OCEAN SHORES, Wash. (AP) - William Puckett's work has him going more than he ever did when he was a full-time employee. It helps him put the pieces of the puzzle together.

As a UFO investigator, Puckett acknowledges or debunks stories of unidentified flying objects in the sky, landing on the ground and hovering over homes through his Web site www.ufosnw.com.

Along the way, the former National Weather Service and Enviromental Protection Agency meteorologist believes he and others are closer to proving that we aren't the only ones living in this universe.

"My intent behind this - why I do this - is for my own scientific curiosity," said the Ocean Shores resident. "I want to stimulate the awareness of this phenomena to the public. It isn't all crackpots and nutcases, although some of them are. I believe that we are not alone."

Puckett's work as a UFO investigator expanded in 2004 when he began his site - UFOs Northwest - during his final years as an EPA weather forecaster in Bellevue. However, his interest in the subject began in the early days of UFO sightings and hysteria.

"I grew up in the 1950s and UFOs were on the national news," said the Peerless, Mont., native, who moved to Ocean Shores last summer. "In those days, everyone believed they were Russian. Later, we learned that they had UFO cases and the objects weren't their's either. If they weren't from the U.S. or from Russia or from escaped Nazi scientists, what were they?"

Movies such as "The Day The Earth Stood Still" and other early science fiction stories further fueled his imagination. His interest intensified in the 1970s when the U.S. government released the declassified Air Force Project Blue Book. In it, the Air Force studied UFO cases between 1947-69 and had more than 800 unidentified cases.

"That was good, because you only need one," added Puckett. "I realized that I'm a scientist and I can study this, too. That was the beginning."

On the site, people from around the country send Puckett their sightings, which he breaks down to either prove that it is "unexplained or unknown" or a hoax. It is an extensive site filled with sightings, audio and video clips, news articles on sightings, abduction and close encounter cases and historical pieces.

"It takes a lot of work; I don't charge anyone for their cases and the only money I get from it is from ads that help pay for the site," Puckett said.

Puckett also gained notoriety from the site when "UFO Hunters," a documentary series through The History Channel, found him and used several cases featured on his site.

"They contacted me when they began researching cases that were first reported to me on the site," Puckett said. "I helped them with those cases and I have a stack of papers here for them for next season.

"I'm so busy, I'm retired and I have two jobs now working on the Web site and working for (UFO Hunters)," Puckett added. "I don't know if I can give them all of the information that they need. People do ask me to research a particular case or sighting, but most of the time, I work on the site."

Using scientific methods learned from his time in the federal government and in school, Puckett breaks down every case to investigate the authenticity of the story.

From information given to him through his site or from other sources, Puckett will begin by looking for weather data and studying astrological charts to check out the weather to help determine if the object is a planet or a satellite in space.

"I've had people call 911 after staring at the planet Saturn, thinking it is a UFO," Puckett said. "If someone sees something in the sky, it isn't moving and they see lights when they look at it through binoculars, I'll check the weather. Then I'll ask them to tell me where it was and I'll determine the angles. When I worked in the EPA, I learned how to plot maps and you'll see plotted maps of the sighting on the site."

Once Puckett has the initial information and double-checked it against the weather at the time of the sighting and whether the International Space Station happened to be floating by on a dark, clear night, the detective work begins.

At times, Puckett can tell the story he's hearing or reading is a hoax or it'll come from a manipulated digital photo sent in with the story.

"If someone used the phrase, 'It was a UFO' or called the object a spacecraft, I'm immediately suspicious," Puckett said. "No one knows whether that is a UFO or not. It couldn't be identified. I really look at the witness report.

"Most hoaxers are pretty stupid," Puckett added. "A few years ago, a couple of guys sounded legit. I asked for a drawing and they gave me a computer drawing. It wasn't good enough for them. They called me the next day and they claimed they were someone else and that's how I figured it out."

If the story isn't a hoax, Puckett will analyze the information more and post it onto his site to let others see it. If the story stands up to scrutiny from other investigators and hobbyists, it goes in as an unidenified case.

"I'll say it is unidentified and it may be identifiable with more data," Puckett said. "I'll never say that it is extraterrestrial. I rarely ever say that. My witnesses might. Most cases I can't identify possibly around 70 percent of them. It doesn't mean that they're not real, just that I can't identify it. Most of the sightings are at night, but if I get one that is in the daytime, that opens my eyes. You don't get too many of those."

Peter Davenport, who runs the National UFO Reporting Center in Harrington near Spokane, and is a friend of Puckett, notes that Puckett is more willing to accept what people are saying as legitimate and holds his work in high regard.

"His vantage point is of a meteorologist and he looks at every case scientifically," said Davenport, who met Puckett eight years ago through a chat club for late-night radio personality Art Bell.

"When anyone investigates anything, they should use scientific methods to prove or disprove it. I'm satisfied that Bill does that to a large degree."

Through Puckett's time as an investigator, research has been easier with his Web site generating more cases and other sites to get initial information to begin his work.

"The Internet is beautiful," Puckett said. "Twenty years ago, you had to go to the library to get astrological data, satellite vectors, weather and radar data. Now, you click to a few sites and get everything you need. My biggest tool in investigations is my computer. I can dump a photo from my camera or a submitted photo into the computer and know if it is a fake or not. In (photo programs), they leave a footprint on the photo and you can tell if it has been manipulated.

"The latest technology has made my job easier," Puckett added. "With mapping software and sites, you used to go to the library to get them a long time ago. Also back then, you'd have to buy the software and it made it very prohibitive to what we're doing today. It has made the job easier, by far."

Part of the tools of the trade, especially for field investigations, include global positioning system (GPS) readers, radiation and low-level electromagnetic field meters, topological maps and a large array of cameras digital and video. Several of Puckett's video cameras are custom-made without lens filters, in order to allow him to place different filters on to see higher and lower levels of light, including infrared light.

"I've done some field investigations before, but I haven't done any recently," Puckett said. "With my equipment, if I receive a report of a landing, I could be out there this afternoon, if I'm able to get onto the property. If I get a case in Illinois, I'll take the information and send it off to Davenport and he'll go out there and interview them."

Does Puckett have his own case, where he is a witness to an unexplainable event?

"No, but I do believe something is out there," Puckett said.

Among Puckett's library of books, many of them scientific books and novels pertaining to astrophysics, scientific exploration and UFO cases, is a textbook for fire cadets the "Fire Officer's Guide to Disaster Control."

Published by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the book is a how-to on dealing with disasters, many of which have been tested and executed over the past several decades. In one section, Chapter 13, the book deals with "Enemy Attack & UFO Potential."

"Firefighters would be the first responders to a landing or crash landing of a UFO," Puckett said. "There's a whole chapter on it - what to do, how to deal with public panic. FEMA is the one who wrote the book. Most fire departments have this book and it is very comprehensive. Everything in the book, like how to deal with hurricanes, comes from experience. That's how you develop protocol.

"If you have extraterrestrial body material, you have a (biological) hazard," Puckett added. "Firefighters would be the first ones out there."

One of Puckett's theories on interstellar travel and extraterrestrials (ETs) is that Earth has been visited before and continues to be visited now to replenish resources like water, minerals and even biological materials.

"For civilizations to survive, they have to have interstellar travel at some point," Puckett said. "In my mind, if they're going to do interstellar travel, they still need resources to do it. Why would they come here in the first place? That's a fair question. I don't know, but I believe it is for genetic material, biological material, water and metals."

When talking about cases and sighting of UFOs, the subject always turns to the government and how much they may or may not know.

"How much they know is debatable, but recently, the British released 1,000 pages of UFO testimony," Puckett said. "One case in the testimony talks about an unknown vehicle landing on an airport runway and then taking off again. That's extraordinary.

"Some people ask why doesn't the U.S. government do something like this, but I worked for the federal government for 30 years and I know that there are turf wars when it comes to information," Puckett said. "We have seven or eight agencies within the government that have files on UFOs. They have their own compartmentalization and they don't share information between each other. That really came to the forefront when the Department of Homeland Security was formed. Do you remember how much trouble that was? These agencies didn't want to give up what they already had.

"For something like this, they're not going to release information when they don't have to."

As a UFO investigator, the more cases you work on, the closer you may get to the truth. Like an archaeologist whose greatest find would be the Holy Grail, a UFO investigator's biggest case would be evidence of ETs and vehicles proven to be from another world.

This is what Puckett and other investigators continue to work for and are motivated to find.

"The Holy Grail, in the scientific world, would be to recover UFO artifacts or biological material, take it into a lab and have an analysis that shows that the metals are not of terrestrial origin and of an unknown manufacturing process," Puckett said.

"That's what scientists want. Obviously, if you had a real extraterrestial being that wasn't human or a deformed human. That's the Holy Grail. We don't have that.

"Allegedly, the government does - allegedly."