The Rex Heflin Photos
1965 · Santa Ana, California · USA
WHAT IT IS
A highway inspector's Polaroids of a disc and a lingering smoke ring. Never definitively debunked, and defended by later technical re-analysis.
THE CASE FOR
Four Polaroids including a lingering smoke ring, taken by a county highway inspector on duty; later technical re-analysis reported no evidence of suspension threads and optics consistent with a distant object.
THE CASE AGAINST
Polaroids leave no negatives to test, the originals vanished into a murky confiscated-and-returned saga, and sceptics have always read it as a small model tossed or hung near the truck.
WHERE IT STANDS
Disputed. Serious questions remain about how it was made or what it shows, and neither side has settled them.
STATUS IS OUR CURRENT ASSESSMENT, NOT A VERDICT · REVIEWED 3 SEPT 2026
THE RECORD
- DATE
- 1965
- PLACE
- Santa Ana, California · USA
- RECORDED BY
- Rex Heflin
- TECHNICAL
- Polaroid Model 101 · 3 object frames + 1 smoke-ring frame · originals lost and anonymously returned decades later
