The Manhattan Alien Abduction (2024) s01e02 Episode Script

1
[man 1] The truth is the truth.
You can't change it.
You have to deal with it.
It takes a lot of courage
to be able to talk about this without
without feeling strange,
but it's the truth.
[radio static]
["Everybody Wants to Rule the World"
by Tears for Fears plays]
[man 1] I'd been working
at the New York Post
delivering newspaper out in Queens
for over 20 years.
And on the way back,
I could take the bridge.
There's no turning back ♪
Even while we sleep ♪
We will find you ♪
Acting ♪
- [music fades out]
- [engine sputters]
[man 1] I was confronted with a blackout,
the truck dying.
[car horns honk]
[man 1] And then all of a sudden,
I saw a bunch of lights in front of me.
[eerie music plays]
[man 1] I didn't know
what I was looking at.
And then I saw what it was.
It scared the heck outta me.
And I saw a woman coming out a window
[sinister whooshing]
[eerie music continues]
and just disappear.
I realized exactly what I saw,
and I could not just let it go.
Who was the woman in the white gown?
I don't know what the big secret is.
I don't know why
they're keeping it from the public.
But we're not alone.
We're not alone.
[eerie music continues]
[mysterious music plays]
[Carol] I think a good documentary
has to be, first and foremost, honest
with intimate access
to the people that you're interested in.
I moved to Manhattan to make a film
about the alien-abduction phenomenon.
And I was making it with someone
who was damn good on camera.
This was the first time
I'd ever seen those things.
This thing was standing
at the foot of my bed.
[Carol] The Linda case
was fascinating to me
because there were numerous witnesses
who had seen her be abducted
out of her window and up into the craft.
- Right where the building is.
- Uh-huh.
Right there. It was so lit up,
you could see them perfectly.
That's when I got scared.
When I looked out the window,
the courtyard was lit.
Like, it's the middle of the night.
[unsettling music plays]
[Peter] Twenty-three witnesses.
Jesus Christ. This is real.
No other abduction case
had this many witnesses.
They didn't know each other,
but they were all reporting
the same thing.
[unsettling music continues]
[Carol] Honey, don't point.
- Just look at it.
- Okay.
[Carol] Put the Coke down and just look.
[Carol] This Linda case
consumed my husband.
[Budd] I'm looking exactly at the building
Linda Cortile floated out.
[Carol] He believed
this was an amazing opportunity
to prove aliens
were a very, very real phenomenon.
But it's absolutely shocking.
[Peter] In the world
of investigating alien abduction,
he was a well-known, respected person,
but he was not being taken seriously
by the general public.
[audience laughs]
You've heard this audience laughing
throughout the show. It's The
Well, you presented this program
with the funniest aspects of it
to begin with,
and naturally that's gonna be funny.
[Carol] I would see Budd was being mocked.
And that made me just furious,
and furiously on his side.
The reason I went to Budd
is because Budd is looking
into these experiences seriously,
trying to find out what's going on.
[Carol] I always felt that he was doing
something valuable and brave,
and I loved him for that.
Budd called the Linda case
the most important
UFO-abduction case in history.
We both had that buzz
that tells you this might be the one.
I'm not gonna presume to know what it is,
but there's something going on out there.
[Carol] I found Linda
to be very believable.
And we became good friends.
[women laugh]
[Carol] I thought it was going to be
a really exciting story.
But I had no idea that it was
about to become entirely insane.
[Carol] Um, I'm gonna try to start up
and tilt down.
[uneasy music plays]
[Carol] Now, when did things
start to change for you?
Carol told me that she was a producer.
And, uh, she took some, uh,
film footage of me with her little camera.
Why don't we do that, Carol?
Make it exciting.
She had pretty, blue eyes
and fine features.
She was charismatic and friendly.
I'm sorry.
[Carol] That's No, no, no, that's fine.
Just do whatever you want to do.
[Carol] Linda trusted me
'cause we were both interested
in exploring this mystery,
which had become
part of her everyday life.
This place is the place to go to shop.
- [man 2] We got the best
- Especially if you're Italian.
We got the best
[Linda] I was raised
in the old neighborhood in Little Italy.
[lively music plays]
My father, he was a Golden Gloves boxer.
They called him Kid Lightning.
He taught me
not to take any crap from anybody.
My mom, she was a stay-at-home mother,
like me.
She told me you get married,
you have children,
go to church on Sundays
and then you die.
But no one told me about these
the creatures and UFOs,
and that is part of life.
[uneasy music plays]
[Carol] Linda was in and out
of our house quite often
having a regression session with Budd.
[Budd] As you fall asleep and rest.
One, you're lying in bed.
Two, right on the edge now.
[Carol] He believed an alien abduction
went into your consciousness
and it would be like a tape recorder.
You could just replay it,
and it would all be there.
[Budd] Three.
Did you see behind the curtain?
[Linda yells]
[Budd] It's all right, Linda.
It's all right. It's all right.
[uneasy music continues]
[Linda] I can't move.
I can't breathe.
[uneasy music continues]
[Linda] That night, thanks to Budd,
I understood the truth.
They numb you.
You can't even move.
You can't you can't fight back.
They are intruders.
I would like to think
that, uh, what I saw during hypnosis
was maybe a dream.
Sure, I'd I'd give almost anything
to have it that way.
But it isn't.
Everything that I saw under hypnosis
was verified by the witnesses.
As the case started
to go forward and unfold, uh,
it got pretty bad.
Pretty bad in my life.
It was a living nightmare, definitely,
and then,
after a while, I started to get paranoid.
And not just about aliens.
[unsettling music plays]
Government documents
indicate that UFO researchers
have been routinely spied upon
by intelligence agencies.
[Peter] We knew that there was interest
in the abduction phenomena
within the intelligence community.
There's no doubt
that the government is aware.
The government has spent a huge amount
of money investigating cases.
Through the Freedom of Information Act,
we have received many, many documents.
The FBI, the CIA, the Army, they
Everything.
[Peter] This is law-enforcement culture,
intelligence-community culture.
This is dark stuff.
[unsettling music continues]
[Linda] I had a very strange feeling
that somebody was following me around.
[telephone rings]
[Linda] I'd be home,
and the phone would ring.
[telephone rings]
[Linda] It would be someone I didn't know.
- [answerphone] 10:19 a.m.
- [answerphone beeps]
[Linda] Budd, the whole thing is strange.
I just picked up the phone.
I was about to dial,
and the voice said, "Can I help you?"
I hope my phone isn't bugged.
- You don't talk around this area here?
- [Budd] No.
And that's the only phone
in this room here?
[Carol] Budd had a friend
with high-end detection equipment.
Any telephones
we'll make you take off of the hook.
[Carol] He wanted to see if anyone
had planted bugs in her house.
He believed the FBI
were interested in Linda's case.
[Peter] This was
another level of the game.
And my first thoughts were,
"Were these men
planning to take Linda away?"
"Wipe her memory?"
Could they shut down Budd's case
before he really got started?
The phrase that went through my mind was,
"Just because you're paranoid
doesn't mean they're not out to get you."
[telephone rings]
- [Linda] Hello?
- Linda?
[Linda] I can't believe this.
[Budd] So tell me what happened.
[Linda] They came over
around a quarter after ten.
[ominous music plays]
[knocking on door]
[Budd] What did they say?
[Linda] "Police."
He says, "But, you know,
we just wanna know,
how did you manage to get
out of the building the way you did?"
[ominous music continues]
What in the name of God is going on here?
[Budd] Did they try to get you
to tell 'em anything?
[Linda] I told them
I didn't wanna talk about it.
[Budd] Oh God, Linda.
Where they came from, how they learned,
what the connection was,
we were completely in the dark about.
[Linda] But they left
about maybe ten minutes ago.
- [Budd] So
- [Linda] My hands are shaking.
[Budd] They tell you their names?
[Linda] He says, um, "My name is Richard,
and this is my partner, Dan."
[Carol] The entrance of Dan and Richard
into Linda's story,
that was like a shot of adrenaline.
[Carol] You know what I'm gonna do?
I'm just gonna start shooting.
[Carol] Whether they were policemen
or agents, nobody knew the truth.
[Carol] Let me just get some focus here.
[Carol] So I took my camera back to Linda,
and I just asked her
[Carol] What happened when they came over?
They told me that I was responsible
for something that they saw happen.
When they were sitting in their cars
under the FDR Drives,
they saw me hanging outside my window
12 stories up in a beam of light.
One seemed, uh, very nice.
Uh, the other one seemed very nervous.
A little on the angry side.
I couldn't believe the look on Dan's face.
He looked terr It didn't look right.
But what frightened me more
was when Dan stood up,
got up from the couch,
and stood up in front of me.
I thought he was gonna beat me up.
I mean it.
And that's when Richard got in between us.
[Carol] What was the
the basis for his emotion?
I was answering him back.
This, uh, authoritative, uh, figure.
He didn't like it.
I don't want to get
these big fellows angry at me.
So I told 'em, "You have to leave."
I shut the door,
peeked through,
and I could see Richard and Dan
out in the hallway.
[tense music plays]
Come on. I'll show you.
Dan grabbed on to Richard's lapels
and started to bang him.
Now, these are two big guys.
He's banging him on the wall
with his lapels and saying,
"Jesus Christ, Rich.
Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ."
[Carol] These two men
seemed to be very upset.
Seemed suspicious of her.
[Carol] Did you feel endangered
after that visit?
Yes. Yes.
[Carol] So for me, there was
a big question about who they represented.
[Carol] Who do you think he was?
Well, I believe he was an, uh,
an intelligence, uh, agent or something.
[Linda] An intelligence,
uh, agent or something.
But that's just what I thought.
[Carol] I didn't know what to believe.
I didn't know what was going on.
[tense music continues]
[Budd] I don't know
that they're detectives, but they may be.
Who knows what's going on?
But we're gonna try to find out.
[Peter] The primary focus had shifted
to learning
who these two individuals were.
This was incredibly compelling for Budd
'cause he was a really good detective.
And Budd had developed, over the years,
a number of contacts
within law enforcement.
[Budd] Look, there's there's a matter of
of speed here, urgency.
[man 3] Okay, but it's also,
like I said, delicate
because if we start knocking
on the wrong doors,
we got big problems.
[Carol] We went
to every station in New York.
[tense music plays]
[Budd] I've got two goals.
I I wanna meet these guys,
and I wanna stop this screwing around
that they're doing with Linda.
[man 4] They hide
their identities really well
in this situation for their protection.
And especially, you know
the subject of this is, uh, you know,
something the government
don't like to talk about.
[Carol] He would leave notes for them,
telling them how important
this work was for the future of humanity,
and they really needed to come forward.
[Budd] Linda, did anybody else
see them come into your place?
- [Linda] No.
- Any way to establish they were there?
See See, a skeptic would say
you made it all up.
[Linda] I don't really give a damn.
- [Budd] Okay. Bye-bye.
- [Linda] Bye-bye.
[Peter] One day, I came into the office
and learned from Budd
that he had received
this tape recording in the mail.
Budd called me and said,
"I think you ought to hear it."
We listened very carefully.
[Peter] And there's a voice.
[man 5] I suppose
Linda's already spoken to you
about our unexpected visit
to her apartment one evening.
Indeed, it was very uncomfortable,
to say the least.
[exhales]
[man 5] The subject matter
was the strangest ever in my line of work.
That's Richard.
That's Richard.
[unsettling music plays]
[Richard] Through my binoculars,
I could see Linda was there
in this beam of light.
My partner screamed.
I felt as though I had lost my breath.
[Peter] Oh my God.
Here was one of these two men
speaking directly to Budd Hopkins.
[Richard] What happened
left us all victims of circumstance.
After actually seeing her
and speaking with her,
we could see
just how frightened and sincere she was.
[Peter] You have to think critically.
Is this some kind of prank or fraud?
But nothing was in conflict
with anything we had learned from Linda.
[Richard] Please respect
the importance of our credibility at work.
We just can't be identified.
We'd be laughed at.
[unsettling music continues]
[Linda] People wanted tangible proof.
And that's the proof.
It's not even evidence. It's proof.
[music fades]
[Peter] As time progressed,
a piece of mail arrived at the office.
That was a letter from Richard and Dan
that they wrote together.
They explained to Budd
they were not police officers
but federal agents acting as protection
for a very high-ranking,
well-known diplomat.
The Secretary General
of the United Nations,
Pérez de Cuéllar.
[uneasy music plays]
[Peter] That night, he was in the car
with Richard and Dan.
He witnessed Linda being taken as well.
We went to look at videotape
of scenes around the United Nations,
hoping to find Richard or Dan.
[uneasy music continues]
[Linda] There you go. Oh boy.
That's Dan guarding the secretary general.
I would recognize him ten blocks away.
Here he is
coming right through that door now.
[uneasy music continues]
[Peter] We're now dealing with
an extraordinarily delicate
political situation
that totally changed the game,
that totally changed the story.
You can't be dispassionate about it.
This is fucking mind blowing.
[unsettling music plays]
[Carol] To me, the involvement
of government officials felt massive.
It was almost addictive,
that sense of excitement.
You knew there was
enough validity in that story
that you were soon going to know
some large truth about human existence.
I've taken video of you in bed
in London, in Paris, in Rome.
This was life with Budd
as I'd always imagined it.
Working in love and harmony.
Trying to find the answer, the truth,
the culmination of what this mystery was.
Budd called the Linda case
the most important
UFO abduction case in history.
And he wanted
to tell that story to the public.
[exciting music plays]
[Linda] I went to my first UFO conference
to listen to Budd make the case public.
[applause]
[Linda] And he took me by the hand
and coaxed me up to the podium.
I'm saying to myself,
"What am I gonna say to these people?"
I felt a numbness
creeping up from my toes.
And, um, well,
you know about that, I guess.
[Carol] She got up
and spoke without reservation.
And I thought,
"Linda's a natural at this."
Thank you.
[Carol] And the audience loved her.
They thought that she was a heroine.
Linda's life changed markedly.
She was doing talk shows.
[man 6] Thanks for holding.
Jay Diamond Show.
[Peter] She was being interviewed.
When people hear this,
do they tell you you're nuts?
I'll tell you, Jay,
I wish I were psychotic.
At least there's treatment for that.
It was fun. It was exciting.
But it meant that she had
much less time with her family.
I think it's very difficult
to fully appreciate
the forces pulling at this woman.
She is a mother of two young boys.
She also has her husband, Steve,
who is now caught up in this madness.
[man 7] Just to set the scene
of that night
and why this is so extraordinary,
it was really
that you were lifted out of your window
[Steve] When she used to go,
I used to stay at home, watch the kids.
- [man 7] Were you aware of what happened?
- [Linda] Well, I had, uh
She was famous. I was not.
[chuckles]
No, but, you know, that's the way it was.
I couldn't tell my husband
much of anything about the case.
We had a hard time.
He felt helpless.
He had no control over it.
None of us did.
She was, uh not herself.
She suddenly was edgy.
You know,
if I'd say somethin', she'd snap.
[melancholy music plays]
[Peter] The madness
that is part of the reality of your life
has bled into the reality of your family.
And in early summer,
an event happened
that added a whole new dimension
to what we were dealing with.
[thunder crashes]
[Linda] We all went to bed late.
Suddenly, I felt something
going down my throat,
and I started to choke.
[coughs]
[Linda] So I went outside
into the hallway.
The whole family was standing
in the living room with nosebleeds.
[unsettling music plays]
What happened? You know, all at once?
I said, "It's It's crazy."
[unsettling music continues]
[Linda] I had this awful feeling
the aliens were back.
Only this time,
they had come back for my family.
[Peter] When I first started
to work for Budd,
we thought that alien abduction
was probably like being hit by lightning.
If it happened to you, it was random
and certainly wasn't gonna happen again.
But as Budd continued his research,
we learned that these other intelligences
weren't just interested in the individual.
Entire families were involved.
People are abducted, uh,
through different stages of their lives,
and then their children
are sometimes abducted,
suggesting that there was
a kind of interest in a bloodline.
They're interested in our DNA,
in our personalities,
our affection for our children,
our love for one another,
what we think of almost
the most human characteristics we have.
My grandmother had
something strange happen to her.
She used to see spirits
walking around her house.
And then I started having experiences,
and my sister too.
We started to see things in the apartment.
Well, that was It was frightening.
At first, uh, my parents said,
uh, to my sister and I,
"Oh, you must've had a bad dream."
But we knew we weren't dreaming.
It was too real.
And then, of course, my parents
started to see what we were seeing.
Then that was a different story.
And that's when she decided
to to have the priest come
and bless the home.
And so that's what she did,
but apparently, it never worked.
We kept seeing them.
[director] What were you seeing?
Aliens.
I'm almost embarrassed even to say that.
It sounds so ridiculous.
But I didn't know at that time
that's what they were.
I thought they were ghosts.
[Peter] We knew that when Linda was taken,
the aliens put a device up her nose.
And now you have your husband
and your son and your other son,
all of you bleeding
from your right nostril.
Could it be one
or a number of individuals in the family
had also been abducted?
[car horns honk]
[Carol] Linda had a really smart,
quick little boy called Johnny.
And I think
the two of them were very, very close.
He was Dare I say it?
He was the favored son.
Listen, John, we're all all of us,
your dad, your mom, me, you,
all involved in a very strange business.
[Peter] Budd had already developed
a rapport with both of Linda's sons.
And following the night of the nosebleeds,
Johnny and he had a call.
[Budd] I'm gonna record this
if you don't mind.
'Cause I'd like to hear
what you have to say.
Do you remember
anything at all about that night?
Did you have any dreams at all?
[Johnny] Oh, yes.
[Budd] In the dream, where were you?
[Johnny] In a room.
It was all white.
And there were two really tall men.
[Budd] Were these, you know,
nice guys, bad guys, or?
[Johnny] They they were very, very mean.
I was scared.
I didn't know what was happening.
[Budd] Next thing is you wake up,
and you got the nosebleed?
[Johnny] Yes.
Budd, I I went into the bathroom,
and I felt like
I was going to completely throw up.
And I'm scared about it.
[Budd] You're scared?
[Johnny] Is something wrong with me
because I keep having nosebleeds?
[Budd] Yeah.
Johnny told Budd
about his own experiences of being taken.
Experiences not unlike his mother.
[Budd] When he said
that he'd had this dream,
I felt, obviously,
an immediate kinda shock.
Here's a little boy who's going to school,
and he's a happy little kid.
He's nine years old.
He's as smart as he can be.
And, uh, he's having a good,
happy little young life.
And yet, here's this whole thing
where he's an unwitting,
uh, participant in something.
[unsettling music plays]
[Carol] To confirm it,
Budd called Linda in
for a hypnosis session
to understand what she was saying
and if it had validity.
[unsettling music continues]
[Budd] Okay, now let's go to the thing
that happened recently with Johnny.
I count to three.
One.
Two.
Three.
[music stops]
[female voice-over] Ragú, America's
tastiest spaghetti sauce, tops everything
[Linda] I'm just sitting on the couch.
I worked so hard that day.
So tired.
[female voice-over] rice is delicious
topped with Ragú
[tense music plays]
[Linda] And I said,
"Oh, Johnny, you're up again."
"Mommy," he says.
"They're here."
Three of 'em in my living room.
Johnny was was begging
not to let this happen.
But I couldn't cry.
I couldn't yell.
[screeching]
I couldn't move.
[tense music continues]
[screeching]
[Linda] And then it was silent.
That's awful.
That was awful.
Johnny, at that time, must have
He must've thought
I was a coward or something.
I just couldn't move.
I couldn't fight for him.
He must've thought I didn't care anymore.
That's horrible.
[melancholy music plays]
[Budd] Three, almost awake.
Two, one, fully awake.
Wow. [sniffs]
It's been some time
since I've had a hypnosis.
Yeah.
That was a bad one.
[Budd] Yeah.
[Linda] Why do that to my kids?
Or anybody else's kids, for that matter.
Somebody better do something.
[Linda cries]
Let me get a Kleenex.
[Carol] Budd was wiping his eyes
in full understanding
of what Linda had talked about,
that the aliens
were also traumatizing her children.
And they were both weeping.
I became very concerned
that he was so emotionally attached.
My alarm bells went off.
I felt that Budd risked
losing his objectivity.
I had access
to all of Budd's original source material,
so I started building
a library of hypnosis sessions
that Budd was doing with people.
I want my mommy.
[crying] No, it's so ugly. No!
[Carol] When I would hear
people go under hypnosis,
they would sound
like they were a little drunk.
Get me out.
And they were, like,
struggling to pull it all together.
It really hurts.
[whimpers]
[Carol] But when Linda was hypnotized
They push me in the room,
and and I don't wanna go,
and I see that that table.
I see the
Uh, I think it's a table.
Can you see all four of its legs?
It has no legs.
It looks like a big, long block.
She didn't sound the way the others did
when they were deep down.
She had a clear, coherent narrative.
Oh. Oh, I feel like
electricity went through me.
[Carol] I just didn't believe
that she was under hypnosis.
That hurt.
[cries]
[Carol] So then I thought,
"What is going on here?"
[Budd] I'm gonna record this
if you don't mind.
I'd like to hear what you have to say.
[Carol] I listened to the phone call
that Budd had with her son Johnny,
and I could hear a couple of points
where he pauses,
and you're not sure why.
[Johnny] I was looking out the window
one day, and then something, like
No, wait.
Yeah. Then something
was pulling me out of the window.
[Carol] She could have coached him
to get aligned with her own story.
I didn't think that I was mad
or wrong to have doubts.
I became very concerned.
I thought Linda was going to be
the case of the century.
But was I actually making a film
about an extremely practiced hoax?
I was going into the spaceship,
uh, through the window,
and I asked myself,
"Doesn't my mommy love me anymore?"
Because she just walked,
and she was just frozen there.
She didn't do anything.
[Carol] Did Linda convince her son
he had been abducted by aliens?
You don't lie
about things like that to children.
Don't lie about it.
It would have been traumatizing for him.
[Linda] I feel sorry for him
because, you see, he's young,
and he has his whole life ahead of him.
[Carol] But as a mother,
how can you sit there and say that calmly?
Calmly?
It's not new to me anymore.
I wish I could do something about it,
but there isn't anything anyone can do.
[Carol] By going out
and speaking about it,
Budd had backed himself into a corner.
Because if it wasn't true,
it would be the end of his career
as a UFO investigator.
[high-pitched tone rings]
[Carol] Basically, what I wanted
to ask you about is Johnny.
So I took a deep breath,
and I just suggested the possibility
that Linda may have coached Johnny.
That made Budd very unhappy.
I don't think
there's any remote possibility
of this child doing anything here
but trying to remember
what happened to him.
Uh, you can't take a nine-or ten-year-old
and train them to to remember
some enormously complicated story
or series of stories.
Budd would not support
me questioning things like that.
He found that very offensive.
Either his mother is controlling him
in a sociopathic manner
and has drilled this into him
and so on and so forth.
Or the other,
he's remembering what happened to him.
There's no other alternative here.
My questions were putting him off.
That was the bottom line of it.
And that I should keep those to myself.
[Carol] If that was your daughter,
would you be doing anything differently
from what you're doing right now?
If it were my daughter
Well, I don't really know
if I can answer that.
It's so enormous a question
and so hypothetical.
Um
It's simpler to believe
that he's just like a little boy
remembering what happened.
[Carol clears throat]
Honey, I want you to eat.
[Carol] I don't wanna eat.
[unsettling music plays]
[Carol] I was very angry
because I didn't know what I should do.
I knew I could not question my husband,
the person
who was doing the investigating,
because I didn't wanna lose my marriage.
But I needed to find out the truth.
And I can't stop doing that
'cause I don't know
what kind of a marriage you can have
if your own self is lost in it.
[unsettling music plays]
[Carol] So I decided
to keep the camera rolling
until I could prove
Linda's case was a hoax.
[unsettling music continues]
How how could she say the things she said
after what my family and I went through?
Johnny was just a little boy.
But he's grown up.
He's different. He's an adult now.
[director] Do you think
Johnny'll talk to us about it?
No, he won't.
Uh, no, he won't. Uh, John
John won't won't talk about it.
[unsettling music continues]
[Linda] I don't know if he's afraid
or if he's angry about it.
But he really despises the subject.
[Johnny] It's gotta be the most terrifying
and hopeless thing that I've ever felt.
Yeah.
So I was very reluctant
to even start talking about this again.
It's been, uh, over 30 years, really,
since I sat down
and seriously talked about this
with anybody but my therapist.
[unsettling music plays]
[music stops]