On World UFO Day, an Ogden business owner and UFO enthusiast has a message: “Open your mind.”

OGDEN — Victor Camacho knows the world is full of UFO skeptics.

But as the world marks World UFO Day on Tuesday, the operator of an Ogden venue focused on extraterrestrials and the possibility of life in the cosmos, Alien Legacy, has a message: Keep an open mind and do your own homework.

“I am a believer. But it is not a religion, you have to investigate,” he said. “After 28 years, I have come to the conclusion that this is reality. We are not alone.”

The reason or reasons for World UFO Day are not entirely clear. The World UFO Day website states that a group called the World UFO Day Organization chose the date of July 2, which coincides with the discovery in July 1947 of a mysterious wreckage field near Roswell, New Mexico, which brought the concept of unidentified flying objects to the public.

Whatever the origins of the day, it has attracted interest from some media outlets and UFO enthusiasts. Roswell will host the Roswell UFO Festival starting Friday, according to the New Mexico Department of Tourism, to commemorate the 1947 Roswell incident. For the record, the U.S. Air Force has said that the 1947 wreckage at the center of the Roswell incident was not an alien spacecraft, but rather the debris of a “high-altitude research balloon” that crashed to the ground.

Camacho didn’t have any special activities at his Ogden store Tuesday to mark World UFO Day. The three-year-old shop in the heart of the city on Washington Boulevard sells images of little green men, crystals, incense, Bigfoot memorabilia, feng shui items and more. But he’s passionate about the subject, even as he acknowledges that it raises doubts for some.

“I’m fine with that. But investigate, don’t just talk… Open your mind, listen to the information,” said Camacho, who also runs an Alien Legacy booth on weekends at the Indoor Swap Meet in Salt Lake City.

A native of Mexico City, Camacho became interested in UFOs in the 1990s as the host of a Spanish-language radio show in Los Angeles. Most of the topics—immigration, family, crime—went unaddressed by listeners. But when he mentioned a letter he received from someone claiming to have had an encounter with aliens, the lights on the studio’s phone group went on and people wanted to chime in. He kept his focus on UFOs, began conducting his own investigations and fieldwork, and the subject has since become central to his identity.

A small section of his shop displays objects and artifacts he has collected in the Mexican states of Veracruz and Jalisco that he believes are evidence of the possible presence of some kind of extraterrestrial civilization on Earth in pre-Columbian times. The figurines depict beings with large eyes and indecipherable engravings.

“They have some kind of written language that we can’t explain. We can’t translate it. It’s not Aztec, it’s not Mayan, it’s not Olmec,” he said.

Regardless of the origins of the objects in Camacho’s collection, a study by geographers at the University of Utah published late last year is addressing the issue of UFO sightings, now called unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAPs) by the U.S. government. The goal of the academic investigation was to better understand what UFO sightings might represent and whether environmental factors influence sighting reports.

“The majority of sightings occurred in the western regions of the United States due to the physical geography of the region: lots of open space and dark skies. The reported UAP hotspots had credible links to air traffic and military activity, suggesting that people are spotting real objects but not recognizing what they are,” a U.S. press release about the study reads.

The researchers, led by Richard Medina and Simon Brewer, associate professors of geography at the University of California, do not attempt to answer the question of whether there is life outside our solar system. “We make no assumptions about what people are seeing, only that they will see more when and where they get the chance. The question remains, however, what are these observation reports about,” the report says.

The Pentagon released a report to Congress in March saying that most reported sightings of “unidentified anomalous phenomena” have natural explanations and that it has not found definitive evidence of intelligent extraterrestrial life.

At the same time, Camacho isn’t trying to impose definitive answers. But he does encourage research. “That’s what we want: for people to question this,” he said.