Aliens Among Us

Alien spacecraft have been documented for over fifty years in the Hudson Valley of upstate New York, where I live…

Alien spacecraft have been observed often where I live in the Hudson River Valley of upstate New York. Not far from me is the town of Pine Bush, also called the UFO capital of the world because of the number of strange occurrences there since the 1960s. But it is not the only place in the valley that has documented extraterrestrial visitors. Thousands of people in many townships and villages have reported sightings over time so frequently the phenomena got the attention of CBS News in 2019 and the valley was investigated in an episode of the television show Unsolved Mysteries.

When I moved to this area in 2012 I knew none of this history, but I soon encountered the newspaper accounts of UFO sightings from decades ago through to the present time.

In addition, there have been mass sightings of massive triangular craft, in the Hudson Valley, “100 yards from wingtip to wingtip,” seen by motorists on highways as well as inland. Calls were made to Stewart Air Force Base nearby, who said no unusual craft had been logged and they had no explanation.

Just a few years ago, I learned a book claiming to be a true story about aliens — a story that had mesmerized me when I read it in New England in the late 1980s — had actually been set in the Hudson Valley. This is Whitley Strieber’s book Communion about his alien abduction. I remember being totally immersed in his narrative. I still have that book with its original cover, but I confess I am unlikely to read it again, for it was more than scary. (The movie they made of his book didn’t have the same haunting quality.)

Now here I am living only a few miles from where Strieber experienced that fateful night! The events he described went something like this: On December 26, 1985, staying in a cabin in a rural area in upstate New York, on the outskirts of Pine Bush, Strieber spent time skiing with his family and later, tired out, fell asleep early. He was awakened in the middle of the night and found himself surrounded by “visitors” from another star system. The book describes the journey he experienced next, for he was abducted and found himself in another, un-earthly place. Six hours later, he returned.

You can see that original cover in this next link. Strieber spent hours with an artist friend, Ted Seth Jacobs, who drew the image according to Strieber’s specific details of what he remembered seeing. The alien face on that book cover will be familiar, for it is now a classic image of extraterrestrials.

And that classic image started in the Hudson Valley.

So Many Stories and Verified Reports

A number of authors have written nonfiction accounts of mysterious happenings in the Hudson River Valley, not limited to UFOs, but including aliens themselves. These are just a few of them.

• In the Night Sky: Hudson Valley UFO Sightings from the 1930s to the Present by Linda S. Zimmermann, a former research scientist, gives some rather extraordinary information. Zimmermann interviewed over one hundred eye witnesses, with the sightings of a triangular craft the most compelling.
• In 1991, Ellen Crystal wrote Silent Invasion, the outcome of eleven years exploring reports of UFOS in Pine Bush.
• This website gives fascinating data on the sightings over time: Weird New York (weirdus.com)
• Vincent Polise wrote about The Pine Bush Phenomenon.
• Phenomena across the Hudson Valley was documented in Night Siege by authors Phillip Imbrogno and Dr. J. Allen Hynek.

Is It For Real?

You might say this is a subjective question. I think it is real, yes. But I am also aware of nay-sayers who suggest UFO reports occur out of some mass hypnosis that serves as a reaction to what is going on in the world, citing the escalation of UFO sightings in the 1950s during the Cold War, in the 1980s with the emphasis on space travel, and now in a world that seems to be in constant jeopardy. Alien intervention sounds like a great alternative!

But still, so much of the phenomena remains unexplained. If it is all deemed false, people ask, why do we have secrecy around Area 51? Why are documents about UFOs classified by the government, or when released, so redacted they cannot be read?

I keep an open mind. National Geographic’s 2012 polling data supports the deduction that one-third of American adults think UFOs are very real. There are an estimated 6,000 reports of UFOs a year in the USA alone. (This number has often escalated at intervals in the Hudson Valley and in New Mexico at the same time.)

So How Do People Justify Their Differing Outlooks?

The explanations for whether there are aliens among us are many and varied, but these approaches tend to show up most often. I am personally very receptive to the first two categories:

• Aliens not only have visited Earth but are exploring the reality of our dimension now. They simply exist on a different frequency.
• Extraterrestrial beings have come here throughout time and indeed, may very well have been responsible for our presence here — meaning we, too, once had our origins in another star system.
• All stories and indications of UFOs and unexplained phenomena that we have recorded are products of the unscientific mind and therefore, false.
• There are no aliens — just our own selves immersed in time travel and parallel universes.
• There are so many universes in the cosmos, it is absurd to think aliens would find Earth interesting enough to visit.

You may have more suggestions, and if so, do let me know in the comments. It is a subject open to so much creative discussion!

Conclusion

There are billions of planets known to scientists in the vast reaches of space. How is it these scientists still believe our earth is the only planet that can support life? Is that arrogance, or are they simply blind to the possibility because it scares them? How is it they deny the presence of aliens among us when they have absolutely no way of knowing for sure?

I like to think they are quite wrong. In the Hudson Valley where I live, the evidence continues to increase in favor of the visitors, if you ask me…

Regina Clarke is a writer of mystery, fantasy, and science fiction. She is the author of mystery series Hidden In Stone, sci-fi thriller Retrieval, and fantasy novels Guardians of the Field and MARI.

• I’m so glad you are here and thank you for reading…