Serving Barnwell County and it's neighbors since 1852
If you’re talking to John Stamey, you’re probably talking long distance. Very long distance.
Like outer space.
Stamey is organizer of something he calls the World UFO Conference, being held Friday and Saturday, June 28th and 29th, in Clayton, Ga.
“Why Clayton?” I ask him in a telephone interview.
“For me,” he says, “Clayton is the magic place for me to run events. People love them there. …The people are the nicest people in the world.”
Then he names some of those nice people, including the owners of the R.M. Rose Distillery in Dillard, just north of Clayton, where Friday night’s program will be held.
“Do you think drinking a little booze might have something to do with spotting UFOs?” I ask him.
Stamey avoids giving a smart-aleck answer to a smart-aleck question and says simply, “Actually, no. We’re going to have an exhibition of spotting UFOs Friday night. It’s going to be great.”
Stamey really doesn’t care if you believe in alien visitors or not. He says UFOs are out there, and their occupants are not natives of Earth. No doubt he has spoken to hundreds of people in this country who say they have seen a UFO, and they weren’t drinking.
He saw his first one when he was in his last year of high school in Morganton, N.C., where he grew up. He and his parents were on their way home from a restaurant. It was about 8 o’clock at night. It was dark.
“I looked up and there was a green, cigar-shaped UFO,” he says. “I said, ‘Hey, there’s a UFO.’ My parents didn’t say a word.”
Later, sitting at their kitchen table, he asked, “‘Daddy, what do you think about that UFO?’ And he looked right through me and said, ‘Son, we are never going to talk about that.’”
Stamey believes his father saw a UFO while serving in World War II, and he didn’t want to discuss it, period.
Since then, John Stamey says he has spotted seven or eight other UFOs.
Stamey holds a doctorate—he calls himself Dr. John—in computer science, but now he’s selling real estate and life insurance and holding his events around the nation. He plans 11 events for next year, including the Bigfoot conferences he organizes. He has put together annual Bigfoot conferences in Clayton and Dillard.
I ask him, “Have you had people in Rabun County who say they have seen Bigfoot?”
“Oh Lord yes, it’s the magic spot,” he says.
Saturday, Stamey’s UFO event will move to the food bank in Clayton, and he’s expecting a capacity crowd. A number of speakers are lined up for the eight-hour session.
We lived in Clayton back in the 1990s, and I never saw a UFO or Bigfoot. I’m not saying they don’t exist. Even Pope Francis said years ago that if a Martian showed up at the Vatican, he would be willing to baptize him (or her, or it).
And Dr. John no doubt would invite the visitor to be a special guest at his event.
