True story behind Netflix's The Manhattan Alien Abduction: photos, 23 witnesses and a bombshell lawsuit

UFO sightings and alien abductions are often reported by folks successful the boondocks without immoderate witnesses astir to backmost up their stories.

Not for Linda Napolitano, who was successful 1989 taken from her New York City flat and beamed onto a spaceship by extraterrestrials, arsenic 23 onlookers bore witness, it is claimed.

Napolitano's communicative has gripped UFO enthusiasts for decades. Now, the incidental has exploded onto the tiny surface — and into the courtroom.

A Netflix amusement presents the abduction arsenic an 'elaborate hoax,' and Napolitano has fought backmost with a suit accusing the streamer of defamation.

Her ailment reopens a rift betwixt a husband-and-wife duo of alien researchers and raises pugnacious questions astir those who accidental they've encountered visitors from space.

As millions of viewers watercourse The Manhattan Alien Abduction, and lawyers duke it retired successful court, concerns astir who is being honorable volition doubtless intensify.

While the US authorities is progressively unfastened to discussing aliens, it's unclear whether those with abduction stories are telling the truth, oregon suffering from mendacious memories, intelligence wellness issues oregon conscionable making it up. 

Napolitano, a stay-at-home mom, stands by her communicative that connected the nighttime of 30 November 1989, 3 aliens kidnapped her extracurricular her 12th-floor Lower Manhattan apartment.

They made her levitate retired her model and into a spacecraft hovering supra the city, wherever they carried retired experiments connected her, earlier returning her to her bedroom, she says. 

But this astonishing lawsuit wasn't her archetypal brushwood with aliens, she claims.

Thirteen years prior, upstate successful the Catskills, she recalls uncovering a unusual bump connected the broadside of her nose.

This was aboriginal identified arsenic a enigma overseas object.

Several months earlier the 1989 incident, Napolitano says she wrote to UFO researcher Budd Hopkins astir that incidental successful the Catskills, and joined his enactment radical for abductees.

Hopkins believed the entity successful her chemoreceptor was implanted by aliens.

An X-ray purportedly shows the object, but, erstwhile a specializer came to cheque Napolitano's nose, it could not beryllium found.

After the 1989 incident, Hopkins scoured downtown for radical to corroborate Napolitano's story.

About 20 radical witnessed it; immoderate adjacent said they saw Napolitano floating supra her building, it is claimed.

Hopkins documented this successful his publication Witnessed: True Story of the Brooklyn Bridge Abduction.

But helium utilized pseudonyms for the witnesses, casting uncertainty connected their authenticity.

Among the purported witnesses were 2 guards for then-UN main Javier Pérez de Cuéllar — but these testimonies person besides been questioned.

Napolitano insists they were each genuine onlookers who saw the night's mind-boggling spectacle.

'If I was hallucinating, past the witnesses saw my hallucination,' she told Vanity Fair successful 2013.

'That sounds crazier than the full abduction phenomenon.'

Hopkins' then-wife, Carol Rainey, a filmmaker and UFO researcher, was besides embroiled successful the case.

She initially believed Napolitano and they became friends, she said, but implicit clip she grew skeptical.

Rainey says Hopkins interviewed abductees nether hypnosis successful hunt of suppressed memories.

But the results of his sessions with Napolitano were not credible, she said.

The three-part Netflix docuseries features interviews with Napolitano, 77, who present lives successful Tennessee, and Rainey, who died successful 2023.

It besides features archive footage of Budd, who died successful 2011.

In the show, Rainey, past divorced from Budd, said her ex-husband had 'lost his objectivity' and whitethorn person guided Napolitano's comments nether hypnosis.

She vowed to 'continue to inquire questions' astir the fishy abduction story.

In her appearances, Napolitano maintains she told the truth.

Only a 'sociopath' would fabricate specified a expansive narrative, she says, portion accusing Rainey of debunking her successful a bid to 'get adjacent with Budd.'

She's successful portion backed up by her son Johnny, who appears successful the documentary, though his likeness is obscured.

'There’s nary mode I judge she would privation to marque thing similar this up,' helium says. 

He recalls seeing 3 'beings' successful the household surviving room, successful what helium calls a 'terrifying' acquisition that near him feeling 'hopeless.'

'I conscionable effort to erase it from my life,' helium says.

According to Napolitano, the aliens were not done with her household aft that nighttime successful 1989. She says they came backmost years aboriginal and targeted her family, giving them nosebleeds. 

Napolitano, Hopkins' estate, and others filed the suit against Netflix, Rainey's estate, and others astatine New York Supreme Court, 2 days earlier the amusement started streaming connected October 30.

The ailment seeks an undetermined magnitude of monetary damages for six claims, from fraud to defamation, and breach of covenant of bully religion and just dealing.

Another petition to halt the amusement from screening was not granted successful time.

The ailment says Napolitano 'was not remotely adjacent to beryllium similar oregon look arsenic the idiosyncratic that is connected screen' and that she 'never had immoderate bony to pick' with Rainey.

Napolitano 'was acceptable up arsenic specified a villain for purposes of contention and conflict, each of which was a patently and deliberately mendacious portrayal to enactment the mendacious communicative of the truth,' it adds.

Netflix did not reply our petition for comment.

Napolitano told DailyMail.com that she could not 'take immoderate risks' by discussing her abduction amid the lawsuit.

'I don't speech astir the lawsuit astatine all,' she said.