The boy scouts, in the car, estimated that their scoutmaster had been gone about five minutes when they saw him stop at the edge of the clearing, then walk on in.  They saw him stop seconds later, hesitate a few more seconds, then shine the light up in the air.  They thought he was just looking at the trees again.  The next thing they said they saw was a big red ball of fire engulfing him.  They saw him fall, so they spilled out of the car and took off down the road toward the farmhouse.

The farmer and his wife had a little difficulty getting the story out of the boys, they were so excited.  All they could get was something about the boys’ scoutmaster being in trouble down the road.  The farmer called the Florida State Highway Patrol, who relayed the message to the county sheriff’s office.  In a few minutes a deputy sheriff and the local constable arrived.  They picked up the scouts and drove to where their car was parked.

The scoutmaster had no idea of how long he had been unconscious.  He vaguely remembered leaning against a tree, the feeling of wet, dew-covered grass, and suddenly regaining his consciousness.  His first reaction was to get out to the highway, so he started to run.  About halfway through the palmetto thicket he saw a car stop on the highway.  He ran toward it and found the deputy and constable with the boys.

He was so excited he could hardly get his story told coherently.  Later the deputy said that in all his years as a law-enforcement officer he had never seen anyone as scared as the scoutmaster was as he came up out of the ditch beside the road and walked into the glare of the headlights.  As soon as he’d told his story, they all went back into the woods, picking their way around the palmetto thicket.  The first thing they noticed was the flashlight, still burning, in a clump of grass.  Next to it was a place where the grass was flattened down, as if a person had been lying there.  They looked around for the extra light that the scoutmaster had been carrying, but it was gone.  Later searches for this missing flashlight were equally fruitless.  They marked the spot where the crushed grass was located and left.  The constable took the boy scouts home and the scoutmaster followed the deputy to the sheriff’s office.  On the way to town the scoutmaster said he first noticed that his arms and face burned.  When he arrived at the sheriff’s office, he found that his arms, face, and cap were burned.  The deputy called the Air Force.

There were six people listening to his story.  Bob Olsson, the two pilots, the intelligence officer, his sergeant, and I. We each had previously agreed to pick one insignificant detail from the story and then re-question the scoutmaster when he had finished.  Our theory was that if he had made up the story he would either repeat the details perfectly or not remember what he’d said.  I’d used this many times before, and it was a good indicator of a lie.  He passed the test with flying colors.  His story sounded good to all of us.