For one day each June, downtown Pine Bush stops pretending to be a normal Hudson Valley hamlet and fully commits to its long-running extraterrestrial reputation. Tinfoil hats become civic wear. Little green men wander Main Street. Serious UFO researchers mingle with people dressed like background characters from a low-budget 1978 sci-fi movie. The effect lands somewhere between county fair, comic convention, and paranormal symposium.
The 15th annual UFO Fair returns to Pine Bush on June 6, transforming the Orange County village—widely self-branded as the “UFO Capital of the East Coast”—into an intergalactic street festival built around decades of reported sightings in the Hudson Valley. The free event runs from 10am to 4pm along Main Street and Crawford Square, with live music, food vendors, alien cosplay, paranormal lectures, games, costume contests, and the gloriously unnecessary “Best in Show Alien Beauty Pageant.”
If the whole thing sounds delightfully unhinged, that’s part of the appeal.
Towering extraterrestrials roam Main Street during a previous Pine Bush UFO Fair, where parade processions and elaborate costumes turn the village’s UFO mythology into a full-scale community spectacle.
Pine Bush’s UFO lore stretches back more than 60 years, but the region’s reputation crystallized during the Hudson Valley UFO flap of the 1980s, when hundreds of residents reported massive silent craft hovering above the area. (Author Whitley Streiber, who lived in a secluded cabin nearby, wrote up his terrifying personal accounts of alien abduction in 1987’s Communion.) Over time, the sightings evolved from local curiosity into civic identity. The town leaned into the mythology rather than running from it, eventually opening the Pine Bush UFO & Paranormal Museum in 2021, turning paranormal tourism into a year-round industry.
The fair now draws thousands of visitors annually, ranging from hardcore believers and paranormal investigators to families looking for an excuse to wear antenna headbands in public. The vibe tends toward playful rather than conspiratorial. One minute you’re listening to a lecture on unexplained aerial phenomena from a former investigator; the next you’re watching a seven-year-old dressed as an alien queen demolish a funnel cake.
Pine Bush has long stopped treating UFO sightings as a public-relations problem. The village leans fully into its extraterrestrial identity, right down to its unofficial “UFO Patrol” cruiser, part of a local mythology turned civic branding exercise.
The Crawford Square speaker lineup keeps the day’s paranormal circuitry humming, with talks running from 10am to 3pm. Author and researcher Thomm Quakenbush opens with “Theory of the Paranormal,” followed by Dominican University professors Robert Stauffer and Thomas Nowak on faster-than-light travel in literature and film. MUFON field investigator John Wright digs into Pine Bush’s own UFO lore, and forensic investigator Gene Sticco explores “The Soviet UFO Files.”
There’s also roaming street performers, themed vendors, live entertainment, and enough silver lame to briefly overwhelm the human eye. The fair has also expanded into a broader weekend of events orbiting the museum, including paranormal programming and community gatherings that blend sincere curiosity with B-movie camp aesthetics.
On the night of the UFO Fair, Angry Orchard Cider House hosts at its home in Walden.
Part of what makes the UFO Fair endure is that it occupies a distinctly Hudson Valley frequency. Pine Bush never turned itself into a polished theme park version of weirdness. It still feels homemade—earnest, eccentric, slightly dusty around the edges, and proud of it. In a region already populated by spiritual seekers, folk mystics, conspiracy hobbyists, artists, burners, and people who definitely own at least one crystal larger than a grapefruit, a UFO festival doesn’t even register as especially unusual.
For skeptics, the fair offers people-watching of the highest order. For believers, it’s a pilgrimage site. For everyone else, it’s a reminder that the region has always had room for the unexplained—whether in the woods, in the sky, or walking down Main Street wearing metallic face paint and platform boots.
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