◆ SpookStack

Objects, (Doubleday) acknowledges this was startling evi- dence in support of the scoutmaster’s story. “The only way it could have been faked would have been to heat the earth from underneath to 300 degrees F, and how do you do this without using big, cumbersome equipment and disturbing the ground? You can’t.” The Air Force through its Project Blue Book set-up was left with the unpleasant task of having to minimize this highly publicized report in the face of almost indisputable evidence to support it. The story had appeared in almost every paper in the country and had been believed by many readers. But ATIC wrote it off as a hoax. “The best hoax in UFO history,” (The Report on Unidentified Flying Ob- jects.) ; The scoutmaster’s story, now 15 years old, is being dusted off and reviewed with less skeptical eye in the light of more recent happenings that, though they may not rattle the im- perturbable “show me” types, have seriously disturbed those who recognize that “anything can happen,” and perhaps has. As a matter of record, just a few months after the Florida story, a family in West Virginia was “shown” in a manner it had no desire to~be. They were investigating a glowing ob- ject that appeared to ‘have landed on a hill behind their home. One of the youths carried a flashlight and in its beam he saw a shape which he first believed to be a woods animal. Moving closer, he made out what was later described as a huge monster with glowing body and bulging eyes. The family raced home to safety, but found some of their bodies to be covered with an oilish substance and during the night all of the youngsters became ill, their throats Approved For Release 2001/04/02 : CIA-RDP81R00560R000100010002-9 D002-9 photos on these and following two pages from APRO. q. One of the deep round depressions found af- ter third visit to Weeki-Wachi Springs cite of a “space craft visit.” Was it left by the landing gear, or part of an elaborate hoax perpetrated on a ready public? swelled and one of. them went into convulsions. Local authorities ‘investigated the scene the next morning and found matted grass and bits of black plastic. The inci- dent might have been dismissed as an example of imagined horrors in the wake of sighting some unexplained night time light of eerie dimension. But that same day hundreds of other reports filtered in from other people in the surrounding area who had sighted strange lights and objects in the sky the previous evening. Among these was a member of the schoolboard who said he had seen a strange craft take off from the hilltop. The Air Force wrote the light off as a meteor; the monster as a clump of shrubbery given spooky shape by a boy’s over stimulated imagination; the glowing eyes as those of an owl. Moreover, ATIC claimed it was making no investigation of the incident. Monster stories would ‘have to be expected in view of the temporary excitement generated by the series of sightings in 1952, and ATIC could not give its time to every scare story ‘that hit the papers. Local investigators were less inclined to kiss-off the inci- dent, and it was later disclosed that despite the claims of ATIC that the story was not of enough value to warrant investigation, a team of plain-clothes investigators, passing themselves off as salesmen, had canvassed the area, asking questions pertinent to the “monster” sighting and not at all pertinent to the product they were peddling. Several per- sons suspected these salesmen actually were representatives from Army intelligence, working in secret to avoid rousing public panic over the possibility that the Pentagon did lend credence to the story. The allegation has been denied by the Air Force. continued on next page 15.