Visit the Bizarre Haunted Flea Market at Old Bethpage Village
A giant stone latex gargoyle is among the items for purchase at the Bizarre Haunted Flea Market in Old Bethpage. Credit: Heather Walsh
Need to pick up a new pair of fangs? Running low on gory fake body parts? The Bizarre Haunted Flea Market at Old Bethpage Village is the place to stock up on all your horror needs this weekend.
“This is not your average craft show,” says organizer Elsie Martinez-Ginsberg of TwitchTwitch Productions. “Everything must have that Halloween feel. It needs to have that weird, quirky, creepy appeal.”
Here are some vendors — along with macabre-themed panels also scheduled — to look for:
VAMPING VENDORS
The Barn will feature a market of 75 vendors selling scary stuff.
For those who want to sharpen up their teeth, Horror Show Jack Fangsmith sells custom fangs ($60) that would make Dracula blush.
“They cap right over your teeth,” he says. “I have customers that only take them off when they go to sleep.”
Get a jump on building a home haunt with Haunted Props of Deer Park, which sells products such as costumes ($5-$10), masks ($5-$40), haunted portraits ($5-$10), gargoyle statues ($150-$300) and full-body animatronics ($150-$300).
“Everything will be discounted by 40-50 percent,” says owner Joe Persampiere. “This is stuff you won’t find in stores.”
Looking for a deadly dolly? Tina Brown of Fantasy Foundlings offers an array of hand-painted dolls ($65-$300) ranging from baby Frankenstein to baby Michael Myers (“Halloween”) to baby Jason Voorhees (“Friday the 13th”).
Brown even sells spooky babyhead lamps ($35-$50) with LED lights inside.
UFO STORIES
Two men whose UFO sightings were documented will be speaking about their experiences.
While working with a lumber company near Snowflake, Arizona, on Nov. 5, 1975, Travis Walton says he saw a flying saucer, which emitted a light knocking him to the ground. His experience was made into the 1993 film “Fire in the Sky” (screening 11 a.m. Saturday with a Q&A at 1 p.m.).
“There are a lot of ideas floating around about aliens,” says Walton. “Americans have been conditioned to think of invading monsters, which is the Hollywood take. I don’t think it’s like that at all.”
Thomas Reed, who grew up in Patchogue, and his family had the first UFO-related case to be inducted into Massachusetts state history for what he experienced with his mother, grandmother and brother on Sept. 1, 1969, in Sheffield, Massachusetts. Today a monument sits at the site commemorating the incident and the records are logged in the collection of the Great Barrington Historical Society.
“A metallic goldish/silver object, which looked like a perfectly contoured turtle shell, rose up from the Housatonic River 100 yards away from us. A blinding light came through our car,” says Reed, who will give a talk on Saturday at 6:30 p.m. after screenings of “New England Legends” at 2:45 p.m. and “Alien Mysteries” at 5:30 p.m. “We drove home in a state of shock.”
Both Reed and Walton will participate in the “UFO/Alien Abduction vs. Paranormal Experiences” panel on Sunday at 12:30 p.m.
VINCENT PRICE REMEMBERED
Victoria Price will give a talk on “The Master of Menace,” her late father and horror icon Vincent Price, on Saturday at 3:15 p.m. and she will discuss his culinary legacy on Sunday at 2 p.m.
“My dad wanted to be a character actor and loved playing villains,” says Price. “He felt horror movies gave audiences an opportunity to go into the dark and face their fears in a safe space.”
AMITYVILLE REDUX
Chris Quaratino, youngest son of the Lutz family that lived briefly in "The Amityville Horror” house after the 1974 DeFeo murders there, returns to Long Island to speak publicly about his experience in the said-to-be-haunted house on Sunday at 4:30 p.m.
“I’ve watched this story get more and more twisted. There’s no sense of what it originally really was. I want to tell it matter-of-factly,” Quaratino says. “This thing has lasted 41 years and it’s never going to go away. If I’m ever going to say what I’m going to say, I probably ought to do it now.”
BIZARRE HAUNTED FLEA MARKET
WHEN | WHERE 10:30 a.m.-7 p.m. Saturday, 10:30 a.m.-6 p.m. Sunday, Old Bethpage Village, 1303 Round Swamp Rd.
INFO twitchtwitchproductions.com
ADMISSION $15 ($5 for a 90-minute session in the vendor room only)
David J. Criblez is a reporter for Newsday's exploreLI, covering entertainment-related events from local music to stand-up comedy to festivals.
