Pod Insights So Supernatural ALIEN: 1989 Manhattan Abduction About this episode On November 30th, 1989, Linda Napolitano was living in New York City when she claimed to experience an abduction case like no other. Not only did Linda find herself levitating over the city as she was taken into a ship—a few witnesses claimed to see it happen. And started having strange visions and experiences themselves.
Transcript Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
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0:32 Yvette Gentile? If I told y'all, "Pack your things, we're going UFO hunting," where do you picture us going? Are we driving in an old, beat-up pickup truck, out to the desert, long, winding stretches of open road? Maybe a tumbleweed or two? We're definitely passing some cows and horses on the way. And we're probably headed to the middle of nowhere. A place with no light pollution, where we can see every constellation the sky has to offer. I mean, that's where I'd take my telescope. Just think about it. Many of the UFO stories we hear on this show happen in the dead of night.
1:17 Yvette Gentile? In a place where hardly anyone else is around. Where it's so easy to debunk a witness because they're the only ones there. But every now and then, you get a UFO story that turns the stereotype on its head. Like today's case.
1:40 Rasha Pecoraro? The year is 1989. In the middle of Lower Manhattan, Linda Napolitano is woken up to find that she's paralyzed and floating out her window, over her apartment complex near the Brooklyn Bridge, and into the sky towards a bright, blue light. And because she's in one of the most densely populated cities in the entire world, there are people who see it happen. At least 20 of them. But it's not just the eyewitnesses that make Linda's story believable. It's the physical evidence that's left behind.
2:18 Rasha Pecoraro? I'm Rasha Pecoraro.
2:20 Yvette Gentile? And I'm her sister, Yvette Gentile.
2:23 Rasha Pecoraro? Get ready for another wild episode of So Supernatural, because today, we are talking about the 1989 Manhattan abduction.
3:08 Yvette Gentile? Have you ever had an experience so strange, so completely unbelievable, that when you try to tell someone about it, they look at you like you have lost your damn mind? As human beings, we have this compulsion to share our own experiences. So when something happens to us that sounds impossible, we're desperate for someone, anyone, to believe us. And if our friends and family don't, well, it's like pouring salt in the womb. But sometimes, being understood isn't all it's cracked up to be.
3:48 Rasha Pecoraro? Just ask Linda Napolitano. In the early morning of November 30, 1989, 41-year-old Linda is fast asleep in her Manhattan apartment overlooking the Brooklyn Bridge. In the early hours, she's woken up by this strange sensation. Her toes feel numb. At first, she's probably more annoyed than anything else. She's a mom of two boys, a teenager, and a six-year-old. It's just a few days after Thanksgiving, and she's probably been running around getting things ready for the holidays, so she really needs her rest. She looks over to the clock and sees it's 3:15 in the morning, way too early for her to start her day. So she turns over to go back to sleep,
4:33 Rasha Pecoraro? or at least, she tries to. But she suddenly finds she can't move. She can still kind of use her arms, but the rest of her body feels completely paralyzed. That's when she starts panicking. She yells for her husband Steve to wake up, but she looks over where Steve is laying right next to her, and it's like he's dead to the world. She's screaming his name out loud, but he doesn't hear her. And that's when she realizes they're not alone. At the foot of her bed, she can see four or five figures, maybe the size of children. She's terrified, but also filled with the urge to fight back.
5:18 Rasha Pecoraro? As the numb feeling completely takes over her body, she uses what little mobility she has left of her arms to throw a pillow at them. The second the pillow leaves her fingers, an overwhelming feeling of dread washes over her. She thinks she's just made a horrible mistake because now she can't move anything. Her eyes start to adjust to the darkness, and the figures at the end of her bed come into focus. They have pale gray skin. They stare at her with huge dark eyes. And then she realizes she's levitating.
6:00 Rasha Pecoraro? It's at this point that Linda's memory starts to get hazy. When she tells people about this incident later, the following events happen in flashes. But what she does remember is being outside her 12th floor apartment, floating through the air over New York City. Immediately, she's trying to figure out how this is even possible. How did she even manage to get through the window? It's one of those city apartments with a sturdy metal grill on the outside, so that detail alone doesn't make sense to her. She also remembers her white nightgown floating around her. And then, as if in a flash, she's inside a spaceship.
6:45 Rasha Pecoraro? These beings escort her floating body down a long hallway and through a pair of sliding double doors. They stop in a sterile-looking room where the walls are covered with control panels with different colored lights and buttons. Then, against her will, they place Linda on the table.
7:07 Yvette Gentile? If you're even a casual consumer of alien abduction stories, this probably feels pretty familiar. When two fishermen reported being taken from the Pascagoula River in Mississippi in 1973, they described a similar clinical place where they were experimented on. In 1975, a forestry worker who disappeared from a work site in Arizona came back with tales of "a hospital-like room and three extraterrestrials." He claimed he fought the aliens who were trying to examine him, and they used some kind of gas mask to knock him unconscious. The next thing he knew,
7:51 Yvette Gentile? it was five days later and he was walking down a random highway.
7:57 Rasha Pecoraro? What's different about Linda's experience, though, is the language. As they set her down on the examination table, the creature starts saying things to her, words she's never heard before. Almost instinctively, she yells something right back at them. But she's surprised when the words coming out of her mouth aren't English. Actually, it's not a language she's ever heard on Earth. And the aliens, they understand her. At least, she thinks they do, because one slaps his hand over her mouth, and she has this feeling she's just said something incredibly offensive to them.
8:39 Yvette Gentile? Afraid of angering them, Linda keeps quiet as the aliens start examining her. She's completely paralyzed, powerless to resist as they pound on her back with their fists and use strange instruments to inspect her head, neck, and even inside her nose. They work their way down her body using different tools, none of which Linda recognizes. To scan her arms, her abdomen, and legs, they seem especially fascinated by her toes, which she can wiggle a little. And all this time, Linda believes the aliens are trying to communicate with her telepathically. She keeps saying words in her head,
9:23 Yvette Gentile? words that appear to be in their alien language. She thinks they're trying to teach it to her. But afraid and angry, she makes a conscious decision to ignore it. And you'll come to see that Linda's really stubborn. And as we say in Italian, test the doodle, she's my kind of woman. Basically, at one point, when the aliens are looking up her nose, she remembers thinking, and this is a quote, "Dear God, please let me sneeze right in their cold little faces." It's just like her earlier reaction. When they were in her bedroom and she thought to throw a pillow at them.
10:04 Yvette Gentile? Basically, Linda is not going to accept her alien abduction without a fight. Like, again, our kind of woman.
10:13 Rasha Pecoraro? But the creatures keep at it. And they try to talk to her some more, even asking at one point how her family is. But eventually, the aliens seem to realize they're not going to get much out of Linda. So they finish their examination and suddenly she hears this really loud noise. A second later, she finds herself sitting up in her own bed, fully able to use her limbs again. Her first thought is her family. She goes room to room, checking on her husband Steven and her kids. All three are still sound asleep. So not knowing what else to do, Linda goes back to sleep. Right before closing her eyes,
10:56 Rasha Pecoraro? she checks the clock one last time and sees that it's 4:45 a.m. Even though it feels like the abduction lasted a long time, it's only been 90 minutes.
11:09 Yvette Gentile? The next morning, Linda's kids go off to school and her husband goes about his day. She tries to act normal, but she's still very shaken. And luckily, she knows the perfect person to call about this. A UFO researcher named Bud Hopkins. Bud is not someone new to her. A few months earlier, she had reached out to him after coming across his book about UFOs. Because as it turns out, this wasn't Linda's first encounter. Linda believed she'd been visited by UFOs when she was a little girl too.
11:48 Rasha Pecoraro? Bud helps those who've had an encounter by hypnotizing them to see if they can recover their lost memories. Linda's actually done a few of these sessions by now. In one, she recalled being eight years old and spotting an object outside of her bedroom window, covered in flashing lights. She told her mother about it the next day, but it seems like Linda was the only witness. For years afterwards, she'd wake up in the middle of the night with numb toes. She couldn't say exactly why, but deep down, she knew it was something to do with a strange object she had seen. Now, on November 30, 1989, she felt like she finally had proof.
12:33 Rasha Pecoraro? Because as she explains to Bud on the phone, the numb feeling she used to get as a child, that was the same sensation that paralyzed her body onboard the spaceship.
12:44 Yvette Gentile? So Bud invites her to his house that day and records her session under hypnosis. He wants her to remember everything she can from her encounter the night before. Now, this isn't anything new for Bud. He's done this hundreds of times for other UFO witnesses. Bud believes that Linda's story might just be another piece in a much bigger puzzle about alien abductions. He's ready to add it to the pile. But a year later, Bud Hopkins receives a letter that suggests Linda's story is not like all the others.
13:26 Yvette Gentile? The message is from two government agents who say they know all about Linda's abduction. And guess why? Because they were there when it happened.
13:46 Speaker 03 Hi, I'm Ashley Flowers.
13:47 Speaker 04 And I'm Britt. And if you're on the edge of your seat, listening to this show, Crime Junkie needs to be your next listen.
13:53 Speaker 03 Every Monday, I dive into a new true crime case that our reporting team has been on the ground looking into. From lesser-known disappearances to the most chilling cases hitting the headlines, and I'm gonna walk you through it the way I tell my best friend, because, well, that's what I'm doing.
14:09 Speaker 04 Yeah, that's me. And I'm right there with you as we listen together, react to every wild detail, and of course, I ask all the questions.
14:17 Speaker 03 And I'm gonna have the answers, because we have case files, we're talking to detectives and family members, and we're gonna stay focused on the facts.
14:24 Speaker 04 So if you're not already listening to Crime Junkie, what are you waiting for? There are over 300 episodes available right now.
14:30 Speaker 03 And you can listen to new episodes of Crime Junkie every Monday, wherever you get your podcasts.
14:41 Rasha Pecoraro? On February 1st, 1991, UFO researcher Bud Hopkins receives a letter in the mail marked "personal and important." This letter takes Linda Napolitano's story from a run-of-the-mill abduction to a high-stakes thriller. When Bud opens this piece of mail, he's not sure what to expect. He gets a lot of mail, from admirers, UFO enthusiasts, and people with their own encounters. But this is something new. Because right there in black and white is an eyewitness account of Linda's abduction from 15 months earlier. A story that no one knows, except for Linda, her family, and Bud.
15:26 Rasha Pecoraro? The letter is from two men who call themselves only by their first names, Dan and Richard. They claim to be police officers and say that on the night of November 30th, 1989, they were sitting in their patrol car, looking out at the Brooklyn Bridge, just a few blocks north of Linda's apartment. Richard was pulling a stick of gum out of his pocket when, all of a sudden, he noticed something odd. The metallic gum wrapper was reflecting a bright orange light back at him, almost like a flame.
16:02 Yvette Gentile? He looks up and he sees the light is coming from some type of flying machine shaped like an oval hovering over an apartment building a few blocks away. Dan notices the ship too. Both are riveted as they watch it sail through the air and slow to a hover right outside a window high up at the apartment building. The fiery orange glow shifts to a cool blue white, which looks eerie in the night sky. And then Richard gasps because there's something floating in the beam of light coming from the ship.
16:41 Yvette Gentile? At first, he thinks it's an angel, but then Richard realizes it's a woman floating through the air in only her night gown. Several small childlike figures float in a loose formation around her and she's heading straight up towards the hovering craft. Dan and Richard's instant reaction is they want to help. They're police officers after all. My god, they should be helping, right? You would think that. But how exactly do you help someone mid-alien abduction? So Dan and Richard are forced to watch as this woman is beamed aboard the spacecraft,
17:24 Yvette Gentile? at which point the ship promptly flies off and dives into the East River. What? Yeah, it's a little hard to believe, but there you have it. There were two witnesses. Dan and Richard spend the next 45 minutes, eyes fixed on the river, waiting for it to come back out. But this ship doesn't resurface, so they head back to work.
17:52 Rasha Pecoraro? They hope to leave the incident way behind them, but for months, it's all they can think about. They reassure each other it was a figment of their imagination. But if that was the case, why did they both see it? Most of all, they feel immense guilt for letting a woman be abducted and doing absolutely nothing about it. They figure someone else must have seen what they did. But they couldn't be the first ones to cry UFO. Coming forward could be dangerous for them. What if people think they're mentally unwell or simply lying? They could even lose their jobs.
18:32 Yvette Gentile? That's right, but not telling anyone is weighing on them too. So when they come across Bud's book, they decide he's the only one who can help them. They send him their letter, and one of the last lines grabs Bud's attention. Because Dan and Richard say they want to find the woman that they saw that night and make sure she's okay. Maybe she can validate what they saw.
18:59 Rasha Pecoraro? Right after opening that piece of mail, Bud's on the phone with Linda. He reads her what they wrote, and she's completely shook. You'd think hearing someone else validate her story would help settle Linda's mind. But it does the complete opposite. Because now, she can't write it off as a hallucination or a nightmare. Now, it's real. And her life just keeps getting weirder from there. Because a few days later, she calls Bud in a panic. Dan and Richard, the two cops from the letter, they just showed up at her house.
19:39 Yvette Gentile? Once she gets over the initial shock, Linda tells Bud the following. It was late at night on February 19th, 1991, when Linda got a knock at her apartment door. When she asked who it was, a voice simply responded, "Police." Not really what you'd hope to hear at 10 o'clock at night. But she looks through the peephole and she's surprised to find two men in street clothes. They show their badges and address her by name before introducing themselves as Richard and Dan. So she cautiously invites them into her apartment. Right off the bat, Linda, come on,
20:22 Yvette Gentile? we all know how Linda is. She is on guard. She decides Richard is the nicer of the two. He's tall, mid-50s with grained red hair and a red complexion. He tries to put her at ease, telling her he's so sorry they witnessed her abduction, but couldn't help her. Now Dan, on the other hand, is a bit more unsettling. He's thinner than Richard with dark hair and olive skin and immediately demands answers from her. He repeatedly asks how she floated into the sky, which gets Linda kind of heated. I mean, rightfully so. Put yourself in her shoes.
21:05 Yvette Gentile? Something so disturbing and traumatic has happened to you and here's some guy demanding you explain how you did it yourself? The whole thing is so bizarre and the two men are so aggressive that Linda begins to wonder if they're cops at all. But she decides the best course of action is just to get them out of her living room.
21:30 Rasha Pecoraro? Linda refuses to talk about the encounter with them any further, encouraging them instead to call Bud so they can offer up their own memories of what happened that night. So after a very quick and strange visit, the two men go on their way. But Linda feels like she now has more questions than answers.
21:52 Yvette Gentile? Over the next few weeks, Bud gets more information from Richard and Dan. He gets a cassette tape in the mail with Richard's account of the abduction on it, in his own words. And Dan sends a letter outlining his version of the events. Both seem to back up Linda's story. And like Linda, both men seem terrified. In his letter, Dan describes how he started sleeping with a sledgehammer in his bed, in case alien beings show up in his apartment. And Richard supposedly starts putting a dummy in his bed and sleeping in another room.
22:35 Yvette Gentile? I mean, come on, we would probably do something similar. At the same time, Bud starts trying to track down the two men. He has a few friends in the NYPD, so he calls in favors hoping to find the pair of detectives who call themselves Richard and Dan. But this line goes nowhere. And Bud begins to wonder if Richard and Dan are really police or something else entirely. I don't know, maybe in the government?
23:07 Rasha Pecoraro? I mean, they like to cover things up, so it wouldn't surprise me.
23:09 Yvette Gentile? Just saying. As Bud's looking for them, they keep sending him more letters. On April 12th, 1991, about two months after their visit to Linda, Bud gets another message from Richard. This time, Richard claims he has to come clean about a few things, like why they were there by Linda's apartment that night. Turns out, surprise, surprise, they're not cops after all. They were security guards. And they've been lying about other important details, like how on the night of November 30th, 1989, there was a third man in their car with them.
23:51 Yvette Gentile? Richard describes this third man as a high-profile person who they escort to speaking engagements around the world.
23:59 Rasha Pecoraro? That night, they were taking him to a helicopter after a late night meeting. Their cars suddenly died on FDR Drive, right near Linda's apartment building and the Brooklyn Bridge. Turns out, all three of the men observed Linda being taken away by aliens. Apparently, they hadn't come forward about the existence of the third man until now because of national security concerns. So, reading between the lines, it sounds like this guy is kind of a big deal. Maybe a foreign businessman here to strike an important deal? Or maybe a celebrity traveling on the DL?
24:37 Yvette Gentile? Bud even wonders if it's some kind of ambassador. That would explain the American Guards, who aren't cops but definitely have some kind of training. In fact, if the third man is a high-profile diplomat from another country, then Richard and Dan may be more than just ordinary security guards. They could be FBI, NSA, even CIA. In other words, possible spies.
25:08 Yvette Gentile? This news disturbs Bud, but not as much as the next call he gets from Linda. Because two weeks later, on April 29, 1991, he gets a frenzied voicemail from her, claiming Dan and Richard, the mysterious agents, just kidnapped her.
25:35 Speaker 03 Hi, I'm Ashley Flowers.
25:37 Speaker 04 And I'm Britt. And if you're on the edge of your seat listening to this show, Crime Junkie needs to be your next listen.
25:43 Speaker 03 Every Monday, I dive into a new true crime case that our reporting team has been on the ground looking into. From lesser-known disappearances to the most chilling cases hitting the headlines, and I'm gonna walk you through it the way I tell my best friend, because, well, that's what I'm doing.
25:58 Speaker 04 Yeah, that's me. And I'm right there with you as we listen together, react to every wild detail, and of course, I ask all the questions.
26:06 Speaker 03 And I'm gonna have the answers, because we have case files, we're talking to detectives and family members, and we're gonna stay focused on the facts.
26:13 Speaker 04 So if you're not already listening to Crime Junkie, what are you waiting for? There are over 300 episodes available right now.
26:20 Speaker 03 And you can listen to new episodes of Crime Junkie every Monday, wherever you get your podcasts.
26:31 Yvette Gentile? On November 30th, 1989, Linda Napolitano was seemingly abducted by beings. But ever since, her problems were much more terrestrial. A year and a half later, she told UFO researcher Bud Hopkins that she'd been abducted again. Only this time, by humans. According to Linda, the event played out like this.
27:00 Rasha Pecoraro? Around 7:30 in the morning on April 29th, 1991, Linda walked her son Johnny to his bus stop near their apartment. When she turned around, she saw who else but Richard. Richard asked her to go for a ride with him, but she refused. She turned to leave and Richard grabbed her by the arm and forced her over to a Mercedes sedan. Linda was fighting tooth and nail. She was hitting Richard, kicking him, trying to squirm out of his arms as best she could. She grabbed the roof of the car and wouldn't let go. She was convinced that if she got inside that car, she might never come back.
27:43 Rasha Pecoraro? And that's when she realized Dan was with him. And he was pulling her into the car from the inside. Eventually, the two men were able to force her into the vehicle and slam the door shut. Inside, Linda kept struggling, even trying to shoot them with a stun gun she carried in her bag. She finally stopped when Richard threatened to just knock her out. What followed was the most bizarre three hours of her life. Well, after getting abducted by literal aliens, of course.
28:18 Yvette Gentile? Dan and Richard hammered her with questions. They asked if she was a government agent and demanded to know who she worked for. Dan even accused her of being an alien herself. At one point, they made her take her shoes off so they could check her feet. I guess to see if she was human. Mind you, this was all happening while they were driving around Manhattan. Finally, things started to calm down. Dan and Richard's questions finally turned back to the abduction itself. They wanted to compare notes to see if they all saw the same thing. Linda refused to tell them anything, though,
29:02 Yvette Gentile? and just repeated that if they wanted to talk aliens, they could talk to Bud. Finally, after three and a half hours, they dropped Linda back off at her home, and that's when she called Bud and told him everything. A few days later, she went to Bud's house and, under hypnosis, was able to remember a partial license plate with an unusual design. With just a bit of digging, Bud discovered a shocking new twist. The Mercedes Dan and Richard drove to kidnap Linda had diplomatic license plates.
29:43 Rasha Pecoraro? If Linda was scared before, she's beside herself now. Two men with who knows what top-secret clearance just kidnapped her. If they work for the UN, then the mysterious third man is probably some high-level diplomat, which means there's a good chance they could do anything to Linda and basically get away with it. At this point, it feels like aliens are the least of Linda's problems.
30:11 Yvette Gentile? That's right. And two weeks after the abduction, she spots Richard again while shopping in Lower Manhattan. Not wanting to take her chances, she races through the streets, hiding in cafes and parks with Richard in hot pursuit. She even gets hit by a car, but she just brushes herself off and keeps on moving. I mean, thankfully, she gets away, and for the next few months, it seems like Richard and Dan are done with her. Until one day in September, when Bud gets another mysterious letter.
30:47 Rasha Pecoraro? This one is from Dan, the more aggressive of the two agents. And he has a new revelation for Bud. According to Dan, in the previous months, he, Richard, and the third man have been recovering flashes of memories. So when they finally get the chance to see each other face to face, they write down what they're all recalling. They each place their sheets of paper down, and all three are instantly dumbstruck. Because on the papers, in three distinct handwritings, are the same exact phrase: "Lady of the Sands."
31:26 Yvette Gentile? Now, this might sound like a fantasy villain, but to Dan, Richard, and the third man, the name brings up all kinds of images. Slowly but surely, they realize that more happened to them on the night of Linda's abduction. They must have forgotten, or had their memories stolen from them, until now. One by one, they recall the same encounter. They're watching Linda floating away from her apartment window. Then suddenly, they're all on a beach. Linda and several small gray aliens are digging in the sand, carting it off in silver buckets.
32:09 Yvette Gentile? And Linda seems to be talking to the aliens in their own language. All of them see the phrase "Lady of the Sands" flash across their minds. And then she approaches them, still wearing the white nightgown she was floating through the air in. She holds up a dead fish and tells them, "Look and see what you've done."
32:35 Rasha Pecoraro? That's all they remember before finding themselves once again inside their car on FDR Drive. What's wild is that days later, in another hypnosis session, without any knowledge of Dan's letter, Linda recounts the exact same memories coming back to her: dead fish and all. Then a month later, on October 15th, 1991, Bud gets another desperate call from Linda. She says she's been kidnapped again, this time by just Dan, who seems to have gone off the deep end. She managed to get away and get home, so Bud tells her to come over immediately. When Linda arrives, she's a hot mess.
33:20 Rasha Pecoraro? Her hair is wet and salty, her jeans are damp, sand clings to her clothes. She's obviously in distress, and the story she tells is horrifying.
33:32 Yvette Gentile? That morning, she was out shopping in the Seaport District in Lower Manhattan when Dan caught her by surprise and forced her into a car. He drove them way out to Long Island to a lonely beach and dragged her inside a vacant summer cottage. The whole time, he was muttering about aliens and accusing her of being part extraterrestrial. He went back and forth between calling her names, his voice dripping with hatred, and assaulting her by forcibly kissing her. At that point, she thought Dan was completely unhinged, and the best way for her to come out of this alive
34:15 Yvette Gentile? was just to keep him calm and play along. But then, he pulled out a white night gown and demanded she put it on. He claimed it was to make sure she really was the woman he saw floating above the Brooklyn Bridge. But she could see there was an unsettling sexual element to his request. What he gave her was closer to lingerie than a nightdress. But again, wanting to keep him calm, afraid he might get violent, she agreed to put it on, but over her clothes.
34:54 Rasha Pecoraro? In a moment of distraction, she managed to break out of the house and run across the beach, only to be tackled by Dan. He smeared wet sand into her hair, demanding she start digging like she did with the aliens. Finally, at the last minute, an unlikely savior arrived: Richard. Richard was able to talk some sense into Dan and get him to let Linda go. Richard drove Linda home, cold and wet, and that brought her up to where she was now, shivering and sandy on Bud's couch. Thankfully, she was able to capture some of this encounter on a tape recorder she had with her.
35:36 Yvette Gentile? To Bud, this is just more evidence that Linda is a victim, not only of an alien abduction, but a coordinated campaign of terror by a pair of rogue agents. And as time passes, he finds more proof that something strange is going on here. First, Richard sends him photos taken by Dan of Linda at the beach. In them, she's frightened out of her wits, and she's wearing a sheer white nightgown over her clothes, just like she said. Then a few weeks after that kidnapping, Linda's cousin, a podiatrist, x-rays Linda's head.
36:19 Yvette Gentile? Linda had gotten a sudden nosebleed in the night, and just wanted to make sure nothing was wrong. The scan showed an otherworldly metal object in her nasal cavity. This wasn't the first time Linda had a doctor find something unexpected in her nose. Years ago, she woke up with a small bump on her nose, so she went to get it checked out. Back then, the doctors didn't find any alien device. They did see scars that looked like they came from a scalpel. When they told Linda, she was surprised. She'd never had surgery on her nose before. After Linda's cousin discovered this new object in her nasal cavity, Linda decided
37:04 Yvette Gentile? to get to the bottom of it. She booked an appointment a few days later to have the thing removed. But when the doctor examined her, he couldn't find it. The strange metal device just disappeared.
37:21 Rasha Pecoraro? Other witnesses also start contacting Bud, and it turns out nearly 20 different people claim to have seen Linda floating above the Brooklyn Bridge in 1989. And Bud receives even more letters from Richard. Now, Richard's telling him he's starting to recall forgotten memories from his childhood. And he's surprised to find Linda in them. According to Richard, witnessing the abduction awoke something in his subconscious. He even remembers being abducted himself as a child multiple times. And each time, there's a little girl there who he knows is Linda.
38:07 Rasha Pecoraro? According to these letters, Richard and Linda have been meeting aboard spaceships for years. They were childhood playmates, adolescent crushes, and even had a whole romantic relationship. I mean, this is what he's saying. Richard even openly wonders if Linda's now eight-year-old son Johnny might be his. Now, that is a twist. This has gone off the deep end for me, but... Right? Altogether, Bud collects a pile of exceedingly bizarre stuff related to Linda's abduction case. So in 1997, he puts the whole thing in a book called "Witnessed." He thinks by publishing the case,
38:50 Rasha Pecoraro? it'll blow the whole thing wide open. But in reality, nothing much happens. Bud's fans buy the book and a few more curious people. Linda gets on a few talk shows. But after a few years, the whole thing sort of dies down. And the public is left with a bunch of questions without any real answers. Like, what happened to Dan and Richard? Did aliens really abduct all these people? And why did they take Linda in the first place? The story of the Manhattan UFO abductions languishes for a few more years,
39:34 Rasha Pecoraro? until it's brought back to life in 2024 with a documentary and a court case.
39:44 Rasha Pecoraro? In October 2024, Linda Napolitano files a lawsuit just days before a documentary about her airs on Netflix. The main target of her suit? The filmmakers and Carol Rheney, an interviewee, and Bud Hopkins' ex-wife. Why was Linda going after the filmmakers who put her story on the big screen? Well, according to her, it's just the latest attack in Carol Rheney's campaign to call her a liar. Carol died in 2023, but Linda filed suit against her estate. The Netflix documentary follows Linda through the events described in Bud Hopkins' book.
40:27 Rasha Pecoraro? Since Bud passed away in 2011 before the series was ever filmed, Linda is the main focus. The doc uses interviews and archival footage to take viewers through her abduction, her harassment by Dan and Richard, and all the other strange things that happened to her. The Netflix series features Carol as a main voice, though not exactly a supportive one. In the documentary, Carol claims that Linda made the entire thing up.
40:58 Yvette Gentile? And Rasha, you and I both watched this Netflix series the other day, and
41:04 Rasha Pecoraro? Yes.
41:05 Yvette Gentile? in my humble opinion, I feel like Carol was definitely jealous of Linda, and I feel a lot. I feel that that's where that angst is coming from.
41:16 Rasha Pecoraro? It definitely seemed like it, for sure. I mean, we shouldn't speak ill of the dead.
41:21 Yvette Gentile? Yes.
41:22 Rasha Pecoraro? However...
41:23 Yvette Gentile? However.
41:24 Rasha Pecoraro? It didn't sit right with me, for sure.
41:25 Yvette Gentile? Yeah. And y'all just have to watch it, you know, to come to your own assumption of what you think happened, right?
41:31 Rasha Pecoraro? So, I mean, it's hard to say what's fact, what's fiction, and what's pure ego. But there are a few things in Linda's story that made Carol believe this was all a hoax.
41:45 Yvette Gentile? Carol brings up the fact that almost all of the statements and witnesses came to Bud through Linda, implying she may have put each of them up to it. In his book, Bud claims to have tracked down nearly 20 witnesses, but they all gave their accounts anonymously to Bud and couldn't be verified. Plus, Bud Hopkins never met Dan or Richard face to face. They only communicated through letters. And every time they told Bud about a new recollection, Linda recovered the same memories shortly after.
42:27 Yvette Gentile? When Bud and Linda finally tracked down the mysterious diplomat they called the Third Man, they couldn't get him to talk. According to Linda, the Third Man is Javier Perez de Cuellar, the former Secretary General of the United Nations. But Javier denies any knowledge or experience of alien abduction and calls Linda's allegations completely false. And there's another issue Carol highlights in the documentary. She's concerned with Bud's hypnosis methods. She believes Linda didn't act like other patients she'd seen under hypnosis, and she
43:11 Yvette Gentile? claims she was worried that Bud himself had lost sight of his goal. She says that he wanted so badly to believe he'd found proof of aliens that he'd fed the delusions of a woman he should have known was unwell. I just have to put in my two cents here. You know, like I said earlier, we spoke about the documentary that we had both watched. And I do believe, in my humble opinion, that Carol was a bit jealous of Linda. What do you think, Raj?
43:44 Rasha Pecoraro? Yeah, I just can't get on board with everything that Carol said. It's very hard to discount Linda completely. After all, things happen every day that are stranger than fiction. Just because Linda's story has twists and turns, it doesn't mean that it's not true. And according to Bud, all the typewritten letters he received from Dan, Richard III, and other witnesses were made on different machines. They all had different writing styles and voices. He believes there's no way every one of these letters were written by the same person. Plus, there are the tapes. Bud has recordings of both Richard and Dan, provided by Linda,
44:28 Rasha Pecoraro? and each, obviously, has the voice of a different man, men that Bud didn't think were acting. If Linda really was behind all of this, it's logical that the letters would sound similar or all come from the same machine. And unless Linda went out and hired actors, there's no way she could have faked the tapes from Dan and Richard. Then, of course, there's the physical evidence, like the x-ray of Linda's head showing a strange object inside her nose, or the photos of her frightened on the beach, taken the same day she showed up damp, sandy, and terrified at Bud Hawkins' house.
45:09 Yvette Gentile? I mean, it would be very hard to believe that she hired a bunch of actors to do all of this.
45:15 Rasha Pecoraro? And the 20 witnesses.
45:17 Yvette Gentile? Yeah.
45:17 Rasha Pecoraro? I mean, come on.
45:17 Yvette Gentile? It doesn't, it just does not add up. Anywho, as for Linda's part, I mean, she blames the whole thing on Carol, saying she's using Linda's case as an excuse to get even with her dead ex-husband Bud. But one of the worst parts of the whole thing, according to Linda, it's the wardrobe. Not only does Linda claim that Netflix and the filmmakers make her read from a script and misrepresent the story, she specifically mentions in her suit that she's suing them for dressing her in unflattering clothes, which made her look old, haggard, and make viewers question her credibility.
46:01 Yvette Gentile? It is so petty, but I can see why. In Linda's mind, she's already a victim of alien abduction and human kidnapping. She can't be a fashion victim too. I'm just saying.
46:16 Rasha Pecoraro? I do think this is a part of the problem with alien abduction stories. It's our reluctance to believe something so out of the ordinary. But the truth is, there's a lot of things out there we have yet to and may never fully understand. Is it easier to say that Linda made the whole thing up? That she hired actors, paid witnesses, falsified documents, and recorded fake tapes? Sure. Does it seem logical from a personal standpoint? Not really. Linda was a mother, raising two boys in New York City in the late 1980s. She didn't try to publicize her account or try to make money off of it.
47:00 Rasha Pecoraro? It was and is her story. To me, it seems far more likely that Linda's account was true. Or at least, it was to her. And that alone is worth validating.
47:25 Yvette Gentile? This is So Supernatural, an AudioChuck original, produced by Crime House. You can connect with us on Instagram at So Supernatural Pod and visit our website at so-supernaturalpodcast.com. Join Rash and me next Friday for an all-new episode.
47:46 Yvette Gentile? I think Chuck would approve.
47:52 Speaker 05 When the nights grow longer, the shadows start to stir, and that can only mean one thing: Full Body Chills is back. This season, step inside original tales where every doorway leads somewhere darker, every stranger carries a secret, and nothing is ever quite what it seems. Each story takes you somewhere new, but be careful: you never know what might follow you home. So gather around, listen close, and stream Full Body Chills wherever you get your podcasts.
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