Abducted in front of 23 witnesses and a UN secretary-general: The most famous UFO file is resurrected on Netflix

Many of the reported cases of alleged alien encounters, flying saucers, or abductions take place in remote locations, far from the eyes and cameras of almost anyone, or in conditions that make it difficult to see anything clearly. For those who fabricate such experiences, it is a necessary alibi. The case of New Yorker Linda Napolitano, a housewife of Italian descent who said she was abducted by aliens in 1989, generated huge media coverage for exactly the opposite reason: she claimed that a UFO had taken her from her bedroom by means of a tractor beam in the early hours of the morning, in the middle of Manhattan.

Together with researcher Budd Hopkins, one of the most famous figures in ufology, she brought 23 witnesses to the table who supported her story and said they had seen her fly over the Brooklyn Bridge. The family not only confirmed the veracity of her experiences, but also declared themselves victims of interventions from outer space. And they all stand firm, to the point that Napolitano, who is now 77 years old, has just sued Netflix over a documentary that casts serious doubts on what some media dubbed “the abduction of the century.”

The three-episode series, The Manhattan Alien Abduction, was written by Linda Napolitano herself and premiered in the U.S. on October 30, just in time for Halloween. It certainly has terrifying elements, not so much in the dramatizations of the abduction itself, but testimonies such as that of her son, who appears with his face obscured and claims to have been in psychological treatment for years over the trauma of alien visits of which he, who experienced the coverage of the case as a child, is entirely convinced. However, there is another woman who manages to displace Napolitano from the center of the documentary: Carol Rainey, Hopkins’ ex-wife and a notable skeptic of her former husband’s work, especially on the Manhattan case. The basis of the complaint against Netflix is that the participation of Rainey, who died in 2023, is much greater than the aggrieved party expected. Napolitano says she was assured Rainey would make only one appearance, but she is, by all accounts, the co-star.

As such, The Manhattan Alien Abduction is much more interesting than a mere reconstruction of a 35-year-old UFO file. Its unexpected focus on Rainey allows us to access another story, that of someone who, out of respect for the man she had once loved, for the credibility and objectivity she once had, made the tough decision to disavow him in a shattering publication that questioned his rigor and methodology. “I saw that I was losing objectivity. I loved Budd. He seemed to me to have complete integrity. Completely honest. But if it was a hoax, I needed to know if my husband was complicit,” Rainey states in the documentary. Peter Robbins, Hopkins’ assistant and friend, who blames Rainey for Hopkins’ book Witnessed: The True Story Of The Brooklyn Bridge UFO Abductions (1996) not being republished or made into a film adaptation, doesn’t see it that way: “Her goal in life was to destroy this man and destroy his reputation.” “She’s a harpy,” Napolitano goes so far as to say on camera.

The housewife’s story contained bizarre elements that went beyond the 1989 abduction. A year later, Napolitano alerted Hopkins that she was being harassed by two men named Dan and Richard, who had witnessed the event from an official car in which they were transporting none other than then-Secretary General of the United Nations Javier Pérez de Cuéllar. Hopkins, who never saw them himself, gave credence to the letters she received signed in their name and that of the diplomat. According to Napolitano, the men kidnapped her and Dan, who was madly in love with her, ended up in a psychiatric hospital. She also underwent an X-ray test to prove that a lump in her nose was the result of an alien graft. The X-ray revealed that it did appear to house a small cylindrical object, but when she later agreed to undergo surgery to remove it, the object never appeared.

I want to believe

Sociologist, writer and editor Pablo Vergel, a contributor to Spanish TV show Cuarto Milenio, which covers mysteries and enigmas, spoke to Napolitano several years ago via Facebook. His intention was to have her participate in a report on the show, although he was unable to get her to appear in front of the cameras. Vergel acknowledges to EL PAÍS that it is “a very problematic case,” which owes its popularity to the context and “the series of incredible twists and turns that followed, a real soap opera, thanks to which it had a lot of coverage in the tabloid press [...] Iconically, this UFO that lifts someone from their apartment with a ray, takes them out and crosses the most famous skyline in the world, over the Brooklyn Bridge, cannot be more powerful,” he says. In 2021, Vergel published in Spain a book by Budd Hopkins, Intruders, originally from 1987 and one of the key titles in the abduction phenomenon in the United States.

“Budd Hopkins is part of the triad of researchers who created the great wave of abductions in the United States, almost a sociological phenomenon, along with Whitley Strieber and John E. Mack,” explains the editor. “He did have a certain courage; he created support groups for people who said they had been abducted, he established mechanisms and protocols… Whitley Strieber, the famous author of Communion (1987), turned to Budd Hopkins and said in his book that he helped him a lot in managing his emotional crisis after the traumatic experience he had [his alleged encounter with extraterrestrials]. But at a certain point he began to act like a devotee, like an absolute believer who could not conceive of any alternative explanation. Many people have accused him of having been an evangelist of the UFO phenomenon and the extraterrestrial hypothesis, rather than of investigating it. He abused hypnosis a lot. If you read his books, hypnosis does not follow methodological controls, it leaves suggestion very open. There is even the possibility of ending up implanting memories in the person. Budd Hopkins — and I say this as his editor — seems to me to be an interesting author, but also very questionable.”

The sociologist refers to a study of the Napolitano case published in 1993 by parapsychologist George P. Hansen, together with Joseph J. Stefula and Richard D. Butler, who was critical of Hopkins for not verifying the “very close” relationship between the housewife and the professional who performed the X-ray test, or the independence of the supposed 23 witnesses to the phenomenon. Among the testimonies that Hopkins had accepted as valid was that of a woman who said she had not been able to see clearly because of the fog — on a morning when such weather conditions did not occur — or that of another who, excusing herself on the grounds of her fear, did not close the curtains at her window that night. Hansen and his colleagues found as many as 16 parallels between Napolitano’s story and Garfield Reeves-Stevens’ 1989 science fiction novel Nighteyes. They also questioned Hopkins’ honesty, noting that the alleged abductee said he had promised her half the profits from his book about her case.

Robbins, the colleague who backs Hopkins in The Manhattan Alien Abduction, brings up in his statements that Rainey, the researcher’s ex-wife, grew up in a fundamentalist Christian family belonging to the Plymouth Brethren, to suggest that she opposed the extraterrestrial hypothesis because of her religion. Rainey argues in the documentary that, precisely, her experience with Hopkins reopened a wound from the past, when she was estranged from her entire family for questioning the faith: “His dogma was as radical as my father’s. They both never doubted and seemed to be in possession of the truth. I could not tolerate what he was doing to very vulnerable people,” Rainey said in reference to Hopkins’ hypnosis sessions with people convinced they were being visited by extraterrestrials.

Napolitano, who is said in the series to have had a frustrated vocation as a music star, has called the late Rainey “resentful and alcoholic” in her lawsuit, as well as damaging to her reputation. Nevertheless, The Manhattan Alien Abduction is conciliatory to anyone who really wants to believe her story. Through the theme of faith, the documentary does allow us to glimpse that, among the scholars or mere lovers of the UFO phenomenon, there are those who, with more or less rigor, try to collate their research, and those who only seek to confirm their own beliefs.

Depending on your preferences, the Brooklyn Bridge story generated a previous documentary that completely takes the authenticity of the matter for granted: Linda Napolitano: The Alien Abduction of the Century (2022). Although Napolitano does not participate in it, we are told, based on the thesis of a certain Corrado Malanga, an Italian researcher of the holographic universe, that humans are the most spiritually developed creatures in the universe and that aliens abduct us to imprint their memories in our unconscious, in order to become immortal with our soul. Case closed.

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