The Florida everglades is a natural region of tropical wetland in southern Florida compromising a massive 1.5 million acres of biodiverse wildlife including venomous snakes, alligators and other dangerous animals. Although it’s close to cities like Miami, it remarkable in its vast remoteness and black darkness that falls on the area during the night.
Despite the dangerous conditions that exist, on March 12, 1965, one man ventured into the region for hunting, and would be harmed, not by an alligator or snake, but by a mysterious object.
James Flynn of East Fort Myers, Florida, an experienced woodsman, headed deep into the Everglades with his four hunting dogs. He had planned to spend several days hunting. On the night of the 14th his hunting dogs took after a deer. Later, hearing a sound like a gunshot, Flynn started up his swamp buggy and headed off in search of his dogs. One of his dogs had returned, which he had placed in its crate, and it joined him on his search for the others.
Around 1 a.m., on Monday, March 15th, Flynn spotted something unusual that he judged to be slightly over a mile away. Whatever it was, it was hovering, shaped like a broad, upside-down cone, an estimated 200 feet in the air above some cypress trees. After a while it began flying off toward the Northeast. After 2 to 3 minutes, it returned to the same place, and hovered again, this time for an estimated 5 minutes. Then it took off toward the Southwest at a quickly.
Soon, however, it returned to the same location again. At this point, Flynn was only about a quarter of a mile away, and the object seemed to come down among some trees. Flynn believed that he was observing a helicopter of some sort, but then he began to view it through a pair of binoculars and realized that he wasn’t looking at a helicopter at all.
Flynn described the object as some 25 feet high, and twice that in its diameter. Up near the top were four tiers of two-foot-square square window-looking sections that emitted a yellowish glow. The thing was metallic and seemed to be made of four-by-four plates that appeared to be held together with rivets. Around the base there was an orange-red illumination that seemed to cast a glow on the ground some 75 feet around its rim. He suspected that it was a secret craft from Cape Canaveral.
Flynn would pass out and sometime later regain consciousness. Finding himself initially blind he laid for a long time until he recovered a small amount of vision in his left eye. Around this time, the sun was shining, and it was Tuesday morning. Flynn rounded up his dogs and makes his way to the home of Henry Osceola, a Seminole Indian who lived in the Everglades swamp.
Flynn would return home Wednesday around noon. Then, he and his wife immediately went to an ophthalmologist, Dr. Paul R. Brown. Dr. Brown measured Flynn’s vision and finds that he is 20/800 in his right eye, 20/60 in his left eye. He noted a slight bruise over his right brow. The left eye appeared normal, but in the right eye he could not see the retina.
Not only was his vision affected but also his hearing. Flynn had significant hearing reduction and numbness in his arms and hands following the encounter. Under careful observation and treatment by Dr. Harvie J. Stipe, a physician who had known Flynn for 25 years, Flynn was treated, and soon those symptoms disappeared.
On March 26, Flynn, Dr. Stipe, and two others, returned to the encounter site in the Everglades, and there found a burned circle some 72 feet in diameter. The circle looked like it had been swept clean of leaves, twigs, limbs — normal forest debris. Eight cypress trees were scorched from their tops down to about halfway from the ground.
In October 1966, in a phone interview with Arizona physicist James E. McDonald, Flynn stated that the UFO was probably, he figured, some secret aircraft of ours, and that if he could ever prove it then somebody would pay for the good eye he used to have.
Flynn, who has expressed his frustration with the government for not discussing the event, has been described of a somewhat recluse, not wanting to discuss the encounter.
In July 1996, Flynn made a rare public appearance at Port Charlotte, Florida, where he stated: “I’m waiting for the day someone turns up the truth about this thing. I hope I live that long.”
It is unknown whether Flynn ever got the real truth about what happened that day and what devastated his eyesight as well as causing a variety of health problems. Like so many other sighting victims and abductees, it appears he will probably never know the real story.
