MUFON Missouri Newsletter

History

Margie Kay edited the Missouri MUFON Newsletter from Kansas City, publishing monthly issues through missourimufon.org beginning in January 2011. State Director Debbie Ziegelmeyer ran operations from Imperial, Missouri, near St. Louis. The chapter maintained a dual-city structure: Kay handled the Kansas City section with Section Director Richard Hayde, while Ziegelmeyer coordinated the St. Louis area with Bruce Widamen covering St. Charles and Barb Becker directing the Columbia section. Joseph Palermo served as Chief Investigator. Ziegelmeyer also founded the MUFON Dive Team, a specialist unit for underwater recovery at physical trace sites.

The newsletter ran to six pages in its early issues and expanded over time, carrying field investigation reports sourced from the MUFON Case Management System, event calendars, book reviews, and articles by section directors. Missouri logged 141 CMS reports in 2010 alone (88 unknowns, 30 hoaxes, 23 identified). Object types broke down heavily toward disc/sphere/fireball (65) and triangle (27) shapes. The newsletter shifted from monthly to quarterly by 2013, with publication becoming irregular through 2015 to 2017 as operations moved increasingly to the chapter website and email distribution.

Meetings rotated between cities. The St. Louis group met at Culpepper's restaurant; Kansas City held monthly meetings and periodic sky watches. The chapter offered Communiversity classes through UMKC on "Are UFOs Real?" covering how to join MUFON and become a certified field investigator. Equipment training, sky watches with binoculars, and mentorship of new investigators formed part of the outreach programme. The newsletter regularly solicited content from members with an encouraging editorial note: "Don't worry about writing perfectly, the editor will take care of that!"

Coverage extended beyond standard sightings. The January 2011 Moscow Mills case involved a witness in an open field who encountered glowing red, white, and blue lights at 100 yards, attempted to approach with a camera and flashlight, and fled when one rose and tilted toward him. Ted Phillips's ongoing Marley Woods investigation in southeastern Missouri, tracking unexplained lights and physical trace evidence in a wooded area over multiple years, received regular coverage. The chapter also tracked broader developments: Richard Hayde reported on the 2011 Global Competitiveness Forum in Riyadh, where Stanton Friedman, Michio Kaku, Nick Pope, and Jacques Vallee appeared on a panel titled "Learning from Outer Space" before an audience of world business leaders.