(thunder clap)
- This week on BuzzFeed Unsolved,
we examine three of the
most compelling cases
of alien abduction.
At least, in my opinion.
- I mean the possibility that aliens exist
is very likely.
I don't know if I believe
most of what you're about to say.
- I just don't understand
how you could believe
in aliens, but then just not
believe in the prospect
that they could maybe
kinda poke around a little bit.
Put a little rod
up your butt-hole, stuff like that.
- I don't know.
I don't think they're here.
That's it.
- Well, I'm gonna get into it now.
Here we go.
The first case is the
abduction of Travis Walton.
On Wednesday, November 5th, 1975,
Travis Walton was working in a seven-man
tree-thinning crew in
Apache-Sitgreaves National Forest
near Heber, Arizona.
At the end of the day,
on the drive back home,
Travis noticed a bright light
coming through the trees.
When the men got closer,
they saw that it was, quote,
a strange, golden disc, end quote,
hovering stationary about
20 feet off the ground
with a 15 to 20 foot diameter,
and eight to 10 foot width.
Though his coworkers warned
that he should stay away,
Travis approached the craft,
hearing loud vibrations as the craft
began spinning erratically.
Suddenly, a blue-green
light sprung from the craft,
striking Travis in the chest and head,
catapulting him backwards several feet.
You would be the best
person to get abducted.
- Oh, absolutely.
The aliens would get tired of me.
They'd kick me off.
- You'd be like, oh, good costumes.
- [Shane] Yeah.
- [Ryan] Travis remembers,
quote, all I felt was the numbing force
of a blow that felt like a
high-voltage electrocution,
my mind sank quickly into
unfeeling blackness, end quote.
Having witnessed this, Travis'
friends fled the scene,
assuming Travis to be dead.
- No, you got like your big burly friend
being like, oh check it out and then just,
(exploding noises) ah!
And then everybody just running.
- His eyeballs pop out.
- Yeah, just smoking.
- In their retreat,
one of the men observed the saucer
fly up to the top of the trees
and away to the northeast.
Some of the men returned to the scene
out of guilt only to find that Travis
was no longer there.
So, basically, what we just went over
was the experience as
witnessed by all these men.
Now, let's board the train to crazy town
and go into Travis' recollection
of what happened when he woke up.
And this is only his recollection.
- Before we get into this,
is there anything we need
to know about Travis?
- No.
- Okay.
- Normal dude.
- Normal dude.
- [Ryan] According to Travis' own writing
about the experience,
Travis awoke in what appeared
to be a medical office
or lab with a triangular ceiling
among three humanoid beings
with large brown eyes and
abnormally large heads.
They stood under five feet tall
and were wearing soft billowy
orange-brown overalls.
- What?
(laughs)
Are they like minions?
- Yeah, I guess they are like minions.
- Now I'm just gonna imagine this guy
being operated on by minions.
- [Ryan] Travis attacked the three beings
who then retreated.
As Travis explored other rooms
in an attempt to escape,
he encountered a large muscular man
wearing a helmet who
forced him out of the craft
into a warehouse with other saucers.
Eventually leading him into another room
with three more people.
All very good looking
Quote, two men and a
woman were standing around
the table.
They were all wearing
velvety blue uniforms
like the first man's,
except that they had no helmets.
The two men had the same muscularity
and the same masculine good
looks as the first man.
The women also had a face and figure
that was the epitome of her gender.
They were smooth-skinned and blemishless.
No moles, freckles, wrinkles, or scars
marked their skin.
The striking good looks
of the man I had first met
became more obvious on
seeing them all together.
They shared a family-like resemblance,
although they were not
identical, end quote.
These people gently
pushed him onto a table
and put a mask over his mouth and nose.
At which point Travis passed out.
The next thing Travis knew,
he was lying on the
ground in Heber, Arizona.
He saw a silvery disc shaped craft
hovering above the road near him,
which then flew straight up into the sky
and disappeared silently.
Although he only believed he was gone
for an hour or an hour and a half,
he later learned he had been missing
for five days.
Over this period of five days,
the rest of Travis' crew
came under investigation
for Travis' disappearance.
During this investigation,
the suspects underwent psychiatric testing
and polygraphs during
which none of the men
confessed to faking the abduction.
All of the later lie detecter tests
administered to Travis
and the other witnesses
came back as passing or inconclusive.
A psychiatrist suspected
the entire abduction
was in Travis' imagination,
but could not explain why the
others went along with it.
In a recent Huffpost Weird News podcast,
Travis said, quote, about 15 years later,
it was discovered that the trees nearest
to where the UFO hovered had
been producing wood fiber
at 36 times the rate it had been
in the 85 years before that.
A complete core sampling revealed
that this thickened growth
was only on the side
of the trees towards or in the direction
that the craft had been, end quote.
As if this case couldn't
get anymore bizarre,
Travis appeared on Fox's
Moment of Truth game show
where a polygraph was conducted on stage.
This particular polygraph determined
that he was not telling the
truth about his abduction.
Regardless, Travis
maintains that the events
transpired as he has told them.
The second case is the
abduction of Linda Napolitano.
UFOlogist Budd Hopkins worked closely
with Linda to document
and publicize her case.
On November 30, 1989, around
3:15 am in New York City,
Linda Napolitano claims she awoke to find
short aliens around her bed.
She found herself unable
to wake up her husband
as she perceived the
beings to be telling her
to be quiet in an odd language.
The three beings then
levitated her outside
her twelfth story apartment window,
floating in a blue-white light
up into a clamshell shaped spaceship.
Sh.
- Right, without that person going,
what the fuck?
- I know.
Especially if you look like a minion.
Once inside, the beings
experimented on her.
Including putting an
instrument insider her nose.
After, she woke up nearly two hours later
at 5 am next to her husband in bed.
In 1991, two years after the abduction,
Linda reached out to Hopkins
with an x-ray of her nose,
showing a calendrical object
that Hopkins describes
as having, quote, spiraling extensions
that curl out away form
her face, end quote.
The x-ray was taken by a podiatric surgeon
and Linda's niece, Lisa Bayer.
Shortly after, Linda claimed the object
was removed during another abduction.
Hopkins reports that Linda visited
a nose and throat specialist who confirmed
the object was gone.
A conspicuous ridge of built-up cartilage
showed where it had once been embedded.
- They also have small fingers right?
- I'm sure they have
- Small but long.
- E.T. had a long finger,
so he could get some distance.
He could go way up into that butt-hole.
- E.T. would be a good doctor.
- He would be.
Ouch.
These details are somewhat
common among abduction tales,
but what makes this case famous
are the supposed witnesses to the event.
In 1991, nearly two years
after Linda's abduction,
Hopkins received a letter
from a police officer
detailing an experience with his partner
in November 1989.
The two were sitting
underneath the FDR Bridge
when they saw a blue light with a woman
being levitated alongside
three strange beings
as they made their way into the light.
They reportedly felt guilty
for not helping the woman
and one officer had a nervous breakdown.
Spending nights parked
underneath her building.
Hopkins told Linda not to
speak with the officers
if they reached out to her to avoid
contaminating their accounts.
Unfortunately, the two visited Linda
multiple times on their own volition
revealing their names
to be Richard and Dan
looking for answers about
what they saw that night.
Linda directed them to Hopkins
and in a few weeks,
Hopkins received a letter.
This letter revealed that the two officers
were actually bodyguards
on a security detail
for quote, an important
political figure, end quote.
This political figure who was also present
with the two bodyguards
during the abduction
also signed the letter,
albeit under the moniker HIM.
Some UFOlogists believe this figure
is the former Secretary General of the UN,
Javier Perez De Cuellar.
However, while this seems impressive
in terms of proof,
it should be noted that Hopkins never
physically met with Richard and Dan
and only corresponded via letters.
This has led many to believe that Hopkins
was the victim of a hoax
where either Linda made
up Richard and Dan alone
or Linda and a group of people
coordinated to complete the hoax.
When take down of the story in the book
The Trickster and the Paranormal,
sites a person who formerly served
in dignitary protective services
who explained that details of the night
of the abduction provided
by Richard and Dan
didn't line up with security protocol
for moving officials.
Still, according to Sean F. Meers,
a UFO and alien abduction researcher
who worked with Hopkins,
there are 23 witnesses
on the public record.
Ranging from family and friends
to complete strangers.
Three of these strangers worked
at the nearby New York Post.
One of whom was an investigative reporter
named Steven Dunleavy.
Despite the questioned credibility
of the two main witnesses,
Linda maintains the truth
lies in all the witnesses.
She has said, quote,
if I was hallucinating, then the witnesses
saw my hallucination.
That sounds crazy than the whole
abduction phenomenon, end quote.
There were a lot of witnesses.
- It's juicy.
- I'm just saying,
her quote makes sense to me.
- Yeah, this one I would buy this over.
- Travis Walton?
- Yeah.
- And other, like Allagash
and all that shit?
- Yeah.
- [Ryan] The third case is the abduction
of Frederic Valentich.
This case is a little
different from the others
in that the abducted person never returned
On October 21, 1978 at 6:19pm,
instructor pilot Frederic Valentich
began the flight from Moorabbin Airport
in Victoria, Australia
to King Island, Tasmania
over the Bass Strait
in a Cessna 182L.
His destination was
only about an hour away.
Visibility was good and
there were only light winds.
Valentich, 20 years old at the time,
reportedly wanted to get
more flight hours in.
Valentich made contact with Steve Robey
at air traffic control in Melbourne
between 7:06 and 7:12pm.
During the transmission,
Valentich asked whether
there was any known
aircraft in his area.
After air traffic control
said there was not,
Valentich claimed a large unknown aircraft
was flying about 1,000 feet above him
at a fast speed with four bright lights.
Valentich then reportedly said,
quote, it seems to be
playing some sort of game.
He's flying over me.
It's not an aircraft.
End quote.
- What does he mean by
it's not an aircraft?
- It didn't look like any aircraft
he'd ever seen before.
- Okay.
He's saying it like, it
doesn't look like an airplane?
- Yeah, he's probably not
thinking through his words right now.
He's seeing a fucking alien ship
above him.
- You always
go with this.
The their not thinking about their words.
- 'Cause they're not!
There's an alien in front of you,
you're not gonna be the most well spoken
you've ever been in front of an alien.
- Yeah, sure.
- Okay.
He continued to describe
the craft saying, quote,
it seems like it's stationary.
What I'm doing right now is orbiting,
and the thing is just
orbiting on top of me.
Also, it's got a green light
and sort of metallic.
It's shiny on the outside.
It's just vanished.
End quote.
His last message around
7:12pm to air traffic control
was quote, ah, Melbourned, that strange
aircraft is hovering on top of me again.
It is hovering,
and it's not an aircraft.
End quote.
After 17 seconds of silence,
there was a loud sound of metal scraping.
Authorities are said to have
searched the area for four days
but found nothing and
Valentich was never seen again.
In May 1982, the aircraft
accident investigation summary's
cause of the accident read, quote,
the reason for the
disappearance of the aircraft
has not been determined, end quote.
A. Woodward, the man who
signed off on the report,
offered pure, unfiltered speculation
that Valentich could've been disoriented,
suicidal, or even the victim
of a meteorite crash.
One alternate theory
comes from a feature story
in a 2013 issue of Skeptical Inquirer.
The story mentions that Valentich
was inexperienced as a pilot
and had supposedly been cited twice
for deliberately flying
blind into a cloud.
According to another source,
Valentich was reportedly
fascinated with UFOs
and even had a UFO scrapbook with him
when he disappeared.
The publication Skeptical Inquirer
posets that Valentich's experience
was some mixture of
wanting to see something,
being easily led to believe
that anything he didn't
recognize was a UFO,
becoming disoriented,
and, or mistaking stars
in the Cessna's own lights
as lights from another object.
- They discredit him a fair amount.
- [Ryan] I don't think so.
- Not entirely, I still find it convince,
I mean, I find it intriguing
because the plane UFO
encounters are always
the most convincing to me.
- [Ryan] However, it should be mentioned
that other sources contest that Valentich
was an experienced pilot.
It's also worth noting
that the Cessna 182 planes
were designed to float in
the case of a water landing.
Historian Reg Watson
has also found numerous
reports of UFO sightings.
Including reports of cigar-shaped lights
seen near King Island, Australia
for two months prior to
Valentich's disappearance.
A farmer allegedly saw a craft
flying over his land near Adelaide
the morning after Valentich vanished.
He claimed that Valentich's plane
was stuck to the side of the craft.
Furthermore, one of the
last pieces of information
on record was Valentich
reaching Cape Otway at 7 pm.
Here's a photograph taken off Cape Otway
20 minutes before Valentich vanished
that shows a strange shape in the sky.
- Let's see the picture.
- Alright, here we go.
Right there, see.
- What are we lookin' at here?
- That's the sky and
that's the weird object.
If this is legit,
this corroborates
the timeline.
- But this also
doesn't look like a UFO either, does it?
- Well, we don't really
know what a UFO looks like.
Do we?
- Looks like some,
like God spit out his gum.
- Sure.
But you saying this doesn't really look
like a UFO's exactly the same thing
as saying, oh, this doesn't
look like a lava monster.
We don't know what a
lava monster looks like,
we don't know what a UFO looks like.
They're apparently made up,
so until we see definitive proof,
I think that this is a very strong case
that this happened.
- And you're welcome to think that.
- Oh my God.
- [Shane] That's fine.
- [Ryan] Ultimately,
nobody can say for sure
if aliens are real.
Let alone alien abductions.
Until we procure solid physical evidence
beyond eye witness testimony,
the lore behind aliens and abduction
will likely remain just that.
Lore.
Hopefully one day we'll
have a definitive answer.
But for now, whether or
not aliens abduct humans
will remain unsolved.
(mysterious music)
Can you at least say that
you have some sort of ambivalence to this?
- I will say that
there is a possibility that some of these
have a shred of truth to them.
- Alright, get out.
(whistles)
That's not what it sounds like.
- [Shane] Yeah.
Ah, my butt-hole!
(laughs)
- Ouch.
(mysterious music)
- Hey, Ryan, I like your shirt.
- Thanks, I like yours too.
- Thanks.
Buy it here.
- Buy it here.
