An alien display greets attendees Sunday at the 4th Annual UFO Crash Retrieval Conference at the Tuscany, 355 E. Flamingo Road. Photo by Jane Kalinowsky.

Ken Jenkins could be anybody's dad or grandfather.

The 77-year-old retired Navy man and Las Vegan is enjoying his retirement and traveling with his wife.

One reason he likes retirement is that he now has more time to learn about UFOs.

That includes attending events such as the 4th Annual UFO Crash Retrieval Conference, which took place at the Tuscany, on Flamingo Road near Koval Lane, over the weekend.

"This (type of conference) is the only place you can go to get information on the paranormal," Jenkins said Sunday.

The three-day conference, which ended Sunday, attracted about 300 people from across the United States and featured some experts on the topic, according to Ryan S. Wood, the chairman of the conference who is among those who say they long have studied the issue of UFO crashes.

But for Jenkins, who has attended similar conferences in Laughlin and California, such gatherings are a way to hear about research being done that is largely ignored by the mainstream media.

"People who should be recognizing this and investigating it are laughing it off," Jenkins said.

"It's a shame," his wife, Maxine, added, "because it's one of the best-kept secrets of the government, and people deserve to know about it."

Although UFO sightings and reports frequently made headlines in the late 1940s through the 1950s, the topic largely has been pushed to the fringes of society and remains relegated to cable television specials and science fiction gatherings.

This is a stereotype that KLAS-TV reporter George Knapp, the conference's keynote speaker, said he has been stuck with.

"No matter where I go or what I'm doing, I'm the UFO reporter," Knapp told the audience Saturday night.

Knapp, who also writes a column for Las Vegas CityLife, a Stephens Media publication, has spent much of his career reporting on the paranormal and the goings-on at Area 51, 90 miles north of Las Vegas.

"I think the assumption for far too long among mainstream media, my colleagues, is that anyone who's interested in UFOs is a crackpot, a whacko, someone in desperate need of some kind of psychiatric attention," Knapp said.

"And, unfortunately, a lot of times, they're right," he added.

Since interest in UFOs exploded onto the scene 60 years ago, Knapp said, the only consensus among people interested in the topic is that there is "an elusive, unknown intelligence that's within our midst that's occasionally interacting with our lives."

Knapp added: "But there are no answers to the big questions: Who are they? Why are they here? Where are they from?"

There is no lack of evidence of the existence of UFOs, Knapp said, but the lack of consensus only adds to the stereotype that the topic is not legitimate.

"We've accumulated a vast amount of evidence, information, photos, videos, eyewitness accounts, government documents, physical traces from landing sites or encounters -- a lot of this solid, verifiable proof of something. But of what?" Knapp said.

Former television reporter and producer Linda Moulton Howe, who now runs the UFO Web site earthfiles.com, told the audience Sunday that the topic doesn't get enough mainstream coverage.

"Much of this should be on the nightly news, '60 Minutes,' (in) The New York Times," Howe said.

Richard Dolan, who has researched UFO sightings for 12 years and has appeared on numerous television documentaries about UFOs, said believers and skeptics alike should take a step back and look at the evidence for UFOs from a scientific standpoint.

"There are enough (unexplained phenomena) to make you really scratch your head," Dolan said.

He said the field has made some progress in understanding the phenomena.

"Just because there isn't the ultimate answer doesn't mean there aren't any answers."