
In the mid-1970s, twin sisters Audrey and Debbie Hewins claimed they were repeatedly visited by beings from another world—and the encounters only intensified with age. Refusing to stay silent, they founded Starborn, a support group for others who’d lived through the same unexplainable events. Members describe chillingly similar experiences: midnight abductions, clinical experiments, and meetings with fellow experiencers aboard spaceships.
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Josh Dean
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Racha Pecorero
Hey so supernatural listeners, if you enjoy the mysterious and eerie stories we discuss here, then we've got another show you need to check out. Park Predators.
Yvette Gentile
Hosted by our friend Delia d', Ambra, Park Predators dives into the dark and twisted crimes that have taken place in some of the most beautiful places on Earth. These haunting cases range from stories of disappearances and murders to unsolved mysteries.
Racha Pecorero
Delia's storytelling will transport you right into the heart of these breathtaking landscapes, and
Yvette Gentile
her dedication to finding the facts ensures that you get all the details of each case.
Racha Pecorero
So if you're looking for some more chilling cases, Park Predators is for you.
Yvette Gentile
Listen to Park Predators available wherever you listen to podcasts.
Racha Pecorero
When you go through something difficult, painful or traumatic, it's natural to feel like you're alone. Like no one could ever understand what you're going through. Which is one reason why support groups exist. Because there's power in saying I get you. And I've been through this too. In fact, about 6,250,000Americans attend some kind of support group on the regular, which works out to be about one in every 54 people. Now I want to share my story with you about support groups. Back in 2021, when I was a flight attendant, I witnessed a traumatic death on board. I saw a passenger die in front of my eyes. And I won't get into the nitty gritty details here, but it triggered not only PTSD for Me, but anxiety, panic attacks, nightmares, and depression. Because I spoke up at the time and asked for help. I was given the amazing gift of going to intense trauma therapy over the course of several months, which my airline paid for. I know not many of us are that lucky. Part of the program included a virtual support group with other first responders who had witnessed some type of traumatic death while they were doing their job. We would share our trauma, our stories, and our hearts. It absolutely made me feel so much less alone and like someone understood exactly what I was going through at the time. I'm still dear friends with a few of the people from the group, and I am thankful for their support to this day. It was because of them, my phenomenal therapist, my doctors, and the support of my sister and wife that I am able to continuously make my mental health a priority, even today.
Yvette Gentile
Yes, Rasha, you certainly are. It's just like our beautiful mother would always tell us. Look for the helpers. And, you know, I just gotta say, I'm so grateful that you had such an amazing support group to get you through that incredibly rough time. Well, today's episode focuses on a very special kind of support group. It only has about a dozen chapters, and some have monthly meetings, while others only gather once a year. But people travel all over the world to go to these sessions because there simply isn't another group like this. It's called Starborn. The attendees aren't there to talk about their addiction or illness or their mental health journeys. They're all experiencers. People who claim they've been either contacted or abducted by aliens.
Racha Pecorero
The group is run by twin sisters who've had countless experiences themselves, and they believe it's important to connect with others like them. Not just so they can support one another, but because the fate of our planet might depend on it. I'm Racha Pecorero.
Yvette Gentile
And I'm Yvette Gentile. This is so supernatural. Life is all about our journey of experiences, and they happen one right after the other. Our memories of those moments truly shape our reality and who we are as human beings. Sometimes, even if our minds don't remember, you better believe our bodies do. They have a mysterious way of holding on to our secrets, secrets we sometimes keep from ourselves. Because when something happens to you that's so difficult to understand and truly defies your definition of reality, it changes you at your core and your entire perspective of the world and everything in it. And when you go through something like that, something so confusing and unexplainable, one of the best things you can do is to validate your experience by finding others who are going through it too. And that's where Starborn comes in.
Racha Pecorero
There's only about a dozen of these chapters around the globe. But if you're in Portland, Maine, there's one that meets every month on a particular Saturday, you can make your way to a local shop called Leaping Lizards. Love the name. A place that sells crystals, tarot decks, candles, and other new agey products. Between six and eight o' clock at night, roughly 50 or so people pile into the shop to talk about their experiences, Specifically their encounters with extraterrestrials. Like any other group, they have their own terminology. They don't like the words abduction or abductee. Because for some members, their memories are kind of fuzzy. It's hard for them to tell if they actually left the planet or got on board a spaceship or if it all just happened here on Earth. Which is why they go with the word experiencer. The term is a bit broader and feels more accurate for a lot of people in the group. For those whose memories are a bit hazy, which is more common than not, they have their own title. They're referred to as dormant. Others who do recall or have unlocked their memories through therapy or hypnosis, they're referred to as activated. And if anyone calls the visitors from outer space they aliens, the group leader will likely correct them. Apparently that's out of respect for the beings who don't prefer that term. Some of the members learn that after building meaningful relationships with these creatures, so everyone at Starborn calls them extraterrestrials and not aliens.
Yvette Gentile
It sounds wild, we know, but unfortunately that's really all the details we have about what goes on in these meetings. Mainly because Starborn's leaders are committed to confidentiality and protecting their members identities. We do know that the group was founded by twin sisters Debbie and Audrey Hewins. And when they share their testimony about why they started Starborn, it can sometimes get disturbing and upsetting. So I just have to say there is a trigger warning. Their accounts involve sexual assault of minors. So y' all please listen with care.
Racha Pecorero
It goes something like this. In the mid-1970s, Audrey and Debbie lived in the small city of Athens, Ohio, just outside of Columbus. And when they were around four or five years old, they were in their shared bedroom one night trying to fall asleep. Only the they couldn't because there were these strange voices they kept hearing through the walls. Almost like someone was talking in another room, loud enough to keep the girls wide awake. Now it's unclear if Debbie and Audrey could actually make out specific words or if they could tell exactly who was speaking. But the longer the conversation went on, the more muddled the voices became, until eventually they sounded kind of like a drone or a buzz. And that's when a brilliant bluish white light flooded the room. Then the bedroom door swung open all on its own, and Audrey and Debbie could see the light glowing in the hallways and other rooms. It was as if the entire house had suddenly just lit up. After that, two figures emerged from the light and walked into their room. The twins didn't recognize the beings, but. But they later gave them a nickname, the bald Men. As you can probably guess, the bald men didn't have any hair. They were both much shorter than your average adult, and they had huge black eyes. Basically, they sound an awful lot like the stereotypical gray aliens that we've all seen in movies and tv. Except their skin wasn't gray. It was pink. It's hard to say what happened next, because Debbie and Audrey didn't go public with their story until decades later. By that time, they'd forgotten the rest of that night. But they did recall what happened the next morning.
Yvette Gentile
Audrey and Debbie told their parents about the bald men, the buzzing noise and the bright light, but they didn't believe them. Actually, it didn't matter who they told. Their teachers, their neighbors, their babysitters, their friends. Everyone acted like it was just their imagination and that they were just making it all up, which meant there was nobody to protect them or to try and stop it from happening again.
Racha Pecorero
It's so sad to me that they weren't believed.
Yvette Gentile
I have to agree with you. I mean, especially if they're repeatedly telling you the same story night after night. Like you would, you know, want to take into consideration how your children are feeling.
Racha Pecorero
If my daughter told me that she was seeing aliens or UFOs or ghosts or anything, I'd want to know about it and I'd, like stake it out with her at night. But anyway, this ended up happening to Audrey and Debbie a lot, even though they weren't believed. It's unclear if the bald men came back that very following evening or. Or even weeks or months later. But we know that eventually the voices returned and faded back into that buzzing sound just like they did before. Then a bright bluish white light flooded Audrey and Debbie's bedroom along with the rest of the house. Once more, the bald men appeared in their room, but this time, they took the girl somewhere. They couldn't tell where or how they got there, but they knew for sure, they were no longer in their house. Then, before they knew it, they were back in bed and it was the next morning. From there, it continued a third time, a fourth time. It eventually happened so many times, the girls ended up losing count again.
Yvette Gentile
We don't know how many nights passed between each visit, but the bald men were showing up on a regular occurrence. It reached a point where Audrey and Debbie were terrified to go to bed each night because they knew the strange visitors would come back. They still couldn't remember what these beings did to them during their visits, but the thought of these men filled them with absolute dread. So every time it got late, Audrey and Debbie would beg and plead with their parents not to put them to bed. They cried and scream and insisted that it just wasn't safe to go to sleep. But their parents just assumed Audrey and Debbie were throwing tantrums like any other young child would around bedtime. So the girls did the only thing that they could do at that point. Audrey and Debbie began keeping careful records of everything they'd been through. Of course, right now we would think of a journal, but you have to remember their age. So these are just drawings, right?
Racha Pecorero
Yeah. They were only four or five years old and they didn't even know how to write yet. And this went on for years. Eventually, as they learned to spell and read, the girls were able to write more thorough entries about their encounters. By the time Debbie and Audrey were about 12 years old, they were very good at keeping accounts of these semi regular visits, but their memories were still vague. After each visit, there were big gaps in their stories and weird time jumps that just didn't make any sense. For example, on multiple occasions, one or both girls remembered laying in bed when the bald men entered their room. Then their next memory would be of them floating in the sky above their home. It was enough to make them think that the bald men were forcing them to forget their experiences. But they weren't capable of erasing all of their memories. So the girls could still recall tiny bits and pieces of what had happened.
Yvette Gentile
And that's why their diaries and notebooks became so important. They gave the girls a way to compare notes and fill in the blanks for each other. And they realized that sometimes the bald men would come in and fire some kind of weapon at Audrey and Debbie. It paralyzed them, so they couldn't run or even scream. They were frozen. The beings would somehow make them levitate out of their beds and then fly them through the walls or the mirrors, literally defying physics. Sometimes the twins blacked out For a bit. And when they woke up, they were on a strange spaceship hovering right above their house. They could even see their home through the craft's windows. On other occasions, the twins found themselves in some kind of laboratory or medical exam room. Their memories of these areas were especially choppy, given the setting. Audrey and Debbie assumed the bald men were doing some kind of experiment on them. But they never figured out what these studies were or what they entailed. However, they did sometimes find unexplained bruises and marks on their bodies the next day.
Racha Pecorero
Then days or weeks would go by without the bald men visiting at all. But they always came back within a day or two of the full moon. So their encounters happened at least once every four weeks. This was notable because the experiences also always happened right before Audrey and Debbie's menstrual cycles began, which coincidentally happened during the full moon. This made the sisters think the bald men could have been interested in menstruation or even reproduction.
Yvette Gentile
As the years went by, Audrey and Debbie entered adulthood. They realized they'd never be able to piece everything together on their own. They needed more data and more information from other people who'd gone through something similar. So, in other words, if they ever wanted to understand what was happening to them, they needed to find other experiencers, which is exactly what they set out to do.
Josh Dean
Everyone's told a lie, but what happens when one lie becomes a life, a movement, a conspiracy? I'm Josh Dean, host of Chameleon, and I uncover true stories of deception scams so intimate and convincing, they fooled the people closest to them. These aren't strangers. They're lovers, friends, and trusted allies. Because the most dangerous cons don't feel like crimes. They feel personal. Listen to Chameleon wherever you get your podcasts.
Racha Pecorero
In the mid-1970s, twins Audrey and Debbie Heughans were 4 or 5 years old. Night after night, strange beings, who they called the bald men, visited them in their bedroom. And these encounters continued for years. At some point, the girl's family ended up moving from Athens, Ohio, to the state of Massachusetts. It's unclear how old the girls were at that time, but now that they were in a new home in a brand new state, they hoped the bizarre visits would just stop. Unfortunately, they were wrong.
Yvette Gentile
One night, they were in their bed in their new house when they heard the same voices and buzzing. Bright light flooded the room. And just like before, the figures appeared at the foot of Audrey and Debbie's bed. But once the visitors were close enough, they realized these weren't the bald men. They didn't even look like they were the same species. Instead, they seemed to be some kind of lizard human hybrids. According to Debbie and Audrey, they were about 6ft tall, significantly bigger than the child sized bald men. And when they spoke, their voices sounded unnaturally deep. They reminded the girls of demons that they'd see in sci fi horror movies. The creatures took Audrey and Debbie from their room. But this time they didn't go aboard a spaceship. Instead, they brought the girls into underground tunnels. There the Reptilians supposedly performed experiments on them and sexually assaulted them. Audrey and Debbie didn't know for sure if this was the first time something like this had happened. Their memories of the bald men were still so fuzzy. But these attacks felt especially violating and upsetting.
Racha Pecorero
This wasn't a one time event. The Reptilians came back. Night after night, they continued kidnapping, assaulting and doing scientific research on the twins. Of course, Audrey and Debbie were afraid of the Reptilians. But somewhere along the way, they also realized these creatures wanted the girls to be scared of them. It's unclear how they knew this, but Audrey and Debbie believe the Reptilians fed on energy and strong emotions. And each time the creatures took the girls, they sucked out some of their life force, leaving them so exhausted. Sadly, the girls were powerless to stop them. And when they tried to talk about it, no one believed their stories or even tried to help them. But it was clear now there was no escaping these beings, even if they tried. Debbie and Audrey moved across the country and they they still ended up tracking them down. They figured they couldn't do much to stop the encounters or the experiments. But they could find a way to help process the trauma.
Yvette Gentile
By the time they reached adulthood, Audrey was working regularly with therapists. But it didn't help much. Especially because her memories of the encounters were still patchy. Which meant the therapists didn't have a whole lot to work with. So at some point, the twins decided they were never going to heal until they recovered those lost memories. So they got in touch with a hypnotherapist. And during Debbie's session, there were a lot of spectators in the room. They watched as the therapist put Debbie under and then began asking questions about the bald men and the Reptilians. And Debbie answered each question question perfectly. It was clear that there were a ton of memories she hadn't been consciously aware of. Because now she described her experiences in detail. It felt like the hypnosis was working. And as the hours drew to a close, the therapist began waking Debbie Up. Which is when something went terribly wrong. All of the color drained out of her face. Her skin turned gray, almost as if she was dying. The observers in the room began screaming in horror, and the hypnotherapist was stumped. They'd never seen anything like this before. They didn't understand why Debbie was having this reaction, but they worried this form of therapy wasn't safe for her. Thankfully, the color returned to her face after she woke up from the hypnosis, and she seemed okay after that. Even better. She unlocked a ton of memories. This encouraged Audrey to move forward with her hypnotherapy session, which went off without a hitch. No gray skin, no medical emergencies, but lots of new memories. Afterwards, each twin went back to therapy and started making progress towards emotional healing. The only problem was the experiences were still happening on a regular basis.
Racha Pecorero
By 2006, Audrey and Debbie were 33 years old and living separately, and each of them were still having encounters with the bald men and the reptilians. From time to time, they also regularly compared notes to see if their memories were similar and how they differed. But by this time, Audrey was starting to feel so frustrated, she and her sister weren't getting any closer to making any sense of these encounters. She wished she had even more data, because if there were other people who'd been through this sort of thing, they might remember the pieces that Audrey and Debbie didn't. So that year, the twins set up a hotline called Starborn. It was for anyone who had ever had an encounter. Audrey and Debbie promised to listen, support, and believe anyone who contacted them. Sure enough, the line started ringing. Audrey and Debbie connected with a few dozen people who had memories similar to their own. And one thing became very clear. A lot of people had been craving an outlet where they could talk about their encounters in a safe place, too. So that same year, the sisters established an in person support group for experiencers. Like the hotline, it was also called Starborn. But the task was easier said than done. The experiencers who'd contacted them were living all over the world, so there was no central location where everyone could easily meet up. Remember, this is 2006, and Zoom wasn't a thing quite yet. Plus, it would be a lot of work to organize something like having them meeting in person. So that's probably why they decided to hold just one annual meeting.
Yvette Gentile
They held the first Starborn conference in Maine, close to Audrey's home. And that's about all we know about it. Since the sisters wanted to protect the experiencers privacy, they didn't want skeptics to show up and mock attendees or poke holes in their stories. They shared concrete details about the time and place only with the experiencers they trusted. And to this day, it's impossible to say how many people actually came to the conference and what exactly they discussed. We do know that Audrey and Debbie came to realize many experiencers had interacted with beings identical to the bald men. Others had been taken by the Reptilians. And just like Audrey and Debbie, they also remembered having their energy and life force sucked out of them.
Racha Pecorero
If you're a longtime fan of this show, you may recognize how well Audrey and Debbie's story fits with other UFO encounters. There are tons of reports where people hear strange buzzing noises or find themselves floating through the air, or think visitors from outer space are conducting experiments on them. If you haven't heard it yet, make sure you check out our recent episode on the 1989 Manhattan abduction. Throughout that year, a woman in New York City claimed she was beamed out of her apartment, levitated through the air, and pulled into a spacecraft. We'll link that episode in the show notes if you want to hear more.
Yvette Gentile
The point is, Audrey and Debbie now realize they were not so alone after all. Lots of people knew exactly what they'd been through, and the conference was a big success, enough so that they held a second one the next year and the year after that. At the conference in 2009, there were 1500 attendees, plus, the hotline was still running at that time, and it was getting more popular. By 2013, seven years after Starborn was founded, they received over 2,000 reports by phone. The demand was now high enough for Audrey and Debbie to set up smaller support groups. As of late 2013, there were 12 different local chapters, most of which were on the US's east coast. But a few were in Latin America, going as far south as Colombia. Reporters also started interviewing attendees, especially Audrey and Debbie, and publishing articles about them. They appeared on abc, National Geographic, and the Biography Channel. A UFO researcher named Kathleen Martin interviewed Audrey, then wrote about their story in her book Alien Abduction Files, which was published in 2013. I actually just read several passages in her book, which is very well documented. And the creepy thing about her book is so many of the people have such similar experiences. Like they see the reptilian, the bald guy, the levitating. It's wild how many people have had this exact experience as Audrey and Debbie. But that same year, Audrey revealed some explosive new information. She said she now understood why. Why the extraterrestrials had been so focused on her and her sister, and it's because the women had a very important mission.
Racha Pecorero
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Yvette Gentile
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Racha Pecorero
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Josh Dean
everyone's told a lie, but what happens when one lie becomes a life, a movement, a conspiracy? I'm Josh Dean, host of Chameleon, and I uncover true stories of deception scams so intimate and convincing they fooled the people closest to them. These aren't strangers, they're lovers, friends and trusted allies. Because the most dangerous cons don't feel like crimes, they feel personal. Listen to Chameleon wherever you get your podcasts.
Yvette Gentile
Audrey Hewins and her twin sister Debbie had countless encounters with extraterrestrials over the years. They began in the mid-70s, when the girls were just 4 and 5 years old, and continued into adulthood. Which is why the 33 year old twins established Starborn in 2006, a support group for experiencers. The group got a lot of attention and made the twins famous. They gave a ton of interviews and in 2013, 33 year old Audrey connected with a UFO researcher and shared a particularly memorable experience from early January of 2007 or so.
Racha Pecorero
That night she was in bed trying to fall asleep when she felt a tingle all over her body. Audrey recognized this sensation. She knew the beings were close. Sure enough, the tingle grew more intense until she found herself involuntarily twitching. I'm not sure how long that feeling lasted, but eventually she went completely stiff and couldn't move at all. All she could do was watch as that brilliant white light filled her room. Then three Reptilians appeared beside her bed, a tall one and two shorter ones. Except this experience was different from the others because this time the paralysis suddenly wore off. As the Reptilians spoke to one another in a language Audrey couldn't understand, she realized that she was able to move her arms and legs. So she grabbed the nearest Reptilian and wrapped her hands around its neck and she squeezed as tight as she possibly could. But the creature's throat was extremely hard, she said it was almost like trying to squish or roll of quarters. Audrey could Tell. The being wasn't bothered. She wasn't hurting it. She wasn't even scaring it. So she ditched her plan and tried to run away. But the Reptilians moved to intercept her. And that's when an almost nonsensical phrase popped into Audrey's head. Clear as day. She heard a voice say, quote, watch out for the mother. She doesn't know if she was hearing the Reptilians thoughts, or if this was a half forgotten memory coming back up. Audrey couldn't make sense of it either way. But after that, she sensed that she and the Reptilians weren't alone. There were other extraterrestrials in her house. Sure enough, she opened her bedroom door and saw several more figures waiting outside for her in the hallway. Audrey didn't get a good look at them, because that's when everything went black.
Yvette Gentile
Audrey woke up a little later, but she had no idea how much time had passed. All she knew was that she wasn't in her house anymore. She was floating above it. Basically rising up into the sky like she was being beamed into a spaceship. But Audrey didn't see a ufo. Instead, she blacked out again. And over the rest of the night, she had a series of strange disjointed experiences. At one point, she woke up to find herself submerged in some kind of thick jail like liquid. And yet she could breathe in it without a problem. She fell unconscious again and next woke up on a table where these beings were doing some kind of medical procedure on her. That's when Audrey spotted the Reptilians working with the bald men and some strange worm like creatures she'd never seen before. Next, Audrey saw a claw coming down from the ceiling above her. It was like she was a toy in an arcade game about to become the unlucky prize. The claw lowered all the way down to her face, then latched around one of her eyeballs. Under ordinary circumstances, this would have been terrifying. But the aliens were somehow muting Audrey's emotions. She said she was only a little bit scared in that moment. She also didn't feel any pain. Not even when the claw yanked her eye out of its socket and then basically popped it back into place. After the claw disappeared, Audrey's eye just felt a little bit irritated. She said it was like she had an eyelash stuck in it. But whatever they did to her, it was rather painless. And I have to say, in Kathleen Martin's book, when Audrey is talking about this, like on the record, she says that they popped the eye out. And then they injected something into her eye socket and then put the eyeball back in. So it's almost like an alien implant. Exactly.
Racha Pecorero
Listen to that episode, too, if you haven't already.
Yvette Gentile
Yeah, that's a. That's a very good episode. But almost like they're implanting something back there so they can see everything through her eyes.
Racha Pecorero
Oh, that's creepy. Yeah, so creepy. Well, next, the extraterrestrials escorted Audrey to a room she'd never seen before. But it didn't look like it was part of an alien craft. Instead, it resembled an ordinary classroom. A bunch of desks were all lined up, and there were other students there, all seemingly human, sitting in the seats. They were all facing forward, away from Audrey, so she couldn't tell if they were fully conscious or in some kind of trance. But she felt very aware of her own surroundings. Audrey took a seat. And then a human looking teacher walked to the front of the room and started lecturing. This teacher told them they'd been chosen for a purpose. They were all going to have a special role to play at some point in the future. He didn't say what the role would be or what exactly was going to happen. But every student already knew all that they needed to know. That information was apparently buried deep in inside them. To Audrey, it sounded like the extraterrestrials had put data into their subconscious, or her DNA. And when the time was right, every student would be activated, which meant they'd suddenly become aware of that hidden information. Then they'd do whatever was required to help the extraterrestrials achieve their goals. Shortly after the lecture, Audrey blacked out again. And then she woke up back in her bed.
Yvette Gentile
For years, Audrey questioned what this special purpose might be. In the meantime, she started getting these spontaneous bursts of intuition. She'd been watching a news report on a natural disaster or a scientific discovery, and she'd just know the story was somehow related to her mission. Thanks to this insight, she pieced together what she was supposed to do. Audrey now realized the extraterrestrials needed her to stop climate change, pollution and environmental destruction. Because if human beings continued on the path they were on, they'd destroy themselves and all the other life on Earth. And the destruction wouldn't stop there. Audrey didn't have all the details, but she knew if our planet got destroyed, so would others. There would be a domino effect with one world after the next just dying off.
Racha Pecorero
So in the weeks after she had this epiphany, Audrey gives a ton of interviews. She raises the alarm at every chance she gets, begging people to change their relationship with the environment. She also notes that the clock is ticking again. She doesn't fully understand how everything fits together, but she knows humanity only has three months to turn it around. If they don't fix it by then, they will lose their chance to ever make things right.
Yvette Gentile
Except Audrey gave that warning in October of 2013, and I'm sorry to report that people didn't listen to her. They didn't stop climate change, but the world didn't end either. And the good news is that scientists still believe there's time to fix things before we see mass extinctions and irreversible damage. But there isn't a lot of time. Still, we haven't passed the point of no return yet. And we weren't there in early 2014 either. Audrey's prediction was completely wrong, which is
Racha Pecorero
why a lot of people reject everything she has to say. Many of them can't resist the impulse to pick Audrey and Debbie's story apart, to try to poke holes in it and prove that their experiences weren't real. In fairness, most of these critics and skeptics don't think the twins are lying. They just say that Debbie and Audrey are confused. Or the theory goes that way. Back when, when they first started having these encounters at the age of four or five, they were simply having just bad dreams. One of the girls had a vivid nightmare. Then she woke up and told her sister about it. And since they were too young to tell reality from fantasy, they both became convinced it was real. Then the nightmare reoccurred night after night. Each time the sisters wrote about it in their diary or compared notes, they reinforced the details in their own memories. To be clear, their fear and trauma may have been very real and authentic to them, but the visitations may have been completely imaginary, just a psychological phenomenon.
Yvette Gentile
I just have to say I'm kind of torn on this, because that does make logical sense, what you just said. But at the same time, what these young girls are experiencing is very real. And when you read this book by Kathleen Martin and you hear all these other stories that people had the exact same experience, and it gets harder to discount it. Exactly. But the most interesting fact, though, is that so many Starborn attendees, like I just said, recall similar details. Not to mention all the people who called the hotline and told their stories before they'd heard what Audrey and Debbie went through. The twins can't be forcing false memories on all of these people. And if these were bad dreams and hallucinations, you'd expect the details to vary from one person to the next, but they don't. Like I said, the similarities are so eerie. I mean, take this event that happened at some point in the late 90s. Audrey was in her mid to late 20s, and she was out at a bar one night when she spotted a man sitting on the other side of the room. Right away, she recognized him, even though they'd never met on Earth. Instead, Audrey remembered seeing him on a spaceship roughly a decade ago. They were both experiencers. So Audrey walked up to this guy and said, this is a quote you remember, right? He looked her in the eye with a completely stunned expression, and then he replied, yeah. Now, okay, yes, this isn't proof that the experience was real. But let's be honest. The twins will never be able to convince everyone to accept their claims. No matter how much evidence they offer, there's always going to be someone doubting them. We know this for a fact. Questioning them and insisting that they're wrong. There are always going to be skeptics. That's just part of life.
Racha Pecorero
Sadly, us. We've all been in that situation where skeptics try to poke holes in our reality or convince us that we don't know our own lives or our own truth. And no one can take your own truth away from you. Debbie and Audrey know that better than almost anyone. It's part of the reason why Starborn means so much to them. Because they know there are a lot of people out there who are in the same situation, living with a story that seems too outrageous to be believed. But that doesn't mean it isn't true.
Yvette Gentile
Which is why they ignore those doubters and they surround themselves with their friends, their family, and those who truly get what they've been through. Because at the end of the day, all any of us need is a bit of support and someone else who can look us in the eye and say, I see you and I believe you.
Racha Pecorero
This is so supernatural. An audio Chuck original produced by Crime House. You can connect with us on Instagram @sosupernaturalpod and visit our website at sosupernaturalpodcast.com Join Yvette and me next Friday for an all new episode. I think Chuck would approve. In the world of true crime, the real story isn't always in the headlines. It's in the evidence. I'm Brandi churchwell, host of 13Zero podcast, and I'm here to take you past the news cycle and straight into the courtroom. Every week, I'll break down the investigation. The prosecution, the defense, and everything that unfolds beyond the jury box. We'll examine every testimony, every exhibit, and every hidden motive. Listen to 13th Juror, wherever you get your podcasts.
Host: Racha Pecorero & Yvette Gentile
Episode: ALIEN: Audrey and Debbie Hewins
Date: May 8, 2026
This episode dives into the origin and impact of the Starborn support group, founded by twin sisters Audrey and Debbie Hewins, who say they’ve endured extraterrestrial encounters—including repeated abductions—since early childhood. The hosts detail the sisters’ story, explore the formation of the Starborn community for "experiencers," and discuss what these accounts mean for questions of belief, trauma, and purpose.
“Between six and eight o' clock at night, roughly 50 or so people pile into the shop to talk about their experiences—specifically their encounters with extraterrestrials.”
"Sometimes the twins blacked out... when they woke up, they were on a strange spaceship hovering right above their house..."
“She unlocked a ton of memories. This encouraged Audrey to move forward with her hypnotherapy session... but lots of new memories.”
[26:11–28:20]
[29:21–36:01]
“Watch out for the mother.”
“But the world didn’t end either. And the good news is that scientists still believe there’s time to fix things before we see mass extinctions and irreversible damage.”
“No one can take your own truth away from you. Debbie and Audrey know that better than almost anyone. It’s part of the reason why Starborn means so much to them.”
“At the end of the day, all any of us need is a bit of support and someone else who can look us in the eye and say, I see you and I believe you.” [42:12]
Caring, empathetic, and curious, with a balance between open-mindedness and healthy skepticism. Hosts avoid sensationalizing, focusing on the psychological and social implications, and validate the importance of support and belief for trauma survivors—regardless of the objective truth of any one story.
Summary prepared for listeners seeking a thorough, empathetic recap of the episode’s core narrative and themes, with direct references to memorable moments and critical timestamps.