“The speed of their craft is 48 to 52 light years an hour,” Don explained. “They come over me and they put down a blue beam of light so extremely bright that you would go blind instantly if you look at it, but it will not illuminate anything, and I’m taken aboard their ship.

“I’ve had 68 scheduled flights and 12 non-scheduled flights.”

Two Wisconsin communities, Belleville and Elmwood, hold annual festivals to capitalize on reported UFO sightings in their areas. The festivals typically entail parades with local kids dressed as Martians, beer tents, brat stands, maybe some live music.

UFO Daze in Dundee is different. Really different. As different as the planets Earth and Surak, which, by the way, is the home of Monn.

Who the hell is Monn? You will have to come to Dundee to find out. Standing among the hundred or so people milling around Benson’s Hideaway you’ll grow accustomed to hearing conversations about “shadow people,” “reptilians” (bad aliens) and “grays” (good aliens, except for a few bad apples). Monn, apparently, is a good alien.

The annual gathering is the swap meet for true believers. Instead of swapping car parts or antique coins, the attendees happily share personal accounts of life with aliens. Like Don, the frequent flyer who began traveling aboard alien spacecrafts at age 2, “give or take 6 months,” according to his recollections. The aliens gave Don “implants” to monitor his whereabouts. The implants expired a week before Christmas 1998.

“When I had my implants they could locate me an hour before they hit the sun’s gravitational pull,” Don said. “Most people think it’s a nighttime situation. It is not. It’s day or night, whenever they need you.

“I have been taken straight through a stone wall that was four feet thick. They have taken me through three floors of a building. They have taken me out of a whole group of military people while I was in service and everybody said, ‘We were talking to you and all of a sudden all that was there was your clothing.’”

Some UFO Daze attendees are part of an organization called Lightside, which meets monthly in an Oshkosh Goodwill store. Lightside member Bonnie Meyer is promoting her forthcoming book “Alien Contact: The Messages They Bring.” 

“We all have had benevolent sightings and contacts with highly advanced spiritual aliens,” said one Lightside member speaking of the group. Meyer is an exceptional “channeler,” according to her peers. “Through channeling we became reacquainted with our ET contacts, as we come here without full memory. The ET team that we work with lives on a ship that we have nicknamed the Peace Ship. The Peace Ship is roughly the size of Chicago and circles the Earth just outside our atmosphere.”

The scenic little crossroads of Dundee, in the Northern Unit of the Kettle Moraine State Forest, has had its share of UFO sightings through the years. Hideaway owner Bill Benson has a binder to prove it -- pages of photos showing strange lights above the forest, as well as a crop circle in a nearby field. He is not a true believer, but truly believes that UFO Daze is good for business, so for 16 years he has hosted the gathering and served a ton of the Hideaway’s homemade pizzas.

In addition to 25 or so true believers who attend, dozens more are curious, even more are weekend campers looking for a good party.

“On my last trip aboard the craft before my implants expired,” Don said, “I asked to see the Titanic. They took me under the ocean and we talked to the creatures of the deep…and I got to see the Titanic.”

Then his pizza arrived, and Don walked away to find a place to eat.