The Controversial Story Behind Netflix’s New Docuseries The Manhattan Alien Abduction

By Megan McCluskey
October 31, 2024 1:45 PM EDT

As the famous Arthur C. Clarke quote goes, "Two possibilities exist: either we are alone in the universe or we are not. Both are equally terrifying."

Netflix's new documentary The Manhattan Alien Abduction explores the latter possibility, but ultimately seems to err on the side of skepticism—at least in this particular case. The three-part series, helmed by Vivienne Perry and Daniel Vernon, investigates the alleged abduction of Linda Napolitano (previously known by the pseudonym Linda Cortile), a New York City housewife who claimed that in the early morning hours of Nov. 30, 1989, three extraterrestrial beings kidnapped her from her 12th-floor downtown apartment, beamed her through the sky to their spaceship, and performed experiments on her before returning her to her bedroom.

The case was previously documented from an apparent believer's standpoint in the 1997 book Witnessed: The True Story of the Brooklyn Bridge Abduction by the late author Budd Hopkins, a prominent ufologist who had a close relationship with Napolitano prior to his death in 2011. However, the purported evidence put forth in Witnessed in support of Napolitano's claims is contested in The Manhattan Alien Abduction by Hopkins' late ex-wife Carol Rainey, a filmmaker who documented her then-husband's exploration of Napolitano's experience. Rainey gave her own side of the story—which was that the whole thing was an elaborate hoax orchestrated by Napolitano—to Netflix before she died in 2023.

The docuseries leans heavily on interviews with Napolitano, now 77, and Rainey—who clearly had a contentious relationship with one another—as well as previously unseen footage captured by Rainey, and dramatic reenactments to reconstruct the events surrounding the alleged abduction and its aftermath. Napolitano's story has also been documented in the 2018 podcast Somewhere in the Skies and the 2022 Apple TV+ documentary The Alien Abduction Case of the Century: The Linda Napolitano Story.

What supposedly happened to Linda Napolitano?

The April before her alleged November 1989 abduction, Napolitano sent Hopkins a letter describing a previous extraterrestrial encounter that she claimed to have experienced during a weekend in the Catskills 13 years earlier. Soon after, she began attending meetings of Hopkins' support group for abductees.

After this purported first encounter, Napolitano claimed that she had found a strange bump on the side of her nose that, when x-rayed, had apparently been revealed to be a small foreign object. Hopkins took this as evidence that aliens had inserted an implant into her nostril and referred to it as the "radiological smoking gun." But the object had reportedly disappeared when a specialist later tried to remove it.

Following the November 1989 incident, the crux of Hopkins' case in support of Napolitano's claims rested on the assertion that 23 people had allegedly come forward saying they had witnessed her floating through the Manhattan sky. "If I was hallucinating," Napolitano told Vanity Fair in 2013, "then the witnesses saw my hallucination. That sounds crazier than the whole abduction phenomenon."

However, none of the witnesses' identities have ever been verified and there is no concrete evidence that the two men who provided the most compelling testimonies—alleged security officers named Richard and Dan who were supposedly parked in a nearby car guarding then-UN Secretary General Javier Pérez de Cuéllar—even existed as they exclusively communicated with Hopkins through letters. Cuéllar later provided a statement to PBS in which he refuted any claims that he had been involved in such an incident.

"I cannot but strongly deny the claim that I have had an abduction experience at any time," he wrote. "On several occasions, when questioned about that matter, I reiterated that these allegations were completely false and I hope that this statement will definitely put an end to these unfounded rumours."

Some of Rainey's footage included in the series also shows that the alleged witnesses' descriptions of what they supposedly saw that night greatly varied in nature, with one woman claiming she had simply seen a bright light through her curtains.

Rainey goes on to criticize Hopkins for failing to heed discrediting elements of the case. "Budd cherry-picked compelling details but ignored anything that presented difficult questions," she says.

What's the truth?

In the end, it's left up to viewers to decide who and what they believe. But Napolitano has made it clear she doesn't approve of her portrayal in the series. Leading up to its Oct. 30 premiere, Napolitano sued Netflix in an attempt to halt the project's release.

According to her complaint, which was filed in New York State Supreme Court on Monday, the documentary defames Napolitano and paints her in an unflattering light while allowing Rainey to play a prominent part in the story as “an expert 'skeptic' in this field" when she was instead an "embittered, alcoholic ex-wife hell bent on revenge against her husband."

The lawsuit claims the doc was Rainey's "last dying act of retribution to get even with her ex-husband, rather than exhibit the actual truth as investigated and written about…in Witnessed."

Considering The Manhattan Alien Abduction has made its debut, it appears a judge did not grant Napolitano's request to block Netflix from airing the series. Netflix did not immediately respond to TIME's request for comment on the lawsuit.