Dispatch Ajax! Podcast
A Geek Culture Podcast - Two life-long Geeks explain, critique and poke fun at the major pillars of Geek Culture for your listening pleasure.
Dispatch Ajax! Podcast
Budd Hopkins & the Manhattan UFO Abduction
What if the boundaries of reality and fiction aren’t as clear-cut as we think? Join us as we navigate the murky waters of UFO phenomena, inspired by the legacy of Budd Hopkins, a man who brought alien abduction tales out of the shadows and into the spotlight. From his artistic roots to a fateful UFO sighting in 1964, Hopkins' journey is a testament to the power of curiosity. We kick off our exploration with intriguing stories like the legendary "War of the Worlds" broadcast and its lasting impact, setting the stage for a deeper understanding of how media shapes our perception of the unexplained.
In a story that could rival any sci-fi thriller, we unravel the twists and turns of the Manhattan Alien Abduction case, spotlighting the compelling yet controversial tale of Linda Napolitano. With accounts from anonymous witnesses including police officers and foreign dignitaries, we dissect Hopkins’ investigative approach and its profound influence on the UFO community. As we peel back the layers of this mysterious encounter, the psychological and social ramifications of such extraordinary claims come to light, challenging us to discern fact from fiction.
But the intrigue doesn’t stop there. We venture into the realm of conspiracy theories, tracing their evolution from entertaining anecdotes to unsettling narratives. Radio legends like Art Bell paved the way for today’s more contentious figures, raising questions about the responsibility of those who amplify these voices. Through spirited discussions and a dash of humor, we aim to keep our minds open to the possibilities that stretch beyond the horizon, urging listeners to ponder the mysteries that continue to captivate our collective imagination.
It said you are no longer connected to the internet. Connected to the internet.
Speaker 2:It's the dark web, like that's a place or something.
Speaker 1:My Tor browser says it's a place.
Speaker 2:I don't think they call it the dark web. On your Tor browser it's a big block letter it says the dark web Dot com.
Speaker 1:Am I not in the right?
Speaker 2:spot. Yeah, I think you might be in a different spot. I'm going to the Salk Road. This is right. Right, the tor johnson network got a ripped, torn browser gentlemen, let's broaden our minds are they in the proper approach pattern for today?
Speaker 3:negative Now Charge the lightning field.
Speaker 2:Welcome back to Dispatch Ajax. I'm Skip.
Speaker 1:I am Jake.
Speaker 2:That's true.
Speaker 1:The last time I checked at least it's the last true thing you're going to hear on this episode.
Speaker 2:Two things will be a lie and one will be the truth. You figure out what it is. Some of those are our names. Damn it, we blew it already.
Speaker 1:Well, that sounds like my sex life.
Speaker 2:So anyway, let's cut that out.
Speaker 1:Cut it out.
Speaker 2:Well, we were just talking about Hellraiser, not David Coulier, but Hellraiser, so that makes more sense.
Speaker 1:Ooh, there's a new Hellraiser sequel. David Coulier as a Cenobite.
Speaker 2:Well, what else is he doing? Get on it. I could totally see David Coulier using the last of his full house money pushing that sweaty wad toward that dude in Morocco, or whatever. I'm at the box. So today I thought we would do stuff around the Netflix docu-series the Manhattan UFO.
Speaker 1:The Manhattan Alien Abduction.
Speaker 2:There you go, Manhattan Alien Abduction.
Speaker 1:I had read about that case years and years ago. Her name is also one that always stuck in my head.
Speaker 2:Her real name or her alias in the book, Because that's a different, weird name. What Napolitano?
Speaker 1:That's her real name or her alias in the book, because that's a different, weird name. What Napolitano? That's her real name. Yeah, that's the name that I always knew her as. When they had it in the show I was like why are they doing a different name? Well, because in the book she had a different name, one of the many questions you might have at the end of the series.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's not exactly the most in-depth thing in the world. They at the end of the series. Yeah, it's not exactly the most in-depth thing in the world. They do some interesting things, but we'll get into that. The approach that I wanted to take today was not so much and I will talk I don't want to say at length, but I will discuss the manhattan ufo incident. But I thought it would be a more interesting angle, something that most people don't do if we actually just dove more deeply into bud hopkins himself. Oh, okay, the researcher who made this incident famous, because he's responsible not just for making this a public story but many other other UFO abduction stories, to the extent where he's sort of an unsung founder of the UFO abductee phenomenon in mainstream culture. So legend goes that a young Bud Hopkins which is Bud with two D's, by the way, which just doubles down on the fact that your kid's name is Bud and that's not a nickname Bud Double D.
Speaker 1:The worst Piranha sequel.
Speaker 2:Maybe that's a nickname for something, but if you use two Ds, his name is Bud.
Speaker 1:The other D is for emphasis.
Speaker 2:So a young Bud Hopkins supposedly was left traumatized by Orson Welles' 1938 CBS radio adaptation of the War of the Worlds. However and this is something we should talk about also tangentially later, as time went on, it settled in that the reality of the widespread hysteria and panic over the broadcast itself was severely exaggerated. It rippled throughout society. Really to this day A lot of FCC standards that are used in broadcast media come from reactions to that broadcast. Like when you come back for station IDs so often it's because of the War of the Worlds broadcast, because a lot of people's complaints were that they missed the opening warning that this was a drama, that this was a fictional thing and there were many factors to go into that, which was just why you know it deserves its own episode, but a lot of the hysteria behind that was completely exaggerated. Still, it likely did plant seeds in the young hopkins, just not in the way that it may have been portrayed, because he claimed that he was emotionally scarred and traumatized, though honestly it didn't even have a very big audience, not that many people heard it and not that many people were actually upset. It was reporting of the panic that caused more panic and the general idea that this was a huge issue. It did cause some problems but they weren't as bad as people thought. In fact, future Tonight Show host Jack Parr had announcing duties that night for Cleveland CBS affiliate WJAR, as listeners called the studio. He attempted to calm them on the phone and on air by saying, quote the world is not coming to an end, trust me. When have I ever lied to you? But then outspoken listeners started to accuse Parr of quote, covering up the truth. Great, it's always been like this. Yeah, does it sound familiar or what? This will come up again later.
Speaker 2:So Hopkins was born June 15th 1931 in Wheeling, west Virginia. He graduated from Oberlin College in 1953 and moved to New York where he began a successful career as a studio artist. It's very similar to the guy that we talked about in Office Horror, oh yeah, yeah. Mostly known for that, but then overtaken by his later work. His paintings to this day hang in many high-profile museums and he became a frequent contributor to art magazines and did art lectures, was guest lecturer and or guest professors at art colleges throughout the years.
Speaker 2:His interest in UFOs and alien visitations was really sparked in 1964, when he and two other guys reported experiencing a daylight sighting of a dark, disc-shaped or elliptical object in Touro, massachusetts. When he reported the incident to nearby Otis Air National Guard Base, he was essentially laughed out of the building, so naturally he suspected a possible government cover-up. I know what I saw. This is from an interview with PBS's Nova quote I had a daytime UFO sighting on Cape Cod.
Speaker 2:It lasted about three minutes. The object seemed to be able to hover and then it zoomed at great speeds straight into the wind. We had thought perhaps it was some kind of balloon or something, but it clearly wasn't. And when you see something like that and the three of us were jumping out of the car finally to watch it disappear you realize that there's some factor in the world you hadn't previously been aware of and that it could be an extraordinary, important factor.
Speaker 2:So Hopkins then put his nose to the grindstone and began reading about UFOs, collecting stories of people who claim to have been experiencers of contact with alien beings. And so, in 1975, hopkins was approached by a man named George Orbarski that's an unfortunate name who supposedly witnessed alien figures step out of a spacecraft and take soil samples at North Hudson Park in North Bergen, new Jersey. I don't know why I said it that way. That was the end of the sentence. North Bergen, new Jersey, hopkins. A man named Ted Blogger, who was the director of the New York State's Mutual UFO Network chapter or MUFON for people who don't know, and Jerry Storher, who's also part of MUFON, investigated the incident, interviewing the witnesses and taking soil samples of their own.
Speaker 1:I like to think that they had a soil sample off with the aliens later, ha. Take that 93 parts nitrogen. All right, Ha what you got.
Speaker 2:What's going on here?
Speaker 1:They don't fucking know, oh red clay yeah.
Speaker 2:We don't care about that, come down and take more. So after Hopkins' account of the Oberski case appeared in a writing he did in the Village Voice in 1976, he began receiving regular letters from UFO witnesses, including a few cases of missing time, which is a big thing in the UFO abductee you know lore Ouvre, yeah, yeah, sure which he found credible because he felt like he couldn't explain where the time went otherwise, which might be shaky, it's a little hard to say, especially since these are just letters. So Hopkins using data from these investigations under a bloke and a psychologist named Aphrodite Claymar, that's a name.
Speaker 2:That sounds like a Star Trek original series character.
Speaker 1:You know, they dress like a Greek goddess.
Speaker 2:Right or it's a blaxploitation character Expanded this idea in his 1981 book Missing Time, which included feelings of fear, awe of alien technology, anger, helplessness and a form of Stockholm syndrome where they felt affectionate or beholden to the aliens that had abducted them. Because of these responses being typical, he found them to be credible, which is also relatively problematic. He believed that aliens were, quote callous, indifferent, amoral race bent solely upon gratifying its own scientific needs at whatever cost to us. We're already getting a lot of leaps in logic here, unfortunately. But I mean he did work with a lot of clinical scientists and these are just summations of his work. These aren't the nuts and bolts of the whole thing. So we'll hold off on judgment for now. But he won't. But he definitely won't. At the end of Missing Time, hopkins included this quote as an afterward.
Speaker 2:I asked anyone who felt that he or she might have had an experience similar to those dealt with in Missing Time to write me at my publisher's address. Among the hundreds of letters that arrived in response from places as divergent as Australia and Norway, lebanon and Canada was Kathy's, and this is a woman named Kathy Davis. He found her testimony an intriguing account Quote. Subsequently she told me that she had written an earlier note that then she tore up assuming that I would not probably be interested. Her second letter, however, the one she actually mailed, triggered an investigation the extent of which she clearly could not have foreseen. It has involved the skills chemists, radiologists, medical practitioners, psychologists and other specialists. I have made four trips to Indianapolis I'm assuming that's around where she is instead of just randomly going to Indianapolis to interview various principals and Kathy has come to New York three times. In-depth psychological tests and interviews have been employed, as has quote lie detection in the form of voice stress analysis administered by a professional in the field. Ultimately, the and this is what would become known as the Copley Woods affair has yielded more new information unsettling information, it must be said about the nature and purpose of the UFO phenomenon than any case yet investigated.
Speaker 2:This is a very large claim to make, but I believe the evidence fully justifies it. So he's all on board, ignoring most of the letters. He got A lot of them. He was just like this is bullshit, this is bullshit, this is bullshit, but with certain ones he really believed he had an opportunity to either prove or disprove the scenario. This is a little long, but this is from the actual letter that Kathy Davis sent, quote around the first week of July 1983, about 8 to 9 pm, I was preparing to go out and sew a little neighbor's home. Sew a little. Sew a little at a neighbor's home.
Speaker 1:Oh OK.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that didn't make sense either. I don't know. I just make houses for the little people.
Speaker 1:I don't know why I'm talking like this. I live in Indianapolis.
Speaker 2:Darby O'Gill and the little people. And while I was standing at the kitchen window I noticed a light in the pool house and the door was open. I remember shuddering it earlier so I knew it shouldn't be open, let alone have the light on. So I mentioned it to Mom. She looked and wondered what was up, but neither of us were all that alarmed. When I got ready to leave, I decided to drive around the turnaround this is a quote, this isn't my bad grammar To make sure no one was out there, as mom would be alone with the kids in parentheses my sons Rob 4 and Tammy 3. When I did, the light was off and the door was shut and the garage door was open, which was always kept shut.
Speaker 2:When I got to Dee Ann's house one street over, I called Mom and told her what I saw and asked if she would like me to come home and check it out. And she sounded rather nervous, not like my mom at all. She said she'd seen a big light by the pool house and it moved up to the bird feeder and it grew to about two feet in diameter. But she didn't see any beam. It was just like a spotlight on the bird feeder lighting it up, but nothing else around it. When I got there it was gone and I looked around the property with my dad's 22 I'm chicken exclamation mark. I did finally find my dog, penny, hiding under a car out back. Usually she carries on something fierce when anyone she doesn't know is on our property. It's not like her to hide and have to be coaxed out from anywhere, especially by me. She's usually all over me. I didn't see anything. So when I went back to sew and later that night Dee and I and her daughter came back about midnight and went swimming it's really hard to read this way.
Speaker 2:Right after that, our yard was burned by what we don't know. Nothing will grow there now. No matter how much water we give it, wild animals won't go onto it. At first, penny would walk halfway around the yard to avoid walking on it. She'd sniff and run the other way. Birds will no longer go near the bird feeder either, and we have always had tons of birds every day, especially red birds. Well, that's the story of our backyard mystery. It's still here for anyone who wants to see it, more or less unchanged. End quote.
Speaker 2:So this and subsequent investigations led to Hopkins' second novel Intruders the Incredible Visitations at Copley Woods in 1987, which did top the New York Times bestseller list the same year as Whitley Stryber's Communion Fascinating. Later, in 1992, a made-for-television film, intruders, was made-profit with four stated goals To provide sympathetic help, understanding and personal investigation for those reporting UFO abduction experiences. To carry out systematic research into abduction phenomenon through careful study of its patterns and resulting physical and psychological evidence. To mount an extensive program of public education about the phenomenon. And to develop a cadre of trained professionals in various fields to carry out all these projects and this comes from the archived Intruders Foundation website it was essentially an abductees support group and resource center, which is, I don't know. That's an interesting thing.
Speaker 1:I mean that's good. Group and resource center, which is I don't know, that's an interesting thing. I mean that's good. I mean these people seemingly need help with what they think they've experienced or have experienced either way.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, they experienced something. And if this is that, then great. Go somewhere where they believe you or at least don't shun you or shame you or call you crazy. They actually just believe you. That's good.
Speaker 2:One beneficiary of the foundation was an alleged abductee named Linda Napolitan. She was a New York City housewife who claimed that in the early morning hours of November 30th 1989, three extraterrestrial beings kidnapped her from her 12th floor downtown apartment, beamed her through the sky to their spaceship and then performed experiments on her before returning her to her bedroom. That sounds crazy, but it's one of the few abduction scenarios that has outside corroboration from multiple witnesses. Unfortunately, that gives it credibility and then also discredits it at the same time as we'll get into. You know what? It's a crazy, complicated and very unfortunate scenario.
Speaker 2:In February of 1991, hopkins received a letter documenting this event, but not from Napolitano. Quote Dear Mr Hopkins, my partner and I are police officers. We have been in a serious dilemma because of our strict profession and our lack of knowledge on this subject. We didn't know what to do or who to turn to, and hadn't done so until recently. We researched the bookstores over and came up with you. There was an address in your book intruders. It was through your publishers. In turn, we let our fingers do the walking through the white pages. This is like a fucking ad. But he's old, like us, and remembers those, much to our surprise. There you were. We are hoping that you are the correct Bud Hopkins. So here it goes.
Speaker 2:One early morning, about 3 to 3.30 am in late November 1989, we sat in our patrol car underneath the elevated FDR drive on South Street and Catherine Slip observing the surroundings ahead, sitting on the passenger side of our vehicle. I reached into my shirt pocket for a stick of gum. As I opened it I looked down at the silver wrapping that was in my hand, saw it reflecting a firelight type of reddish glow. I looked up through the windshield to see where it was coming from and there it was A strange oval hovering above the top of an apartment building two to three blocks up from where we were sitting. That might be the coming of gozer. It's really hard to say you mean the gozerian?
Speaker 2:the very same. We didn't know where it came from. Its lights turned from a bright reddish orange to a very bright whitish blue, coming out from the bottom of it. It moved out away from the building and lowered itself to an apartment window just below. I yelled for my partner, who was sitting beside me behind the wheel of the patrol car, and he was just as excited as I was. Answer yourself, boys.
Speaker 1:I looked at his pants and boy he was raging for this light.
Speaker 2:He was so excited I I had to be sure of what it was I was seeing, so I went to the glove compartment to get a pair of binoculars, and not condoms at all.
Speaker 1:I promise you they're not condoms. Anyway, this is the story. We grabbed hold of each other, uh-oh.
Speaker 2:This is a deep cover mission.
Speaker 2:This is the way it's written hey, partner, you want to get staked out, except they can't be, and we'll explore why later. And it's really crazy. I had to be sure of what it was I was seeing, so I went to the glove compartment to get a pair of binoculars. We grab a hold of each other and we're going to get out of the car. But what could we do for that poor little girl or woman wearing a full white nightgown? She was floating in midair in a bright beam of whitish blue light, looking like an angel.
Speaker 2:She was then brought up into the bottom of the very large oval, about three quarters the size of the building, across. Now, they did not know her, they had no knowledge of who she was. They witnessed this on their own, which is an extremely interesting point. However, not a smoking gun, an interesting idea. This didn't come from her at first. Yeah, yeah, this is where we get into some problems here. To continue with the letter, this poor person was escorted out of her window. I don't know if she was willing or not. I don't think so, because it seemed as though she was being escorted up into this thing by three ugly but smaller human-like creatures. Okay, okay, let's pause there. Was there a window? Was it like a zeppelin, where they have like a thing, and you look into the windows.
Speaker 1:I mean, there have been many cases throughout the decades of describing windows on crafts, but the way that it was described before, she was just going up into this oval, into this craft before by them yeah, but I don't understand where do we get these? How do they see these creatures?
Speaker 2:right. Where were they? What were they doing? Were they physically carrying her? Because they don't seem to indicate that at any other point.
Speaker 1:And they can make out three creatures. From how many 12 stories?
Speaker 2:up.
Speaker 1:Yeah, at least.
Speaker 2:And you can tell they're not human. I mean maybe if they're weirdly shaped, I guess. But I mean, like that's such a weird non sequitur in the middle of this that just doesn't seem to gel. But that's not the biggest problem with this and we'll get to the bigger problems. They were supposedly three ugly but smaller human-like creatures, one above her and two below. They seem to be in charge. On top of our fear of getting involved, we were also carrying a load of guilt because we didn't help her and we didn't know what was going to become of her after she was escorted up and in the oval, turned reddish-orange again and whisked away, coming in our direction, above us. It must have flown over the FDR drive while we were sitting beneath it. Then it plunged into the river behind us, not far from Pier 17, behind the Brooklyn Bridge. Someone else had to see what happened that morning. I know what we saw.
Speaker 1:I know what we saw.
Speaker 2:Don't tell me I didn't see it. I saw it happen. Don't tell me it didn't happen. I saw it happen and we'll never forget it.
Speaker 2:Mr Hopkins, the oval never came up from under the river. It's possible that it could have after we drove away about four to five minutes later. We could have stayed longer. We couldn't ignore our radio call any longer. The guilt is brutal, more so than the fear we felt when we witnessed this terrible encounter. The guilt has lingered into today and we find it difficult living with ourselves.
Speaker 2:My partner and I have been debating for 14 or 15 months if we should seek her out. We know the building and we know which window she came out of. Perhaps she was just a figment of our imagination. If she isn't, is she alive and well? We don't know. We have to know. We're feeling much better now that we've had the chance to tell someone else than ourselves. We wish to stay anonymous for the time being, on the count of our profession. If we should decide to seek this person out and she may very well value her privacy, as we do, and we respect that we'll contact you again with further information if we do find her, and I hope we do Now.
Speaker 2:I know that's long, but there's a reason I included all of that. The sign-off is many thanks. Police officers Dan and Richard. Now, if you have watched the Netflix documentary series on this case, napolitano likened these officers to, essentially, the men in black. They were mysterious, they were secretive, they were accusatory, using vague, possibly fake names, but they also were distinctly human. They were human, sure, but I mean the way that she implied their presence. She thought they were like CIA or like FBI or something Right.
Speaker 1:When they finally meet her.
Speaker 2:When they finally meet her.
Speaker 1:Ideally, you guys have all watched the series before you're listening to this, so we can get an explorer-esque territory for a case that's I don't know 40 years old.
Speaker 2:And we're almost there and I'm sure a lot of the way they presented themselves would have come across that way. Let's say they're police officers and they're trying to figure out what's going on. They're not going to tip their hand right off the bat, right? They want to know if she's crazy, if she staged something, if she did something weird, theoretically right. So I could see why you would think oh, they're kind of aloof and weird and standoffish and she was very combative with them, you know, by her own admission. It is funny in that series where she's just like I'm a Italian woman from New York, fuck you for accusing me of shit. I get that.
Speaker 1:But she also seemed to be afraid of them as well.
Speaker 2:She was 100% afraid of them. But it was. Those were the same cops that did reach out to Hopkins. They seemed at that point to be pretty upfront about their part. Except in that letter this is me putting pieces together here they did imply that they were working in their capacity as police officers right, yes. In communication with Hopkins. They then claimed that they were operating as bodyguards who were with their client at the time, but refused to name him, I believe that's not in that letter, but in subsequent letters I believe that comes out.
Speaker 2:Right, but those are contradictory letters.
Speaker 1:Very much so, and they implied that they are police officers, but they state they're police officers in their patrol car. But the men who are later identified by Napolitano are not police.
Speaker 2:Right. So already this account that led to this investigation is super suspect. Red flags all over the place here Because they stated they were police officers and implied that they were working in their capacity as police officers, in their capacity as police officers, but then, as more communication went along, they admitted that they were security detail slash bodyguards for a foreign dignitary Then UN Secretary General, javier Perez de Cular.
Speaker 1:That comes out later because, remember, he signs the.
Speaker 2:Why did they pretend like they were on patrol as cops?
Speaker 1:To play devil's advocate. They are writing to a UFO investigator in a time where it was certainly not as well as accepted or prevalent in pop culture. They could have feared for their jobs if it had gotten out who and what they were and what they were doing.
Speaker 2:Their credibility takes a big hit when they're omitting huge or just straight up obfuscating huge details, that they're asking him to investigate this, and if they're not going to tell the truth about even their basic situation, they don't have to reveal their actual identities, but they've already set themselves up to be questioned. Let's just say, at best they didn't help their case.
Speaker 1:Well, I think there's a lot of issues at play.
Speaker 2:There's a lot of issues we'll get to, don't worry. Yeah, but it's why Hopkins got involved. Was this, he thought, a credible account from credible people?
Speaker 1:I will say again, one of the reasons it had teeth within the community and the larger community looking at this is that it wasn't just them. There are supposedly what 20 to 22 other witnesses. There are supposedly 23 witnesses Right. And I'm counting the cop bodyguard people as one to two people.
Speaker 2:Yeah, Of course their foreign dignitary supposedly also witnessed the event.
Speaker 1:Right. Having one or two other witnesses, that's one thing, but having 20, that has a little more staying power.
Speaker 2:I agree completely. That part is fascinating and, I think, a key element in this mystery. However, he got involved because what he assumed was an earnest statement from two police officers working in their capacity and they weren't. That wasn't true and that lines up more closely with Napolitano's assertions that they were really vague about being law enforcement and about how vague they were with their identities. When they finally confronted her which we're about to get to, jolted awake, she claimed that she felt that something wasn't right.
Speaker 2:Something was in the room with her, and anybody who's experienced sleep paralysis or shadow people experiences or even abductions this is a very common thing. She insists that three gray colored bipedal aliens took her physically from her 12th floor Manhattan apartment using a blue light stream thing that paralyzed her, before lifting her into the air onto a reddish-orange spacecraft which then veered off toward the Brooklyn Bridge. Once aboard that craft, these beings performed a series of vague, unspecified experiments on her before returning her unharmed to her bedroom. She described the aliens as having black eyes. They were able to communicate with her telepathically A lot of boxes here Telling her in some strange language to be quiet, which is weird because they communicate telepathically Before she found herself unable to move as the blue beam lifted her into the night sky. Yada, yada, yada.
Speaker 2:So after the incident she claimed that she remembered an examination room where a metallic device was inserted into her nose. The next thing she remembered was waking up back in her apartment next to her husband as if nothing had happened, and her first inclination was that she had dreamed the whole episode until she discovered a lump in her nose. So the Napolitano went to a doctor and an x-ray allegedly indicated that she had something lodged in there. Doctor, and an x-ray allegedly indicated that she had something lodged in there. Later, an ear, nose and throat specialist confirmed that a lump of some sort had been inserted there. Essentially, the x-rays confirmed what she had suspected, which was another reason that Hopkins put a lot of credibility into this story.
Speaker 2:Hopkins claimed that he had uncovered at least 23 witnesses who had come forward to corroborate this narrative, though he never would reveal their names or identities. But then in communication, Hopkins revealed to those supposed police officers that Napolitano was still alive, that she had survived the ordeal. So Richard and Dan reportedly visited her at her apartment and Dan reportedly visited her at her apartment and, depending on who you ask if it's Napolitano, it was an accusatory confrontation. If you ask Hopkins, they claim to him that it was a mutually supportive relationship in which where they all kind of agreed on what happened that night, based on telling each other their personal experiences. I'm not exactly sure what to make of that, especially after what comes next, because this is where it gets really dark.
Speaker 2:According to Hopkins, the quote police officer known as Dan began stalking Napolitano. He apparently would stake out her apartment daily. Then, in April 1981, they allegedly kidnapped napolitano, forcing in her into their car and interrogating her for hours about the alleged abduction, trying to see if she knew more than she was letting on or if she was faking it. They even had her take off her shoes and show them her toes to prove that she wasn't an alien herself this.
Speaker 1:This is one of those weird bits from her tale of how, like one of them would call her half-breed and thought she had webbed toes that would indicate that she was some type of hybridization.
Speaker 2:And this is the problem with coming through the filter of Hopkins and we'll get to this a little bit later but he has this whole thing about alien hybrids. This is the Chris Carter playbook. This whole thing is just Chris Carter's narrative for X-Files.
Speaker 1:Well, a lot of this is where he got it from 100%.
Speaker 2:But I'm saying like. This plays out like most seasons of X-Files, of the alien abduction stuff. Almost all of this comes from this incident. A lot of the main lore alien abduction stuff comes straight out of this. After this incident where she was kidnapped, hopkins claimed Dan grew increasingly delusional and obsessed with Napolitano. Supposedly in 1991, in October, he kidnapped her again, on his own this time, and brought her to a beach house on Long Island. This event actually literally happens in the X-Files and then they retcon it later in those terrible seasons later on. But Napolitano told Hopkins that Dan then ordered her to wear a white nightgown, similar to the one she'd worn the night of the abduction, and when she refused to get changed in front of him, he became frantic, attempted to rape her, calling her his quote Lady of the Sand. I don't know what the fuck that is.
Speaker 1:What.
Speaker 2:I guess this comes from Hopkins. Thankfully, napolitano somehow was able to escape and she never saw Dan again, though she claimed he wrote her letters in which he confessed to being in love with her and to fantasizing about kidnapping her more. Okay, that's not good. During this time, napolitano also claimed she was being followed by men in black suits actual men in black this time, causing her to fear for her life. Now one reading is she's becoming increasingly paranoid, for whatever reason, because she saw even these guys as that kind of thing, but now they're just straight up men in black. Also, she could be suffering from some severe ptsd, and on one hand, she could be paranoid because of her fantasy that she's woven or there's some really serious ptsd going on that's causing her to become paranoid, to have these kind of delusions or maybe even have a point.
Speaker 1:Or I mean, that's what's the best way to get further sympathy. If you're trying to like spread the story, paint yourself as even more the victim.
Speaker 2:Which she was. She did end up becoming a pretty big public figure for a second, so her case apparently had a really big impact on other witnesses of the event. But a lot of this comes from Dan. Hopkins concluded that Dan and some of the other witnesses didn't come forward and sort of secretly confessed their I guess PTSD about the situation afterward. According to the Skeptics UFO newsletter, Dan's mental health specifically deteriorated to the point that he had to be checked into a mental health facility. Okay, good, that's moving forward. Be checked into a mental health facility Okay, good, that's moving forward. As for the supposed foreign dignitary that Richard and Dan had been guarding that night, it supposedly rattled him enough that it changed his political priorities. According to the 2022 documentary Linda Napolitano the alien abduction case of the century, this politician wrote a letter to Hopkins emphasizing the importance of taking care of the planet and begging Hopkins to stop investigating the incident so that the extraterrestrials could continue their grand plan.
Speaker 1:What Wait?
Speaker 2:that's what the supposed letter says yes, that's what Hopkins maintained. Yeah, this is where we're getting into some like really dude, All right. Napolitano herself suggested that her abduction was meant to draw the attention of world leaders and steer the course of global politics to focus on environmental sustainability.
Speaker 1:This is from the beginning, of not necessarily abductees, but people that have encountered aliens. A lot of times it's the space brother kind of variety where they come and tell you you know, one of the hallmarks is you know impending natural disasters or global catastrophes brought on by human negligence or interference, and that we need to heal the planet physically and psychically and spiritually in In 1996, hopkins released Witnessed the true story of the Brooklyn Bridge UFO abductions.
Speaker 2:It was not, however, without criticism. The purported evidence put forth in Witnessed in support of Napolitano's claims are contested famously now in the Manhattan Alien Abduction series on Netflix by Hopkins' late ex-wife, carol Rainey. Alien abduction series on netflix by hopkins late ex-wife, carol rainey. She died during the production of that series, which I didn't find out about until after I watched it, and so I looked it up. So that's why, when they keep showing both of them videos, napolitano is watching pre-recorded video of her before she died. That's why they never confront each other directly, right, but is she not watching video of linda basically throughout 2022 and then carol died? It's too bad. Yeah, it is really sad. So when they showed linda that stuff that was already done. They edited it to make it seem like they're going tit for tat, but the stuff they recorded with carol was recorded a year or so before, okay, and so the stuff that carol is reacting to is mostly archival footage and some preliminary stuff that Netflix had done with Linda.
Speaker 1:Interesting.
Speaker 2:And so it's one of the reasons that Linda sued Netflix immediately after that came out, because she feels like it wasn't a fair representation of the story of her or her ability to argue with Carol, and that lawsuit is ongoing and will go nowhere.
Speaker 1:No it's. I don't think it has any legs to stand on.
Speaker 2:She was upset about the way that they framed it for that reason that it made it seem like well, she's like well I now. I want to be able to rebut her, but I can't because she's dead.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think a lot of things. I think the strongest evidence isn't what Carol brings forth, necessarily.
Speaker 2:No, but the interesting thing was that Carol herself was a documentary filmmaker and a lot of the stuff that they use in that series is actually from her unused footage. Basically she was going around documenting Bud Hopkins throughout years and was compiling her own documentary and so a lot of the Netflix stuff uses that and Linda got upset that she couldn't refute it. Other critics of Hopkins' views on alien abductions in general sort of maintained the normal pushbacks on the phenomenon. But not surprisingly it's the normal stuff about sleep paralysis and the stuff we've already talked about that everybody kind of knows about already at this point. But to some alien enthusiasts just the number of witnesses of the event prove that something really did happen that night. And I'm sure something did happen that night. Unfortunately, because of the shadiness of a lot of the people involved, it's hard to tell what it was, but something undoubtedly happened that evening.
Speaker 1:It's hard to tell what it was, but something undoubtedly happened that evening it's hard to say the amount of witnesses lead you to have some type of credibility, the fact that I don't really know what most of the witnesses said, the few that they discuss. They at least refute the police officer. Well, the the bodyguards, whatever bodyguards yeah and you know, there's a couple others where, like, there's an old, lady and she doesn't see anything. She didn't know she saw. Even if they were credible, there's no way to corroborate that.
Speaker 2:So it's always going to like lean into the camp of it's easy to dispute and that's kind of always a problem with things like whistleblowers or anonymous sources. It's kind of always a problem with things like whistleblowers or anonymous sources. It's really hard. You just kind of have to take them on their word that these sources, they were telling the truth and that they were sincere, and so that's always going to leave an air of mystery, no matter what, no matter how credible they might have been. But one of the most damning things I think honestly that really hurt Hopkins, was that he himself admitted to have never met Dan or Richard Hopkins was that he himself admitted to have never met Dan or Richard. So all of everything he's gotten is either through correspondence in letter form with them or with other people anonymously who knew them, or from Linda.
Speaker 1:Yeah, who might seem to be like the main source of information about them.
Speaker 2:Right, that's a big problem because we do have letters from Dan and Richard, but they were not credible on the surface and one of them pretty credibly suffered from mental illness. So unfortunately, given the lack of concrete evidence, even some of the most hardcore UFO abductee believers think that Linda Napolitano's story is a hoax. Story is a hoax Still. Despite all of that, hopkins and Rainey co-wrote the 2003 book Sight Unseen Science, UFO Invisibility and Transgenic Beings.
Speaker 2:In this book, hopkins, along with Elizabeth Slater, who conducted psychological tests on abductees, likened their experiences and this focused mostly on the stuff that you touched on in Harvest. And this focused mostly on the stuff that you touched on in Harvest Sexual experiences, experimentations, assaults, which were portrayed in this book as not unlike rape but specifically for the purpose of human reproductive capabilities, to the extent where, in the book, hopkins often seemingly dismisses the subject's conscious memory of abuse for being alien experiences. It's not his most popular book. He seems to have become more of an alarmist or just more willing to believe, like a cycle of cognitive dissonance and self-bias in his approach, rather than his earlier stuff, where it was more clinical and more skeptical and more objective.
Speaker 2:And then it gets weird because then he starts seeing these things as a ramping up of some sort of apocalyptic event and he sees them more and more as menacing and sinister. He describes a lot of the events as nightmarish and severe.
Speaker 1:Which I don't think is out of line.
Speaker 2:No, but I mean, as the guy goes along, he very obviously has become less and less objective and less skeptical and I know in his mind he's like well, I've got all this evidence and it seems to be building to this thing. That's fine, but you can't go into that thinking that the whole time, like you have to. I mean.
Speaker 1:I appreciate what you did. You know like setting up support groups and trying to help people through things, but that is not objective and you can't keep your objectivity doing that. Once you form these personal relationships with people, you can't separate yourself from their events and the factual natures of those things.
Speaker 2:Right, you know it reminds me a little bit of Michael Moore in that sense, bit of michael moore in that sense. If you watch roger and me, it goes through a specific lens. Objectively he's got a point. Great man on the street stuff presents the facts in a way that is hard to dispute, and a lot of his early work does that. But then when you get later on he uses the same sort of techniques to make movies that more reinforce the opinions he already has, whether he's right or not, and it kind of goes off the rails to an extent where it's hard to give him credibility as much as he used to have. I feel like that's what's happening. So for this last book, just as an example, on May 9th 2004, hopkins was interviewed by friend of the pod, art Bell on Coast to Coast AM. For those of you out there who don't know, jake, how would you describe Coast to Coast?
Speaker 1:Coast to Coast AM was a nighttime radio broadcast where it started out regionally in the Southwest and expanded out nationwide where Art Bell would bring different guests on involving the paranormal in a variety of ways and then people call in with their experiences or whatever paranormal news is going on. It was a playground for those interested in this type of stuff. You're hearing all these different stories and at the time that was kind of the main outlet, I would say, for exposure Pre-podcast. You had this one radio show where this was about aliens and cryptids and UFOs and ancient pyramids and time travel and all of these things that you'd have. People who are writing books, promoting books. A lot of conspiracy ideas came from this and kind of the same way that, say, Alex Jones now is like a purveyor of right insanity and conspiracy laden QAnon, adjacent BS, Art Bell and later that he doesn't believe.
Speaker 2:No, he doesn't believe.
Speaker 1:Art was felt like a radio host who was just happy to give someone a platform. He would push back on certain things, but he wasn't a diehard dyed in the wool believer. He was a radio host who gave people a platform to express interesting ideas.
Speaker 2:Which now is dangerous, but back then was pretty innocent. It was.
Speaker 1:It was a fun radio show to just listen to. You'd hear plenty of wild stories. Some of it would be hilarious, some would be really endearing, some would be captivating.
Speaker 2:The famous phone call of the guy that escaped from Area 51 or whatever.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I love it. It's on the Tool album Anima, I think. Coast to Coast is still on now, I think with George Knapp.
Speaker 2:Well, now it's.
Speaker 1:Has George Knapp left. It's Nori now, oh, george Nori now.
Speaker 2:Yeah, knapp is gone, but this is where you get guys like David Icke.
Speaker 1:I remember Father Malachi Martin quite a bit. Oh boy, there's the famous Mel's Hole phenomenon. That's essentially just coming from people calling and writing in to Coast to Coast. That whole story comes from.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it was fun, it was innocent, but unfortunately it did lay the groundwork for what we have today, which is not good.
Speaker 1:But just like X-Files doesn't make it a bad thing because it was perverted and manipulated.
Speaker 2:post-mortem that is true, so I wanted to share with you a clip from that. Oh okay, I edited down a little clip from, and this comes from his discussion about his last book 2003. Thank you, thank you.
Speaker 3:The whole second half of the book has to deal with people who seem to be creatures beings, with people who seem to be creatures beings, part human and part alien, who seem to be operating in the real world right along with the UFO aliens, the gray beings, in facilitating abductions. In other words, they seem to be able to eat meals, drive cars, talk to people and so forth. Yet they can also. These transgenic beings seem to be able to absolutely control another person's behavior, read their minds, pass through walls, do the things that the aliens themselves are able to do. And this is, of course, the ultimate result of what I had written about in intruders, where, it seemed to be, the basic purpose that we discussed earlier of the phenomenon really was to produce this kind of viable mix.
Speaker 3:And what's interesting to me in terms of the objections science has and how they've had to back away, when I wrote Intruders and I talked about this attempt to create a mix of alien and human characteristics, I was, of course, attacked roundly. That's impossible, we could never do such a thing. And, of course, since 1987, when that book came out, we have mapped the human genome, which is unbelievable as an accomplishment, and we are now in an area where, as you know, they have been able to take a gene from a jellyfish and splice it into the genetic makeup of a rabbit A jelly rabbit A jelly rabbit.
Speaker 1:Finally.
Speaker 2:A jelly rabbit, a jelly rabbit, finally a jelly rabbit Mommy when will I get my jelly rabbit? And then he goes on about these seemingly magical abilities that these hybrid jellyfish rabbits have the hybrid infiltration.
Speaker 1:It's all levels of society.
Speaker 2:This is kind of the sad part about hopkins is that we went from a guy that legitimately brought on scientists, did actual experimentation, real research and made his bread and butter on credibility, and now he's talking about alien human hybrids like they're a fact of life yeah, yes, uh.
Speaker 1:On the surface it is almost ridiculously sad that, from one point of view, someone has gone from trying to deal with and help people who had traumatic experiences, try to get through them, understand them, come out the other side, able to live and function. On the other hand, the further you go down this rabbit hole and the more inundated you are with cases and deeper levels of insidious alien behavior and contact and furthering plans. You kind of have to up and ante and, whether it's real or not, you keep getting pushed further and further to these edges of believability, plausibility and also, if you're going to be doing this, what sells? If we go back to the Alex Jones thing, that's why everything is this is the most important election of our lifetime. The New World Order has a plan that's going to happen impending. So you've got to buy my boner pills and my brain juice. It's the same reason why certain religions the Messiah is coming, so you have to act now.
Speaker 2:Oh, Jim Baker. Now all he does is sell Doomsday Prepper shit you light the fire.
Speaker 1:Nothing is more galvanizing and intense than a coming alien invasion that's going to sell books. That's an enticing and scary proposition, Whether one hand is washing the other, or it's where the evidence quote unquote has led him to believe. Or this is what's going to sell because this is what's more popular and this is what's going to scare people and make them feel the need to read it before it happens. I, I can't say, and it's it's really your point of view that's going to determine that.
Speaker 2:um, but he's certainly not the only person in this field sees a mass hybridization infiltration occurring yeah, but that's that's its own separate thing, because a lot of that gets into eugenics and dysgenics, which is a thing again. The problem that I have is that david I I think we both now agree that, at least at this point, he's a grifter. He's been doing it so long.
Speaker 1:It's really tough to know how much of this is, I believe, and so I'm going to put it out there and make money off of it, or I need to make money, so I'm going to push this out there. Early on, for years and years and years, he was just this crackpot loony, who was kind of funny on the outside with this crazy idea, but it gained steam. It's an odd thing to be so devout into that finally breaks through to some type of mainstream. You think if it wasn't working you would have moved on to some other thing, you know?
Speaker 2:what I mean. Yeah, I agree, but the thing about Hopkins is that he already was a successful artist. He was a successful studio artist throughout his entire career. He really wasn't financially dependent on the books that he only wrote what? Four books, six books, but I mean, this wasn't like his entire identity. He had a whole other life that I don't get the grifter vibe from Hopkins. I think he just kind of started believing his own hype a little too much and lost objectivity, and especially since Bud Hopkins died in 2011, long before a lot of these grifters that peddled this stuff found purchase in mainstream American pop culture or at least pop culture in general, and I don't think at any point I doubted Hopkins' sincerity about his beliefs. I can't say the same thing about David Icke. We both know for a fact Alex Jones is full of shit.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, a million percent, I think you'd have to be a fool not see that I mean, it's literally been proven in court. So I don't feel like he's that kind of guy, but I feel like he was on the path to that, but I think genuinely he thought he was doing good.
Speaker 1:I would say that the things he put out he believed to some extent. That's the way I've read him throughout the years.
Speaker 2:I don't think he. Yeah, I don't think he was bullshitting.
Speaker 1:There's a reason that we all know, well, we all know people that are into the paranormal and the UFO world. They all know Bud Hopkins' name because he was one of those guys who was out there on the front lines in the mass media Yep, getting these stories out there, getting these ideas out there, getting his name out there as a researcher and both a contactee and a ductee helper.
Speaker 2:Advocate. He was an advocate for sure, which I think is a good.
Speaker 1:No, I think he probably maybe pushed a little bit to get out there and try to sell himself and his ideas rather than focusing on the research or smaller scale tasks to aid in understanding this phenomenon. But there's also a reason. We know his name.
Speaker 2:He will be remembered by a huge swath of the UFO community as the father of the abduction or abductee experience movement and did do good work, I think his support groups he really did mean well up until his death and he believed Linda Napolitano up until the day he died. Now he and Carol did divorce day he died and now he and carol did divorce before he died and she wholeheartedly believed that linda was full of shit and, I think, lamented and I think that was one of the reasons for their breakup. But it's not really for us to say that's just kind of what we've been given in the pop culture. To polish it all off, I just want to leave you all with an excerpt. This is from his foreword from the book Intruders, quote.
Speaker 2:So my request to you, the reader do not prejudice, realize, if any aspect of the UFO phenomenon as reported is true, then any of the rest of the reported phenomenon may be true too. Try not to put anthropomorphic limits on what may be an entirely alien intelligence and technology. The true skeptic cannot, at the beginning, accept the impossibility of anything. Well said, very well said, and that's uh, george hopkins, um, I'm not george, but hopkins, I hope there's no, talk about a hybrid.
Speaker 2:No, no, don't need that. He was there at the philadelphia experiment. No, I just typed in.
Speaker 1:Who is george hopkins?
Speaker 2:bob lazar's roommate in college. It's not for us to parse our opinions on it, honestly, don't really matter. Bud Bud Hopkins believed it, and in the stars is where you will find us. We don't use Starlink, though.
Speaker 1:No, we do not. We tried to overturn the election that way.
Speaker 3:It wasn't working out.
Speaker 1:Thank you for listening to us coming checking out our podcast. We've done some paranormal stuff and some UFO stuff, but I think we're going to have a few more UFO things and alien stuff in the pipeline and a little alien uap wap wap series that we're doing.
Speaker 2:I don't I? Those are very different things I'd like to point out.
Speaker 1:Let's squish them all together, uh. So please do stop back and check those out for you. Do that if you wouldn't mind, like share and subscribing. If you think there are other people might be interested in hearing what we're talking about, send it their way. If you do know an, if you wouldn't mind like share and subscribe. If you think there are other people who might be interested in hearing what we're talking about, send it their way. If you do know an alien, please drop them a line. Let them know we have a podcast out. Let them tell their friends in Zeta Reticuli, because that's an untapped market.
Speaker 2:Friends we need that it really is. It's going to take a few years to get to Alpha Centauri, but you know.
Speaker 1:If you can get them to give their podcast app of the choice five DB Coopers just because Zeta Reticulite, they love the DB Cooper story.
Speaker 2:That was apropos of nothing. They just like DB Cooper. It has nothing to do with aliens.
Speaker 1:It's like the French loving Jerry Lewis.
Speaker 2:I don't know. Nobody knows. That's just what they're into. The Germans love David Hasselhoff I. I don't know. Nobody knows why.
Speaker 1:There's no accounting for taste here or the rest of the galaxy.
Speaker 2:It's probably ironic, but we don't quite get it either.
Speaker 1:So you know you play to the fan base. Come back. We thank you for listening. We are going to shut this down Before we do Skip. What should they do?
Speaker 2:Well, they should probably those who are still listening for some reason pay their tabs, tip their waitstaff, make sure they've cleaned up after themselves to some sort of reasonable degree. Make sure they have did all that. Uh, make sure they have done their. I get out of rhythm and then I forget where the fuck I am.
Speaker 1:Hey, uh, let's come back to us, frank, real quick, let's come back to me real quick, Charlie Scheider.
Speaker 2:one-niner, let's come back to me.
Speaker 1:Is that Charlie?
Speaker 2:Scheider. Yeah, it's Roy Scheider's ham radio handle. I don't know what it's Chris Christopherson in Convoy. I don't fucking know what's your 10 for.
Speaker 1:This is Red Rider Scumbag to me. Hammer down, we got some bears up ahead of us. Scumbag, help us in this pod.
Speaker 2:This is a level of hell that we have never. I'm gonna need an old priest and a young priest. They walk into a bar, you see, please make sure you have, please make sure you support your local comic shops and retailers. And from Dispatch HX we would like to say Godspeed, fair wizards.
Speaker 1:Scumbag to us.
Speaker 2:Scumbag Called the ball. Please go away. Scumbag to us, scumbag, scumbag call the ball. Please go away.