True Story Behind Netflix’s The Manhattan Alien Abduction: Photos, 23 Witnesses, and a Thrilling Trial

UFO sightings and alien abductions are often reported by people in the wilderness without any witnesses present to corroborate their stories.

Not for Linda Napolitano, who was taken from her New York City apartment in 1989 and beamed to a spaceship by aliens, as 23 onlookers testified, it is alleged.

Napolitano’s story has captivated UFO enthusiasts for decades. Now the incident has exploded on the small screen – and in court.

A Netflix show is presenting the kidnapping as an “elaborate hoax,” and Napolitano has fought back with a lawsuit accusing the streamer of defamation.

Her complaint reopens a rift between a husband-and-wife duo of alien researchers and raises tough questions about those who say they’ve met visitors from space.

As millions of viewers stream The Manhattan Alien Abduction and lawyers duke it out in court, concerns about who is fair are sure to grow.

While the U.S. government is increasingly open to discussing aliens, it is unclear whether those with abduction stories are telling the truth, suffering from false memories, mental health issues, or if they are just making it up.

Napolitano, a stay-at-home mother, stands by her story that three aliens abducted her outside her 12th-floor apartment in Lower Manhattan on the night of November 30, 1989.

Linda Napolitano, 77, stays true to her story of being abducted by aliens from her Manhattan apartment in 1989

They floated her out the window and into a spacecraft that hovered over the city, where they conducted experiments on her before returning her to her bedroom, she says.

But this astonishing event wasn’t her first brush with aliens, she claims.

Thirteen years earlier, in the Catskills, she remembers finding a strange bump on the side of her nose.

This was later identified as a mysterious foreign object.

Several months before the 1989 incident, Napolitano wrote to UFO researcher Budd Hopkins about that incident in the Catskills and joined his abductee support group.

Hopkins believed that the object in her nose had been implanted by aliens.

An X-ray would show the object, but when a specialist came to check Napolitano’s nose, it could not be found.

After the 1989 incident, Hopkins scoured the city for people who could corroborate Napolitano’s story.

About twenty people witnessed it; some even said they saw Napolitano floating above her building, it is claimed.

Hopkins documented this in his book Witnessed: True Story of the Brooklyn Bridge Abduction.

But he used pseudonyms for the witnesses, casting doubt on their authenticity.

Among the alleged witnesses were two guards of then UN chief Javier Pérez de Cuéllar – but these testimonies have also been questioned.

Napolitano insists they were all real spectators who saw the evening’s stunning spectacle.

The Netflix recreates Napolitano’s story in which she floated out her window and floated above the city in a spacecraft

The docuseries shows archival footage of Napolitano pointing to where she believes the kidnapping took place

UFO researcher Budd Hopkins’ hypnosis sessions with Napolitano have been questioned

“If I was hallucinating, the witnesses saw my hallucination,” she told Vanity Fair in 2013.

“That sounds crazier than the whole kidnapping phenomenon.”

Hopkins’ then-wife, Carol Rainey, a filmmaker and UFO researcher, was also involved in the case.

At first she believed Napolitano and they became friends, she said, but over time she became skeptical.

Rainey says Hopkins interviewed abductees under hypnosis in search of repressed memories.

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

The three-part Netflix docuseries includes interviews with Napolitano, 77, who now lives in Tennessee, and Rainey, who died in 2023.

There is also archive footage of Budd, who died in 2011.

On the show, Rainey, then divorced from Budd, said her ex-husband had “lost his objectivity” and may have hypnotized Napolitano’s comments.

She vowed to “continue asking questions” about the story of the suspected kidnapping.

In her appearances, Napolitano claims she was telling the truth.

Only a “sociopath” would concoct such a grand story, she says, accusing Rainey of exposing her in an attempt to “get revenge on Budd.”

Napolitano’s story has captivated UFO enthusiasts for decades

Napolitano (left) and Carol Rainey started out as friends, but had a falling out over the kidnapping story.

An X-ray reportedly shows a mysterious object in Napolitano’s nose, but there are doubts about its authenticity

She is supported in part by her son Johnny, who appears in the documentary, although his likeness is unclear.

“I don’t think she would want to make something like that up,” he says.

He remembers seeing three “creatures” in the family living room, in what he calls a “terrifying” experience that left him feeling “hopeless.”

“I’m just trying to erase it from my life,” he says.

According to Napolitano, the aliens were not done with her family after that night in 1989. She says they came back years later and targeted her family, causing nosebleeds.

Napolitano, Hopkins’ estate and others filed the lawsuit against Netflix, Rainey’s estate and others in the New York Supreme Court two days before the show began streaming on October 30.

The complaint seeks an unspecified amount of damages for six claims ranging from fraud to defamation and breach of the covenant of good faith and fair dealing.

Another request to stop the showing of the show was not fulfilled in time.

The complaint says that Napolitano “did not remotely resemble the person appearing on screen” and that she “never had a choice” with Rainey.

Napolitano “was set up as such a villain for the purpose of controversy and conflict, all of which was a patently and deliberately false portrayal to support the false narrative of the truth,” it adds.

Netflix did not return our request for comment.

Napolitano told DailyMail.com that she “couldn’t take any chances” by discussing her kidnapping during the trial.

“I don’t talk about the case at all,” she said.