Strange sights appear in Livingston for UFO Festival

The Route 66 UFO Festival featured alien-themed games, music, vendors and an alien costume contest — all in a setting that already boasts giant mythical figures, a bespectacled Pepto-Bismol-shaded pachyderm, and a rare vintage UFO-inspired home. 

It was that home— one of the last remaining Futuro Houses in the world— that drew enthusiasts Karra Small and Jeremy Werner all the way from Kansas City, Kansas.

“I had visited here before to see the Futuro House, and when I heard they were doing the UFO Festival I thought, ‘What a great weekend getaway,’” Small said. “I think you can take a look at me and probably tell I’m a believer, right?”

Small and Werner were bedecked for the occasion in alien glasses and antennae. But there’s a serious belief behind their festival fun.

“I don’t think it’s true that we are the only intelligent beings anywhere in the universe,” Small said. “The government has come out and said that there are objects flying around and that they don’t know what they are.”

Believers or not, those who set up booths at the UFO Festival hoped to cash in on alien enthusiasm, like Laura Jasko of Short and Stout Designs from Athens, Illinois. She had produced several plaques depicting UFO abductions.

“When we produced aliens abducting cows, we decided that maybe some of the aliens are vegetarian. So we did aliens abducting broccoli as well,” Jasko said.

And if a UFO were to land next to their booth, what item might its pilots purchase?

“Our newest product: a Thor’s Hammer bottle opener,” Jasko said. “It’s got magnets inside so it could stick to the inside of the UFO. And it comes with a leather cord so they could wear it as a necklace as they travel the galaxy.”

Brighton resident David Romano had a UFO Festival booth where he sold random items. He said alien and Bigfoot items being the hottest sellers. And what would visiting aliens purchase from him?

“I think they would buy baseball cards, because they would wonder what baseball was,” Romano said.

Another booth operator, Sherri Primas, sold painted concrete statues and thought that aliens might like one of her skulls to remind them of their visit this season. Robert Leetham of St. Louis figured that visiting aliens may decide to leave without a purchase.

“After they looked around, they’d probably leave pretty fast,” Leethan said with a chuckle. “They’d figure there was no intelligent life on earth.”

The UFO Festival, for all of its focus on science fiction, had some decidedly non-alien components, including horse and carriage rides offered by Sam Perrine of Worden.

“I grew up with the mall owners and they asked me to do it,” Perrine said, who added that if real aliens dropped by the festival, “you never know, they might abduct a horse or two!”

The Route 66 UFO Festival ran through Sunday at the Pink Elephant Mall along Interstate 55 near the Livingston exit.