Linda Napolitano Had 23 Corroborating Witnesses—The Real Story Behind The Manhattan Alien Abduction
The Manhattan Alien Abduction docuseries is now on Netflix, and with it, there’s been a renewed interest in the story of Linda Napolitano. Napolitano claims that in 1989 she was abducted out of her 12th-floor Manhattan apartment by three extraterrestrial beings. The three beings then beamed her to their spaceship hovering nearby, performed experiments on her, and then returned her to her bedroom.
In the docuseries, the story is presented both from the point of view of people who believe Napolitano’s tale and from the point of view of people who don’t—notably Carol Rainey, the ex-wife of Budd Hopkins, a prominent ufologist who wrote a book titled Witnessed: The True Story of the Brooklyn Bridge Abduction. Raines’ involvement in the documentary has caused pushback from Napolitano, who went on to sue Netflix because of it.
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But what is the real story behind The Manhattan Alien Abduction? Is there any proof Napolitano’s story is real?
Is The Manhattan Alien Abduction real?
According to Linda Napolitano, it is. The Manhattan Alien Abduction docuseries takes a more skeptical approach as it presents her story, however. Or, at the very least, it presents both Napolitano’s side of the story and that of Carol Rainey, who claims Napolitano “made it up.” It’s important to note that Rainey’s ex-husband, Budd Hopkins, believed Napolitano completely and his book very much supports Napolitano’s theory of what happened the night of her abduction.
In the end, the truth behind The Manhattan Alien Abduction is left for viewers to decide, but the facts are as follows: The reason Napolitano’s case was always so strong was that Hopkins’s book claimed 23 witnesses came forward to confirm having seen her floating through the sky on the night of November 30, 1989. “If I was hallucinating,” Napolitano told Vanity Fair in a 2013 interview, “then the witnesses saw my hallucination. That sounds crazier than the whole abduction phenomenon.”
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None of Napolitano’s witnesses has ever been verified, however. The two most compelling testimonies, from two security officers who claimed to be guarding then-UN Secretary-General Javier Pérez de Cuéllar, were provided to Hopkins exclusively by letter. Cuéllar himself denied having any knowledge or experience with alien abductions, telling PBS in a statement that “I cannot but strongly deny the claim that I have had an abduction experience at any time,” and adding. “On several occasions, when questioned about that matter, I reiterated that these allegations were completely false and I hope that this statement will definitely put an end to these unfounded rumors.”
“Budd cherry-picked compelling details but ignored anything that presented difficult questions,” Rainey says in the documentary.
Napolitano, to this day, insists the abduction happened. Not just that, she claims the Netflix documentary presents Carol Rainey, the one person who has the most compelling argument against the abduction, as an “expert in the field” when she is instead an “embittered, alcoholic ex-wife hell-bent on revenge against her husband.”
