It seems an unlikely place for it to happen, this land of tumbleweeds, bullet-ridden road signs, and cattle that roam freely from asphalt to grassland and back again.

But it is here, insiders say, where the amazing truth behind mankind’s decades-long involvement with aliens from outer space, will finally be revealed. This is the town of Rachel, population 100, a one-horse establishment that can hardly be described as a ghost town because there was never really anyone there in the first place.

In Rachel, however, there is more than meets the eye. This ramshackle collection of trailer parks and feed stands is groundzero for two highly-important and fundamentally-opposed movements: it is the site of Nellis Air Force Base, the top-secret training facility where the nation’s (and the world’s) frightening and sophisticated weapons of warfare and space travel are developed; and it is the home of Area 51, the even-more top-secret establishment where the preserved remains of two space aliens and their aircraft are stored in a mysterious bunker called Hangar 18.

At least, that’s the rumor going around. And the people of Rachel have done nothing to challenge those lurid tales. The remote possibility that there are aliens and alien spacecraft in Area 51 have drawn literally thousands of visitors to this desert town that shouldn’t exist at all, and kept its pulse alive as surely as many believe the government has kept alive the beating hearts of the aliens in the clandestine hangar.

“Everyone in this town has a story,” says Brian Paschal, a self-described alien afficionado who has made repeated visits to Rachel. “And they’re all very suspicious – it’s like the moment you step into town, everyone knows about it. You walk into a restaurant, and everyone stops what they’re doing and turns around to check you out. It’s not hard to feel like an outsider.”

“I think there are people and machines from other planets over there,” says Pat Travis, co-owner of the Little A’Le’Inn. “And I think our government is working in conjunction with them.”

Pat Travis and her husband Joe took over what was then the Rachel Bar and Grill, in 1989. Seizing upon the notoriety of what was hidden on the other side of the forbidding brown mountains, the Travises renamed the establishment the Little A’Le’Inn, transforming the tiny restaurant into a sort of museum and gathering place for the alien movement.

The cramped, kitschy Inn is literally jam-packed with alien memorabilia – stickers, hats, t-shirts, posters, stuffed animals… even replicas of the infamous government warning signs which line the perimeter of Nellis Air Force Base (”No Trespassing – Violators Will Be Shot on Site”). The walls are decorated with framed photos of UFO sightings from all over the world. The piece de resistance of this makeshift museum is a panoramic print of the Air Force Base – including what theorists believe to be the hangar containing the alien ruins – snapped from atop Tikaboo Peak, one of the highest non-government owned mountaintops in central Nevada.