ALIEN: Audrey and Debbie Hewins

In the mid-1970s, twin sisters Audrey and Debbie Hewins claimed they were repeatedly visited by beings from another world—and the encounters only intensified with age. Refusing to stay silent, they founded Starborn, a support group for others who’d lived through the same unexplainable events. Members describe chillingly similar experiences: midnight abductions, clinical experiments, and meetings with fellow experiencers aboard spaceships.

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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• 0:32Rasha Pecoraro?

  When you go through something difficult, painful, or traumatic, it's natural to feel like you're alone, like no one could ever understand what you're going through. Which is one reason why support groups exist, because there's power in saying, "I get you, and I've been through this too." In fact, about 6,250,000 Americans attend some kind of support group on the regular, which works out to be about 1 in every 54 people. Now, I want to share my story with you about support groups. Back in 2021, when I was a flight attendant, I witnessed a traumatic death onboard. I saw a passenger die in front of my eyes, and I won't get into the nitty-gritty details here.

• 1:16Rasha Pecoraro?

  But it triggered not only PTSD for me, but anxiety, panic attacks, nightmares, and depression. Because I spoke up at the time and asked for help, I was given the amazing gift of going to intense trauma therapy over the course of several months, which my airline paid for. I know not many of us are that lucky. Part of the program included a virtual support group with other first responders who had witnessed some type of traumatic death while they were doing their job. We would share our trauma, our stories, and our hearts. It absolutely made me feel so much less alone and like someone understood exactly what I was going through at the time.

• 2:00Rasha Pecoraro?

  I'm still dear friends with a few of the people from the group, and I am thankful for their support to this day. It was because of them, my phenomenal therapists, my doctors, and the support of my sister and wife that I am able to continuously make my mental health a priority, even today.

• 2:19Yvette Gentile?

  Yes, Rasha, you certainly are. It's just like our beautiful mother would always tell us, "Look for the helpers." And, you know, I just got to say, I'm so grateful that you had such an amazing support group to get you through that incredibly rough time. Well, today's episode focuses on a very special kind of support group. It only has about a dozen chapters, and some have monthly meetings, while others only gather once a year. But people travel all over the world to go to these sessions because there simply isn't another group like this. It's called Starborn.

• 3:00Yvette Gentile?

  The attendees aren't there to talk about their addiction, or illness, or their mental health journeys. They're all experiencers, people who claim they've been either contacted or abducted by aliens.

• 3:15Rasha Pecoraro?

  The group is run by twin sisters who've had countless experiences themselves, and they believe it's important to connect with others like them. Not just so they can support one another, but because the fate of our planet might depend on it. I'm Rasha Pequegrero.

• 3:32Yvette Gentile?

  And I'm Yvette Gentile. This is So Supernatural.

• 4:08Yvette Gentile?

  Life is all about our journey of experiences. And they happen one right after the other. Our memories of those moments truly shape our reality and who we are as human beings. Sometimes, even if our minds don't remember, you better believe our bodies do. They have a mysterious way of holding on to our secrets. Secrets we sometimes keep from ourselves. Because when something happens to you that's so difficult to understand and truly defies your definition of reality, it changes you at your core and your entire perspective of the world and everything in it.

• 4:50Yvette Gentile?

  And when you go through something like that, something so confusing and unexplainable, one of the best things you can do is to validate your experience by finding others who are going through it too. And that's where Starborn comes in.

• 5:07Rasha Pecoraro?

  There's only about a dozen of these chapters around the globe, but if you're in Portland, Maine, there's one that meets every month. On a particular Saturday, you can make your way to a local shop called Leapin' Lizards. Love the name. A place that sells crystals, tarot decks, candles, and other new-agey products. Between 6 and 8 o'clock at night, roughly 50 or so people pile into the shop to talk about their experiences. Specifically, their encounters with extraterrestrials. Like any other group, they have their own terminology. They don't like the words abduction or abductee because for some members, their memories are kind of fuzzy.

• 5:51Rasha Pecoraro?

  It's hard for them to tell if they actually left the planet or got on board a spaceship, or if it all just happened here on Earth. Which is why they go with the word experiencer. The term is a bit broader and feels more accurate for a lot of people in the group. For those whose memories are a bit hazy, which is more common than not, they have their own title. They're referred to as dormant.

• 6:18Rasha Pecoraro?

  Others who do recall or have unlocked their memories through therapy or hypnosis, they're referred to as "activated." And if anyone calls the visitors from outer space "aliens," the group leader will likely correct them. Apparently, that's out of respect for the beings who don't prefer that term. Some of the members learned that after building meaningful relationships with these creatures. So everyone at Starborn calls them "extraterrestrials" and not "aliens."

• 6:50Yvette Gentile?

  It sounds wild, we know, but unfortunately, that's really all the details we have about what goes on in these meetings, mainly because Starborn's leaders are committed to confidentiality and protecting their members' identities. We do know that the group was founded by twin sisters, Debbie and Audrey Hewins. And when they share their testimony about why they started Starborn, it can sometimes get disturbing and upsetting. So I just have to say, there is a trigger warning. Their accounts involve sexual assault of minors, so y'all, please, listen with care.

• 7:32Rasha Pecoraro?

  It goes something like this. In the mid-1970s, Audrey and Debbie lived in the small city of Athens, Ohio, just outside of Columbus. And when they were around four or five years old, they were in their shared bedroom one night trying to fall asleep. Only, they couldn't, because there were these strange voices they kept hearing through the walls, almost like someone was talking in another room loud enough to keep the girls wide awake. Now, it's unclear if Debbie and Audrey could actually make out specific words, or if they could tell exactly who was speaking. But the longer the conversation went on, the more muddled the voices became, until eventually, they sounded kind of like a drone or a buzz.

• 8:17Rasha Pecoraro?

  And that's when a brilliant bluish-white light flooded the room. Then, the bedroom door swung open all on its own, and Audrey and Debbie could see the light glowing in the hallways and other rooms. It was as if the entire house had suddenly just lit up. After that, two figures emerged from the light and walked into their room. The twins didn't recognize the beings, but they later gave them a nickname: The Bald Men. As you can probably guess, the Bald Men didn't have any hair. They were both much shorter than your average adult, and they had huge, black eyes.

• 8:58Rasha Pecoraro?

  Basically, they sound an awful lot like the stereotypical gray aliens that we've all seen in movies and TV, except their skin wasn't gray, it was pink. It's hard to say what happened next, because Debbie and Audrey didn't go public with their story until decades later. By that time, they'd forgotten the rest of that night. But they did recall what happened the next morning.

• 9:24Yvette Gentile?

  Audrey and Debbie told their parents about the Bald Men, the buzzing noise, and the bright light, but they didn't believe them. Actually, it didn't matter who they told: their teachers, their neighbors, their babysitters, their friends. Everyone acted like it was just their imagination, and that they were just making it all up, which meant there was nobody to protect them or to try and stop it from happening again.

• 9:50Rasha Pecoraro?

  It's so sad to me that they weren't believed.

• 9:54Yvette Gentile?

  I have to agree with you. I mean, especially if they're repeatedly telling you the same story night after night, like you would, you know, want to take into consideration how your children are feeling.

• 10:07Rasha Pecoraro?

  If my daughter told me that she was seeing aliens, or UFOs, or ghosts, or anything, I'd want to know about it, and I'd like stake it out with her at night. But anyway. This ended up happening to Audrey and Debbie a lot, even though they weren't believed. It's unclear if the Bald Men came back that very following evening, or even weeks or months later, but we know that eventually, the voices returned and faded back into that buzzing sound, just like they did before. Then, a bright, bluish-white light flooded Audrey and Debbie's bedroom along with the rest of the house. Once more, the Bald Men appeared in their room,

• 10:53Rasha Pecoraro?

  but this time, they took the girls somewhere. They couldn't tell where or how they got there, but they knew for sure they were no longer in their house. Then before they knew it, they were back in bed and it was the next morning. From there, it continued. A third time, a fourth time. It eventually happened so many times, the girls ended up losing count.

• 11:19Yvette Gentile?

  Again, we don't know how many nights passed between each visit, but the bald men were showing up on a regular occurrence. It reached a point where Audrey and Debbie were terrified to go to bed each night because they knew the strange visitors would come back. They still couldn't remember what these beings did to them during their visits, but the thought of these men filled them with absolute dread. So every time it got late, Audrey and Debbie would beg and plead with their parents not to put them to bed. They cried and screamed and insisted that it just wasn't safe to go to sleep. But their parents just assumed Audrey and Debbie were throwing tantrums like any other young child would around bedtime.

• 12:04Yvette Gentile?

  So the girls did the only thing that they could do at that point. Audrey and Debbie began keeping careful records of everything they'd been through. Of course, right now, we would think of a journal, but you have to remember their age, so these are just drawings, right?

• 12:21Rasha Pecoraro?

  Yeah, they were only four or five years old, and they didn't even know how to write yet. And this went on for years. Eventually, as they learned to spell and read, the girls were able to write more thorough entries about their encounters. By the time Debbie and Audrey were about 12 years old, they were very good at keeping accounts of these semi-regular visits. But their memories were still vague after each visit. There were big gaps in their stories and weird time jumps that just didn't make any sense. For example, on multiple occasions, one or both girls remembered laying in bed when the bald men entered their room. Then, their next memory would be of them floating in the sky above their home.

• 13:05Rasha Pecoraro?

  It was enough to make them think that the bald men were forcing them to forget their experiences. But they weren't capable of erasing all of their memories. So the girls could still recall tiny bits and pieces of what had happened.

• 13:21Yvette Gentile?

  And that's why their diaries and notebooks became so important. They gave the girls a way to compare notes and fill in the blanks for each other. And they realized that sometimes the bald men would come in and fire some kind of weapon at Audrey and Debbie. It paralyzed them so they couldn't run or even scream. They were frozen. The beings would somehow make them levitate out of their beds and then fly them through the walls or the mirrors, literally defying physics. Sometimes the twins blacked out for a bit, and when they woke up, they were on a strange spaceship hovering right above their house. They could even see their home through the craft's windows.

• 14:04Yvette Gentile?

  On other occasions, the twins found themselves in some kind of laboratory or medical exam room. Their memories of these areas were especially choppy. Given the setting, Audrey and Debbie assumed the bald men were doing some kind of experiment on them. But they never figured out what these studies were or what they entailed. However, they did sometimes find unexplained bruises and marks on their bodies the next day.

• 14:35Rasha Pecoraro?

  Then days or weeks would go by without the bald men visiting at all. But they always came back within a day or two of the full moon. So their encounters happened at least once every four weeks. This was notable because the experiences also always happened right before Audrey and Debbie's menstrual cycles began, which coincidentally happened during the full moon. This made the sisters think the bald men could have been interested in menstruation or even reproduction.

• 15:07Yvette Gentile?

  As the years went by, Audrey and Debbie entered adulthood. They realized they'd never be able to piece everything together on their own. They needed more data and more information from other people who'd gone through something similar. So in other words, if they ever wanted to understand what was happening to them, they needed to find other experiencers, which is exactly what they set out to do.

• 15:40Yvette Gentile?

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• 16:25Yvette Gentile?

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• 17:07Yvette Gentile?

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• 17:19Rasha Pecoraro?

  Well, I haven't had any hot flashes yet. Knock on wood.

• 17:23Yvette Gentile?

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• 17:25Rasha Pecoraro?

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• 18:07Rasha Pecoraro?

  In the mid 1970s, twins Audrey and Debbie Hewens were four or five years old. Night after night, strange beings who they called the bald men, visited them in their bedroom. And these encounters continued for years. At some point, the girls' family ended up moving from Athens, Ohio to the state of Massachusetts. It's unclear how old the girls were at that time. But now that they were in a new home in a brand new state, they hoped the bizarre visits would just stop. Unfortunately, they were wrong.

• 18:43Yvette Gentile?

  One night, they were in their bed in their new house when they heard the same voices and buzzing. Bright light flooded the room and just like before, the figures appeared at the foot of Audrey and Debbie's bed. But once the visitors were close enough, they realized, these weren't the bald men. They didn't even look like they were the same species. Instead, they seemed to be some kind of lizard-human hybrids. According to Debbie and Audrey, they were about six feet tall, significantly bigger than the child-sized bald men. And when they spoke, their voices sounded unnaturally deep. They reminded the girls of demons that they'd see in sci-fi horror movies. The creatures

• 19:28Yvette Gentile?

  took Audrey and Debbie from their room, but this time, they didn't go aboard a spaceship. Instead, they brought the girls into underground tunnels. There, the reptilians supposedly performed experiments on them and sexually assaulted them.

• 19:46Yvette Gentile?

  Audrey and Debbie didn't know for sure if this was the first time something like this had happened. Their memories of the bald men were still so fuzzy, but these attacks felt especially violating and upsetting.

• 20:01Rasha Pecoraro?

  This wasn't a one-time event. The reptilians came back night after night. They continued kidnapping, assaulting, and doing scientific research on the twins. Of course, Audrey and Debbie were afraid of the reptilians, but somewhere along the way, they also realized these creatures wanted the girls to be scared of them. It's unclear how they knew this, but Audrey and Debbie believed the reptilians fed on energy and strong emotions. And each time the creatures took the girls, they sucked out some of their life force, leaving them so exhausted. Sadly, the girls were powerless to stop them.

• 20:44Rasha Pecoraro?

  And when they tried to talk about it, no one believed their stories or even tried to help them. But it was clear now, there was no escaping these beings, even if they tried. Debbie and Audrey moved across the country, and they still ended up tracking them down. They figured they couldn't do much to stop the encounters or the experiments, but they could find a way to help process the trauma.

• 21:09Yvette Gentile?

  By the time they reached adulthood, Audrey was working regularly with therapists, but it didn't help much, especially because her memories of the encounters were still patchy, which meant the therapist didn't have a whole lot to work with. So at some point, the twins decided they were never going to heal until they recovered those lost memories. So they got in touch with a hypnotherapist. And during Debbie's session, there were a lot of spectators in the room. They watched as the therapist put Debbie under, and then began asking questions about the bald men and the reptilians. And Debbie answered each question perfectly.

• 21:52Yvette Gentile?

  It was clear that there were a ton of memories she hadn't been consciously aware of, because now she described her experiences in detail. It felt like the hypnosis was working. And as the hours due to a close, the therapist began waking Debbie up, which is when something went terribly wrong.

• 22:15Yvette Gentile?

  All of the color drained out of her face. Her skin turned gray, almost as if she was dying. The observers in the room began screaming in horror. And the hypnotherapist was stumped. They'd never seen anything like this before. They didn't understand why Debbie was having this reaction, but they worried this form of therapy wasn't safe for her. Thankfully, the color returned to her face after she woke up from the hypnosis, and she seemed okay after that. Even better, she unlocked a ton of memories. This encouraged Audrey to move forward with her hypnotherapy session, which went off without a hitch.

• 22:59Yvette Gentile?

  No gray skin, no medical emergencies, but lots of new memories. Afterwards, each twin went back to therapy and started making progress towards emotional healing. The only problem was, the experiences were still happening on a regular basis.

• 23:20Rasha Pecoraro?

  By 2006, Audrey and Debbie were 33 years old and living separately. And each of them were still having encounters with the bald men and the reptilians from time to time. They also regularly compared notes to see if their memories were similar and how they differed. But by this time, Audrey was starting to feel so frustrated. She and her sister weren't getting any closer to making any sense of these encounters. She wished she had even more data, because if there were other people who'd been through this sort of thing, they might remember the pieces that Audrey and Debbie didn't. So that year, the twins set up a hotline called Starborn.

• 24:04Rasha Pecoraro?

  It was for anyone who had ever had an encounter. Audrey and Debbie promised to listen, support, and believe anyone who contacted them. Sure enough, the line started ringing. Audrey and Debbie connected with a few dozen people who had memories similar to their own. And one thing became very clear. A lot of people had been craving an outlet where they could talk about their encounters in a safe place, too. So that same year, the sisters established an in-person support group for experiencers. Like the hotline, it was also called Starborn. But the task was easier said than done. The experiencers who'd contacted them were living all over the world,

• 24:49Rasha Pecoraro?

  so there was no central location where everyone could easily meet up. Remember, this is 2006, and Zoom wasn't a thing quite yet. Plus, it would be a lot of work to organize something like having them meeting in person. So that's probably why they decided to hold just one annual meeting.

• 25:09Yvette Gentile?

  They held the first Starborn conference in Maine, close to Audrey's home. And that's about all we know about it. Since the sisters wanted to protect the experiencers' privacy, they didn't want skeptics to show up and mock attendees or poke holes in their stories. They shared concrete details about the time and place only with the experiencers they trusted. And to this day, it's impossible to say how many people actually came to the conference and what exactly they discussed. We do know that Audrey and Debbie came to realize many experiencers had interacted with beings identical to the bald men. Others had been taken by the reptilians. And just like Audrey and Debbie,

• 25:54Yvette Gentile?

  they also remembered having their energy and life force sucked out of them.

• 25:59Rasha Pecoraro?

  If you're a longtime fan of this show, you may recognize how well Audrey and Debbie's story fits with other UFO encounters. There are tons of reports where people hear strange buzzing noises or find themselves floating through the air, or think visitors from outer space are conducting experiments on them. If you haven't heard it yet, make sure you check out our recent episode on the 1989 Manhattan abduction. Throughout that year, a woman in New York City claimed she was beamed out of her apartment, levitated through the air, and pulled into a spacecraft. We'll link that episode in the show notes if you want to hear more.

• 26:40Yvette Gentile?

  The point is Audrey and Debbie now realize they were not so alone after all. Lots of people knew exactly what they'd been through, and the conference was a big success, enough so that they held a second one the next year and the year after that. At the conference in 2009, there were 1,500 attendees, plus the hotline was still running at that time, and it was getting more popular. By 2013, seven years after Starborn was founded, they received over 2,000 reports by phone. The demand was now high enough for Audrey and Debbie to set up smaller support groups.

• 27:22Yvette Gentile?

  As of late 2013, there were 12 different local chapters, most of which were on the US's east coast, but a few were in Latin America going as far south as Colombia. Reporters also started interviewing attendees, especially Audrey and Debbie, and publishing articles about them. They appeared on ABC, National Geographic, and the Biography Channel. A UFO researcher named Kathleen Martin interviewed Audrey, then wrote about their story in her book, Alien Abduction Files, which was published in 2013. I actually just read several passages in her book, which is very well documented.

• 28:06Yvette Gentile?

  And the creepy thing about her book is so many of the people have such similar experiences, like they see the reptilian, the bald guy, the levitating... It's wild how many people have had this exact experience as Audrey and Debbie. But that same year, Audrey revealed some explosive new information. She said she now understood why the extraterrestrials had been so focused on her and her sister. And it's because the women had a very important mission.

• 28:48Speaker 00

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• 29:13Yvette Gentile?

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• 30:46Speaker 03

  Hi, I'm Ashley Flowers.

• 30:48Speaker 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.

• 30:53Speaker 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.

• 31:09Speaker 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.

• 31:17Speaker 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.

• 31:24Speaker 04

  So if you're not already listening to Crime Junkie, what are you waiting for? There are over 300 episodes available right now.

• 31:31Speaker 03

  And you can listen to new episodes of Crime Junkie every Monday, wherever you get your podcasts.

• 31:41Yvette Gentile?

  Audrey Hewins and her twin sister Debbie had countless encounters with extraterrestrials over the years. They began in the mid-'70s, when the girls were just four and five years old, and continued into adulthood, which is why the 33-year-old twins established Starborn in 2006, a support group for experiencers. The group got a lot of attention and made the twins famous. They gave a ton of interviews, and in 2013, 33-year-old Audrey connected with a UFO researcher and shared a particularly memorable experience from early January of 2007 or so.

• 32:25Rasha Pecoraro?

  That night, she was in bed trying to fall asleep when she felt a tingle all over her body. Audrey recognized this sensation. She knew the beings were close. Sure enough, the tingle grew more intense until she found herself involuntarily twitching. I'm not sure how long that feeling lasted, but eventually, she went completely stiff and couldn't move at all. All she could do was watch as that brilliant white light filled her room. Then, three reptilians appeared beside her bed, a tall one and two shorter ones. Except this experience was different from the others, because this time, the paralysis suddenly wore off.

• 33:09Rasha Pecoraro?

  As the reptilians spoke to one another in a language Audrey couldn't understand, she realized that she was able to move her arms and legs. So she grabbed the nearest reptilian and wrapped her hands around its neck, and she squeezed as tight as she possibly could. But the creature's throat was extremely hard. She said it was almost like trying to squish a roll of quarters. Audrey could tell the beam wasn't bothered. She wasn't hurting it, she wasn't even scaring it. So she ditched her plan and tried to run away. But the reptilians moved to intercept her. And that's when an almost nonsensical phrase popped into Audrey's head.

• 33:51Rasha Pecoraro?

  Clear as day, she heard a voice say, quote, "Watch out for the mother." She doesn't know if she was hearing the reptilians' thoughts, or if this was a half-forgotten memory coming back up. Audrey couldn't make sense of it either way. But after that, she sensed that she and the reptilians weren't alone. There were other extraterrestrials in her house. Sure enough, she opened her bedroom door and saw several more figures waiting outside for her in the hallway. Audrey didn't get a good look at them, because that's when everything went black.

• 34:28Yvette Gentile?

  Audrey woke up a little later, but she had no idea how much time had passed. All she knew was that she wasn't in her house anymore. She was floating above it, basically rising up into the sky, like she was being beamed into a spaceship. But Audrey didn't see a UFO. Instead, she blacked out again, and over the rest of the night, she had a series of strange, disjointed experiences. At one point, she woke up to find herself submerged in some kind of thick, gel-like liquid, and yet, she could breathe in it without a problem. She fell unconscious again, and next woke up on a table, where these beings were doing

• 35:12Yvette Gentile?

  some kind of medical procedure on her. And that's when Audrey spotted the reptilians working with the bald men, and some strange worm-like creatures she'd never seen before. Next, Audrey saw a claw coming down from the ceiling above her. It was like she was a toy in an arcade game about to become the unlucky prize. The claw lowered all the way down to her face, then latched around one of her eyeballs. Under ordinary circumstances, this would have been terrifying. But the aliens were somehow muting Audrey's emotions. She said she was only a little bit scared in that moment.

• 35:55Yvette Gentile?

  She also didn't feel any pain, not even when the claw yanked her eye out of its socket, and then basically popped it back into place. After the claw disappeared, Audrey's eye just felt a little bit irritated. She said it was like she had an eyelash stuck in it. But whatever they did to her, it was rather painless. And I have to say, in Kathleen Martin's book, when Audrey is talking about this, like on the record, she says that they popped the eye out and then they injected something into her eye socket and then put the eyeball back in. So it's almost like they're-

• 36:36Rasha Pecoraro?

  Like an alien implant.

• 36:37Yvette Gentile?

  Exactly.

• 36:39Rasha Pecoraro?

  Listen to that episode too, if you haven't already.

• 36:41Yvette Gentile?

  Yeah, that's a, that's a very good episode. But almost like they're implanting something back there so they can see everything through her eyes.

• 36:48Rasha Pecoraro?

  Oh, that's creepy.

• 36:52Yvette Gentile?

  Yeah.

• 36:52Rasha Pecoraro?

  So creepy.

• 36:54Yvette Gentile?

  Well, next, the extraterrestrials escorted Audrey to a room she'd never seen before. But it didn't look like it was part of an alien craft. Instead, it resembled an ordinary classroom. A bunch of desks were all lined up, and there were other students there. All seemingly human, sitting in the seats. They were all facing forward, away from Audrey. So she couldn't tell if they were fully conscious or in some kind of trance. But she felt very aware of her own surroundings. Audrey took a seat, and then a human-looking teacher walked to the front of the room and started lecturing.

• 37:31Rasha Pecoraro?

  This teacher told them they'd been chosen for a purpose. They were all going to have a special role to play at some point in the future. He didn't say what the role would be or what exactly was going to happen, but every student already knew all that they needed to know. That information was apparently buried deep inside them. To Audrey, it sounded like the extraterrestrials had put data into their subconscious, or her DNA. And when the time was right, every student would be activated, which meant they'd suddenly become aware of that hidden information. Then, they'd do whatever was required to help the extraterrestrials achieve their goals.

• 38:15Rasha Pecoraro?

  Shortly after the lecture, Audrey blacked out again, and then she woke up back in her bed.

• 38:21Yvette Gentile?

  For years Audrey questioned what this special purpose might be. In the meantime, she started getting these spontaneous bursts of intuition. She'd been watching a news report on a natural disaster, or a scientific discovery, and she'd just know the story was somehow related to her mission. Thanks to this insight, she pieced together what she was supposed to do. Audrey now realized the extraterrestrials needed her to stop climate change, pollution, and environmental destruction. Because if human beings continued on the path they were on, they'd destroy themselves and all the other life on Earth.

• 39:05Yvette Gentile?

  And the destruction wouldn't stop there. Audrey didn't have all of the details, but she knew if our planet got destroyed, so would others. There would be a domino effect with one world after the next just dying off.

• 39:22Rasha Pecoraro?

  So in the weeks after she had this epiphany, Audrey gives a ton of interviews. She raises the alarm at every chance she gets, begging people to change their relationship with the environment. She also notes that the clock is ticking. Again, she doesn't fully understand how everything fits together, but she knows humanity only has three months to turn it around. If they don't fix it by then, they will lose their chance to ever make things right.

• 39:53Yvette Gentile?

  Except Audrey gave that warning in October of 2013, and I'm sorry to report that people didn't listen to her. They didn't stop climate change. But the world didn't end either, and the good news is that scientists still believe there's time to fix things before we see mass extinctions and irreversible damage. But there isn't a lot of time. Still, we haven't passed the point of no return yet, and we weren't there in early 2014 either. Audrey's prediction was completely wrong.

• 40:31Rasha Pecoraro?

  Which is why a lot of people reject everything she has to say. Many of them can't resist the impulse to pick Audrey and Debbie's story apart, to try to poke holes in it and prove that their experiences weren't real. In fairness, most of these critics and skeptics don't think the twins are lying. They just say that Debbie and Audrey are confused or mistaken. The theory goes that way back when, when they first started having these encounters at the age of four or five, they were simply having just bad dreams. One of the girls had a vivid nightmare. Then she woke up and told her sister about it. And since they were too young to tell reality from fantasy,

• 41:16Rasha Pecoraro?

  they both became convinced it was real. Then the nightmare reoccurred night after night. Each time the sisters wrote about it in their diary or compared notes, they reinforced the details in their own memories. To be clear, their fear and trauma may have been very real and authentic to them. But the visitations may have been completely imaginary, just a psychological phenomenon.

• 41:45Yvette Gentile?

  I just have to say, I'm kind of torn on this because that does make logical sense, what you just said, but at the same time, what these young girls are experiencing is very real. And when you read this book by Kathleen Martin and you, you hear all these other stories that people had the exact same experience, you know?

• 42:05Rasha Pecoraro?

  Then it gets harder to discount it.

• 42:06Yvette Gentile?

  Exactly. But the most interesting fact, though, is that so many star-born attendees, like I just said, recall similar details, not to mention all the people who called the hotline and told their stories before they'd heard what Audrey and Debbie went through. The twins can't be forcing false memories on all of these people. And if these were bad dreams and hallucinations, you'd expect the details to vary from one person to the next. But they don't. Like I said, the similarities are so eerie. I mean, take this event that happened at some point in the late 90s. Audrey was in her mid to late

• 42:48Yvette Gentile?

  20s and she was out at a bar one night when she spotted a man sitting on the other side of the room. Right away, she recognized him, even though they'd never met on earth. Instead, Audrey remembered seeing him on a spaceship roughly a decade ago. They were both experiencers. So Audrey walked up to this guy and said, and this is a quote, "You remember, right?" He looked her in the eye with a completely stunned expression, and then he replied, "Yeah." Now, okay, yes, this isn't proof that the experience was real, but let's be honest,

• 43:30Yvette Gentile?

  the twins will never be able to convince everyone to accept their claims. No matter how much evidence they offer, there's always going to be someone doubting them. We know this for a fact.

• 43:43Rasha Pecoraro?

  Mm-hmm.

• 43:43Yvette Gentile?

  Questioning them and insisting that they're wrong. There are always going to be skeptics. That's just part of life.

• 43:51Rasha Pecoraro?

  Sadly, yes. We've all been in that situation where skeptics try to poke holes in our reality or convince us that we don't know our own lives or our own truth. And no one can take your own truth away from you. Debbie and Audrey know that better than almost anyone. It's part of the reason why Starborn means so much to them. Because they know there are a lot of people out there who are in the same situation, living with a story that seems too outrageous to be believed. But that doesn't mean it isn't true.

• 44:32Yvette Gentile?

  Which is why they ignore those doubters and they surround themselves with their friends, their family, and those who truly get what they've been through. Because at the end of the day, all any of us need is a bit of support and someone else who can look us in the eye and say, "I see you and I believe you."

• 45:04Rasha Pecoraro?

  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 sosupernaturalpodcast.com. Join Yvette and me next Friday for an all-new episode.

• 45:26Rasha Pecoraro?

  I think Chuck would approve.

• 45:31Speaker 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 round, listen close, and stream Full Body Chills wherever you get your podcasts.