IT SEEMS strange, but there are people out there who believe these stories. Even stranger, though, is the fact that there are people out there who are involved in a systematic effort to shut Dennis up. Ironically, the person causing the most damage is Bobbie Felder, author of the Omega Agency Files and Dennis’s onetime champion.

For the past year, an increasingly dubious Felder has publicly and persistently challenged Dennis to produce evidence to back up his claims. So far, she says, he has failed to do so. She now believes that Dennis used her, that he used her credibility in the UFO community to gain some credibility of his own. And she is pissed.

“He was my friend and I trusted him,” she says. “And frankly, at that point in time, I was very much an idiot. To this day it bothers me that there are people out there who believe those files. The story just keeps getting bigger and bigger. It bothers me that people believe the stuff he says.”

Okay, here’s a question: why? Why does anyone care if some guy wants to us to believe that he shared BK Broilers with a 750-year-old woman from outer space? Where’s the harm?

“You don’t know UFO people, do you?” says Felder. “There are people who take this stuff very seriously, fanatics. They don’t need any help moving further from reality. Some people, for whatever reason, are looking for authority figures, someone to validate their beliefs, and then someone like Dennis comes along. It can mess up their lives.”

These days, Felder spends her time circulating another document: “Anatomy of a UFO Hoax.” Like Felder’s first Internet opus concerning Dennis, the “Anatomy” files are causing quite a stir. Beyond this, Felder has posted untold chat-room messages calling Dennis a fraud. And she has publicly apologized for helping to proliferate his ideas. “There is nothing I can say that will undo the damage this tale has done to the Internet UFO community,” she writes, “and to the credibility of the UFO field at large.”

In its turn, the community that once embraced Dennis is now turning a collective cold shoulder. “I’ve reminded Bossack that he failed to apologize to either me personally — or the group — for his Omega deception,” wrote the administrator of a UK-based UFO message board called Black Triangle. “I’ve told him that he really was NOT welcome on B-T, & I’ve removed [him] from our group.”

Dennis, of course, denies that there has even been a deception, and therefore refuses to apologize, which makes the UFO buffs even madder. When he is challenged on his beliefs, which is quite often these days, Dennis resorts to a Schopenhauer aphorism: “All truth passes through three stages: first, it is ridiculed; next, it is violently attacked; finally, it is held to be self-evident.”

“Right now,” he says, “I’m being violently attacked.”

Another of Dennis’s most dedicated foes is an out-of-work truck driver named Tim. For Tim, discrediting Dennis has become, if not an obsession, a mission. When DNA announces upcoming guests, for instance, Tim will make a point of writing to them. He has a form letter he sends out: “I am contacting you about an interview you are scheduled to do ... ” If the guest doesn’t cancel, Tim will call in and ridicule the host on the air: “Dennis says he was the director of a top-secret agency; I can’t see this guy directing traffic.”

“Dennis talks about things he really has no knowledge about,” says Tim, speaking on the phone from his Rhode Island home. “He constantly contradicts himself. He makes up absurd stories to cover his butt. I’ve caught him in too many lies, too many fantastic stories. The UFO community has rejected him wholeheartedly. MUFON has rejected him because he can’t prove anything he says.”

A call to the Rhode Island chapter of MUFON backs up this claim. “I really don’t feel comfortable talking about him,” says a woman on the other end. Click.

“I’m telling the truth,” Dennis says. “One of the things I’m constantly saying to people is, ‘I’m not asking you to believe.’ What I’m saying is, ‘I want you to keep an open mind and think about it. Is it possible that I am telling the truth?’ ”

DENNIS FLAT-OUT lies,” says Bobbie Felder. “He will say whatever he thinks it takes to move those books and videos off the shelves of his little gift shop, whatever he thinks it will take to get the ratings points on his little radio show, whatever he thinks it will take to get his name in lights.”

And this, perhaps, is his most damnable transgression. The UFO community’s anger at Dennis has far less to do with what he says than with what he does. He is, after all, by no means the first person to make odd claims about UFOs. A recent report to MUFON described “a reptilian creature walking on the beach with a black suit on and with glaring red eyes” — clearly a tough one to verify. Yet there was no subtextual “What a nut!” in MUFON’s account of the report. Why not?

In the end, Dennis Bossack’s crime is not that he made extravagant claims; it’s that he made extravagant claims from a position of authority. The fact is, Dennis could have claimed to be the King of Mars and no one would have given a hoot — as long he had done it quietly. In this sense, Dennis is something of a tragic figure. The very qualities that raised him to the heights of UFOlogy — a great story and a knack for self-promotion — are the things that have proved to be his undoing.

It’s no coincidence that Felder’s assault on Dennis began around the time he launched his radio show. It’s equally telling that Tim puts so much effort into “giving a heads-up” to DNA’s guests. On one recent show, DNA hosted Harold E. Burt, author of Flying Saucers 101 (UFO Magazine, Inc., 2000). After a while, Dennis began to talk about his years at Omega. Burt Mmm-hmmed his way through it, but you could hear the consternation in his voice. There was an “Oh jeez” in every Mmm and a “D’oh” in every Hmm. Later, Burt said a very astute thing about the UFO community: “Ridicule is the biggest thing,” he said. “People would rather die than get embarrassed.”

UFO buffs cannot abide the idea that Dennis has the likes of Harold Burt Mmm-hmming over this Omega stuff. As far as they’re concerned, Dennis is opening the UFO community up to ridicule, and the community is closing in around him. Some buffs actually believe Dennis is a government infiltrator, a saboteur. It’s far more effective to discredit a belief, the argument goes, than it is to deny it.

“There are people who have devoted years to researching these things,” says Felder. “Then Dennis opens his mouth on his radio show and it gets all shot down. The UFO community gets upset with this garbage because legitimate researchers get lumped in with what one idiot says. They become crackpots by association.”

At least one legitimate researcher disagrees. “I have some doubts about Dennis’s claims,” says Stanton Friedman. “I’m not part of his coterie of believers, but I don’t agree with this guilt-by-association thing. There are people saying he’s bad for the cause, but I don’t think that way. I don’t think Dennis is doing any harm.”

Indeed, the final twist in this tale is that legitimate, respected UFO researchers — as opposed to UFO fanatics — seem to be the only people who are not turning their backs on Dennis Bossack. Even those who cringe a little on his radio show still agree to appear. As one authority puts it, “Controversy is good.”

Friedman, for one, is more troubled by Dennis’s detractors than he is by Dennis. “I don’t understand the zealots of this world,” he says. “I don’t understand what drives them. Maybe they don’t have faith in their own thinking ability. Get a life, people. There are more important things you can spend your time on.” Besides, he adds, “there are plenty of crazy ideas out there.”

Is Dennis Bossack crazy? “I’m a physicist,” Friedman says, “not a psychiatrist.”

Tim, of course, is more forthcoming. “Dennis might buy his own line of crap,” he says. “He may be sincere. He may be lost in madness about all this stuff.”

Right now, Dennis doesn’t care whether people think he’s nuts or not. All he wants is to do his Omega work in peace. “Why do I have people stalking me on the Internet?” he says. “Why do I have people harassing me if I’m just some lunatic? Leave the lunatic alone and he’ll go away.”

Chris Wright can be reached at cwright[a]phx.com.