One Researcher Says He Has Evidence of
UFO Acceleration on Video Tape

Few UFOs caught on videotape remain unidentified after analysis. But there are some exceptions, and during the last few years Bruce Maccabee, a Navy physicist by day and UFO photo analyst by night, has examined a handful of examples which he believes prove UFOs are capable of flight characteristics--acceleration in particular--far beyond the capabilities of any terrestrial technology.

Among the most remarkable of these videos is one shot by the notorious Ed Walters of Pensacola Beach, Florida. Walters' numerous sightings and photographs over the past decade have been the subject of several books and considerable controversy. As a result, the UFO video that Walters managed to take on July 21, 1995 will not convince any of his critics. But Maccabee has produced an analysis sure to thrill UFO buffs.

The full story of this video actually begins on July 13, 1995 when Walters saw a strange object flash through the sky. Hoping the object would return, he set up his videocamera with its telephoto lens on a tripod in his office and kept up his daily surveillance-by-video until the effort finally paid off. Walters was working at his desk on the morning of the 21st, when he noticed a flash in the sky. So he turned on the camcorder and shortly afterward the object returned.

Its brief reappearance and Walter's description of it are recorded on the videotape: Looking like an inverted layer cake, the UFO appears suddenly at the left of the screen and moves over the Santa Rosa Sound and a line of trees 7,600 feet away on the opposite shore. The object darts rapidly toward center of the screen, reverses direction, and quickly exits left.

When Maccabee received a copy of Walter's video, he was delighted to see that the UFO sequence appeared to show the object's shadow--a roundish, rapidly moving area that slightly darkens the tree line as the object moves back and forth across the screen. "The shadow meant that we could locate the UFO in three dimensions," says Maccabee.

After Jeff Saino computer enhanced the images, Maccabee used an astronomy program to calculate whether the shadow "belonged" to the passing object. He determined that it did. Maccabee found "strong evidence that the darkened area on the trees is, in fact, the shadow of the UFO." This enabled him to also calculate the size of the object. It measured about 27 feet by 13.5 feet, give or take a foot or two.

Maccabee was then able to determine that the UFO had been traveling at about 500 mph, then decelerated to zero, producing about 150 "g's," reversed direction, and departed at about 550 mph. That's probably enough force, notes Maccabee, to "turn a person into soup." It's this acceleration, rather than mere speed, that poses a challenge to physics as we know it. "Speed is not the thing," he adds, "it's how fast it takes you to get up to speed that counts."

The sudden acceleration displayed by this and other UFOs captured on videotape has led Maccabee to believe that this extraordinary flight characteristic may help explain why so many eyewitnesses report UFOs suddenly disappearing. "Maybe the objects are not actually disappearing," notes Maccabee. "Maybe it's simply the inability of the eye to follow them at a high rate of acceleration."

But did Walters capture a genuine UFO on his video? Many don't believe so.

Rex Salisberry is one of them. "I doubt that it's real," says Salisberry, who thoroughly investigated the Walters story for the Mutual UFO Network (MUFON.) "Some of his previous photos did not hold up under our technical scrutiny, and to me, that casts doubt on his other evidence, too."

Maccabee did consider the possibility of a hoax, but after much thought, finally dismissed the idea. "Even a Hollywood special effects person," he states, "would have to be a major genius, use lots of high powered technology, and spend lots of time to get it right."