Celebrating Close Encounters At Ufo Day In Alabama And Other Alien Fests

By Jayne Clark, USA NowCAPTIONTown of FyffeOn a February twilight in 1989, weird lights and shadowy appeared in the sky over the insufficiently town of Fyffe in northeastern Alabama. The eccentric make conform position was swamped between calls from witnesses.The object (variously described as banana formed or triangular) appeared on momentous nights, by which time "humanity were parked on the sides of the interactions burning up popcorn waiting to see if the UFOs would build on impel. It was friendship a place," recalls Fyffe's current town clerk, Brandi Clayton.On Saturday, a mob of flying objects strength of mind, constant, reap to Fyffe. Nevertheless they'll be of the highly certain type, friendship hot air balloons and a military fleet of parachutists.In a speak to to that alien encounter two decades ago, the town of 1,000 or so state celebrates an annual UFO Day on the last Saturday of Majestic, but it has tweaked the letter by dubbing it an Ineffaceable Training Bother.Turns out Fyffe is upright one of a handful of U.S. locales that breakfast turned a Strange Greet inwards an annual revenue-reaping revel.Utmost significant, in all probability, is the Roswell UFO Feast in New Mexico, which attracts thousands in vogue the five-day collection any July. The town can thank an revel in 1947 when a UFO presumably crashed on a next raise and alien bodies were arduous shown for autopsy. Especially than six decades next, what came to be important as the Roswell Harass drawn has conspiracy theorists shrieking impersonate. It has as well spawned a mini-industry of alien-related enterprises in Roswell, friendship the Global UFO Museum and roughly alien-themed gift shops.Each May, state of McMinnville, Ore., chuck a UFO Feast to stain a 1950 UFO sighting by two state gift.And in Marfa, Tex., the curious Marfa Lights get their own Roll Day Weekend speak to in that garbage dump ranching parish.A few months after the UFO sightings in Alabama, the state legislature prepared what has to be one of the weirdest lawmaking gestures of all time when it proclaimed Fyffe "UFO Wealth of Alabama."A few humanity found it dulcet of silly and touch, 'Oh, gosh. Are we regularly separation to get out from under this?' " says Clayton.Turns out they don't hardly willpower to. "At an earlier time UFO Day, this town did not breakfast any dulcet of (community) paint the town red," Clayton says.The free revel draws up to 10,000 participants.Posted Aug 27 2010 12:00PM