Linda Napolitano claimed that three aliens abducted her from her Manhattan apartment and beamed her into their ship on November 30, 1989. Her story was allegedly corroborated by 23 witnesses — but even some of the most staunch alien believers are skeptical.
Linda Napolitano was a typical housewife living in Manhattan with her husband and two children. But everything changed on Nov. 30, 1989, when she claims three gray bipedal creatures abducted her from her 12th-floor apartment. Napolitano said she was then paralyzed and lifted through a blue beam of light into a spaceship, where the aliens performed experiments on her before returning her to her bedroom.
Napolitano’s alleged abduction was widely publicized by ufologist Budd Hopkins, who claimed that 23 witnesses had seen Napolitano rising through the sky and into a UFO near the Brooklyn Bridge that night — including an important government official rumored to be UN Secretary-General Javier Pérez de Cuéllar.
“If I was hallucinating,” Napolitano told Vanity Fair in 2013, “then the witnesses saw my hallucination. That sounds crazier than the whole abduction phenomenon.”
But some have called the story’s credibility into question, pointing out that most of the alleged witnesses’ identities have never been verified. Still, Napolitano’s case continues to captivate alien enthusiasts to this day — so much so that her story will once again be explored in a new Netflix documentary, Manhattan Alien Abduction.
Linda Napolitano Floats Through The Manhattan Sky
At around 3 a.m. on Nov. 30, 1989, Linda Napolitano claimed, she was sleeping next to her husband when she suddenly jolted awake. In her bones, she could feel that something wasn’t right — that something was in the room with her.
When she looked around, she allegedly saw a group of small gray beings standing over her, staring at her with black eyes. By Napolitano’s account, the aliens told her to be quiet in some strange, telepathic language — and she found herself paralyzed and unable to call out to her husband for help.
Napolitano claimed a bright blue beam then shone through her window and lifted her body off her bed, out into the night sky, and into a large oval-shaped spaceship. Once inside, the creatures brought her into an examination room, where they laid her out on a table and inserted a strange metallic device into her nose.
Then, Napolitano woke up in her bed next to her husband as if nothing had happened.
At first, Napolitano wrote off this terrifying ordeal as an incredibly vivid dream. Soon after, however, she noticed a curious lump in her nose. She said she visited a doctor to inspect it — and an X-ray allegedly taken of her nasal passage appeared to show that there really was something lodged inside it.
Later, a throat and nose specialist allegedly examined Napolitano and found that the object was gone, but that there was a buildup of cartilage that suggested something had been lodged there recently.
Napolitano took her story to Budd Hopkins, an artist and ufologist with decades of experience researching alien phenomena. In 1996, Hopkins published a book about Napolitano’s story titled Witnessed. And soon, Linda Napolitano was making headlines.
Alleged Witnesses To The Manhattan Alien Abduction Come Forward
Linda Napolitano’s case sounded like something straight out of science fiction. However, it differentiated itself from other well-known alien abduction stories in that, according to Budd Hopkins, nearly two dozen people had witnessed the event. Hopkins included their accounts in his book, though he used pseudonyms for most of those involved — including Napolitano herself, whom he called “Linda Cortile.”
According to Hopkins, Napolitano contacted him shortly after her alleged abduction. However, his investigation really began in 1991, when he said he received a mysterious letter from a pair of security guards.
In their letter, the men claimed that on the night of Nov. 30, 1989, they had been parked under FDR Drive when they saw three alien figures and a woman in a white nightgown floating out of an apartment window and into a UFO. The security guards, who called themselves “Richard and Dan,” said they “can’t live with ourselves” for not helping the woman, according to Daily Mail.
Later, the guards claimed that their client, a prominent world leader who had been visiting New York at the time, had also witnessed the event. Some UFO researchers have since suggested that this politician might have been Javier Pérez de Cuéllar, the UN Secretary-General.
After Richard and Dan got in touch with Hopkins and learned that the woman they had seen was alive, they allegedly visited Napolitano at her Manhattan apartment. The men were reportedly emotional upon seeing her, and the three spoke as if they’d known each other for years.
However, the story soon took a dark turn.
Linda Napolitano Begins To Fear For Her Life
Linda Napolitano’s troubles didn’t end after the aliens allegedly returned her to her room.
According to Budd Hopkins, “Dan” began stalking Napolitano soon after meeting her, staking out her apartment daily.
Then, in April 1991, the security guards allegedly kidnapped Napolitano, forcing her into their car and interrogating her for hours about her alleged abduction, trying to see if she knew more about the aliens than she was letting on. They even had her take off her shoes and show them her toes to prove she wasn’t an alien herself.
After this, Hopkins claimed Dan grew increasingly delusional and obsessed with Napolitano. In October 1991, he allegedly kidnapped her again and brought her to a beach house on Long Island.
Napolitano told Hopkins that Dan then ordered her to wear a white nightgown similar to the one she had worn the night of the abduction. When she refused to change in front of him, Dan allegedly became frantic and attempted to have sex with her, calling her his “Lady of the Sand.”
Thankfully, Napolitano was able to get away. While she never saw Dan again, she claimed he wrote her letters in which he confessed to being in love with her and to fantasizing about kidnapping her. During this time, Napolitano also claimed she was being followed by men in black suits, causing her to fear for her life.
Meanwhile, more people were contacting Hopkins with their accounts of the alleged abduction — and their stories seemed to match Napolitano’s.
To some alien enthusiasts, the sheer number of witnesses proves that something really did happen that night. However, critics have pointed out that most of these witnesses refused to give interviews or to identify themselves. Hopkins himself admitted to have never met Dan and Richard.
Given the lack of concrete evidence, even some of the most devoted believers in UFOs believe Linda Napolitano’s story to be a hoax.
The Legacy Of The New York Alien Abduction
Over the years, Linda Napolitano has stuck to her story, even as people dismissed her as crazy.
“I’ll tell you,” she has said, “I wish I was psychotic — at least there is treatment for that.”
Her case purportedly had an immense emotional impact on the alleged witnesses, and especially on Dan. According to the Skeptics UFO Newsletter, Dan’s mental health allegedly deteriorated so much that he had to be checked into a mental health facility.
As for the diplomat Richard and Dan had allegedly been guarding that fateful night, the event purportedly rattled him enough that it changed his political priorities.
According to the 2022 documentary Linda Napolitano: The Alien Abduction Case of the Century, the politician wrote a letter to Hopkins, emphasizing the importance of taking care of the planet and begging Hopkins to stop investigating the incident so that the extraterrestrials could continue their grand plan.
Linda Napolitano herself suggested that her abduction was meant to draw the attention of world leaders and steer the course of global politics to focus on environmental sustainability. And Hopkins theorized that Napolitano, Dan, and the diplomat may have even been cosmically tied together to help nudge the diplomat toward protecting the planet. This, Hopkins posited, would also explain why Dan had such a powerful obsession with Napolitano.
Budd Hopkins died in 2011, temporarily ending the long investigation into Napolitano’s abduction. However, in 2024, Netflix announced the release of a new documentary about the case, titled Manhattan Alien Abduction. The series will feature new interviews with Linda Napolitano in an attempt to explain what really happened on that cold November night in 1989.
After reading about Linda Napolitano, dive into the story of Project Blue Book, when the U.S. government set out looking for aliens. Then, read about the mysterious Berkshire UFO incident of 1969.