Here's How Many UFO Sightings Have Been Reported In The Hudson Valley

Two locations come to mind when we talk about UFOs in the U.S.A.: Roswell, New Mexico, and the Air Force base in Nevada nicknamed Area 51. But while these sites now occupy canonical spots in pop culture today, neither can boast as many sightings as New York's Hudson Valley. According to the Times Union, the rural hamlet of Pine Bush has been the epicenter for UFO sightings in the country since the beginning of the 20th century. Residents and visitors have documented sightings of all kinds of supposedly alien aircraft, from classic flying saucers to big, boomerang-shaped things to triangular ships the size of football fields.

Pine Bush's popularity among eager stargazers skyrocketed in the 1990s thanks to the publication of UFO researcher Ellen Crystall's 1991 book "Silent Invasion." Crystall wrote that "thousands" of sightings had been reported in Pine Bush in the 1980s, and her book only brought more curious cosmic rubberneckers to the tiny town in the '90s, when hundreds of people crowded along West Searsville road to search the skies. And according to Crystall and other researchers, they often found exactly what they were looking for. Hudson Valley resident and paranormal expert Linda Zimmerman told the Times Union that these weren't your usual blurry speck in the sky kind of sightings. "Stories about little disks zipping across the sky for five seconds make an impression," she said, "but imagine a triangle the size of a football field 75 feet over your head for 20 minutes."

Residents lament the fact that places like West Searsville Road have been built over with suburbs, causing the aliens to visit less frequently, but in its heyday, the Hudson Valley was apparently some kind of truck stop on an intergalactic highway plied by all kinds of alien spacecraft. "Whatever this phenomenon is, it needs open space," said C. Burns, head of the Pine Bush Anomaly Archive. Speaking to the Times Union on the condition of keeping his first name anonymous due to the stigma that researchers of the paranormal commonly receive, Burns has recorded hundreds of accounts of UFO sightings in the area during his years of research. But the number of alien encounters has reportedly dropped in recent years as suburbia encroaches on what were once wide open spaces.

Still, the Hudson Valley is such a UFO hotspot that sightings are still regularly reported there. According to the Travel Channel's new installment of its Shock Doc series, "Alien Invasion: Hudson Valley," the region has racked up almost 3,000 UFO sightings in the last decade alone. So, combine that estimate with those of researchers like Zimmerman and Burns from previous decades, and you have many more thousands of alleged sightings. Still not sure if you believe? The Travel Channel's new documentary should be able to help you decide. "Alien Invasion: Hudson Valley" begins streaming on Discovery+ on August 15.