This weekend the town of Roswell, New Mexico, erupts in celebration of the 60th anniversary of a stellar event: the supposed crash-landing of an alien craft near this once-sleepy town. And helping lead the festivities is the woman who married one of the survivors of that incident.

Chase Masterson ("Leeta") will co-host the "Amazing Roswell UFO Festival" taking place Thursday through Sunday, July 5-8, with events centered at the Roswell Convention & Visitors Center. The post-holiday long weekend is packed with a dizzying array of activities, lectures, discussions and demonstrations. Activities include hot-air balloon rides, an "alien motorcycle rally" and the like, but probably the most popular will be bus tours to the "UFO Official Crash Site," departing hourly each day.

There will also be musical entertainment, and Masterson is one of the stars of the Thursday-night concert at Wool Bowl. The Alan Parsons Project will headline the Friday-night concert. Saturday night a parade down Main Street culminates in a showing of "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" (co-starring Teri Garr, "Roberta Lincoln") on an inflatable screen at the bowl.

The other co-host of the weekend is Dean Haglund, a highly appropriate choice because he played one of the "Lone Gunmen," Langly, on The X-Files and its spin-off, The Lone Gunmen. While he doesn't have a direct Star Trek connection, he's been in attendance at many Trek and other sci-fi conventions.

Masterson and Haglund will emcee the program on the main stage at the Convention Center, introducing speakers and such, and they will also be available throughout the weekend for autographs.

City officials are anticipating an attendance of 50,000 at the four-day festival. For information visit www.roswellufofestival.com. You can also call 1-888-ROS-FEST.

If you can't attend in person, radio host George Noory on Coast to Coast AM (formerly Art Bell's show) will broadcast live from Roswell this weekend, and Masterson will be on the show from midnight to 12:30 a.m. local time Friday night/Saturday morning (that's 2 a.m. on the East Coast, 11 p.m. in the West). Visit www.coasttocoastam.com for more info.

We're all familiar with the story: In June or early July of 1947, something crashed on some ranchland about 70 miles north of Roswell. On July 8, the Roswell Army Air Field (RAAF) issued a press release that led to the famous headline in the Roswell Daily Record: "RAAF Captures Flying Saucer On Ranch in Roswell Region." Within 24 hours the claim was retracted, the story changed to say that the debris recovered was that of a simple weather balloon.

It was more than 30 years later when the story surfaced again in the popular consciousness, with many "experts" and "witnesses" supposedly coming forward to say that the original account was the one which was true, adding the detail that several dead bodies of extraterrestrials were also recovered. And it was all elaborately covered up by the government. The "Roswell Incident" grew into the most intensely scrutinized, debated and mythologized UFO claim of the century. Today the prevailing hypothesis of skeptics is that the weather balloon story was indeed false, but what the government was covering up was a top-secret program called "Operation Mogul" in which high-altitude balloons were sent up to listen for nuclear testing by the Soviets.

What is currently adding fodder for UFO believers is the alleged "deathbed confession" of one of the military witnesses at Roswell. Buzzing around the news just today is a story that Lt. Walter Haut signed and notarized an affidavit before his death in December 2005 swearing that he personally saw an alien craft and dead alien bodies. He claimed that he was allowed into the hangar where the recovered wreckage was hidden away. He described an object "approximately 12 to 15 feet in length, not quite as wide, about 6 feet high, and more of an egg shape." (He admitted, though, that the lighting was bad.) He also swore that he saw a couple of bodies covered by a canvas tarpaulin. "Only the heads extended beyond the covering, and I was not able to make out any features. The heads did appear larger than normal and the contour of the canvas suggested the size of a 10 year old child," reads the alleged affidavit.

Of course, those of us who are truly clued in know what really happened: The roughly egg-shaped craft in question actually came back in time from the 24th century by accident, carrying three diminutive humanoids and one shapeshifter. But none of them died — in fact, they managed to escape captivity from the military and retrieve their ship, using an atom bomb test to propel themselves back into their own time. Duh.