Hastings, Florida: the dome with lit windows and the three-county police search (1975)

Hastings is a farming town in St. Johns County, about 18 miles southwest of St. Augustine. Known as the "Potato Capital of Florida." Woods spread toward the point where St. Johns, Flagler and Putnam counties meet. In late 1975 a UFO wave was sweeping the United States. On November 5, Florida Highway Patrol troopers near Miami had watched objects with flashing red and blue lights. In December, it was Hastings' turn.

December 12, 1975. About 7 p.m. Patricia Beck Goodman was on State Road 13, two miles south of Hastings. She saw an object about 30 feet long, glowing like a switched-off TV screen, red and orange rings at its edges. She watched for about 10 minutes, until a bend in the road hid it.

At 9:30 p.m. Richard and Betty Beck and their daughters Patricia and Sandra saw a pulsating, glowing saucer "as large as a DC-8," ringed with bright orange-red lights. It came down behind the trees. Thinking a plane was crashing, they drove toward it. About 200 yards away, it went dark. Then, a quarter mile off, came a "huge fire explosion with no noise."

At 10:45 p.m. Charlotte Shearer saw a dome about 200 feet up, "looking like a castle in the air with every window lit." At 11 p.m. Marcus Barnes and 10 to 12 others at a hunting camp watched a dome glow behind the trees.

The next night Marcus and Edith Barnes saw it again. A dome 300 to 400 feet across. It carried 8 rows of pulsing "fire-orange lights" in its windows. They followed it about 10 miles on dirt roads as it drifted back and forth. Then it moved south, out of sight.

December 14. 9:10 p.m. On the Masters farm the dogs "started raising the roof." Then the lights appeared. Larry and Mary Ellen Masters, Leighton and Tedra Middleton and three children watched a huge dome rise above the tree line. It hovered. It sank. It rose again, showing three rows of windows. Then it went completely dark. Minutes later, Donna Scranton and four family members saw 10 to 12 fire-coloured lights hovering overhead.

Tedra Middleton called the St. Johns County Sheriff's Department. Within 15 minutes, two local men were up in a crop-dusting helicopter. The next day the Florida Highway Patrol and the St. Johns, Flagler and Putnam sheriff's offices launched a joint ground and air search. The Associated Press counted at least 12 policemen, joined by residents on foot. Witnesses spoke of a multicolored object the size of three football fields, three storeys high, flashing rainbow colors. They said it flew sideways and landed in a wooded area.

A Flagler County spokesman was frank. "We just don't know what it is yet. One of the deputies actually saw it. But then we lost it." The FAA knew of no planes that had crashed in the area. The search turned up nothing out of the ordinary.

APRO field investigator Jim Jones wrote up the flap as "Repeating Reports in Florida," the front page story of the APRO Bulletin in January 1976. Clay Today printed drawings by children and by Leighton Middleton, said to be notably similar. Project Blue Book had closed in 1969, and no federal inquiry is on record. No hoax claim or conventional explanation has surfaced. In 2023 Charles Lear revisited the case, pairing it with the Miami troopers' sightings.