CLOSE ENCOUNTERS WITH THE `TRUTH'; UFOLOGISTS, PSYCHICS TALK SHOP AT CONVENTION.

Byline: Glenn Gaslin Daily News Staff Writer

Pick a truth. Any truth. It's out there.

Mount Baldy a holy place? Sure. Silverlake a hotbed for UFO technology? Aliens living among us? We're all going to turn into big, flaming stars in two years? You bet.

Almost any reality imaginable can be found this weekend at the Stars Over Hollywood Paranormal and UFO Exposition, a three-day convention celebrating the psychic, the extraterrestrial and the extremely creative. And during the opening at the Holiday Inn on Friday, hundreds of speakers, exhibitors and gawkers shared evidence and insight about the universe of possible realities.

Some even had photos.

Believe them or not, here are a few of what some call ``mind-expanding phenomena,'' what others call ``bull'' and still others call ``truth'':

Truth No. 1: Humans never landed on the moon. ``Not even NASA can get clearance to land on the moon,'' explained a frenetic Fred Aeilts, unloading framed moonscapes from a camouflage-colored pickup truck parked in front of the hotel. Giant aliens live on the moon, he explained, and they mine ore with giant spaceships. ``I've got pictures,'' he said.

But his black-and-white photos of alien engine exhaust (bright fuzzy poofs on the moon labeled with arrows and words like ``emissions'' and ``torroid'') don't compare with what he has hitched to the back of his truck, what he calls ``a replica of an Area 51 back-engineered alien sport-craft,'' or rather, a 13-foot flying saucer.

He pulls it all over town, offering to rent it out for $200 a day. ``Haven't made a dime yet,'' he said. ``But then, I haven't worked out the kinks in the anti-gravity drive.''

Truth No. 2: The Egyptians did not build the pyramids 4,000 years ago. Instead, a human race called the Vath did the construction 75,000 years ago, and not with a complex systems of rocks and levers and slave labor but telekinetic powers. ``They'd touch the blocks, and they'd float into place,'' explained the conference's first of 33 lecturers, Randolph Winters. He wrote a book called ``The Pleiadian Mission,'' which recounts the life and times of a Swiss man who time-traveled with a group of aliens, snapping photos of dinosaurs and witnessing the pyramids under construction.

Truth No. 3: In two years, the Earth and everyone on it will transcend into the fourth dimension, and each one of us will become a giant, burning star. ``My job will be to free Mother Earth at that point,'' said Michael Russ, a paranormal-topic lecturer from Denver. ``I just learned this two days ago from a woman who was born of a virginal birth.''

Other truths he knows - for example, there are 72 universal laws that include the Ten Commandments and ``Don't worry, be happy'' - came from a 40,000-year-old tutor from another planet who Russ meets weekly.

``Right now,'' he said, placing his hand below a hovering magnetic disc that demonstrates UFO flight technology, ``I'm creating universes in my spare time on the Rolodex in my sixth chakra.''

Truth No. 4: Somebody somewhere is projecting images from the 1950s into physical space. A faint wood-paneled station wagon recently materialized and hovered above the desk of Andy Reiss, master of ceremonies for the conference and staff psychic for the Weekly World News tabloid. ``Someone is flinging around relics from a time when they thought things were better, more solid,'' he explained.

Truth No. 5: Jesus was an alien. Or so claims the Aetherius Society, which bills itself as the oldest and most established UFO group on Earth. Our planet languishes in evolutionary inferiority, said spokeshuman Raymond Neilsen, and shape-shifting entities throughout the solar system sometimes send teachers, such as Jesus Christ and Confucius, to help us along.

Of course, these ``truths'' may conflict with others about the alien culture, about the ``grays'' and ``ancients'' and ``Nordics,'' the different species visiting from Venus or the Pleiades star cluster. Reiss, for example, has paintings of a bald Venusian named Capt. Vor, who abducted him, and two flesh-color ``bullet creatures'' that he saw.

Truth No. 6: UFO conventions aren't what they used to be. Things were better, more real, before UFO ideas became so popular, said author Winters, before ``The X-Files'' and Heaven's Gate, when researchers met to compare notes and theories.

``In the earlier days, the conventions were more serious,'' Winters said. ``These days, there's a fringe element. Normally, I don't even go anymore.''

CAPTION(S):

4 Photos

Photo: (1) A model of an Area 51 UFO looms over its creator Fred Aeilts.

(2) Andy Reiss shows an image of an alien at the Stars Over Hollywood Paranormal and UFO Exposition.

(3--4) Psychic Shelley Hofberg attends the event, above, Marsha Cifarelli bears a photograph of her aura.

Michael Owen Baker/Daily News