By Len Barcousky, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Sunday, September 16, 2007-Brian Seech has never glimpsed a Bigfoot, but he hasn't given up hope. Sightings of a Sasquatch -- an 8- to 10-foot-tall hairy, half ape-half human creature -- are frequent in Western Pennsylvania and Ohio, he said.

His wife, Terrie, has been more fortunate with her passion, parapsychology with a special interest in ghosts. She reported personal contact with a poltergeist, or mischievous spirit, when she was an adolescent and, more recently, with the spectral form of her husband's late aunt.

"I was sitting up in bed when she passed across the hallway," Mrs. Seech recalled. The nearly transparent apparition was clad in a blue-white nightgown. "That is the kind she wore," her husband said of his aunt.

Mr. and Mrs. Seech, of Aliquippa, were among the 15 people who gathered recently in the rear dining room at King's Family Restaurant in Butler Township. The occasion was the monthly meeting of the Butler Organization for Research of the Unexplained.

Over the course of the next few hours, people described their encounters with spirits, silent spacecraft and, they suspect, extraterrestrials. They talked about their experiences in the same calm, matter-of-fact voices they used for ordering supper or dessert from the restaurant menu.

Their organization, known as BORU, is more than 20 years old, according to director Dan Hageman. Membership is about 40. Attendance at meetings waxes and wanes, with anywhere from a half dozen to 35 people showing up. Sessions are open to the public. The group has no membership dues.

BORU is just one of many similar groups in southwestern Pennsylvania devoted to collecting information and sharing experiences linked to the very broad term "paranormal."

Many people interested in topics like unidentified flying objects and alien encounters are torn between two impulses, said Mr. Hageman, a salesman who lives in Butler.

On the one hand, they believe it is important to publicize information on the many UFO encounters that they say have been reported in and around Butler County. "But we don't want to be labeled as kooks, nuts and idiots," he said.

Science and traditional religion sometime have to catch up to what ordinary people already know or have long suspected, members said.

"Cryptozoology" is the name for the effort to find and classify animals known from folklore or legend but not categorized by biologists. Scotland's Loch Ness monster, which has been talked about for centuries but never captured, may be the best known example of what they call a "cryptid."

The world's oceans and jungles periodically turn up previously unknown or extinct creatures, Mr. Seech said. A living coelacanth, a type of early fish previously seen only as a 65-million-year-old fossil, was pulled from the ocean off the coast of South Africa. In 1993, a new horned mammal called a saola was identified in Vietnam.

BORU meetings are informal, often with no fixed agenda. At some meetings, the group has a guest speaker, but members and visitors more often talk about their interests and experiences.

While they are serious about their subject, members don't take themselves too seriously. Their Web site, www.boru-ufo.com, features eerie music and cartoon images of waving aliens and spaceships.

While the site draws visitors and e-mails from around the world, Mr. Hageman and other members are most interested in local phenomena.

One early report dates to April 23, 1897 -- an era before dirigibles or airplanes -- when an "airship" was sighted in Lawrence and Butler counties.

The most recent unexplained sighting came Aug. 18. Mr. Hageman read an e-mail from two people who had been sitting on their porch near Portman Road in Summit, Butler County. They described a single bright light, moving quickly, silently and erratically from north to south, that suddenly divided into two circular lights.

One of the more controversial claims of groups like BORU is that the U.S. government suppresses evidence of paranormal phenomena, especially anything related to possible UFO visits and human-alien contacts.

The best-known claim of a coverup centered around the reported crash of a spaceship near Roswell, N.M., in 1947 and what has been described as secret research -- including alien autopsies -- in Area 51, the name given to part of a Defense Department testing and training range in southwestern Nevada.

Several late-night national radio programs, TV series such as "The X-Files" and movies such as "Men in Black" have focused, either seriously or humorously, on coverup claims.

While proof of alien life could raise major religious questions, there are no scientific hurdles to the idea of life existing on other worlds. So why would all of the world's major leaders, and especially the U.S. government, expend so much effort to discount reports of UFOs?

"They have been lying about it so long that they can't admit the truth at this point," Mr. Hageman said.

"The government thinks most people couldn't accept the reality," suggested Joe Rice, of Butler.

"Remember what happened after 'The War of the Worlds' radio broadcast [in 1938]?" asked Michelle George, of East Brady, codirector of the group. "A lot of people got very upset."

Public officials fear that entire societies could become unhinged if the existence of aliens were confirmed. "Their technology is clearly so superior," Ms. George said. "It would mean our government can't protect us."

Most people go through life without ever seeing an apparition, a UFO or a Yeti -- another name for a Bigfoot. How is it that a small group often has had multiple experiences with the paranormal? If you are going to spot an alien spacecraft, you have to be scanning the skies. "We're always looking up," Ms. George said.

Mr. Hageman had an alternate explanation. Sensitivity to the paranormal may run in families, he said. He and his mother both have had similar experiences that he believes are best understood as alien encounters. He also had a suggestion for people interested in improving their chances of seeing something inexplicable.

An amateur astronomer named Ted Anderson has spotted what he calls the "UFO Universe Freeway Entrance" near the constellation Ursa Major, which contains the Big Dipper.

Over the past 30 years, the Washington state resident claims to have seen hundreds of space ships entering and exiting hyperspace via a "stargate" between the stars Arcturus and Muphrid in Bootes, a constellation next to Ursa Major.

"Keep your eye on the handle of the Big Dipper," Mr. Hageman advised.