Friday, November 05, 2010


Are You There Zehaas? Its Me, Kal-El


Memory trigger.

Over at his blog, The X Spot, X. Dell (no relation) has been running a series of posts dealing with Ed Walters and the Gulf Breeze sightings.

In November 1987 a resident of Gulf Breeze, Florida, contractor Ed Walters, was nearly abducted during a UFO encounter, zapped by a blue beam. The aliens started to abduct Ed, lifting him off the ground with the beam, but he fought back. He screamed "Aagghh!" and the aliens dropped him and left.

Thus begins Ed's story in the book, The Gulf Breeze Sightings (1990), co-written (as such) with his wife Frances. (I don't notice any discernable differences in writing styles between Ed's and Frances's sections.) As explained in the book, the aliens kept showing up now and then, telepathically saying stuff to Ed like "Zehaas, in sleep you will know."

When X. Dell mentioned the name Zehaas it triggered a memory. The main detail I had retained after reading TGBS many years ago was the alien's name for Ed. So I checked out a copy of the book from the library and started skip-reading through it again. (Some books aren't worth a full read.)

Originally Ed tried to stay in the background, calling himself Mr. X (definitely no relation) when he submitted the Polaroid snaps from his first UFO encounter to the Sentinel, a local newspaper. On page 243 of TGBS it's mentioned that a Sentinel editor received a call from a woman who suggested that since the aliens spoke Spanish at times that Zehaas was really "cejas" (pronounced "See-hass"), the word for eyebrows. Ed wrote that since he had curly eyebrows maybe the aliens were eyebrowless, impressed by his prominent ones.

Yeah, right.

Ed's story doesn't hold up for a number of reasons. As X. Dell explains at his blog Ed faked a photo one time of a "demon." After he moved away from the house where all the weird stuff went down, the new owners found an UFO model similar to what was seen in Ed's photos hidden under some attic insulation.

Even without this revelation I find it hard to buy Ed's story with its old-style sci-fi pulp magazine details like a small alien who appears in a metal suit with a futuristic cattle-prod. Or the UFO that looks like something out of an old TV series like Tom Corbett, Space Cadet. And don't get me going about the hack-writer name for an alien, "Zehaas."

I haven't read the two books by Ed that followed TGBS so I don't know if the Zehaas mystery was ever explained. Going by what is offered in TGBS it seems that Ed might have been working towards a story that he was part alien or had some sort of alien connection. You know, the trite SF story about a prince from another world who is exiled to Earth as a baby because the bad guys on his own world have killed off the rest of the royal family. Or maybe his world just went BOOM! but he got away.

This isn't anything new outside of science fiction. In an article entitled "Alien Memories And Dreams" paranormal writer Brad Steiger observes:

"The whole matter of sensible men and women who claim alien memories and persistent dreams of extraterrestrial origin invites extensive speculation. Are these people, because of their higher intelligence and greater sensitivity, rejecting an association with Earth because of all the inadequacies and shortcomings, which they witness all around them?

"Does the mechanism of believing oneself to be of alien heritage enable one to deal more objectively with the multitude of problems, which assail the conscientious, and caring at each dawn of a new day?"

Steiger collects information on human hybrids with alien DNA with his Starseed Questionnaire. I don't know the validity of all those who claim to be "Star People" but if Ed Walters and his "Zehaas" rap was intended to go in that direction, faked Polaroids and a concealed UFO model undermine any of his claims.

5 comments:

Marvin said...

I have all TGBS books. I must say, if they're fakes, they're good ones, good enough to fool Bruce Maccabee. But Ed's behavior WAS suspicious, especially the model ship in the garage.

An entertaining story, even if it's false.

X. Dell said...

(Looking at Marvin's comment) I didn't even mention the model in the garage. Seemed like overkill.

As you have pointed out to me earlier, my memory of Walter's first book with Maccabee gets hazy at times. I guess I found the whole thing so difficult to believe (save for the sightings by others unconnected to Ed) that it all started to whirr together after awhile. But it would seem to me to read more like mythology, or perhaps hypnopompic imagery.

Whitley Streiber is a better writer, though, so I could at least sit through The Secret School and several other books.

Some of Walters' story reminds me of a dream by one of Dr. JUng's patients. She was a very intelligent French woman, extremely well educated, who, because of the ravages of WWII had to make a living as a manual laborer. She dreamt that a flying saucer emitted a bright blue beam, which left a mark on her forehead. To Jung, that dream (and she was aware it was a dream) was an unconscious attempt to remind herself that she was special in a way. It was as if God (or a god-substitute) laid its mark on her.

I entertained that as a possibility, despite the other evidence of Walters' fraud.

Doug said...

In Arizona this story would be interpreted that aliens really are from Mexico--and that we need to defend the border. In space.

Ba-dump-chik!

Unknown said...

The sightings and case data from Gulf Breeze from late 87 into the 90s is extensive. It was the most investigated case in UFOlogical history involving several family's, hundreds of witnesses, and dozens of videos and photos taken by numerous people...not just the Walters family. Walters passed two polygraph tests. None of the photos he has taken have been proven hoaxed, in fact several have been proven not to contain ANY signs of manipulation whatsoever, including a look by someone over at the jet propulsion laboratory. There are volumes of collected data available on this case. The so called "model" which was basically paper plates glued together was proven NOT to have had anything to do with any of the photos and was dated well after the flap was over and found in an attic 9 months after the photos were taken. It's been 24 years and no one has been able to prove these photos hoaxed...nuff said.

Unknown said...

The sightings and case data from Gulf Breeze from late 87 into the 90s is extensive. It was the most investigated case in UFOlogical history involving several family's, hundreds of witnesses, and dozens of videos and photos taken by numerous people...not just the Walters family. Walters passed two polygraph tests. None of the photos he has taken have been proven hoaxed, in fact several have been proven not to contain ANY signs of manipulation whatsoever, including a look by someone over at the jet propulsion laboratory. There are volumes of collected data available on this case. The so called "model" which was basically paper plates glued together was proven NOT to have had anything to do with any of the photos and was dated well after the flap was over and found in an attic 9 months after the photos were taken. It's been 24 years and no one has been able to prove these photos hoaxed...nuff said.