BETHEL, N.Y. -- Sometime in the four years since they took possession of Max Yasgur's farmhouse, Jeryl Abramson and Roy Howard became possessed themselves.

By all accounts, they are a hard-working couple. They put in long hours at their discount beverage store in Monticello. They have their hands full at home with their son, Zack, who just turned 4; another boy, Mike, who is 11; a growing stable of mustangs, and 95 acres of fields and woods ready to rebel against a dry, hot summer.

Yet busy lives aside, the couple have become completely caught up in the whole Woodstock reunion phenomenon. This started modestly. A couple of years ago, they started joining the pilgrims who make annual treks to the original concert site, near the farmhouse.

Then, last year, when state troopers kept the pilgrims away, the couple invited a few thousand new friends to camp and play music right in front of their house. After that, the two were head over heels in Woodstock peace and love.

In their rational minds, they've known, as everybody who lives in Sullivan County does, that Bethel wears a "No Woodstock" sign on its heart. For 28 years, people have been coming back for reunions and Bethel has said go away.

Most famously, after years of wrangling over permits with concert organizers, the town rejected a 25th-anniversary concert in 1994. Then the town sullenly watched as the festival, publicity and dollars went to Saugerties, which is near the town of Woodstock but nearly 75 miles from the original festival field. No matter. With a couple of dozen friends, including some of the original concert organizers, Howard and Ms. Abramson spent nearly a year planning for a Woodstock '97 in their front yard.

They rented trailers for rest rooms, organized volunteers, set up a Web site and booked 80 bands (including a band from South Africa, coming with the South African ambassador). They also spiffed up their property, redoing one of the two old barns so it could be used as an indoor concert site, grading the land around the farmhouse, drilling a new well and ordering two historical plaques, one to mark "Maximillian Yasgur's" original farmstead, the other to honor the last remaining patch of Yasgur family land.

The couple planned to hold the three-day affair next weekend at the edge of a field bordered by woods on one end and a neighbor's alfalfa plants and head-high corn on the other. They did not apply for a zoning permit, even though they were taken to court for not having the proper permits for last year's impromptu affair.

Some townspeople wondered what had overcome the two. Others figured it had to be Max Yasgur's spirit. Or at least the same spirit that possessed him in 1969 when he allowed his cow pasture to be used for a rock-and-roll concert. The new owner of the original field, Alan Gerry, sounds more like a true Bethelite. He has had signs posted on the field warning pilgrims that they are welcome to visit but not to stay overnight. Several people have been arrested recently for camping out, and more arrests are likely as the concert's anniversary approaches on the 15th, 16th and 17th.

Howard, a Monticello boy who bought the farm 11 years ago and moved in with Ms. Abramson after their son was born, says he was just trying to have a big party. Since thousands trek over to the original site anyway, why not give them something to do, something to see, somewhere to go?

They weren't planning to make money, Howard says. They were going to charge $10 a carload for three days. If they recouped their expenses, they'd be happy.

Of course, that won't happen. The other day, faster than you could say "Hippies Go Home," the pair were ordered in state Supreme Court to drop the concert for not having the proper permit. "We were stupid not to even try for the permit," says Ms. Abramson after a long day at the store. "That was the rebel in us."

She sounds awfully worried about next weekend. People keep calling and saying they're coming anyway; that this is the true Woodstock way.