FL Entrepreneur’s UFO Sightings Lead To His Opening A Beachside Alien Artifacts Museum

ST. PETE BEACH, FL — Dave Metcalfe was 21 years old the first time he saw what he believed was an alien spacecraft.

Now, decades later, he’s the owner of a newly opened aliens artifacts museum on St. Pete Beach, Museum of the Unknown.

The museum recently took over the former Fifth Third Bank building at 4105 Gulf Blvd., celebrating its grand opening on May 15.

Ancient artifacts that Metcalfe believes are of alien origin are displayed throughout the space. He said the carbon-dated relics were recovered from an archaeological dig north of Mexico City and range from 5,000 to 45,000 years old, he told Patch.

It was the early 1990s, when Metcalfe had that first UFO sighting. The U.S. Air Force veteran had already left the military, trading his time in uniform for civilian life. He was working in sales, and his company flew him from Florida to Atlanta for an important meeting.

“I was just there for two days and that night I got there, I was witness to a really bright blue light in the sky. I was like, ‘Wow, what is that?’ It wasn’t moving or anything crazy, just a bright blue, like an LED, light,” he said.

The next day, watching the morning news, Metcalfe learned many others had the exact same experience.

“Thousands of people called in for this strange blue light in the sky, and so, it was like, cool, I was part of a mass sighting,” he said. “And that was it.”

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He didn’t think much about the sighting in the years that followed. And if you told him when it happened that decades later, at 54, he’d open an alien artifacts museum on the beach, he would have “thought it was a joke,” he said.

“Not in a million years,” Metcalfe said. “But here we are.”

About a decade ago, he narrowly missed another sighting, which further fueled his interest in UFOs. He was fishing with buddies at John’s Pass Village when he took a break to cook himself a burger.

“When I came back down there, they were all frantic, ‘Oh my gosh! We saw three orbs,” he said.

One of the orbs flew over John’s Pass Bridge before moving straight up into the sky, his friends told him. Two others followed.

“I was, like, ‘Wow, that’s really cool,’ but I was so upset because I just missed the sighting of a lifetime,” Metcalfe said.

He added, “Now, I see them all the time.”

He started his own company, Sharkey’s, which offers water sports rentals and glass-bottom, LED-illuminated nighttime kayak tours on local waters.

As his business grew, he moved closer and closer to the waterfront, until finally, in November 2023, he moved into a beach house overlooking the Gulf. It was a longtime goal.

“I finally made it,” he said.

Metcalfe said he spent hours on his back deck watching the beach and night sky after moving into the home.

“So that’s what I was doing, night and day, looking at the stars, and … then those lights, man, they started appearing,” he said.

First came the white orbs. Then others started to appear in the sky, day and night, and he started recording them all.

“There’s one a lot of people like to call the ‘Tic Tac’ because it’s shaped like a ‘Tic Tac.’ There’s another one that kind of showed us like it was a computer code,” Metcalfe said. “And the portals are some of the most amazing things that I’ve captured … The portals are something that appear the size of a football field on the ocean, and they’ll spin.”

He began filming the phenomena first with his iPhone 12 before upgrading to an iPhone 16. Today, he has a high-tech infrared camera system aimed toward the water and constantly filming.

He continues to post all of his videos to his YouTube page, UFOwebcam, and compiled a book of his sightings. He also submitted many of them to local U.S. Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, who chairs the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform’s Task Force on the Declassification of Federal Secrets, which is currently investigating Unidentified Aerial Phenomena.

With the infrared camera in place, he started testing whether the presence of crystals influenced the appearance of the lights.

“You can see the swarms coming from the ocean. I have over 200 videos of just these,” Metcalfe said. “They come towards my house. I mean, millions of them. I’ve got to the point where I can communicate with them. Not only are they lights, they respond to me; they transform. They’ve transformed in what we think is a scarab, which is a beetle … and they transform into many things.”

He added, “I get them to blink. I can kind of get them to gather in some way.”

Metcalfe’s fascination with the sightings led him to connecting with others in the UFO community, both locally and around the world.

This is how he met Arturo Hernandez, who leads the dig near Mexico City, in February. Curious, Metcalfe purchased a relic from the archaeologist.

“I was just blown away, like, ‘Wow, these are so cool,’” he said. “And then I just kept buying and buying and buying.”

Metcalfe also introduced the artifacts to his friend, local entrepreneur Robert Czyszczon, who quickly became fascinated by them.

“And he started buying. Eventually we realized, we were supporting the dig site and supporting [Hernandez] to pay his people and stuff, and we wanted to keep helping him,” Metcalfe said.

At one point, Metcalfe had 13 relics in his home. He used them similar to the crystals, trying to draw UFOs to his deck. Eventually, his fiancée grew nervous about the pieces.

“I brought them all there and I was like, ‘Wait, I can’t have all this stuff here.’ And my fiancée was like, I don’t want that in our room,’” he said. “I had half my upstairs with just relics, and we got a couple cats, and they’re just jumping around these pieces. I’m like, ‘Oh my God. They’re going to knock one over.’”

Metcalfe contemplated putting the pieces in storage when he came up with the idea for a museum. He reached out to Czyszczon, who owns several properties along the beach, including the former bank building that the Museum of the Unknown currently calls home.

Both businessmen have the relics they’ve purchased on display in the museum, Metcalfe said.

All proceeds from ticket sales will fund the Mexico dig site. Tickets are $35 for adults, free for those 5 and under, and $25 for seniors, active military members, and children 6 to 17.

Metcalfe is eager to share these findings with as many people as he can, both tourists and locals.

“I want people to open their eyes. We want to share that there’s more out there,” he said.

He’s also convinced the aliens are visiting with an important message for humanity.

“I think that they’re trying to communicate. It’s an urgency type of message, and it’s a warning, I think, is what it is,” he said. “We’re past the tipping point, that's what they’re feeling. The oceans have been acidic and coral reefs are dying and warming up, the South American anomaly, the glaciers are melting. I mean, look how freaking hot it is. There’s no hiding it anymore.”