(WBRE/WYOU) — Carbondale will host the inaugural Carbondalien Festival on Saturday and the celebration is based on an out-of-this-world series of events that happened in the small Lackawanna County city 50 years ago.
The video in the player above takes you back to April 26, 1999, when WBRE-TV reporter Kathy Bozinski and photojournalist Jason Hughes spoke to then Carbondale Police Chief Dominick Andidora about what led to a majority of the town believing that a spacecraft landed in a silt pond in Russell Park in November 1974.
It sparked a conspiracy that would go on for the next 50 years.
"The center of the pond, it was actually green, and it looked like the whole pond was glowing... it looked like something fell from the sky and was boiling the water," Andidora recalled when we spoke to him in 1999.
Brave divers waded into the eerie, emerald water and came up with an easily identified object... a watertight railroad lantern whose strong beam illuminated the sulfur-laden silt within the pond, causing the water glow green.
Former Carbondale Police Chief Dominick Andidora in 1999 recalling the night back in 1974 when he was called to Russell Park to investigate what many thought was a downed UFO in a silt pond.
But the mystery didn't die there. Soon after, some wrecked machinery was hauled from a mine working nearby.
"Everybody thought it was a spaceship they took out of the pond, or it was a Soviet satellite. We tried to tell people what the truth was, and they didn't believe it. I don't think anyone believes us to this day... The story was that the FBI brainwashed us and everybody said we were told not to say anything, my own mother thought I was hiding stuff," Andidora explained.
It seems the desolate mine area, the autumn mist, and the green water were the perfect ingredients for an urban legend.
The Carbondalien Festival will kick off at 11:00 a.m. on Saturday, November 9 in downtown Carbondale.
The Steamtown train will be riding into the city for the event where an alien hot air balloon will also be open for rides. For more info check out the Carbondalien Festival.
