Out of this world

Twenty six. That’s the number UFOs Judy Messoline has seen from her UFO Watchtower since opening 15 years ago in Hooper, Colorado. As long as this viewing platform has been here, there have been 96 documented viewings, she says. The UFO Watchtower only rises a story off the ground, but it offers a sweeping view of the otherwise flat-as-a-pancake 7,600-foot San Luis Valley, high in the Rocky Mountains.

This is what they call the high plains. The roads are straight and long, and about the only thing you’ll see out there is the UFOs – if you’re lucky – or alligators at the nearby Colorado Gators Reptile Park.

A three-hour drive from Colorado Springs, 30 minutes from the Great Sand Dunes National Park, and spitting distance to the New Age town of Crestone, hand-painted green alien signs guide you from the two-lane highway to the watchtower and the accompanying campground, if you want to spend the night with an eye on the skies.

Messoline came out to greet us when we kicked up dust pulling into the drive. You can see people coming from far away in a place like this. Or did she know we were coming?

She showed us a sprawling gravel garden populated with big-eyed plastic alien statues and bric-a-brac that spills out across from the Watchtower. She points out two large rocks that she says mark two large vortexes that several psychics have identified, energy centers and portals to a parallel universe, which may explain all the UFO sightings in the vicinity.

According the website, there are beings at the vortex ready to help earthlings with their lives, “so if you need help or change in your life, you are to go into the Garden and ask for it.”

In fact the garden is filled with souvenirs left by travelers hoping for a little bit of good energy in return—pens, CDs, business cards, alien figurines, notes, shells, a plastic nose.

The gift shop is filled with more curiosities. Plastic binders filled with articles about UFO sightings around the world, a photo of a Renaissance painting of the Virgin Mary with a UFO hovering in the background, bulletin boards covered in yellowing articles about the Messoline and her Watchtower.

After securing a glow in the dark bumper sticker that says, “I want to believe” and taking selfies with the inflatable alien on the welcome bench, we were off to the other end of the valley, to the Best Western Movie Manor in Monte Vista.

“Someone saw one by the Monte Vista the other night. They woke up with a beam of light coming into the room between the curtains,” she said.