Life

9 Creepy Things People Have Said After Allegedly Being Abducted By Aliens
IgorZh/Shutterstock

I’ll be honest: A lot of the time, I listen to the things people say after allegedly being abducted by aliens, and I think, “Yeah, right.” To me, the stories are just so outlandish — and with so little hard evidence to back them up — that I have a hard time believing them. That said, though, the stories often are chilling to read or listen to… and who knows? Maybe I’m a skeptic purely because I’ve never seen anything myself that suggests that aliens might be among us. I might be wrong, of course. Anything is possible.

Solid data on exactly how many people believe in aliens is a little tough to come by; the most recent reputable survey I’ve found is a Gallup poll from 2005 which found that 24 percent of Americans believe “that extra-terrestrial beings have visited Earth at some time in the past.” (For the curious, another 24 percent do not believe it, while 51 percent remain undecided.) A YouGov poll from 2015 found that among Americans, 54 percent do believe in extra-terrestrial intelligent life; however, although YouGov believe their polls are some of the most accurate out there, the market research company has also been criticized for not being representative of the population as a whole as well. So, y’know, do with that what you will.

In any event, though, it’s certainly possible to believe in the possibility of alien life without necessarily believing in alien abductions — but for what it’s worth, although I’m a skeptic, I also don’t think the proliferation of alleged alien abduction stories is as simple as people just making stuff up. I don’t doubt that in the wide majority of cases, people believe they experienced something; however, I think there are loads of other reasonable, rational, earthly explanations for these kinds of incidents we should try to rule out before entertaining the idea that it’s aliens.

Either way, though, it’s true that the universe is such a vast place that it seems unlikely that there’s no intelligent life in it other than ourselves. Surely there’s got to be something out there beyond our solar system, right? These folks definitely believe there is — and according to their accounts, it’s closer to us than some of us might like to think.

Check out the entire 'What's Up, Boo?' series and other videos on Facebook and the Bustle app across Apple TV, Roku, and Amazon Fire TV.

1

“My Body Remembered, But My Mind Did Not”

This story popped up in an AskReddit thread from earlier in 2017 asking folks who believe they’ve been abducted what their experiences were like. There are other explanations for losing time like this, of course (like, for example, a dissociative fugue state) — and, indeed, as u/Pun-Chi notes, they’ve mostly just joked about this experience having been an alleged alien abduction — but even so, this story is still unsettling.

2

“I Started Having These Visions Of Who I REALLY Am”

The video here features an 11-minute long interview with a woman named Elizabeth April, who is a frequent speaker at conferences for alien enthusiasts and UFO believers. In the interview (starting at about the 3:40 mark), she tells her alleged abduction story: When she was 18, she went on a 10-day meditation retreat and woke up one night to find a huge, white head hovering above her. Several of the beings that had these huge, white heads — what she calls “Tall Whites,” a species of aliens she claims are about eight and a half feet tall, very skinny, and paper white in color — took her out of her bed and out of her room, she says, at which point they “shot [her] up to their ship.”

While she was up there, she claims they implanted something in her ear with a metal machine — and after the experience, she says, “A whole world of everything new opened up for me.” She continues, “As invasive as that was, and the fact that they put this implant in my ear — regardless of all of that, it still opened me up to the possibilities. It was in my pre-destined contracts to be abducted at that time at that age by that species.”

This, she says, is when she learned that she has ET genetics in her—that she’s basically an alien-human hybrid. “After that,” she went on, “I started getting very vivid flashbacks into other lifetimes where I lived, not as a Tall White, but as other ET species. And I lived through these lifetimes, and after being abducted, I started having this recall, these flashes, these visions of who I really am, not just who I am here and now.”

Sarah Hagi wrote a fascinating piece about attending the Alien Cosmic Expo for Vice earlier this year, where April was speaking — head over there for more.

3

“It Had A Sense Of Humor”

In the third episode of The X-Files — “Squeeze,” which originally aired on Sept. 24, 1993 — Mulder corrects a fellow agent who asks whether he thinks their current case is “the work of little green men.” “Gray,” says Mulder. “You said green men. A Reticulan’s skin tone is actually gray.” Indeed, Greys, as they’re called, are closely associated with the Roswell incident, as well as with the Betty and Barney Hill abduction. (More on that one in a bit.)

This is all stuff I knew before reading this story, which came from that same 2017 AskReddit thread I referred to earlier. What I did not know is that Greys apparently have a sense of humor. Or at least, these Greys did.

4

“It Turned Out I Had Been Gone For Three Days”

In 2016, Vice France spoke to a bunch of people who claimed they had been abducted by aliens and asked them to draw pictures of what they experienced. One guy, Stephane, described something that had happened to him in 2010 when he was on his way home from working the night shift at the hospital that employed him.

“At about 4 a.m. I drove up to the security gate to go home, when a flash of light blinded me,” he said. “In a split second, I found myself in another place — I was on a mountain, and there was a lake at its foot. Suddenly a huge space ship appeared in the sky, while an even brighter light began to emanate from the ground. That's all I remember.”

And then it got even weirder: “The next thing I know, I am back behind the wheel of my car, passing the security gate,” Stephane told Vice France. “When I got out, I was approached by police who said they had been looking for me. It turned out I had been gone for three days. I have no idea what happened.”

He doesn’t think he saw any aliens, but he did end up with some weird marks on his right hand. There were three of them; they made up a triangle. He said they felt “like a burn that wouldn’t heal” — and that ever since this experience, he feels like he’s being watched at all times.

There are a lot of super interesting stories in the full Vice piece, by the way— including one from a young woman who broke up with her boyfriend after he wouldn't wake up during her experience. And, I mean, to be fair, "Failed to help prevent my alleged alien abduction" sounds like a legit reason to break up with someone.

5

“YOU CAN’T UNDERSTAND”

The AskReddit thread this story appeared in had only a few comments; indeed, this submission makes up the bulk of the thread. It’s long — this is just an excerpt — so head on over to Ask Reddit to read the whole thing. Suffice it to say that the alleged aliens in this one did not appear to come in peace.

6

“I Knew Something Was Terribly Wrong With My Body"

This interview with Travis Walton — whose story is both one of the most infamous and frequently contested alleged alien abduction cases — is from 2014. Walton was working as a lumberjack in Arizona’s Sitgreaves National Forest in 1975 when he and six coworkers allegedly witnessed a flying saucer descend upon them. Walton said that when he approached it, he was knocked to the ground by a beam of light emanating from the saucer and woke up in a room that looked like some sort of a hospital environment. He was found by the highway five days later.

Still, though, he’s stuck to his guns — and according to him, his alleged experience was incredibly painful. Says Walton in the 2014 interview, “I didn’t know where I was; I didn’t realize the danger and the fearful situation I was in at that point; but I knew something was terribly wrong with my body, especially my inability to get enough oxygen. This feeling of suffocation generated a panic in me that, even through the haze of pain and semi-consciousness, still added to this desperate feeling. Added to that was the feeling that I couldn’t move.” Yikes.

For more, check out the first interview Walton ever gave about the whole thing here. It's... really somethin' else.

7

“I Would Often Ask My Parents Where My ‘Other Parents’ Were”

The r/Abductions subreddit allows Redditors to share and discuss alleged alien abduction experiences. In this account from the sub dated to about a year ago, Redditor u/MaddyMania recalled a number of odd experiences they had when they were very small — including a number of times when they asked their parents where their “other parents” were. What made u/MaddyMania start thinking that maybe what was going on could be extraterrestrial in nature was the appearance of a location they call “the blue room.”

8

“I’ve Got To Get Away! Oh! Oh!”

Betty and Barney Hill are often credited with making the first publicized account of an alleged alien abduction experience. In 1961, the husband and wife duo were driving on a highway in New Hampshire when they had what they said was a pretty terrifying-sounding encounter with a UFO. Both Betty and Barney underwent hypnosis several times in an effort to unearth what they believed were lost memories; they got very emotional at various points during these hypnosis sessions, including the moment in which Barney began to panic, yelling, “Run! God, give me strength! I've got to get away! Oh! Oh!

You can listen to Barney’s hypnosis sessions here, although consider yourselves warned — it can get pretty upsetting to hear.

9

“I Couldn’t Move”

In 1973, Charles Hickson and Calvin Parker were fishing in the Pascagoula River in Mississippi when they claimed they encountered a UFO. They described hearing a whirring or whizzing sound, saw flashing blue lights, and witnessed a huge oval object arrive. They said they were taken aboard the oval by three “creatures” and examined before being released.

One of the many times Hickson and Parker recounted their story was in a 1987 article in the Gadsden Times. Said Hickson, “I couldn’t move. I don’t know if it’s because I was so frightened, or what.” Neither of the men could tell how long the “examination” lasted — but eventually they would up back at the river’s edge. Hickson died in 2011, although Parker said in 2013 that the whole incident “turned his life upside down.”

Are aliens real? That's still up for debate. But it's not stopping these stories from being plenty creepy all on their own.