HUDSON VALLEY UFO SIGHTINGS
DATE:
March 1983 to September 1984
ASSOCIATED LOCATION:
Hudson Valley, New York (Westchester, Putnam, Dutchess, and Fairfield counties); Western Connecticut
OVERVIEW:
Beginning in March 1983, residents of the Hudson Valley area began to see a string of lights in a rounded boomerang shape on seemingly random clear nights. According to observers, the lights seemed to move as a unified object, occasionally changed colors, produced no noise, and were together about the size of a football field.
Among the most well recorded sightings of the lights are those at the Indian Point Nuclear Power Plant in Buchanan, New York, on June 14th and July 27th 1984. Overnight guards at the plant reported seeing the lights for around 15 minutes, at which point they stated they attempted to fire upon the objects using shotguns (which seems somewhat dangerous at a nuclear power plant, but that's just me). By this point, local authorities became worried about the spread of hysteria. New York State Police began to track the locations of reported sightings, finding them to be largely localized around the Stormville Airport in East Fishkill, New York.
By the end of the summer of 1984, independent ufologists had begun to congregate in the Hudson Valley area and news of mysterious invaders had begun to spread outside of the area. As a result, an anonymous group of amateur pilots approached Discovery Magazine to come take responsibility for the sightings. They stated that it initially started as an exercise in group flight using Cessna 152s (a small, highly manueverable aircraft), but evolved into a wider prank as they saw newspaper reports of the sightings begin to spread. They reportedly painted the undersides of their planes black to reduce glare from ground lights and outfitted their winglights with color changing bulbs. State Police offered confirmation of this, stating that the actions were entirely legal, if a bit mean-spirited.
While many involved with the sightings deny that the UFO was a hoax, I personally believe this explanation. Playful jokes are a very intrinsic part of the human spirit. While I don't want to dismiss anyone's lived experience, I believe the frequency with which these sightings occured in a localized area and their proximity to a municipal airport to be dead givaways of a prank. While it is incredibly difficult to access amateur flight logs from 40 years ago, I am willing to bet that examination of these logs would confirm this. Observers who deny this explanation may be dealing with a simple case of allowing a predefined conclusion to shape their view of presented evidence.
MEDIA:
Clip of videotape of lights taken by Bob Pozzuoli on 24 July 1984 - via internet archive
Photograph of lights sourced from collection of local science teacher Phillip Imbrogno. Image has been dithered and color shifted to maintain design of this page. The original can be found here.
FURTHER READING:
Hartford Courant- Interview with Philip Imbrogno, a science teacher who was heavily involved with UFO investigations in the Eastern United States.
Philadelphia Inquirer - "Strange visions from ordinary people"
Unsolved Mysteries - Yep, they did a recreation of this one. It's extremely sensationalized as is their usual style, but it's pretty amusing at the very least.
