YOUR SPACE: He's a paranormal guy

Most guys chase members of the opposite sex.

Chuck Zukowski chases members of the opposite universe.

He’s a UFOlogist.

He studies alien abductions and cattle mutilations. He’s a ghost buster. And now he’s tracking Bigfoot’s visit to Colorado.

“Basically there is more physical evidence of life visiting this planet than there is of Jesus Christ,” he says, citing videos, photos and eyewitness testimonials.

His work can be found in cyberspace at ufonut.com. I met him at his terrestrial haunt, the Starbucks at Garden of the Gods Road and Centennial Boulevard. “The Paranormal Starbucks,” he jokingly calls it.

With salt-and-pepper hair and boyish grin, Zukowski looks like any coffee-drinking, middle-aged man. Except for the “UFO NUT” jacket on back of his chair.

By day, he’s an integrated circuit design engineer consultant. (Drawing microchips sounds alien to me.) But his passion is trying to get integrated with “the little grays.”

Aliens, that is . . .

“It’s more of a bluish tint,” he says. “We just call them grays.”

Lights in the night skies of Arizona sparked his imagination as a boy; it never stopped burning.

He has pursued grays for 28 years, but has yet to meet one. “It would scare the hell out of me,” he says.

His pursuit of the paranormal came to be a normal activity for his family. For example, on vacations, the father of three would detour the RV through Roswell, N.M. — the alien headquarters of the USA. “The kids got a kick out of it,” he says.

As for his wife, Tammy, well, she’s a more tolerant spouse than I’d be.

“She’s a skeptic,” he says. “She questions it. It makes me more assertive in investigations.”

He likes skeptics. He’s one as well: “I address every case with a grain of salt.”

Like the Springs couple who claimed to be abducted while driving one day. He arranged for an expert to study the implants they said aliens put in their arms. Funny thing happened next: “They up and left.”

UFOlogy keeps him busy. In the last year, he’s investigated five cattle mutilations, finding carcasses precisely cut, carved and drained of blood with no traces of bite. No claw marks. No footprints left behind. Not human or predator intervention, he says, though he couldn’t prove whodunit.

“I’m not saying it is aliens. I’m saying it is suspicious.”

Zukowski makes time for earthly pursuits. He’s an El Paso County reserve deputy sheriff. “I ride a Harley. Play guitar. I do yard work.”

It’s not easy believing in grays. “There’s the ridicule and giggle factor,” he says. “Actually, I’m more on the ball than most people. I have a better idea what’s going on on this planet than most people.”

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