On Saturday, June 1, my bucket list got a little shorter by attending the 13th annual UFO Street Fair in Pine Bush. They had a full weekend of activities which included a Space Prom, an Alien Hoedown, a Cosmic Drum Circle, a Best in Galaxy costume contest and much more. The Pine Bush UFO and Paranormal Museum on Main Street was the hub of many extra-terrestrials roaming around, and visitors were immersed in the strange and unexplainable happenings of the Pine Bush and Hudson Valley areas.
The street vendors offered everything alien from candles to jewelry to cookies. There was a tattooist who had a special list of tattoos for the day, including a space cat and other worldly creatures.
Ever since I experienced seeing a UFO, my interest really piqued to everything space and extra-terrestrial. It was in the mid-80s at dusk in Tillson on a summer evening. As I was getting into my car, I turned and just glanced up the road. There, right above the treetops and with no sound whatsoever, was a full-sized passenger airplane coming toward me. I stood there agape and watched it make a 90-degree turn over my head toward the south. All the passenger windows were lit with outlines of people (no one waved!). One of my all-time favorite movies is Close Encounters of the Third Kind with Richard Dreyfuss. Believe it or not, he was not their first choice, nor second, nor third. In fact, Steve McQueen turned down the role, as did Dustin Hoffman, Al Pacino, Jack Nicholson, Gene Hackman and James Caan.
I felt comfortable asking people at the street fair if they experienced an encounter since I could offer mine. One person said they had an experience like mine, but I wasn’t expecting a story like this next one. He was a family man who drove a taxi in New Paltz. One winter afternoon his fare was a woman who lived in Clintondale and just came back from NYC. He picked her up at the New Paltz Trailways station and as he was nearing her house, he saw this circle in the sky. As he approached the driveway, this circle, now huge, about eight to ten stories high, was hovering over her house. He saw this red disco-like ball drop from the UFO on a long string. After waiting a while, he helped the woman carry her bags into the house. The next thing he remembers is waking up and it was night. He looked at his watch and realized he lost about six hours of time. The scary part is that this event has been occurring yearly on the same day since 2020.
Now I have room to add to my bucket list!
Join the family! 
