Cases and themes
Reports of people taken aboard craft, the investigations of them, and the research controversies. 46 events, newest first.
Select any year above to see what happened that year.
MediaJun 2024
Penn State historian Greg Eghigian published a global history of the UFO phenomenon with Oxford University Press, drawing on archives, old newspapers and interviews to trace how witnesses, scientists, governments and media responded to sightings and abduction reports.
Media15 Mar 2021
Former New York Times reporter Ralph Blumenthal published the first biography of Harvard psychiatrist John Mack, who studied people reporting alien abductions. The book drew mixed reviews, including criticism that it was uncritical of Mack's conclusions.
Photo: Becket01, CC BY-SA 4.0
Media4 Apr 2014
IFC released Alien Abduction, a found-footage horror film directed by Matty Beckerman about a family who encounter aliens while camping. Its story is inspired by the Brown Mountain Lights reported in western North Carolina.
Photo: Thomson200, CC0
Media22 Feb 2013
Dimension Films released Dark Skies, written and directed by Scott Stewart, in which a suburban family comes to believe aliens are targeting them for abduction. Reviewers called it a familiar riff on earlier abduction stories such as Communion.
Photo: Gage Skidmore, CC BY-SA 3.0
Close encountersJul 2011
New Hampshire put up a state historical marker on Route 3 in Lincoln titled 'Betty and Barney Hill Incident', calling it the first widely reported UFO abduction report in the U.S. A resident petitioned for it; the state said it marked the story's cultural impact, not its truth.
MediaNov 2009
Universal agreed to pay the Alaska Press Club after promotion for The Fourth Kind, a film about alleged abductions in Nome, used fabricated news stories attributed to real Alaska papers. The deal included removing the fake articles from the web.
Photo: Sir Mildred Pierce , from North Augusta, South Carolina , USA, CC BY 2.0
Close encounters2007
Nuclear physicist Stanton Friedman and Kathleen Marden, Betty Hill's niece, published 'Captured!' with New Page Books. It retells the 1961 Hill abduction claim, drawing on the Hills' papers, letters and audiotapes, which Marden held as conservator, and compares their hypnosis sessions.
Photo: SMG2019, CC BY-SA 4.0
Close encounters2005
Harvard psychologist Susan Clancy published Abducted with Harvard University Press, based on her interviews with people who believed aliens had taken them. She argued that sleep paralysis, cultural ideas and memories shaped under hypnosis can explain how such beliefs form.
Close encounters2004
Harvard psychologists Richard McNally and Susan Clancy reported in Psychological Science that people who believed they were abducted reacted physiologically to their abduction memories much like trauma patients. They argued that strong belief, not real events, can drive such reactions.
Media2 Dec 2002
Steven Spielberg Presents Taken, a ten-part Sci Fi Channel drama following families entangled with alien abductions and government secrecy from the 1940s onward, premiered. It won the 2003 Emmy for Outstanding Miniseries.
Photo: Helene C. Stikkel, Public domain
Close encountersAug 2002
Harvard psychologists Susan Clancy, Richard McNally and colleagues reported that people with recovered or suspected memories of alien abduction made more false recall and recognition errors in a word-list test than controls, with no difference in correct recall.
Photo: Donna McNally, CC BY-SA 4.0
Close encounters2000
The American Psychological Association's 'Varieties of Anomalous Experience', edited by Etzel Cardena, Steven Jay Lynn and Stanley Krippner, included a chapter by Stuart Appelle, Lynn and Leonard Newman reviewing abduction reports: prevalence, aftereffects, psychopathology and proposed explanations.
Photo: Harrison Keely, CC BY 4.0
Media20 Jan 1998
UPN aired the mock documentary Alien Abduction: Incident in Lake County, a TV remake of Dean Alioto's 1989 McPherson Tape. Many viewers took it as real and some local papers ran notices that it was fiction, while some UFO researchers, including Stanton Friedman, argued it reflected a real tape.
Close encounters1998
Temple University historian David M. Jacobs published The Threat with Simon and Schuster, arguing from hypnosis sessions with abductees that aliens were running a breeding program to produce human-alien hybrids. Kirkus Reviews received the claims skeptically.
Photo: Hinata47d, CC BY-SA 4.0
Close encounters1998
Cornell University Press published political scientist Jodi Dean's study of UFO and abduction culture, which treated aliens as cultural icons of distrust and conspiracy in late-1990s America. The New York Review of Books gave it a sharply critical cover review.
Photo: Institute of Network Cultures from the Netherlands, CC BY-SA 2.0
Media13 Aug 1997
Comedy Central premiered South Park with 'Cartman Gets an Anal Probe,' in which aliens probe Cartman and abduct a younger child. The crude pilot lampooned familiar abduction tropes and launched a long-running series.
Photo: Comedy Central, Public domain
Close encountersApr 1996
Psychologists Leonard Newman and Roy Baumeister published a target article in Psychological Inquiry proposing that abduction memories are largely spurious, elaborated under hypnosis, with masochism-like themes reflecting a wish to escape the self. Several researchers published replies.
Photo: ZURICH.MINDS, CC BY-SA 3.0
Close encounters27 Feb 1996
The PBS science series NOVA examined alien abduction accounts, giving time to Budd Hopkins, John Mack and abductees, then weighing them against sleep paralysis, suggestibility and false-memory research presented by Carl Sagan, Elizabeth Loftus and other skeptics.
Photo: PBS, Public domain
Media1996
Astronomer Carl Sagan's book on scientific skepticism used UFO and alien abduction claims as central case studies, attributing reported encounters to hallucination, misidentification, hoaxes and therapists' influence, and comparing abduction stories with older demon lore.
Photo: Kenneth C. Zirkel, CC BY-SA 4.0
Close encountersAug 1995
After a year-long faculty review of psychiatrist John Mack's work with people reporting alien abductions, Harvard Medical School chose not to censure him. Its dean affirmed Mack's academic freedom but warned him to keep to the faculty's research standards.
Photo: Becket01, CC BY-SA 4.0
Close encounters19 Nov 1994
Psychologist Susan Blackmore argued in New Scientist that abduction accounts need not come from disturbed people: sleep paralysis may supply a real core experience, and suggestion and memory reconstruction can turn it into a vivid, sincerely believed abduction story.
Photo: Zooterkin, CC BY-SA 3.0
Close encounters25 Apr 1994
TIME reported that Donna Bassett, a Boston writer, said she invented an abduction story and faked hypnotic-regression sessions with Harvard psychiatrist John Mack, who she said asked leading questions. Mack cited patient confidentiality; she repeated the account at a skeptics' conference in 1995.
Photo: Becket01, CC BY-SA 4.0
Close encounters1994
Harvard Medical School psychiatrist John E. Mack published Abduction: Human Encounters with Aliens, drawn from his work with people who said they had been taken by aliens. Harvard reviewed his methods and in 1995 decided not to censure him, affirming his academic freedom.
Photo: Becket01, CC BY-SA 4.0
Close encounters1994
Chinese and foreign media reported that a craft had landed on Phoenix Mountain at a forest farm in Wuchang, and farm worker Meng Zhaoguo claimed he was abducted by aliens. Astronomer Liu Yan analyzed the accounts and in 1995 concluded it was likely hallucination or delusion if not invented.
Photo: Jay Fang, CC BY-SA 3.0
Close encounters7 Aug 1993
Kelly Cahill said that driving home near Melbourne she and her husband saw a lit craft, then lost time, later recalling tall dark figures. Researchers said people in another car gave similar accounts, but no report was released and those witnesses never went public.
Photo: Maksym Kozlenko, CC BY-SA 3.0
