There, dedicated ufologists unsuccessfully attempted to summon Ayling, the son of local woman Elizabeth Klarer and her alien paramour, Akon, from the planet Meton.

Until her death in 1994, Klarer insisted that after much telepathic chatting up, she had been visited and seduced by Akon, a tall Aryan type. In 1956, she says, she spent four months with him on Meton, a planet circling the nearest star to Earth, Alpha Centauri, where she gave birth to a galactic cross-breed.

The idea of extraterrestrial sex holds a strange fascination for humankind, as can be seen from the proliferation of sci-fi porn since the mid-20th century and repeated claims of men and women being abducted by aliens for scientific/sexual purposes.

Klarer's account, alongside that of Brazilian Antonio Vilas Boas -- who claimed that, in 1957, he was forced aboard a UFO, tested, injected with a serum (Venusian Viagra?) and then rogered by an insatiable, statuesque blonde alien for several hours -- is among the most widely quoted by ufologists and alien contactees.

The Kamberg Valley community, hoping that Ayling may still be kerb-crawling the galaxy, turned out its finest male-bait to entice the 50-(Earth)-year-old.

Past the gathering of farmers and other Kamberg luminaries sipping gluwein, coffee and local ale, swans Vera Sutherland (née Johns), a Miss South Africa pageant-winner in 1975 and now stud-farmer. So, too, do a range of Miss Fertiliser Bag winners and runners-up. "The second question the judges asked me was sooo hard," squeals one, who seemed to have recycled a kunsmis-sak (fertiliser bag) into a two-piece swimsuit. "Whether I preferred harrowing or deep riding," she giggles.

The sense that I may, indeed, be surrounded by alien life-forms begins to germinate.

To the left of the gathering a landing strip shimmers for Ayling, while farmer George Armstrong, who owns the land and has lived in the area for 60 years, points to Flying Saucer Hill on the right. It is on this eminence that Klarer maintained her encounter of the third kind occurred as a seven-year-old.

"Is that where they shagged?" I ask. Armstrong laughs: "Why do it in a cold, wet field when you have a comfortable flying saucer?"

I ponder the question: novelty, farm fetishism, or so that orgasmic cries of "Who's your mother ship?" don't carry through the thin walls of the UFO?

Armstrong says that many of the younger generation in Kamberg and surrounds no longer remember Klarer the astral traveller, and that with time, her story has evolved into a good-natured myth.

It appears that local black people are especially sceptical: the Ayling reception party is as pale as the Milky Way.

It becomes increasingly apparent that the romance of Elizabeth and Akon is now being used as a gimmick to draw tourists to the area.

Yet there is a mystery at the heart of the Madame Klarer saga: she was a Cambridge-trained meteorologist, and her story was technically convincing in its description of the UFO, the mother ship and the planet Meton.

Klarer, who worked for South African air force intelligence during World War II, delivered a paper at the 11th International Congress of UFO Research in Germany in 1975 and addressed the United Kingdom's House of Lords in 1983, at a time when Britain's Ministry of Defence had officially declared that UFOs did exist.

Many cite her intelligence and lucidity as proof that she was not a crackpot.

Yet what is one to make of claims that Venusians, forced to abandon their planet, left a section of their civilisation on Earth to look after it and "advance the mentality and consciousness of the indigenous people"?

Why is it that alien abductors are always such hunks? And why should an interstellar traveller from such a high civilisation find a down-home gal from the Midlands so irresistible? Rough trade?

We see the little inverted triangular faces with the queen bee eyes everywhere; on candy wrappers, tee shirts, skateboards, jewelry, note cards, advertising. Comedians make jokes; the references to being probed and abducted are everywhere in pop culture.

"Belief" is not an issue; the point is moot. Everyone knows what one means when commenting on alien abductions. No need to go further.

Then there are those who study this thing. Mostly sociologists and psychologists; theorizing on things like sleep paralysis, fantasy prone personalities, victims of the onslaught of entertainment media images as explanation. These all go into some subconscious soup that produces the 'belief" that some of us have been abducted. The sane, the rational, the serious don't literally think -- not for one darn second -- that humans are being abducted by aliens. At best, it's just damn silly, at worst, it's a dangerous plunge into superstition, the harbinger of a retro-Dark Ages cultural attitude that is on equal footing with Intelligent Design, religious fanatics and global warming apologists.

Oh, wait a minute. Then there are the abductees themselves. Those who believe they've been abducted by aliens, or decidedly non-human beings of some kind. They believe it so strongly, so firmly, because, as they tell us, it really did happen to them just as they said it did.

Yes, it is preposterous. But let's just do a huge 'what if . . .'

There are pretty much only three possibilities here. One, everyone who insists they've been abducted are liars. There's probably a few out there who are. There always are. But to accept wholeheartedly every single abductee on this planet is a liar is almost as amazing as the abduction scenario itself.

Then there's the theory these people are suffering from a sleep disorder. Or something. Anything. It's gotta be right? Again, to think everyone who reports seeing aliens or being abducted has sleep issues is a bit much. Besides, abductions, according to the lore (and when I use 'lore' do not mistake it to mean 'silly bit of fictional fairy tale' but lore in the academic sense; a story, a narrative, an experience, a retelling of an event) occur at all times of day and night, in and out of bed. I've had sleep paralysis since childhood, I've had more than the average person, according to statistics, yet not once have I thought I'd seen an alien or been abducted, probed, or strapped to a metal table. So now what?

Another theory, and this is one I like a lot, is that the abductions are real, they're just not being done by extraterrestrials. The government is responsible. This theory, known as MILABS (Military Abductions) says that staged events to look like aliens are kidnapping humans. Mind control experiments, power of suggestion, drugs, hypnosis, playing games with your memory (cover or screen memories, missing time) -- Manchurian Candidate kind of stuff, only with ET from space, instead of the Presidency, as the force responsible.

Then there's the unsophisticated and embarrassing question: what if it's true? Just what if aliens really are abducting humans?

I agree it is preposterous, but not because people who say so are lunatics or mentally unstable. What do you do when you know not one, but a few, people personally who say this has happened to them? Suddenly your smugness and sense of rational superiority are left behind. Because you're dealing with friends, family. People you know. Not so easy, is it?

What if you, yourself, along with another person, has experienced missing time and screen memories, in connection with not one, but a few, UFO sightings?

I'm not ready, not for a minute, to say I've been abducted, or that I even think I've been abducted. But I will say that some very strange things have been occurring, and continue to occur. This fact has ceased to matter in the mainstream, for the alien abduction motif has become a familiar icon in our culture. One that is harmless for most, since it sells candy and toys, and is the object of jokes and lame sit-coms. We've become comfortable with it, and so it is harmless.

Meanwhile, in the background, the abductees are being patronized (at best) by the sociologists and psychologists. They're still being listened to by UFO researchers, but outside of the UFO researcher/blogger/writer/experiencer realm, no one listens to them. You won't see any of them on CNN. Unless you're idly watching the History or Discovery channels and a UFO show airs, the UFOlogist, no matter how careful and factual he or she may be, is not taken seriously by the mainstream. That includes mainstream science, which is a given.

It's up to the rest of us to think about these weird events, even as they get consumed by inane mediocrity and smug intellectual elitism.

You never know who around you has experienced these things. Would you want to know? Has it happened to you? It could. It might. Then what?

And 39-year-old mother-of-four Diane Lazarus's "psychic detective agency" is also in demand from people who have missing relatives and from animal lovers who have lost pets.

Diane Lazarus won Channel Five's Britain's Psychic Challenge 2006, presented by Trisha Goddard.

More than 2,000 people applied for the show earlier this year in which eight psychics were eventually picked, with one person being voted off each week.

In each show Diane, of Cross Hands, had to complete a number of tasks, proving herself to a number of sceptics and a jury until she was voted overall winner.

After winning, she has been inundated with offers from TV, radio and from people hoping to harness her psychic ability to find missing relatives, partners having a fling, or worried parents asking if she can help trace their missing children.

She has now turned super-sleuth to set up her own detective agency and has hired two ex-police officers to work with her.

She said, "So many people were ringing me and asking me for help that I decided to start up the agency.

"One lady phoned asking where her child was, crying that something awful had happened, and I reassured her.

"I said, 'Don't worry, he'll be back by four o'clock' and, sure enough, he was."

Sometimes, however, Diane has a feeling the missing person may never be found.

She said, "I have to be diplomatic then and the two ex-officers who are part of the agency will go into action looking for clues as to what could have happened.

"I feel I can help give them an edge in their inquiries by picking things up from relatives.

"I get a lot of calls from people who ask me if I can tell them if their husbands or wives are cheating on them.

"It's no good me just giving them my feelings, although they are usually right, they might want photographic evidence as well."

Diane's success in the Channel Five show has landed her a contract with publishers Random House for her autobiography.

She said, "Because I live in a relatively small place like Cross Hands, they want to call it The Only Psychic in the Village but I am all for calling it Why Me?."

Diane says she has had psychic powers since she was a young girl and has harnessed them to help people ever since.

She once helped West Midlands police find the killers of college lecturer Mark Green, after claiming he contacted her from beyond the grave and led her to the identity of his killers.

She sad, "A lady came to me for a reading after her nephew had gone missing and suddenly this guy called Mark came through.

"He told me he'd been murdered," said Diane, who also helped police in the case of murdered TV presenter Jill Dando.

"I could feel his spirit in the room and he wanted me to tell his mum and dad that he had passed over.

"I gave the police in Birmingham information no-one else knew, things they hadn't made public. I think they thought I was a bit mad at first but I knew too much for it to be wrong."

A month later, Mark's body was found.

Diane is happy to work on less high-profile work.

She said, "I get a lot of people ringing me about their lost dog or cat and asking if I can sense if they are still alive or where they may be.

"I'm quite happy to help, being an animal lover myself. I know that many people regard their little pet dog or cat as part of their family."

"We weren't about to do that, because we knew that that those transmissions would be heard by all sorts of people and somebody might have demanded we turn back because of aliens or whatever the reason is."

The documentary, tonight on Five, also reveals that the astronauts had to repair the lunar module with a ballpoint pen after the historic landing in July 1969.

In the cramped conditions, someone's bulky spacesuit had snapped off a circuit breaker essential for starting up the engine.

To this day, Aldrin treasures the everyday object that saved their lives.

He said: "I used a pen, one of several that we had on board that didn't have metal on the end, and we used that to push the circuit breaker in."

The programme also draws on classified documents made public for the first time.