THAT strange light in the sky. The scraping sound in the basement in the dead of night.

To most adults, they're explained easily enough: an airliners navigational beacon; that pesky mouse which has been raiding the pantry.

To Rob McConnell though, they could be whiffs of the paranormal.

The St. Catharines resident has investigated suspected haunted houses, exposed likely UFO frauds, lectured at symposiums on aliens and delved into everything from firewalking to angels.

Now the 43 year-old ex-cop is going head-to-head against sensational tabloid giants like the National Enquirer with his new monthly newspaper, THE 'X' CHRONICLES.

The publication, launched earlier this year by McConnell, is being sold at supermarket check-out counters just like its laughable counterparts. But that's where the similarity ends, says McConnell, who served nearly two decades as a police officer in the Montreal area before moving to the Garden City 10 years ago.

The October (1995) edition features an article which labels a hoax a film supposedly showing the autopsy of an alien following the alleged crash of a UFO in Roswell, New Mexico in 1947.

The November edition will explore the 1970 sighting of a ghost in St. Catharines, including interviews with police officers who saw a bed rise off the ground.

"We don't have President (Bill) Clinton on the front page shaking an alien's hands," said McConnell. "We don't want to get into sensationalism like the tabloids."

If McConnell's articles sometimes debunk stories of UFO abductions and sightings, his belief in the paranormal remains unbending as it has been since he was five years old when he was sure he saw a UFO outside his bedroom window in Chomedey, Quebec.

"The next day all the kids in the neighborhood were talking about it," he said. "But every adult denied ever seeing it."

"Ever since then I've had a thirst for knowledge into the paranormal and the unknown."

HE began haunting libraries, devouring research on everything from demonic possession and miracles to ancient mythology and the disappearances of aircraft and boats on the Great Lakes.

Along the way, he began to earn a reputation as an expert in UFO phenomena. Recently, he joined other experts and people claiming to be alien abductees on a panel discussion as part of a Toronto symposium on the paranormal.

He is also a regular lecturer and visits suspected houses. At one such house in Hamilton, he recalls ectoplasm - the goop associated with ghosts - oozing from the walls.

McConnell's obsession with learning all he can about the fantastic has attracted the attention of those also looking for answers.

In McConnell's home office, one man's recent letter awaits a response. The writer has included detailed drawings of the strange flying object with colored lights he saw in Algonquin Park.

For another writer, it's a description of a near-death experience which has haunted him for nearly 20 years.

Both have one thing in common: they're looking to McConnell to answer questions about experiences which fundamentally affected them.

McConnell who is heard each Friday on Hamilton AM radio station CHML (frequency 900), says that drive to know more is common among those who have experienced the paranormal. An expanded appreciation of the environment, children and water are also traits common among those who have experienced real close encounters, he said.

He credits his UFO sighting as a kid for preventing the "vail of forgetfulness" most adults are eventually affected by - the refusal to believe in things not easily understood - from engulfing them.

"It's like a spiritual awakening," he said. "It put a wedge in the door that usually closes, and it's kept it open."