A SHORT TIME ago, in a galaxy far, far away, Dennis Bossack fraternized with aliens. He ate their food, listened to their music, laughed at their jokes, and conversed with their pets. “They have dogs and cats and they look like dogs and cats,” Dennis says. “Mentally, however, they are a lot more advanced than our animals. You can talk to them and they will understand everything you say.”

This is Dennis Bossack’s story, and he’s sticking to it.

And why not? According to an ABCNEWS.com poll last year, over 25 percent of Americans believe earth has been visited by aliens. Almost 50 percent believe that there is intelligent life on other planets. Members of the UFO community, of course, are 100 percent true believers. So when Dennis Bossack came on the scene a few years back claiming to have firsthand knowledge of an “above top-secret” intergalactic agency, he found plenty of followers. In fact, when word of Dennis’s role in the so-called Omega Agency began to circulate, UFO buffs from London to Biloxi trembled with anticipation.

Today, believers are somewhat harder to come by. Once a respected propagator of UFO conspiracy theories, this Rhode Island resident now finds himself being denounced as a conspirator, a fraud. He has been vilified and ostracized by the very community that once embraced him. In a particularly weird twist — and this is a field where weird twists are par for the course — people whose beliefs are founded on conjecture and anecdote are heaping scorn on Dennis for the very reason that mainstream society often heaps scorn on them: no solid, verifiable evidence backs up his claims.

In the face of these attacks, Dennis Bossack is doing what any self-respecting space buff would do: he’s deploying his deflector shields and sitting tight. “In four and a half years, I am scheduled to deliver the proof to this entire planet,” he says, referring to a series of three books he says he is writing. “I will prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that there have been Visitors. Not one person on this planet will go without proof.”

THE STORY of Dennis Bossack’s rise and fall begins in the mid 1990s, when a Mississippi woman named Bobbie Felder — who goes by the Web name Jilain — authored a series of essays called the “Omega Agency Files,” based on a series of interviews she conducted with Dennis. “The Omega Agency is the one running the show,” the files begin. “Omega is a multi-level, multi-structured organization of secrets upon secrets.” The document goes on to catalogue Omega’s plans for “world betterment,” detailing the agency’s policies on everything from crime prevention to population control.

The Omega Agency Files quickly found their way onto dozens of Internet sites. Their measured style and preponderance of detail led many to believe they were authentic. Also, Bobbie Felder had a reputation as a relatively level-headed UFO enthusiast. Even more scintillating for the UFO community was the fact that Felder refused to reveal the true identity of “Robert,” the files’ mysterious central figure. Thanks to Felder, Dennis — a/k/a Robert — was on his way to becoming a UFO celebrity.

In 1997, Dennis boosted his status in the UFO field even further when he met and married a woman named Ann Harris. When Dennis met Ann, she owned a space-age emporium called the UFO Lab in Albuquerque, New Mexico. One of the only businesses of its kind at the time, the lab attracted national publicity. It seemed the perfect base for Dennis Bossack to loose his Omega theories on the world.

Better yet, Ann had impeccable credentials of her own. She is a native of Roswell, New Mexico, the Mecca of the UFO movement. Her father, Richard Clayton Harris Jr., was stationed at the Roswell air field in 1947, the year a space craft is supposed to have crash-landed there. As a budget officer, Ann says, Lieutenant Harris allotted the funds for the clean-up and cover-up of the crash site. In 1997, the noted UFO expert Kevin Randle investigated Harris’s claims for the TV show Strange Universe, and called them “credible.” In the UFO community, this is as close to a ringing endorsement as you’re likely to get.

Ann also counted Stanton Friedman — one of the UFO field’s most respected investigators — among her friends. Indeed, it was Friedman who first introduced Dennis to Ann. The couple insist, though, that their marriage was more a matter of divine — or at least otherworldly — intervention. “When the Creator formed the foundations of the earth,” says Ann, “he meant me for Dennis and Dennis for me.”

In any case, the two share one thing in common: both have had a lifelong obsession with things that go bleep in the night. And, whether or not you believe their account of the night they met, the way they tell the story lends credence to Ann’s assertion that they are “a match made in heaven.”

Dennis: Tell him about the light.

Ann: Dennis was parked in the parking lot. There was a huge spotlight kind of thing on the building.

Dennis: Ann and I kept making eye contact all night long.

Ann: And we got equidistant between ...

Dennis: The light ...

Ann: The light ...

Dennis: It blew ...

Ann: It exploded ...

Dennis: And I mean it exploded. It didn’t just go out: it exploded.

Both: A big ... halogen ... halogen light. I mean, it blew ... that was it: boom!

Ann: And that was the first time.

Dennis: We took that as a sign.

Ann: Stan [Friedman] said to me once, he always wanted to be the one to change the world, and little does he know that he did, by introducing me to Dennis.