Still Sunny: Continued Investigations into the Gulf Breeze Six, Pt. 1

Ken Beason, Dreams, Nightmares, Paranoia, and Science Fiction

Read the original series from the beginning here.

While most of the Gulf Breeze Six have remained silent about their AWOL experience in 1990 or have at least kept a low profile, Kenneth Beason was relatively vocal when speaking to the press immediately after the group’s release in August 1990. Seemingly discounting all paranormal or religious motivations, Beason told the papers the gang had gone AWOL to meet up with friends. “We didn’t really leave the Army; we left Europe,” he was quoted as saying upon returning to Gulf Breeze.¹ As discussed in Pt. 7 of the original series, Beason’s family placed the blame for the whole ordeal on the psychic Anna Foster who he would marry shortly after being released from custody—although the marriage has not continued into the present. “If anyone should be arrested, it should be (Foster),” Beason’s sister Carolyn told The Pensacola News Journal.² She would elaborate that he was “terribly gullible” and that Foster’s influence “br(ought) to life what he’s written about and wanted to be.”³ His sister mentions a lifelong interest in superheroes, science fiction, and aliens. His brother-in-law Charles Reed noted that Beason “never wanted to be average.”⁴

Friends and family members seemed to be inundated with Beason’s newfound religiosity during his brief time back in Tennessee to buy the group a van to travel across the country with. Stan Johnson, a friend who picked him (and Michael Hueckstaedt) up from the airport, also described Beason as “gullible”:

He was a very nice fellow but very gullible. He was one of those people who believed anything someone would tell them. (…) The idea that he was arrested, or that he was hanging around with a cult-like group didn’t surprise me. He kind of lives in a science fiction fantasy world sometimes.⁵

Johnson mentions that Beason hung around his Morristown, TN photography shop but did not talk about his work with the Army, instead preferring to talk “science, science fiction, and unidentified flying objects.”⁶ William Grant, the man who Johnson connected Beason with in order to facilitate the sale of van, was also taken aback by his claims saying: “They believe that the Rapture is going to happen in Pensacola Beach in October. (…) I don’t want to talk down to anyone about anyone’s religious beliefs, but they said if they weren’t on the beach in Pensacola they wouldn’t go to heaven.”⁷

The Knoxville News-Sentinel, 19 July 1990.

These unconventional interests and beliefs would also appear in INSCOM’s investigation into the six soldiers, as covered in Pt. 4. Beason made an official statement that related experiences with or interest in the paranormal from an early age, including a ghost giving him a glass of water because he was thirsty at the age of 5. He further describes being tormented by visions of the end of the world:

I have also had various dreams about Armageddon since about age 9. These dreams have depicted the end of the world in various ways. Earlier in my life, I tried to dismiss the dreams as not having any significance. However, I know now that my dreams were sent to me as visions from God. I believe these dreams to be true. To understand myself and my dreams better, I have in recent years researched paranormal and psychic energy. This research included the use of the Ouija board.⁸

Just as Davis recounts in Unbroken Promises, both he and Beason had visions that seemed to be confirmed by the Ouija board, but Beason’s visions always seemed to manifest as dreams or nightmares. These nocturnal prophecies will come into play later.

Vance Davis, while making it clear that Beason held at least a substantial portion of the culpability for the six going AWOL, paints the Tennessee native as consistently paranoid and not as sure-footed in his approach to paranormal communication. It was Beason, according to Davis, that seemed to have spurred the duo’s experimentation in unconventional contact methods. The foray into occult investigations began after he had met Foster in Pensacola and he was the one who initially bought the Ouija board from the Field Station Augsburg PX for him and Davis to test out. However, in Davis’ Unbroken Promises, Beason is always the first to doubt any paranormal happenings, even at one point breaking a Ouija board when he thought a spirit was deceiving him—also recounted in Pt. 4. Even on the AWOL flight back to the States, Davis describes Beason as incredibly paranoid about being caught, being in a fearful state that was “threatening any moment to turn to panic.”⁹ He further deems Beason as the only member of the group not “at peace with (their) decisions,” somewhat odd given that he is often considered to be a primary motivator for the decisions made. Davis would continue to paint this somewhat unflattering portrait of Beason, but it is worth considering that this description may have been influenced by the schism the group would experience later.

After being released from custody and discharged from the Army, Beason, Davis, and their respective wives along with Eccleston and Hueckstaedt moved into a house in Evergreen, Colorado hoping to retain the small community that they had formed. Again, Davis mentions Beason being suspicious about the whole ordeal they had been through:

Ken was gradually convincing himself that I had personally orchestrated the whole thing, and recklessly ruined people’s lives in the process. (…) I suspect that Ken’s real problem was that Armageddon hadn’t started right away, and he was beginning to feel a bit foolish about his actions.¹⁰

Davis’ wife Diana seems to share his stance on Beason, stating that the group split apart due to his “paranoia and guilt.” She would further write that Beason “was becoming quite adept at pushing people away.”¹¹ Foster notes that he “broke psychologically in a shower at Ft. Benning,” perhaps indicating an underlying trauma brought on by the ordeal.¹² Despite the portrayal by Vance and Diana Davis, Annette Eccleston calls him the group’s “leadership strength,” a role most often assigned to Davis.¹³ Whether Beason was the true leader is made a more likely scenario when considering the fact that much of what Davis relayed in his talks with Sean David Morton (explored in Pt. 10) are beliefs assigned to Beason in the INSCOM investigation. That document reports that his coworkers and an off-duty associate described the soldier as “paranoid and living in a dream wo(r)ld that involved aliens and UFOs.” Further that: “Beason believed the US government was in contact with aliens who they were providing humans for experimentation and the anti-christ (sic) was coming to earth. Beason also believed the US established a ‘Joint Moon Base’ on the far side of the moon with the ‘Good Aliens.’”¹⁴ Bafflingly, however, these same sources contend that Beason would not use a Ouija board because such a practice would welcome “evil spirits,” so I am unsure what to believe of their testimony. He is variously characterized as paranoid, a leader, gullible, and charismatic. The truth is probably somewhere in between.

While Davis has been the most vocal member of the GB6 group and his recollection of events served as the major basis for the original series of articles, Beason has not spoken out about his experiences since (from what I can tell) the early 1990s. He did not write a piece for the appendix of Unbroken Promises even though Iris Davis, Annette Eccleston, and Anna Foster (his wife at the time) all contributed testimony to the book. Yet Beason is not a total ghost: In 2013 he released a novel co-written with James L. Cavanaugh titled The Incarnate. It is in this book that, while still very much a fictional work, we see hints that Beason is wrestling with echoes of his experiences during the Gulf Breeze Six debacle.

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1. Associated Press. “Ex-soldier dismisses cult reports.” The Tampa Tribune. 5 August 1990. https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-tampa-tribune/112645905/.

2. Clausen, Christopher. “Soldiers were to expose UFO scam, sister says.” The Pensacola News Journal. 20 July 1990. https://www.newspapers.com/clip/117291215/pensacola-news-journal/.

3. Smith, Amy. “Soldier was ‘brainwashed,’ kin say.” The Knoxville News-Sentinel. 19 July 1990. https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-knoxville-news-sentinel/111965898/.

4. Ibid.

5. Clausen, Christopher. “Six soldiers here to kill Antichrist.” The Pensacola News Journal. 19 July 1990. https://www.newspapers.com/article/pensacola-news-journal/117840536/.

6. Ibid.

7. Clausen, Christopher. “Cult linked to desertion arrests.” The Pensacola News Journal. 18 July 1990. https://www.newspapers.com/article/pensacola-news-journal/109522134/.

8. Davis, Vance A. and Brian Blashaw. Unbroken Promises: A True Story of Courage and Belief. Appendix: “Kenneth Beason’s Statement and Information.” Mesa: White Mesa Publishers, 1995. Page 242.

9. Davis, Vance A. and Brian Blashaw. Unbroken Promises: A True Story of Courage and Belief. Mesa: White Mesa Publishers, 1995. Page 127.

10. Ibid., page 152-153.

11. Ibid., “Thoughts from Diana Gautier Davis.” Page 210.

12. Ibid., “Thoughts from Anna Foster Beason.” Page 202.

13. Ibid., “Thoughts from Annette (Eccleston) Levesque.” Page 192.

14. Ibid., “Final Report of Investigation INSCOM (Intelligence Security Command).” Page 220.