop it.

[Dana Schwartz]

Yeah. I mean, again, it's like the people who believe in aliens are going to want to be here.

[Lizzie Logan]

Yeah. Too bad though, because Tracy Torme, son of jazz legend Mel Torme and a former writer on SNL and Star Trek, who would go on to be a very successful sci fi TV writer, organizes UFO Cover Up Live, which is a big special Featuring interviews with the ufologists. UFO Up.

[Dana Schwartz]

That's a great name.

[Lizzie Logan]

Excellent. Dave Barry, the very funny columnist, writes about it. There's an Unsolved Mysteries about it.

[Dana Schwartz]

I like that. A lot of comedy writers are coming down and dealing with it.

[Lizzie Logan]

Ed's book comes out, someone's going to turn it into a TV show. He's going to make a couple million dollars by the end of this thing.

[Dana Schwartz]

Million with an M. Yes.

[Lizzie Logan]

Because by spoiler, like post, when our story takes place, he's going to get divorced and he and his wife are each going to walk away with like, a million bucks.

[Dana Schwartz]

Whoa.

[Lizzie Logan]

Yeah.

[Dana Schwartz]

Good for them.

[Lizzie Logan]

But now the Pensacola News Journal is across it.

[Dana Schwartz]

So now, like, not the tabloid, the real newspaper.

[Lizzie Logan]

Yeah, the real local, but larger local newspaper.

[Dana Schwartz]

Okay.

[Lizzie Logan]

They've been covering this, like, a little bit on and off. Like, not reporting every sighting, but like, oh, this thing is happening out in Gulf Breeze. Like, isn't that interesting?

[Dana Schwartz]

Yeah. Like a thing is happening in the town.

[Lizzie Logan]

Yeah. And they're reporting it objectively. Like, if 20 people say they saw something, you can report that 20 people said they saw something. But, I mean, you use, like, a great example. Yeah.

[Dana Schwartz]

It's like the idea in journalism where it's like, if people. If someone says it's raining, it's your job as a journalist to stick your hand out the window.

[Lizzie Logan]

Yeah. You're not supposed to say, someone says it's raining. Someone says it's raining. Yeah. So finally they just come to the conclusion, like, all right, the story here is not 50 people say they saw a UFO. The story here is either we have been visited by aliens, in which case we should probably look into that big news story, or there is a large hoax fooling a lot of people in Gulf Breeze, in which case we should look into that.

[Dana Schwartz]

Yeah, they should do that. News story.

[Lizzie Logan]

Yeah. Like, that's. Those are the two options here. Yeah. Craig Myers is one of the journalists assigned to cover the whole phenomenon. And he's the guy who emailed me. Hi, Craig.

[Dana Schwartz]

Hi, Craig.

[Lizzie Logan]

He takes his then girlfriend, now wife, down to the beach to meet the UFO lovers. And in sort of a way where he's like, look at all these kooky kooks. And gotta love a woman's intuition. His girlfriend is like, nope, Ed's weird. Ed gives me the heebie jeebies. Ed's bad.

[Dana Schwartz]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Good instincts.

[Lizzie Logan]

So I think they just don't know how to investigate. Like, did aliens visit? Really? The only evidence they have is these photos. So what they've decided to do is we are going to try every way we can to figure out how these photos were faked. And if we can't do that, then we will take as our hypothesis that the photos are real.

[Dana Schwartz]

I mean, yeah, that seems like a reasonable approach. See if the photos were faked or not.

[Lizzie Logan]

Yeah. So they try all these different methods. They have lamps that they reflect in a window that sort of look like they're floating. And they. They have, like, a funny little, like, photo fake contest. They get good fake photos, but they don't get any that quite look like Ed's.

[Dana Schwartz]

So they haven't figured out specifically how Ed has done it.

[Lizzie Logan]

Right.

[Dana Schwartz]

So to the best of their knowledge,

[Lizzie Logan]

if they can't figure it out, then the only explanation left is his explanation. Yeah, but Ed is a contractor by trade, and he lives in houses while he fixes them up, and then they get sold. And so what Craig does is he drives around to the different houses that Ed has been living in just to see if any of the owners found anything interesting. It's a good lead. And at the house that Ed was living in when he was supposedly visited by his little wrinkly friends, the new owners say, you know, we actually did find something interesting in the attic. And I'm gonna show you the picture of it again so that you can describe it for the listener.

[Dana Schwartz]

Okay. It is a small model of a spaceship.

[Lizzie Logan]

Yep. It is made of styrofoam plates glued together.

[Dana Schwartz]

It is the spaceship that appeared in the photos. Yep, to the best of my naked eye.

[Lizzie Logan]

And it also is made of, like, cardboard, paper.

[Dana Schwartz]

I mean, great.

[Lizzie Logan]

Yeah.

[Dana Schwartz]

Did Ed make a model of the. Of the ships that he saw? Like, maybe he, like, saw the spaceships and was. Huh.

[Lizzie Logan]

So, I mean, great question.

[Dana Schwartz]

That would be my only, like, ace in the hole. My lead here.

[Lizzie Logan]

That would be a great defense. But they're smart, these journalists. They write up their story, and of course, they have to bring Ed in for comment. And the first thing they ask him is, have you ever made a model of a spaceship?

[Dana Schwartz]

See, but the thing is, Ed should know that he did.

[Lizzie Logan]

He should know that he did. And he definitely did. Because before they ask him this, they run. They, like, inspect this model very closely. They realize that the Styrofoam is, like, one of the missing keys, because it is. If you put a light inside, it glows just enough.

[Dana Schwartz]

So it's like when they take a picture of the Styrofoam, they're like, yep, we solved it.

[Lizzie Logan]

It's a double exposure. The Styrofoam is one of the keys. And inside the, like the back of the paper has Ed's handwriting on it.

[Dana Schwartz]

So he made this.

[Lizzie Logan]

He made this. He absolutely made this. So they bring Ed in and they're like, hey, did you ever like, in the course of, for any reason, make like a little model of a spaceship? Oh, Ed. And he's like, no, I took pictures of them. Why would I need to make a model? I took pictures of them and they're like, oh, interesting. Interesting because we found a model. Boom.

[Dana Schwartz]

With your handwriting.

[Lizzie Logan]

With your handwriting. It's definitely yours.

[Dana Schwartz]

What is he? How does he react when they confront him with this literal smoking gun? Not literal smoking gun.

[Lizzie Logan]

I think he just like freaks out and leaves and then he calls back two hours later and he's like, okay, that was planted, of course, in the attic. My wife, when, when we had moved out and the owners hadn't yet moved in, my wife, she just remembered, oh my God. A neighbor called her and said that she had seen someone with out of state plates driving into the garage and pulling down the ladder up to the attic. So you know what? That was probably the feds coming to plant the evidence. Yep, yep. And then they're like, well, it has your handwriting on it. And he's like, yes, someone took my old papers out of my trash and made it. Of course, there will later be a whole thing with the writing on the papers used to make the model is a reference to a plan that Ed had for a house. And Ed is going to claim that these are references to. He's. He's always going to say, yes, that's my handwriting. I wrote those words on that paper. He's going to say that those words were written on that paper to plan for a house that was not even being planned until well after the photos were taken. So evidence that it's fake.

[Dana Schwartz]

Of course, because the photos, if the handwriting comes from later, then it was taken out of his trash and planted.

[Lizzie Logan]

Right. As part of a cover up. Post facto.

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[Lizzie Logan]

the journalists will find evidence of a different house that was made earlier than the photos were taken that they believe those. The handwriting is, like, from those plans.

[Dana Schwartz]

Yeah.

[Lizzie Logan]

And to corroborate this, the journalist will go to, like, the city archives and get, like, the original blueprints for that house to try to be like, look, here's the blueprints, here's the plans, and here's the date. Except in the quarter, that has the date written on it was, like, torn off. Oh, because Ed went and, like, covered his tracks.

[Dana Schwartz]

He covered his tracks, but he didn't throw away his model.

[Lizzie Logan]

Well, okay, so the model details about the model. It technically doesn't have quite the same number of windows as the spaceship in the photo. So people point to that as, like, well, it's not in the photo, but, like, why would someone cover it up by making a model that doesn't have the same number of windows?

[Dana Schwartz]

Yeah. Wouldn't someone making the model only be basing it on his photo? Wouldn't it be perfect?

[Lizzie Logan]

Right. Wouldn't they just make as many as it took to get it exactly right?

[Dana Schwartz]

Maybe he had, like, multiple models and he practiced with one.

[Lizzie Logan]

Right. And also, why wouldn't he throw it away? Well, it was found, like, wedged behind some insulation in the attic. So my theory is just that Ed had a bunch of practice models and a bunch of stuff up in his attic, and it got, like, shoved back there accidentally. And then when he cleaned out his attic, he didn't. He, like, missed it. Yeah. And the guy who found it in his attic was looking behind the insulation because he was having a problem with one of his pipes. So he was, like, looking for, like. He was, like, trying to track where this, like, clog in the pipe or whatever was. He does work at the epa, the

[Dana Schwartz]

bad guys in any team.

[Lizzie Logan]

So Ed is going to, like, point to that and be like, they're with the feds. But then later he's going to say, like, well, no, maybe they were patsies. And the feds actually came and broke that guy's pipe to get him to look where they'd stash the thing, yada, yada, yada.

[Dana Schwartz]

He'll come up. I mean, that's the thing about conspiracy theories. You can always come up with an answer.

[Lizzie Logan]

They will always move the goalposts. They will always just rewrite the truth to incorporate whatever evidence you bring forward.

[Dana Schwartz]

Is MUFON and these organizations, like, standing by him, or do they acknowledge that this is fake?

[Lizzie Logan]

So MUFON is having their annual convention in Gulf Breeze that summer.

[Dana Schwartz]

I'm sure the mayor loves that.

[Lizzie Logan]

The mayor is so annoyed. They're like, we're still having our convention. We are going to put our top two investigators on this. They were last year's investigators of the year. I think they're like a married couple. They're kind of like the Warrens.

[Dana Schwartz]

I love that. The controversy.

[Lizzie Logan]

Yeah. Did we start a franchise? Obviously.

[Dana Schwartz]

Okay, yeah.

[Lizzie Logan]

Hoax Origins.

[Dana Schwartz]

I mean, right? This married couple going around solving MUFON hoaxes.

[Lizzie Logan]

Absolutely. So that's their reaction. Ed knows that this story is going to come out in the Sunday paper because, kids, the paper used to have extra circulation on Sundays.

[Dana Schwartz]

Yeah, the big stories are for Sunday.

[Lizzie Logan]

So he goes onto a talk show Saturday night to preemptively explain his side of the story, which, let me tell you, just makes more people read the Sunday paper.

[Dana Schwartz]

Yeah, it doesn't seem all that convincing. Sorry, Ed.

[Lizzie Logan]

Now Tommy Smith comes forward. Tommy Smith sounds like a fake name, but it's not.

[Dana Schwartz]

Real person. Real person, Fake name, Real person.

[Lizzie Logan]

This is his real name.

[Dana Schwartz]

Okay.

[Lizzie Logan]

Great fake sounding name. He comes forward and he's like, I'm friends with Ed's son, and three years ago, Ed tried to get me to help him fake his UFO photos. And I should have come forward then, but, like, I don't know. He's no snitch.

[Dana Schwartz]

Yeah, he was. He was waiting until he was exposed. Yeah.

[Lizzie Logan]

But he's like, I didn't, you know, I. I helped him a little bit when I thought it was like a prank. And then once I realized that he was doing fraud, I didn't help him anymore. But now that he's been exposed, I'm gonna, like, tell you how he did it. So he sort of lays out, like, step by step exactly how they did all the double exposures. Like, where you put the black backdrop, where you put the, like, PVC pipe that. They put the little models on this, that and the other.

[Dana Schwartz]

There was a little school project, son. I mean, that now I'm back on board. It was, like, cute. Bonding with his son and his son's friend.

[Lizzie Logan]

I don't think the son was involved. I think it was just like his son's friend.

[Dana Schwartz]

Even a little weird, but okay.

[Lizzie Logan]

He was just like, yeah, my son is this sort of like, friend who's good at photos. Maybe.

[Dana Schwartz]

Okay, a little weird, but keep going.

[Lizzie Logan]

He tells them how Ed made crop circles, which is that you leave a trampoline turned over for a couple weeks. Because during one of the many interviews that Ed gave, he had taken a reporter out to see other crop circles, like, on a hillside. It wasn't just the one in his backyard. And later, Craig is also going to find that Ed. This is not from Tommy, but he's going to find out from another source that Ed made, like, sort of a. Like, the size of a desk prop of a ufo, and that is the one that he used to create, like, the sightings that other people witness.

[Dana Schwartz]

Oh, so he, like, puts that one in the sky somehow?

[Lizzie Logan]

Yeah, he would, like. I think he would, like, have it dangle from, like, a kite and just sort of, like, whiz by so that if you were already. Things are. It's like a hazy, dark night, and you're already sort of looking in another direction, you would be like, oh, yeah, that's. No, I saw that.

[Dana Schwartz]

Yeah.

[Lizzie Logan]

I mean, and then you're presented with a photo, and you're like, yeah, no, that's what I saw.

[Dana Schwartz]

If it's dark and night and you're not looking for it, I think that's plausible.

[Lizzie Logan]

Tommy reveals that there was another, like, college kid their age involved, named Hank. Hank now lives in Chicago. So the mayor and the chief of police of Gulf Breeze.

[Dana Schwartz]

This has gotten serious.

[Lizzie Logan]

Go to Chicago to talk to Hank.

[Dana Schwartz]

Okay.

[Lizzie Logan]

Hank is like, tommy is covering up the truth because Tommy's parents are religious zealots whose faith won't allow them to believe in aliens.

[Dana Schwartz]

So Tommy is trying to disprove aliens on behalf of his religious parents.

[Lizzie Logan]

Yes. So they call Tommy's parents, and the Smiths are like, we are Episcopalians. Who has ever heard of a radical Episcopalian?

[Dana Schwartz]

That's. That's very funny.

[Lizzie Logan]

Which is, like, such a good point.

[Dana Schwartz]

Like, the.

[Lizzie Logan]

The.

[Dana Schwartz]

Like, there are no zealot Episcopalians.

[Lizzie Logan]

No, like, it's like them and Presbyterians, like, they're just not. They're like, just like a vanilla member of Christianity.

[Dana Schwartz]

Yeah, yeah. If anything, they were like, don't lie. Probably.

[Lizzie Logan]

No, literally, they're just like, we don't like. No, that's like, no, no, no, no. So the conference comes and goes. Ed gets lots of attention. He uses it as a springboard to bigger and better things. He goes on Oprah.

[Dana Schwartz]

He goes on Oprah.

[Lizzie Logan]

He goes on Oprah to debate a debunker.

[Dana Schwartz]

I mean, that sounds like good television.

[Lizzie Logan]

It does sound like good television. Ed runs for city council and comes in dead last. And then the top two MUFON investigators come out with their report.

[Dana Schwartz]

The stars of our franchise film. Yeah.

[Lizzie Logan]

They say it's a hoax. Wow. Yes.

[Dana Schwartz]

That genuinely is surprising to me, because you'd think that MUFON people would just want to, you know, Prove it. But I guess a sloppy fake makes them look bad.

[Lizzie Logan]

Well, it divides the membership.

[Dana Schwartz]

Ooh.

[Lizzie Logan]

Because some people are like, okay, well if these investigators say it's a hoax, then it's a hoax. But other people are like, no, this is evidence of this thing that I believe or want to believe or have seen or experienced. And so I going to appeal the investigation or whatever. And I think it's similar to like how the crop circle investigators became like a less and less serious group. MUFON I think started as amateur but like very good faith investigation into UFOs. But if your group loses members every time there's a debunking, then all you're left with are the people who will never believe in a debunking.

[Dana Schwartz]

Yeah. The people who are who would never believe a debunking because the group is shedding all the more credible members.

[Lizzie Logan]

Yes. So I think that's sort of like it self radicalizes a little bit.

[Dana Schwartz]

That's a good way to put it.

[Lizzie Logan]

But the Gulf Breeze, the finer points of it continue to be debated. But for our intents and purposes, that is the end of the story. At least some MUFON members say it's a hoax. Therefore listener, it is a hoax.

[Dana Schwartz]

I think there are probably several reasons listeners can be confident that this is in fact a hoax.

[Lizzie Logan]

Yep, yep.

[Dana Schwartz]

That Lizzie and Dana will both be on the record as saying we believe a hoax.

[Lizzie Logan]

Yeah. UFOs in general continue to be in the news.

[Dana Schwartz]

Yeah. Like I said, like I feel like every 10, 10 months someone's like hey guess what, UFOs are real. And I'm like, are they? And then I never hear about it again.

[Lizzie Logan]

Again. They are. Because UFO just means thing in the air and we don't what it is.

[Dana Schwartz]

And the government says they're real sometimes.

[Lizzie Logan]

Well, the Pentagon did a study of UFOs in the mid 2010s. NASA has been studying them since 2022. In 2023 there were congressional hearings about various aircraft that people either saw or heard about that can supposedly allegedly outmaneuver American jets and can also supposedly allegedly fly in ways that to our knowledge no human made craft can. There are also these reports of a government program operating since the 30s to capture these aircraft and the pilots and then also to cover it all up.

[Dana Schwartz]

Sure, why not?

[Lizzie Logan]

Only evidence for any of this is the testimony and it's testimony from credible people.

[Dana Schwartz]

I mean things happen, people see things, people hear things. I don't want to debunk anything outright.

[Lizzie Logan]

I'm not going to like Sit here and call somebody a liar who, like me? Like, no, they were perjuring themselves in front of Congress. But like, I think that's very different from being like, oh, we found it. The smoking gun.

[Dana Schwartz]

Yes. So there are people who credibly believe

[Lizzie Logan]

they have seen things that cannot be explained. Yeah, yeah. During these hearings, they change UFO to

[Dana Schwartz]

UAP to make it less alien Y.

[Lizzie Logan]

Yeah, to make it like, less stigmatized. Which just means unidentified anomalous phenomen, which sounds spookier. Actually, it doesn't mean anything though.

[Dana Schwartz]

Anything is an anomalous phenomenon.

[Lizzie Logan]

Phenomenon is like thing that happens. Yeah, anomalous means like sort of like one of a kind or like unusual or the ordinary. And it's just so that's just like weird thing that happens that we don't know what it is. That could be anything.

[Dana Schwartz]

I mean, I guess it's good they're investigating weird things sometimes.

[Lizzie Logan]

In 2025, a whistleblower leaked footage taken in 2024 of this, like, 20 orb. That is the footage is pretty grainy. I think it makes more sense if you're in the military and know what you're looking at. But it's this orb that's like flying very fast off the coast of Yemen and it's hit by a hellfire missile. And then some debris breaks off, but the orb keeps going. And there is, to our scientific knowledge, no man made object that can survive being hit by a hellfire missile. Okay, so people were like, what the hell is this? Orbit my personal. And this is. I'm not getting this from anywhere except just like, genuinely, this is my theory that it's a drone and that the missile was like, broken.

[Dana Schwartz]

I mean, that it seems plausible. It's one of those things where it's like, there's an unlikely explanation and a more plausible explanation. It's like, which is more likely there are aliens that have done nothing but spin an orb around or one missile brute. Yeah.

[Lizzie Logan]

And there's other sort of like, famous videos that like, we don't have an explanation for. There's like the tic tac video of this, like, weird aircraft that, like, we just don't know what it is.

[Dana Schwartz]

Who knows what Russians are doing?

[Lizzie Logan]

We don't know. In early 2026, President Obama went on a podcast and said that there were aliens.

[Dana Schwartz]

But I. Okay, I listened to this and I also heard what he said afterward, which is to clarify, he's like, yeah, I, as a private citizen, Barack Obama, believe, like, there are aliens in our vast, unknowable, infinite universe. But I have no evidence of them.

[Lizzie Logan]

Yes. So in response to this, President Trump was like, okay, I'm going to release all these UFO documents. Great. There is some interesting stuff in those documents which are now, like, all on a website that you can see if you Google around. But there's nothing that qualifies as paranormal.

[Dana Schwartz]

Yeah.

[Lizzie Logan]

So basically, there is scientific consensus on this matter. Law of large numbers. There must be aliens somewhere. We haven't met them because the universe is too big.

[Dana Schwartz]

I mean, the two things are true. The universe is so vast that aliens must exist somewhere. And also, the universe is so vast, we have not. Aliens have not come here.

[Lizzie Logan]

Yeah, yeah. I mean, that's pretty much it. Like, space is cool enough without us having to, like, make stuff up. And science is cool enough without us having to, like, make stuff up.

[Dana Schwartz]

But you know what? I do like people who investigate, but I also like when people investigate credibly, which means that when there's counter evidence, you have to engage with it in good faith.

[Lizzie Logan]

Yeah. I will say, if you are genuinely interested in whether or not we've been contacted, not visited, but contacted, look into seti, because we would be contacted by, like, radio waves first. It wouldn't be, like, a visit. And we might find life on other planets within our lifetime. It will probably be bacteria.

[Dana Schwartz]

That makes more sense. I mean, that makes sense.

[Lizzie Logan]

And I do have a comment specifically for this pod.

[Dana Schwartz]

Oh, please.

[Lizzie Logan]

From astronomy professor Andrew Fracknoy. Great.

[Dana Schwartz]

Thank you, astronomy professor.

[Lizzie Logan]

He is my dad's best friend, so, you know, that's my in there. But he has this to say. Okay. My favorite thing about UFO observations is that there is a lot less to them than meets the eye. No one can prove that we have not been visited by aliens. But negatives are always hard to prove. The thing scientists want is analyzable proof that we have been visited. And so far, not one shred of physical evidence exists that alien spacecraft have been or are here. And why would they come all this way, take a short dip into our atmosphere, just enough to be glimpsed, and then go away.

[Dana Schwartz]

That's very well said, Professor. Thank you very much for that excellent comment. And that's a beautiful place to end where it's like, look, who knows what these aliens are up to? But the fact of the matter is we don't have any, you know, scientifically credible evidence at this moment.

[Lizzie Logan]

I'm sorry, we don't.

[Dana Schwartz]

But we do have pretty good evidence that Ed was faking it.

[Lizzie Logan]

And if you're into space and into aliens and into science, there's real evidence for all of those things being cool. So go look into them in a real way.

[Dana Schwartz]

Lizzie, where can the good people find you?

[Lizzie Logan]

The good people can find us on hooksthepodcast on Instagram, which is also where you'll get information about the future of this podcast. When we have it.

[Dana Schwartz]

Yeah, that's actually a very important comment. We love doing this podcast. Our season one is coming to an end. We wanna find a future for this podcast. So if you are a listener, I mean, hopefully no matter what, it'll just keep coming on the same feed. But please follow us on Instagram so you can find us wherever the future takes us.

[Lizzie Logan]

Yeah, I try not to spam it. It's like good content there.

[Dana Schwartz]

It's good content. Yeah, it is. It's very funny.

[Lizzie Logan]

Always. Dana, where can the people find you?

[Dana Schwartz]

On my Instagram at Dana Schwartz with three z's and on TikTok, Dana Schwartz, three z's. And also, you can email hoax the podcast mail.com and I will read those emails.

[Lizzie Logan]

Please Hoax responsibly.

[Dana Schwartz]

Bye.

[Lizzie Logan]

Hoax is a production of I Heart Podcasts. Our hosts are Dana Schwartz and Lizzie Logan. Our executive producers are Matt Frederick and Trevor Young, with supervising producer Rima El Kayali and producers Gnomes Griffin and Jesse Funk. Our theme music was composed by Lane Montgomery. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks for listening.

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