BUTLER TWP — A packed parking lot, 40-plus vendors and a busy kitchen Saturday, April 27, at the Tanglewood Center meant another well-attended event dedicated to the unexplained.

The 17th annual Butler Paranormal Conference, held from 10 a.m. to 6:30 p.m., saw two rooms at Tanglewood Center lined with vendors selling items and services related to bigfoot; UFOs; aliens; Dogman; Mothman; cryptozoology; paranormal research and ghost hunting; alchemy; reiki demonstrations; alternative health; wine; soaps and lotions; psychic medium readings; and telepathy.

One of those vendors was John Turley of Coshocton, Ohio, who talked with visitors from behind his vendor table, Crowtown Squatchers.

Turley, who goes out to hunt bigfoot at least once every two weeks with a group of researchers, was walking to his favorite fishing hole as a 10-year-old with a buddy when the woods on one side of the path came alive, with saplings shaking and other noises emanating from the seemingly empty woods.

“We looked up and we could see the outline of a head and shoulders,” he said.

Turley estimated the creature they saw was 7 to 8 feet tall.

The boys ran back down the trail, but stopped to hide in the brush on either side of the path and string fishing line across to try and trip the cryptid, a creature that may exist but whose existence is disputed or unsubstantiated scientifically.

“After a few minutes, we looked at each other and decided we were being pretty stupid and we got out of there,” Turley said.

The first person Turley told about the encounter was his best friend.

“He laughed in my face,” he said. “After that, I kind of kept it to myself.”

In high school seven years later, he and a handful of friends heard tree knocks and deafening screaming while having a few beers just 1 mile from the location of his childhood sighting.

“We jumped in our cars and left, then met up at the high school,” Turley said. “We were all saying ‘Can you believe that?’”

Ray Keller, or “Cosmic Ray” in UFO and alien circles, sold his 11 books on UFOs and the paranormal at his table.

He said more Americans believe in the paranormal, aliens and cryptids than people think.

“A recent survey indicated that 80% of Americans believe in UFOs, 50% have seen them, and another 15% have experienced contact with the entities behind them,” Keller said.

He said those in UFO and alien circles believe “the big disclosure” will happen, meaning the government will reveal all their knowledge on UFOs.

But that anticipated event will be watered down because so many people have seen UFOs, he said.

“It will be a little too late, because people’s personal experiences with UFOs will transcend anything the government will tell us,” Keller said.

He believes those in the know in Washington, D.C., have been slowly leaking information on UFOs over the years, including through Hollywood movies.

Keller said the technical consultant on the 1977 blockbuster “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” was J. Allen Hynek, and Air Force consultant on UFOs for Project Bluebook — a U.S. government study of UFOs from 1952 to 1969 — for more than 20 years.

Fred Saluga, the co-author on Keller’s most recent book, “Pennsylvania UFO Portal,” worked the admission table at the conference, which he has attended since it started.

Saluga is the director of West Virginia Mutual UFO Network (MUFON), assistant director of Pennsylvania MUFON and director of Fayette County Bigfoot Research, and he teaches ufology and cryptozoology at West Virginia Northern Community College in Wheeling, W.Va.

Saluga nonchalantly reveals why he became interested in cryptids while growing up in Allison, Fayette County.

“There used to be a bigfoot running around down there,” he said.

He also found out when he was 50 that he was “allegedly abducted” by aliens at age 4.

He and a friend had an unusual experience at Salt Fork State Park in Ohio a few years ago, which is said to be a hotbed of unexplained activity.

“We had four hours of missing time,” Saluga said. “That’s normal for an abduction.”

Those who have had an experience with a UFO or bigfoot call him, and he goes to investigate.

Saluga doesn’t worry about those who look at him out of the side of their eye when they hear about his experiences, or his work in helping those who have had encounters.

“Once you experience it, you’ll totally change your attitude about it.,” he said.

But don’t ask him to investigate a haunting.

“I don’t do ghosts,” Saluga said.

Dan Hageman, founder and director of the Butler Organization for Research of the Unexplained, which co-sponsored the conference with the Center for Unexplained Events, said he hopes to have Nick Pope as a speaker at next year’s conference.

Pope is a former official with the British Ministry of Defence who was responsible for investigating UFO phenomena in his duties. Pope has appeared on countless UFO-themed television shows.

Hageman said paranormal, cryptid and UFO phenomena should not be discounted.

“They’re real, and the government can’t withhold the truth from us any longer,” he said.

The lineup at the conference included Heather Moser, who spoke on cursed objects; Denny Viglo, who discussed Bigfoot, UFOs, portals and the Lake Creature; Amy Bue on the Science of Sasquatch; Steve Ward on Patterns in the Paranormal; and Terrie and Brian Seech on Our Weird World.