Intergalactic reptilians ride in the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade in 1984


It wasn’t the soft, forgiving kind of chill you feel when the first powder of winter dusts the eaves; this was New York City’s November bite, smelling of exhaust and hot dog carts, reaching right through your wool coat like a skeletal hand. The year was 1984, the same year a certain razor-gloved dream-walker was cutting up Elm Street and the Boss was singing about Dancing in the Dark on every radio in America.

And down here, on 34th Street, a different kind of darkness was gathering.

It was Thanksgiving morning, a day for normalcy, for turkey and football and the relentless, saccharine cheer of the Macy’s parade. But the people lining the route weren't just here for Snoopy or Santa Claus. They were waiting for them. The Visitors. The sweet-faced lizards who had charmed America on the NBC alien invasion miniseries V.

The whole thing felt wrong, like putting a funeral wreath on a bouncy castle.

The float wasn't a float so much as a metallic monstrosity, a gleaming, angular piece of propaganda that looked like it had been salvaged from a scrap heap in some far-off solar system. It was meant to be the Visitors’ 'shuttle,' that had been put to such diabolical-yet-utilitarian use on the nation's TV screens.

Riding on top, waving like beauty queens at a tractor pull, were three of them. The Visitors. In person. You remember how they looked on TV: tall, symmetrical, teeth too white, uniforms pressed so sharp you could shave with the creases. 

The Visitors waved. They wore those uniforms, crisp and clean as ever. They smiled. 

The crowd loved them. Of course they did. Kids were holding up signs: WELCOME FRIENDS. THANK YOU FOR COMING. One little girl in a pink coat handed a bouquet to the lead Visitor (Diana herself, though nobody knew her name yet). Diana took the flowers with that little tilt of the head, the one that was supposed to look humble. Then she smiled.

The crowd roared. They loved the bad guys. They cheered for the people who, just the previous year on television screens across the nation, had been revealed to eat rodents whole and store humans in deep-freeze lockers.

A chill that had nothing to do with the November air ran through me then. There was a thin place between reality and fiction on that grey, bright morning. The parade was supposed to be a bulwark against the darkness, a celebration of warmth and family.

But in '84, as that silver ship of horrors glided past the onlookers, the line blurred. It felt like the lizards had won, not with ray guns or insidious mind control, but with something far more American: a marketing budget and a prime-time slot. They were smiling for the cameras, and we were smiling back, a whole country of people applauding the very monsters NBC had beamed into America's family rooms.

They brought the creepiness right off the screen and up into the atmosphere, a giant, smiling, floating reminder that maybe, just maybe, the things that seem benevolent are the ones you should fear the most.

Because that’s how the real evil works, see? Conquering not with a roar, but with a friendly wave and a big, shiny parade float. And sometimes, you just stand there, clutching your cold hands together, watching the horror drift by, and you can’t do a damn thing about it. Except buy a hot dog.

Location: New York, NY, USA

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