It's not a matter of if, but when, for UFO tracker John Ventre. And if you believe his stats, the little green men -- or whatever -- will be here soon. Here could even be Western Pennsylvania.

"It's an intervention that will take place. They're going to make contact. We weren't ready in the '50s and '60s, but we're ready now," said Ventre, who serves as Pennsylvania coordinator for the Mutual UFO Network, in addition to working as director of security at the UPS depot in New Stanton.

The Colorado-based network with its 300 members, also known as MUFON, keeps track of UFO sightings. According to Ventre, Pennsylvanians led the way this summer in spotting unidentified flying objects.

Since June, there have been about 100 sightings of UFOs above the Keystone State. Ventre said there have been about 25 sightings over the Pittsburgh region, including eight above Westmoreland County. Close encounters have more than tripled over previous years' tallies.

Ventre's statistics show there have been twice as many sightings this summer in Pennsylvania as any other state.

On June 29, Ventre was with his dogs in the front yard of his Greensburg home when he saw what dozens of others have been talking about. Looking south, Ventre gazed upwards and high in the sky saw a fast moving, lighted object that seemingly reflected the moonlight as it sped off into the summer night.

"It was moving really fast. It had to be like 3,000 mph," Ventre said.

Ventre keeps track of everything, from the time, date and location of a sighting to its shape and color. Those statistics appear on MUFON's Web site. One recent UFO sighting came from an Export woman who saw a triangular object with multicolored lights.

Retired U.S. Army First Sgt. James Everett saw a similar object last month over his Jefferson Hills home. He snapped three pictures that are being analyzed.

"I'm not sure what it is but I know it wasn't an airplane. I spent 20 years in the military and I know the difference between stars and things that aren't supposed to be there," Everett said.

Could all this activity, which seems to follow a path from Ohio and across Pennsylvania over the turnpike corridor, be a precursor to some "X-Files" encounter somewhere close to home?

Ventre and Everett think so.

"There would be a lot of things in our region they would be interested in, power plants and steel plants. If I was from another world coming to our planet I'd look at our production of things," Everett said.

The potential of alien contact has apparently caught local officials flat-footed.

Dwayne Pickels, spokesman for the Arnold Palmer Regional Airport near Latrobe, said local air travel has not been affected due to any increase in radar traffic from flying objects of unknown origins. And county public safety officials have not devised any sort of first-contact strategy.

"We have not received any intelligence this is going to occur. But If this is going to occur we know they will come in peace," said department spokesman Dan Stevens.

If Ventre and Everett aren't convincing enough, listen to someone who knows more about space travel than most earthlings.

Edgar Mitchell, who walked on the moon as part of the Apollo 14 mission in 1971, told an interviewer last month that aliens have visited earth for six decades. It's a fact being covered up by NASA, according to Mitchell.

NASA has denied Mitchell's claims. It declined to comment about any UFO sightings or theories of impending alien contact.

"NASA does not track or collect data on such reports," said NASA spokesman Stephen Cole.

The U.S. Air Force, which once did track UFO sightings, does so no more. It's the Air Force that debunked the region's biggest suspected alien encounter, the 1965 incident in Kecksburg.

Locals to this day insist a spaceship crashed in the rural Westmoreland County hamlet. The government said it was a meteor while others have theorized the object that flamed across the sky and plunged to the earth in Kecksburg was a secret Soviet satellite.

Ventre said the mystery might someday be revealed and history will show that Kecksburg was the appetizer for a full course of alien activity.

"I think people can handle the truth, as long as they're not hostile," Ventre said.