Original subtitles

[distant sirens wail]

[dog barks]

[unsettling music plays]

[man 1] So, Carol.

Yes, sir?

[man 1] You said you wanted to hear what Linda said in her interview.

Okay.

[man 1] You still wanna do that? Are you sure?

Yes. I do want to hear it.

I expect it's gonna be vicious.

[Linda] Well, Carol Rainey,

you'd have to be a sociopath or a genius

to commit a hoax like this.

I am not a sociopath

nor am I ingenious.

[unsettling music plays]

I don't know about you, though.

- You are a disgruntled, bitchy ex-wife. - Wow.

And that's the true story, isn't it, Carol?

[unsettling music continues]

You lied. You did lie, and I will say you're a liar.

Are you proud of getting credit

for the great UFO case of the century?

[unsettling music builds]

[Linda] These aliens, these creatures,

if they want you,

they're gonna get you.

And I can tell you what happened to me.

[unsettling music continues]

[Linda] I slipped my shoes off and got into bed.

My 150,000-volt stun gun is on my night table.

And then I realize

I forgot to look behind the drapes.

[suspenseful music plays]

- [thud] - [Linda] Ah!

[eerie music plays]

[Linda] They keep getting closer and closer and closer.

Oh, I feel like electricity went through me.

I'm outside.

I'm standing up on nothing.

Witnesses have seen me levitate outside my window.

[man 2] This is New York City.

There were 23 witnesses.

[eerie music continues]

[man 2] I thought it was a movie. Special effects.

The view I had, it was this way.

[man 2] It would become the greatest abduction case ever seen.

This could turn out to be the single biggest story

in the history of humanity.

[man 2] Linda's life changed markedly.

Joining us now is Linda.

She says she's been abducted by extraterrestrials

right here in New York City.

People called her the Queen Bee because she got most of the attention.

[man 3] People hear this. Do they tell you you're nuts?

[Linda] I'll tell you, Jay. I wish I were psychotic.

At least there's treatment for that.

You had all the elements of a thriller.

[man 2] Linda had a sense that she was being observed.

And then she was fucking kidnapped.

[Linda] I need help.

You know I need help.

This has to stop.

We now have a child involved.

Are they gonna come back, and are they gonna do something worse?

To me, it began to seem almost too perfect.

How could Linda possibly be orchestrating this enormous hoax,

if that's what it is?

It was up there.

I picked up my camera, and I started filming everything.

How do we know what's real? How do we know what's true?

I will continue to ask questions to find out the truth, Linda.

And I won't stop doing that.

Bring it on.

[upbeat music plays]

[man 4] Human beings abducted by aliens from other planets.

Women being used by little gray men for sex experiments.

Are aliens examining people on Earth, even conducting genetic experiments on us?

Well, my next guest says yes.

Please welcome Budd Hopkins.

♪ Your own personal Jesus… ♪

[Budd] The existence of an extraordinary phenomenon

demands an extraordinary investigation.

♪ Reach out and touch faith ♪

- [music fades out] - [telephone rings]

Hello?

Uh, can't come to the phone now. Um, can I take a message?

[man 2] When I first started to work for Budd, I did what needed to be done.

At times, it was very exciting. I mean, my gosh. What were we involved in?

[Budd] We don't know where they come from or what they are,

but we know that they're not some kind of earthbound technology.

[Peter] He was looking into claims that aliens were taking human beings.

[Budd] So we'll have to assume the possibility of life elsewhere.

[Peter] These people were being floated through…

hard objects.

Windows, ceilings, brick walls.

It didn't matter.

[Budd] Are these people making it up? Are they lying?

What kind of evidence is there?

I just knew this was important work

and that the small things I was doing

in the service of a real pioneer in this work

were gonna make a difference.

[woman] You feel good?

- It's all right. - [woman] All right.

[Peter] The first time I met Carol was at the studio.

All right, I think we're ready.

[Peter] All I knew was what Budd told me.

He had met the woman that he was attracted to.

She seemed personable, smart, inquisitive,

but I guess, behind it, guarded in some way.

[eerie music plays]

[Carol] Before I met Budd, I was a UFO virgin.

I had really almost no reason to understand what they were

other than some mythical thing.

[eerie music continues]

[Carol] I made films about science.

I knew what the scientific method was. I knew what good evidence was.

I think I was always, by nature, a little skeptical.

And I was very much loving being single.

I was not looking for a husband.

But then there was the factor of Budd Hopkins.

He said, "Come to New York and live with me,

and I will support you."

[music fades]

[Carol] And it was UFOs 24/7.

[lively orchestral music plays]

[Carol] The house was an open house.

There were usually people in and out all the time.

He's not.

It was hard to sleep or cook or do anything

if there was a support group meeting for alien abductees

in the front room.

You started to say how you felt when you were a kid.

Something otherworldly happened to me.

I mean, the most incredible patterns and colors that…

I mean, I see them in my mind, but I have no words for them.

[Peter] It was completely Budd's idea.

Why don't we bring some of these people together

and see if they can get value from each other's experience

and some validation?

It is a subject that you don't even speak to your family about.

But you can speak to these people openly

and know that they will believe you.

We all felt something happened to us,

and we in that room could talk about it… openly,

without criticism, without shame, without feeling crazy.

We saw Budd as someone who could give us answers to the puzzle.

There'd always be a break

with cookies and coffee and that kind of thing.

Then we'd go back again.

The big question is, why me?

Most people were reporting that something nonhuman

was coming into their home,

performing all kinds of medical experiments,

and then returning them without memory.

- [breathes heavily] - Tell me what's happening.

- I'm on a table. - [Budd] Mm-hmm.

[John] And one of the ways to recover those memories

is through hypnosis.

- My hands… - [Budd] Okay.

They're vibrating. Do you feel 'em?

- [Budd] I can feel vibrating. - You feel 'em?

Oh, they're having yellow eyes.

- They're having yellow eyes? - Yes.

[cries] They're all so ugly. No.

[Carol] Fairly quickly, I understood that Budd got most of his information

through hypnosis sessions.

[softly] It's coming from outside.

[Carol] I wanted to know how is it that so many people

felt they had had these intense experiences?

My whole fucking life they've been fucking with me.

- Let me sit up. - [Budd] Yeah, sit up.

If I don't, I'm gonna…

[Carol] So I decided to use my camera to explore this very interesting phenomenon.

I wanted to start understanding my husband,

his research and his methodology.

Yeah. Do I look at you or into the camera?

- [Carol] No, me. - Okay.

[Carol] And so I asked Budd to regress me,

just so that I would know what it was like.

[tense music plays]

[Carol] Gradually, as he moved me back in time,

unbelievably, I had this amazing recollection

that I was falling back into my childhood.

Traumatic images, traumatic memories, circling back around.

Those are things I'd not thought about for a long time,

and there they were.

And that frightened me.

[Peter] I learned through Budd

that she had grown up in a very strict, fundamentalist Christian family.

I would characterize the beliefs as cult-like.

[man 1] What were those traumatic memories?

I promised not to talk about that.

I… I don't think I should.

[John gasps]

It's okay. Lie down.

You're okay, John. Lie down. Close your eyes. Close your eyes. Lie down.

Budd would take us back to that place, that time.

The stuff that started coming out was a shock to me.

[whimpers]

I don't wanna see these things.

The UFO was shaped

like a flattened football.

Silver.

Glowing.

And on my front porch was a half a dozen of these things.

[exhales, clears throat]

They were waiting for me.

[Budd] What's happening, John?

They're doing something in my nose.

[whimpers] I can't move.

[cries] He's doing something in my nose, and I can't move.

And the first thing they did was grab something from above,

like a wand, a silver stick, that had something on the end of it,

a little tiny thing on the end of it.

And they inserted that in my nostril.

And I heard a crunch.

I heard the bone go… [imitates bone crunching]

[groans]

[Budd] We have many, many, many, many reports

where people describe a needle going up the nostril,

and it has a little object on the end,

and we have reason to believe that this is some kind of implant.

[Carol] Budd believed that he understood the basic idea

of what alien abduction was about.

They were trying to track us.

The aliens were doing the same thing to us that we did to lower-level beings.

[uneasy music plays]

[Carol] They were surveying humankind and intruding in their lives

in the same way that we intrude into the lives of wildlife

that we want to track and follow.

You know, we put implants in them

and we track where the animals go

and when they reproduce and what they eat.

We can track a lot of things just through an electronic implant.

[uneasy music continues]

[Carol] Budd believed that it was the endgame times.

That these much more intelligent beings

were coming in to take us away, touch us, tag us, and then return us.

I saw Budd as the apostle crying in the wilderness,

you know, that danger was right overhead.

[tense music plays]

[Carol] And that the human race should be aware that this was happening

and they could come in and conquer the planet.

[tense music continues]

[audience jeers]

[Budd] Okay.

They can boo, but they don't know the facts.

[John] Budd needed a way

to raise the public's attention about the phenomenon.

And when he was booked for an engagement, he would take me with him.

We're, uh, talking today to people

who believe that they were abducted by aliens.

[John] Everything we said, everything we were trying to communicate,

was being dismissed out of hand.

"This can't be happening. They're making it up."

First, I have the experiences.

Then, when I go to people with it, we get whacked again and get laughed at.

I will never again recommend anyone that I care about

to go on a show like this, ever again.

[uneasy music plays]

[Peter] It's such an outsider subject

that people who take it seriously

are seen as social outcasts, as eccentrics, as cranks.

You've opened yourself up to the world of ridicule, wholesale.

So you're looking for the case.

A case with evidence.

Witnesses that will convince people,

"My God, this is really happening."

[mysterious music plays]

[Peter] And then there came a time when we got a letter.

It was from this woman in Lower Manhattan.

[Linda] "I am a 41-year-old wife and mother."

"I came across your book about alien abductions,

but I only read a portion of it, and then I had to put it down."

"I felt overwhelmed with fear,

simply because the pieces of a puzzle may have come together."

I said to myself, "That happened to me."

"One weekend, my husband and I, we went to the Catskills,

and we had a wonderful time."

"And one night, it was time to go to sleep,

so I… I got into bed."

"I closed my eyes."

[tense music plays]

[Linda] "I felt that I had a dream."

[tense music continues]

[Linda] "I was levitating in the air."

"It was a very strange feeling."

"The following morning, I found myself laying on the grass."

"Waking up and not knowing w… where I was."

"And I had a very bad nosebleed."

"The blood was streaming out of one nostril,

and it was the right side."

"It tasted sort of metallic."

"To tell you the truth, I don't remember much of anything."

"Only the strong feeling

that there is much more than meets the eye."

"I feel as though there is something buried in my mind,

and I just can't remember it."

[cats yowl]

"Whatever happened to me,

I wouldn't wish it on a cockroach."

"Sincerely, Linda Napolitano."

[swing music plays]

♪ Amore, dolce amore ♪

♪ Tells of sweet love That I have for you ♪

♪ My daydreams are full Of the memories I treasure with you… ♪

[Linda] Two or three days later, I get a phone call.

"Budd Hopkins here."

So I says to him, "You're calling me?"

So he says, "Yes, your letter was very interesting."

"I'd like to make arrangements so we could meet."

And I said to myself,

"I'll bet you he thinks I was kidnapped by aliens."

It doesn't help us to worry about it. Whatever it is, it isn't good.

I'm an investigator, you know.

Objectively trying to find out what happened.

[Carol] Budd was very, very taken with Linda.

He described her as being an attractive woman in her forties,

who was a wife and a mother.

Italian American. Very.

He believed that she was very, very credible

and that she'd been traumatized.

[suspenseful music plays]

[Carol] We met for tea, and we just chatted for a while,

and I think we liked each other.

[laughs]

[Carol] Linda was a natural in front of the camera.

She enjoyed it. She played to the camera.

You know, had her hair just right and clothes just right.

[man sings indistinctly]

[Carol] Only person I ever met who drinks coffee out of a straw.

Oh yeah. It's better that way.

- It doesn't stain the teeth. - [Carol] Oh.

[Carol] She was spunky. She had spirit. In that way, she was a good subject.

Put it between my two front teeth.

[Linda] I don't know why she was filming me.

I don't know if she was doing it for herself

or doing it for Budd Hopkins, her husband.

She told me she was a producer, so I took her word for it.

[Carol] So you know what I'm gonna do? I'm just gonna start shooting.

And, um, what I'm interested in is the beginning of your story.

[Linda] Well, when my first son was born, uh, we were taking photographs.

But I noticed in every photograph, uh, my nose looked crooked.

I'd never had a crooked nose before, and there was a lump on my nose.

Right here.

I saw that Linda was very bothered by a lump in her nose.

If I had a lump in my nose, I'd be disturbed too.

But it terrified me. I says, "It could be a tumor."

And it's right in the middle of my face.

- [tense music plays] - [TV] …Washington or Oregon.

Sixties all the way through Washington, D.C…

[Linda] I told my husband all about it.

[TV] …gets wet by Monday…

[Linda] He didn't like it. Not at all.

[man 5] She was scared, you know.

So I caress and… and I kiss,

and, uh, I say, "Don't worry about it. Everything is gonna be okay."

[Linda] He said, "Listen to me. You need to get your nose X-rayed."

And so that's what I did.

I went to the doctor. He examined me,

and, uh, he says, "You had nose surgery."

On the wall of my nose.

So I said, "I never had surgery before."

He says, "You have a scar."

So I says, you know, "Maybe I'd scratched it."

He said, "No."

He says, "The scar was made with a scalpel."

[Budd] We have many, many reports

where people describe a needle going up the nostril.

And we have reason to believe that this is some kind of an implant.

It scared the shit out of me.

[sinister music plays]

[Linda] I looked at the X-ray,

and I said, "What is that?"

Did one of those buggers put a contraption up my nose?

[uneasy music plays]

[Linda] So then I called Budd Hopkins.

He looked at it for a long while.

He was surprised to see it.

He'd never seen anything like that before.

[Budd] Linda came out to see you, is that right?

- [doctor] About this bump in her nose. - [Budd] Yeah.

- [doctor] I said, "Let's X-ray it." - [Budd] You're an MD? You do surgery?

[doctor] Yeah. I read the X-ray and I noted,

you know, a foreign body in the nasal cavity.

[Budd] Did you show that to Linda at the time?

[doctor] Uh, yeah. She was upset.

Well, I hope this helped you.

- [Budd] It certainly does. - [doctor] If you have any other questions…

[Budd] Okay, and you wouldn't have any objection

to signing an affidavit or anything like that?

[doctor] No.

[Budd] Your name wouldn't be used, just so I can--

[doctor] That's fine.

I have no problem standing behind what I did.

Okay. Bye-bye.

[Carol] The X-ray was very exciting to Budd.

[Budd] Next slide, please.

An X-ray was finally taken. This object turned up.

[applause]

[unsettling music plays]

He called it the radiological smoking gun,

which would reveal the reality of UFO abductions.

A giant discovery like that, who wouldn't want to be in on it?

I wanted to be in on it… if there was anything to it.

[unsettling music continues]

Son of a bitch.

That day stands out for me. That X-ray.

All of a sudden, you are presented with

hard, real-world, three-dimensional evidence.

This took the case to a different level.

[unsettling music continues]

[Peter] And then something happened that was so unexpected,

it changed everything.

[tense music plays]

[telephone rings]

- [Linday] Hello? - [Budd] Linda?

[Linda] Hi, Budd. I gotta get outta here before Steve gets home with the kids.

I don't want 'em to see me this way.

[Peter] I had come into work,

and I remember Linda called Budd

to say that she might've been taken the night before.

[Budd] Oh, Linda, tell… God, tell me what happened.

[Linda] I'm sitting in… in my…

I'm sitting in my bed, and I'm really scared.

[Budd] Oh, Linda.

[Linda] And I… I don't know. The whole thing is just strange.

[Budd] God, listen. Come on over.

[Linda] Okay. I'm freshening up my makeup, and then I'm gonna leave.

[Budd] Okay, just right away. Okay, Linda. Get off the phone. Come on over.

- Okay? - [Linda] Okay.

[Budd] Okay. Okay. Bye-bye.

[Peter] This call from Linda stood out for Budd, no question about it.

It was very exciting.

This is New York City.

There are always people up somewhere.

My God, people must've seen this.

We might have a situation here that was witnessed.

[Linda whimpers]

[Peter] She came into the studio

and agreed to do an hypnotic regression around this with Budd.

[sniffs, cries]

[unsettling music plays]

[Budd] Every dream or memory or event has a beginning. And they inserted that in my nostril.

And they inserted that in my nostril.

And they inserted that in my nostril. When I count to three, that moment will start.

And they inserted that in my nostril.

And they inserted that in my nostril. One. You're lying in bed.

And they inserted that in my nostril.

Two. Right on the edge now.

Three.

[unsettling music swells]

[tense music plays]

[Budd] What's the very first thing that seems to be different?

[Linda] I'm afraid of that thing.

[unsettling music plays]

[Linda] They keep getting closer and closer and closer.

[electricity crackles]

[unsettling music continues]

Oh. Oh, I feel like electricity went through me.

I can't see.

I… I can't see anything.

[woman] Ten-four. We have a total blackout at the moment.

[indistinct radio chatter]

[man] Power's out on Fourth.

[indistinct radio chatter]

[indistinct radio chatter]

[sirens wail]

I sense something.

I feel a numbness crawl up from my toes.

[voice breaking] There's someone in the room!

[tense music plays]

[Linda] Ah!

[body thuds]

[ominous music plays]

I don't wanna go.

But I'm going.

[Linda] I'm outside.

It's weird.

I'm standing up on nothing.

And they take me up, all the way up.

It opens almost like a clam.

[unsettling music plays]

I'm looking up into a volcano.

And then I'm inside.

[unsettling music intensifies]

[Linda] I'm gonna shut my eyes.

I'm gonna shut my eyes. I don't wanna see.

What are they gonna do to me?

They're gonna kill me.

What do you want from me?

[Budd] One. We're gonna move back. We're gonna end all this.

Two. We're moving back now. You're not dying.

- Three. - [music stops abruptly]

[reels squeak]

[gentle music plays]

[Carol] I didn't know what to believe.

I didn't know what was real. I didn't know what was fantasy.

It was beyond bizarre.

But was there any evidence that this thing had actually happened?

[Peter] You need witnesses.

You're nothing without people having the courage to come forward.

Witnesses are what it's all built on.

Everybody's afraid to come forward.

[telephone rings]

This is Budd Hopkins.

And then the first one came forward.

[woman 1] I don't believe in, uh, flying saucers, but it was a clear view.

It was, uh, glowing, shiny.

I just kept staring at it.

We had somebody.

And then the second witness came forward.

I had to stare at it for at least two minutes.

And then the third witness.

[man 6] I saw the woman in a white gown coming out a window.

[Peter] Then the fourth.

- [man 7] I thought it was a movie. - [Budd] Yeah.

- Special effects. - [Budd] Yeah.

[Peter] Then the fifth.

[woman 2] We were scared. We didn't know what was going on.

- There are other people that saw it? - [Budd] Yes, there are.

[Peter] There were 23 witnesses.

They didn't know each other,

but they were all reporting the same thing.

And now you're on to something important.

You're building a case around the seemingly impossible,

like an attorney or a cop.

You follow the evidence where it goes.

It would become the most compelling abduction case

that I had ever been involved in.

We were in territory that none of us had ever been in before.

You know, I'm sure there's gonna be people out there watching this film,

sitting on their couches, eating popcorn,

laughing their heads off, and saying, "Now, that one, that one is loony."

Well, fine.

What should I care what morons think of me?

[unsettling music plays]

[Linda] Because this alien abduction made my life miserable.

Not only because of what happened to me.

It was what happened afterwards.

My guest today fears her family will be in danger

if she reveals her identity.

[unsettling music plays]

[Linda] "Mommy," he says, "They're here."

We now have a child involved.

Are they gonna come back, and are they gonna do something worse?

[man 8] As a kid, you don't know what to think.

You hope and pray that it's a nightmare.

The government has lied about UFO information

and even spied on UFO witnesses.

[Linda] Oh God. He's coming.

It just kept getting wilder and crazier.

[Peter] Then she was fucking kidnapped.

[Linda] Help! Help!

Where was this leading to?

[suspenseful music plays]

This case, this woman…

and where it was gonna go, who knew?

[unsettling music plays]

[music fades]