Dade City, Florida, 1924 — schoolgirl Evelyn Wendt's account of an egg-shaped craft and flower-shaped robotic beings, published fifty years later and cited by Timothy Beckley.
THINK ABOUTIT UFO|UAP | ENTITY ENCOUNTER REPORT
Dade City Florida 1924: The Flower-Being CE-III Case
In 1924, a schoolgirl playing in the yard of St. Joseph School in Dade City, Florida allegedly encountered an egg-shaped craft and small robotic beings resembling animated flowers, with faces positioned where a bud would sit — beings so gentle in appearance that the child felt no fear, communicated with them telepathically, and was promised a return visit in thirty-five years that never came. First published fifty years later in a 1974 newspaper account and cited secondhand by Timothy Beckley in 1981, this is among the most narratively vivid pre-1947 entity encounters in the archive and, simultaneously, one of its most fragile from an evidentiary standpoint — a case this report holds for its morphological distinctiveness while being unsparing about its sourcing problems.
Date: 1924 (specific date undocumented)
Sighting Time: Daytime
Day/Night: Day
Location: St. Joseph School, Dade City, Pasco County, Florida
Urban or Rural: Small town / school grounds
No. of Entity(‘s): Multiple (“little robot people”), plural but exact count undocumented; witness also recalled “a man” accompanying them
Entity Type: Small robotic/biological hybrid entities described as resembling animated flowers, plus one human-appearing figure
Entity Description: Smaller than the child witness; resembling animated flowers with faces positioned where the flower’s bud would be; described elsewhere in the account as “little robot people,” suggesting a mechanical or artificial quality alongside the floral appearance
Hynek Classification: CE-III (Close Encounter of the Third Kind — craft and occupants both observed, direct interaction)
Duration: Undocumented, but sufficient for extended interaction including attempted assistance with equipment and telepathic exchange
No. of Object(s): 1
Description of the Object(s): An egg-shaped craft on the ground; a hatch opened after an initial light in the witness’s eyes went out; craft described secondarily as leaden and pockmarked while grounded, turning silvery bright on ascent, then flying straight up and hovering briefly before disappearing
Shape of Object(s): Egg-shaped
Size of Object(s): Undocumented
Color of Object(s): Leaden/grey and pockmarked when grounded; silvery bright on ascent
Distance to Object(s): Close range — witness interacted directly with the occupants and their equipment
Height & Speed: Departed by flying straight up, hovering a minute, then disappearing
Number of Witnesses: 1 (Evelyn Wendt, as a schoolgirl)
Special Features/Characteristics: Telepathic communication (“the conversation was not ordinary talking, she understood mentally what was being said”); occupants carried a weapon-like device toward the school’s science building with a stated intent to halt unspecified work there; a promised 35-year return that did not occur; witness was given the option to leave with the beings and declined; craft’s color/texture changed between grounded and ascending states
Case Status: Insufficient Data. Single-witness account first published 50 years after the alleged event; secondary citation chain; hypnotic regression was attempted and unsuccessful.
Source: Timothy G. Beckley, Book of Space Contacts, New York, Global Communications, 1981, pp. 26–27, citing a local newspaper account first published circa 1974 (The Weekday, West Palm Beach, Florida). The school is correctly identified as St. Joseph School, Pasco County — an earlier version of this entry incorrectly named it Holy Name Convent School, a location error corrected throughout this report.
Summary/Description: According to a 1974 local newspaper account later cited by ufologist Timothy Beckley, Evelyn Wendt — by then an adult beauty-parlor operator — recalled that as a schoolgirl in 1924 she encountered an egg-shaped craft on the grounds of St. Joseph School in Dade City, Florida. Small flower-shaped robotic beings emerged and carried a device toward the school’s science building, stating an intent to halt unspecified work there. Wendt communicated with them telepathically, was offered the chance to leave with them and declined, and was told they would return for her in 35 years — a promise that was not kept. The craft then departed vertically and vanished. Hypnotic regression was attempted decades later without success in placing the witness in trance.
Related Cases: 1924: UFO|UAP & Alien Sightings Archive
Detailed Report
The Dade City case presents an unusually clean split between its most compelling and its weakest evidentiary features. On the compelling side: the entity description — animated-flower-shaped beings with a face at the bud position — has no obvious cultural precedent in 1924 Florida or in the broader UFO-adjacent folklore of the era, which was still dominated by airship and occasionally humanoid imagery rather than botanical or hybrid-mechanical forms. The telepathic communication detail, the specificity of the science-building errand, and the offered-but-declined departure are all narrative elements that don’t map cleanly onto later, more culturally saturated abduction-genre conventions, which argues at least modestly against the account being a simple retrofit of 1970s ufological tropes onto a childhood memory.
On the weak side, nearly everything else works against the case’s evidentiary standing. The account surfaced in print fifty years after the alleged event, filtered through an adult’s recollection of a childhood experience and then through a newspaper reporter’s write-up, and reaches this archive only via Beckley’s 1981 secondary citation of that newspaper piece — a two-step remove from anything resembling a primary source. Hypnotic regression, attempted at some point in the 1970s presumably to recover additional detail or verify the account, reportedly failed to place the witness in trance at all, which neither confirms nor discredits the underlying memory but does mean no enhanced-recall data exists to weigh. The school’s correct identification as St. Joseph School, Pasco County — rather than the previously stated Holy Name Convent — is a minor factual correction but underscores how much editorial drift a fifty-year-old, multiply-sourced account can accumulate even in relatively basic details.
RESEARCHER’S NOTES
The Dade City Flower Beings — 1924 and the Fifty-Year Retrospective Problem
- Classification Rationale: CE-III is assigned because both craft and occupants were directly observed and interacted with at close range. The telepathic communication and the offered departure push this toward the richer end of that tier, though the classification says nothing about evidentiary reliability — a CE-III can still rest on very thin sourcing, as this one does.
- Source Chain Assessment: The chain runs: 1924 alleged event → 1974 newspaper account (fifty years later) → 1981 Beckley book citation of that newspaper account → this archive. Each step introduces potential drift, and this archive has not located the original 1974 newspaper text directly, relying instead on Beckley’s rendering of it. This is a meaningfully weaker chain than most of this archive’s other entries.
- Pattern Context: Flower-form or botanically-inspired entity descriptions are rare in both pre- and post-1947 ufological literature, which tends heavily toward humanoid, reptilian, or classic “grey” morphologies. The specificity and rarity of this description is notable, but rarity alone is not evidentiary weight — an unusual detail can indicate either genuine anomalous experience or simply a more creative retrospective elaboration.
- Evidentiary Weight: Single witness, fifty-year gap before first publication, secondary citation chain, and an unsuccessful hypnotic regression attempt place this case at the low end of this archive’s evidentiary scale despite its narrative richness. Case Status is logged as Insufficient Data rather than Unexplained to reflect that this archive cannot meaningfully evaluate the claim against independent evidence, not that the claim has been disproven.
The Dade City case earns its place in this archive on the strength of its distinctive, hard-to-source-from-cultural-templates entity description — not on the strength of its documentation, which is thin by any standard this archive applies. Both realities are held here without resolving one into the other.
“They were smaller than her and resembled animated flowers with faces where the bud would be. As they looked like flowers, and as she was a kid, she was not afraid of them.”
Account of Evelyn Wendt, Dade City, Florida, 1924, as published in a local newspaper circa 1974 and cited by Timothy Beckley, 1981
