Gulf Breeze, FL UFO Sightings Revisited

This winter marks the 20 year anniversary of the Gulf Breeze, Florida UFO sightings and I wanted to do an update on the UFO sighting capital of the United States.

Gulf Breeze, Florida is an oceanfront town located in Santa Rosa County, Florida. This panhandle city was made famous by the numerous UFO sightings reported in the winter of 1997. Beginning on about November 11, 1987, there were widespread reports of unidentified flying objects in Gulf Breeze and in the surrounding communities of the panhandle region of Florida. There were many photographs that allegedly captured the images of UFO's. These UFO sightings were covered in local newspapers and then spread quickly to national news outlets. They were covered extensively on television talk shows and news broadcasts. Magazines nationwide did article after article on the phenomenon, some portraying the town in a positive, mystical light, others portraying the southern community of six thousand people as superstitious country bumpkins. As a native of Santa Rosa County, Florida, I have vivid memories of these sensational stories of sightings by locals. I spent many nights looking up at the sky, in hopes that I would glimpse a UFO sailing across the sky above my house. Although I never saw anything that even resembled a UFO, it couldn't be denied that there were a lot of people who were claiming that they did. So I always wondered if these sightings were real or were they the result of a mass hysteria.