The Manhattan Alien Abduction (2024) s01e03 Episode Script
Part 3
1
[unsettling music plays]
[Peter] Is this being faked,
or is this real?
Witnesses have seen me levitate
outside my window.
[Peter] Is this person a liar
or telling the truth to the best
of their ability and understanding?
Up there,
on the other side of the building.
[Peter] If she's so intent on convincing
the world that she's been taken by aliens,
is there anything she wouldn't do
to advance that notion,
including mess with
one of her own children?
And how would she have gone about
creating the impression in this boy
that he had been abducted by aliens?
Would she have instructed him to lie?
Would he have been convincing if he had?
What kind of human being would do this?
[unsettling music continues]
[Peter] By this point, we've established
some basic character references
for this woman,
and she's a decent person,
a caring person who would
probably much rather hurt herself
than hurt one of her children,
as any decent parent would.
Is she putting on an act?
Creating a persona?
And you've gotta come to an informed
decision one way or the other.
[woman 1] Roll one, take one.
[ominous music plays]
[music fades]
[Johnny] Starting to feel some feelings
maybe I haven't felt in in a while.
I just tried to erase it from my my life.
And you're sure you can't see my face?
I really don't want to have
my face seen on camera.
[man 1] No. It's fine.
[Johnny] It happened a long time ago.
I was quite young.
I say to myself,
you know, "Why did they pick me?"
"Why couldn't they pick,
you know, somebody else?"
[older Johnny] Obviously, as a kid,
you don't know what to think.
You hope and pray that it's a nightmare.
But the better part of me knows
that it was a real experience.
Mom was in the kitchen.
I don't really know what she was doing.
I looked out the window.
And the next thing,
I I remember turning around.
I remember seeing three beings
in the living room.
The most vivid memory is of calling out
to my mom for help,
and it was almost as if
she was standing still.
She wasn't moving. She wasn't responding.
And I know I was screaming
as loud as I could.
It was almost as if she wasn't even there.
It was just an image of her.
[younger Johnny] I asked myself,
"Doesn't my mommy love me anymore?"
Because she was just frozen there,
and she didn't do anything.
When I think about it, I think,
"Are they gonna come back,
and are they gonna do something worse?"
[older Johnny] I know it was terrifying
for me, and I can only imagine
the terror and anger that my mom felt.
[Linda] I felt it was my fault
because it happened to me.
But, uh, when it happens
to your own, you know,
that's a different story.
Yeah.
[Budd] Can you train
a little child to lie?
Because if Johnny's telling the truth,
then the whole story holds together
and is true.
Now, there's no doubt about that.
So, in a strange way, Johnny is quite key.
[Johnny] Well, I know my mom
better than anybody else.
I'll tell you right now,
there's no way I believe
she would wanna
make anything like this up.
From what I'm told, a lot of witnesses.
So either she planted a seed
in all those people's heads and mine,
or this is a real experience.
So I can't imagine
that she would wanna perpetuate something
involving so much terror and agony.
[unsettling music plays]
[Carol] How do we know what's real?
How do we know what's true?
I was becoming
increasingly suspicious of Linda's story.
I felt that she was
pulling the wool over Budd's eyes,
and he couldn't see what was happening.
He believed that he was about to unfurl
the most comprehensive abduction case
that has ever been known about
with all of those witnesses.
To me, it began
to seem almost too perfect.
Almost too perfect.
But Budd was always certain
that this was a good enough story
to be a bestseller
and be made into a movie.
He needed to stay with that
all the way to the end.
- [Budd] This will be
- I know.
the most important UFO book ever.
[Dona] I like it.
There's tons of interest.
Everyone is interested in UFO
and and X-Files stuff, period.
[Oprah] My guests this morning say
that they have been abducted by aliens,
taken aboard spaceships,
and examined by beings from outer space.
[Peter] The Linda case elevated
the subject of abduction
to something
that had gone kind of mainstream.
Oprah, she took it seriously.
What the aliens,
quote, unquote, are are interested in
is their agenda, and they're doing it
their way for their reasons.
At the time,
one of the big chat shows in America
was Geraldo Rivera's show.
I'd never been on a chat show that large.
We don't have a problem with skepticism.
Um, we do have a problem with ridicule.
What in the world
were these little creatures after?
The focus of the whole thing seems to me
to be on some kind of genetic
experimentation that's taking place.
Now, are they taking sperm and eggs
to make little humans
on their home planet or
The implication is that they are trying
to create a hybrid.
A mix of their stock and our stock.
[Carol] Budd was never trying
to fool anybody with that.
He had a very, very pessimistic concept
of why aliens were here,
which he believed in wholeheartedly.
The aliens were up to no good
for humankind.
And you had no way to stop it.
We won't see it happening.
It'll come invisibly in the night.
Another civilization coming
from somewhere else.
Breeding us out of existence.
This was an endgame for the aliens.
[uneasy music plays]
[Linda] Budd Hopkins told me
what was going on.
Every woman that was abducted
had their ova taken.
So I looked at Budd.
I says, "Oh," I says, "wait a minute."
I says, "What are you saying?"
So Budd regressed me,
and I remembered everything.
I'm in this strange place.
[older Linda] Everything that happened
to me when I went into the craft.
[uneasy music continues]
One of them picks up a stick,
a long stick.
- [Budd] Mm-hmm.
- Looks like a rod.
There were these creatures ar around me,
and they were examining my stomach.
One of them came after me
with a needle
the length of a turkey baster.
That isn't friendly.
I didn't wanna believe
that I was a lab rat
being experimented on.
But after a while,
I just couldn't deny it anymore.
[uneasy music continues]
[woman 2] Hi, everybody.
Thank you, guys, and welcome.
Joining us now is Linda. She says
she's been abducted by extraterrestrials.
She's in silhouette today because
she fears her family will be in danger
if she reveals her identity.
[Linda] I was invited
on The Ricki Lake Show,
but I told her, "The only way I'll appear
is if you put me in shadow."
Because of what happened to me
and what was going on besides the
the aliens.
[reporter] The government
has lied to us about UFOs,
has withheld information,
has spied on UFO witnesses.
It's going into a whole nother world
of fear, of drama,
of not knowing where this is all leading.
[reporter] She was visited at her home
by a man identifying himself
as a government agent.
[Peter] Linda had a sense
that she was being observed
by the two men
who had originally come to the apartment.
[knocking on door]
Richard and Dan.
I was abducted by aliens.
As foolish as it sounds,
that's what's goin' on.
- [Budd] But
- And then they showed up.
And it wasn't just that they showed up.
They kept showing up
and and harassing me.
Budd was concerned that Linda
was being harassed on a regular basis
and never felt safe going out of her home.
It felt like every time
she went out to grocery shop,
something strange happened to her.
The story just kept on rolling.
[Johnny] I wouldn't mess with Linda,
my mother. [chuckles]
She can be
the sweetest thing in the world,
but if you try to hurt her
or anybody that she loves,
you better watch out.
I was raised
not to take any crap from anybody.
So I borrowed an old gun
from a friend of mine,
and I said to her,
"I just don't feel safe."
"I feel like I'm going to be attacked."
Because of the things
that were happening to her,
Budd came up with this idea
of wiring her for sound.
[Linda] Testing. Testing.
The microphone was in my pocket.
The speaker was in my ear.
One day I was walking up Cherry Street,
and I see this black car.
And who's standing outside the car
was Richard and Dan.
[Linda] He's standing across the street,
watching.
God. I gotta get the hell outta here.
Oh God. He's coming!
I don't see him anymore.
Where the hell is he?
[tires screech]
Oh God, oh God!
[man 2] You're not going anywhere.
Get in the car.
[Linda cries out]
[man 2] Go, go, go!
[Linda screams]
I didn't wanna get into the car.
I didn't wanna have anything
to do with them, period.
But here I was sitting in the car,
and we just took off.
[tires screech]
[unsettling music plays]
[man 2] A tape recorder? You wired?
[Linda] No, I'm not wired. It's not on.
I need help.
You know I need help.
No. Stop it.
No. No.
He told me to take my shoes off.
They wanted to see my feet.
I think they wanted to know
how many toes I had.
[Linda] What?
[man 2] Come here, half-breed.
That bastard, Dan,
used to call me a half-breed.
[Linda] What? Stop it. Stop.
He actually thought
I was half-human, half-alien.
It just kept getting wilder and crazier.
[Linda] I wanna go home.
Why don't you let me out of the car?
[Linda] And I took out the gun.
I says to him, "I'm holding a gun,
and you better watch out
'cause I'm gonna shoot your balls off."
[tries screech]
[Linda] And he stopped the car,
and I ran away and called Budd.
[telephone rings]
- [Linda] Hello?
- [Budd] Linda?
[Linda] They grabbed me by Pier 17.
[Budd] Oh, Linda. Tell
God, tell me what happened.
[Linda] He went nuts.
He grabbed me by my shoulders
and started to shake me until I was dizzy.
[Budd] Oh, Linda.
[Linda] And I have
this son of a bitch on tape.
[Budd] Okay. Okay, Linda.
Get off the phone. Come on over, okay?
- [Linda] Okay.
- [Budd] Okay. Bye-bye.
I've got to know these things
when they happen.
Has there been anything else lately
that I don't know about?
[Linda] No, really not. Nothing dangerous.
- Everything's okay.
- Okay.
[Linda] I was lucky to have Budd.
He was my rock.
He was always there. He was protective.
[Budd] I'm worried about
you saying you don't know who to trust.
- Mm-hmm.
- I don't.
[Budd] Linda, there are lots of people
you know you can trust.
[Carol] At that point, I kind of was
seeing a lot of these stories
as being made up, invented.
Budd didn't pick up on it
because she was delivering material
that he so badly wanted for his new book.
These are two little children's drawings
done by little Johnny.
Linda was offering him new elements,
new stories, every few days.
That's an extremely dramatic chapter.
It's like
It sounds like a mystery.
It sounds intriguing.
- It makes you wonder
- When you read this
I hope you'll read it.
I think I've shown you the picture
of the, uh, really creepy detective.
Of course, the skeptics will say
Linda made all this up. I mean
Who's that creative? She'd be doing
something more than she's doing now.
I mean, Linda is not unintelligent.
- Right.
- But Linda is
- She's your average working-class person.
- Exactly.
[Carol] Budd said
that Linda wasn't smart enough
to be able to manage anything like this.
She couldn't plan things that far ahead
and make this whole great story happen.
I thought she was smart.
She's not well educated,
but she was smart.
[tense music plays]
[Carol] If the Linda case was a hoax,
it was done masterfully well.
The whole case was built on 23 witnesses.
Basically, all the lights went out.
In the city, on the bridge.
I had to stare at it
for at least two minutes.
I mean, I was looking at it.
[Carol] But listening to Budd's interviews
with some of the witnesses,
I couldn't help wonder
if they had really seen
what they thought they had seen.
Uh-huh.
The yard was lit.
It wasn't bright white light.
It wasn't moonlight. It was lit.
[Carol] Francesca remembered
being terrified by a bright light.
[Francesca] What freaked me
But she never lifted the curtain
to see what was causing the light.
I just felt
that if I would've pulled open that shade,
I would have really seen something
I didn't want to see.
[woman 3] It was roundish,
even though it was, uh, sort of glowing.
Cathy Turner was an elderly woman
whose eyesight was failing.
- [Cathy] I didn't say I was on the bridge.
- [Budd] Yeah. No, I know.
[Carol] The confusing thing
was she couldn't remember
where she had seen the abduction.
[Budd] You think
you were on the Brooklyn side?
[Cathy] It's possible.
[Carol] What is going on here,
and how much
is being generated by Linda herself?
[woman 4] And out of the corner of my eye
I saw, you know, this light.
[Carol] Janet Kimball was a key witness.
I thought hers was perhaps
the most convincing testimony.
But when I first heard it,
I thought, "Oh my God,
that sounds just like Linda."
[Janet] At first, you heard
car doors slamming and all that
and everybody yelling.
Then I didn't hear anything.
[Budd] Uh-huh.
I wanted to meet her and have her
let me interview her on camera.
So I actually got Budd to call her.
- [Carol] You have the recorder on, right?
- Okay.
Uh, Budd Hopkins.
Uh, from New York. I'd just like
to speak to her for just a moment.
She's in the shower? Uh-huh.
Uh, can I try, uh, what,
in about, uh, half an hour?
This is Budd Hopkins calling again.
Is she out of the shower?
Oh, she did?
- [Carol] What? Where'd she go?
- Went straight to bed.
[Carol] What are you gonna do
with a book called Witnessed
when you don't have witnesses
who'll come forward?
Well, that's, of course
Well Shit.
[Carol] I saw that Budd
was accepting as true
things that there was no evidence
to support that they were true.
But that didn't seem to stop him.
[suspenseful music plays]
[reporter] Joining us is Budd Hopkins,
one of America's top ufologists,
who heard Linda's story
and made her the subject
for his latest book,
Witnessed: The True Story
of the Brooklyn Bridge UFO Abductions.
[suspenseful music continues]
[Peter] When Witnessed was published,
a major Hollywood producer
picked up the option.
The thought that this
might actually become a movie
was, for me, very exciting.
[Carol] Independence Day
was a big, splashy movie,
and I think that was the model
that Budd had in his mind
for how Witnessed would look.
[Peter] A Hollywood feature film
based on this extraordinary story
had the dual ability
to entertain as well as educate.
Would you like a cigarette, Nick?
[Linda] Budd used to say that
"Sharon Stone should play you
if there should ever be a movie."
- No.
- [Linda] We all used to giggle and laugh.
And I said, "No, I don't look
anything like Sharon Stone,
that's for sure."
[Carol] I thought Linda
was a natural actress.
She was a dramatic person.
She said, "Because of
this alien-abduction business,"
she said, "I had talents
that I never fully developed."
[dramatic music plays]
When I need somebody to rely on ♪
Don't let me down ♪
You're the only one
Means anything to me ♪
No one else ♪
Could ever be ♪
So don't let me down ♪
[Linda] When I was a little girl,
I wanted to be a singer when I grew up.
♪before me ♪
And this whole world
Seems to ignore me ♪
[Linda] In high school,
I had friends who also wanted to sing,
and so we made a singing group,
and they decided I should be lead singer.
And, uh, Mercury Records took us on.
They gave me the name Lynn Long.
Don't let me down ♪
I don't know
If I could face it all alone ♪
I can't make it ♪
On my own ♪
So don't let me down ♪
[Linda] It was putting something
out into the world
and people hearing my voice.
That was good.
Oh, look at that.
That's Mia Farrow and me.
I was about 17 years old there.
The Duke, John Wayne.
We were invited to to sing for them.
[melancholy music plays]
It was a different world.
It was a better world.
It was where I wanted to be.
But then I met Steve,
and it was either a music career
or marriage and a family.
So I chose marriage and a family.
[melancholy music continues]
[Johnny] She was good at it,
I'll tell you.
She was definitely a great mom.
When I was about six,
I had a a nightmare.
[screeching]
[ominous whooshing]
[Johnny] I went right to my mom, and I
I do remember how shocked she looked.
She was very quick to let me know
that she had had
some of the same experiences.
She basically told me that it was
m most likely a real experience.
And that's hard, as a six-year-old,
to wrap your head around.
I can't begin to explain
the absolute terror you feel.
It definitely fucked me up a little bit.
I'm glad that I went into therapy
when I did
to stop it from fuckin' me up even more.
But when you experience
something like that at that age,
it's it's gonna do damage.
[tense music plays]
[Carol] What Linda is not willing to do
is to say,
"I had a role in this entire story."
"I fed it. I dreamed it up."
"I manipulated my family."
"And I deceived Budd Hopkins, my friend."
That's what Linda should be saying.
Linda is simply telling the truth.
It's as easy as that.
The only way that she can be attacked,
the case can be attacked,
is, of course, if people say
she's a a a liar, a hoaxer,
she's hired all these people,
every one of these people
is an actress or actor that she's hired,
she's trained her son, etc. etc.
[unsettling music plays]
[Carol] It was a hoax
with a thousand moving parts,
but I needed definitive proof.
So I started
going through primary resources,
documents and stacks of letters.
I was really shocked
that half of the book is comprised
of letters from Richard and Dan,
two key witnesses to Linda's abduction.
Even though Budd never could get them
to agree to meet.
[Linda] I'm the only one
that sees these guys.
[Budd] Well, yeah,
but I get the letters from them,
and I'm gonna insist that they contact me.
It's ridiculous. Why would they not?
[Carol] I felt strongly
that they were an invention of Linda's,
and then I found a letter
forwarded to Budd by the agent Richard.
And on it was a signature
of Javier Pérez de Cuéllar,
who was the head
of the United Nations at that time
and who was in the car
with Richard and Dan
the night of Linda's abduction.
And then when I saw
the handwriting on the envelope,
I just wondered
if that handwriting matched Linda's.
So I went
to a forensics document examiner.
[examiner] I was looking at the "Hopkins"
on the manila envelope.
There was a virtually identical "H"
in the letter signed "Linda."
It is fairly clear to me
that they were executed
by the same person.
Now, I am going to produce
a transparency of the signature.
[Carol] I asked him to compare it
with a trusted copy
of de Cuéllar's signature
because no one ever writes
their own signature exactly the same way.
[examiner] Voilà! That is
an exact replication of the signature.
[Carol] The person who replicated
de Cuéllar's signature
is the same person
who's written the letters from Richard
and the letters from Dan.
And that is Linda.
Richard is an invention of Linda's.
- And so is Dan.
- [knocking on door]
[Carol] They were both actors.
[man 3] I suppose Linda
has already spoken to you
about our unexpected visit
to her apartment.
[Carol] And de Cuéllar is brought in
as the credibility character.
It was so layered, so detailed,
so generative of new elements,
new stories.
She learned about
the elements of alien abduction
by reading Budd's own books
and then being invited into support groups
and having hypnosis sessions with Budd.
She would have known
what Budd was looking for.
She would have known
what the typical abductee pattern was.
All the ingredients were there.
I almost had a reluctant admiration
for Linda for doing that,
except for the fact I was really pissed
that she made a fool out of my husband.
I hoaxed the whole thing,
that's what she said, and Budd was a dupe,
and Budd fell for it.
Yeah.
Well, if that was the case,
tell me who operated on my nose.
Next slide, please.
[Carol] Budd called it
the radiological smoking gun.
An X-ray of the alien implant
that was said to be in her nose.
That was an interesting piece
of physical evidence.
In that white drawer
full of original source material
that Budd used for the book,
I found the actual X-ray.
It did look like
some squiggly little thing
inside her nose.
But when you get down to it,
you could get the same effect
by taping something
to the outside of a nose.
[Peter] There's always gonna be people
that can talk it away.
That obviously somehow
she stuck this thing up her nose.
Or worse, that Hopkins
was involved in doing it.
These are
I mean, that's just beyond creepy.
[melancholy music plays]
[Carol] I was in a place
that was utterly uncomfortable.
I loved Budd.
He seemed to be so full of integrity,
so full of honesty.
But if this was a hoax,
I wanted to know
if my husband was part of it.
[uneasy music plays]
[Carol] And then I started to realize
what Budd had put forward in Witnessed
was not the full story.
Budd cherry-picked compelling details
but ignored anything
that presented difficult questions.
And that's when my alarm bells went off.
I began to fear it wasn't just Linda
who was doing the misleading.
There was a lot of misleading
by Budd himself.
What's the matter?
[Carol] I just felt
that I had to challenge him.
[Carol] Well, I would like to have a case
that's absolutely provable
and where there were
unimpeachable witnesses.
Uh, I've got many, many such cases.
- [cat meows]
- Many such cases.
But what but what's a scientist
gonna say to that?
I don't care about things like that.
- Sure, you've got all that. We don't
- [Carol] They're stories.
We we don't count Yes.
Uh, stories are, of course,
eyewitness accounts.
A story sounds like fiction.
An eyewitness account
sounds like evidence.
I find it I find it disgusting.
I find it repellent.
I find it demeaning
of of one's normal humanity.
This is not the way
we operate in the real world.
This is not the way we treat one another.
Oh boy. That was a repeat of history
I did hadn't planned on.
Your questions aren't welcome here.
To me, that resonated way, way back.
I didn't wanna talk about this.
These are traumatic memories,
things I'd not thought about
for a long time.
We were Plymouth Brethren,
and Plymouth Brethren
are a fundamentalist
almost a clan now of people.
We were to keep
the world separate from us.
"This is a dangerous place.
Don't go there."
So we didn't go to movies.
We didn't have television,
magazines, or newspapers.
We believed that every word
in the Bible was true.
But as I got older,
I was less able to accept things
that were not scientifically valid.
Questions were considered
the tip of the iceberg of your doubt.
After, you know, a year of my asking
increasingly unwelcome questions,
my father stood
in the middle of the room and he said,
"You're not my daughter anymore."
There were 72 members of my family
in the group.
I lost everybody
in one fell swoop, really.
That was terribly wounding.
And it also made me furious.
I have this little skeptical doobie,
doubting Thomas inside me
that keeps coming up and poking at things.
And I get in trouble.
I lose things. I lose people.
[uneasy music plays]
[Peter] I started to see
a very different side to Carol.
Angry, frustrated,
and increasingly vindictive.
She seemed to be more and more
formulating an attack on Budd's work.
He had shaped for himself
a particular belief system.
[Budd] I often think of myself
as a very religious person
without a religion.
And, uh, maybe I'm inventing my own.
[Carol] As I started thinking about it,
his dogma was as strong as my father's.
Each man wholeheartedly believed
they were the truth.
And you shot down anybody
who didn't believe your truth.
She was particularly critical
about the way he conducted
his hypnotic regressions.
Putting my hand back on your forehead.
[Peter] That they were manipulative,
and that his intention was to lead people.
[Budd] Let's go to that.
Let's move to that.
[crying] No. It's so ugly. No.
I felt that Budd had lost his objectivity.
[whimpers]
[Carol] I don't know
if it was through the Linda case
[whimpers]
[Carol]or earlier than that.
I couldn't respect what I heard him do
to people who were vulnerable.
Very vulnerable.
I want my mommy.
[Budd] You're gonna be with her
in just a little bit.
[Carol] I had to try
to protect other people
from being tormented this way.
[man 4] I don't wanna see these things.
[cries]
[Carol] I was sick.
I was literally sick
of the whole business.
And the only thing
that I could think to do
was to speak out about it.
[uneasy music plays]
So I wrote an essay and posted it online.
I mean, really, what the fuck?
She is a bitch.
She used my case and me and my family
as a tool to get even with Budd.
[Peter] She had a new cause in life
of destroying this man.
All you have is your reputation,
and it's over.
Budd's book Witnessed wasn't republished.
It didn't ultimately become a movie.
This is very disappointing for any writer.
I have such a deep dislike
and lack of respect for this woman.
[Linda] She's a son of a bitch.
No doubt about it.
She tried to hurt a lot of people.
[Carol] I think
Linda does try to take me down
at every opportunity she gets.
I never confronted Linda
about the things that she did.
[funereal music plays]
[Linda] Well, Carol Rainey,
no one believes you.
And no one believes you
is because you are a liar.
And it's as simple as that.
Everybody has your number.
Your ex-husband has been dead
for 12, 13 years.
And it wasn't enough for you to try,
make the attempt to ruin his reputation.
Now you're trying to ruin his legacy.
But, oh, but you can't.
All you've succeeded in doing
was to discredit yourself.
[Carol] You did lie,
and I will say you're a liar,
and I'm sorry about that.
But I will tell the truth.
It It's best not to mess
with Linda or her family.
Because, uh there'll be no warning.
Wow.
[director] Is that
what you expected to hear?
It was crushing.
And it was hurtful.
And I think I've acknowledged my part
in the things going wrong.
[melancholy music plays]
[Carol] I don't see any point
regretting a a part of your life.
There there were elements of it
that were very exhilarating.
Linda's was the most complex hoax
that I'd ever seen.
But that doesn't make
the whole phenomenon all a lie.
You'd have to be silly not to know
that there are other beings
that are out there
in this unbelievably dense universe
that we're only beginning
to see right now.
[reporter 1] A Pentagon report
is detailing
a dramatic increase in UFO sightings.
[reporter 2] The government
is investigating
more than 650 potential sightings.
[reporter 3] Last year, NASA put together
this team to study the phenomenon.
[Peter] Things have changed.
Every day, more and more people
realize this is real.
We had witnesses in the American Congress
talking about biological entities
and crashes and recoveries.
Do you believe that our government
is in possession of UAPs?
Absolutely. Based on interviewing,
uh, over 40 witnesses.
[Peter] Perhaps we'll get to a time
where people look back on Budd
and see that he was
a real pioneer in this work
and a case like Linda's
will be taken more seriously
by more people.
[Linda] Quite frankly,
at this stage in my life,
I don't care.
It's not easy to believe, let's face it.
That's the truth.
Unless you have experienced this yourself.
[lively music plays]
[Linda] Sometimes I watch all the people
walking and talking and smiling.
I wonder how many have had
the same experience I have had
and they just don't know it.
I'm nothing special.
I'm just one out of all those millions.
[uneasy music plays]
[Linda] Before I go to bed,
the first thing I do
is look behind the drapes.
In the closet.
You never know when it's going to happen.
But I don't feel any safer.
Not at all.
These aliens, these creatures,
if they want you, they're gonna get you.
When I need a shoulder to cry on ♪
And I need somebody to rely on ♪
Don't let me down ♪
You're the only one
Means anything to me ♪
No one else ♪
Could ever be ♪
So don't let me down ♪
When I see there's trouble before me ♪
And this whole world
Seems to ignore me ♪
Don't let me down ♪
I don't know
If I could face it all alone ♪
I can't make it ♪
On my own ♪
[unsettling music plays]
[Peter] Is this being faked,
or is this real?
Witnesses have seen me levitate
outside my window.
[Peter] Is this person a liar
or telling the truth to the best
of their ability and understanding?
Up there,
on the other side of the building.
[Peter] If she's so intent on convincing
the world that she's been taken by aliens,
is there anything she wouldn't do
to advance that notion,
including mess with
one of her own children?
And how would she have gone about
creating the impression in this boy
that he had been abducted by aliens?
Would she have instructed him to lie?
Would he have been convincing if he had?
What kind of human being would do this?
[unsettling music continues]
[Peter] By this point, we've established
some basic character references
for this woman,
and she's a decent person,
a caring person who would
probably much rather hurt herself
than hurt one of her children,
as any decent parent would.
Is she putting on an act?
Creating a persona?
And you've gotta come to an informed
decision one way or the other.
[woman 1] Roll one, take one.
[ominous music plays]
[music fades]
[Johnny] Starting to feel some feelings
maybe I haven't felt in in a while.
I just tried to erase it from my my life.
And you're sure you can't see my face?
I really don't want to have
my face seen on camera.
[man 1] No. It's fine.
[Johnny] It happened a long time ago.
I was quite young.
I say to myself,
you know, "Why did they pick me?"
"Why couldn't they pick,
you know, somebody else?"
[older Johnny] Obviously, as a kid,
you don't know what to think.
You hope and pray that it's a nightmare.
But the better part of me knows
that it was a real experience.
Mom was in the kitchen.
I don't really know what she was doing.
I looked out the window.
And the next thing,
I I remember turning around.
I remember seeing three beings
in the living room.
The most vivid memory is of calling out
to my mom for help,
and it was almost as if
she was standing still.
She wasn't moving. She wasn't responding.
And I know I was screaming
as loud as I could.
It was almost as if she wasn't even there.
It was just an image of her.
[younger Johnny] I asked myself,
"Doesn't my mommy love me anymore?"
Because she was just frozen there,
and she didn't do anything.
When I think about it, I think,
"Are they gonna come back,
and are they gonna do something worse?"
[older Johnny] I know it was terrifying
for me, and I can only imagine
the terror and anger that my mom felt.
[Linda] I felt it was my fault
because it happened to me.
But, uh, when it happens
to your own, you know,
that's a different story.
Yeah.
[Budd] Can you train
a little child to lie?
Because if Johnny's telling the truth,
then the whole story holds together
and is true.
Now, there's no doubt about that.
So, in a strange way, Johnny is quite key.
[Johnny] Well, I know my mom
better than anybody else.
I'll tell you right now,
there's no way I believe
she would wanna
make anything like this up.
From what I'm told, a lot of witnesses.
So either she planted a seed
in all those people's heads and mine,
or this is a real experience.
So I can't imagine
that she would wanna perpetuate something
involving so much terror and agony.
[unsettling music plays]
[Carol] How do we know what's real?
How do we know what's true?
I was becoming
increasingly suspicious of Linda's story.
I felt that she was
pulling the wool over Budd's eyes,
and he couldn't see what was happening.
He believed that he was about to unfurl
the most comprehensive abduction case
that has ever been known about
with all of those witnesses.
To me, it began
to seem almost too perfect.
Almost too perfect.
But Budd was always certain
that this was a good enough story
to be a bestseller
and be made into a movie.
He needed to stay with that
all the way to the end.
- [Budd] This will be
- I know.
the most important UFO book ever.
[Dona] I like it.
There's tons of interest.
Everyone is interested in UFO
and and X-Files stuff, period.
[Oprah] My guests this morning say
that they have been abducted by aliens,
taken aboard spaceships,
and examined by beings from outer space.
[Peter] The Linda case elevated
the subject of abduction
to something
that had gone kind of mainstream.
Oprah, she took it seriously.
What the aliens,
quote, unquote, are are interested in
is their agenda, and they're doing it
their way for their reasons.
At the time,
one of the big chat shows in America
was Geraldo Rivera's show.
I'd never been on a chat show that large.
We don't have a problem with skepticism.
Um, we do have a problem with ridicule.
What in the world
were these little creatures after?
The focus of the whole thing seems to me
to be on some kind of genetic
experimentation that's taking place.
Now, are they taking sperm and eggs
to make little humans
on their home planet or
The implication is that they are trying
to create a hybrid.
A mix of their stock and our stock.
[Carol] Budd was never trying
to fool anybody with that.
He had a very, very pessimistic concept
of why aliens were here,
which he believed in wholeheartedly.
The aliens were up to no good
for humankind.
And you had no way to stop it.
We won't see it happening.
It'll come invisibly in the night.
Another civilization coming
from somewhere else.
Breeding us out of existence.
This was an endgame for the aliens.
[uneasy music plays]
[Linda] Budd Hopkins told me
what was going on.
Every woman that was abducted
had their ova taken.
So I looked at Budd.
I says, "Oh," I says, "wait a minute."
I says, "What are you saying?"
So Budd regressed me,
and I remembered everything.
I'm in this strange place.
[older Linda] Everything that happened
to me when I went into the craft.
[uneasy music continues]
One of them picks up a stick,
a long stick.
- [Budd] Mm-hmm.
- Looks like a rod.
There were these creatures ar around me,
and they were examining my stomach.
One of them came after me
with a needle
the length of a turkey baster.
That isn't friendly.
I didn't wanna believe
that I was a lab rat
being experimented on.
But after a while,
I just couldn't deny it anymore.
[uneasy music continues]
[woman 2] Hi, everybody.
Thank you, guys, and welcome.
Joining us now is Linda. She says
she's been abducted by extraterrestrials.
She's in silhouette today because
she fears her family will be in danger
if she reveals her identity.
[Linda] I was invited
on The Ricki Lake Show,
but I told her, "The only way I'll appear
is if you put me in shadow."
Because of what happened to me
and what was going on besides the
the aliens.
[reporter] The government
has lied to us about UFOs,
has withheld information,
has spied on UFO witnesses.
It's going into a whole nother world
of fear, of drama,
of not knowing where this is all leading.
[reporter] She was visited at her home
by a man identifying himself
as a government agent.
[Peter] Linda had a sense
that she was being observed
by the two men
who had originally come to the apartment.
[knocking on door]
Richard and Dan.
I was abducted by aliens.
As foolish as it sounds,
that's what's goin' on.
- [Budd] But
- And then they showed up.
And it wasn't just that they showed up.
They kept showing up
and and harassing me.
Budd was concerned that Linda
was being harassed on a regular basis
and never felt safe going out of her home.
It felt like every time
she went out to grocery shop,
something strange happened to her.
The story just kept on rolling.
[Johnny] I wouldn't mess with Linda,
my mother. [chuckles]
She can be
the sweetest thing in the world,
but if you try to hurt her
or anybody that she loves,
you better watch out.
I was raised
not to take any crap from anybody.
So I borrowed an old gun
from a friend of mine,
and I said to her,
"I just don't feel safe."
"I feel like I'm going to be attacked."
Because of the things
that were happening to her,
Budd came up with this idea
of wiring her for sound.
[Linda] Testing. Testing.
The microphone was in my pocket.
The speaker was in my ear.
One day I was walking up Cherry Street,
and I see this black car.
And who's standing outside the car
was Richard and Dan.
[Linda] He's standing across the street,
watching.
God. I gotta get the hell outta here.
Oh God. He's coming!
I don't see him anymore.
Where the hell is he?
[tires screech]
Oh God, oh God!
[man 2] You're not going anywhere.
Get in the car.
[Linda cries out]
[man 2] Go, go, go!
[Linda screams]
I didn't wanna get into the car.
I didn't wanna have anything
to do with them, period.
But here I was sitting in the car,
and we just took off.
[tires screech]
[unsettling music plays]
[man 2] A tape recorder? You wired?
[Linda] No, I'm not wired. It's not on.
I need help.
You know I need help.
No. Stop it.
No. No.
He told me to take my shoes off.
They wanted to see my feet.
I think they wanted to know
how many toes I had.
[Linda] What?
[man 2] Come here, half-breed.
That bastard, Dan,
used to call me a half-breed.
[Linda] What? Stop it. Stop.
He actually thought
I was half-human, half-alien.
It just kept getting wilder and crazier.
[Linda] I wanna go home.
Why don't you let me out of the car?
[Linda] And I took out the gun.
I says to him, "I'm holding a gun,
and you better watch out
'cause I'm gonna shoot your balls off."
[tries screech]
[Linda] And he stopped the car,
and I ran away and called Budd.
[telephone rings]
- [Linda] Hello?
- [Budd] Linda?
[Linda] They grabbed me by Pier 17.
[Budd] Oh, Linda. Tell
God, tell me what happened.
[Linda] He went nuts.
He grabbed me by my shoulders
and started to shake me until I was dizzy.
[Budd] Oh, Linda.
[Linda] And I have
this son of a bitch on tape.
[Budd] Okay. Okay, Linda.
Get off the phone. Come on over, okay?
- [Linda] Okay.
- [Budd] Okay. Bye-bye.
I've got to know these things
when they happen.
Has there been anything else lately
that I don't know about?
[Linda] No, really not. Nothing dangerous.
- Everything's okay.
- Okay.
[Linda] I was lucky to have Budd.
He was my rock.
He was always there. He was protective.
[Budd] I'm worried about
you saying you don't know who to trust.
- Mm-hmm.
- I don't.
[Budd] Linda, there are lots of people
you know you can trust.
[Carol] At that point, I kind of was
seeing a lot of these stories
as being made up, invented.
Budd didn't pick up on it
because she was delivering material
that he so badly wanted for his new book.
These are two little children's drawings
done by little Johnny.
Linda was offering him new elements,
new stories, every few days.
That's an extremely dramatic chapter.
It's like
It sounds like a mystery.
It sounds intriguing.
- It makes you wonder
- When you read this
I hope you'll read it.
I think I've shown you the picture
of the, uh, really creepy detective.
Of course, the skeptics will say
Linda made all this up. I mean
Who's that creative? She'd be doing
something more than she's doing now.
I mean, Linda is not unintelligent.
- Right.
- But Linda is
- She's your average working-class person.
- Exactly.
[Carol] Budd said
that Linda wasn't smart enough
to be able to manage anything like this.
She couldn't plan things that far ahead
and make this whole great story happen.
I thought she was smart.
She's not well educated,
but she was smart.
[tense music plays]
[Carol] If the Linda case was a hoax,
it was done masterfully well.
The whole case was built on 23 witnesses.
Basically, all the lights went out.
In the city, on the bridge.
I had to stare at it
for at least two minutes.
I mean, I was looking at it.
[Carol] But listening to Budd's interviews
with some of the witnesses,
I couldn't help wonder
if they had really seen
what they thought they had seen.
Uh-huh.
The yard was lit.
It wasn't bright white light.
It wasn't moonlight. It was lit.
[Carol] Francesca remembered
being terrified by a bright light.
[Francesca] What freaked me
But she never lifted the curtain
to see what was causing the light.
I just felt
that if I would've pulled open that shade,
I would have really seen something
I didn't want to see.
[woman 3] It was roundish,
even though it was, uh, sort of glowing.
Cathy Turner was an elderly woman
whose eyesight was failing.
- [Cathy] I didn't say I was on the bridge.
- [Budd] Yeah. No, I know.
[Carol] The confusing thing
was she couldn't remember
where she had seen the abduction.
[Budd] You think
you were on the Brooklyn side?
[Cathy] It's possible.
[Carol] What is going on here,
and how much
is being generated by Linda herself?
[woman 4] And out of the corner of my eye
I saw, you know, this light.
[Carol] Janet Kimball was a key witness.
I thought hers was perhaps
the most convincing testimony.
But when I first heard it,
I thought, "Oh my God,
that sounds just like Linda."
[Janet] At first, you heard
car doors slamming and all that
and everybody yelling.
Then I didn't hear anything.
[Budd] Uh-huh.
I wanted to meet her and have her
let me interview her on camera.
So I actually got Budd to call her.
- [Carol] You have the recorder on, right?
- Okay.
Uh, Budd Hopkins.
Uh, from New York. I'd just like
to speak to her for just a moment.
She's in the shower? Uh-huh.
Uh, can I try, uh, what,
in about, uh, half an hour?
This is Budd Hopkins calling again.
Is she out of the shower?
Oh, she did?
- [Carol] What? Where'd she go?
- Went straight to bed.
[Carol] What are you gonna do
with a book called Witnessed
when you don't have witnesses
who'll come forward?
Well, that's, of course
Well Shit.
[Carol] I saw that Budd
was accepting as true
things that there was no evidence
to support that they were true.
But that didn't seem to stop him.
[suspenseful music plays]
[reporter] Joining us is Budd Hopkins,
one of America's top ufologists,
who heard Linda's story
and made her the subject
for his latest book,
Witnessed: The True Story
of the Brooklyn Bridge UFO Abductions.
[suspenseful music continues]
[Peter] When Witnessed was published,
a major Hollywood producer
picked up the option.
The thought that this
might actually become a movie
was, for me, very exciting.
[Carol] Independence Day
was a big, splashy movie,
and I think that was the model
that Budd had in his mind
for how Witnessed would look.
[Peter] A Hollywood feature film
based on this extraordinary story
had the dual ability
to entertain as well as educate.
Would you like a cigarette, Nick?
[Linda] Budd used to say that
"Sharon Stone should play you
if there should ever be a movie."
- No.
- [Linda] We all used to giggle and laugh.
And I said, "No, I don't look
anything like Sharon Stone,
that's for sure."
[Carol] I thought Linda
was a natural actress.
She was a dramatic person.
She said, "Because of
this alien-abduction business,"
she said, "I had talents
that I never fully developed."
[dramatic music plays]
When I need somebody to rely on ♪
Don't let me down ♪
You're the only one
Means anything to me ♪
No one else ♪
Could ever be ♪
So don't let me down ♪
[Linda] When I was a little girl,
I wanted to be a singer when I grew up.
♪before me ♪
And this whole world
Seems to ignore me ♪
[Linda] In high school,
I had friends who also wanted to sing,
and so we made a singing group,
and they decided I should be lead singer.
And, uh, Mercury Records took us on.
They gave me the name Lynn Long.
Don't let me down ♪
I don't know
If I could face it all alone ♪
I can't make it ♪
On my own ♪
So don't let me down ♪
[Linda] It was putting something
out into the world
and people hearing my voice.
That was good.
Oh, look at that.
That's Mia Farrow and me.
I was about 17 years old there.
The Duke, John Wayne.
We were invited to to sing for them.
[melancholy music plays]
It was a different world.
It was a better world.
It was where I wanted to be.
But then I met Steve,
and it was either a music career
or marriage and a family.
So I chose marriage and a family.
[melancholy music continues]
[Johnny] She was good at it,
I'll tell you.
She was definitely a great mom.
When I was about six,
I had a a nightmare.
[screeching]
[ominous whooshing]
[Johnny] I went right to my mom, and I
I do remember how shocked she looked.
She was very quick to let me know
that she had had
some of the same experiences.
She basically told me that it was
m most likely a real experience.
And that's hard, as a six-year-old,
to wrap your head around.
I can't begin to explain
the absolute terror you feel.
It definitely fucked me up a little bit.
I'm glad that I went into therapy
when I did
to stop it from fuckin' me up even more.
But when you experience
something like that at that age,
it's it's gonna do damage.
[tense music plays]
[Carol] What Linda is not willing to do
is to say,
"I had a role in this entire story."
"I fed it. I dreamed it up."
"I manipulated my family."
"And I deceived Budd Hopkins, my friend."
That's what Linda should be saying.
Linda is simply telling the truth.
It's as easy as that.
The only way that she can be attacked,
the case can be attacked,
is, of course, if people say
she's a a a liar, a hoaxer,
she's hired all these people,
every one of these people
is an actress or actor that she's hired,
she's trained her son, etc. etc.
[unsettling music plays]
[Carol] It was a hoax
with a thousand moving parts,
but I needed definitive proof.
So I started
going through primary resources,
documents and stacks of letters.
I was really shocked
that half of the book is comprised
of letters from Richard and Dan,
two key witnesses to Linda's abduction.
Even though Budd never could get them
to agree to meet.
[Linda] I'm the only one
that sees these guys.
[Budd] Well, yeah,
but I get the letters from them,
and I'm gonna insist that they contact me.
It's ridiculous. Why would they not?
[Carol] I felt strongly
that they were an invention of Linda's,
and then I found a letter
forwarded to Budd by the agent Richard.
And on it was a signature
of Javier Pérez de Cuéllar,
who was the head
of the United Nations at that time
and who was in the car
with Richard and Dan
the night of Linda's abduction.
And then when I saw
the handwriting on the envelope,
I just wondered
if that handwriting matched Linda's.
So I went
to a forensics document examiner.
[examiner] I was looking at the "Hopkins"
on the manila envelope.
There was a virtually identical "H"
in the letter signed "Linda."
It is fairly clear to me
that they were executed
by the same person.
Now, I am going to produce
a transparency of the signature.
[Carol] I asked him to compare it
with a trusted copy
of de Cuéllar's signature
because no one ever writes
their own signature exactly the same way.
[examiner] Voilà! That is
an exact replication of the signature.
[Carol] The person who replicated
de Cuéllar's signature
is the same person
who's written the letters from Richard
and the letters from Dan.
And that is Linda.
Richard is an invention of Linda's.
- And so is Dan.
- [knocking on door]
[Carol] They were both actors.
[man 3] I suppose Linda
has already spoken to you
about our unexpected visit
to her apartment.
[Carol] And de Cuéllar is brought in
as the credibility character.
It was so layered, so detailed,
so generative of new elements,
new stories.
She learned about
the elements of alien abduction
by reading Budd's own books
and then being invited into support groups
and having hypnosis sessions with Budd.
She would have known
what Budd was looking for.
She would have known
what the typical abductee pattern was.
All the ingredients were there.
I almost had a reluctant admiration
for Linda for doing that,
except for the fact I was really pissed
that she made a fool out of my husband.
I hoaxed the whole thing,
that's what she said, and Budd was a dupe,
and Budd fell for it.
Yeah.
Well, if that was the case,
tell me who operated on my nose.
Next slide, please.
[Carol] Budd called it
the radiological smoking gun.
An X-ray of the alien implant
that was said to be in her nose.
That was an interesting piece
of physical evidence.
In that white drawer
full of original source material
that Budd used for the book,
I found the actual X-ray.
It did look like
some squiggly little thing
inside her nose.
But when you get down to it,
you could get the same effect
by taping something
to the outside of a nose.
[Peter] There's always gonna be people
that can talk it away.
That obviously somehow
she stuck this thing up her nose.
Or worse, that Hopkins
was involved in doing it.
These are
I mean, that's just beyond creepy.
[melancholy music plays]
[Carol] I was in a place
that was utterly uncomfortable.
I loved Budd.
He seemed to be so full of integrity,
so full of honesty.
But if this was a hoax,
I wanted to know
if my husband was part of it.
[uneasy music plays]
[Carol] And then I started to realize
what Budd had put forward in Witnessed
was not the full story.
Budd cherry-picked compelling details
but ignored anything
that presented difficult questions.
And that's when my alarm bells went off.
I began to fear it wasn't just Linda
who was doing the misleading.
There was a lot of misleading
by Budd himself.
What's the matter?
[Carol] I just felt
that I had to challenge him.
[Carol] Well, I would like to have a case
that's absolutely provable
and where there were
unimpeachable witnesses.
Uh, I've got many, many such cases.
- [cat meows]
- Many such cases.
But what but what's a scientist
gonna say to that?
I don't care about things like that.
- Sure, you've got all that. We don't
- [Carol] They're stories.
We we don't count Yes.
Uh, stories are, of course,
eyewitness accounts.
A story sounds like fiction.
An eyewitness account
sounds like evidence.
I find it I find it disgusting.
I find it repellent.
I find it demeaning
of of one's normal humanity.
This is not the way
we operate in the real world.
This is not the way we treat one another.
Oh boy. That was a repeat of history
I did hadn't planned on.
Your questions aren't welcome here.
To me, that resonated way, way back.
I didn't wanna talk about this.
These are traumatic memories,
things I'd not thought about
for a long time.
We were Plymouth Brethren,
and Plymouth Brethren
are a fundamentalist
almost a clan now of people.
We were to keep
the world separate from us.
"This is a dangerous place.
Don't go there."
So we didn't go to movies.
We didn't have television,
magazines, or newspapers.
We believed that every word
in the Bible was true.
But as I got older,
I was less able to accept things
that were not scientifically valid.
Questions were considered
the tip of the iceberg of your doubt.
After, you know, a year of my asking
increasingly unwelcome questions,
my father stood
in the middle of the room and he said,
"You're not my daughter anymore."
There were 72 members of my family
in the group.
I lost everybody
in one fell swoop, really.
That was terribly wounding.
And it also made me furious.
I have this little skeptical doobie,
doubting Thomas inside me
that keeps coming up and poking at things.
And I get in trouble.
I lose things. I lose people.
[uneasy music plays]
[Peter] I started to see
a very different side to Carol.
Angry, frustrated,
and increasingly vindictive.
She seemed to be more and more
formulating an attack on Budd's work.
He had shaped for himself
a particular belief system.
[Budd] I often think of myself
as a very religious person
without a religion.
And, uh, maybe I'm inventing my own.
[Carol] As I started thinking about it,
his dogma was as strong as my father's.
Each man wholeheartedly believed
they were the truth.
And you shot down anybody
who didn't believe your truth.
She was particularly critical
about the way he conducted
his hypnotic regressions.
Putting my hand back on your forehead.
[Peter] That they were manipulative,
and that his intention was to lead people.
[Budd] Let's go to that.
Let's move to that.
[crying] No. It's so ugly. No.
I felt that Budd had lost his objectivity.
[whimpers]
[Carol] I don't know
if it was through the Linda case
[whimpers]
[Carol]or earlier than that.
I couldn't respect what I heard him do
to people who were vulnerable.
Very vulnerable.
I want my mommy.
[Budd] You're gonna be with her
in just a little bit.
[Carol] I had to try
to protect other people
from being tormented this way.
[man 4] I don't wanna see these things.
[cries]
[Carol] I was sick.
I was literally sick
of the whole business.
And the only thing
that I could think to do
was to speak out about it.
[uneasy music plays]
So I wrote an essay and posted it online.
I mean, really, what the fuck?
She is a bitch.
She used my case and me and my family
as a tool to get even with Budd.
[Peter] She had a new cause in life
of destroying this man.
All you have is your reputation,
and it's over.
Budd's book Witnessed wasn't republished.
It didn't ultimately become a movie.
This is very disappointing for any writer.
I have such a deep dislike
and lack of respect for this woman.
[Linda] She's a son of a bitch.
No doubt about it.
She tried to hurt a lot of people.
[Carol] I think
Linda does try to take me down
at every opportunity she gets.
I never confronted Linda
about the things that she did.
[funereal music plays]
[Linda] Well, Carol Rainey,
no one believes you.
And no one believes you
is because you are a liar.
And it's as simple as that.
Everybody has your number.
Your ex-husband has been dead
for 12, 13 years.
And it wasn't enough for you to try,
make the attempt to ruin his reputation.
Now you're trying to ruin his legacy.
But, oh, but you can't.
All you've succeeded in doing
was to discredit yourself.
[Carol] You did lie,
and I will say you're a liar,
and I'm sorry about that.
But I will tell the truth.
It It's best not to mess
with Linda or her family.
Because, uh there'll be no warning.
Wow.
[director] Is that
what you expected to hear?
It was crushing.
And it was hurtful.
And I think I've acknowledged my part
in the things going wrong.
[melancholy music plays]
[Carol] I don't see any point
regretting a a part of your life.
There there were elements of it
that were very exhilarating.
Linda's was the most complex hoax
that I'd ever seen.
But that doesn't make
the whole phenomenon all a lie.
You'd have to be silly not to know
that there are other beings
that are out there
in this unbelievably dense universe
that we're only beginning
to see right now.
[reporter 1] A Pentagon report
is detailing
a dramatic increase in UFO sightings.
[reporter 2] The government
is investigating
more than 650 potential sightings.
[reporter 3] Last year, NASA put together
this team to study the phenomenon.
[Peter] Things have changed.
Every day, more and more people
realize this is real.
We had witnesses in the American Congress
talking about biological entities
and crashes and recoveries.
Do you believe that our government
is in possession of UAPs?
Absolutely. Based on interviewing,
uh, over 40 witnesses.
[Peter] Perhaps we'll get to a time
where people look back on Budd
and see that he was
a real pioneer in this work
and a case like Linda's
will be taken more seriously
by more people.
[Linda] Quite frankly,
at this stage in my life,
I don't care.
It's not easy to believe, let's face it.
That's the truth.
Unless you have experienced this yourself.
[lively music plays]
[Linda] Sometimes I watch all the people
walking and talking and smiling.
I wonder how many have had
the same experience I have had
and they just don't know it.
I'm nothing special.
I'm just one out of all those millions.
[uneasy music plays]
[Linda] Before I go to bed,
the first thing I do
is look behind the drapes.
In the closet.
You never know when it's going to happen.
But I don't feel any safer.
Not at all.
These aliens, these creatures,
if they want you, they're gonna get you.
When I need a shoulder to cry on ♪
And I need somebody to rely on ♪
Don't let me down ♪
You're the only one
Means anything to me ♪
No one else ♪
Could ever be ♪
So don't let me down ♪
When I see there's trouble before me ♪
And this whole world
Seems to ignore me ♪
Don't let me down ♪
I don't know
If I could face it all alone ♪
I can't make it ♪
On my own ♪