Freddie and his dreamers touch down for UFO rally

LIMA - One minute Jonathan Reed was walking with his dog in a forest in Seattle. The next, his pet was being torn apart by a "grey" - an alien being that smelled of rotting fruit.

Reed, a former psychologist, says he then took the alien, dubbed Freddie, home and lived with it for nine days. It communicated via telepathy and could pull thoughts from his mind.

Reed and others - including Uruguayan Rafael Ulloa, who maintains aliens spirited away people from New York in the September 11 attacks - gather in Lima this week for a world ET congress.

Peru has long been a mecca for the mystics and there have been abundant reports of flying saucers, especially over the southern town of Chilca. Some locals reckon aliens imbued mud springs there with special curative and fertility powers.

The meeting is organised by Alfa y Omega cult, which believes UFOs will appear at Armageddon and Christ may use one for his return.

At the gathering will be retired US Air Force colonel Wendelle Stevens, who has investigated UFO 100 cases.

Stevens, thought to have the largest archive of UFO photographs, worked from 1947-49 in Alaska with B-29 planes fitted with scientific instruments to "detect the visitors".

His work there began the year the US is believed by some to have hushed up two purported crashes of UFOs within a month, with the Roswell incident the most famous.

Stevens recounted how B-29 crews reported "radios going haywire" and "discs" flying round their planes.

He said photographs were taken but suppressed by the military.

One of the most unusual testimonies comes from Reed on his 1996 experience with Freddie.

The alien had skin "almost like a pig", and Reed says he wears a bracelet given to him by Freddie.

He claims tests showed Freddie had 46 chromosomes, like humans, but nine resembled those of dolphins and sea turtles. The alien "proved to me we are living in a much bigger universe".

- REUTERS