Ed Grimsley was not a scientist with institutional backing. He was not a military insider or a government whistleblower. He was a civilian researcher who obtained Generation-3 military-grade night vision equipment and pointed it at the sky — night after night, year after year — and documented what he found there. What he found was extraordinary: delta-shaped and saucer-shaped craft operating at altitudes and speeds inconsistent with any known human technology, and in some cases appearing to engage each other with directed energy. He invited researchers, journalists, and curious members of the public to look through his equipment themselves. He did not ask anyone to take his word for it. He handed them the lens.

I dedicated ESA's School of UAP and NHI Studies to Ed Grimsley because he represents the best of what independent UAP research can be: methodical, reproducible, and completely indifferent to whether the mainstream was ready to listen. I met Ed, I know his work, and I know what it cost him to pursue it with the honesty he brought to it. As UAP disclosure has moved from the fringe to congressional testimony, the people who were doing the hard work of documentation long before it was safe or popular deserve to be remembered. Ed Grimsley was one of those people. This school carries his name because the students who study here are carrying on his work — with better tools, a formal credential, and the institutional backing he never had.

Ed was also a close personal friend. I knew him not just as a researcher but as a man — generous with his time, his equipment, and his conviction that the truth about what was happening in our skies was worth whatever it cost to document it honestly. He was a veteran of Coast to Coast AM, appearing alongside George Noory to discuss his findings — and at the 2008 MUFON UFO Symposium, he handed Noory his night vision goggles and let him see for himself. Noory saw what Ed had been describing for years. Ed also appeared on CNN and NBC News — not as a fringe curiosity, but as a researcher with a method, a body of evidence, and the quiet confidence of someone who already knew what was up there.

In 2012 he spoke at my event — the UFO Paranormal Summit in Sacramento, California. Ed, George Noory, and I held a room of nearly 500 people captivated for an hour — covering UAP phenomena, night vision skywatching, and filled with the kind of laughter that only comes from two men who had been through something genuinely strange together and found a way to carry it with grace. That night is one I will never forget. Ed had a gift for making the impossible feel immediate — and for making everyone in the room feel like they were standing under the same sky he had been watching for decades.

He passed away in 2016. This school is my way of making sure he is not forgotten — and that the work he started continues in the hands of people serious enough to carry it forward.