Georgia Sky Watch (MUFON Georgia)

History

Georgia Sky Watch began publishing in late 1995 as the newsletter of MUFON Georgia, with Chris Early serving as State Director and Michael Norris as Assistant State Director. The first meeting of 1996, held on 13 January with twenty members present, established the chapter's organisational structure: Henry and Kelley Owens ran public relations (building a database of every police department, fire department, airport, and military base in the state), hosted meetings in their home, and contracted a clipping service to capture media coverage. Field investigator training classes launched on 10 February 1996.

John C. Thompson, a self-employed insurance agent and MUFON field investigator based in LaGrange, Georgia, emerged as the chapter's most prolific case researcher. His December 1995 article "Getting Started" laid out the investigator's creed: tack a sign on your office wall asking "Have you seen a UFO?", carry your MUFON card, tell the local police and fire departments what you do, and cultivate leads relentlessly. Thompson's LaGrange location, in the western Georgia hills near the Alabama border, put him in range of a region that generated persistent reports throughout the 1990s.

Chris Early's leadership gave the chapter a philosophical dimension unusual among state MUFON groups. At the January 1996 meeting, Early described a trip to the Gulf Breeze UFO conference that ended at Ed Komarek's house in south Georgia, where they encountered an orange ball-shaped UFO. Early then told members that "forty years of investigation and compiling data have yielded tens of thousands of reports of lights in the sky and of entities both which exhibit patterns," and challenged the group to move beyond data collection toward deeper understanding. He announced a goal: dialogue with alien entities by 1997.

The newsletter transitioned from monthly to quarterly publication by 2000, with issue numbering running from No. 2 (December 1995) through No. 19 (Q3 2001). The chapter maintained field operations across a state stretching from Appalachian mountain communities to coastal lowlands, with investigation clusters in the LaGrange/Troup County area and the greater Atlanta region.