by Charles Lear
In the 1980s, New York’s Hudson River Valley was home to a wave of extraordinary UFO encounters by thousands of people. It was explained away as a hoax perpetrated by a group of nighttime pilots in ultralights and this was enough to make it fade from the public consciousness, even among those in the UFO community. However, one town in the area has kept the memory of the events alive with a yearly fair and a recently opened UFO museum.
A book about the wave, “Night Siege” by J. Allen Hynek, Philip Imbrogno, and Bob Pratt, was published in 1998. Hynek died in 1986 before the book was published but actively investigated and contributed to the book. His wife, Mimi, helped edit the book after his death.
According to “Night Siege,” the wave began in Kent, New York, on New Year’s Eve 1982 with a sighting by a retired New York City police officer identified by the pseudonym,“Tony Vallor. He’d just christened his new house by smashing a champagne bottle against it, and his wife had sent him back outside to clean up the broken glass after he’d told her about it. As he was cleaning up the glass, he saw a group of red, green, and white lights to the south. At first he thought he was seeing a jet having trouble but it was moving too slowly to be a jet.
Vallor called for his wife and told her to bring their movie camera. As she stepped out, the lights were over the house. Vallor told the researchers that they seemed to connected by a V-shaped or boomerang-like structure. He said he heard a loud hum like a factory full of machines operating at a distance.
As Vallor was filming the object, which was about 500 feet above him, the colored lights went out and three white lights remained that formed a triangle. The investigators examined the film and reported in the book that the white lights were clearly visible with faint colored lights in the background, but they could see no structure.
Soon there were sightings all over the Hudson Valley of what became known as “The Westchester Boomerang” named after Westchester County, where many were concentrated. Local police departments received literally hundreds of calls, sometimes on a single night. Police officers themselves were among the witnesses.
The most common description was of a large boomerang-shaped object with lights along its “arms.” They were said to be as big as one, two, or three football fields, to hover or move as slowly as 15 mph, and were said to be completely silent. An odd claim that shows up repeatedly is that a witness says they found themselves wishing for a better view and that as soon as they thought that, the object moved quickly towards them and hovered in front of or over them.
Pine Bush, NY, is between 15 and 20 miles west of the Hudson River in Orange County. As the Hudson Valley Wave faded after 1987, reports continued to come out of Pine Bush. The area was put into the UFO spotlight in 1991 when Ellen Crystall published “Silent Invasion,” also written with Philip Imbrogno, which chronicles her 11-year investigation there. The book may be hard to take seriously by some (Crystall describes seeing, on her very first outing, more than a dozen ships flying about and periodically landing in and taking off from a field), it does contain names of witnesses to more likely events along with descriptions.
Crystall was introduced to the area by Harry Lebelson, a writer for Omni magazine posted as the sole person at the UFO desk. Lebelson wrote an article on Pine Bush for the magazine after coming to the area and interviewing witnesses. In her book, Crystall says that the editors at Omni didn’t take UFOs seriously, but saw them as good for business.
What was unique about Pine Bush was that it seemed to be a paranormal hotspot. Besides UFOs, there were reports of cryptids, phantoms, strange mechanical rumblings heard coming from under the ground, and farmers reported finding large sections of earth moved in their fields after seeing lights there the night before.
More and more people started coming to Pine Bush to skywatch and explore. Lines of cars parked along the roads and people gathering in the farm fields became common. At the same time, Pine Bush was becoming more developed. As “no trespassing” signs started to appear all over the area, there were frequent conflicts between the property owners and the paranormal adventurers. In 2000, a rumor started that Pine Bush had passed a law against skywatching. What had actually happened, according to the article “They Came From Pine Bush,” posted on the Hudson Valley Magazine website, was that there had been an “altercation” between a developer and some skywatchers. With encouragement from the developer, the police began enforcing a parking rule that made it illegal to park along West Searsville Road, a popular skywatching spot.
According to the introduction on the website for The Pine Bush Anomaly Archive, the loss of the farm fields (to developers) led to a loss of interest in the Pine Bush Phenomenon as there was less space available to explore or gather together in groups. However, two New Jersey residents who met as skywatchers in the area in 1995, managed to reignite interest in the area for those who are paranormal-curious.
In 2003, Vincent Polise started the website pinebushufo.com, where he posted several of his pictures and accounts of his paranormal experiences in Pine Bush. In 2005, Polise published the book, “The Pine Bush Phenomenon.” Then, in 2008, Polise and his friend, C. Burns (who keeps his identity a secret for fear of his interest interfering with his employment) launched The Pine Bush Anomaly Archive and “re-booted” it in 2017. Also involved is Linda Zimmermann, who has been researching and compiling witness accounts of UFOs in the Hudson Valley area since 2011. Both Polise and Burns can be heard in a recent interview describing their experiences on the episode “UFO Activity in Pine Bush, NY” on UFO Headquarters with Linda Zimmerman and Michael Worden.
In 2011, the first Pine Bush UFO Festival was held thanks to efforts of an organizing committee chaired by Sue Wiand. In 2013 it was expanded into an all day event and “Festival” was replaced by “Fair.” It is held on the Saturday of Labor Day Weekend and draws around 7000 people. There are talks by UFO researchers and celebrities along with a parade and costume contest. World famous PodcastUFO Host Martin Willis attended this year’s fair.
On June 4, of this year, The Pine Bush UFO and Paranormal Museum was opened. Creator and director of the museum, Lance Hallowell, was interviewed on the UFO Headquarters episode aptly titled, “The Pine Bush UFO and Paranormal Museum.” Hallowell has experience as an event creator, having put together the Halloween event around the Legend of Sleepy Hollow in Sleepy Hollow, NY, and approached the museum in the same way. Instead of displays where visitors walk around and read, the museum offers guided tours and a more immersive experience.
The reader might be thinking that Pine Bush is now the East Coast Roswell, and some of the locals reportedly think of it that way. While that name has also been used for Exeter, New Hampshire, and Kecksburg, Pa., Pine Bush has made more of an effort to earn it.