Immokalee, Florida: Hunter James Flynn struck by beam from hovering cone, eye damaged

Around 1:00 a.m. on March 15, 1965, James W. Flynn was in his swamp buggy with four hunting dogs deep in the Everglades east of Immokalee, Florida, when he saw an object like an upside-down cone hovering about 200 feet above cypress trees a little over a mile away; through binoculars it appeared 25 feet high and 50 feet wide, with yellow-glowing square windows and an orange-red glow lighting the ground below. After about 40 minutes he drove toward it, then walked on waving his arms as it hovered four feet off the ground; a blast of wind nearly knocked him over, and at 75 feet a light like a 'welder's torch' struck his forehead. He blacked out twice and woke temporarily blinded; in the morning he found a symmetrical circle of burned ground and burned treetops. He reached the home of Henry Osceola (or Henry Billy) later that day, arrived home in East Fort Myers on March 17 and spent five days in the hospital with permanent damage to his right eye, bruises, burns, deep muscle damage and hearing loss. The Lee County sheriff's office verified the landing marks and burned trees. The account follows the entry in George M. Eberhart's chronology UFOs and Intelligence (CUFOS) and the sources cited there; it is not an independent determination by From Beyond Space.