Houston Sky

History

Houston Sky launched in October 1994 as a free bimonthly newsletter mailed to more than 100 MUFON members in the Greater Houston area. The first issue announced its purpose plainly: networking, forum for exchanging ideas, raising awareness about Houston-area UFO happenings, and creating a positive image of the UFO community. Non-MUFON members could subscribe separately, and the editors welcomed sighting reports, story suggestions, and contributions from the readership.

John F. Schuessler drove the publication. An aerospace engineer by profession and longtime MUFON figure, Schuessler used Houston Sky as a vehicle for his Cash-Landrum investigation and for connecting Houston's scattered researchers. The first issue led with his extensive retelling of the December 1980 Cash-Landrum encounter on FM 1485 between New Caney and Huffman, thirty miles northeast of Houston, and reported on the Roswell Declaration campaign gaining traction through Omni magazine, Izvestia, Fox Network's "Encounters," and Larry King's two-hour UFO special.

Regular departments included "Flashback" (historical Houston-area sightings contributed by readers), "Worth Repeating" (a digest of quotes from researchers, enthusiasts, sceptics, and debunkers), and reprinted news coverage of local sightings. The first issue carried a Galveston County Daily News article from August 1994 about lights over Dickinson, Texas, investigated by the Coast Guard Air Station at Ellington Field. A reader contributed a 1968 Park Place sighting of three white lights in triangular formation, revolving around each other, near Ellington Air Force Base where NASA was testing the Lunar Landing Research Vehicle.

The newsletter also published first-person accounts from significant witnesses. Issue No. 1 carried former astronaut Deke Slayton's account of his 1951 UFO encounter over Hastings, Minnesota, reprinted with permission from his family and publisher. Issue No. 5 featured MUFON-Houston member Vito Saccheri's account of dealing with NASA in the 1970s over suppressed moon photographs. By its final issue (No. 11, June to October 1996), the newsletter was publishing Kevin D. Randle's conference paper on pop culture's influence on abduction reports, delivered at the North Carolina MUFON conference.