First, a big thanks to Rebecca for inviting me to be here today!!!
As many of you may know, I grew up in the suburbs of New York City. Like all suburban kids, I was bored most of the time. I mean there were only so many hours in a given day that I could spend at the mall. It does close eventually. Thankfully, New York has a wealth of freaky, unusual and alien sighting locations so when my best friend could get the keys to the ye olde parental Lincoln Continental, there were plenty of strange and sinister places to explore.
One of my favorite adventures was the time we went to Pine Bush to hunt for aliens. Supposedly, it is the alien capital of New York State, complete with ghost lights, abductions and strange objects in the sky. There used to be a billboard on the Route that would get you there that read:
ET Phoned Home
You Can Too!
Pine Bush, NY
I don’t know if it’s still there, but I sure hope it is.
One snowy night in the middle of winter, we decided to hunt up some aliens of our own. I don’t quite know what we were expecting to find—something odd I’m sure—but all we found when we arrived was a small suburb that was shut down for the night. There were no other cars out and it was so quiet we could feel the silence.
My friend, who was driving, decided that a certain Dead End road looked suspiciously a little too dead end-ish and we absolutely had to explore it. I agreed and we set out down the dark, deserted road. There wasn’t a single streetlight to be had and there was snow everywhere and I swear to you, forces beyond the human realm existence forced our car into one of the drifts. Really. Or maybe it was just an ice patch. Either way, we were stuck.
Now this happened in a time before cell phones and back in those days, a person had to go inside somewhere, a house for example or store or phone booth, and use a phone that remained fixed in that location. Unbelievable, I know, but nonetheless very true. Unfortunately for us, it was so pitch black on the tiny road it was impossible to ascertain if any of those things were nearby.
As luck (or maybe forces beyond this dimension) would have it, a police car appeared from the supposedly ‘Dead End’ portion of the road and pulled up alongside our hopelessly incapacitated car. Two police officers exited the cruiser, one tall and blond, the other dark-haired and wearing mirrored sunglasses. Now I realize that mirrored sunglasses on a cop is not an unusual thing, but it was close to midnight. And pitch black as I think I’ve mentioned. I can’t say why he would be wearing them in the middle of the night while sitting with his partner at the end of a dark, deserted, dead end road, I’m merely telling you the facts. You must draw your own conclusions.
The blond took my friend’s driver’s license and when he noted the address, he asked us what we were doing so far from home. We told the truth. We were hunting for aliens. Mirrored sunglasses just nodded and said, “Yeah, I’ve heard something about that.” These were troubling words spoken in a very troubling (and perhaps alien?) monotone, but we had no time to dwell on the irregularities. The car was stuck, it was getting late, and we had school in the morning. Something had to be done.
The officers agreed to see what they could do to help us and offered to help push the car out of the snow mound. When my friend and I had tried this before the officers arrived (or beamed down) the car had not budged, but with their superhuman, indomitable strength, the car went flying out of the snow with very little effort. Before I could even blink, we were back in the car and left with the suggestion to maybe do our alien hunting in the summer months. And then, the officers were gone, disappeared, just as though they had never been there at all.
And that is the story of the time I went alien hunting in Pine Bush, NY.
Actually, maybe that one isn’t my favorite paranormal story of my youth. I didn’t see any aliens after all. Trying to find the Amityville horror house out on Long Island was pretty fun too. And so was that time we went to Sleepy Hollow. Or that trip to Untermyer Park where the Son of Sam was said to once roam. All good times.
Have you ever gone on an alien or ghost hunt?
