Project Blue Book Case #2200. On the evening of October 31, 1952, witnesses in Fayetteville, Georgia — a small community south of Atlanta — reported a luminous object in the night sky. While the Halloween date might invite skepticism, the object's characteristics were consistent with the pattern of credible sightings that had been reported throughout the extraordinary year of 1952.
Fayetteville's location in the Atlanta metropolitan area's southern fringe placed it within the operational zone of several military installations, including Fort Benning to the south and the Lockheed aircraft plant in Marietta to the north. The Atlanta region was also a major hub for commercial and military air traffic.
The 1952 wave had peaked in July and August but continued producing unexplained cases through the autumn. By October, Blue Book had received well over a thousand reports for the year — an unprecedented volume that was straining the small investigative staff led by Captain Edward Ruppelt. The program was barely able to investigate the most compelling cases, let alone the flood of routine reports.
The Fayetteville object displayed the characteristics that had become the signature of the 1952 unknowns: bright, steady luminosity; controlled movement inconsistent with aircraft or natural phenomena; and no associated sound. The observation was sufficiently well-documented to merit investigation despite the overwhelming caseload.
No conventional explanation was identified. Flight records and weather data for the greater Atlanta area were checked without finding a correlation. The case was classified "Unknown," one of the last from the historic 1952 wave.