12 places that will make you wonder if aliens are out there

Roswell, New Mexico
For alien enthusiasts, this is ground zero. During the summer of 1947, a southeastern New Mexico ranch foreman noticed some mysterious debris in a field and reported it to the air force, which announced the recovery of a "flying disk." But the military quickly changed its story and dismissed the findings as a weather balloon. Over the years, witnesses corroborated the initial hunch that it was a UFO and fingered the government in a massive cover-up of a crashed alien spacecraft. This story isn't just relegated to the annals of sci-fi -- modern-day Roswellians take pride in their history and host multiple commemoration festivals every summer. The biggest and most tongue-in-cheek is the Roswell UFO Festival, which features a 10k "alien chase," pet costume contest, light parade, and UFO-themed art show. The city's UFO Museum & Research Center hosts Galaxy Fest, a speaker series featuring researchers, abductees, and celebs like Ray Wise, better known as Twin Peaks' Leland Palmer. And the Roswell 2012 Conference welcomed noted ufologists and hosts tours of the air field where the aliens' bodies were supposedly taken after the crash.

Area 51, Nevada
This military airfield in southern Nevada has been shrouded in secrecy for a number of conspiracy-based reasons, one of which is its peg as the government's parking spot for the crashed Roswell spaceship. Believers have congregated along the road leading up to the base, and UFO sightings have abounded there, leading the state to officially designate it the Extraterrestrial Highway. The site is remote, but visitors can bunk and dine in the town of Rachel, Nevada, at the aptly named Little A'Le'Inn.

Very Large Array, west of Socorro, New Mexico
If the truth is out there, the machinery at the Very Large Array should find it. Part of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory, the VLA is a field of 27 85-foot-wide antennas that, combined, act as one super-antenna 22 miles in diameter. Although the dishes haven't picked up on any alien flights (as far as we know), they have been used to scout black holes and other spooky space stuff. The site is open daily for self-guided tours, and organized tours leave on first Saturdays.

Kennedy Space Center, Florida
Southwestern ranchers and alien hunters aren't the only people who have spotted UFOs -- even astronauts have encountered oddities in outer space while in orbit. Ufologists have analyzed space shuttle videos to try to piece together unexplained visions, although NASA has usually debunked their findings. You can decide for yourself at NASA's launch headquarters, where footage from space flights runs in immersive exhibits, and astronauts stop by every day for Q&As. For the center's 50th anniversary, NASA buildings and launch pads heretofore closed to the public will be opened up for tours, and visitors can witness ongoing rocket launches to the International Space Station.

Elmwood, Wis.
With a population of less than 800, the village of Elmwood has the lucky distinction of being known as the "UFO Capital of Wisconsin," thanks to a string of sightings in the late '70s. Enthusiasm for all things extraterrestrial here went into the creation of the annual UFO Days. Held on the last full weekend of July, the fest features a parade, concert, and craft fair. In fact, the region, a little more than an hour outside the Twin Cities, has a rep for being a hotbed of alien interest: In the late '80s, a Chippewa Falls resident asked President Reagan to build a UFO landing strip here to make it easier for intergalactic visitors.

Grover's Mill, New Jersey
With its proximity to Princeton University, one might think this New Jersey town would be home to enough rocket scientists to know the difference between a Martian invasion and a hoax. But when Orson Welles famously broadcast War of the Worlds on October 30, 1938, and chose Grover's Mill as the landing site for the Martians, locals were so riled up they shot at a water tower that they thought was a spacecraft. Today, a monument stands in Van Next Park, where the Martians supposedly first touched down, commemorating the Halloween trick.

Flushing Meadows Corona Park, New York
To those who don't know that three crumbling towers in this Queens park were built as part of the New York State pavilion in the New York World's Fair of 1964-1965, it's easy to mistake them for something otherworldly. Of varying height and topped by disks (now defunct observation decks), the towers are a funky reminder of '60s modernist New York City architecture. And their extraterrestrial street cred has only grown since the first Men in Black portrayed them as alien spaceships in disguise.

Outer Space
Don't just spot the aliens -- be the aliens. For $200,000, and a lot of patience, ambitious travelers can hitch a ride on one of Virgin Galactic's spaceships, currently in development. The ride will catapult civilian astronauts outside the atmosphere's gravitational pull, where passengers can experiment in weightlessness and get a snapshot view of Earth from their windows. A $20,000 deposit is required to hold your spot on a flight from the company's new spaceport in the New Mexican desert. The facility itself is open for three-hour tours, which include coverage of the Spanish and Native American history of the area. Space Adventures is another company that offers a few different kinds of space trips -- one that orbits the moon, and another that sends passengers on a 16-day holiday aboard the International Space Station (after training in Russia).

Aurora, Texas (near Fort Worth)
Fifty years before Roswell, this small Dallas suburb shot to fame in 1897 as the site of the first reported UFO crash in American history. On April 18 of that year, the Dallas Morning News reported that a spacecraft had hit a windmill and crashed on an Aurora farm. The pilot, a supposed Martian, was said to be killed on impact and buried in the local cemetery. Today, a historical marker outside the graveyard makes reference to the legend.

This post originally appeared on Condé Nast Traveler.com

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