My Favorite UFO Cases #1
I was this kid, see?
Beginning in first grade or so, my dad took my sister and I to the library every week and instructed us to get at least one book and we would return the next week to get more. For some reason I have never been able to figure out, the volumes I checked out tended to be on paranormal themes. From age 5 or 6 to about 14 or so, I read everything I could find on Bigfoot, ghosts, ESP, UFOs and lake monsters that were available in the stacks. We then moved on to another branch and I did the same there.
I may have read at least a hundred UFO books. They were much better than fiction, since the stuff could actually have happened. Of course in my young mind, all of the things I read really did occur exactly as described, although I do remember being kind of iffy on Adamski’s Flying Saucers Have Landed. Perhaps if I had read the contactee books first, I wouldn’t have been so skeptical.
One of the first and most famous cases that I encountered, and that stuck in my memory, was the Rex Heflin sighting and photos from Santa Ana, California on August 16, 1965. Our family lived in Anaheim at that time, which meant that this historic sighting occurred not 10 miles from me (albeit when I was but a toddler.) Another spectacular sighting mesmerized hundreds of motorists along the freeway in Anaheim in the same week as the Heflin event, but this was not reported in the news, and I had not heard about it until recently.
Heflin was employed by the Orange County Road Department as a maintenance engineer. He was out on an assignment to inspect highway signs when the radio he used to communicate with Department Headquarters suddenly cut out and would not receive or transmit. Other workers in the same general area reported this effect as well, it was learned later.
Looking out through his windshield, he saw an apparently metallic “straw hat”-shaped object “wobbling” in the air over the road about an eighth of a mile away. In the space of 20 seconds, he snapped three pictures of the thing with his job-issued Polaroid camera.
Thinking he had just captured photos of some sort of experimental aircraft from nearby El Toro Marine Base, he thought little more of the incident, but when co-workers and family members told Heflin that he might have seen something extraordinary, he began to wonder more about the experience. Soon the Orange County Register caught wind of the pictures and published them without Heflin’s knowledge or permission. Against his wishes, he was suddenly a minor celebrity.
The Air Force and Marines stopped to visit (separately of course.) Both groups asked for and were granted permission to borrow the photos for analysis. Although you might expect the story to end there, Heflin’s photos were dutifully returned each time.
When two men who flashed badges and claimed to be from NORAD asked for the pictures, Heflin had little concern about getting them back again, but his trust was broken. He did not see his originals again for almost 30 years.
Heflin moved to Northern California due to a serious medical condition he developed working around auto exhaust for so many years, and it was here in 1993 that:
while Heflin was sitting in his northern California home, the phone rang. When Heflin answered, a woman’s voice asked, “Have you checked your mailbox lately?” Before he could answer, the call was abruptly terminated. He went to the mailbox and found it empty. About half an hour later, the same unidentified woman called again with the same question. This time, Heflin found a plain manila envelope in his mailbox. It had no postage or other marks that would indicate how it had been delivered. To his surprise, it contained what appeared to be his three lost Polaroid photos.
The package didn’t include one photo that has been routinely ignored by UFO buffs, which depicts a “smoke ring” that was left hanging in the air when the UFO departed. Apparently the NORAD people didn’t think it was important enough to take with them either.
Some researchers have theorized that the dust and particulates in the ring may have been clinging to the object when it was hovering, making it appear that there was a black band around the top. The UFO left quickly and perhaps also created some sort of field that was made visible by the “smoke.”
A highly detailed and extremely interesting analysis of the photos was done in 2000 by Ann Druffel, Robert Wood, and Eric Kelson, and is available online from the Society for Scientific Exploration. The report goes into the history of the photos, early examinations of them, reflections on Heflin’s resilient personality, and even a strange men in black episode (which sort of makes things complete.) The analysis is exhaustive, compelling and reasonably balanced, especially when you consider that at least two of the researchers are decidedly pro-UFO.
Druffel is apparently hanging on to the photos and won’t let them out of her home, at least that was the situation the last time I checked. Anyone is free to come and look at them for legitimate research, but not outside of Druffel’s sight, since she apparently made a promise to Heflin (now deceased) that she would not lose them.
P.S. Apropos of my comments to “curious” below, here are two pictures I took of a smoke ring at an air show last October. UFO researcher James Mac Donald apparently had doubts as to whether a torus-like cloud could sustain itself in the atmosphere in a wind. Photos were taken 20 seconds apart. Another (not shown) was taken a further 20 seconds before.
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Mar 15 2008 
March 15th, 2008 at 12:04 am
To me it’s always looked like a hubcap or a metal bowl or something similar that’s been thrown into the air.
March 15th, 2008 at 1:51 am
Disowned,
Read the report. I was undecided on this case until I did. At this point, I am about 95% convinced that Heflin did see and photograph something unusual.
Whether it’s an alien ship from another planet is irrelevant, in my view. What’s important is that it is most likely not a hoax, shows a physical object and is consistent with Heflin’s recollections, even down to details that he could not have easily faked, or even known about when he took the pictures.
March 15th, 2008 at 5:36 pm
Well I have already looked at your top ten UFO cases at http://www.forteantimes.com/strangedays/ufofiles/519/greg_bishops_ufo_top_ten.html, so this news comes as no surprise. What I would like to know instead, is why this is one of your favorite cases?
March 15th, 2008 at 7:15 pm
Sage,
See my previous comments to mister ecks, as well as the original post above.
One thing that struck me is that Heflin recalled a light that revolved on the bottom of the object, but did not show up in the pictures, at least by visual inspection, but turned up upon examination with better computer software.
Like I said, my opinion came down almost solidly in the “anomalous” category after reading the Druffel/ Wood/ Kelson paper. Read it through and see what you think.
March 16th, 2008 at 9:58 am
I read the paper and it doesn’t do the subject scientific justice. I see a lot of “she says/he says” and assertion, but very little in-depth questioning and methodology. So I did a little research and came up with this:
http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread208479/pg1
March 16th, 2008 at 1:12 pm
Sage,
“She says/ he says” is not a fair analysis of all the research in the paper. The comments gathered were from Heflin, military personnel in the area (which actually did not tend to support the weather data reported) and most importantly, the fact that co-workers and management at the Highway Department all confirmed the malfunctioning radios during the time of the sighting.
Did you look at the photo analysis beginning on page 24/ 606? The researchers found a previously undetected trail of particulates next to the object in photo #3, which is consistent with an effect that may have created the full “smoke ring” in photo #4. Along with the radio malfunction, This would take a lot of effort to hoax, assuming you had a device that could blank out radio transmission and reception while you hung a model out of the window.
No strings were detected in the new analysis, which doesn’t mean one wasn’t there, but 2-3 feet from the cab of the truck, you would expect something to show up, no matter how thin.
I have seen that 3-D analysis you linked to before. It is interesting, but not conclusive, at least to me. It also shows little in-depth questioning, and narrow methodology (as you say about the SSE analysis.) He also asks us to make some rather broad assumptions about his methods and admits that the analysis is rough. He also doesn’t take into account the other photos, circumstances surrounding the sighting, the confirmation of the weather reports, the atmospheric perspective (degradation with distance) of an object–which can’t be faked if it was just a few feet from the truck–and (actually not mentioned in the SSE paper) the dust swirl kicked up on the ground under the object in photo 1. This of course could have been a lucky coincidence that Heflin happened to snap the picture just as a dust devil came by, but thermal vortexes are rare under cloudy skies. Also, the fact that it appears to be consistent with the atmospheric blurring regarding the object’s distance from the truck lends more credibility.
I don’t care if some people say that the thing is an alien craft from another planet. There is no evidence for that idea. But the evidence that something unusual was seen and photographed by Rex Heflin is compelling to me. Not conclusive, just compelling.
March 16th, 2008 at 4:30 pm
Greg,
The “smoke ring” photo looks a lot like a photo of a UFO over Volga, Tver in 1991, from the book “Mysterious Sky Soviet UFO Phenomenon,” by Philip Mantle and Paul Stonehill. It’s on page 174. I’m sure you can find the image somewhere on the internet, though. This apparent similarity could merely be pareidolia on my part, but I thought I’d mention it just in case.
March 16th, 2008 at 7:06 pm
curious,
I think I’ve seen that picture. The SSE paper also mentions a similar case (page 17/ 599) of a “smoke ring” photographed at Fort Belvoir in 1957.
At the Miramar Air Show last year, I also photographed a smoke ring that stayed in the air for over a minute after a small incendiary device was detonated.
March 17th, 2008 at 1:26 pm
I grew up in Orange County too and the Heflin case was one of the things that got me into UFOs (well, that and the copy of the Condon report the Laguna Beach library owned).
Two things bother me about this case:
The first is the dust swirl. It’s not a dust cloud at all, but a cluster of weeds growing next to the water bore casing used in the irrigation for that field (the casing is that solid white vertical object below the UFO). Most of the fields in Irvine used seepage irrigation systems and you would see these casings alongside the highways everywhere. And wherever you had standing water, you had weeds.
Additionally, I always wondered why there were no reported witnesses on the Santa Ana (I-5) freeway. You can see the cars and trucks in the background of photo #1 and you would think that someone else would have come forward.
March 17th, 2008 at 5:11 pm
Chris,
So make me look like a dork. I’ve always heard that it was dust, so that’s what I saw. Thanks for clearing that up.
Two reasons others may not have come forward: 1) There are probably hundreds of UFO cases that go unreported. Witness the other sighting a few days and a few miles away from the Helfin event which was never reported in the news or gained any fame amongst UFO researchers. It was right next to the freeway, whatever it was. 2) Most people are looking at the road ahead and may miss things that are more than 100 feet from the edge of the asphalt. Combine these two tendencies, and it may be easier to see why no one else came forward publicly.
I do notice a dark area to the left of the object on the ground. It may be a diffused shadow, or perhaps not. It would be consistent with the time of day (half past noon) and the other diffuse shadows in the picture which are barely visible under the brush at the side of the road. The angle of the sun would be slightly to the right (south) since the picture was taken lookng east on a fall day.
March 17th, 2008 at 5:12 pm
Sage,
Disregard all I said about the dust swirl!
March 17th, 2008 at 10:07 pm
Is anyone aware of a source for high quality art prints of the classic ufo photos?
March 18th, 2008 at 11:49 am
In science, any one fact that contradicts a theory is enough to render said theory invalid.
So what would it take to render the Heflin photos invalid? One contradictory fact. Enkidu’s 3D analysis provides that one fact and his results cannot be faked. So if you have your one contradictory fact, there is no need for in-depth questioning, analysis of any other photos, circumstances surrounding the sighting, confirmation of the weather reports, or atmospheric degradation because none of that will eliminate that one contradictory fact.
Science is based on uncertainty and doubt and documenting your methodology so that anyone may be able to find flaws in your work. All the testimony in the world and all the computer enhancements and calculations of “atmospheric degradation” will not change one contradictory fact.
Notice how Enkidu carefully documents his methodology so you can confirm his results for yourself. Enkidu does the proper scientific thing by reporting his uncertainties and doubts because he is an honest person with nothing to hide. Now take a look at the Heflin UFO report. Do they document their methodologies and list any uncertainties in their data? No. How do we confirm their methodology? We can’t since it wasn’t given! We just have to take their word for it. What were the names of the other people who had their radios go out? We don’t know because they are all anonymous. The Reanalysis of the 1965 Heflin UFO Photos amounts to nothing more than a lot of pontificating instead of scientific research.
Enkidu also points out other blatant inconsistencies in the photos, such as the fact that his 3D analysis would not have been possible if the object had moved at a significant time between frames. Since the object in photos two and three are the same size, it makes it sound like the object hovered during that time — in direct contradiction to the testimony Heflin gave.
I in turn, would like to point out that there is absolutely no way for anyone to determine the size or distance of the object, because there are no rulers in the sky. “Atmospheric degradation” cannot do this because the photo is not degraded merely due to atmospheric effects, but because older film is grainier and has the same effect. Did the authors of that paper take that into effect? Notice how the windows of the van reflected in the sideview mirrors has as much or more “atmospheric degradation” than the UFO. Clearly the effects of poor film quality was not factored into their (unpublished) equations and (unpublished) data for determining distance due to “atmospheric degradation”.
March 18th, 2008 at 1:43 pm
Sage,
I happen to disagree with you about the fuzziness produced by distance that you keep putting quotes around to belittle my opinion. The film grain seems to do better with the edges of the truck than the object in the (supposed) distance, especially in photos 1 and 3.
I also disagree about the movement that you say contradicts Heflin’s testimony. The description of the action was:
Throughout its passage, the craft seemed to “wobble” slightly. In Heflin’s words, its motion was “similar to a gyroscope when losing its stability.” As the object moved further east, it began a turning motion, and Heflin snapped a third photo…
If the object is moving east, that means it is moving away from the camera, therefore, it was not moving laterally in the frame. He did not say how far it moved, just that it was moving east. If you measure the size of the object, you can in fact see that it is slightly smaller in the third photo. It is a little less distinct as well, possibly indicating that it has moved further away, or maybe that moisture in the air is interfering (or the focus is bad, but since the truck and ojects in the background are in focus, the depth-of-field is pretty wide.
The authors of the paper did not discuss atmospheric perspective, so there is no unpublished data about it. I saw no equations in the paper you referenced either. The SSE paper is also forthcoming with inconsistencies and doubts in the story, which you seem not to have found.
I know we will probably never agree on this, and the facts of many good UFO cases are endlessly debatable, just like some scientific issues. Falsifying the hypothesis based on one question in this case is problematic, since the movement of the object is away from the viewer (according to the witness) as I discussed above. The “fact” must be incontrovertible to render a hypothesis invalid. It’s often the same in “normal” science-just look at the climate change debate.
I still happen to think that this is a compelling case, and will probably continue to do so.
March 18th, 2008 at 8:00 pm
There is no such thing as atmospheric degradation. That isn’t to belittle you, it is to set the facts straight. I’ve seen that term misused with the Trent UFO and it could not prove or disprove anything there either.
The math to determine atmospheric visibility is simple: determine maximum visibility (where the distant background fades into grayness) for that day and divide that by the amount of gray superimposed on the object. First the albedo of the original object would have to be determined (not possible in this case) and then calculate the ratio of additional gray between object and the background. If the ratio was 1:8 and the maximum visibility was one mile for that particular day, then the object could be said to be 1/8 of a mile away. Since nothing of the sort was done by anyone in that report, this kind of information is irrelevant.
Whether the object was turning or not, the fact remains it had not moved enough to allow photo two and photo three to be superimposed on each other. There are no “ifs” about that. The shift in position made by Heflin was enough to give us a good 3D perspective of *ALL* the objects in the photos, so why would the UFO be an exception to the rule? Nothing you or anyone else can say or do will eliminate that one blatant contradictory fact. Until that specific fact is addressed, the only logically and scientifically proper thing to do is to doubt Heflin’s story.
Note that my claim was that the report was not forthcoming with inconsistencies or doubts about their *OWN* methodology, not with inconsistencies or doubts about the *STORY*. There is a *BIG* difference between those two statements.
Also note that facts are never debatable, only opinions are debatable. So if this story is still debatable, it is because there are no facts to report about it, just the usual pontificating of opinions.
FYI — Other additional contradictory facts are irrelevant to this case since the one contradictory fact cited above is all that is necessary to disprove the UFO theory, but for entertainment purposes (and just to show how little UFO “researchers” pay attention to what they are doing), I would like to point out one more blatantly contradictory fact: The report says, “Some branches of a tree were obscuring a railroad-crossing sign, and Heflin had stopped to photograph it…Still inside his van, HE WAS ABOUT TO PHOTOGRAPH THE SIGN [when] he suddenly saw a flash of motion on the periphery of his left eye and then viewed a silvery craft flying slowly from left to right”. Look at all four photos again. There is no evidence that Heflin was any railroad crossing for miles and miles, and there are no trees to obscure any signs. The sign, if it had existed, would have to be on his right side, since the object appeared from his left.
The Heflin UFO is clearly a fake.
March 18th, 2008 at 10:46 pm
Sage,
You are changing your argument again.
First you wrote:
Since the object in photos two and three are the same size, it makes it sound like the object hovered during that time — in direct contradiction to the testimony Heflin gave.
Then you wrote:
Whether the object was turning or not, the fact remains it had not moved enough to allow photo two and photo three to be superimposed on each other.
You are changing the direction of the discussion away from Helfin’s testimony (which you said contradicted what the pictures showed) to a discussion of the shift in perspective between photos.
I don’t think that you need equations to tell you that something is partially obscured by atmospheric haze, even if you can’t tell how far away it is.
Was he going to photograph the sign from his truck, or get out to take a picture of it because he had just passed it and was going to get out of the truck to do so? This is not made clear. The tracks could just as well have been behind him.
You bring up other valid points, but I don’t completely agree. Readers can look at our posts and decide what to think. You made me think and doubt a bit, but not change my mind yet.
March 19th, 2008 at 11:12 am
“You are changing the direction of the discussion away from Helfin’s testimony (which you said contradicted what the pictures showed) to a discussion of the shift in perspective between photos”
No I’m not — you are. The fact (still) remains, photo two and photo three can be superimposed on each other to get a 3D view of the scene, and that reconstruction demonstrates the “UFO” to only be a few feet from the van, and about three inches in diameter. Anything else said about the subject was just further clarification of this fact and how it was done.
“I don’t think that you need equations to tell you that something is partially obscured by atmospheric haze, even if you can’t tell how far away it is”
What is this haze made of? Smog or fog? The conditions were not conducive for fog that day (overcast) and whenever it is overcast, visible smog levels go way down due to the absence of photochemical smog (the only kind that is visible). The fact that there is atmospheric haze on the inside of the van and on the sideview mirror, indicates that what we are looking at is poor resolution or graininess of older film. Older cameras with older film always showed scenes with a “haze” in them, not because the days were always hazier back then, but because of the poorer quality of film produced at that time.
“Was he going to photograph the sign from his truck, or get out to take a picture of it because he had just passed it and was going to get out of the truck to do so? This is not made clear. The tracks could just as well have been behind him”
You are adding things to the testimony that aren’t there. I quoted the report and it very clearly says, “still inside his van, he was about to photograph the sign”. It is very clear he was in the van, had the camera up to his eye, and was about to take the picture when, he caught a glimpse of the UFO from “the periphery of his left eye”. In other words, his right eye was placed in the viewfinder of the camera so only his left eye was free. Yet there are no railroad tracks in his field of vision from the inside of the van. Heflin’s testimony is clearly flawed.
March 19th, 2008 at 12:00 pm
Greg,
You make mention in your original article, and again in comments, about an additional sighting with multiple witnesses “a few days and a few miles away” from the Heflin incident. I would be keenly interested in any further details you can provide about this.
Sage,
There is an archive of discussion regarding Enkidu’s stereo image pairs at UFO UpDates (where he posted as Tim Shell). If you review them I think you’ll find that it by no means ‘debunks’ the case.
On the other hand, I don’t dismiss the possibility of a hoax… atmospheric attenuation arguments suggest the object may indeed be closer than Heflin claimed, although this is difficult to quantify.
In any case, there is currently no rigorous evidence or argument to indicate “the Heflin UFO is clearly a fake.” As far as ‘favorite’ UFO cases, one could do a lot worse.
March 19th, 2008 at 6:25 pm
SunMesa,
It is mentioned in the SSE paper linked in the post (pages 596-97):
This incident had occurred during the first week of August 1965, the same week as Heflin’s sighting. About 9:00 p.m., Mr. and Mrs. Ralph Joseph were driving on the Santa Ana Freeway in Anaheim, a city about 10 miles from the location of Heflin’s sighting. They saw a large glowing object sitting atop high-voltage lines that ran high above the freeway. The object had a rounded dome and was disc shaped with a rounded bottom. It glowed bright white with self-contained light, which did not illuminate its surroundings.
Many cars were stopped on the shoulder of the freeway, and motorists had gotten out and were staring at it. The Josephs slowed down but did not stop. At their closest point, they were about 40 feet from the object yet could hear no sound from it. They judged its size as “much bigger than a car.” It was about 3 times the width of the power-pole yardarms and its width was four times its own height. No features, such as seams or “windows,” were visible.
The Josephs expected that the occurrence would be reported by the media, and they listened to the car radio as they drove, but nothing was broadcast about it. Neither was there any mention in the newspaper or TV news programs during the next few days. Yet the object had been totally visible from a heavily traveled freeway. This phenomenon of underreporting from busy locations is a reflection of lack of clarity of uniform reporting procedure. It is still true in 2000. LANS and McDonald had conducted interviews with the Josephs, which left them satisfied that the witnesses were solid and reliable. Other witnesses to the sighting were sought but without success.
Thanks for the link to the Updates discussion. I’ll check it out.
March 19th, 2008 at 6:40 pm
Sage,
Simple distance will slightly degrade objects in a picture, and there was obviously some sort of fog, haze, or smog in the air that day. You can see it in the pictures affecting the plants, telephone poles, etc. in the distance.
Re: The testimony, I added nothing. I was simply questioning the vagueness of the account. You are adding things by saying “It is very clear he was in the van, had the camera up to his eye, and was about to take the picture…”
That is not in the testimony. You added it.
Unless I missed the point of your first post of 3/18, you indicated that the discrepancy between what Heflin said he witnessed (object was moving between photos 2 and 3) and the pictures (object not moving, at least not very much) called into question his testimony and hence the case. If this was not your point, I apologize. But you did write:
Since the object in photos two and three are the same size, it makes it sound like the object hovered during that time — in direct contradiction to the testimony Heflin gave.
I tried to point out that this is not an airtight reason to dismiss the story.
In any case, you have piqued my interest in the physical descriptions, and since I live about an hour from the site, I may have to check it out. The area has changed a lot in 43 years, but the roads are still there and there are other ways to find out what was there in 1965. If there was no railroad track crossing Myford road near the intersection of Walnut Ave. in 1965, you have a very good point, and a valid reason to seriously doubt the Heflin sighting.
March 19th, 2008 at 8:07 pm
Again, take a look at *ANY* photograph from Heflin’s era — they all have a haze to them that isn’t due to atmospheric conditions but to the poor quality film of that era.
The 3D perspective by cannot be faked and it is a very well known and accurate way to determine distances. Enkidu followed the *EXACT* procedure used by the military and other satellite photos. It is even a technique used by NASA for taking photos of Mars. It is a red flag that cannot be easily dismissed without some scientifically valid reason.
In fact, the whole point of my responses are to emphasize the numerous red flags and loopholes in Heflin’s story. It would not be logically or scientifically proper to accept Hefin’s story but rather to dismiss it.
The coordinates for his location are 33°42′36.05″N by 117°48′13.35″W. This is per Heflin’s testimony that he was about 7/8ths of a miles from the Santa Ana Freeway, facing north towards Walnut Avenue. If the UFO was “1/8th of a mile away”, that would place it almost right over Walnut Avenue (0.2miles away). The railroad was almost 1/4 of a mile *BEHIND* Heflin. It doesn’t make it look like he was interested in taking pictures of a railroad sign. Let me know what you find. I am curious if any of those water bores are still present? Note that part of Myford road was demolished to make room for the 261 freeway and a business.
March 20th, 2008 at 10:41 am
Greg,
As long as you’re going to be poking around in the area, perhaps you could look around for any evidence or clue as to the original spacing of the power poles (which are certain to have been replaced by now, perhaps buried). Believe it or not, this datum is still in dispute (Dolyak 1965 = 300 ft; Hartmann 1967 = 206 ft, etc).
This value is of interest for a variety of reasons, one of which is that it can be used to calculate an atmospheric extinction coefficient from the grayscale values in the successive poles.
I had previously contacted the director of the Southern California Edison planning office for this information. She was of the opinion that the original records and maps of pole placement probably no longer exist, but that 150 - 200 ft would have been typical, with 300 ft possible in a rural setting.
She further ventured that my best bet was to track down a retired lineman who worked in the area (she didn’t know any herself, and I certainly don’t, being ~1000 mi away). I’ve learned nothing further since.
In any case, I’m curious to hear your observations about the current site and any useful data that might be recovered from it.