Sighting record / 1965
15 March 1965. About 1 a.m. Deep in the Florida Everglades, rancher James W. Flynn was out with his hunting dogs when he saw it above the cypress trees. A cone, brightly lit in yellow, with four tiers of glowing windows. He drove his swamp buggy closer. He walked toward it, waving his arms. A blast of wind almost knocked him down. Then a light like a welder's torch struck him between the eyes. He woke more than a day later. His right eye was blinded. Nearby, sawgrass had burned in a circle 74 feet across. A doctor, a sheriff and a newspaper vouched for him. The Air Force promised a visit that never came.
Fort Myers, Florida. March 1965. James W. Flynn was 45, a rancher and former constable who trained hunting dogs. James E. McDonald later called him "an experienced woodsman" who "grew up in those swamps." On Friday 12 March he took four dogs and a swamp buggy deep into the Everglades, beyond the road's end. Secondary accounts place the spot about eighteen miles east of the Big Cypress Indian Reservation.