ir had also been singed, indicating a flash heat.

The flight surgeon had no idea how this specifically could have
happened. It could have even been done with a cigarette lighter, and
he took his lighter and singed a small area of his arm to
demonstrate. He had been asked only to make a physical check, so that
is what he'd done, but he did offer a suggestion. Check his Marine
records; something didn't ring true. I didn't quite agree; the story
sounded good to me.

The next morning my crew from ATIC, three people from the
intelligence office, and the two law officers went out to where the
incident had taken place. We found the spot where somebody had
apparently been lying and the scoutmaster's path through the thicket.
We checked the area with a Geiger counter, as a precautionary
measure, not expecting to find anything; we didn't. We went over the
area inch by inch, hoping to find a burned match with which a flare
or fireworks could have been lighted, drippings from a flare, or
anything that shouldn't have been in a deserted area of woods. We
looked at the trees; they hadn't been hit by lightning. The blades of
grass under which the UFO supposedly hovered were not burned. We
found nothing to contradict the story. We took a few photos of the
area and went back to town. On the way back we talked to the
constable and the deputy. All they could do was to confirm what we'd
heard.

We talked to the farmer and his wife, but they couldn't help. The
few facts that the boy scouts had given them before they had a chance
to talk to their scoutmaster correlated with his story. We talked to
the scoutmaster's employer and some of his friends; he was a fine
person. We questioned people who might have been in a position to
also observe something; they saw nothing. The local citizens had a
dozen theories, and we thoroughly checked each one.

He hadn't been struck by lightning. He hadn't run across a still.
There was no indication that he'd surprised a gang of illegal turtle
butcherers, smugglers, or bootleggers. There was no indication of
marsh gas or swamp fire. The mysterious blue lights in the area
turned out to be a farmer arc-welding at night. The other flying
saucers were the landing lights of airplanes landing at a nearby
airport.

To be very honest, we were trying to prove that this was a hoax, but
were having absolutely no success. Every new lead we dug up pointed
to the same thing, a true story.

We finished our work on