Pat Marcatillio points out a UFO photograph at a paranormal meeting.

We are not alone. As testified by members of a group that meets monthly at the Hamilton Free Library on Municipal Drive, Earth receives regular visits from “grays” and other extraterrestrial beings.

And that’s just the tip of the iceberg, when you consider the ghosts, the elusive forest dwellers like Bigfoot, and the phenomena of the rainforests of the Amazon and Puerto Rico — a real hot spot — and in the Bermuda Triangle.

Pat Marcattilio, or “Dr. UFO” as his URL and license plate attest, is the Hamilton resident and lifelong student of UFOs and other paranormal phenomena who founded the UFO and Paranormal Study Group in 1984.

“We’ve been meeting at the same time and same place for 25 years,” he said. “Some people are more interested in ghosts than UFOs. It’s whatever people want to bring up.”

Some attendees are regulars, while others are first-timers for whom the meeting’s announcement online and on the library’s bulletin board proved irresistible.

The June 3 gathering, attended by about 20 people, indeed unfolded in a freeform fashion in its 150 minutes. Topics jumped from personal encounters, to published accounts, to the passing around of publications, photos, and other memorabilia, to the latest UFO program on the History Channel and the current acclaimed Star Trek release.

Questions tend to be open-ended and perhaps unanswerable, as exemplified by one Marcattilio posed about dimensions that transcend those we accept, such as time and speed:

“A spaceship is solid, but as it starts to fade and become fuzzy, then, finally, transparent, is it still there but in a less physical dimension that is imperceptible to the human eye?”

Who can say?

For the monthly meetings and appearances at such places as retirement residences, Marcattilio travels with a sampling of his 100 or so framed displays of clippings and photographs, a decidedly one-dimensional traveling museum.

One collaged image he pointed out during the June meeting was a circa 1500 portrait of a well-dressed lady of means, a spaceship hovering past her shoulder above the rolling hills of Tuscany.

After reading a published account of a man’s roadside Extra Terrestrial encounter during which he could not run, Joe, the group’s skeptic-in-residence, countered: “That never happened. That was a dream.”

“We have skeptics who attend every meeting to debunk our stories,” said Marcattilio on the phone the next day. “Others come to us and it’s like a confessional. They’ve held back their story for maybe 25 years and they let it out before a welcoming group of people.”

With his soothing voice, gentle smile, and dapper attire, Marcattilio exudes a warmth and openness that eases the way for first-time attendees to reveal personal stories held behind tight lips for perhaps decades. At this meeting, for example, two men, both newcomers, told widely varying stories of personal encounters with extraterrestrial beings.

“This is my first meeting,” said one. “Two nights ago I woke on my living room couch and saw two grays standing at the bottom of the stairway. I wanted to get up and try to kill them; I was very angry that they were there.”

“Wow,” interjected Marcattilio.

“The presence I felt was very intimidating,” the man continued. “I couldn’t get up and move toward them; I felt something force me back.”

“You were paralyzed; you couldn’t move,” offered Marcattilio in a manner that indicated he was well familiar with the scenario.

“I couldn’t move the way I wanted to,” the man said. “I moved very slowly. And then they disappeared, as if they had beamed down or something.”

“Where’s David Jacobs when you need him?” asked Marcattilio with a shrug and a smile.

David Jacobs, Ph.D., heads the International Center for Abduction Research (ufoabduction.com) and is the author of several books on the subject of UFOs and abductions, including Secret Life: Firsthand Accounts of Abductions, published by Simon & Schuster.

Jacobs also was among the high-profile speakers, along with Dr. Stanton Friedman, and Farah Yorduzo, who headlined Marcattilio’s most recent conference—The Great UFO/ET Congress of 2009—held in May at the Ramada Inn in Bordentown. The next one is scheduled at the same location for October 10 and 11.

“In Bucks County, there were 70-some reports [of UFO sightings] last summer and into the fall,” said Marcattilio. A few months later, in January, a UFO conference at Bucks County Community College featured several of the witnesses and prominent researchers and drew 500 attendees.

“It was an excellent conference,” Marcattilio said. “There were people who had seen strange lights over Quakerbridge Mall.”

“What about that face on Mars?” Marcattilio asked the meeting’s youngest attendee. The boy told of a formation that resembled a face sculpted of rocks. “How’d you find out about that?” asked Marcattilio.

“The Internet.”

“Boy, that Internet will get you every time,” Marcattilio said with a gentle laugh that was greeted with many more.

Marcattilio went on to explain that the formation is actually a mountain that’s sculpted into an ancient Egyptian face.

The boy was attending the meeting for the first time at the side of his father, a nurse and former Navy man who stood to describe a 1980 encounter in East Brunswick with beings that had both humanoid and reptilian features. The encounter was strange and confusing, he said, but not entirely unpleasant.

Following what resembled a blackout and time change—known by UFO students as a “dichotomy”— he found himself standing in line to board a spaceship. “They told me they’d have to change me somehow, because my body couldn’t fit in it. The next thing I know, I was in the craft.”

There were two creatures, not grays, not blonds, but sort of a greenish-brown, he said. “I know this was not a dream. I remember it 100 percent, the colors and everything.”

“Sometimes I feel like the guy in Close Encounters,” he confessed after sharing sightings of cigar-shaped craft in Virginia and in California. “There aren’t too many people I can talk about this with,” he said after receiving a round of applause.

The first newcomer opened up with his own 1980s encounter. “I never really told anyone,” he said.

“Yeah, well who are you going to tell, right?” responded his fellow newcomer.

Marcattilio, now 66 and retired from the Postal Service after careers in design engineering, which he pursued in college, and insurance, said that as a boy he always watched the stars and meteor showers. “I always thought that if we could ever find life on another planet that would be the most exciting thing.”

His interest grew during the 1950s when a friend shared Marine Major Donald Keyhoe’s book Flying Saucers from Outer Space.

Then came a second book, Flying Saucer Conspiracy. “This got us more excited.”

The boys joined the leading organizations of the day, the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena and the Aerial Phenomenal Research Organization. Monthly bulletins kept them abreast of the latest sightings.

Marcattilio and his group members are hardly alone in their beliefs. According to a Gallup poll of 2000, about a third of Americans believe in extraterrestrial life. UFOs are covered regularly on the History, Discovery, and Biography channels.

“Sex and UFOs are the two biggest searches on the Internet,” said Marcattilio at one point.

“Sexy grays,” said attendee Eva with a wink.

So, why do extraterrestrials bother with Earth?

“They’re coming here on vacation,” said Marcattilio, tongue in cheek. “What could be more exciting than a planet where people are blowing each other up and bombing cities? It’s like coming to watch war games. It’s really an exciting planet! They can just watch us from 100 or 200 miles above.”

And if ETs can go on vacation, so can the people who study them.

Marcattilio’s daughter Karin, for whom ghosts are of greater interest than ETs, is making plans to book a group vacation cruise.

The First Annual International Paranormal Cruise will venture into the Bermuda Triangle.

Open to the public, the UFO and Paranormal Study Group meets the first Wednesday of every month from 7:30 to 10 at the Hamilton Free Library. Visit http://www.drufo.org or call Pat Marcattilio at (609) 631-8955.