Paranormal enthusiasts attend annual UFO conference in Hempfield

Lisa Fyke of Monroeville can recall her mother’s stories about paranormal things she’d experienced growing up in Braddock.

“When I was going downstairs once, I saw a man in a yellow raincoat,” Fyke said. “When I went and told my dad and we came back, of course, he was gone.”

When she was working at the old Rivertowne Inn in Verona, she swore she regularly caught a glimpse of a man in a flannel shirt sitting in a corner, only to disappear when she turned for a better look.

“I found out later on that a longtime customer used to sit there,” Fyke said, “and he wore a flannel shirt all the time.”

It’s a wonder, then, that Saturday was Fyke’s first visit to the Mutual UFO Network’s 16th annual Pittsburgh UFO Conference, held at Westmoreland County Community College in Hempfield.

From psychic mediums to crypto-zoologists, information was available on paranormal occurrences of all types.

It’s an interest that has only grown the past couple years, according to conference organizer John Ventre of Hempfield, a paranormal author and former state director for the Mutual UFO Network, known as MUFON for short.

“The covid years were definitely lean, but last year and this year, especially with the government talking more and more about UFOs, our numbers have been back up,” Ventre said.

The auditorium in the WCCC Student Achievement Center was filled for a lecture by paranormal investigator and author Teri Lynge-Kehl, who is also MUFON’s membership director. Lynge-Kehl is working on an update to her book, as well as the topic of her lecture, “Alien Healing,” about an encounter with a reptilian being that culminated in the unexplained healing of pain she’d experienced for a dozen years.

“While we might not have all the answers, there is certainly a lot we don’t know about extraterrestrial life,” Lynge-Kehl said.

Conference attendees like New Florence author Ed Kelemen are always trying to find out more about the paranormal.

Kelemen said he’s been investigating strange occurrences for more than three decades. It’s a hobby that began during his time as a former director at the West Overton Museum. Kelemen said Pennsylvania’s long and storied history has left plenty of paranormal traces behind that have kept him busy.

“My sons and I encountered three separate spirits in one day there,” Kelemen said. Those experiences helped form the basis of his first book, “Weird West Overton.”

“That got me started, and now I’ve written nine books on haunted parts of Pennsylvania,” Kelemen said.

Kelemen has investigated alleged paranormal events at Saint Vincent University, the Westmoreland County Courthouse in Greensburg, the Ligonier Tavern and other locales. Working alongside a psychic medium, Kelemen said he tries to help paranormal spirits “find peace and cross over.”

“I’ve gone into West Virginia a time or two, but we have so much to investigate in Pennsylvania, I don’t really have to go anywhere else,” he said.