The truth is out there.
“The Manhattan Alien Abduction,” now streaming on Netflix, covers the bizarre true story of Linda Napolitano, a New York City mother and housewife who claimed she got abducted by aliens in 1989.
At the time, Napolitano, now 77, had her story discussed on “Ricki Lake” and “The Oprah Winfrey Show.” Now, she’s suing Netflix over the new docuseries.
Here’s everything to know.
What does she claim happened?
On Nov. 30, 1989, Napolitano, a housewife and mother of two who had grown up in Little Italy, alleged that she got abducted by aliens.
She claims that she was levitated out of the window of her 12th floor apartment in lower Manhattan, toward the Brooklyn Bridge and into a spaceship.
On-screen, she recalls, “They take me up, all the way up. [The spaceship] opens almost like a clam, and then I’m inside. I’m gonna shut my eyes. I don’t wanna see.”
Napolitano adds, “There were these creatures around me and they were examining my stomach. One of them came after me with a needle the length of a turkey baster … I didn’t want to believe that I was a lab rat being experimented on. But after a while, I just couldn’t deny it anymore.”
She took her story to UFO researcher Budd Hopkins, who died in 2011.
In 1996, Hopkins published a book about her account, “Witnessed: The True Story of the Brooklyn Bridge UFO Abductions.”
An unspecified number of years after the alleged incident, Napolitano claimed that the extraterrestrials returned and targeted her family, giving them “nosebleeds.”
What is her proof?
Twenty-three people claim they witnessed Napolitano floating across the Manhattan skyline like Criss Angel. Or at least, that’s what Hopkins’ book alleges, but he didn’t provide all of their identities.
On-screen, one witness alleges that he saw Napolitano levitating in the sky and “I thought it was a movie — special effects.”
Another witness, an unnamed delivery man for the New York Post, says he saw her while he was on his delivery route.
“It scared the heck out of me,” he says in the show. “I saw a woman coming out a window and just disappear.”
“I realized exactly what I saw and I could not just let it go,” he says. “Who was the woman in the white gown? I don’t know what the big secret is. I don’t know why they’re keeping it from the public. But we’re not alone.”
Napolitano also shared an X-ray showing a supposed metal object that she says aliens put up her nose to track her.
Her son Johnny, whose likeness is obscured on-screen, backs up her story that her family was targeted too.
“It’s got to be the most terrifying and hopeless thing that I’ve ever felt. So I was very reluctant to even start talking about this again. It’s been over 30 years since I sat down and seriously talked about this to anyone but my therapist,” he says.
He adds, “I just try to erase it from my life. It happened a long time ago. I was quite young. Obviously, as a kid, you don’t know what to think.”
He claims that he saw three “beings” in their family living room.
“I know my mom better than anyone else and I will tell you right now — there’s no way I believe she would want to make anything like this up,” he insists.
He concludes that with all the witnesses, Napolitano “either planted a seed in all those people’s heads and mine, or this is a real experience.”
What are the holes in her story?
Napolitano visited Hopkins frequently, and he recorded hypnosis sessions he did with her where she recalled her alleged ordeal.
His widow, Carol Rainey, says in the show, “I had access to all of Budd’s original source material, so I started building a library of hypnosis sessions that Budd was doing with people.”
“When I would hear people go under hypnosis, they would sound like they were a little drunk and they were struggling to pull it all together. But when Linda was hypnotized, she didn’t sound the way the others did when they were deep down,” Rainey says. “She had a clear coherent narrative. I just didn’t believe that she was under hypnosis.”
Rainey also said Napolitano may have fed her son what to say.
“I listened to the phone call that Budd had with her son Johnny and I could hear are a couple of points where he pauses and you’re not sure why,” she says. “She could have coached him to get aligned with her own story … Did Linda convince her son he had been abducted by aliens? You don’t lie about things like that to children. It would have been traumatizing for him.”
Rainey also doubts Napolitano’s “proof” in the form of the X-ray of the metal implant in her nostril. She says that wouldn’t be hard to fabricate, if Napolitano held the metal up to the outside of her nose.
As part of her account, Napolitano claimed that mysterious government officials named Richard and Dan were visiting her to find out about her abduction. But when Rainey had a handwriting analyst study Richard and Dan’s signatures on documents, the analyst found that it matched Napolitano’s handwriting, Rainey says.
Why is she suing Netflix now?
According to Forbes, the complaint that Napolitano filed in New York Supreme Court alleges that Netflix featured Rainey in the docuseries as an “expert,” when in reality, Rainey is an “embittered, alcoholic ex-wife hell bent on revenge against her husband,” court docs allege.
Additionally, Napolitano’s complaint claims the show sets her up as “a villain for purposes of controversy and conflict,” and that “The Manhattan Alien Abduction” will “destroy her reputation as an honest and decent person.”
The Post reached out to Netflix for comment.
“The Manhattan Alien Abduction” is now streaming.
[Notigroup Newsroom in collaboration with other media outlets, with information from the following sources]
