A (6:37)

If you're even a casual consumer of alien abduction stories, this probably feels pretty familiar. When two fishermen reported being taken from the Pascagoula river In Mississippi in 1973, they described a similar clinical place where they were experimented on. In 1975, a forestry worker who disappeared From a work site in Arizona, came back with tales of a hospital like room and three extraterrestrials. He claimed he fought the aliens who were trying to examine him and they used some kind of gas mask to knock him unconscious. The next thing he knew, it was five days later, and he was walking down a random highway.

B (7:27)

What's different about Linda's experience, though, is the language. As they set her down on the examination table, the creatures start saying things to her, Words she's never heard before. Almost instinctively, she yells something right back at them. But she's surprised when the words coming out of her mouth aren't English. Actually, it's not a language she's ever heard on Earth. And the aliens, they understand her. At least she thinks they do, because one slaps his hand over her mouth and she has this feeling she's just said something incredibly offensive to them.

A (8:08)

Afraid of angering them, Linda keeps quiet as the aliens start examining her. She's completely paralyzed, powerless to resist as they pound on her back with their fists and used strange instruments to inspect her head, neck, and even inside her nose. They worked their way down her body using different tools, none of which Linda recognizes, to scan her arms, her abdomen and legs. They seem especially fascinated by her toes, which she can wiggle a little. And all this time, Linda believes the aliens are trying to communicate with her telepathically. She keeps seeing words in her head, words that appear to be in their alien language. She thinks they're trying to teach it to her, but afraid and angry, she makes a conscious decision to ignore it. And you'll come to see that Linda's really stubborn and as we say in Italian, tested. She's my kind of woman. Basically. At one point, when the aliens are looking up her nose, she remembers thinking, and this is a quote, dear God, please let me sneeze right in their cold little faces. It's just like her earlier reaction when they were in her bedroom and she thought to throw a pillow at them. Basically, Linda is not going to accept her alien abduction without a fight. Like, again, our kind of woman.

B (9:43)

But the creatures keep at it, and they try to talk to her some more, even asking at one point how her family is. But eventually, the aliens seem to realize they're not going to get much out of Linda. So they finish their examination, and suddenly she hears this really loud noise. A second later, she finds herself sitting up in her own bed, fully able to use her limbs again. Her first thought is her family. She goes room to room, checking on her husband, Steven, and her Kids. All three are still sound asleep. So not knowing what else to do, Linda goes back to sleep. Right before closing her eyes, she checks the clock one last time and sees that it's 4:45am Even though it feels like the abduction lasted a long time, it's only been 90 minutes.

A (10:39)

The next morning, Linda's kids go off to school and her husband goes about his day. She tries to act normal, but she's still very shaken. And luckily, she knows the perfect person to call about this. A UFO researcher named Bud Hopkins. Bud is not someone new to her. A few months earlier, she had reached out to him after coming across his book about UFOs because as it turns out, this wasn't Linda's first encounter. Linda believed she'd been visited by UFOs when she was a little girl, too.

B (11:18)

Bud helps those who've had an encounter by hypnotizing them to see if they can recover their lost memories. Linda's actually done a few of these sessions by now. In one, she recalled being 8 years old and spotting an object outside of her bedroom window covered in flashing lights. She told her mother about it the next day, but it seemed like Linda was the only witness. For years afterwards, she'd wake up in the middle of the night with numb toes. She couldn't say exactly why, but deep down she knew it was something to do with the strange object she had seen. Now, on November 30, 1989, she felt like she finally had proof. Because as she explains to Bud on the phone, the numb feeling she used to get as a child, that was the same sensation that paralyzed her body on board the spaceship.

A (12:14)

So Bud invites her to his house that day and records her session under hypnosis. He wants her to remember everything she can from her encounter the night before. Now this isn't anything new for Bud. He's done this hundreds of times for other UFO witnesses. Bud believes that Linda's story might just be another piece in a much bigger puzzle about alien abductions. He's ready to add it to the pile. But a year later, Bud Hopkins receives a letter that suggests Linda's story is not like all the others. The message is from two government agents who say they know all about Linda's abduction. And guess why? Because they were there when it happened.

B (13:18)

On February 1, 1991, UFO researcher Bud Hopkins receives a letter in the mail marked personal and important. This letter takes Linda Napolitano's story from a run of the mill abduction to a high stakes thriller. When Bud opens this piece of mail, he's not sure what to expect. He gets a lot of mail from admirers, UFO enthusiasts, and people with their own encounters. But this is something new, because right there in black and white is an eyewitness account of Linda's abduction from 15 months earlier. A story that no one knows except for Linda, her family, and Bud. The letter is from two men who call themselves only by their first names, Dan and Richard. They claim to be police officers and say that on the night of November 30, 1989, they were sitting in their patrol car looking out at the Brooklyn Bridge just a few blocks north of Linda's apartment.

A (14:23)

Richard was pulling a stick of gum out of his pocket when all of a sudden, he noticed something odd. The metallic gum wrapper was reflecting a bright orange light back at him, almost like a flame. He looks up, and he sees the light is coming from some type of flying machine shaped like an oval hovering over an apartment building a few blocks away. Dan notices the ship, too. Both are riveted as they watch it sail through the air and slow to a hover right outside a window high up at the apartment building. The fiery orange glow shifts to a cool blue white, which looks eerie in the night sky. And then Richard gasps because there's something floating in the beam of light coming from the ship. At first he thinks it's an angel, but then Richard realizes it's a woman floating through the air in only her nightgown. Several small childlike figures float in a loose formation around her, and she's heading straight up towards the hovering craft. Dan and Richard's instant reaction is they want to help. They're police officers, after all. My God, they should be helping, right? You would think that. But how exactly do you help someone mid alien abduction? So Dan and Richard are forced to watch as this woman is beamed aboard the spacecraft, at which point, the ship promptly flies off and dives into the East River.

B (16:08)

What? Yeah, it's a little hard to believe, but there you have it. There were two witnesses. Dan and Richard spend the next 45 minutes eyes fixed on the river, waiting for it to come back out. But this ship doesn't resurface, so they head back to work. They hope to leave the incident way behind them, but for months, it's all they can think about. They reassure each other it was a figment of their imagination. But if that was the case, why did they both see it? Most of all, they feel immense guilt for letting a woman be abducted and doing absolutely nothing about it. They figure someone else must have seen what they did, but they couldn't be the first ones to cry. UFO coming forward could be dangerous for them. What if people think they're mentally unwell or simply lying? They could even lose their jobs.

A (17:09)

That's right. But not telling anyone is weighing on them, too. So when they come across Bud's book, they decide he's the only one who can help them. They send him their letter. And one of the last lines grabs Bud's attention. Because Dan and Richard say they want to find the woman that they saw that night and make sure she's okay. Maybe she can validate what they saw.

B (17:35)

Right after opening that piece of mail, Bud's on the phone with Linda. He reads her what they wrote, and she's completely shook. You'd think hearing someone else validate her story would help settle Linda's mind, but it does the complete opposite. Because now she can't write it off as a hallucination or a nightmare. Now it's real. And her life just keeps getting weirder from there. Because a few days later, she calls Bud in a panic. Dan and Richard, the two cops from the letter, they just showed up at her house.

A (18:15)

Once she gets over the initial shock, Linda tells Bud the following. It was late at night on February 19, 1991, when Linda got a knock at her apartment door. When she asked who it was, a voice simply responded, police. Not really what you'd hope to hear at 10 o' clock at night. But she looks through the peephole and she's surprised to find two men in street clothes. They show their badges and address her by name before introducing themselves as Richard and Dan. So she cautiously invites them into her apartment right off the bat. Linda, come on. We all know how Linda is. She is on guard. She decides Richard is the nicer of the two. He's tall, mid-50s, with graying red hair and a red complexion. He tries to put her at ease, telling her he's so sorry they witnessed her abduction but couldn't help her. Now Dan, on the other hand, is a bit more unsettling. He's thinner than Richard, with dark hair and olive skin, and immediately demands answers from her. He repeatedly asks how she floated into the sky, which gets Linda kind of heated. I mean, rightfully so. Put yourself in her shoes. Something so disturbing and traumatic has happened to you, and here's some guy demanding you explain how you did it yourself. The whole thing is so bizarre and the two men are so aggressive that Linda begins to wonder if they're cops at all. But she decides the best course of action is just to get them out of her living room.

B (20:06)

Linda refuses to talk about the encounter with them any further, encouraging them instead to call Bud so they can offer up their own memories of what happened that night. So after a very quick and strange visit, the two men go on their way. But Linda feels like she now has more questions than answers.

A (20:29)

Over the next few weeks, Bud gets more information from Richard and Dan. He gets a cassette tape in the mail with Richard's account of the abduction on it in his own words. And Dan sends a letter outlining his version of the events. Both seem to back up Linda's story, and like Linda, both men seem terrified. In his letter, Dan describes how he started sleeping with a sledgehammer in his bed in case alien beings show up in his apartment. And Richard supposedly starts putting a dummy in his bed and sleeping in another room. I mean, come on, we would probably do something similar. At the same time, Bud starts trying to track down the two men. He has a few friends in the nypd, so he calls in favors, hoping to find the pair of detectives who call themselves Richard and Dan. But this line goes nowhere. And Bud begins to wonder if Richard and Dan are really police or something else entirely. I don't know, maybe in the government.

B (21:43)

I mean, they like to cover things up, so it wouldn't surprise me just saying. As Bud's looking for them, they keep sending him more letters. On April 12, 1991, about two months after their visit to Linda, Bud gets another message from Richard. This time, Richard claims he has to come clean about a few things, like why they were there by Linda's apartment that night. Turns out, surprise, surprise, they are not cops after all. They were security guards. And they've been lying about other important details, like how on the night of November 30, 1989, there was a third man in their car with them. Richard describes this third man as a high profile person who they escort to speaking engagements around the world. That night, they were taking him to a helicopter. After a late night meeting, Their car suddenly died on FDR Drive right near Linda's apartment building and the Brooklyn Bridge. Turns out all three of the men observed Linda being taken away by aliens. Apparently, they hadn't come forward about the existence of the third man until now because of national security concerns. So, reading between the lines, it sounds like this guy is kind of a big deal. Maybe a foreign businessman here to strike an important deal. Or maybe a celebrity traveling on the DL.

A (23:13)

Bud even wonders if it's some kind of ambassador. That would explain The American guards, who aren't cops, but definitely have some kind of training. In fact, if the third man is a high profile diplomat from another country, then Richard and Dan maybe more than just ordinary security guards. They could be FBI, nsa, even CIA. In other words, possible spies. This news disturbs Bud, but not as much as the next call he gets from Linda. Because two weeks later, on April 29, 1991, he gets a free frenzied voicemail from her claiming Dan and Richard, the mysterious agents, just kidnapped her. On November 30, 1989, Linda Napolitano was seemingly abducted by Beans. But ever since, her problems were much more terrestrial. A year and a half later, she told UFO researcher Bud Hopkins that she'd been abducted again, only this time by humans. According to Linda, the event played out like this.

B (24:43)

Around 7:30 in the morning on April 29, 1991, Linda walked her son Johnny to his bus stop near their apartment. When she turned around, she saw who else but Richard? Richard asked her to go for a ride with him, but she refused. She turned to leave and Richard grabbed her by the arm and forced her over to a Mercedes sedan. Linda was fighting tooth and nail. She was hitting Richard, kicking him, trying to squirm out of his arms as best she could. She grabbed the roof of the car and went. Wouldn't let go. She was convinced that if she got inside that car, she might never come back. And that's when she realized Dan was with him and he was pulling her into the car from the inside. Eventually, the two men were able to force her into the vehicle and slam the door shut inside. Linda kept struggling, even trying to shoot them with a stun gun she carried in her bag. She finally stopped when Richard threatened to just knock her out. What followed was the most bizarre three hours of her life. Well, after getting abducted by literal aliens.

A (26:00)

Of course, Dan and Richard hammered her with questions. They asked if she was a government agent and demanded to know who she worked for. Dan even accused her of being an alien herself. At one point, they made her take her shoes off so they could check her feet. I guess to see if she was human. Mind you, this was all happening while they were driving around Manhattan. Finally, things started to calm down. Dan and Richard's questions finally turned back to the abduction itself. They wanted to compare notes to see if they all saw the same thing. Linda refused to tell them anything though, and just repeated that if they wanted to talk aliens, they could talk to Bud. Finally, after three and a half hours, they dropped Linda back off at her home. And that's when she called Bud and told him everything. A few days later, she went to Bud's house and under hypnosis, was able to remember a partial license plate with an unusual design. With just a bit of digging, Bud discovered a shocking new twist. The Mercedes Dan and Richard drove to kidnap Linda had diplomatic license plates.

B (27:26)

If Linda was scared before, she's beside herself now. Two men with who knows what top secret clearance just kidnapped her. If they work for the UN Then the mysterious third man is probably some high level diplomat. Which means there's a good chance they could do anything to Linda and basically get away with it. At this point, it feels like aliens are the least of Linda's problems.

A (27:54)

That's right. And two weeks after the abduction, she spots Richard again while shopping in lower Manhattan. Not wanting to take her chances, she races through the streets, hiding in cafes and parks with Richard in hot pursuit. She even gets hit by a car. But she just brushes herself off and keeps on moving. I mean, thankfully, she gets away. And for the next few months, it seems like Richard and Dan are done with her. Until one day in September when Bud gets another mysterious letter.

B (28:31)

This one is from Dan, the more aggressive of the two agents. And he has a new revelation for Bud. According to Dan, in the previous months, he, Richard and the third man have been recovering flashes of memories. So when they finally get the chance to see each other face to face, they write down what they're all recalling. They each place their sheets of paper down, and all three are instantly dumbstruck because on the papers, in three distinct handwritings are the same exact phrase. Lady of the Sands.

A (29:09)

Now, this might sound like a fantasy villain, but to Dan, Richard, and the third man, the name brings up all kinds of images. Slowly but surely, they realize that more happened to them on the night of Linda's abduction. They must have forgotten or had their memories stolen from them. Until now. One by one, they recall the same encounter. They're watching Linda floating away from her apartment window. Then suddenly, they're all on a beach. Linda and several small gray aliens are digging in the sand, carting it off in silver buckets. And Linda seems to be talking to the aliens in their own language. All of them see the phrase lady of the Sands flash across their minds. And then she approaches them, still wearing the white nightgown she was floating through the air in. She holds up a dead fish and tells them, look and see what you've done.

B (30:18)

That's all they remember before finding themselves once again inside their car on FDR Drive. What's wild is that days later, in another hypnosis session without any knowledge of Dan's letter, Linda recounts the exact same memories coming back to her, dead fish and all. Then, a month later, on October 15, 1991, Bud gets another desperate call from Linda. She says she's been kidnapped again, this time by just Dan, who seems to have gone off the deep end. She managed to get away and get home, so Bud tells her to come over immediately. When Linda arrives, she's a hot mess. Her hair is wet and salty. Her jeans are damp. San clings to her clothes. She's obviously in distress, and the story she tells is horrifying.

A (31:16)

That morning, she was out shopping in the seaport district in lower Manhattan when Dan caught her by surprise and forced her into a car. He drove them way out to Long island to a lonely beach, and dragged her inside a vacant summer cottage. The whole time, he was muttering about aliens and and accusing her of being part extraterrestrial. He went back and forth between calling her names, his voice dripping with hatred, and assaulting her by forcibly kissing her. At that point, she thought Dan was completely unhinged, and the best way for her to come out of this alive was just to keep him calm and play along. But then he pulled out a white nightgown and demanded she put it on. He claimed it was to make sure she really was the woman he saw floating above the Brooklyn Bridge. But she could see there was an unsettling sexual element to his request. What he gave her was closer to lingerie than a night dress. But again, wanting to keep him calm, afraid he might get violent, she agreed to put it on, but over her clothes.

B (32:37)

In a moment of distraction, she managed to break out of the house and run across the beach, only to be tackled by Dan. He smeared wet sand into her hair, demanding she start digging like she did with the aliens. Finally, at the last minute, an unlikely savior arrived. Richard. Richard was able to talk some sense into Dan and get him to let Linda go. Richard drove Linda home cold and wet, and that brought her up to where she was now shivering and sandy on Bud's couch. Thankfully, she was able to capture some of this encounter on a tape recorder she had with her.

A (33:20)

To Bud, this is just more evidence that Linda is a victim not only of an alien abduction, but a coordinated campaign of terror by a pair of rogue agents. And as time passes, he finds more proof that something strange is going on here. First, Richard sends him photos taken by Dan of Linda at the beach. In them, she's frightened out of her wits. And she's wearing a shoe. Sheer white nightgown over her clothes, just like she said. Then a few weeks after that kidnapping, Linda's cousin, a podiatrist, X rays Linda's head. Linda had gotten a sudden nosebleed in the night and just wanted to make sure nothing was wrong. The scan showed an otherworldly metal object in her nasal cavity. This wasn't the first time Linda had a doctor find something unexpected in her nose. Years ago, she woke up with a small bump on her nose, so she went to get it checked out. Back then, the doctors didn't find any alien device. They did see scars that look like they came from a scalpel. When they told Linda she was surprised, she'd never had surgery on her nose before. After Linda's cousin discovered this new object in her nasal cavity, Linda decided to get to the bottom of it. She booked an appointment a few days later to have the thing removed. But when the doctor examined her, he couldn't find it. The strange metal device just disappeared.

B (35:04)

Other witnesses also start contacting Bud. And it turns out nearly 20 different people claim to have seen Linda floating above the Brooklyn Bridge in 1989. And Bud receives even more letters from Richard. Now Richard's telling him he's starting to recall forgotten memories from his childhood and he's surprised to find Linda in them. According to Richard, witnessing the abduction awoke something in his subconscious. He even remembers being abducted himself as a child multiple times. And each time there's a little girl there who he knows is Linda. According to these letters, Richard and Linda have been meeting aboard spaceships for years. They were childhood playmates, adolescent crushes, and even had a whole romantic relationship. I mean, this is what he's saying. Richard even openly wonders If Linda's now 8 year old son Johnny might be his.

A (36:12)

Now that, that is a twist.

B (36:14)

This has gone off the deep end for me.

A (36:16)

But right altogether, Bud collects a pile of exceedingly bizarre stuff related to Linda's abduction case. So in 1997, he puts the whole thing in a book called Witnessed. He thinks by publishing the case, it'll blow the whole thing wide open. But in reality, nothing much happens. Bud's fans buy the book and a few more curious people. Linda gets on a few talk shows. But after a few years, the whole thing sort of dies down and the public is left with a bunch of questions without any real answers. Like what happened to Dan and Richard? Did aliens really abduct all these people? And why did they take Linda in the first place? The story of the Manhattan UFO abductions languishes for a few more years until it's brought back to life in 2024 with a documentary and a court case.

B (37:27)

In October 2024, Linda Napolitano files a lawsuit just days before a documentary about her airs on Netflix. The main target of her suit? The filmmakers and Carol Rainey, an interviewee, and Bud Hopkins ex wife. Why was Linda going after the filmmakers who put her story on the big screen? Well, according to her, it's just the latest attack in Carol Rainey's campaign to call her a liar. Carol died in 2023, but Linda filed suit against her estate. The Netflix documentary follows Linda through the events described in Bud Hawkins book. Since Bud passed away in 2011 before the series was ever filmed, Linda is the main focus. The doc uses interviews and archival footage to take viewers through her abduction, her harassment by Dan and Richard, and all the other strange things that happened to her. The Netflix series features Carol as a main voice, though not exactly a supportive one. In the documentary, Caril claims that Linda made the entire thing up.

A (38:43)

And Rasha, you and I both watched this Netflix series the other day, and in my humble opinion, I feel like Carol was definitely jealous of Linda. And I feel a lot. I feel that that's where that angst is coming from.

B (39:00)

It definitely seemed like it, for sure. I mean, we shouldn't speak ill of the dead.

A (39:04)

However.

B (39:05)

However, it didn't sit right with me, for sure.

A (39:08)

Yeah, and y' all just have to watch it, you know, to come to your own assumption of what you think happened. Right. So, I mean, it's hard to say what's fact, what's fiction, and what's pure ego. But there are a few things in Linda's story that made Caril believe this was all a hoax. Carol brings up the fact that almost all of the statements and witnesses came to Buddha through Linda, implying she may have put each of them up to it. In his book, Bud claims to have tracked down nearly 20 witnesses, but they all gave their accounts anonymously to Bud and couldn't be verified. Plus, Bud Hopkins never met Dan or Richard face to face. They only communicated through letters. And every time they told Bud about a new recollection, Linda recovered the same memory. Shortly after, when Bud and Linda finally tracked down the mysterious diplomat they called the third man, they couldn't get him to talk. According to Linda, the third man is Javier Perez de Cuellar, the former Secretary General of the United Nations. But Javier denies any knowledge or experience of alien abduction and calls Linda's allegations completely false. And there's another issue Carol highlights in the documentary. She's concerned with Bud's hypnosis methods. She believes Linda didn't act like other patients she'd seen under hypnosis. And she claims she was worried that Bud himself had lost sight of his goal. She says that he wanted so badly to believe he'd found proof of aliens, that he'd fed the delusions of a woman he should have known was unwell. I just have to put in my two cents here. You know, like I said earlier, we spoke about the documentary that we had both watched, and I do believe, in my humble opinion, that Carol was a bit jealous of Linda. What do you think, Raj?

B (41:27)

Yeah, I just can't get on board with everything that Carol said. It's very hard to discount Linda completely. After all, things happen every day that are stranger than fiction. Just because Linda's story has twists and turns, it doesn't mean that it's not true. And according to Bud, all the typewritten letters he received from Dan, Richard, the third man, and other witnesses were made on different machines. They all had different writing styles and voices. He believes there's no way every one of these letters were written by the same person. Plus, there are the tapes. Bud has recordings of both Richard and Dan provided by Linda. And each obviously has the voice of a different man. Men that Bud didn't think were acting. If Linda really was behind all of this, it's logical that the letters would sound similar or all come from the same machine. And unless Linda went out and hired actors, there's no way she could have faked the tapes from Dan and Richard. Then, of course, there's the physical evidence, like the X ray of Linda's head showing a strange object inside her nose. Or the photos of her frightened on the beach taken the same day she showed up damp, Sandy, and terrified at Bud Hopkins house.

A (42:52)

I mean, it would be very hard to believe that she hired a bunch of actors to do all of this.

B (42:59)

And the 20 witnesses? I mean, come on.

A (43:01)

It doesn't. That just does not add up. Anywho, as for Linda's part, I mean, she blames the whole thing on Carol, saying she's using Linda's case as an excuse to get even with her dead ex husband, Bud. But one of the worst parts of the whole thing, according to Linda, it's the wardrobe. Not only does Linda claim that Netflix and the filmmakers make her read from a script and misrepresent the story, she specifically mentions in her suit that she's suing them for dressing her in unflattering clothes, which made her look old, haggard, and make viewers question her credibility. It is so petty. But I can see why. In Linda's mind, she's already a victim of alien abduction and human kidnapping. She can't be a fashion victim, too. I'm just saying.

B (43:59)

I do think this is a part of the problem with alien abduction stories. It's our reluctance to believe something so out of the ordinary. But the truth is, there's a lot of things out there we have yet to and may never fully understand. Is it easier to say that Linda made the whole thing up? That she hired actors, paid witnesses, falsified documents and recorded fake tapes? Sure. Does it seem logical from a personal standpoint? Not really. Linda was a mother raising two boys in New York City in the late 1980s. She didn't try to publicize her account or try to make money off of was and is her story. To me, it seems far more likely that Linda's account was true. Or at least it was to her. And that alone is worth validating.

A (45:09)

This is so supernatural. An Audio Chuck original produced by Crime House. You can connect with us on Instagram @sosupernatural pod and visit our website at sosupernaturalpodcast.com join Rash and me next Friday for an all new episode. I think Chuck would approve.