Guy Malone is talking about elves and fairies. Sometimes about Jesus Christ. And a lot about aliens. But he is not alone.

Malone is the founder of the Alien Resistance Ministry, a sizable and influential group of UFO enthusiasts and researchers that believe that aliens are really Biblical demons. According to Malone and ARM, demons have just undergone a makeover, and have a plan more terrifying than that on any television show: Aliens are here to destroy humanity’s relationship with God, to possess them, and eventually, to annihilate humankind. The search for extra-terrestrial intelligence, they argue, is dangerous, lest it lower our guard against demons, and we begin to perceive aliens as possible saviors, or worse, as our creators.

Guy Malone (center) with partners Joe Jordan (left) and Chris Ward, founding members of the Alien Resistance Ministry. (Photo courtesy of Guy Malone)

And ARM, which was founded in 1999, is here to stop them.

It is hard to lump Malone and his Roswell, N.M.-based group in the same basket as conspiracy theorists commonly found on the Internet who write regularly about how President Obama has been “soul-scalped” by “alien invaders.” This is because ARM is really an evangelical Christian church with what experts say is an ample following, and a message that the group says is bolstered by years of research. They are also helped by the familiarity factor. “People are already familiar with the basics of demons and we are supplying the last piece of the puzzle,” he says. “That aliens are the same.” Before aliens, Malone says, people referred to supernatural phenomena as the work of elves or fairies, but they were really demons all along.

ARM’s presence is notable at UFO-related conferences around the country. They set up booths, hand out pamphlets and in the most extreme cases, practice evangelical conversion on those who believe they were abducted by aliens, but, according to ARM, were really possessed by demons.

William Alnor, a professor of communication at California State University at East Bay who has researched UFO phenomena for 30 years, says the “demonic approach is immensely popular.” He estimates ARM has at least 12,000 followers who contribute to research, give lectures and write material for the organization. Many of them have a strong media presence, he says. He points to academics like Michael Heiser, an editor with Logos Bible Software, a company that produces software to analyze the Bible, as another example. Heiser appears regularly on “Coast to Coast,” a nationally syndicated radio program that is broadcast on 500 affiliates in the United States and some in Canada. On the show, which discusses the paranormal, he draws comparisons between experiences of alien abduction and certain passages in the Bible dealing with demonic possession.

Heiser says ARM’s approach is grudgingly acknowledged by the rest of the UFO community. “They are looked upon as an annoying peripheral element and people kind of wish they would go away,” he says. “But there are so many Christians that they have to accept that they are not going anywhere.” Stacey Wright, co-founder of the Phoenix Mutual UFO Network, which approaches UFO research more scientifically, has similar misgivings about ARM. “To us serious, science-minded researchers, they are a joke,” she says.

According to Alnor, “This is a mainstream view in the UFO community and has been one for a long time.” The UFO community, he says, is a broad swath of people who believe aliens have visited or contacted us, as well as people who continue to search the universe for signs of intelligent life. Some study crop circles and reports of alien abduction, and some are technology enthusiasts interested in the scientific machinery used to sweep the skies for ET.

And why not? Many Americans are obsessed with aliens.

According to a 2008 Roper Poll, 55 percent of all Americans believe that there is life on other planets, and 72 percent of them believe that it is more intelligent than humans. In another Roper poll in 2002, 48 percent believed aliens had visited Earth at some point. And we’ve always been curious about them. After all, the concept that we are alone in this vast, infinite universe seems like a massive waste of prime real estate.

In this quest for other life forms, billions of dollars have been spent on telescopes, satellite dishes and researchers, by institutes like the California-based Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence, which seeks evidence of alien life by looking for signals from space. UFO-related conferences are held throughout the country, and theories about how best to find aliens run the gamut. Hollywood’s obsession with aliens is continual and intense, as the recent remake of the television show “V” indicates. In the show aliens arrive on Earth ostensibly to help us, but a group (coincidentally called “alien resistance”) senses a more sinister motive. The show does not address ARM’s specifically Christian opposition to the idea of aliens.

Barbara Pitkin, a professor of Christian thought at Stanford University, thinks the possibility of alien existence is not necessarily incompatible with Christianity. In 2009, the Vatican held a conference to study the possibility of extraterrestrial life and its implications for Christianity. “ARM is living with a first century worldview, which is that if there are aliens, they are undermining God’s power,” she says. “If Jesus Christ is our savior, and there are other beings out there in the cosmos, then he isn’t this only savior around, and they don’t agree with that.”

According to Rebekka King, a religious studies graduate student and instructor at the University of Toronto, the divide in Christianity regarding aliens is to be expected. Catholics don’t view Jesus Christ the way evangelicals do, she says, and ARM falls in the latter category. For evangelicals, Jesus is singular because he is both human and divine. “The existence of the alien challenges the uniqueness of Jesus,” she says. “Aliens are also human like, but also not from this world, and Jesus is the only figure who can do that.” Anything that would be perceived as a challenge to Jesus Christ, then, is more likely to be negated by evangelical Christians than any other group.

ARM is opposed to even the most scientific alien research, mostly because they think it’s futile. Its argument has a way around any evidence of life on other planets, too, like the research conducted into the 1976 Viking landers’ findings that suggests that microbes found on Earth that may have come from Mars. “Any microbial life we find out there may have originated from here,” says Malone. “God orchestrated everything scientists have found.” ARM believes that the UFO sightings reported through the years are real except that they were demons, not really aliens.

As for Malone, he is closed off to the very possibility that there may be entire other worlds out there. “Telling me there are aliens is like telling me Santa Claus exists,” he says. “I know better.”