Pine Bush UFO Fair 2025

Well, we’ve been to the Pine Bush UFO Fair before, years ago, but I don’t remember it being this heavy in content this time around. Back then, it was mostly, I’d say, very cheesy stuff. Sure, there were talks by people who specialized in the field and by people who’ve actually seen UFOs, but the fair was mostly dominated by people in costumes, ET balloons, arts and crafts, local brews and delicacies, and pop culture (as Nick Pope would say) with nothing, I’d say, particularly groundbreaking when it came to the subject of UFOs.

This time, though, Nick Pope was there. His (paid) talk was not until 7 PM that night, but perhaps having nothing else better to do than sit in his hotel room, he graced the morning and afternoon by hanging around in the main gazebo for people to take selfies with him and ask him questions. And, man, you have to love the guy. Nice and honest, forthcoming and kind, somewhat smallish in stature, he engaged everyone who came. His path to fame, I guess, before he became all famous and ubiquitous in just about every UFO documentary on TV and the History Channel on cable – and he would always include this in his introduction – is he worked for the “UK Ministry of Defense”, America’s equivalent of “DoD”, investigating UAPs. But – and perhaps out of humility he would always add with some emphasis – he was a “civilian contractor”. He was not an “employee”. So don’t picture him in a brass military uniform in your head just in case I think he’s trying to say.

I guess I came up with the right question when, after being hawked into his booth with a, “Check out my art show!” and looking at his drawings, I asked, “What inspired you?” And immediately, he pointed to his drawing of a spacecraft with 8 beings inside looking out the window. I wasn’t expecting that. He was in a ferris wheel with his wife in Maryland, he said, when they saw the UFO which then just “disappeared”. Everything about his body language, his facial expression, his questioning of his own experience, and, yes, emotion as if reliving something that just happened moments ago instead of 5 years ago, was authentic as far as I can tell. It “messed” him up, he’d always say. Speaking with someone who’ve actually seen living UFO occupants, a “close encounter of the third kind”, is an experience I never thought of having.

Then there was a booth with lots of UFO photos taken by Billy Meier, a UFO contactee in Switzerland whose story I read about in a book nearly 40 years ago. Meier’s alien contacts (there was more than one) would tell him where to show up and when with his camera so he could take tack-sharp photos of metallic disk objects floating in the sky. He is now a prophet with a shrine in Switzerland that people can visit. At 88 years of age, he is still very active both physically and mentally. His message, according to the booth attendants, is, “There should be peace on earth because the last thing we want is [for] the world to be destroyed. We don't want no nuclear war.”

Amazing, indeed, is all I can say about this year’s UFO Fair in Pine Bush. It was in the past perhaps cheesy because not too long ago one cannot have a serious discussion once “UFO” is dropped in the conversation. But, now, especially with the Pentagon releasing the Tic Tac UFO video, UFOs—or UAPs to better phrase the phenomenon—have become accepted in the mainstream. There is something out there—and because my wife and I have seen one ourselves, I can say—that no amount of searching in humankind’s collective mental database of everyday objects would ever come close to making a full and final revelation.