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Hudson Valley UFO Hoax

Donn

Philosopher
Donn
Joined
Sep 17, 2003
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In my head.
Looking into a few UFO cases with a friend. His notion is to look at the veracity of mass sightings. I got stuck on the Hudson Valley reports during the 80's.

A few skeptic sources say there was a group of pilots, the Stormville Flyers, who set out to prank people.

Example: http://www.theironskeptic.com/articles/hudson/hudson.htm

The ‘UFO sightings’ were the results of that group of glorious airmen, The Stormville Flyers. They owned ultralight aircraft that they had modified with some fancy lights, and their boredom and willingness to dupe the locals is the sole cause of this case.
​
I can find no evidence of such a group; not names of a few of the pilots; not interviews; not images of their rigged craft. Zip. My google-fu is probably failing me.

Does anyone here have information that would back-up this hoax story? I like it as an explanation, but the evidence is not there.
 
I've lived in the Hudson Valley since 1999. I'm afraid I've never heard of the Stormville Flyers, but I can tell you the skies in this area are chronically peppered with aircraft. In my immediate area we have three airfields. One of these is Stewart International Airport, which is home to an Air National Guard base. There's also two county airports nearby which offer hot air ballooning, towed glider and ultralight aircraft operations. In addition, the Catskills are home to many hang gliding and parasailing clubs. On certain stretches of road, it's not uncommon to see thirty or more thrill seekers circling the valley below.

The point is, it's almost impossible to look into the sky around here and not find a man-made aircraft of some kind. If someone were interested in propagating a UFO hoax, there are a hundred facilities at their disposal to make it easy for them.
 
A little googling came up with a book, called Night Siege, which appears to be about the event, and might contain more information, though it looks, from initial investigation, as if this is a UFO nuts' book. It at least might point in the right direction.

Google book excerpt here

This is an interesting case study on UFO's. I did some further searching elsewhere and there are a few other references to the hoax, including one that says the local newspaper (not specified) published an exposé and a Fortean Times note from someone who saw the same phenomenon right after that, and thus realized that the hoax was being repeated. I suppose a diligent search might turn up a newspaper article about this from the area.

In the meantime, the search abounds with credulous accounts of UFO's. If one went only by the percentages, you'd think it was real, even though a surprising number of the sighting accounts look exactly like the shape and appearance of a lit up ultralight.

I suspect this would be another instance of the inability of people to admit that they were hoaxed, and that a few, even if they were presented with the craft and the explanations, would claim that that's not what they saw at the very same time and place.

Too busy today to keep searching, but if I were looking for this, I'd start trying to find out what newspapers served the Kingston, NY area at the time, and see if there's an archive.
 
Post 2, thanks.

Post 3, I shall try what you suggest but I'm limited to web searches only.

I find it sad that the general skeptical claim (out there) is about these prank pilots, but there's not one backed-up source.
 
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Hudson Valley UFOs

The November, 1984 issue of Discover Magazine contains an article by Garelik "The Great Hudson Valley UFO Mystery" (pages 18-24) that tells the story of the pilots. The hoaxing stopped when the FAA objected to their flying around in the night sky in crowded airspace with their lights off. Imagine that - the killjoys! Actually, the pilots didn't start out with the idea of pulling off a hoax, but when they saw what a stir they'd created just flying about, they began hoaxing. The article may be available on-line (I haven't checked) but you may have to get a copy ILL from your local library.

I've lived in the Hudson Valley since 1981 but, sadly, never saw the hoaxers in action. I do remember coming out of a supermarket in Pleasantville one night after teaching a night class and seeing a dozen or so people in the parking lot looking up in the sky - the "UFO" had just passed over. Rats - I'd missed it.
 
thines,
Nice lead. I doubt the libraries near me will have that magazine, but on a trip to the big-smoke one day, I might remember to go check. Wish I could find those pages online. Any chance of a scan?

ETA - Too bad you missed that FO. I missed one that my family saw. Sucks.
 
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Discover Magazine

Donn,
Ah - I see you're in South Africa and you're right - not likely that the local library will have it. By chance, I was looking for my copy of that issue just last week to assign the article to one of my classes. I couldn't find the issue. But our university library has it on microfilm so I can make a copy and send it to you - by snail mail. No guarantee how good the microfilm copy will be - microfilm sucks as a storage method (derail - read Baker's "The Double Fold" for the story of the true horror of librarians destroying our printed heritage to save a little space). Anyway, you can contact me by email if you want to give me your mailing address. My email address is thines and I'm at Pace University -pace dot edu.
 
The book I have... "UFO, the complete sightings explained" published in 1995, doesn't mention the Hudson Valley at all! :confused:
 
That's easy for you to say.....:rolleyes:
 

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Of course one of the problems with this kind of story is that, presuming as I do that it was just a bunch of ultralight pilots fooling around and finding they were being mistaken for UFO's and fooling around some more, or something like that, there's likely to be very little documentation. Nobody involved probably took it seriously enough to imagine that years later it would have solidified into a legend.
 
The main problem for advocates of an alient spacecraft flying over Hudson Valley is that the eyewitness testimony was all over the map. About half of the witnesses said they saw a group of planes and that the engines were clearly audible. The remaining witnesses stated they saw a silent singular object that was the size of a football field. I've seen the videotape footage (e.g., two separate videos) of the object(s) and it is not impressive. To me, it sure looks like a group of planes flying in a v-shaped formation.
 
In general, I agree that it's not what I'd call an AUFO (Alien) event.

In the site linked in the OP, the hoaxers are described as having gone to some trouble to modify their aircraft to create effects with lights. It describes their activities in a way to account for the majority of the (many) sightings.
thines is kindly helping me with an old article and I will also dig around as much as I can to, at least, connect this explanation to something real.


JTF - any online source for that video?
 
JTF said:
DONN: Here ya go.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=324SaKoeA8E
Click to expand...

From that video:
The UFOs imitate the sound and navigational lights of the commercial airplanes! Thus their activity is disguised easily.
Click to expand...
Or...the sounds and lights of commercial airplanes could be what would identify them as actual commercial airplanes. That's some pretty blatant question-begging going on there, I think.
 
I’ve lived in the Hudson valley since 1965 and I have never heard of the Stormville Flyers. Tough it would not surprise me one bit if there were such a group and that I never heard about them. Back in the 80’s I do recall a group of ultra-lights flying over our house (in Wappingers Falls) one evening, low, in formation and with lights. My first thought was “Here come the UFO reports”.
 
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