The story of Linda Napolitano is very familiar to anyone interested in unexplained phenomena. Napolitano, originally from New York, claims she was abducted from her bedroom by aliens and beamed onto a spaceship in 1988. Now, Netflix is documenting the story—including the people who claim Napolitano made it all up, in a docuseries titled The Manhattan Alien Abduction.
In the docuseries, filmmakers revisit not just Napolitano’s abduction story, but present interviews from people who know her and have supported her for years, alongside an interview with Carol Rainey, perhaps Napolitano’s biggest doubter and the ex-wife of Budd Hopkins, who wrote a book about Napolitano’s experiences called Witnessed: True Story of the Brooklyn Bridge Abduction. Rainey, who passed away in 2023, spent decades opposing Napolitano’s story and calling her a liar. On the docuseries, Rainey can be seen saying Napolitano “made it up.”
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The most shocking thing about the docuseries, however, isn’t the back-and-forth over whether Napolitano is telling the truth or not, but the fact that Napolitano took Netflix to court because of it. In the complaint that Napolitano filed in a New York Supreme Court, according to Forbes, Napolitano alleges that she agreed to have her story portrayed and was promised only one interview with Rainey would be used, but was blindsided by her level of involvement during a screening in September.
In the complaint, Napolitano alleges that Netflix featured Rainey as an expert on the field when in truth she’s an “embittered, alcoholic ex-wife hell-bent on revenge against her husband.”
The complaint also alleges that the show looks to set her up as “a villain for purposes of controversy and conflict,” and that The Manhattan Alien Abduction will “destroy her reputation as an honest and decent person.”
But where is Linda Napolitano now and what is the story behind The Manhattan Alien Abduction?
Where’s Linda Napolitano from Manhattan Alien Abduction now?
According to her recently filed lawsuit, Napolitano now lives in Soddy-Daisy, Tennessee. Back in 1989, she was a housewife and stay-at-home mom, and she claims that on November 30, 1989, she was abducted from her apartment in Manhattan, New York. Napolitano recounts three non-human beings appearing in her bedroom and making her levitate out of the apartment window, on the 12th floor, and into a spaceship floating above the city.
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Budd Hopkin’s book claims there are 23 witnesses to Napolitano floating across Manhattan, though Hopkins doesn’t identify all of them. Some of them are featured in the docuseries, however, with one man saying, “I thought it was a movie — special effects” and another adding, “It scared the heck out of me. I saw a woman coming out a window and just disappear.”
Napolitano’s story has been told before Netflix’s The Manhattan Alien Abduction, first by Hopkins in his 1997 book, but also in the 2018 podcast Somewhere in the Skies and in a 2022 documentary called Linda Napolitano: The Alien Abduction of the Century. Napolitano also discussed her experience in interviews on the “Ricki Lake” show in the 1990s and with Vanity Fair in 2013.