The truth

is out there and Tom Sheets wants to find it.

Sheets is

the state director for MUFON, the Mutual UFO Network, a

group dedicated to the scientific investigation of UFO

sightings.

MUFON has a

chapter in almost every state of the union as well as in

several foreign countries. Members approach their

investigations as if they were criminal investigations,

searching every avenue and weighing many possibilities.

For Sheets,

the investigations are a piece of cake. He was a

detective in College Park for a number of years before

becoming chief of police there. He retired in 1995 but

his work with MUFON keeps him busy.

The first

thing that needs to be explained is that MUFON is not a

fringe group. It is made up of people from all walks of

life; homemakers, educators, policemen, ex-military

personnel, physicists and geologists. The new

international director of MUFON is John Schussler, a

former employee of NASA.

Membership

in the Georgia chapter is over 70 people and the number

continues to grow. In fact, there is a meeting open to

the public in Griffin Sunday, Nov. 14. The goal of the

group is to determine what people are seeing when they

see UFOs.

"The

large majority of sightings are misidentified

aircraft," explains Sheets. "They can also be

celestial objects or natural phenomena." While they

find that lots of times the sightings are natural or man

made, they still believe that some of the sightings are

of objects not of this world.

Sheets saw

his first UFO in the mid 1960s. Always interested in

astronomy, he and some colleagues were out snapping

photos of star clusters. While they were preparing their

equipment, they saw a V-shaped formation with unusual

lights flying east to west in the night sky. The crafts

in the formation flew at a very high rate of speed and

some objects left the formation. Sheets knew that the

objects were traveling too fast to be airplanes, but he

called some relatives who were high ranking officials at

the airport.

"There

were no flights over that part of Atlanta at that

time," said Sheets, "and that started my

lifelong study in UFOs."

The first

group that Sheets joined was ISUR, the International

Society for UFO Research, where he eventually became a

member of the board of directors. While studying and

investigating sightings with ISUR, Sheets was also

hearing reports from citizens that sought his help as a

policeman. "People knew that they could come talk to

me and I wouldn't laugh," Sheets said. "They

still can."

The history

of sightings in America goes back a long way. One of the

earliest was in 1870 by a man named Charles Fort. Fort

was an investigator of the strange and supernatural and

he reported seeing an unidentified flying object, but the

heyday for UFOs, that is, until now, was during and after

World War II.

Anti-aircraft

batteries picked up UFOs in their spotlights and fired

upon them and many flight crews reported seeing crafts

shaped like orbs or spheres following their planes. They

called the unidentified crafts "foo fighters,"

which is where the popular rock band got its name. There

were suspicions that the crafts were of German origin but

that turned out not to be true. Can thousands of fighter

pilots, navigators and bombardiers be wrong?

The crafts

that people reported seeing then and now have many

similarities. They appear to be under intelligent control

and they travel at speeds and in directions that cannot

possibly be performed by humans. "The technology

does not exist," said Sheets. "Many of the

sightings are just military aircraft. The stealth bomber

was a secret for at least 10 years before it was

announced to the public. But our crafts cannot make a

standing start and accelerate immediately to rates of

1,000 miles per hour or make 90 degree turns at

incredible speeds."

So, just

what are these objects that fly through the night sky?

What was the source behind the loud booms and alleged

sightings that occurred in West Georgia and Alabama in

August? We hear about strange occurrences and then never

get an explanation.

Is it a

conspiracy like the "X-Files" television show

proclaims? Are the objects escaped craft from Area 51?

Are the aliens looking to land in a new Roswell, perhaps

one in Georgia? Sheets, and many other members of MUFON,

don't think so.

"Half

of the stuff you read and see on television about Roswell

and Area 51 and UFOs and aliens is malarkey," Sheets

said. "Pop culture detracts from serious research

and makes all groups look like kooks." As for the

incident this summer, a former state director of MUFON

conducted an investigation into the booms and sightings.

Both GEMA and the GBI conducted an investigation into the

incident and neither group interviewed any of the more

than 20 witnesses involved. There will be a video

presentation at MUFON's meeting this weekend concerning

his investigation.

Also on

hand at the meeting will be Officer Michael Hill of the

Roswell Police Department (seriously). He is the local

historian for MUFON and has written a book,

"Georgia's UFO Phenomena, 1947-1987." There

will be a question and answer period with the MUFON staff

for the public and there will be a discussion on recent

sightings in Israel and elsewhere internationally.

MUFON seeks

credibility and to not be associated with fringe groups.

Members feel that there is something out there, and even

they do not know what it is yet. Some members of the

group believe it is extra-terrestrials, while others

believe there is a perfectly logical explanation behind

the sightings. As for Sheets, he sides with some of the

popular physicists of the day.

"People

like Stephen Hawking and Dr. Wolf believe that multiple

universes exist side by side," Sheets explained.

"I don't think these craft traveled from 10,000

light years away; I think they found a way to pass

through into our reality. A sort of quantum state."

Wherever

you fall on this topic, it certainly opens doors for some

very interesting discussion. MUFON tries to meet every

other month and will meet this Sunday at the Holiday Inn

in Griffin at 1 p.m. The meeting is free and open to the

public. Tom Sheets also is available to talk to at

anytime. He can be reached on-line at [email protected] .

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