Myth Monday: Encounters of the Alien Flower Kind: The Florida Flower Aliens
By Kara Newcastle
So far this July I’ve presented to you stories of walking tree stumps and invisible force field-generating space penguins that fly around in a mushroom-shaped UFO. If you thought I couldn’t top that, then you are sadly mistaken. Buckle up, buttercup, here comes the craziest weird alien story yet.
In 1974, fifty-five-year-old beauty salon operator Evelyn Wendt of Dade City, Florida, contacted the local paper called “The Weekday” and asked to be interviewed by a reporter. She claimed that she had an extraordinary story to share with the world, and now the time was right to unveil it.
Picture it: 1924—a year not commonly associated with UFO sightings. Pasco County, Florida. Little Evelyn, aged about nine years, is outside playing in front of Holy Name Convent School. At some point while playing, Evelyn notices a bright shining light. Yes, the sun was in the sky, but this light came from a different direction—the ground, actually. Several dozen feet away from young Evelyn was a large, egg-shaped ball of intense light nestled on the lawn (insert “Mork & Mindy” jokes here.) The light was so incredibly bright that Evelyn later said she thought that she had passed out from the intensity.
Evelyn thought she had blacked out for only a few seconds, but when she opened her eyes again, she instantly saw whatever caused that brilliant light was gone. Evelyn could now clearly see what the object actually was: a flying saucer. Unlike other flying saucers chronicled before, Evelyn said that this one was a little beat up, looking “pockmarked.” Maybe they flew through an asteroid field? Or could it have been an old junker UFO that they bought from a used lot? A hand-me-down flying saucer that an alien and his buddies just tooled around in?
As Evelyn looked at the spaceship, she saw a hatch open up beneath it. Almost as soon as it finished opening, out marched a bunch of little metallic flower people.
No, not hippies. Actual metallic flower people. People-shaped metal flowers. Metal people flowers. Flowers that were metal and looked like people. But they were aliens. Metallic alien flower people.
And possibly a man was with them, but she didn’t remember that part too well.
But Evelyn did remember the metallic alien flower people. I mean, of course she’d remember that part. That would stand out for anybody. They were metallic alien flower people … and no matter how many times I write that, it still sounds like a bad TV movie idea a Syfy Channel scriptwriter scribbled down on a cocktail napkin at three in the morning.
“I think they were robots,” Evelyn later told the reporter. “I tried to count them, but they changed about so. They were smaller than I was and resembled animated flowers with faces where the bud would be. Remember, I was just a bitty thing then, and kids don’t fear flowers.”
The little flower aliens were carrying a large object between them, something Evelyn assumed (either at the time or later on, the articles weren’t clear) was a weapon, and it was so big and bulky they seemed to have trouble moving it. Being a sweet little kid who wasn’t afraid of flowers, as she said—although she should have been since they were hauling around a dark matter cannon or something—Evelyn walked over and asked if she could help them. Seemingly grateful for the assist, the flowers allowed Evelyn to grasp part of the object. Despite its small size, Evelyn was surprised to find it was far too heavy for her to lift.
The flower aliens apparently didn’t mind that Evelyn couldn’t lift the device, and they allowed her to accompany them as they finished carrying it out of the UFO. They placed the weapon on the ground and began setting it up, aiming it at the school’s science building, communicating with Evelyn telepathically the entire time. They told her that there were “experiments” being conducted in the science building, experiments that were dangerous and they were going to put a stop to them. “If the work continued, they would destroy the place,” Evelyn later said.
You may be wondering what kind of experiments could be made in an elementary school science building back in 1924? (I had a biology teacher claim that he was growing clones of himself in jars in the closet of our school lab, but that was 1997. This was 1924—not a lot for a teacher to do back then.) The flower aliens apparently never told Evelyn what the experiments were and, being a child, she probably never thought to ask. When reporters asked the adult Evelyn Wendt if she had any idea what could have been in that building, she just shook her head. She did mention that some time later the building was indeed destroyed.
Weirdly, after setting the weapon up, the flower aliens suddenly dismantled it and towed it back into their ship. One of the aliens hung back, and invited Evelyn to come with them. Luckily, though she wanted to see what the inside of the UFO looked like, Evelyn had an ounce of sense and politely declined. The alien did not seem offended by her refusal and promised that they would come back for her in 35 years. It then followed its extraterrestrial plant pals into their ship and drew up the hatch. The dinged UFO lifted off, hovered overhead for a moment, began to glow that same intense light that Evelyn had seen earlier, and then, according to Evelyn, disappeared.
Thirty-five years came and went, with no sign of the flower robot alien thingies. Almost two more decades would pass until fifty-five-year-old Evelyn Wendt decided to tell her story in 1974. She claimed that she told very few people of what she had encountered, and decided to make the story public now because people were much more open to the idea of extraterrestrials. This of course instantly caused a stir in the UFO community, and people flocked to interview her. Researchers such as Steven Putnam tried to put Evelyn under hypnosis, hoping this might help her to recall more details about the encounter, but every attempt failed.
If you’re having a hard time believing this story (or any of the crazy alien stories I’ve presented), you’re not the only one. As interesting as this one is, I find it pretty suspect, as certain things don’t make sense. Like, almost all of it.
For starters, let’s talk about Evelyn being at school that day. Evelyn said she was playing out in front of her school, but she never said whether or not it was a school day, if it was recess, if it was after school, if it was a weekend or a holiday or summer break. This matters to me, because if it was a school day, where the hell were the other students and teachers while this was going on? Based on the articles I’ve read, Evelyn makes no mention of anyone else being remotely near the school while this was happening. This would lead some to believe that perhaps this was a weekend or during a vacation, when most people with any sense would be at home. It could be that she didn’t remember if anyone else was there, but she had a fairly clear recollection of everything else that occurred. And it wasn’t really like the school was in the middle of nowhere—neighbors should have seen something.
What was going on inside that science building that irked the flower aliens so much? Maybe a chemistry teacher was dabbling with a formula and was about to invent an extraterrestrial herbicide that could be sprayed into space. Okay, I’m just hypothesizing on that one, but when I did a cursory search on information about Holy Name Convent School, nothing and no one noteworthy popped up … mostly because there was practically no information to be found about the school. All I could really find (if this was indeed the same school) was that it was a Catholic girls’ one-room elementary school established by Benedictine nuns. A second room was added in 1924, but it was not described as a science building. If this was the same school, then Evelyn’s descriptions of it don’t match.
Evelyn did say that at some point the science building was destroyed, but doesn’t say when it happened. Was it soon after, or some week later? Did she hear the explosion? How did she find out about it? Did the aliens make good on their vow? Did the experiments that were taking place inside go horribly awry and blow up? Or did a hurricane just annihilate it, as hurricanes are wont to do?
I’m betting money on the hurricane theory myself.
Okay, Evelyn did mention that she might have passed out, possibly from the bright light. Some other people have reported falling unconscious after witnessing similar bright lights, but there are people who are so sensitive to bright light that it can make them dizzy. What if Evelyn was sensitive to the light, got lightheaded, and then collapsed? She could have dreamed up this craziness in a sort of fugue state, and, if you’ve read my blog on the Old Hag Syndrome, you’ll see that dreaming during this in-between-sleep-and-wakefulness place can cause very realistic dreams.
And if the sunlight doesn’t get you, the humidity sure as hell will. Seriously, I went to Miami last August for a convention—the humidity was so thick I basically swam to the beach.
Again, as with many of the people I’ve previously chronicled in my weird alien blogs, we have to ask what did Evelyn Wendt stand to gain from reporting her encounter? As near as I can tell, Evelyn (along with other experiencers like space pancake guy Joe Simonton and space penguin guy Claude Edwards) didn’t benefit monetarily from her report. But, as with everyone who comes forward with their stories, Evelyn did gain some notoriety. Sometimes, that’s all that people want.
Still, kooky as it sounds, Evelyn Wendt’s story can’t be entirely dismissed. Until the alien flowers come back to prove it all true (hopefully not saying “Feed me, Seymour!” when they arrive), we’ll just have to file this one away, and make sure we have plenty of Weed Whackers to go around.
Just in case.
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