Abducted on Lake Champlain

On the shores of Vermont’s Lake Champlain in the summer of 1968, two camp counselors watched a glowing craft descend over the dark water before losing hours of time they could never explain. What followed were terrifying dreams, recovered memories, hypnosis sessions, and claims of telepathic contact that would haunt them for decades. Known today as the Buff Ledge abduction case, the encounter became one of New England’s most chilling and heavily investigated UFO cases. For a full list of our sources, visit npadpodcast.com/episodes For the latest NPAD updates, group travel details, merch and more, follow us on npadpodcast.com and our socials: Instagram: @‌nationalparkafterdarkTikTok: @‌nationalparkafterdark Support the show by becoming an Outsider and receive ad free listening, bonus content and more on Patreon or Apple Podcasts. Want to see our faces? Catch full episodes on our YouTube Page! Thank you to this week’s partners! Fora: Turn your love of travel into a flexible business. Become a Fora Advisor today at ForaTravel.com/NPAD and start building a travel business with industry-leading training, tools, and support. Avocado Green Mattress: Upgrade your sleep with thoughtfully crafted mattresses and furniture made with certified organic materials. Visit Avocado Green Mattress® | Organic Non-Toxic Mattresses to shop their mattress and furniture sale. BetterHelp: This summer, make time for yourself. Find support in therapy and get 10% off your first month at BetterHelp - Get Started & Sign-Up Today . Upwork: Need expert help for your business? Find, hire, and pay top freelance talent all in one place. Post your job for free at Upwork | Hire Top Freelance Talent with Confidence . ButcherBox: Get premium, responsibly sourced meat and wild-caught seafood delivered right to your door. New customers can get free Sirloin Tips, Ground Beef, or Chicken Wings in every box for life, plus $20 off at podcast - CYO - Gated - pso . Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 1:04Cassandra Yahnian?

  Vermont's Lake Champlain has carried stories of strange encounters for centuries. People have claimed to see unexplained things in the water, encounter mythical beings along its shores, and in some cases, vanished without a trace. Beneath the lake's surface is the legend of a serpent known today as Champ. Though long before it became a modern cryptid, the Abenaki people feared and respected the creature as Giddasgog, warning early Europeans not to disturb the lake unnecessarily. And some descriptions of this creature are genuinely terrifying. In 1819, Captain Crum claimed he watched a massive beast rise nearly 15 feet out of the water near Bulwaga Bay.

• 1:46Cassandra Yahnian?

  He estimated it was around 187 feet long, with the head of a seahorse and only three teeth, eyes the color of a peeled onion, a white star on its head, and a red ring around its neck. Over the years, there have been countless reported sightings of Champ. So many, in fact, that in 1873, a circus showman offered a $50,000 reward to any

• 2:10Cassandra Yahnian?

  One who could bring him the creature's hide so he could display it as part of his exhibition at the world's fair. Champ was never captured, but the sightings never really stopped. More than a century later, in 1992 alone, roughly 180 people claimed to have seen something in the waters of Lake Champlain that they believed was Champ. But without a doubt, the strangest story ever tied to Lake Champlain unfolded on August 7, 1968, at a girl's summer camp along the lake shore. Around 8:10 that evening, two camp counselors walked down to the dock, expecting an ordinary summer night by the water. Instead, they would later claim they encountered something hovering above the lake that changed the course of their lives forever.

• 2:55Cassandra Yahnian?

  Many people have heard of the alleged abduction of Betty and Barney Hill, but what happened on Lake Champlain that night could make even the biggest skeptics believe in extraterrestrials. Welcome to National Park After Dark.

• 3:27Danielle LaRock?

  Hey, everyone. Welcome back to National Park After Dark. My name is Danielle.

• 3:30Cassandra Yahnian?

  And I'm Cassie.

• 3:32Danielle LaRock?

  And you're doing an Uno reverse. I thought we were going Nessie route.

• 3:36Cassandra Yahnian?

  Nope. I just had to bring up Champ since we're going to Vermont.

• 3:39Danielle LaRock?

  Oh, yeah. Sorry, Champ, not Nessie.

• 3:41Cassandra Yahnian?

  Yeah, same realm.

• 3:43Danielle LaRock?

  Yeah, I don't want to disrespect, but I'm super excited. We're doing an alien story and I feel ashamed. I've never heard of it as a New Englander.

• 3:51Cassandra Yahnian?

  I'm so excited. I had never heard of this either because everyone focuses on Betty and Barney Hill.

• 3:57Danielle LaRock?

  Yeah.

• 3:57Cassandra Yahnian?

  And this was crazy.

• 3:59Danielle LaRock?

  I don't know up literally one thing about this.

• 4:01Cassandra Yahnian?

  I love that because I would expect you to know about it and you don't, which is more exciting.

• 4:07Danielle LaRock?

  I've been off my game. But speaking of Betty and Barney Hill, by the time this comes out, I would have gone to, this is a shout out to your local historic societies. Please check out the events that they do because the Portsmouth Historical Society had an exhibit about Betty and Barney Hill and. Just about a week or two ago, I went on their tour of their Betty and Barney Hill exhibit led by a curator.

• 4:34Cassandra Yahnian?

  So cool.

• 4:36Danielle LaRock?

  So, look at, you never know what your local historic society is up to.

• 4:40Cassandra Yahnian?

  And if you're listening and you're like, I have no idea what Betty and Barney Hill was and what you're talking about, we did a whole, we did a whole episode on it and it was an alien abduction that happened in northern New Hampshire.

• 4:51Danielle LaRock?

  And the reason the Portsmouth Historical Society is doing it is because Betty and Barney Hill were from Portsmouth or lived in Portsmouth at the time.

• 4:58Cassandra Yahnian?

  And were on their way back to Portsmouth.

• 5:00Danielle LaRock?

  Yeah.

• 5:01Cassandra Yahnian?

  When they got abducted.

• 5:03Danielle LaRock?

  Well, tell me another abduction story and I love that you do, well, you don't do every alien episode. I guess I did Travis Walton, but I like that you take the reins on these because it just makes it so much more enjoyable for me selfishly.

• 5:17Cassandra Yahnian?

  Well, I feel like I kind of have to. There's like a pressure, I feel like for me because you're well versed in this world and I am kind of relatively new to it since we started the podcast. I'm like, I have to catch up and I need to know. And I do think that they're super interesting. And this one in particular, when I found out it happened in Vermont, not too far from me, I was like, wait a second. Why isn't there more information about this? When you go to places, I don't know, you go to Roswell, New Mexico, or even if you're in Death Valley area or something, there are alien UFO stuff everywhere and talk about sightings, but I've never even seen an alien sticker somewhere around Lake Champlain. And there's this crazy abduction story that happens there.

• 6:02Danielle LaRock?

  And are you going to, sorry to remind me, this happened in 68?

• 6:07Cassandra Yahnian?

  Yes.

• 6:09Danielle LaRock?

  So just a couple of years after Betty and Barney Hill?

• 6:12Cassandra Yahnian?

  Yeah, I was really close to it.

• 6:13Danielle LaRock?

  Okay.

• 6:14Cassandra Yahnian?

  There are a lot of links. There are so many links to Betty and Barney Hill in this. It's crazy. So, and it's way less known, which is also crazy. And there was actually a book that I used for this and I can't think of the title of it right now, but I'll put it in the show notes because I found it online. And it is actually, it's more of like a scientific research paper, like book about this whole event, but it's a rare book and you can't really find it anywhere. So it's way less known than Betty and Barney Hill, but it very, very much happened. So before we dive into this real quick, I did want to mention that Vermont,

• 6:58Cassandra Yahnian?

  I mean, we do have one national park, the Marsh Billings National Park. But the story does not take place inside of a national park. And I know that you guys don't care about that at all. And you've made that pretty clear. But I found a national park tie in that I thought I would share with you guys anyway. Just in case someone out there is like, this isn't a national park. I don't care. It's still not, but there is a very, very, very small tie to the National Park Service.

• 7:29Danielle LaRock?

  I don't know why we feel so traumatized about this.

• 7:31Cassandra Yahnian?

  No one has ever traumatized us about it.

• 7:34Danielle LaRock?

  I know. We made it up in our minds and we're just like really afraid.

• 7:38Cassandra Yahnian?

  Yeah.

• 7:39Danielle LaRock?

  That it's going to be not well received, but go ahead. I appreciate the effort of the tie in.

• 7:44Cassandra Yahnian?

  Okay, well, get this. Lake Champlain is part of the Champlain Valley National Heritage Partnership, which is a federally designated national heritage area connected to the National Park Service. And they help preserve the region's natural and cultural history. So basically there's a subset of the National Park Service that helps Champlain Valley National Heritage Partnership decide how they preserve history here in the culture.

• 8:20Danielle LaRock?

  Okay, I'll accept that.

• 8:23Cassandra Yahnian?

  And this partnership is managed by the Lake Champlain Basin Program, which works to protect the basin's environmental, historic and social resources while expanding recreation access and cultural heritage education throughout the region. And then if you've never heard about Lake Champlain at all, Lake Champlain stretches more than 120 miles between Vermont, New York and Canada, bordered by the Adirondacks on one side and the Green Mountains on the other. It's one of the largest freshwater lakes in the United States with hundreds of miles of shoreline, dozens of islands, deep cold water and history that stretches back thousands of years. Indigenous communities traveled these waters long before Europeans arrived.

• 9:06Cassandra Yahnian?

  Revolutionary war battles unfolded here. And for centuries, people have tied the lake to strange sightings, disappearances, lake monsters, and unexplained encounters. So if aliens were going to show up anywhere in Vermont, Lake Champlain kind of feels like the place. So let's dive into the story. In August 1968, 16-year-old Michael Lapp, a blond-haired, blue-eyed teenager working at a girls' summer camp on the shores of Lake Champlain in Colchester, Vermont, spent his days running boats, helping campers waterski, and taking care of the equipment at the camp, which sat tucked along the edge of the lake about 14 miles north of Burlington.

• 9:49Cassandra Yahnian?

  On the evening of August 7th, Michael was sitting on the dock with 19-year-old Janet Cornell, a college student working at the camp as a waterski instructor. The camp was unusually quiet because the campers had traveled into Burlington for swim meet, so the two spent the evening talking and getting to know each other. They chatted about their families, relationships, hobbies, just normal conversations as the sun started setting over the lake. And that is when they noticed something strange in the sky. A glowing cigar-shaped object hovered over Lake Champlain. Then, three smaller objects emerged from it and began moving through the sky in strange patterns. Moments later, the larger craft and two of the smaller objects suddenly shot away,

• 10:34Cassandra Yahnian?

  leaving one of them behind. And that one started slowly moving directly towards them. As it got closer, Michael could make out figures inside the craft, beings he believed were communicating with him telepathically. Then the object hovered directly over the dock. Terrified, Michael and Janet dropped onto the wood planks beneath them. Michael could never clearly remember whether they fell, crouched, or were forced down somehow, but Janet appeared to either lose consciousness or slip into a kind of trance. And then, there was a gap. Michael couldn't remember what happened next. His memory simply stopped. The next thing he recalled was hearing car doors slamming and kids laughing as the campers returned

• 11:19Cassandra Yahnian?

  from the swim meet. He looked up and saw flashes of light moving rapidly towards the camp before the object suddenly ascended and disappeared into the night sky. Afterwards, Janet was exhausted and went straight to bed. The two barely spoke about what happened before the summer ended and eventually they lost contact entirely. But Michael never forgot that night on Lake Champlain. Before the encounter, Michael had been a pretty typical teenager. He ran track, played football, skied, wrote poetry, and played guitar. But after that night on Lake Champlain, the people around him noticed a shift. He started experimenting with marijuana and became deeply interested in spirituality,

• 12:00Cassandra Yahnian?

  consciousness, meditation, and mystical ideas about the universe and human existence. He dropped out of college three separate times and drifted from place to place, taking jobs in Hawaii, California, and New Mexico, always seeming to search for something he couldn't quite explain. Michael tried not to dwell on what happened that night on the dock, but over time, fragments of disturbing dreams began surfacing. In them, he was being taken somewhere against his will, surrounded by strange figures, and unable to stop what was happening. The dream would come for a while, then suddenly disappear, only to return again months later. Michael couldn't shake the feeling that whatever was happening in those dreams was connected to that night on Lake Champlain.

• 12:45Cassandra Yahnian?

  About five years after the encounter, Michael wrote a paper for one of his classes recounting what had happened at the camp. Not long after, the dreams became even more vivid, shifting into detailed memories of being inside a craft. That was the point where he decided that he needed answers. He started trying to reconnect with the other people who had been at the camp that summer, including Janet and several other counselors. One of them, Patrick, who had also allegedly witnessed these UFOs in the sky that night, he tried to contact- But when he tried tracking him down, he learned that Patrick had since been confined to a psychiatric hospital and was reportedly unable to communicate with anyone.

• 13:26Cassandra Yahnian?

  Then one day, Michael came across an article in Playboy magazine that mentioned J. Allen Hynek and the Center for UFO Studies in Evanston, Illinois. The very next day, he called the center searching for help, and that call eventually connected him with Walter N. Webb, who was a Boston astronomer and member of the NICAP, or the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena. Webb had studied under J. Allen Hynek at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory. Hynek had served as a scientific advisor on UFO investigations for the US Air Force, and later became one of the most prominent names in UFO research.

• 14:07Cassandra Yahnian?

  Webb had also been the first investigator to interview Betty and Barney Hill, following their alleged abduction experience in New Hampshire in 1961, a case that would later become one of the most famous UFO stories in the United States.

• 14:24Danielle LaRock?

  There it is.

• 14:25Cassandra Yahnian?

  There it is. So, he gets connected with the same person, which is crazy. And to backtrack slightly to the book that I mentioned a little bit, Walter Webb is the person who wrote the book about this specific UFO abduction, which is also why I think it's crazy that this is so not known as much as the Betty and Barney Hill incident, because it's the same investigator on both of them. And when we get into the nitty gritty of this, there's so many parallels to that story.

• 14:58Danielle LaRock?

  I'll have to do some boots-on-the-ground investigative work this year, because if I'm around, we tend to always be gone in September. We always pick that month to travel. But usually, there's an annual UFO celebration, like, event, festival, that Exeter, New Hampshire, puts on, and they have a ton of... Lecturers, guest speakers, things like that. It's not just like, oh, let's all get together and you can buy alien stuff. It's actually kind of like a quasi-conference type of thing. And one of the years, Betty and Barney Hill's niece spoke.

• 15:41Danielle LaRock?

  So I wonder if there's any programming that will come up or has come up in the past about this incident, because it's more of like a local event. And this is a New England story. So.

• 15:57Cassandra Yahnian?

  Yeah, I'd be so curious because even when researching this outside of the book, there definitely are. There were a couple of resources that I found that have covered and talked about this story. But if you look up Betty and Barney Hill, there's hundreds. There's books. There's like, there's so much about Betty and Barney Hill and this. There was like five or six resources that kind of talked about it.

• 16:20Danielle LaRock?

  Well, I'm glad you found them and made an episode out of it because.

• 16:23Cassandra Yahnian?

  Well, outside of this book that goes into like the full, full detail of this whole thing, which is crazy because it was like, oh, my God, there's everything I need to know is in this, in this book right here.

• 16:33Danielle LaRock?

  Okay, so now here's an experiment. We'll see if after this episode airs.

• 16:39Cassandra Yahnian?

  If more people start covering it.

• 16:41Danielle LaRock?

  Yeah, we'll know. We'll know.

• 16:43Cassandra Yahnian?

  We'll see it. No pressure.

• 16:45Danielle LaRock?

  No pressure. It's fine. I spread the word about aliens, please.

• 16:49Cassandra Yahnian?

  But yeah, in this case, put Lake Champlain on the map. Lake Champlain is actually really cool. I really like it up there. It's beautiful. If you guys haven't gone listening, you guys, if you're looking for a lake place, it's just such a cool spot in Burlington School and they have a causeway and you can ride your bike across the lake pretty much. And I don't know, it's so, it's so beautiful. Okay, but going back into the story. So we found out that Walter Webb has worked with Betty and Barney Hill. And Webb was known for being careful about the cases he investigated and focused on reports he believed could contribute meaningful information to the study of aerial phenomena. So he wasn't just accepting anyone who was like, hey, I think I saw a UFO. It had to

• 17:34Cassandra Yahnian?

  be substantial. After looking into the Lake Champlain encounter, he eventually wrote a book about the case. Oh, I have it right here. That he called Encounter at Buff ledge, a UFO Case History. And it's fairly rare now. Like I mentioned before, there's only a few copies that are circulating. And I found a version online where you can read it right online. And what's also interesting about it, too, is there's illustrations in it from what was witnessed here. So you can see the hand drawn illustrations from Michael in here of what he saw.

• 18:09Danielle LaRock?

  That reminds me of the Alagash abduction story. Oh, I guess I've done two alien stories.

• 18:14Cassandra Yahnian?

  Yeah.

• 18:15Danielle LaRock?

  Hard to keep track nowadays. But yeah, they, when they were under hypnosis, all of them drew what they saw. Anyway, okay, keep going.

• 18:26Cassandra Yahnian?

  So basically, what I was getting into is that even though Webb did eventually take on Michael's case, he was pretty reluctant at first because he wanted to verify that this was actually real and worth his time. In fact, when 26 year old Michael Lapp called him up, he was skeptical and considered sending him away with the usual UFO questionnaire, which was basically like, oh, you saw a UFO here, fill out this form and I'll get back to you. At that point, Webb was only investigating CE3s, which were known as close encounters of the third kind. That's a reference to the Heineck scale, which means a close encounter of the first kind is only observing a UFO visually. The second kind is getting physical

• 19:06Cassandra Yahnian?

  evidence of a UFO. The third kind is actual up close, personal contact with an alien life form. So that was the only thing that he was willing to research at this point. And in his book about the Lake Champlain story, Webb wrote, "One does not and should not enter lightly into a CE3 investigation." Webb warned Michael over the phone that the investigation would involve an intense witness credibility test. He would make sure Michael hadn't been reading a bunch of sci fi novels. He'd do character reference checks, put him through a polygraph and psychological tests to make sure Michael wasn't just out of his mind or making anything up.

• 19:46Danielle LaRock?

  Okay, I have a, I get it. I get it. I understand why that is part of the process. But what if something happened to me tomorrow that like legitimately? I had an encounter of some kind and they're like, yeah, well, like, have you read about aliens before? It's like, well, yeah, but it's still happened.

• 20:06Cassandra Yahnian?

  Happened. That's so valid. I think that maybe during this point in time, too, he was a little bit more iffy about it because aliens weren't as well as much. There was kind of like a craze going on of aliens during this time. So I think he was just trying to make sure he wasn't obsessed with it and then making up an encounter that didn't really happen or, or whatever it was. So he was just trying to, and I think he was also trying to scare Michael where he was like, if you want to go down this road, if you really think that you had this, this encounter, this is all the work that I'm going to do. Are you sure you want to do it?

• 20:47Danielle LaRock?

  Yeah. He's like, don't piss me off.

• 20:49Cassandra Yahnian?

  Yeah. Don't waste my time.

• 20:50Danielle LaRock?

  Yeah.

• 20:51Cassandra Yahnian?

  It's like, I am going to do a deep dive on you, your life, your family, everything that's ever happened to you. I'm going to learn about, are you in? And Michael was like, yeah, I'm in. I have nothing to hide. And also Michael seemed sincerely baffled by what he experienced and expressed interest in contributing to the scientific understanding of UFO encounters. He was basically like, I don't know what happened to me. I don't, I know it was a UFO encounter. I don't really understand why. I want to learn more. I want to help contribute to this research that you're doing. So he agreed to go under hypnosis to try and remember, because remember, he is missing a lot of stuff. He's just having these

• 21:32Cassandra Yahnian?

  really detailed dreams that he's connecting back to this time and he remembers an aircraft and he remembers being spoken to telepathically, but there's a lot of gaps in his memory at this point. So Webb decided to invite Michael to meet in person. Four days later, Michael hitchhiked 230 miles from northern Vermont to Boston to see him because he didn't have a car, so he just hitchhiked from here to Boston. It's a far ride, it's like three and a half hours. On his arrival, Webb discovered that Michael was a ruggedly handsome young man, standing about six feet tall with long blond hair. And this was after all the late 70s, so not surprising, he had long hair. Michael had just graduated from the University of Vermont with a degree in religion.

• 22:17Cassandra Yahnian?

  He didn't have a job yet, but planned to get one as a ski instructor that winter. They sat down and Michael told Webb his whole story, or at least what he could remember of it. When Webb first heard Michael's story, parts of it almost sounded too stereotypical to believe. The cigar-shaped craft, the telepathic communication, the missing time. It sounded like something straight out of a science fiction show. But from an investigative standpoint, the case had one detail that immediately caught Webb's attention. And that was that there were two witnesses who had never really discussed the experience with each other after it had happened. And that was pretty rare. In most multi-witness UFO cases, the people involved spent hours comparing memories

• 23:02Cassandra Yahnian?

  and unintentionally influencing each other's recollections. But Michael and Janet had barely spoken at all after the night on the dock before eventually losing contact altogether. Webb asked Michael if he thought he could track Janet Cornell down. Michael had heard through the grapevine that she was living in Atlanta and working for an Ivy League university, so he agreed to try. Months passed before Michael finally got back in touch with Webb, this time with a business phone number and mailing address for Janet. Webb wrote her a letter introducing himself, explaining his background and credentials, and telling her he was investigating an encounter involving Michael Lapp, someone who she had obviously worked with at the summer camp back in 1968.

• 23:44Cassandra Yahnian?

  He asked if she would be willing to share her side of what happened that night on Lake Champlain and assured her she could remain anonymous if she chose. As soon as Janet caught the letter, she called him back. Over the phone, Janet told him what she remembered. It wasn't too much. She remembered the strange lights and Michael getting really excited about them. She remembered tumbling onto the dock, but couldn't remember how she got there. In her memory, it all happened in about 15 minutes or so. She hadn't been sure why Michael seemed so much more affected by the event than her. But looking back, she recognized how odd the experience had been, and she was also perplexed by the time gaps in her memory. Webb was careful not to give Janet any details from Michael's version of events.

• 24:26Cassandra Yahnian?

  He wanted to see what she remembered on her own without influencing her recollection in any way. From their conversations, Webb found Janet to be intelligent, grounded, and articulate. She came from a well-educated family, one of five children and the daughter of a doctor. After her time at Buffledge Summer Camp, she graduated from Northwestern University with a degree in psychology. By the time Webb contacted her, she was 29 years old, married to a doctor, and living what appeared to be a completely normal life. Janet told Webb she was willing to cooperate with the investigation. And with that, Webb began seriously digging into the Buffledge case. He started digging through newspaper stories to see if anyone else had reported seeing unusual lights over the lake.

• 25:10Cassandra Yahnian?

  He even filed formal record requests trying to obtain police reports and any official documentation connected to the sighting. He started trying to track down other counselors working at the camp at the time as well. And he took a trip to Buffledge with some special equipment so he could make estimates of distances. Michael met him there and walked him through exactly what he had seen from the dock that night. Using a sighting compass and a homemade inclinometer, a device used to measure angles and elevation, Webb worked to map out the UFO's approximate position and movement across the sky. Webb estimated the object had appeared and disappeared at roughly 195 degrees and about 25 to 30 degrees in elevation.

• 25:51Danielle LaRock?

  You know, when people are like, geometry is such a waste of time to learn in high school.

• 25:57Cassandra Yahnian?

  Yeah.

• 25:58Danielle LaRock?

  Except

• 25:59Cassandra Yahnian?

  Right now.

• 26:00Danielle LaRock?

  In ufology.

• 26:03Danielle LaRock?

  So think about that.

• 26:04Cassandra Yahnian?

  That's the only time you need it.

• 26:07Cassandra Yahnian?

  During this, he also took photographs, recorded compass bearings on nearby landmarks, and sketched the horizon from the dock where the encounter had taken place. Then he visited Michael's family home and met his parents and siblings. The day after the UFO encounter, Michael had actually hitchhiked home to tell them about what he had experienced. His mom was a social worker and figured there must be a perfectly simple psychological explanation for what Michael experienced. She kind of blamed the liberal arts college, Goddard, that he ended up attending. But his dad and one of his sisters believed his story completely. Webb asked if he could visit Michael's bedroom because he wanted to look at his bookshelf

• 26:48Cassandra Yahnian?

  and make sure he didn't have any novels on the shelf that could have inspired his story. But he didn't see any red flags. Michael's high school sweetheart also talked to Webb. She remembered him coming back that night ranting about a UFO encounter, how he'd been so wild in his telling of the story that it had actually made her cry.

• 27:07Danielle LaRock?

  All of this?

• 27:09Cassandra Yahnian?

  She was just, she said, it was just so overwhelming. She was like, you're being crazy. I don't know what's going on. And it, the whole thing, she just burst into tears.

• 27:20Cassandra Yahnian?

  And Michael actually said that it kind of hurt his feelings. He was like, what?

• 27:24Danielle LaRock?

  It's like, stop making this about you.

• 27:26Cassandra Yahnian?

  Like, this is about me and my UFO encounter. I was just abducted by aliens. Why are you crying?

• 27:31Danielle LaRock?

  It's like, don't gaslight me right now, okay? I don't need this.

• 27:34Cassandra Yahnian?

  Like, this is why she's now his ex-girlfriend.

• 27:38Cassandra Yahnian?

  But all of this gave Webb more confidence that Michael was actually telling the truth. You know, he's not finding all these novels that he was researching aliens. He's seeing the location he's detailing. He's kind of getting, getting an image of like how this could have occurred. And then I think also seeing his family members, hearing that they completely doubted his account and that he came back so quickly and told them about him, about them. It was all kind of airfying that he should investigate this. Webb also noted that 1968 was what he called a wave year for UFO sightings across the globe. There were 19 incidents of people reporting that they had been abducted. Many of them were automobile-related, in which car engines failed to work in the presence

• 28:23Cassandra Yahnian?

  of a spacecraft. Lots of them were in South America, Spain, and Canada. In fact, up to that time, 1968 was the fourth highest year of UFO sightings. Before he left town, Webb visited the local library and discovered the date of the swim meet that the campers had attended, which he found to be August 7. And now that he had figured out that exact date, because previously, Michael was like, it was like the 7th or the 8th, like, he wasn't sure. He just knew that there was a meet that happened and a swim meet that happened when he was out on the dock and kind of explained it that way. And as any good UFOologist knows, he needed to try to make a good faith attempt to explain the events through natural causes first. So let's get rid of all of

• 29:06Cassandra Yahnian?

  the UFO stuff and what else could have happened here. He tracked down descriptions of the weather and checked to see if Venus had been present in the sky that night. Maybe the bright lights had just been a really intense planetary event. Webb was an astronomer after all, and so he verified that yes, Venus had been out that night, but far from where the UFO had been in the sky.

• 29:28Danielle LaRock?

  I'm telling you one thing, I'm never mistaking Venus for a UFO. If there's one thing about me, that's not ever gonna happen.

• 29:35Cassandra Yahnian?

  It's like, if I see a UFO, it's gonna be real. If I come out and tell you I saw one.

• 29:42Danielle LaRock?

  If somebody approached, their first reaction to my story was, are you sure you just didn't see Venus? I'd flip out.

• 29:51Cassandra Yahnian?

  As you should.

• 29:52Danielle LaRock?

  Don't insult me, please.

• 29:54Cassandra Yahnian?

  Don't insult my intelligence, please.

• 29:56Danielle LaRock?

  Can I pick Venus out right now?

• 29:57Cassandra Yahnian?

  Absolutely not. However, do I also know that I don't see any UFOs in the sky right now? Not that I know of. So with all this information, Webb moved forward with the hypnotist approach to conduct interviews with Michael and with Janet.

• 30:19Danielle LaRock?

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• 31:02Danielle LaRock?

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• 31:43Danielle LaRock?

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• 32:26Danielle LaRock?

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• 32:49Cassandra Yahnian?

  The first hypnotist Webb brought in was a man named Harold, who had extensive professional background and was already working with local police departments and hospitals. He had multiple certifications in hypnosis and ended up conducting five separate sessions with Michael. For Janet, Webb hired a female hypnotist with similarly impressive credentials. Janet underwent three sessions of her own, some which became unusually long. One reportedly lasted more than three and a half hours. Michael's sessions were shorter, usually around 90 minutes, but he entered into a hypnotic state much faster and more deeply than Janet did. During Janet's first session, she struggled to relax and seemed almost too determined

• 33:31Cassandra Yahnian?

  to remember every detail. But once the hypnotist guided her into a calmer state during later sessions, her recollections became much more detailed. While the witnesses were under hypnosis, Walter and Webb conducted the interviews himself. He was extremely careful not to lead either witness or reveal what the other person had already said. In the encounter at Buff Ledge, a UFO case in history that he wrote, he included long sections of these interviews, and throughout them, you can see how cautious he was to let both Michael and Janet describe events entirely in their own words. Over hours and hours of testimony, Webb slowly began piecing together a fuller picture of what might have happened that night on Lake Champlain. And what

• 34:14Cassandra Yahnian?

  stood out most to him was how many details in Michael and Janet's accounts overlapped. So here's the story Webb ultimately pieced together from their testimony. Both Michael and Janet remembered lazing around by the water that evening beneath an unusually clear sky. Visibility was so good, they could see nearly 10 miles across Lake Champlain all the way to South Hero Island with its orchards and Marble Island, home to a small yacht colony. As the sun began to set, Michael noticed a bright star-like object about a third of a way up the southwestern sky that he initially assumed was Venus. But then Venus started moving into an arc to the right, towards another long object hovering nearby.

• 34:58Cassandra Yahnian?

  Michael remembered turning to Janet and saying he thought Venus was falling. The object burned bright white above the Adirondacks roughly 10 miles away. Then suddenly, three lights along the bottom illuminated one at a time before reversing direction. Moments later, three smaller objects began darting around the sky. They zigzagged upward, fluttered downward like falling leaves, then spiraled perfectly back into the air. At one point, the objects clustered together in a triangle formation before splitting off in different directions again. And at this point, Michael could hear something, though Janet later said she didn't remember any sound at all.

• 35:39Cassandra Yahnian?

  He described it as a strange humming noise, like thousands of different tuning forks being struck at once. Soon, only one object remained in the sky, emitting this wavering mix of tones and pitches. And by that point, Michael was terrified. He couldn't believe what he was watching happen over Lake Champlain. Michael asked Janet to touch his face because he needed to know if this were actually happening or if somehow he was dreaming. The two reached out and touched each other just to confirm that they were both seeing the same thing. Michael later said they did this several times, though Janet didn't remember that part the same way. Michael wanted to get away from the dock, but Janet seemed drawn to whatever they were watching and wanted to stay.

• 36:23Cassandra Yahnian?

  Along the edge of the craft, they could see a pulsating band of light flashing in rhythms with strange sounds coming from it. Then suddenly, according to Michael, the object shot straight up before plunging down into the lake with almost no splash at all. At the same moment, he remembered hearing dogs and cats nearby erupting into frantic cries while tree branches cracked violently in the wind.

• 36:48Cassandra Yahnian?

  The object stayed underwater for a couple of minutes and then reappeared. This time, it started moving towards them glowing in a brilliant white. Michael noticed that Janet became very quiet and spaced out, staring straight ahead. Janet didn't remember any of this. As Michael watched, the top of the object became transparent like a window and he could see two figures inside who appeared to be driving. The UFO stopped in front of them and Michael could see the figures in more detail. They appeared child-sized and their movements seemed childish, too. But they had large bald heads and their skin looked greenish-blue. They wore skin-tight uniforms, the same color as their skin,

• 37:30Cassandra Yahnian?

  and they had frog-like eyes that bulged out from the sides of their lima bean-shaped heads like goggles. Their nostrils were two slits and Michael remembered their mouths as nonexistent or very small. Their necks seemed extremely long and skinny. Kind of feel like that's the typical alien description.

• 37:49Danielle LaRock?

  There's gotta be truth to it, that's all I'm saying.

• 37:52Cassandra Yahnian?

  If that's what everyone's seeing.

• 37:53Danielle LaRock?

  I know, and it's like, I get the argument of, okay, well, that's what everyone says.

• 37:59Cassandra Yahnian?

  It's like, but maybe it's because that's what everyone's seeing.

• 38:02Danielle LaRock?

  Right, that's what I'm saying.

• 38:07Cassandra Yahnian?

  Well, Michael called out to them and he said, "What do you want? Are you gonna hurt us?" And that's when they answered telepathically to him, and he heard them say in his mind that they were not here to harm him. So then, Michael asked again out loud, he goes, "What are you doing here?" And then, they told him telepathically they had returned to Earth after their first atomic bomb had exploded. And from here, he has this telepathic communication with them, where they say that they wanted to help humans protect themselves from themselves. They said that they also came to obtain some kind of energy to help them in a civil war that they were fighting against an evil group of their own kind.

• 38:50Cassandra Yahnian?

  Then, Michael thought to himself, "I wonder what it's like on their ship."

• 38:54Danielle LaRock?

  An intergalactic war is happening.

• 38:56Cassandra Yahnian?

  Yeah. Big deal.

• 38:58Danielle LaRock?

  Yeah.

• 38:59Cassandra Yahnian?

  It's not just here on Earth. It's everywhere.

• 39:01Danielle LaRock?

  It's not just like, just checking in, seeing how it's all going. It's like, actually shit's going down back home.

• 39:06Cassandra Yahnian?

  Yeah. It's like, this is a strategic mission. We're here for a certain energy you have on this planet to help us fight.

• 39:13Danielle LaRock?

  And also just a wellness check on you.

• 39:15Cassandra Yahnian?

  Yeah.

• 39:16Danielle LaRock?

  We saw that atomic bomb happening.

• 39:17Cassandra Yahnian?

  It's like, that was kind of fucked up. What are you guys doing? You're gonna explode the whole planet and we need this source that you have here. So can you chill the fuck out?

• 39:26Danielle LaRock?

  Yeah.

• 39:27Cassandra Yahnian?

  Basically.

• 39:27Danielle LaRock?

  It's like, you're gonna ruin everything for us.

• 39:29Cassandra Yahnian?

  It's like, and yourselves, stupid idiots.

• 39:31Danielle LaRock?

  And that, yeah.

• 39:35Cassandra Yahnian?

  So then Michael thinks to himself, I wonder what it's like inside their ship. And instantly, the disc maneuvers directly overhead. He felt like he could jump up and touch it. It was so close. And he shouted to them. He actually said, we don't want to go, but it was too late.

• 39:52Danielle LaRock?

  It's like, well, you thought it.

• 39:53Cassandra Yahnian?

  It's like, you wanted to see it. Get on up here.

• 39:56Danielle LaRock?

  We heard you. Get on up in here. It reminds me, you said it kind of had like a translucent top or something?

• 40:04Cassandra Yahnian?

  Yeah.

• 40:04Danielle LaRock?

  I just can't get a Tesla out of my mind. Cause don't they have that like translucent roof?

• 40:13Cassandra Yahnian?

  Do they?

• 40:14Danielle LaRock?

  I've only been in a Tesla twice. And I'm pretty sure the whole roof is clear.

• 40:21Cassandra Yahnian?

  Really? I was picturing the Jetsons. You know how they have their little cars and it's just the little glass thing?

• 40:27Danielle LaRock?

  Yeah, I think Tesla copied that.

• 40:29Cassandra Yahnian?

  Does that?

• 40:30Danielle LaRock?

  I don't know. Tesla people can let us know. I've clearly don't know.

• 40:33Cassandra Yahnian?

  I've never been in one. I've just seen them from afar. So I have no experience, but I could see it. I could picture that. I've never seen it from the outside. Is it just translucent from the inside?

• 40:44Danielle LaRock?

  I think. I think it's like an optical illusion. I don't know what's happening with them. It's too futuristic for me. I don't, I know it's kind of like if cars and vehicles are moving in this direction. I don't know. I'm gonna be one of those people that just holds on to my forerunner forever.

• 41:01Cassandra Yahnian?

  Yeah, I'm all for more sustainability in cars. I think that that's great.

• 41:06Danielle LaRock?

  But is are they super sustainable? I don't know. Or a Cybertruck? Are Cybertrucks Tesla?

• 41:13Cassandra Yahnian?

  Yeah, I think Cybertrucks are crazy. Cybertrucks are UFOs. Like, what are you guys doing?

• 41:20Danielle LaRock?

  And people don't talk about them enough.

• 41:22Cassandra Yahnian?

  Yeah, I saw one that was outfitted with like a camper on the back the other day and it blew my mind.

• 41:28Danielle LaRock?

  No.

• 41:28Cassandra Yahnian?

  I swear. It was like that. Now that it looks like a Humvee slash UFO slash.

• 41:36Danielle LaRock?

  I've never been in a Cybertruck.

• 41:37Cassandra Yahnian?

  Airplane. I don't know. Yeah, me either.

• 41:40Danielle LaRock?

  Okay, but back to the actual.

• 41:43Cassandra Yahnian?

  UFO.

• 41:43Danielle LaRock?

  UFO.

• 41:44Cassandra Yahnian?

  Alien abduction that's going on here. So he yells out saying, we don't want to go like, we don't want to go, don't take us, but it was too late. A beam of super white light came down over them. He grabbed Janet and pulled her down to the dock. Janet only vaguely remembers much of these events, but she did remember hitting the dock. Meanwhile, Michael felt himself start to lose consciousness. He prayed to Jesus for protection as everything around him became increasingly disorienting. This portion of his memory only surfaced after multiple hypnosis sessions. He remembered the sensation of floating, followed by what felt like his entire life flashing before his eyes. Somehow, he believed the beings were learning every detail about him telepathically,

• 42:29Cassandra Yahnian?

  absorbing memories, emotions, and moments from his life all at once. Afterwards, he described feeling strangely connected to them, almost as if they had become familiar to him because they now knew everything about him. Then came what he described as a powerful booming rush of sound and flashes of intense color exploding through his mind. Michael became convinced he was dying. He remembered feeling an overwhelming sadness before suddenly finding himself moving through space with the earth far below him. At first, he felt completely alone. But then, one of the beings which Michael later thought of as kind of a guide, appeared beside him and touched him.

• 43:11Cassandra Yahnian?

  He described the creature's skin as wet and clammy, and Janet described it similarly, saying it almost felt like touching a rubber glove. Next thing, Michael knew he was inside a huge spacecraft. He remembered entering an enormous white circular room. The ceiling of it was transparent with a night sky above. And then, he saw Janet, spread out on a table in her bathing suit, and aliens were gathering around her, examining her. They were using instruments to scrape her skin along the collarbone and limbs and put these samples into glass containers that emerged on an arm from a hole in the wall. They shined lights into her eyes and touched her long, black hair in astonishment. They laid something on her head, testing her brain.

• 43:54Cassandra Yahnian?

  Janet remembered eventually this in hypnosis. They lifted and dropped her arm, checking her reflexes. "Nothing felt painful," she said. "She felt like a specimen under a microscope. It all felt very scientific, and the eight or ten aliens around her were doctors." In a later session, Michael recalls that a machine descended from the ceiling above Janet's table. It had tubes that they used to collect saliva and vaginal fluid samples from Janet's body. As the machine sucked at her body, it caused her to shake on the table, and the image disturbed Michael deeply. Janet never remembered these details of the exam herself, so she just remembered them kind of looking at her and not feeling pain or scared, where Michael was like, "No, whatever

• 44:39Cassandra Yahnian?

  they were doing to you was really..."

• 44:42Danielle LaRock?

  Intense.

• 44:43Cassandra Yahnian?

  Intense, yeah. Janet only began remembering parts of the examination after several hypnosis sessions. Unlike Michael, she recalled being covered by what felt like a hospital sheet or gown, rather than lying exposed on the table. More than anything, she remembered the beings acting calm and strangely gentle. One of them seemed to be assigned specifically to comfort her, communicating telepathically to keep her relaxed throughout the entire examination.

• 45:13Cassandra Yahnian?

  The aliens conducting the exam seemed female to Michael, although there were no physical features to give him that impression. Janet thought of them with no gender at all. Both Janet and Michael independently remembered one particular being serving almost like a recorder, silently documenting everything that happened without writing anything down. At one point, Michael asked why they were performing tests on them. The being he thought of as his guide responded telepathically that they were, quote, spawning consciousness in order to transplant it elsewhere into the universe.

• 45:47Danielle LaRock?

  Oh, shit.

• 45:50Cassandra Yahnian?

  Like, you're going.

• 45:50Danielle LaRock?

  Oh.

• 45:51Cassandra Yahnian?

  Galaxies away.

• 45:54Danielle LaRock?

  Oh, my goodness. Now, this is.

• 45:58Cassandra Yahnian?

  The plot thickens. Michael also asked where they came from. He later recalled hearing a long, multi-syllabic name he couldn't pronounce or recognize, along with the explanation that their planet was far too distant for humans to detect. It's basically like, I could tell you, but you're never gonna understand.

• 46:16Danielle LaRock?

  First of all, no one will ever believe you. And second of all, there's no way to.

• 46:22Cassandra Yahnian?

  You don't even have a map to point this out.

• 46:24Danielle LaRock?

  Yeah. I don't know. Did you see? You've been off social media.

• 46:28Cassandra Yahnian?

  I have been.

• 46:29Danielle LaRock?

  God bless you, but.

• 46:33Danielle LaRock?

  I posted this thing. There was, um, over the last, like, month or so, they released this kind of like 3D, three-dimensional, I hate to say map, but it is kind of a map of what we know of the universe so far. And it was this multi-country, like, there's many different countries and scientists working on this. It wasn't just from one program. It was like, it took years and it was a pretty collaborative effort. And it's really cool to see because it's so mind-boggling how large the known universe is. And this woman did a really cool job. It was like a minute and a half video explaining it and

• 47:18Danielle LaRock?

  all that and whatever. And I just reposted it and I was like, anyone who doesn't believe in extraterrestrial life needs to get out of my face.

• 47:28Cassandra Yahnian?

  It's like, look how big this place is.

• 47:30Danielle LaRock?

  It's just.

• 47:31Cassandra Yahnian?

  And we're one tiny little dot.

• 47:33Danielle LaRock?

  A speck, not even a speck. Whatever is smaller than a speck is what we are. So. I just, yeah, at this point in 2026, with all of the information that we've had, I mean, I feel like back in 1968, even though there were clearly people who were in the camp of, hey, we are trained scientists and astronomers and we understand that there is probably life out there in some way, shape or form. But I think they were more fringe at that time. I truly don't think that believing there's extraterrestrial life is a fringe belief right now. I feel like it's

• 48:15Cassandra Yahnian?

  It's like if you don't believe

• 48:16Danielle LaRock?

  Kind of embarrassing to say you don't believe

• 48:19Cassandra Yahnian?

  Yeah, it's like, what do you mean?

• 48:21Danielle LaRock?

  And I'm not saying you need to ascribe to this exact description.

• 48:25Cassandra Yahnian?

  Like abductions and

• 48:27Danielle LaRock?

  Yeah, like, and the description of, you know, they all look like this and yada, yada, yada.

• 48:32Cassandra Yahnian?

  Yeah, like the big eyes and the

• 48:34Danielle LaRock?

  Yeah.

• 48:35Cassandra Yahnian?

  Weird heads.

• 48:36Danielle LaRock?

  Wet skin or whatever you just said.

• 48:37Cassandra Yahnian?

  Yeah.

• 48:38Danielle LaRock?

  Yeah, I don't know. I'm just saying, just life doesn't have to equate to this description of an organism. It could be anything.

• 48:48Cassandra Yahnian?

  So you don't believe Michael?

• 48:49Danielle LaRock?

  No, I believe Mike. I'm just saying you, as in, I'm trying to like, make everyone else feel better, but I believe Michael. I believe Michael from the second you started.

• 48:58Cassandra Yahnian?

  Like, I didn't even need to know anything about him. I believed him.

• 49:02Danielle LaRock?

  Especially after you said, and I think, again, it could be a coincidence, and I think it is not that unbelievable that after this experience, he had this sort of awakening into different realms of like religion and whatever he said, spirituality and just kind of like searching for what I think is, he's thinking of like, what is the meaning of life? What is our purpose here? What is all this?

• 49:31Cassandra Yahnian?

  Yeah.

• 49:31Danielle LaRock?

  Plenty of people do that without having an abduction experience.

• 49:36Cassandra Yahnian?

  Totally.

• 49:37Danielle LaRock?

  But I'm just saying it aligns really well. For sure. I follow.

• 49:41Cassandra Yahnian?

  Well, jumping back into the story, so basically they're from a place that we can't even comprehend. In Janet's final hypnosis, Webb tried to help Janet look at the faces of aliens. She still had only described them very vaguely. And she realized she had been trying very hard not to look at the faces of her abductors because she said that they were so ugly. She didn't want to look at them. And in his, in Webb's famous investigation of the Hill couple, Betty had also refused to open her eyes during the abduction. So Webb surmised that both women had been traumatized by the creature's intense strangeness. But now during the hypnosis, Webb prodded Janet, asking if she'd peek now and then, and she had.

• 50:26Cassandra Yahnian?

  She described their eyes sunken in, not bulbous, as Michael had said. But she did notice slitted nostrils, a large lima bean shaped head and thin mouth. Like Michael, she also noticed that when they spoke to each other, it was in a shrill, rapid voice, like a tape recording on fast forward. And Michael described it more like a whine.

• 50:46Danielle LaRock?

  Oh, so they actually heard them audibly speaking, not just telepathically?

• 50:50Cassandra Yahnian?

  Yeah, it was like they were telepathically communicating to them, but they were audibly speaking to each other.

• 50:56Danielle LaRock?

  Okay.

• 50:56Cassandra Yahnian?

  Michael, on the other hand, didn't remember undergoing any type of physical examination. Instead, he recalled what felt more like some type of training while Janet was being examined nearby. He remembered being reclined back on a slanted surface while a helmet like device with small prongs was placed against his head. In front of him was a wall filled with glowing screens. Whatever information was shown to him, he couldn't consciously retain any of it afterwards. He later described the experience as feeling like multiple versions of himself were absorbing everything all at once. Around him, the beings appeared pleased with whatever was happening, expressing excitement in a way Michael interpreted

• 51:41Cassandra Yahnian?

  as similar to clapping or celebration. So it's like, yay. Like I just picture like a bunch of alien beings. So you're like, it's working.

• 51:48Danielle LaRock?

  Yes. Yeah.

• 51:49Cassandra Yahnian?

  Yeah. Throughout the experience, Michael became convinced that he was dying. But the being he thought of as his guide communicated telepathically that what he was experiencing would only resemble death and that he would survive it. Then came an overwhelming burst of brilliant white light that Michael described as strangely cool, almost like being submerged in water. Later, based on testimonies collected through NICAP, Walter Webb noted that experiences like this training appeared surprisingly often in alleged abduction cases and frequently resembled descriptions from near-death experiences.

• 52:29Danielle LaRock?

  It's all connected. That's all I'm saying. It's so cool. It's so cool.

• 52:35Cassandra Yahnian?

  So interesting.

• 52:37Danielle LaRock?

  I, oh my God, sorry. I have so much to say. I'm just trying to let you tell the story. But this morning, so I don't do it, I don't listen to it all the time, like every week, but there's a YouTube channel, and I follow their Instagram, that I believe it's called Coming Home. Don't quote me, but I think it's something like that. But it's all just interviews about people's near-death experiences.

• 53:03Cassandra Yahnian?

  Oh, interesting.

• 53:03Danielle LaRock?

  And I listened to one this morning about a man who was on the telephone that got struck by lightning.

• 53:11Cassandra Yahnian?

  Oh.

• 53:12Danielle LaRock?

  And he's like, the last thing I remember is like going to hang up the phone and then just feeling like immediate, I was just outside of my body. Like I wasn't aware that I had died type of thing. And anyways, what I'm trying to get at is all of their experiences, almost every single one has similarities, similar to what we were just talking about with abductees, having like, yes, their experiences have nuance and they're different because they are different incidents, but there are threads that are similar throughout every single one. And it's the same thing with near-death experiences.

• 53:52Cassandra Yahnian?

  That's so interesting. Like the out-of-body seeing thing, like seeing visual.

• 53:58Danielle LaRock?

  And also this like sense of not always, is it like this sense of peace and things? Like a lot of times they're like, I was confused. I didn't really understand what was happening. But there was always this tendency of them saying in one way, shape or form, like this guy today, he's like, I remember just not wanting to go back. And I understood that I was feeling that and also recognized like I liked my, I loved my life. I had three kids. I had a wife. I loved my life. It was great.

• 54:34Danielle LaRock?

  But I just all of a sudden was just like, yeah, I didn't want to return. Like this is much better. Like this is my home. I was waking up, you know, it was, and it's always like that. Which is so just crazy, so crazy. Anyway, okay, so.

• 54:54Cassandra Yahnian?

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• 55:36Cassandra Yahnian?

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• 56:41Cassandra Yahnian?

  I forget what was happening. So we were talking about the near-death experiences. But towards the end of the experience, Michael remembered suddenly feeling as though he was flying directly into the wall of screens while images flashed rapidly around him. One of them showed Janet and himself lying back on the dock at camp. As this was happening, he heard a voice in his mind telling him that even if humans feared them or viewed them as evil, that they were actually friends. In another hypnosis session, Michael also recalled the beings telling him that they loved him, cared about him, and saying goodbye before the encounter ended. So he heard all of these voices from the aliens being like, "We love you, we're your friends."

• 57:23Cassandra Yahnian?

  At the same time, he was seeing this image of the dock back in Burlington, back on Lake Champlain, and then suddenly, he was back. For Janet, she just remembered a poof and she was back on the dock. When she woke up, she thought she'd taken a strange nap and woke up feeling zonked. They both heard the sounds of slamming doors and kids' voices, campers returning from the Burlington Swimme and noticed that they were back on the dock. Above them, the UFO still hovered overhead. Two 15-year-old girls, Susan and Barbara, saw the glow and ran across the bluff to see what it was. Later, Webb reached out to these women and they substantiated this description of events. The UFO shot several beams of light at them and then went dark.

• 58:08Cassandra Yahnian?

  So there were other people who saw this UFO as well. Then, the UFO disappeared. Michael and Janet stumbled into the dining hall after that, both reportedly feeling very exhausted. But Michael's friend Patrick, who I mentioned at the beginning of this, that he reached out to when he was first having all these dreams, he tried to reach out to him to be like, hey, do you remember that time on Lake Champlain? And, and found out that he had actually been committed to a psychiatric ward and he wasn't in a state of mind to speak with him. This is what happened right after. His friend Patrick rushed up to him and asked him, he said, something really strange happened to you on the lake, didn't

• 58:49Cassandra Yahnian?

  it? Because Patrick had actually seen the whole thing from the window of the building. He saw the UFO come in and he saw them get scooped up.

• 58:58Danielle LaRock?

  No.

• 58:59Cassandra Yahnian?

  Yeah.

• 59:00Danielle LaRock?

  And he just, I don't want to, I don't want to assume, but now he's in a psychiatric ward?

• 59:06Cassandra Yahnian?

  Yes.

• 59:07Danielle LaRock?

  Do we know why?

• 59:08Cassandra Yahnian?

  It didn't go into details of that.

• 59:10Danielle LaRock?

  Like, he could have definitely been having a mental crisis of some sort.

• 59:13Cassandra Yahnian?

  It could have been so many other things, because it was years later. But yes. And he actually, so Patrick wanted to report a UFO sighting to the Plattsburgh Air Force Base. But Michael tried to talk Patrick out of the idea because he didn't want people to think that he was crazy. It's like, this sounds wild. I know what you just saw. I know what just happened to me, but no one's going to believe us. I don't want to report it. But Patrick called anyway and asked them if they'd seen anything flying around. Michael can't remember exactly what the Air Force had told Patrick, but Webb didn't find any articles in the local paper that anyone else had seen strange lights that night. And then after that call and that conversation and kind of looking into it,

• 59:56Cassandra Yahnian?

  it kind of just faded, faded out. For whatever reason, Patrick dropped the conversation.

• 1:00:02Danielle LaRock?

  Well, who knows what the Air Force Base said to him? Or, no, I'm just, I don't know. This is also amidst the time of all of the scientists going missing or being killed.

• 1:00:17Danielle LaRock?

  You're also off social media, so I'm not sure if you're aware, but there's like a whole conspiracy thing right now that's very much in the news. And like, the administration has even commented on it because it's so. Wild and people are like, hey, what the hell is going on at this point? I think there's in the last year, there's been 15 scientists who have had top security, security clearance and have been working on a plethora of different top secret government projects that have to do with some pretty intense things about space and nuclear and

• 1:01:00Danielle LaRock?

  all that. And it's like, oh, she went missing on a hike and was never seen again. He ended his own life, even though he said he wasn't going to, or, oh, he was found shot to death or what? And it's all of these people.

• 1:01:14Cassandra Yahnian?

  It's like, okay, something's going on here.

• 1:01:16Danielle LaRock?

  Yeah. And people are starting to put the pieces together and are starting to question the administration. And we all know they're never gonna own up to anything.

• 1:01:25Cassandra Yahnian?

  But yeah, I'm even going to get into it a little bit here with how the government at the time that this was going on, kind of handled these type of circumstances. So we are gonna jump into that a little bit soon. But after all this happened, he talks to Patrick, it's the end of like that encounter that day. He goes back to his room and he just takes a really long nap. It's like, oh, my God, I don't know what just happened. I need to sleep. When he woke up, he tried to go talk to Janet, but she was still asleep and her roommate wouldn't wake her up because she said that she was feeling unwell. So Michael went to a cabin called the Playpen that was on the summer camp and all alone, he got drunk for the very first time in his life.

• 1:02:10Cassandra Yahnian?

  After that, he was up all night throwing up and he didn't get up until noon the next day. So that same evening, after he's hungover all day, Michael borrows a friend's car and drove home to tell his parents and three siblings what he believed had happened to him, or at least the parts he could remember. And we kind of talked about this earlier, but most of his family didn't take the story seriously, except for one of his sisters, who was willing to listen. And then, of course, he went to his girlfriend's house, who didn't believe him and cried.

• 1:02:41Danielle LaRock?

  Yep.

• 1:02:41Cassandra Yahnian?

  On his. On his recounting, "The day after the abduction, Janet didn't understand why Michael suddenly seemed so distant and aloof. She couldn't shake the strange feeling that something important had happened and that she was somehow being excluded from it, even though she couldn't fully explain why. Unlike Michael, Janet didn't remember the same vivid details of the encounter at the time. She only remembered fragments and strange feelings she couldn't make sense of. Neither Janet nor Michael brought up the experience with each other after that. And before long, summer ended and they went their separate ways. And then that's where it all circles back five years later, where they talk to Webb."

• 1:03:25Cassandra Yahnian?

  After Webb was finished with the hypnosis sessions, he wrapped up his investigation. Janet and Michael still hadn't ever talked to each other about what they'd endured together. And so Webb finally agreed to let them meet. Janet was going to be in the area one more time before moving to the West Coast. So Michael promised to hitchhike to a halfway meeting place, which was a bus station. Webb and Janet drove to meet them through driving in rain. They waited a few hours, but Michael never showed up. So Webb and Janet drove home. On the drive back, Webb told Janet the details about what Michael had seen happening on the exam table, how the aliens had invaded her body, how they were taking all those

• 1:04:06Cassandra Yahnian?

  samples and were really doing invasive procedures. She didn't talk much afterwards and she actually, after trying to remember what he was talking about and listening to that, she came down with a really, really bad headache, which was very uncommon for her. She never really experienced bad headaches and especially not like the one she got during this conversation. That evening, Michael called and said he had to turn around when the rain got too bad for cars to pick him up. So instead, Janet and Michael talked on the phone for a long time, swapping their stories for the very first time after all these years. They were amazed at the similarities of their experiences and their drawings of aliens

• 1:04:48Cassandra Yahnian?

  and their spacecraft, because they both drew aliens and like what they- Saw and they kind of talked about it and they drew almost the same images.

• 1:04:56Danielle LaRock?

  Except for the eyes seemed a little different, right?

• 1:04:58Cassandra Yahnian?

  Yeah. And this was actually the start of a lifelong friendship. Over the years after the investigation, Michael would periodically call Janet up out of nowhere. He said he just wanted to make sure Janet's life was going all right. And he needed reassurance that what they had experienced had actually been real. And Michael had a pretty good reason to doubt himself and these hypnosis sessions and believing if they were real or not. Because in 2024, the Pentagon released a study in which the US government concluded that there were no signs of alien life from any of the numerous reports going back decades, including the buff ledge incident at Lake Champlain.

• 1:05:41Cassandra Yahnian?

  A PBS News article about the report said, "The study from the Defense Department All Domain Anomaly Resolution Office analyzed US government investigations since 1945 of reported sightings of unidentified anomalous phenomena, more popularly known as UFOs. It found no evidence that any of them were signs of alien life or that the US government and private companies had reverse engineered extraterrestrial technology and were hiding it." So they basically just said, "All of that research, all of those recordings, all those documented sightings and abductions were fake and we find no evidence of alien life." Another study published in the Harvard Gazette

• 1:06:22Cassandra Yahnian?

  found another explanation for UFO abduction stories like Michael and Janet's. They say that these experiences happened during times when they were dreaming with their eyes opened.

• 1:06:33Danielle LaRock?

  What?

• 1:06:35Danielle LaRock?

  Yeah, I do that a lot.

• 1:06:36Cassandra Yahnian?

  It's like, I get sleep paralysis, but what? It's like, they said that the human body experiences sleep paralysis during sleep. The researchers explained, "But sometimes people wake up during a dream before the paralysis has lifted." People can experience vivid hallucinations that feel like real life, such as flashing lights, flying through their bedroom window, or strange beings hovering over them in bed. When they go to a psychiatrist for help, they are encouraged to recover memories through hypnosis and that's when they supposedly remember getting transported to a spacecraft and subjected to medical and sexual experiments." So they basically just say, It's sleep paralysis and hypnosis is contorting your memory.

• 1:07:17Danielle LaRock?

  Okay, valid, I guess, and isolated incidents. I can see a world in which that is an explanation for somebody's experience, but

• 1:07:26Cassandra Yahnian?

  Two people?

• 1:07:27Danielle LaRock?

  Two people, there's other witnesses, there's this whole, no.

• 1:07:31Cassandra Yahnian?

  No.

• 1:07:31Danielle LaRock?

  And going back to the government thing, I don't think I need to really speak on that because we all know where I stand, but I think that's a load of horseshit.

• 1:07:38Cassandra Yahnian?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:38Danielle LaRock?

  And

• 1:07:38Cassandra Yahnian?

  There's no aliens, don't worry.

• 1:07:41Danielle LaRock?

  I truly believe that if the government revealed what they know about extraterrestrial life, whatever that is, I think collectively, as the human race, we would absolutely lose our shit.

• 1:07:58Cassandra Yahnian?

  That's fair.

• 1:07:58Danielle LaRock?

  And I think that it's a protective measure. I do, I really do, like, do I think that we have the right to know? Yeah, sure, but I think that there's also a very real argument for saying, hey, we're not going to disclose this information because it will totally shatter what you know about life and how you live your life, and we don't want worldwide chaos.

• 1:08:25Cassandra Yahnian?

  Yeah. I could see that. I could also see a world in where they don't understand it, and they've had, I think that the government has definitely had UFO experiences. I mean, there was a, recently Obama did that interview where he came out and he was like, yes, I do know of alien forces, however, they are not at, what is that, Alien 50?

• 1:08:48Danielle LaRock?

  Area 51.

• 1:08:49Cassandra Yahnian?

  Alien 51, Area 51. He's like, however, they are not, from my knowledge, being hidden away at Area 51, is what he said.

• 1:08:57Danielle LaRock?

  Yeah, um, and also, I think it's pretty common knowledge that if, one of the reasons that the government is not disclosing what they know is for military purposes, like they're reverse engineering a bunch of stuff and studying it for military operations and that, like, they're not going to be like, yeah, we know all this stuff.

• 1:09:19Cassandra Yahnian?

  I know, to specifically be like, we are not using this information for reverse military operations. It's like, hmm, that sounds like you're using it for

• 1:09:29Danielle LaRock?

  It sounds like you're reverse engineering alien technology, but

• 1:09:34Cassandra Yahnian?

  That's what I hear. It's like, I didn't even ask you if that's what you were doing.

• 1:09:40Danielle LaRock?

  But we're not. It's like, okay, we all know you are because you're killing people who are associated with

• 1:09:47Danielle LaRock?

  that work, but not to put a target on my back, but that's

• 1:09:50Cassandra Yahnian?

  I don't think we're targets. We're just talking about it. You know, we literally know nothing. We know zero things, except that they exist.

• 1:09:58Danielle LaRock?

  I'm just kidding, but to cover the bases, I have no intention of ending my own life.

• 1:10:03Cassandra Yahnian?

  Same.

• 1:10:04Danielle LaRock?

  Okay, go on.

• 1:10:08Cassandra Yahnian?

  On that note,

• 1:10:11Cassandra Yahnian?

  it's hard to say what happened that summer day in 1968. But in his book, Walter Webb makes a truly unsettling case using detailed calculations and in-depth research that these two people experienced something unimaginable on that dock. So if you go visit Lake Champlain, keep your eyes peeled. You never know what will rise out of the waters and grab you.

• 1:10:36Danielle LaRock?

  Oh, oh, wait. Circling back to your intro, I almost responded and I'm like, oh, shoot. That's not my time.

• 1:10:43Cassandra Yahnian?

  Yeah, champ.

• 1:10:45Danielle LaRock?

  Okay, the description by Captain Crumb or Crunch or whatever the heck.

• 1:10:51Cassandra Yahnian?

  Captain Grinch.

• 1:10:51Danielle LaRock?

  You said something about like, it was so descriptive in such a weird way. It's like it had an peeled onion.

• 1:11:00Cassandra Yahnian?

  Colored eye, three teeth, a star on its forehead.

• 1:11:06Danielle LaRock?

  Like that's, I have never described something so detailed in my life.

• 1:11:10Cassandra Yahnian?

  Really saw it.

• 1:11:12Danielle LaRock?

  Especially for something that was fleeting.

• 1:11:14Cassandra Yahnian?

  Yeah. A fun fact, something for Danielle and I, when we were on Lake Champlain a few months ago, we learned that Champ is a protected cryptid and that you can, they have a federally protected cryptid.

• 1:11:29Danielle LaRock?

  So.

• 1:11:30Cassandra Yahnian?

  So if you see it, you can't hunt it, you'll

• 1:11:32Danielle LaRock?

  Go to jail.

• 1:11:33Cassandra Yahnian?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:33Danielle LaRock?

  Straight to jail.

• 1:11:35Cassandra Yahnian?

  As you should.

• 1:11:36Danielle LaRock?

  Well, thank you so much for sharing. I was, I really enjoyed that, not only because I love aliens, but because it was just so fresh. And I just think the whole time I was just like, mm hmm. And that's what I've been saying.

• 1:11:50Cassandra Yahnian?

  That tracks. There's so many similarities to

• 1:11:53Danielle LaRock?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:53Cassandra Yahnian?

  all of the stories we've ever covered on this podcast about aliens, from the dreams to being experimented on, to having these out of body experiences and telepathic communication that's going on. But I think what's adds to this one is that there's outside witnesses who saw this UFO craft, which I think just all of the other ones we've talked about, it's only been the people involved who are talking about it. Where this one, it's like, no, other people who had nothing to do with this saw this craft in the area.

• 1:12:25Danielle LaRock?

  It adds additional layers of credibility, or at least validates

• 1:12:29Cassandra Yahnian?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:30Danielle LaRock?

  their experience to some degree.

• 1:12:32Cassandra Yahnian?

  And it happened right here in Vermont.

• 1:12:34Danielle LaRock?

  Yeah. Look up at those skies.

• 1:12:37Cassandra Yahnian?

  They're up there.

• 1:12:38Danielle LaRock?

  What's happening?

• 1:12:39Cassandra Yahnian?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:40Danielle LaRock?

  Super cool. Well, thank you for sharing. Loved it. Let's do it again.

• 1:12:45Cassandra Yahnian?

  Yeah, I was stoked to do something in Vermont. I was just thinking, I'm like, I know, there's not really a bunch of national parks here or anything, but since I live here, it just felt like we've done White Mountain National Forest stuff. I had to bring it to Vermont. And aliens were the way to go.

• 1:13:01Danielle LaRock?

  Love it. Well, thank you, everyone for listening. We will see you next week. In the meantime, enjoy the view.

• 1:13:07Cassandra Yahnian?

  But watch your back.

• 1:13:08Danielle LaRock?

  Bye.

• 1:13:09Cassandra Yahnian?

  Bye.

• 1:13:11Cassandra Yahnian?

  Thanks for joining us for another episode. We hope you learned something new and have another location to put on your list. If you want more NPAD content, make sure to follow along with our adventures on all socials at National Park After Dark. For more stories just like this one, with the added bonus of exclusive content, you can join us on Patreon or Apple subscriptions. If you prefer to watch our episodes, head over to our YouTube channel. And if you're enjoying the show, please take a moment to rate, review, and subscribe on your favorite listening platform.

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