The skies over Alabama were relatively free of alien spacecraft on Tuesday, disappointing many of us UFO enthusiasts who really believed it when an Australian psychic predicted their arrival months ago.

Blossom Goodchild boldly went where no psychics had gone before, predicting the exact date (Oct. 14) of an Earth visit by extraterrestrials. As reported here, she said she learned of the upcoming visit by beings calling themselves "The Federation of Light," while channeling the spirit of a dead American Indian named "White Cloud." She said the UFOs would hover over the southern United States long enough for there to be no doubt of their existence. Alas, on Oct. 14, Alabama continued to be populated only be terrestrials, no extra ones to be found anywhere.

Blossom Goodchild's Web site is rather silent on the issue of why the ETs never showed up. Her last communication with her legion of believers (of which I am one) came on Oct. 6 and hinted that all might not be right with our only connection to beings from another world. She said she was cutting back her readings and that she was "truly exhausted" and, to make matters worse, she had dropped her laptop computer and it had broken.

"Not a good time," she wrote.

Indeed. It is tiring channeling space beings through dead American Indians. The hardest thing, I would think, is keeping a straight face. Those muscles start to hurt after a while.

I'd be the last one to suggest that Miss Blossom might have had a financial interest in predicting the arrival of ETs, but I notice she has become very popular and her Web site hosts advertisements from other seers and psychics hoping to ride her coattails.