Early on November 30, 1989, Linda Napolitano’s life took a dramatic and strange turn that still echoes within UFO circles today. Media coverage, films, and books have focused on the events of that evening—which she describes as being a horrific alien abduction—but the issue of whether they resulted from a real extraterrestrial contact or a clever deception is still unanswered.
The claimed abduction—a night of terror
Linda’s account starts with what appeared to be a normal evening at her New York apartment. She was fast awakened while sleeping next to her husband, Steve, and their two small children. Her following description has all the elements of a ghostly science fiction story: At the foot of her bed stood three tall, gray-skinned entities staring down at her from great black eyes. What she described as a bolt of electricity left her paralyzed and unable to move.
A “brilliant, bluish-white beam of light” poured through her window as she lay immobilized, pulling her off the ground and bringing her toward a UFO hovering over her apartment building. As the craft drew Linda upward, she said she could see the red glow. She remembers being taken all the way up, high over the structure. “The UFO opens and then I’m inside almost like a clam.”
Inside the craft, Linda spoke about a big room full of lights and buttons dominated by a long table. Standing in front of her, the three aliens fixed great attention on her. She said, expressing an intense terror, “I feel I can drown in their eyes.” Allegedly probed with a needle “the length of a turkey baster,” one of the entities seemed to intensify her anxiety.
But Linda’s memory blackened as soon as the torture started. She says she woke back in her apartment and, as though nothing had happened, lay next to her snoring spouse. Though Linda insisted it was real, the strange meeting sounded out of a pulp science fiction book.
Could They Have Seen the Abduction Too?
Linda’s story is especially interesting since it wasn’t only hers to tell. Other people saw the happenings of that night. Linda claimed to have seen at least 23 more people, including a bookkeeper and a newspaper delivery driver, floating out of an apartment window into a UFO. One eyewitness, a delivery driver on his way to work early that morning, claimed: “It shocked the heck out of me. I watched a woman vanish right out of a window.
Cathy Turner, a bookkeeper, also claimed to have seen an unusual, glowy object in the heavens that evening, characterizing it as “a big Christmas ball.” UFO researchers gave Turner’s evidence, along with the others, great weight and turned it into a key component of Linda’s narrative.
But the sightings did not end there. Linda started to believe she was being pursued by unidentified guys after the claimed kidnapping. Two tough guys knocked on her door one night, claiming to have seen her floating out of her bedroom window. Federal agents assigned to guard UN Secretary-General Javier Pérez de Cuéllar on the night of the claimed kidnapping introduced themselves as “Dan” and “Richard.” The men said even Pérez de Cuéllar himself had observed Linda being abducted by the UFO.
Budd Hopkins and the Dawn of the Abduction Phenomenon
One of the most well-known UFO investigators of the day, Budd Hopkins took note of Linda’s case. After Linda contacted Hopkins in 1989, he, who had been investigating alien abduction events for years, got quite involved in her account. Years before in the Catskill Mountains, Linda claimed to have had an alien encounter that left her with a weird thing under her skin.
Hopkins assumed Linda’s body contained such a gadget since he was already fascinated with the idea that aliens were tracking people using electric implants. Linda started to recall her 1989 incident as she attended support group sessions for other claimed abduction victims at Hopkins’ house. Hopkins thoroughly examined Linda’s story in his book Witnessed: The True Story of the Brooklyn Bridge UFO Abductions, interviewing the 23 witnesses who had claimed to have seen Linda that evening and the UFO.
To honor Linda’s privacy, her narrative was presented to the public under the alias “Linda Cortile,” and the names of the witnesses were likewise kept secret to save them possible embarrassment. One of the most often discussed UFO events of the 1990s since the case attracted media attention.
The Emerging Question: Allegations Made by Carol Rainey
Linda’s case attracted great doubt even with the general attention. Among these detractors, Carol Rainey, a director and ex-wife of Budd Hopkins, was most outspoken. Rainey had first backed Linda’s narrative and assisted Hopkins by shooting witness interviews. She grew, meantime, more dubious about the way the inquiry was taking over time. Rainey said Hopkins was losing his impartiality and Linda was basking in the attention, maybe even embellishing the specifics of her encounter for the limelight.
Rainey also called into doubt Hopkins’s acquired evidence’s integrity. She claimed that Hopkins had chosen to highlight just the most convincing facts of the case, therefore excluding other parts that would contradict Linda’s tale. An interview with a “witness” who had seen simply a brilliant light through her curtains—a detail that didn’t seem to fit the story of an alien abduction—was one important example Rainey noted.
As Linda started to assert that her young son, Johnny, had also been kidnapped by aliens while she remained motionless nearby, Rainey’s worries escalated. Rainey worried Linda might have coached Johnny to believe in the abduction event, therefore impacting him. Johnny disputed these allegations, although he acknowledged having a vivid dream as a young child that his mother believed might have been an actual abduction event.
The Netflix Documentary: A New Chapter in the Arguments
The Netflix documentary The Manhattan Alien Abduction examined Linda Napolitano’s claimed abduction account in 2024. The show takes an unexpected turn as Rainey charges Linda of staging the whole kidnapping narrative as a fabrication. Rainey claims Linda had invented the kidnapping and Hopkins had helped to advertise it for media coverage and book sales. Rainey’s assertions have generated debate particularly given Linda’s ongoing belief in the truthfulness of her experience.
The documentary is especially divisive since it presents Hopkins in a negative light and implies that he deliberately disregarded data contradicting the story. Rainey’s claims have great weight since she not only calls into doubt the integrity of the inquiry but also implies Linda’s participation with Hopkins was not totally professional. Indeed, some publications have conjectured that Linda and Hopkins might have had a romantic relationship, therefore adding a degree of personal drama to the case.
Now 77 and living in Soddy-Daisy, Tennessee, Linda fiercely disputes the assertions in the documentary. Arguing that they distorted her story for entertainment benefit and exposed her to public ridicule, she has sued Netflix and the documentary creators for slander. She believes that her treatment in the series defines the problem, not the truth of her kidnapping.
Although the new documentary casts major doubt on Linda’s tale, it has not totally disproved the view of those who still find her story credible. The story revolves mostly on the testimony of the 23 witnesses even with allegations of fabrication. These witnesses, who observed Linda in her nightgown drifting toward the UFO, are for some the most convincing bits of proof in the case.
Whether seen as a meticulously planned hoax or an amazing account of alien abduction, Linda Napolitano’s narrative still generates discussion and fascination. The unresolved issues concerning her meeting with extraterrestrials only heighten the mystery of one of the most often discussed UFO tales of the past few years. Linda’s remarkable story goes on for now as well as the mystery about whether the truth is weirder than fiction—or just fiction itself.
