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OGDEN — Victor Camacho knows the world is full of UFO skeptics.
But as the globe marks World UFO Day on Tuesday, the operator of an Ogden locale focused on aliens and the possibility of life in the cosmos, Alien Legacy, has a message — keep an open mind and do your own homework.
"I'm a believer. But this is not a religion — you have to investigate," he said. "After 28 years, I came to the conclusion that this is the real thing. We're not alone."
The force or forces behind World UFO Day aren't totally clear. The World UFO Day website says a group it calls the World UFO Day Organization picked the July 2 date, which coincides with the July 1947 discovery of a mysterious field of wreckage near Roswell, New Mexico, that brought the notion of unidentified flying objects into the mainstream.
Whatever the origin, the day is getting traction from some media outlets and UFO enthusiasts, alike. Roswell is hosting the Roswell UFO Festival starting Friday, according to the New Mexico Tourism Department, to celebrate the 1947 "Roswell incident." For the record, the U.S. Air Force says the 1947 wreckage at the center of the Roswell case wasn't an alien spaceship but, rather the debris of a "high-altitude research balloon" that crashed to the ground.
Camacho didn't have any special activities going on in his Ogden store on Tuesday to mark World UFO Day. The 3-year-old locale in the heart of the city, on Washington Boulevard, sells likenesses of little green men, crystals, incense, Bigfoot memorabilia, feng shui items and more. But he's passionate on the subject, while acknowledging it generates doubt among some.
"That's OK for me. But investigate, don't just talk ... Open your mind, listen to the information," said Camacho, who also operates an Alien Legacy stand on the weekends at Salt Lake's Indoor Swap Meet in West Valley City.
Originally from Mexico City, Camacho started delving into UFOs in the 1990s as a host of a Spanish-language radio talk show in Los Angeles. Most topics — immigration, family, crime — fell flat with listeners. But when he brought up a letter he received from someone claiming to have had an encounter with aliens, the lights on the phone bank in the studio lit up with people wanting to chime in. He maintained the focus on UFOs, started doing his own investigation and legwork and the topic has now become central to his identity.
A small section of his store features items and artifacts he collected from the Mexican states of Veracruz and Jalisco that he says attest to the possible presence of some sort of alien civilization on Earth, in the pre-Columbian era. The figures depict beings with large eyes and undecipherable engravings.
"They have some kind of written language we can't explain. We can't translate it. It's not Aztec, not Mayan, not Olmec," he said.
Whatever the origin of the items in Camacho's collection, a study led by University of Utah geographers released late last year looks into the question of sightings of UFOs, now dubbed unidentified anomalous phenomena, or UAPs, by the U.S. government. The purpose of the academic probe was to better understand what UAP or UFO sightings may represent and whether environmental factors bear on sighting reports.
"The majority of sightings were in western parts of the U.S. due to the region's physical geography — lots of wide-open spaces and dark skies. UAP-reporting hotspots had credible relationships with air traffic and military activity, suggesting that people are spotting real objects, but not recognizing what they are," reads a U. press release about the study.
The researchers, led by Richard Medina and Simon Brewer, associate professors of geography at the U., don't try to answer the question of whether there's life outside our solar system. "We make no hypotheses about what people are seeing, only that they will see more when and where they have opportunity to. The question remains, however, as to what these sighting reports are of," the report reads.
The Pentagon issued a report to Congress in March saying that most reported sightings of "unidentified anomalous phenomena" have natural explanations and that it has not found definitive proof of intelligent alien life.
At the same time, Camacho doesn't try to force-feed definitive answers. But he encourages inquiry. "That's what we want — people to question this," he said.
