32.17 - MU Podcast - Seduced by Strangeness
01:34:43 Share

Welcome to Mysterious Universe, Season 32, Episode 17. Coming up on the show, we've got the cross-dressing gas panics, the Manhattan abductions, and the pressure to deliver high strangeness. I'm

I'm your host, Benjamin Grundy. Joining me is Aaron Wright. Are you referring to your role in this job every single week? Yeah, there's a criticism of some of the peak UFO abduction researchers in the kind of mid-2000s, early 2000s. One of the criticisms was that they...

whether knowingly or not, have this pressure to deliver on the weirdness. Yeah, you know what? I've heard about this. And what this actually relates to was you've got, you know, large UFO research organizations. Look, I don't begrudge them because they have to make funding somehow, right? They've got to, it's not, and it's not a big business for making money, right? There's no big UFO that's letting you, you know, make some money out of this.

But I noticed that it was like when all these television programs started gaining popularity in the early 2000s, you had these UFO research organizations, which actually acted as like story books.

Yeah, story farm. They would go out and they would push witnesses harder and harder and harder, which actually caused a pushback from people that were reporting their experiences. And it all kind of collapsed in upon itself. It's changed now. This comes up because we're going to be talking about Bud Hopkins on this episode, of course. A brilliant researcher. Was the legendary UFO abduction researcher who some have credited as, well,

creating the field of UFO abductions, which I don't think is fair to say that, but he was one of the first to gather so many of these reports. He was one of the first to publish them en masse and reveal the patterns that emerged in these reports of people that believe they've been abducted by aliens. Well, don't quote me directly, but I believe even he was Yvonne Smith's mentor for a period of time, and she's an excellent researcher. He inspired John Mack. Right. He inspired a bunch of the researchers that followed, and

He's come up in the news this week. He passed away years ago, but there's a new documentary that's just launched on Netflix. It's called The Manhattan Alien Abduction. And this is based on what Bud called the most important UFO abduction case of all time. Yeah, I agree with him.

It really stood out, this case. I remember this case because it was, I don't know, you'll get into it, but obviously, allegedly, it was witnessed by two police officers that a woman was being abducted out of her high-rise apartment in New York City. Well, ultimately, this was all revealed in a book that came out, I think this was 19... No, no, it must have been the early 2000s this came out. Witnessed the true story of the Brooklyn Bridge UFO abductions. When was it? Was it 2000?

Was it 2000? It's got to be earlier than that. First edition was 1996. There you go. So the abductions took place in 1989. And as you said, yeah, there were two supposedly credible witnesses. And ultimately, there went on to be nearly 30 eyewitnesses to this abduction, which again, I'll get into. But this Netflix documentary that appeared this week features Hopkins' ex-wife. Oh. Carol Rainey, her name is. Yep.

And I might just play you some of the trailer here. Let's take a quick listen. They saw me hanging outside my window in a beam of light. There were 23 witnesses. I thought it was a move. Special effects. I don't know why they're keeping it from the public, but we're not alone. It would become the greatest abduction case ever seen.

There's the quote. But was there any evidence that this thing had actually happened? So that's his wife. That's his ex-wife. Right. I moved to Manhattan to make a film about alien abduction with my husband, Bud Hopkins. The existence of an extraordinary phenomenon demands an extraordinary investigation.

Bud believed that she was very, very credible and the audience loved her. When people hear this, do they tell you you're nuts? I'll tell you, Jay, I wish I were a psychotic. At least there's treatment for that. Linda is simply telling the truth. It's as easy as that. She was pulling the wool over Bud's eyes. How could she say the things she said?

So that's the woman that was abducted. I like how they zoom in on her sociopath face.

I'm starting to get panicked. No, but you can't. Obviously, we're going to get into it. But I don't believe... I'll pause it there. Go ahead. I don't believe that you can accuse someone of pulling the wool over Bud Hopkins' eyes when you have, what was it there? Almost 30 witnesses, eyewitnesses? Yeah, you're right. We will get into this. And I think it's telling that she's been framed a certain way, obviously, in this documentary. And we can see this because...

She's suing. Linda Napolitano is her name, and she's now suing Netflix over this documentary. She claims she's been set up. So we're going to go through-

By the creators of the documentary and by Bart Hopkins' ex-wife, Carol Rainey. So we're going to be going through the story today. I'm going to take you through the ins and outs. We're going to retell it and re-examine it in light of the new information that's come forward. What have you got coming up? Jeez, the waters are muddy though in the UFO field. Before I get into what I'm going into, the waters are muddy. And in fact, maybe that will be something which is highlighted in the plus extension later on in the show because-

I want to return to the story of the Mad Gasser of Mattoon. If you're not familiar with this, I mean, many people are. No, never heard of it? Never gone across it? Yeah, okay. Well, then I will re-describe that for you. But essentially, this has been written off by many as being some type of hysteria that occurred, a mass psychosis hysteria where back in the 1940s, people claimed that they were being gassed in their homes by some vague, strange figure that people would get fleeting glimpses of.

But then there are all these high strangeness paranormal elements that are connected to the story. You've got, you know, this Spring Hill Jack style entity, which is being seen in some cases. You've got high strangeness occurring. You've got men in black type figures showing up. But really, apparently it was done by a very angry homosexual chemist. I love that you've cracked the case.

Just an angry gay. Just an angry gay, which I'll get back to, which I'll get back to. But actually, I'm really interested in this because I don't think that's the complete answer. I think it might explain some of it. Sure. But in fact, there was a flap that actually had occurred in Virginia in the prior decades that was very similar, but also had a high collection of strange things.

very paranormal reports connected to it. So we're going to go into that and see how far we get and kind of muddy the waters there as well and see where we end up. But let's jump into Bud Hopkins. Okay, yeah, re-examining a couple of classics on this episode. So yes, this is the Manhattan Abductions. And as I said, it was revealed in 1996 by the legendary Bud Hopkins editor

And, you know, with eyewitnesses he interviewed over the years, he would often like to hypnotically regress them. Well, that's part of the issue with this, though, where skeptics come in or people that are critical of it is that, you know, a significant amount of regression hypnosis was used. And people jump on that and they say, well, it's like because you're having regression hypnosis, you could be under the spell of the hypnotist. Yeah, that's right. I mean, it's fair to say.

criticize that particular method of gathering information. But I mean, we've got to also understand that for many of these people, it's the only way to get this information. They have fragments of memories that seem to come through. They know that something's happened to them. Often they have physical evidence left behind and

but it's the nature of the human mind is there's these entities. If this is really happening to these people, these entities seem to have an ability to bury these experiences deep within the subconscious or that. And so I don't think we should be that critical of the hypnotic method because it is just one of the few tools that we have. Well,

Well, that- If this force is real. Yeah. And the other possibility here is that the entities themselves are somehow screening those memories. Right. Exactly. So Hopkins saw a pattern emerge of technically sophisticated visitors in these expeditions.

experiences that were coming forward. They were practicing, as we know, some kind of genetic engineering program, crossbreeding with humans, it seemed. They were trying to create hybrids. We know the outline of the program. So he was hugely influential. Whitley Streber was the other high-profile individual that was massively influenced by Bart Hopkins, along with John Mack, the Harvard psychiatrist. So he wrote four books on the subject. As I said, Witnessed was in 1996.

probably his most bombastic, crazy story as we're going to get into. It was on a single case, this book. And...

Bud would go on to claim that this case was the most important UFO abduction case in history. So, yeah, when I saw this Netflix documentary being announced, the Manhattan alien abduction, I thought, yeah, perfect time to revisit this. Because as I said, Carol Rainey, his ex-wife, was featured heavily. And it's notable because after they divorced, didn't take her long before she was writing some hit pieces about Bud and his methods. Yeah.

And she was working on her own documentary, which I'm not sure if it ever got off the ground. There's a couple of rough cuts, which I'll play for you later on in the show. But it seems as though the Netflix producers...

Yes, but is it a case of hell hath no fury, like a woman UFO researcher scorned? Is that kind of what's occurring? You do get a sense of that. We'll get into that. The

The main thrust of it, of course, is the obvious narrative of the abduction of this woman from New York, Linda Napolitano, although she had a pseudonym in the original story, but her real name's Linda Napolitano. So again, she's suing the producers of this documentary. It kind of sets it up as two sides of the story and the viewers left to ultimately decide, obviously, who's more believable.

Before we get to Carol and her side of the story, Bud Hopkins' ex-wife, let's go through the abduction. Let's go through the story. Well, you know why this case stands out so much? The fact that Bud Hopkins is proclaiming that this is so important to the ufological field. It's also because it's that one story that was kind of getting to the height of where

The whole abduction phenomenon was, it's always been there probably from the late 80s, but it really kind of heated up in that following decade. But on top of that, it took it from being that people were being abducted from isolated homesteads on rural farms.

farm locations, you know, with being home by themselves to people being abducted in a busy city with a whole heap of people around on the 30th floor of a building. It probably wasn't that high, but high enough, right? You're right. Yeah. The fear that would come from that of, hang on a second. Anyone's vulnerable. Anyone could be taken at any time, anywhere. So Linda, her name was Cortile, that was her pseudonym in the original book.

Again, Napolitano is her name. She's fast asleep on her 12th floor apartment on Manhattan's Lower East Side. This is back on November the 30th, 1989. And she's right across from the Brooklyn Bridge. It's around 3 a.m. and she's startled awake. And there at the foot of her bed stand several figures, you know, the usual suspects, right? She's immediately terrified. She knows that her apartment is locked up. Their doors are locked. How can these people be in her home? They're gray forms, right?

Yeah, we, well, she doesn't immediately recall what they look like until later, but she tries to wake up her husband who's sleeping next to her. And for some reason he will not wake up, which again is part of this typical pattern of these stories. She screams at him. He still doesn't wake up.

And she's eventually paralyzed. She can only kind of move her eyes and move her head. She feels herself lift up from the bed, float through the apartment wall, and she's now hovering outside the streets of Manhattan, surrounded by blue light. She's 12 stories up. And her and the strange figures are lifted into a waiting circular craft that's above them.

Inside the craft, Linda is led down a hallway lined with benches. She's guided into a brightly lit room. Again, we know the story. And she's placed on a long metallic table under these strange lights. And she's obviously terrified beyond words. Now she feels a sharp sensation as a medical instrument is inserted into her nose.

And the typical pattern proceeds. At one point, because she's screaming, one of her creatures starts caressing her cheek, telling her it's okay. This is only a quick visit. Moments later, she wakes up in her bed. Her husband and children are deeply asleep. And she tried to shake them awake to tell them what had happened. But for some reason, they still would not wake up, even her children. So was it still nighttime? Yeah. Earlier that year,

Linda had actually read Bart Hopkins' earlier book, Intruders, The Incredible Visitations of Copley Woods.

And Linda knew of his dedication to supporting people that had gone through this. So it wasn't like she was completely unaware of the whole alien abduction scenario. And that falls into some of the criticism that it's somehow pre-experience. She reads this book and then she has the same experience. I know that's the criticism, but at the same time, it's like the abduction scenario, you can always make that criticism. You can always say that, well, everyone's stories are the same. That's what makes it compelling.

That's what makes it interesting. If everyone and their doc had some crazy story that was completely different and there was no pattern at all, why would you care? Yeah, it's more likely to be a hallucination. It does lend to the idea that they're copying each other.

But it also lends to the idea that maybe these experiences are real. Well, it bothers me as well in the sense that we talk about the hitchhiker effect where you have, you know, it's kind of been coined from the Skinwalker Ranch, but other interdimensional locations like the Blind Frog Ranch and, you know, this phenomenon of following people home. But it's almost the same, I think, in this. It's like she read Bud Hopkins' book and somehow that lit her up to these entities.

It's like, I don't, obviously that wasn't Bud Hopkins intention. Well, if you listen to her, I don't know if I've got it in this footage coming up, but she describes that she only read one chapter. Really? She didn't even read the whole book. That's what she claims. Not even once, Ben. He is. So she reads out, she reaches out to Bud Hopkins because she knows he's in New York and she knows that he can help her.

And she just wants to make sense of the whole experience. I've got a bit of footage of her here explaining what happened. Let's take a listen. When I opened up my eyes before I threw that pillow, this thing was standing at the foot of my bed. Do you know what that's like? No, what's it like? Well, we put locks on our doors to keep outsiders from coming in. How did that thing get in my apartment? And it was standing there, chomping.

- I was horrified. - What did it look like? - I tell you the truth, as God is my witness, I thought I was gonna have a heart attack.

and I have a good heart. These people took me, and they were your classic greys, you know, with the large heads and the big black shiny eyes. I don't remember a nose, but they had slits for mouths, long necks, real thin. They were about my size at the time, maybe taller. Now, are those related to the images that you saw in Intruders or any other books that you've read?

I'd only read "Intruders." But even when I read that one chapter, I really couldn't make out what it was. But when I went back and looked through Bud's earlier book, "Intruders," you could find all the ingredients of Linda's experience: the alien look, the eyes, the fragility. On page 14 of chapter 1, Kathy Davis describes the figures as having large heads

So that's his ex-wife Carol there explaining that, well, it's amazing that her descriptions were identical to Bud's previous book, but it's like...

All of the descriptions of Grey's, the hundreds of reports, thousands of reports are like that. Maybe that's because that's what they look like. Yeah. And in her defense, you know, maybe she decided to do that interview the day after she got noticed that her alimony payments had been reduced. You know?

I see the skeptical position has been taken by someone. I am a bit skeptical. Which leaves nothing for me. Like, where am I supposed to go? I guess I'm the believer now. No, look, I'm skeptical about it because I don't think you could actually be... I don't think she can be impartial. Regardless of what she truly believes, she can't be impartial. Let me tell the story and we'll withhold our judgment on Carol and Linda until we get to the end of the story. So initially, as I said, she didn't remember the...

The procedure or anything like that. And once she was interviewed by Bard, Bard suggested, of course, let's do a hypnosis session. And it was in this first initial hypnosis session that she recalled being floated out, hovering above the streets of Manhattan, being taken up into the craft. Initially, she just recalled seeing the beings in her room and then

She had a memory of a table and then waking up in her bed, that was it. But in the regression, she was shrieking in terror as they were doing experiments on her in this strange room on this metal table. She recalled the being kind of telepathically speaking to her. And also she was screaming in pain. The whole thing hurt. It was incredibly painful. And she claimed that the entity just simply put its hand over her mouth to shut her up.

And Linda, after this came through, she started to attend Bud's workshops with other abductees to try and work through these experiences. And of course, these people talk, you know, there's quite a lot of them involved and word got around that.

And the timing of this is important because it was around this time that Bard received an astonishing letter in the mail. Now, what I've done today is I've actually taken what transcripts I can get of these letters and I've applied a voice to it.

Like it's a, it's a 11 labs AI voice, but rather than me reading it, I thought it'd be better to add a personality to these letters because these are some important individuals to the story. So this is the first letter that he got. Let's take a listen. Here, Mr. Hopkins, my partner and I are police officers. We have found ourselves in a serious dilemma because of the demands of our profession and our lack of knowledge on this subject.

Around 3.30 a.m. in late November 1989, we were parked in our patrol car beneath the elevated FDR Drive. Suddenly, we saw it, a strange oval object hovering over an apartment building two to three blocks from where we were sitting. A very bright blue light was shining from the bottom of it. I yelled for my partner, who was just as shocked as I was.

We considered getting out of the car, but what could we do for that poor little girl or woman we saw? She was wearing a full white nightgown and was floating in midair within a beam of whitish-blue light, looking almost like an angel. She was then brought up into the bottom of the large oval, about three-quarters the size of the building across the street.

This poor person was escorted out of her window by three smaller human-like creatures that looked rather ugly. After she was brought up into the oval, it plunged into the river not far from the Brooklyn Bridge. Mr. Hopkins, the oval never resurfaced from beneath the water. Since that night, the guilt has lingered, making it difficult for us to live with ourselves. My partner and I have debated whether we should try to find her.

We know the building, and we remember the window. Perhaps she was just a figment of our imagination. But if she wasn't, is she alive and well? We have to know. If we decide to pursue this, we will contact you again with any further information we uncover. We sincerely hope we do find her.

Many thanks, police officers Dan and Richard. So the implications of this obviously strike Hopkins immediately. Two reasonably credible eyewitnesses, if they're police officers, claim to have seen this woman on the same night taken aboard this UFO in exactly the same location. The UFO descends into the river and doesn't come out. They don't know about Linda's case. They're very concerned about this woman and they reach out to Bud because he's

the most well-known UFO researcher there. Now, this is incredible, but these guys have just left first names. They haven't come forward officially. They've just given him this letter. So Bard, all he can really do is hope that he can track them down or hope that they can come forward officially and give him more information. But this could be huge. This could be the biggest case ever. And you can start to see why he got so excited about it.

Well, two weeks later, he gets a call from Linda. And on the call, she sounds stressed and agitated. She claims that earlier that night, she had gotten a visit from two strange men at her apartment unannounced. They were wearing black suits. It was nearly 11 p.m. They knocked on the door. She said she looks through the peephole. She sees these two guys she doesn't recognize, and they hold up badges. They identify themselves as detectives.

When she let them in, she realized they were the same Richard and Dan who had sent the letter to Bud Hopkins. Linda noticed right away that the two had very different demeanors. Dan was a bit standoffish. He was a bit aloof. Richard seemed friendly, but they were both kind of on edge, a bit nervous. And as they talked, Richard grew emotional, nearly breaking down as Linda told her experience. She told them how her husband and children had been in such a deep sleep, she couldn't wake them up.

Now, Richard and Dan supposedly sat there listening intently, but when Linda suggested that they reach out to Bud Hopkins to give their story officially, they refused. They were worried about their reputations. They were worried about their jobs. So after this brief 30-minute strange conversation, it's strange that they were so emotional about it, they left her apartment and Linda assumed that would be the last of it.

Then Hopkins received a second letter. Let's take a listen. Dear Bud, we're hoping that this audio tape is satisfactory. We don't know how it will help, but use it as you wish. We'll keep in touch. Thanks, Dan and Richard. Linda is a darling little lady. Weird way to end the letter, right?

Darling little lady. So there's obviously a tape included. Yeah, so I've took the transcript from the tape and this is what he played on the tape. It apparently starts kind of mid-sentence. Let's take a listen. Many of your feelings on the whole matter. I understand as far as this tape is concerned. I've written everything down so that it'll be easier to express on tape. Please excuse my reading voice. The subject matter was the strangest ever.

Linda is a nice person. We saw it through all the discomfort she felt. Linda expressed the deep importance of our reaching you to actually see it out. And speaking with her, we could see just how frightened and sincere she was when we saw what actually happened. I hope it doesn't drive me nuts. We'll never forget the look on her face. Pure white, with no expression. A white mommy doll hanging in the air.

What?

But I do know it's all I can do for you, Bud, for Linda, and all the other people like her. Please respect the importance of our credibility at work. We just can't be identified. What do you think about their claims that they can't be identified? This is too risky for them. So if I recall correctly, or perhaps it's just instinct, and I know that Bud Hopkins was, you know, he'd written books and he was well-known in that area. I'm like, what are the...

you know, what's the probability that it just so happens that he's the researcher that they contact? You know, it's like, did they really have these experiences? Well, I mean, to that you can argue he was the most well-known. That's what I'm saying. You look anyone up, he's the only guy that's in the papers. But... He's the guy. Yeah, he's the guy. But that also brings attention from sources that perhaps don't want these details getting out or something else is occurring. Is he being messed with by some type of

What powers, the hidden powers that be, the intelligence itself. The thing that strikes me is how creepy they are. I know I've added AI voices to the letters. These are the real letters. Listen to the words. It's saying baby doll and she's a pretty little lady. And it's kind of creepy. Now, a few weeks later, Bard receives a letter from Dan. After he gets this audio tape, he gets a letter from Dan, who is the partner of this Richard guy.

So I created another voice for this one. Let's take a listen. What? What?

Seeing Linda reinforces the reality of it all. He doesn't feel crazy anymore. This doesn't work for me. When I see Linda, I tremble. I don't need reminders. I'll never forget what happened for the rest of my life. That incident in November was the worst time of my life. As if the UFO wasn't enough, we had to witness a young woman being taken. What were they going to do to her? What could I do to help her? These thoughts were more than I could take. Did Richard tell you about our nightmares?

Mr. Hopkins, I sleep with my pistol beside my bed. If they could take Linda, they could take me. Richie has the same fear. We understand that you need us to come forward because these people of yours are considered crazy. We know they aren't crazy, but to be honest, you're going to need more than two detectives to figure out what the hell has been happening to a lot of people. Good luck with your investigations.

If you ever stumble upon good, tangible evidence, be careful whom you give it to. There's an obvious cover-up going on. Thank you for taking the time to read this long letter. Actually, I want to know what you think first, because I...

There's something happening here, but I want to hear what you have to say. Well, I like that out of all the voices I could pick from 11 labs, I mean, the ones that I've picked are the most convincing, but they sound like movie voices, like the way he reads it. Yeah, it's kind of got that superhero Batman. And it was so gritty the way I spoke. Did you put the street sounds underneath? I put the street sounds there just to add a bit of grit to the existing grit of the grittiness.

But the reason I'm making fun of that is because the way it's written almost sounds like the way you would write a movie script. It's too much. It just occurred to me that perhaps, look, we're condensing this, right? We're compressing this down. And so maybe because we're just in this very rapid delivery of this, it's like, oh, okay, we've kind of jumped to it. But seriously, right? You're a police officer. You're driving along a bridge one night. You see a woman in some weird blue light and some other beings, right? You...

Do you immediately drop into depression and maybe fearful? But let's be honest, if you're a man, and I'm not going, oh, if you're a man, but normally men, especially back then, were probably like, if you're a police officer, there's an element of stoicism of just like,

That was really weird. Oh, no, I'm really worried about this woman. Yeah, you would tell people and you would try and figure out what was going on. You'd try and get to the bottom of it, especially if you're a detective. But I guess this is what they're trying to do. This is why they tracked her down. This is why they were concerned. No, they're playing games with the investigators. So that's Dan. And Hopkins...

He obviously realizes, I need to find these guys or this is going nowhere. This is ridiculous. So he goes down to the local precinct and he asks around to see if there's officers Richard and Dan around.

No one comes forward. He goes to police precincts across the city and he even posts flyers asking for these guys to step forward or for anyone that has information to step forward so we can get to the bottom of this. No one steps forward. No one responds. He cannot find these two individuals.

Now, he didn't tell Linda this. He just wanted to wait, see what would play out. A few weeks later, like clockwork, he gets another letter. In the letter, Richard and Dan explain that we are writing to you once again due to the utmost importance of what needs to be said. There is much more involved than we initially shared. Okay.

We have been given permission to reveal additional facts from a third party also involved in the November 1989 incident. This third party is a very important individual. And they go on to explain that they're actually not cops at all. They're not police officers. They were pretending to be police officers and that they are, in fact, running security for Javier Perez de Cuella.

who was the UN Secretary General at the time. This guy on the screen here. So immediately the story has now gone from, okay, interesting to cops that are a little bit suspicious to the UN Secretary General. So if you're in diplomatic protection, so this is, I don't know how it works. Like in Australia, you still fall under policing agencies, but you're acting as some diplomat protection officer.

Black Ops UN protection. But then you're watching a UFO abductee stalking her? Okay, so they claim in the letter that this guy on the screen here, the Secretary General of the UN, he's a Peruvian diplomat and he was the, I think, Prime Minister of Peru years later.

But he's the third witness with these Richard and Dan characters who were part of his security detail. The story is, this is what they explain in the letter. They were driving him downtown. He was due to catch a helicopter. So they were driving him to a helicopter that was waiting. They report that their vehicle lost power. Like so many of these UFO stories, everything just went dead. The electronics died and all three men in the car see this bright light. Cause it's almost like there was a blackout in that area of New York and

They see the UFO, they see the beings floating outside, and they see Linda being levitated above. Now, according to them in this letter, the Secretary General was also concerned about this woman that he saw get abducted, and he was now happy that she was safe. Do they say it in Spanish there? Is it like, keh? Yeah, he's like, keh! He obviously did not want to be part of this story. Of course not! You're a diplomat! He didn't want his name involved, he didn't want to be interviewed, he didn't want to be...

part of it in any way at all. And we learn, they actually say, Dan and Richard say that it was actually the Dekuaya

who told them to pretend that they were police officers so that it wouldn't in any way connect to him that they were UN security detail. So then you have to ask the question, okay? So why is he contacting them now? Yes! Why now? Yes! Maybe he was so moved about Linda's story, he just had to reach out. I don't know. Maybe because you are in this position of power and especially then there's a lot of ridicule attached to this kind of stuff. But then why would you say...

to your security officers oh you contact this leading ufo researcher who's got a lot of heat on him because of the media that attention that he's attracting and drag you know essentially drag me into it without dragging me into it is it new already we're asking the important questions let it keep going we've got some suspicions however the thing with this case it's not just these guys that step forward

Another eyewitness emerges. Hopkins gets a letter and subsequent phone call from a woman named Janet Trimble. And on the night of Linda's initial abduction, Janet claims she'd been driving a car along Brooklyn Bridge. And she says, just like Dan and Richard, that her car died. She lost power. She looks up. She sees the same abduction taking place.

And at the time, she believed that she was watching a movie scene. She thought, okay, they're filming something. There's someone on a trapeze. They're on wires or something. A logical assumption. This is really annoying that my car's broken down in front of this film set. It wasn't until some time later, in hindsight, she started to think about what she saw that night and thought, hang on a second, that wasn't a movie set. So she reached out to Hopkins and explained the story.

So her account corroborated many of the details that had come from Linda that were coming through from these slash, like scratch cops, now UN security detail and the UN secretary general himself. So Hopkins felt that, okay, this case, I can now rest on this. I've got enough eyewitnesses not to dismiss this. And then it starts to get dangerous. So on a Sunday, a sunny day during the latter part of April in now 1991, Hopkins,

This is nearly a year and a half after the abduction. Linda is casually walking along a busy New York sidewalk, minding her own business, and she suddenly realizes she's being abducted for a second time. Not by a UFO, not by a beam sucking her up into a ship. In broad daylight, two men drag her, terrified, into a waiting vehicle and drive off. Now, I've heard different descriptions of this story. You can get the original book,

on archive.org. It is available. So you can't then. So in other words, you can't get it now. It's like the timing of this story. I really wanted to download the book, of course. We've got a copy somewhere. Yeah, I was going to say, there is one somewhere in those boxes out back. But as you know, we've been complaining for a couple of weeks because the Internet Archive and the Open Library database are down. So I couldn't get it. But various people have described, like, I think the original description from the book is that the car pulls up and it's Dan and Richard.

And they ask her to come with them, you know, take her out to lunch. Let's have another discussion. And she says, no, I'm busy. And then they forcibly drag her into the car and basically abduct her. She is basically interrogated by these men. And Dan becomes increasingly obsessed with Linda, allegedly to the point of stalking her. Dan has supposedly become convinced that Linda had some kind of supernatural ability to

And that she was somehow able to exert her influence over people. Why would you think that? Well, I'll get into that. But eventually their erratic thoughts and paranoid behavior reached a fever pitch, prompting the men to kidnap and interrogate Linda. Dan and Richard held Linda captive and relentlessly interrogated her for many hours. During this interrogation, they made bizarre and seemingly paranoid accusations that Linda was somehow involved in strange events that had recently been happening to them.

So in typical high strangeness fashion, they had poltergeist-like stuff going on, weird calls, men in black. They thought Linda was behind it. They demanded to know who she was working for. Was she part of some secret government program? Perhaps she was an alien herself.

It just gets crazier and crazier. And the whole time she claims she's just crying. She's denying this. No matter what she says, they don't believe her. Dan's not satisfied. He's convinced she's in league with the ETs. Finally, they return her to her building, though. Richard mutters an apology, but Linda is done with them.

She's like, I never want to see you guys again. This was completely over the line. Don't ever contact me again. It's got a weird Men in Black feel to it, though. I'm not saying they're Men in Black, but it's following this pattern of behavior, which is akin to harassment. Like, it's kind of like they're... Oh, you're kidnapping her? Yeah, that is harassment. That is harassment. But what I mean is, like, it's similar to what you hear about Men in Black, you know, causing disruption and trouble for witnesses. Yeah.

It's like, are these guys agents of something? Well, Bart obviously wants to dig deeper into this. And he arranges for a hypnosis session with Linda, hoping to access maybe some repressed memories that these guys seem to understand, but she doesn't. So under hypnosis, she reveals details about the car.

It was an elegant Rolls Royce with a blue United Nations sticker, diplomatic plates, followed by a second vehicle, a Mercedes. She even remembered fragments of the license plates. Now Hopkins apparently investigates this and what she's remembering is from that night, right? And apparently Hopkins was able to trace the make and description of the car along with the remnants of the plate and it matched up with the Secretary General's vehicle when he was in New York.

But that wasn't the end of it. Just weeks later, as Linda was walking near her building, she heard someone calling her name and it's Richard. Again, she's being harassed. She actually flees from him. She runs to her apartment building, makes it inside just in time as he's yelling at her through the door. So these guys, obviously, this is something more than them just witnessing whatever happened to her.

Obviously, this is deeply connected to them. This has to be more than just, oh, we saw this abduction. We're terribly mortified about it. There's something more going on with these guys. So a few months go by, Bud gets another letter. This time it's from Dan. He expresses regret for kidnapping Linda. Oh, no kidding. He says they're both under tremendous stress, but there's more to the story than Hopkins knows about.

It turns out that Richard, Dan, and the Secretary General of the United Nations all had a shared memory of that night. Something that emerged in the following days. And what was that? So after the UFO went into the river, they didn't just get back into their car and go, okay, that was weird. They found themselves teleported to a nearby beach where they saw Linda with three aliens digging in the sand.

After the aliens and Linda approached the stunned men and they find that Linda's, she's in a sort of trance and she holds up a dead fish at them and yells, see, see what you've done. Throws the dead fish on the ground. One of the beings then calls Linda the lady of the sands. They notice that Linda has no toes in this memory. Suddenly, snap, they're teleported back to their car. Richard and Dan are inside.

the UN Secretary General is missing. It turns out he had just been teleported on top of the car by mistake. With a fish lying on him. Yeah, he was just lying there. They had to help him get off the top of the car and get him into the vehicle. So with that insane context in mind, here's what Dan wrote in his latest letter. Let's take a listen. We knew she was withholding information. Honestly, we were frightened and uncertain of her intentions. The fact remains that

We still don't know who she is. We've been led to believe she might be the Lady of the Sands. Whoever that is, whatever the case, we need to find out. As for me, Linda can be a real pain. I dislike admitting that. She could fly to the moon in her spacecraft, and it still wouldn't feel far enough. As far as I'm concerned, on a good day, I think about having a heart-to-heart talk with Linda.

She would likely never agree to such a meeting, but I know we'll cross paths again in the near future. Linda claims she's indifferent, but there's something different about her, and I'm going to find out what it is. If you can prepare Linda for a visit from me, I'd appreciate it. I don't want her running off again. Please reach out, and also, reassure Linda that we honestly didn't kill that fish. Thank you, brother.

They call her the Lady of the Sands. We just want to find out what that means and why she had no toes. What on earth is happening here? See what I mean? This just gets so batshit insane. See, I think it's much later than when intelligence agencies were clandestinely getting themselves into UFO groups because they were worried about the spread of communism. That was a big thing in the 60s and 70s. We're now in the late 80s.

But is there something, is there some political intrigue going on here? Because this is not. You're saying these guys are plants to make everything sound ridiculous and make Bud Hopkins look like a moron. Maybe.

So, Bart hears this and of course he's like, well, I've got to figure this out. Like these guys are making these crazy claims in this letter. Maybe I can use my best methods of intel gathering to get to the bottom of this. Perhaps not act as an accessory to a crime of lining up this woman to meet this guy as well. Well, he uses the best tool he has, which is hypnotic regression. So he puts her under hypnosis and of course...

He asks if Linda can go back to that night and see if any of this checks out, you know, any memories or any memories of you having no toes and a dead fish emerging. And she's like, well, now that you say it. Yeah. She says, yes, I was on the beach. We were taking samples of the sand to see if they could figure out why the fish were dying. She also recalled being called Lady of the Sands, though she had no idea what that meant.

Then Linda was abducted a third time. This isn't in the regression. This is just this happened to her. This time, Dan acted alone. He dragged her into his car and started driving towards Long Island. He said he had a safe house there.

Along the way, he's trying to kiss her. He's like fondling her leg and he's calling her the hot half-breed and all this variations of that. He forces her into the safe house. He starts crying at one point. She tries to escape, but she can't. He then comes out with a present, like a gift box. She opens it up and it's this like red negligee number. And he's like, put it on.

And she doesn't want to put it on. Obviously, she refuses. But she realizes this is a scary situation. She can't outright refuse. So she opens up a box and is like, hit me with this fish. So she says, what if I put this underwear on over my clothes? And he's like, yeah, that'll do. So she puts this underwear on. This is the side of the story that I do not know. I've never heard this. She puts the underwear on over her Hillary pantsuit.

And he's just like, oh yeah, that's it. Oh my God. He says to her, oh my God, it was you. He starts rocking back and forth, crying.

She goes up to console him, but it was all like a ruse. She then bolts out the door and runs to the beach to try and escape. With her underwear on the outside. Still wearing the underwear on the outside. He catches up with her, grabs her by the back of the head. And he's like, check the sand now, bitch. And he's pushing her into the sand. He's like, where's the fish? Where's the fish? It's like picture Batman and Joker. And eventually at this point, what saves her is Richard arrives.

And he's like, okay, Dan, my old partner, chill out, bro. Let's work this out. He calms Dan down. Dan starts crying again. Linda's crying again. Everyone's crying. And then he ends up driving her home. And he says, I'm really sorry about my partner. He's kind of lost it. A few days later, Bard gets a letter from Richard. Let's take a listen. Dear Mr. Hopkins.

I was angry and saddened about the entire incident that took place on October 15th concerning Linda and Dan. Linda is very special to me and Dan is my closest friend. I want my friend back but he just isn't the same. Does Linda have this effect on others? Are we the unusual ones? I can tell you this, if she were the ugliest woman around, I would care for her just the same.

Please reassure Linda there's no reason to be afraid. Tell her that if she runs away, I will chase her. I'm so sorry for what happened. Many thanks and kind regards, Richard. This has serious domestic violence vibes. It's not good. This guy is actually a narcissistic stalker sociopath. It's very clear that Linda has a powerful effect on both of these men.

And they're falling apart by the allure of her feminine charms. And it's not clear why this is happening. Obviously, she might be some kind of hybrid alien. So then Thursday, November the 21st, Linda's on her way to the post office and she encounters Richard. And Richard says, wait, wait, no kidnapping going on today. I'm actually in love with you. He confesses his love. Now, Linda is married with a child.

Richard moves in for a kiss. Linda does not push him back. They embrace. They kiss. It's hot. It's passionate. It's like it was always meant to be. And she's obviously conflicted, but she goes along with it. Now, they spend a few hours together this day, and they share stories about their childhoods. They share things that they had in common. It turns out they seem to be pretty similar. Richard was particularly interested in Linda's son, Johnny.

mentioning that he'd always felt as though he had a son, even though he didn't. The following day, Bard receives a letter from Richard. Let's take a listen. Dear Mr. Hopkins, the meeting yesterday between Linda and me went very well. She was relaxed and comfortable. Linda is a very interesting person. She's not questioning why, considering what she may be. Yes, but I believe that Linda is from another place.

Linda is my baby and she's real. I went away very angry that night after I left her apartment. It wasn't fair, but I love her deeply. But it's too late. I've hinted to Linda about our bond, but she doesn't remember. Linda has me standing between fire and water. If I go in either direction, I'll either burn or drown.

So passionate. So passionate for a man to write these things about a woman, isn't it? No, it's not. It's passionate. It's really unhealthy. It's really dangerous. And

It really sounds like the thing a man would write. Is he implying- That they're trapped. Is he implying on some level that, because I begin to think now of the hybrid programs and other stories we've heard, is he somehow implying that the two of them have previously been abducted or- Yes. Very insightful. We learn that Richard has never been able to be 100% happy in his relationships with women because-

Ever since he was around nine or 10 years old, he's been having these dreams. And he explains he's been having these dreams about a woman or a girl. Started off as a girl and then it became a woman. And he would always be with this girl or this woman in his dreams to the point where they had a relationship, they fell in love. And as he got older, it formed into them having a child together. And these dreams were so visceral, they were so real.

Whenever he was with a woman in his waking life, he couldn't help but compare it or think about this woman from his dreams. Now, one day the dream stopped and then it was shortly after this that he saw Linda being abducted. And he claims that when he saw her levitating into that UFO, he realized that she was the woman from his dreams. Okay, so at the risk of being unpopular and going here again...

I think this is some type of mind control program. I think this has been orchestrated by the government and some type of testing because let's logically break it down for a second, right? Give me a fucking answer! Yeah, you've got it. So it's so intricate that somehow you've lined this guy's life up so that ultimately he gets a job to be driving along that bridge at that particular time at night to see a woman being pulled out at that precise moment, which triggers...

That's how fate works. That's not how it works. That's not what's going on. So what's probably likely is that unless they're just psychotic and there's some weird thing going on that we can't even comprehend, is it not possible that the hypnosis has somehow caused, these things have been inserted, they're just people that are psychologically susceptible to this kind of thing, or does it go even further? Well, he hasn't been hypnotized.

Not that we know of. Well, Hopkins, he doesn't tell Linda this information, but he goes to her in one of these meetings and he says-

By the way, you know, during your childhood, did you ever have any imaginary friends or reoccurring dreams? And she's like, oh yeah, now that you mention it, I just always dreamt of this boy ever since I was young. And then the dreams kept on recurring. And then I pictured him as a man and I thought one day I'd meet him and we'd get married. And then I thought we had a son together. Funny, just had these recurring dreams. She says, I even had a name for him. His name was Mickey. And then she says, you know, it's funny, like the way I pictured him is he kind of looks like my son now, like how my son turned out.

Again, implying just what you're saying, that they had some netherworld relationship. The aliens watched them having sex in some weird room. Is this entire thing just some affair that's gotten out of control and they've now had to create an entire UFO ruse just to cover up for the fact that her husband's kid is not his kid? Well, it seems as though Richard is the winner in the pursuit because Bud gets a letter from Dan. He abducted her! Dan, um...

Well, Dan did most of the abducting. Oh, so that makes it okay. Dan is now in a mental institution. I won't read you his letter, but he's basically like, this is fucking shit. If you see my partner Richard, tell him to go F himself. Linda's life sort of gets back to normal until her son Johnny starts talking about weird dreams he's having now. Of little men talking to him with their minds. Strange rooms at night with experiments. Something going into his nose.

And so on and so forth. So the question again is... Is it real, fuckers? Is it real? Sorry for the Australian. I'm beginning to...

whether or not this is a carry-on, a sub-program, a parallel program of MKUltra. And you know why they would do it this way, right? Because they want to be able to see what they can do, just how far they can create the lie. Because these people clearly believe this, right? Why not do it out in the open so it gets into, I guess, their alternative cultures, but UFO research, they can monitor it. It's actually a very great environment, right?

to test out something like a mind control program. Well, there was someone who was watching this, slightly more removed from the suspects involved, and that was Bud's wife, Carol. And very early on, because she started to get involved with Bob and they got married around the time he was nearly ready to complete the book. And so... Bud. Sorry, yeah, Bud. And she...

got quite suspicious on what was going on. Let's take a listen. I felt uneasy about the nature of this relationship. Bud and Linda saw themselves as collaborators, deciding the best way to present their story in public. I am from these memories. This wasn't like any research I'd ever known.

For many years, I'd made films with scientists. They went about getting new knowledge in a different way by following strict research protocols. They gathered objective data, and every aspect of their research was reviewed by other experts along the way. Those tools helped researchers stay objective.

Help them stay close to the data and not fall into the world reported by the subject. That was a bad one. Yeah. I hope they didn't do that to my children. That whatever they did in the back, they stick a needle in your back, you know? Boy, I sure hope they didn't do that to my kids or anybody else's kids for that matter. Somebody better do something.

Both crying. I was starting to realize that alien abduction research had none of those safeguards for the getting of truth. So, yeah, she's obviously suspicious of the methods that are being used. And this is what I was talking about at the start of the show, the way that there's a certain pressure to tell stories, to produce stories for the readers, right? Kind of like what we do for this show. I totally understand it. But surely there's some reality to this case. And...

I mean, that just... But is there? Well, that goes back to the amount of eyewitnesses. Let me just play a quick clip from the new documentary from Netflix, which I think underlines precisely that point of just how many people saw this take place. Let's take a listen. 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.

This is what happens. And then the first one came forward. We had somebody. And then the second witness came forward. I had to stare at him for at least two minutes. And then the third witness. I saw the woman in a white gown coming out a window.

Then the fourth came in. I thought it was a move. Yeah. Special effects. Yeah. Then the fifth. We were scared. We didn't know what was going on. There are other people that saw it. Yes, there are. 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. Excuse me, can't recall that guy's name, but I think his name was Frank. He was one of Bud's assistants on the case. So look, what was it? 23 witnesses. Yeah. Right. So that's pretty compelling. However...

What did they see? I know we heard one or two people actually saw a woman floating, but did they see a light in the sky? Well, I went to some old archive footage and one of the guys you saw there, his name was Yancey Spence. And there's a clip of him saying, I thought it was a movie. And I found an interview of him with Bard where he told his story in full. So again, he was driving along the Manhattan Bridge because obviously there must have been a ton of people on the bridge.

And he recalls the same story that his truck stalled, all the electronics died. And he notices this strange blue-white light illuminating the buildings around him. He thought they were testing a laser. He thought maybe the Navy was testing something. But then he saw that whatever was creating the light was changing size. And then he saw the light, this laser, focus on a specific window. And he claims he saw the figures coming out with Linda and

And he just thought it was a movie. I've got a clip of him here describing it. Let's take a listen. I tried to follow it back like a flashlight beam, but it didn't go back. It didn't go over into Brooklyn, so I knew that was out. And I realized that it was coming a short ways away from where it was focusing. The ship, from what I can recall now,

I don't remember too much, except it kind of, like, absorbed the darkness around it. You couldn't really make it out. The only thing that I do remember seeing was, like, when it... After being the lady and the three... ...serestals back on board, they did come out like that red, where they were spinning as if they were on a trapeze, all of them. And when they got closer to the light source, they straightened out and more or less...

I mean, you didn't see them now. Yes, I could. When they were going up and they were entering the ship, I remember saying to myself, oh, that's it. They're filming a movie. Look, they have them on wires and they're filming a movie like Peter Pan or something like that. That's what I figured. Gut feeling? Yeah. It's what I read. So what do I think he's doing?

How far away is the bridge from the... Way too far to see details like that. And it's... I have a feeling that perhaps because he said there, like he gave it away. It's what I read. Yeah. So he's read it. He's recreated this in his mind. And that's like a 15 minute... There's a 15 minute interview and the whole way through...

you're just like, there's no way. This guy's telling a true story. Yep, your gut immediately tells you. Just his mannerisms, the way he remembers things. Like there's certain points where Hopkins says, oh, you said that you didn't say you remembered that. Like he totally changes his story. It's a super soldier effect. Yeah, it's just like you can tell he's not actually remembering something. He's remembering something that he needs to retell. So Carol became really suspicious of a lot of these eyewitnesses.

And she divorced Bud, I think, after 2003. And it was around 2000...

nine or 10 that she started to speak out publicly about the problems she saw with his, his research and also David Jacobs and other UFO abduction researchers. One of the, uh, for one of the big impacts she had was this magazine came out. This is the first issue was called paratopia. When was this? I think it was back in 2010. Okay. And the whole kind of cover story was her essay, uh,

on the priests of high strangeness, co-creation of the alien abduction phenomenon. And I just want to read you a little bit of what she wrote, because I think in a way you and I, Aaron, will relate to this. You'll certainly relate to this when I read it. She says, people drawn to the great mystery of UFO sightings and abduction accounts are increasingly aware that

that little new has been learned about the phenomenon for a very long time. For years, the core of the abduction stories have remained essentially the same. Only names, places, and a few details change. She said once I was on a panel at the Mindshift Institute in Maine

She said someone in the audience asked if it wasn't just fascinating and exciting to live in the middle of this UFO and abduction activity. And she said she blurted out, actually, no, it's not. She said it was fascinating for the first four or five years. But after six, seven or eight of hearing the same story over and over again, it gets a little tedious. It's frustrating. I understand.

She said, I kept hoping for a new perspective, another handle on what this thing is, some kind of understanding, but it almost never happened, she said. No, it remains elusive. Now, she went on to say that Bard would never acknowledge this outright, but his actions showed that he felt equally frustrated. The lack of new insights, the lack of new information after an initial interview and hypnosis session in our home with a perfectly credible yet fairly typical abductee.

She said, Bud really did more than a single hypnotic regression. And then she says it was basically like you're cracking open their mind with a rusty can opener and then you're sending them on their way. She said it seemed he dropped people because he was looking for something with a higher octane level. For what purpose though? Is he suggesting just out of his research or was it to...

derive an income and fame? Well, think about it. You've got these stories, right, where it's incredible, like hybrid babies in vats and you're being transported across the galaxy and there's mantis beings and then someone comes along and they're like, yeah, I was taken and there was a light and a table and then I woke up in my bed.

If you and me, you and I, we see those stories and we're like, what is this? The 1990s? Like, where's the high strangeness? Where's the weirdness? I'm not interested. And she's saying Hopkins and even David Jacobs and these other researchers, it's not like they purposefully set out to do that. It's just natural human behavior. You're like, yeah, I've heard that. I know what happens. They're neutralized. You want...

You want the next super high strange case that pushes it in a new direction. You are chasing the paranormal dragon. That's right. With these things. She said, I entered the picture in 1995 when Bud was just completing the book Witnessed. He'd been investigating this complex case for approximately five years, carefully piecing together the puzzle as new details continued to emerge. Bud and Linda had shared the advanced money for the book.

Although Linda falsely told other investigators of the case that she and Bud would be splitting at 50-50. And she's essentially questioning Carol Rainey saying, wouldn't that influence how she's telling the story if she knows that she's going to get an advance on this? Especially, here's the key, she was going to get a cut on any movie deal, any adaption of this story. So there's your motivation to make this as bombastic and wild

wild as you can. There's that, right? You're absolutely right. The other thing, I'm not saying she's doing this, but over the years when I've spoken to people about, they're highly skeptical, if not cynical, about these things. It's like, why would they do it? Why are they making up these stories? I'm like, well, there's a certain group of people, there's a certain number of people that just simply want attention. And maybe before social media, you'd be like, oh, come on. No, no one's like that, right? Now,

Like you see streamers that will literally get themselves into fights without making any money just so that it's for the attention. Well, one of the other suspicious points for Carol was the things that Bud left out of the book. Because Bud would present this book and he would obviously include the best evidence, the most compelling part of the story. And, you know, that's natural to do that. That's the best way you would, obviously you would do that. Yeah.

But Carol said it was quite telling over what he left out because Linda made all sorts of claims that Bud didn't include in the books. For example, she said she was a heroine and her red blood cells were immortal. She had told tales of lusty and dangerous Secret Service agents, a prince from afar, gifts of fur coats, foot chases throughout New York City, an X-rayed alien implant. She supposedly had that one in her nose, X-rayed.

Her abduction into the spacecraft was accompanied by John Gotti. The mafia Don was involved. He was abducted as well. Oh my God. That was left out. Later, as the story continued to unfold, Linda's presence in the lobby of the World Trade Center when the planes hit and her barefoot escape over shards of glass was also left out.

However, not all of the events reported above by Linda were included in the book, as I said. Although I'd often heard Bard's assertion, she said, that Linda simply didn't have the mental capacity to pull off such a complex case as a hoax. Because that's what this could be. If all these people are working under some mastermind who's coordinated their stories, it would be an incredible hoax. Yeah, but what I said-

She wasn't intelligent enough to do this, but Carol was under a different impression. She said, no, this woman was sharp and she was well-educated. Well, not well-educated, but she was quick-witted. She was sharp. She said, I've never met anyone, for instance, who could receive an unexpected phone call from a male admirer.

And so effortlessly spin a spontaneous, intricate, family-related excuse for not meeting them for coffee, all while winking broadly at me. She had just finished telling me she was dying to head home for a nap. So she watched her on many occasions be able to lie effortlessly and spin stories. Here's a damning example of Linda's willingness to lie and I think Bud's unwillingness to

To, well, to acknowledge the lie. Let's take a listen. Linda Cortilla was Bud's most famous abductee. Witness, the book based on her story, was about to come out, and Bud had staked his entire reputation on this sweeping, highly dramatic story. So Sal and I are sitting in the C-court. But I was starting to realize that Linda's case was far from over. Mr. Walton, damn you.

Yeah.

And he was just staring at me and he was wearing this hat. He still had his strength coat on. Do you think he wanted you to think that he would see you? Yes. No, he wasn't being... The guy is really, you know, stealing. He was deliberate. Yeah. I came away feeling it was a deliberate act to intimidate me. So remember, she explains that the book is done. The story's written. And she's still in his living room talking about strange men in black that are harassing her.

And this story is quite telling because after this, and I'll skip ahead a little bit, but she says that she's with her cousin Connie and this man later on tries to drag her into her van. And this is struggle to stop her from getting kidnapped for like the eighth time. Let's take a listen. The van door slid open, you know, and you have to step up. And I stepped up and... Back and right. Yeah, back. And then he goes to drive it. And in fact, is a man crouched down...

just crouched down and grabbed my, my wrist. - Jesus Christ. - But I'm yelling all over the place. I'm screaming and yelling. Connie is coming, right? - Yeah, right. - Connie sees what's going on. - Yeah. - And she grabbed me from my waist and she's yelling and screaming now and she's pulling me back but she's not getting anywhere.

So she makes it out of this dangerous encounter. And of course, her cousin Connie saves her, pulls her out of the van. They manage to escape. So of course...

Her cousin Connie can verify this story. Look, I know that it's New York pre-Giuliani cleanup, but if you're being pulled into a van, and this woman just incidentally seems to be abducted a lot in multiple vehicles, both space and terrestrial. Did no one else see it? Did no one else see a woman being held by another woman? Well, as I said, her cousin Connie was there, saved her. She is clearly, she'll be able to confirm the story. So Linda goes home and,

And Bud gets a call from Connie to confirm the story. Let's take a listen. That night, the phone rang. Bud answered, not saying much, but a peculiar look came over his face. When he hung up, I asked who it was. He said, that was Linda pretending to be her cousin, Connie. I wondered why Bud wasn't more upset.

He just told me that the subject of his most important case had pretended to be Cousin Connie, witness number 20 to the Brooklyn Bridge UFO abductions. But he never mentioned it again and continued his staunch support of the case.

Of course he's not going to mention it because so much is now built upon this woman's story. He's got a book deal. There was a movie deal in the works, which eventually fell through. And so he catches his star witness clearly lying to him. Look, I feel very bad for him, but in my opinion, that completely undermines the entirety of the story. It's pretty damning, right? And she reiterates most of these alleged witnesses had contacted Bard through letters.

Now, those two guys, Richard and Dan, no one's ever met them.

Bud's never spoken to them. Oh my God. He's never sat down and interviewed them. See, this is what I actually didn't realize. So he's never met them. He's just received letters. He's never met them. Because they wanted to protect their identity. They didn't want to be ID'd because it would wreck their jobs. He'd never come face to face with many of the players in the story. Now, another incredible example that she mentions in that article, which I'll link to in the show notes, there's a case of Jim Martello, another abductee. And he was unique because he said that

He was dealing with a psychiatrist, and this psychiatrist was part of a little network who kept in touch with each other, all psychiatrists in New York. And they were discussing in a private group some of their patients' issues, and they all discovered each of them had several patients who were reporting alien abduction phenomenon.

And so this guy Martello said that his psychiatrist and the others, they formed a sort of informal study of this and they hadn't revealed it to anyone. Now, obviously Hopkins was very interested in this and he let Bud know that a Dr. Nancy was going to make a confidential call to Bud soon and that she was scared to death about something that had happened to her and needed his advice. Now,

Bard, one evening, this is Carol telling story, Bard gets home one evening and he goes to check his message machine. And one of the messages starts playing. And Carol says, it's literally a man going, hi, this is Dr. Nancy. I'm just letting you know that I've had some patients with alien abductions going on. I'm a lady. I'm a lady after all, you see.

And he listens to the message and Carol's looking at him going, hello, are you going to say anything? And he's like, what? That was Dr. Nancy. And he doesn't even realize that this is a man.

Talking in a woman's voice. Is it like. Trying to trick him. Now she claims that the voice was digitally manipulated and that it was obvious to her because she worked in post-production. But Bard was just like, yep, that's one of the psychiatrists and now I can add this to the next book.

But he didn't speak to her? No, he never interviewed her. Like getting the voice message was enough to go into the book. It was enough of the story. Yeah, see, this isn't grassroots stuff, is it? And if this is true as well, right? So I have to be fair to Bud Hopkins. And I have to like, it could be possible, as I highlighted at the start, if there was a messy divorce and some resentment, I mean, surely she can back up what she's claiming here.

You know, like, can she go and talk to the cousin Connie? Well, I think the key with this is she does do exactly what you're asking. This is what Carol does. And she was shopping this around for a documentary years ago. So I don't know if the Netflix people have kind of picked up this old footage that she was working on because I don't think the documentary ever got made. This is just footage from her YouTube channel.

But there's a key part here where she realizes something really important about those letters that were being sent to Bud, along with sketches from eyewitnesses and all this information that he was collating for the book. Let's take a listen. Richard had also mailed Bud a set of his own crayon drawings of the event. I thought the similarities between his and Janet Kimball's drawings were striking. Maybe...

too striking. But it was the manila envelope that began to attract my attention. Janet's drawings had been sent to Bud in this ordinary padded envelope. But something was different here. And then I realized all of the other letters and envelopes sent by witnesses, they'd all been typed. I didn't recall seeing a single piece of handwritten correspondence from the key witnesses.

not until Janet Kimball's envelope. But one other person related to the case had written extensively to Bud by hand. I compared the two handwriting samples. At first, I was stunned. I'd had a few doubts and questions about the Linda case, but I hadn't expected this.

I am a question document examiner. I specialize particularly in question handwriting, which is to try to determine whether handwriting is written by another person or not. So this is, what was his name, Roger Rubin, so a forensic handwriting expert. Let's hear what he's got to say. First large letter I looked at was

the H in Hopkins and I noticed that there was a virtually identical H in the letter signed Linda dated May 1st, 03 and what is identical is the fact that the loop in the within the two downstrokes of the H on the left and on the right. This guy's really boring. Long story short

It's the same handwriting. Is there other examples? Because just a single one is not enough. I know he's- He goes through- I've really cut it down, but he goes- Just play that for me. I just want to see it. He goes through all of it. It's very tedious. The question and the known writing. I think there's a large enough sample to indicate- Right. Okay, that's what I wanted to hear. They've both written. Yeah, I cut it out, but he goes through all the sentences, the structure, the way-

she wrote everything. Yeah, because that's important in handwriting recognition is that, you know, is there, it's because, yeah, we can all have things that are similar, but yeah, to have a lot of it. So this answers your question is there is no Dan and Richard. She wrote the whole thing herself. She made it up. She was sending all of this to Bud. Now, what is, I think, most damning about this is I think

Bud knew. Do you really think so? I think he did. See, I don't think he did. What I, my opinion on this is, is that because- Why else would he ignore her lying to him and not pursue that and not call her out on it? Because it's the I want to believe. He'd already gotten in so deep. It has a spell. Like the paranormal has a spell upon you, right? And once it sucks you in and it drags you in, it's like until you become old and cynical like I am-

And John Keel is. It's like, and you just don't give a stuff anymore. The thing is you get so caught up and consumed by it that it's kind of like another strain of what we described with the wild goose chase. He wants to believe. And in light of evidence which is being presented to him, which is not reliable, he can't break out of that spell.

He stuck within it. I think there was certainly a part of him that understood if he dug enough, he wouldn't get the answer he wanted. Well, you know what the stupidity, I shouldn't say stupidity, that's the wrong word. It's the story is stupid in the sense that, but what he should have done. In hindsight, right? You read these guys' letters. Fish woman on the beach.

the beach. And they're all like, they're all falling head over heels in love with her. And they're like, we're trapped between the fire and the heart of our lost and passion for this woman of the stars. It's like, obviously she wrote that. Yeah. And she keeps on getting, you know, abducted by this guy and she's like, oh, but then I embraced him. So the one thing that still stands out, what I want to go back to, and I'm getting close to the end of this, but I have to question. So are the other eyewitnesses

The 23, we've got three worked out now that one seems to be lying. What about the other 20 or so? I don't know. That's such a great question. So there's an implication. And you can probably find more on this in the Netflix documentary. I've only watched the first two of the three-part series. So that'll be more in-depth there. And I'll link to the Netflix series in the show notes. But I have a sense this could be one of those cases where

And I don't know this. It could also be all made up by her and these people just saw something that night, right? Maybe there was a UFO that night. Maybe she saw the UFO that night. But she took this opportunity to say, this happened to me. She took this opportunity to create a story and weave it around this man. I despise you sometimes. I don't really, but...

This story, when we were talking just before the show, I know this story well. And this really has just undermined what I have known for a long time to be what I thought was real. Well, it makes you question Hopkins quite a bit because, like I said earlier, there's this...

drive and this pressure to find the high strangeness, to find the next story. We understand that. Every week, we've got to find the next story. The perfect example is Bigfoot, right? We did Bigfoot stories for years. And then once you do some Kiwani Lapseritis, getting Space Bigfoot pregnant, some of those stories, then when someone sees Bigfoot walk across the road, I'm not interested. Yeah.

Like I've already had the most insane, crazy space Bigfoot story. Nothing you can tell me you saw in the woods is going to interest me. Well, you'll never get to the same high. I am now searching for the most bombastic batshit insane Bigfoot escapades I can find. I'm not interested in the other stuff. And this naturally happened to Bud Hopkins. And I don't blame him.

This was his job. Because intruders. He wasn't a scientist. No. He wasn't following scientific methods. I know. And he wasn't really under...

any kind of review. Like, there was no body to review his work or double-check his standards. He could do whatever he wants. And there's no controls either. And this is where the hypnosis stuff comes in. The reality is that she could have just sat there and just rattled off anything that came into her mind like a fantasy and...

because it's under hypnosis to people that want to believe, that in itself kind of makes it valid. And that's the main drive of Carol's argument. If you read her article, she doesn't believe that the alien abduction is entirely made up. She doesn't believe that all these people are lying, that these stories aren't true. I mean, what's interesting is just years after

She found out all this dodgy stuff with this case. She published this book in 2003 with Bart. She co-authored this book, Sight Unseen. Yeah, I've covered this book. I've read it. And it's brilliant. It is brilliant. And so we shouldn't take her criticism and extrapolate into that saying that, no,

that none of this is real. No, but I appreciate her honesty. Like, this is like, she just wants to hold these guys to higher standards. Yeah, look, this is the thing about this field, right? Is that, and some people aren't going to like us saying this or me saying this, but the reality is that there's a lot of bullshit in this field and there's a lot of, um, attention. There's a little, I'm not going to say a lot of money to be made because there's not, but there's money to be made, uh,

And so people will just go and get attention and spin stories. And if you don't have people working in this field to act as kind of like a check, you know,

you know, as a buffer, then what happens is the ridiculousness completely flies out of control and the entirety of the phenomenon is completely undermined. I'll link to this critique in the show notes as well. This is from Joseph Stifula, Richard Butler, and George P. Hansen. It's, yeah, basically going through all the problems with this case. I'll just quickly mention some of the points.

They mentioned that the primary witnesses, so Richard, Dan, probably don't exist. Obviously, Bud's never met them, never spoken to them directly. I can't believe, I know from researchers, good researchers, that they go and see people. I always talk about the boots on the ground. Yeah, I know. So you're telling me that Bud Hopkins never met these people, never interviewed them, never was able to judge them and their bodily movements. They literally sent him crayon drawings in the mail.

He spoke to the UN Secretary General, Javier de Cuella, and the guy refused to talk about UFOs and refused to talk about this case. He was just like, I don't know what you're talking about. I'm not interested. Because he didn't know what he was talking about. There was no medical records of the x-ray where she claimed she had this implant. There were all these unexplained delays, like why did Richard and Dan take so long to contact him?

But I think the most compelling one is they found this fiction novel called Night Eyes by Garfield Reeve Stevens. It was published in 1989. And they go through point by point the instances from this novel and compare it to Linda's story. She's not even original.

It's like the identical story. So Linda was abducted into a UFO hovering over a high-rise apartment building in New York City. There's a character named Sarah who was abducted into a UFO hovering over a high-rise apartment building in New York City. Dan and Richard initially claimed to have been on a stakeout and were involved in a UFO abduction in the...

early hours. But in the novel Night Eyes, two government agents were on a stakeout and became involved in a UFO abduction during early morning hours. And it just goes on and on and on. Linda was kidnapped and thrown into a car by Richard and Dan. The character Wendy was kidnapped and thrown into a van by Derek and Meryl. So it's just like you take Derek and Meryl, it's Richard and Dan. She just swapped the names out.

And everything, I won't go through the full list. It even mentions the safe house on the beach. It mentions the same harassing kidnappings. It mentions the UFO researcher living in New York City. There's one in the novel that's exactly the same as Bud Hopkins. It's like the identical story.

Um, and then there's little things like these guys, they spoke to Bud Hopkins and they asked him questions like that night that she had this abduction, what was the weather? Like, what was the weather like? And Bud didn't know. And these guys say that is the most rudimentary basic part.

of investigating any case. Like it's one of the first things in the MUFON manual. Yes. Yeah. It's like you establish what the weather was like on the night or the day of the event. Cause you, yeah, you want to know visibility. You want to know the conditions of the sighting. And after writing this entire book, six, seven years of research, Bard was like, I don't know. So he didn't even check the most basic thing. So is this a case though of, um,

You're saying six, seven years of research. It's like you get three years in, you're like, well, I've wasted three years. So do you keep going? I think, I honestly think he was in to the point of no return.

And part of him knew that if he dug deeper, he would find out that it was bullshit. But he was friends with this woman. He liked her. And he didn't want to destroy the work he'd been doing. And he didn't want to lose his friend. He didn't want to blow everything up. Now, obviously, for Carol, it was too much. They eventually got a divorce. But I just want to leave you with this final word from her, which is from her article, which I think is the key to this whole thing.

She said these two leading abduction investigators, and she's critical of David Jacobs as well, as I said, she says, I now believe are driven by the rules of the game they're in to whip up their best cases, to drive them hard. These ufologists whose ego supplies are dependent on their standing in this marginalized field are desperate to keep bringing home the magic unless they're to become quickly obsolete and

Alien abduction experts are expected to deliver the goods. Newer, fresher, stranger, and ever more weird reports.

And I just read that and you just described my job. Like that's what we do. So I can, like, I don't, I do that on purpose because it's an entertaining show. But I understand the mentality. I understand the drive to do that, the need to do that. But the difference is though, is that we're not on the ground with people. You know, we're putting out shows every week. We're just retelling stories with the information that's available to us that are 30, 40 years old.

You know, even before we were born, we have no way of getting that, you know, on the ground information. The problem is, is that these researchers, they're on the ground, they're there sitting across the table from someone.

You should know better. Yeah, you're right. It's not a perfect analogy. It would be like if we had a killer story, but we knew it was bullshit because we knew someone who wrote it or changed it and we didn't tell you on the show. But we call it out. We just continued with the story. You can't accuse us of doing that because over the years, if we read something which is potentially bullshit, I call it out as potentially bullshit. If I know something is bullshit, I won't read it unless I'm making fun of it or providing it for information. This is...

It angers me because I really like Bud Hopkins. I really like him. Now, once again, there's a lawsuit happening. She claims this whole thing is a setup. I don't know. Linda says she's been painted as a liar by this documentary. She's extremely upset. She's going ahead with this lawsuit.

That kind of reminds me of AOC there, where she's in front of a painting of her. Yes, that's exactly what I was thinking. I'm like, why would you pose for that? You've obviously had to pose. There's a painting of her being abducted, and she's like, no, it's too stressful. Like AOC at the border. I'm definitely not lying.

I'll link to the documentary in the show notes, the Manhattan alien abduction. It is available now. It's a very good watch. The production value is excellent and you'll learn more insider scoops from Carol and Linda specifically. It kind of sets them up as these two stories going head to head. Ultimately, I think Carol is more convincing, but...

It's not as clear cut as you would think. No, it's not. And it comes back to the question you asked earlier. All these eyewitnesses, are they all lying? Or did something happen that night and she just took advantage of it? I think at the very least, this is the product of the human psyche. It's of potentially mass hysteria.

Which is all very fitting for what I'm going to be going into in our plastic session coming up in a moment, where we're going to return to the case of the mad gasser of Mattoon. As I pointed out earlier in the show, back in the 40s, many people in this small Illinois town claimed that there was a man or some type of entity that was spraying gas into their homes to incapacitate them. Some kind of mad fun thruster of Mattoon. Oh, yes. Well, this is the thing, is that the fun thrusting...

does seem to be responsible and it's anything but paranormal. It's just some very angry gay man who is an accomplished chemist. I like that you just reveal a little...

Sign up today. That's not the ultimate reveal, but yes, that's part of it. The Mad Gasser of Mattoon scoop coming up. Sign up for MU+. Head to mysteriousuniverse.org forward slash plus. Sign up today. Help support your favorite show. You get access to the big extensions on these episodes every single Friday. And of course, we have an exclusive season that runs on Tuesdays. If you sign up for plus, you're getting more than double the content.

Plus members also get a high quality audio version of the show, totally ad free version of the show as well. And if you sign up for our MU Max tier, you get access to our massive, massive back catalog going back nearly two decades now. All the videos and audio is on the website. Again, mysteriousuniverse.org forward slash plus. That's a wrap for this free edition of the show. Thanks for watching. Thanks for listening. If you're on plus stick around for the great stuff after the break for everyone else. We'll catch you next week.

Welcome back to your plus extension.