The Manhattan Alien Abduction: Where Is Linda Napolitano Now After Alleged Extraterrestrial Encounter — And Why Is She Suing Netflix Over the Docuseries?

Thousands of people have reported alien sightings over the years — but few stories have gained as much media attention as Linda Napolitano’s. 

The Manhattan Alien Abduction, a three-part Netflix docuseries released in October 2024, investigates her claims that aliens took her from her New York City apartment in November 1989. The incident became highly publicized when artist and UFO researcher Budd Hopkins said he found almost two dozen witnesses who had seen Napolitano floating in the sky. 

“If I was hallucinating then the witnesses saw my hallucination,” she told Vanity Fair in 2013. “That sounds crazier than the whole abduction phenomenon.” 

Carol Rainey, a filmmaker and Hopkins’ ex-wife, refuted Napolitano’s claims and argued in the docuseries that it was all an elaborate hoax. The Manhattan Alien Abduction features commentary from both Napolitano, who still stands by her story, and Rainey, who questioned it until her death in 2023. 

Napolitano sued Netflix days ahead of the project’s release, alleging that it “defames her, paints her in an unflattering light and steals the work of an author who first wrote about her story more than 20 years ago," per Forbes.

So, where is Linda Napolitano now? Here’s what she said happened to her in 1989 and why she’s suing Netflix over The Manhattan Alien Abduction. 

What was the Manhattan alien abduction?

Napolitano alleged that on the night of Nov. 30, 1989, three non-human beings appeared in her bedroom. She said they made her levitate out of her window and into a spacecraft that was hovering above her 12th-floor apartment in Lower Manhattan. After allegedly performing experiments on her, Napolitano said the aliens returned her to her bedroom.

She later reported the incident to Hopkins, who then wrote a book about it in the '90s called Witnessed: The True Story of the Brooklyn Bridge Abduction. In it, Hopkins claimed he found over 20 witnesses to Napolitano's abduction but only used pseudonyms to identify them. 

None of these alleged witnesses were verified — including two security officers who Hopkins claimed wrote him letters about what they saw while allegedly guarding former UN Secretary-General Javier Pérez de Cuéllar. The diplomat later refuted any affiliation with the abduction, saying in a statement to PBS that the “allegations were completely false.” 

In The Manhattan Alien Abduction, Rainey shared footage that shows how varied some of the alleged witnesses’ descriptions are. "Budd cherry-picked compelling details but ignored anything that presented difficult questions," she claimed in the docuseries.

Who is Linda Napolitano?

Linda Napolitano is a former N.Y.C. housewife who claimed she was abducted by aliens in 1989. But that wasn’t her first alleged encounter with extraterrestrials. 

A few months before the alleged Manhattan alien abduction, she wrote to Hopkins about a different encounter she said happened 13 years prior. In The Manhattan Alien Abduction, Napolitano said she dreamt she was levitating and woke up with a nosebleed in her first alleged alien encounter. Afterward, she claimed to find a strange bump — which she and Hopkins believed to be a foreign object — on the side of her nose. When a specialist tried to remove it, the object was no longer there.  

Napolitano was also part of a support group for people who claimed they had been abducted by aliens that Hopkins organized. In his book Witnessed, he refers to Napolitano by the pseudonym Linda Cortile.

Who is Carol Rainey?

Carol Rainey was a filmmaker and Hopkins’ ex-wife who worked to debunk Napolitano’s abduction story until she died in 2023. Though she said in The Manhattan Alien Abduction that she initially believed Napolitano's claims, Rainey started having doubts when Hopkins hypnotized the housewife to recover memories of her supposed encounter. 

Rainey, who had seen Hopkins hypnotize several people for his work, believed Napolitano didn’t act the way most people do while under hypnosis. 

“I felt that Budd had lost his objectivity,” Rainey said in The Manhattan Alien Abduction. “I don’t know if it was through the Linda case, or earlier than that. I couldn’t respect what I heard him do to people who were vulnerable, very vulnerable. I had to try to protect other people from being tormented this way."

She continued, "I was sick. I was literally sick of the whole business, and the only thing I could think to do was to speak out about it.”

According to The New York Times, Hopkins died in 2011. Rainey died in 2023, per the Netflix docuseries.

What happened to Linda Napolitano after she was allegedly abducted?

In Witnessed, Hopkins wrote that at around 3 a.m. on Nov. 30, 1989, Napolitano woke up to find a “diminutive, large-headed figure with enormous black eyes” coming toward her. The UFO researcher said he used “hypnotic regression” to help her remember more details like allegedly being levitated in a “brilliant, bluish white beam of light.” 

Napolitano alleged that once inside the UFO, she underwent “a series of quasi-medical procedures” for two hours before being returned home. 

“There were these creatures around me and they were examining my stomach,” she claimed in The Manhattan Alien Abduction. “One of them came after me with a needle the length of a turkey baster ... I didn’t want to believe that I was a lab rat being experimented on. But after a while, I just couldn’t deny it anymore.”

Napolitano also claimed that years after the incident, the aliens continued to target her family and give them nosebleeds. 

Why is Linda Napolitano suing Netflix? 

Napolitano filed a defamation and fraud lawsuit against Netflix, The Manhattan Alien Abduction filmmakers and producers and the estate of Rainey in October 2024, per The Independent. The suit — which includes Peter Robbins, who was a friend of Hopkins, and the estate of Budd Hopkins as plaintiffs — alleges that Napolitano was misled about the direction of the project and positioned as a “villain for purposes of controversy and conflict.” 

In the complaint — which seeks an undetermined amount of monetary damages for six claims, including fraud, defamation and breach of covenant of good faith and fair dealing — Napolitano claimed she was forced to read from a script that falsely represented her and her story. Napolitano also took issue with her on-screen wardrobe, which the suit said showed her “in a grotesque and unusual fashion, in unflattering clothes that were not her own style of dress, making her up to appear old and haggard."

Another chief complaint of the alleged alien abductee is how prominent of a role Rainey played in the docuseries. Napolitano's claim states that she agreed to the docuseries because she was promised there would only be one interview with Rainey and that the “true story of her abduction would finally be presented.” 

Napolitano also claimed that Rainey, who gave Hopkins’ research documents, notes and videos on the abduction to filmmakers, forged a letter that says Napolitano admitted the “entire incident was a hoax.” She argued in the complaint that she never made that confession.

The plaintiffs asked the New York Supreme Court to bar the docuseries from premiering, but the request was denied, and The Manhattan Alien Abduction premiered on Oct. 30 as planned. PEOPLE has reached out to Netflix for comment.

Where is Linda Napolitano now?

Hopkins wrote in Witnessed that at the time of the alleged abduction, she was married to a man named Steve and had two sons, Steven and John. John (who goes by Johnny and obscured his face on camera) appeared in The Manhattan Alien Abduction alongside his mom and said he also saw three “beings” in the family’s living room as a kid. 

“It’s got to be the most terrifying and hopeless thing that I’ve ever felt,” he said. “So I was very reluctant to even start talking about this again. It’s been over 30 years since I sat down and seriously talked about this to anyone but my therapist."

Johnny added, “I know my mom better than anyone else, and I will tell you right now — there’s no way I believe she would want to make anything like this up.” 

According to Napolitano's lawsuit, she now resides in Tennessee.