The problem with alien abductions is that you never know what you’re going to get. Sure, it’s all fun and games when you come face-to-face with a Marvin the Martian character, playing practical jokes on one another, chewing the end of a carrot or whatever. But heaven forbid you end up misplaced in a Ridley Scott movie. You will lose your chill very fast.

No matter what your opinion on the vastness of space and the wonderful critters who may or may not be watching you right now, one thing is for certain: if aliens are prone to a little human kidnapping fun every now and then, they are experts at cleaning up the mess after themselves. Because of this, every time some human wakes up naked in a field after being molested by an oversized extraterrestrial brand of drilling machine, the police usually don’t find any evidence lying about, and tend to ask questions to the likes of “have you been drinking?” or “how much cheese did you eat before bed this time, Mr. Woods?”.

That’s not the point, officer. The point is this: why are so many ordinary people, completely independent of one another and with nothing to gain, suddenly telling elaborate stories about little gray men fondling their body parts, when I’m just standing here like hellooo? I mean, I’m not too sure about the statistical likeliness of an alternative intelligent lifeform existing somewhere in our infinite Universe, but I just want it on record that I’m ready to be picked up now, thanks. Planet Earth has become a bit weird now, and so as long as your spaceship has wifi, I am packed and good to go.

15. Jesse Long’s Alien Babies

Jesse Long is obviously a very special boy. Whilst exploring the woods with his brother at the age of five, he stumbled upon a forest clearing where a large round spaceship was parked. Both boys were surprised to find that they could not move, as a tall figure approached Jesse, picked him up, and carried him off into the craft. There, he was plonked on a hard table, then poked and prodded with creepy fingers and cold metallic tools until they located what they were looking for, and let him go.

Nobody knows for sure what they found, but those pesky aliens seemed to really like Jesse, and for years they kept on coming back to fetch him even when he was too tired to play. As he got a bit older, they extracted his sperm and told him they were going to crossbreed his genes with female aliens. A few years later, after yet another abduction, the aliens introduced him to a hybrid creature which they claimed was definitely his, because it probably looked like a complete mess of human/alien features, and you don’t exactly need a paternity test in cases like that.

Jesse is now 65 years old, and still swears that he is telling the truth. In fact, he claims to have met nine of his alien children in total at this point, and has never paid a dime in child support.

14. Linda Napolitano’s Trouble With Humans

It was 1989 in Manhattan when two United Nations bodyguards watched in fear as a woman wearing a white gown sailed out of her window, and into an oval-shaped object hovering above her apartment building. The UFO then changed into an orange color and blasted away. That woman was Linda Napolitano.

Events from her side are even more interesting. She claims that when awoke, she was standing on thin air above the city, fearful she might fall, before arriving safely on a spaceship. A group of bald aliens with giant heads guided her to a table, and lay her down, which was about the point she realized this was not an LSD flashback, and began to scream uncontrollably. One of the aliens placed his hand over her mouth and that is where her recollection ends, ultimately waking up back at home, safe and sound.

This story gets even weirder. The bodyguard spectators could not deal with what they had seen, and slowly became increasingly irrational to the point of psychosis. They believed Linda had supernatural abilities, and they started to stalk her, eventually kidnapping her in broad daylight and interrogating her for hours. One of the bodyguards’ obsession eventually got so crazy that he was ultimately committed to an asylum. And they were not alone. To date, reportedly over 20 other witnesses have come forward, claiming they too saw this abduction take place.

13. The Inappropriate Touching of Antônio Vilas Boas

In 1957, Brazilian farmer Antônio Vilas Boas noticed a red star in the sky. He watched it curiously, as it got closer and closer, bigger and bigger, and then Boas realized this was no star! This was a spaceship! And all of his greatest fears had come true.

The man jumped on his tractor and tried to speed away, but this outdated mode of transport was no match for a machine than can cross the Universe at warp speeds, and the ship swiftly landed behind him, as a small creepy humanoid creature with blue eyes grabbed Boas and took him on board. The man then claims he was lubed up with a gel-like substance, and forced to have intercourse with a female alien who had bright red pubic hair, and maybe he was even into it? I don’t know, who am I to judge? I like some weird stuff. Anyway, once the deed was done, they dropped him off at his place four hours later, and she never called back.

Despite suffering from burnt skin, nausea, and headaches, doctors told him that he was most likely a victim of radiation sickness and this was probably not some alien STI as far as they could tell. Boas eventually became a lawyer but always maintained that what had happened to him was the truth, because it’s out there, or so they say.

12. Amy Rylance’s Speedy Transit

In 2001, when Amy Rylance invited her friend Petra to sleep over at her and husband’s house in Gundiah, Australia, Petra had no idea that Amy was next on the Extraterrestrial to-do list of abductions, and she ignorantly fell soundly asleep in the couple’s guest room.

At 11:15pm, a loud noise awoke Petra from her slumber, and she tiredly wandered into the living room, only to find Amy floating through midair, still frozen in sleeping-position, carried through an open window upon a beam of light towards (what she called) a “huge ship outside”. Petra freaked out a bit and frantically woke up Amy’s husband Keith, but by the time he could make sense of her incoherent blabbering, Amy had already completely disappeared. Keith initially dismissed Petra as having some nonsense dream, until he noticed that the curtains were visibly burnt, and they would cost good money to replace. 90 minutes later, they received a call from a woman in Mackay, Queensland, who claimed she had found Amy. The city of Mackay, by the way, was roughly an eight-hour drive away.

They eventually arrived to find Amy in hospital, bewildered and severely dehydrated. She had red blotches all over her legs, and was mumbling about tall polite figures who were standing around her only moments earlier, taking samples from all sorts of places. What’s more, the hair on her body had grown significantly longer, but even this was not enough evidence to stop the police reporter from snickering in her face.

11. The Botched Abduction Attempt of Colonel H.G. Shaw

As one of the oldest sightings ever reported, the tale of Colonel H.G. Shaw is extra cool because it proves that even these so-called superior beings don’t exactly know what they are doing.

It was back in 1896, when Shaw was traveling in his carriage towards Lodi, California. After his horses got a bit spooked, Shaw noticed three 7 foot tall bald beings standing at the side of the road, holding glowing minerals in their hands, chanting a strange language to one another. The aliens then grabbed Shaw, attempting to lift him up, but the man was too fat and their brittle little arms couldn’t manage it, and so they gave up and ran away.

Not one to be so improperly rejected, Shaw chased them down until he reached a cigar-shaped spaceship hovering in the air, watching as the aliens flew up into it and zoomed away, embarrassed, in hopes of forgetting the whole awkward incident ever happened. But Shaw remembered and told everyone, until the Stockton Evening Mail wrote a piece about it, cementing the alien’s failure for all the world to see.

10. Peter Khoury’s Sexy Alien Time

Growing up, one of the most terrifying things I could possibly fathom was a creature grabbing at my ankles whilst I was asleep, and for Peter Khoury, that is exactly what happened. As soon as these bony fingers wrapped around the man’s legs, his entire body became paralyzed, and before he knew it, he was suddenly surrounded by golden aliens with gigantic eyes, all looking down on him, scaring him like a big group of bullies. Shortly afterwards, one of them shoved a giant needle into his head and he blacked out.

Granted, this could have been a dream, but then how do you explain this: a few years later, Khoury was visited once again. This time, it was a female alien with long white hair, and she crawled into bed with him, engaging in naughty sexual activity. Peter even recalls accidentally biting a piece of the alien’s nipple off and swallowing it, but the kinky spacelady did not seem bothered. Ok, so again, this could have been a wet dream too, except for one tiny detail: when Peter awoke, there was a long blonde hair tied around his penis.

As the holy grail of extraterrestrial souvenirs, Khoury got the hair tested in a lab, and DNA analysis proved it to be biologically different from that of a human’s, which is all a little scary and not something I want to spend too much time thinking about.

9. The Business Meeting Kirsan Ilyumzhinov Almost Missed

Multi-millionaire businessman and former President of the Republic of Kalmykia loves to tell the story about that time he was abducted by otherworldly beings, and taken to another planet, because when you’re that rich and famous, who cares if people think you’re crazy?

According to him, he was sucked from his apartment balcony and onto a ship which was “absolutely enormous” including a chamber that was “the size of a large football pitch”. Unlike other abductions, Ilyumzhinov reported no foul play, and claims that he and the aliens had a lovely chat as they flew to a nearby planet in order to pick up some equipment. After realizing he had a meeting the next morning, Ilyumzhinov panicked, and begged  them to take him home, to which they reassured him not to worry, as they still had time. This is not me trying to be funny either, according to Kirsan, this exchange actually happened.

In his defense, Kirsan’s staff were unable to locate the man for over an hour, and when he magically appeared back in his apartment, they weren’t fully able to explain it. But did they check under the bed? Always check under the bed.

8. The Passionate Love Story of Akon and Elizabeth Klarer

One of the only noted cases of interstellar romance, was this unlikely tale of two star-crossed lovers, South African born human Elizabeth Klarer, and the Meton born alien Akon. According to Klarer (and her two profitable books detailing the holiday fling), she had been in telepathic communication with Akon for years before 1956, when he finally came to her arms, whisking her away in his UFO chariot.

They spent four glorious months together orbiting the nearby Alpha Centauri multiple-star system, which was apparently enough time in alien years to make love, get pregnant, and give birth to a happy hybrid baby boy, who they named Ayling. Unfortunately, her human heart struggled to function in the foreign atmosphere, and she was forced to come home.

Before her death 1994, she claimed to often receive telepathic Whastsapp messages from Akon, delivering news and photos of their child, all the while her story captivated the world, with various online sites promising that she once gave a speech at London’s House of Lords, and that her papers have been read at the United Nations. In other news, I can’t even get a date with a human being.

7. When Travis Walton Was Not Murdered By His Friends

In 1975, when Travis Walton and his five forestry worker friends noticed a strange bright flash coming from the distance, they did what any sensible people would do, and ran straight towards it. They were quick to realize their error when Travis got blasted through the air by a beam of light and sucked straight into a spaceship, slurp!

The workers raced to the police and tearfully relayed their tale, but the authorities figured that this was surely some elaborate story created to cover up the murder of Travis (even though one officer reported “if they were acting, they were awfully good at it”). The forestry crew were detained and interrogated, but the murder theory was instantly dropped when Travis reappeared five days later with one helluva tale to tell. According to him, he was placed on a table where bald aliens in orange robes performed days upon days of experiments on him, until he eventually escaped, running around the ship and then bumping into other humans. Relieved to find help, he was only let down once again when they forced him to inhale some unusual  gas, and that was the last thing he remembered.

Naturally, nobody believed Walton or his friends, but this does remain one of the few alien abduction cases with so many convinced witnesses.

6. Barney and Betty Hill’s Big Night Out

When Barney and Betty Hill were driving back from their 1961 holiday in Niagara Falls, they noticed a strange shape hovering above their car. For a while they debated what they were seeing. Was it a bird? A plane? Superman? A clever new advertising format? And then before they knew it, they were back at home, seven hours later, even though they had only been driving for four.

Furthermore, they both claimed to feel a buzzing sensation, whilst Betty was covered in a strange powder, which so far sounds like a typical weekend for most of my mates. Although it gets a little less funny when they noticed each of their watches had stopped and their clothes were torn in very specific places. Neither of them could explain this, and so they tried their best to ignore it and go to bed. And that’s when Betty started to get the stream of nightmares which reminded her of what had happened…

She said they had been abducted by aliens, who were pretty chill dudes, spoke a bit of broken English, explaining that this was no biggie, standard procedure, just gonna jab this here needle into your navel, and then you’ll be right on your way. Apparently, near the end, these visitors explicitly told her that they were going to wipe her memory clean, but I guess they got the new guy to do it, because he totally messed up. Damnit, new guy! Betty remembered everything!

5. Hilary Porter and the Persistent Reptile Alien

Hilary Porter has an on-and-off long distance relationship with aliens. Her first introduction was at the age of five, when a reptilian creature with black holes for a nose and mouth snatched her up and carried her onto a disk-shaped ship. She was stripped naked and prodded with various bits machinery until she got bored and fell asleep.

Many years later, whilst driving with her husband, they both looked up to find themselves parked at a garage, with no memory of how they got there or the last few hours whatsoever. Upon inspecting her body, Hilary found a red triangular suction mark on her stomach, and was probably fondly reminded on those fun little games her and that reptilian alien used to play when she was a kid.

Since then, Porter gets abducted, like, all the time. She often wakes up with strangely shaped bruises, scratches, or even blood on her clothing, and suffers from intense migraines because of all the memory erasing. She has given the police countless details of how these beings communicate telepathically and have been sent to Earth to extract our genetic material, even providing detailed sketches of these spacemen, which authorities all agree are very good and then stick them up on their fridge.

4. Clayton and Donna Lee Aren’t Having Fun Anymore

For as long as Clayton can remember, he has been a prime target for abduction. He recalls vivid memories as a very young child where he was floating through the air before blacking out, and as a result, is forever plagued by the sneaky sensation that aliens have been studying him throughout his whole life. I’m not sure whether or not he mentioned this crazy talk to Donna before he married her, but as soon as they got hitched, she started getting abducted too.

They have both independently sketched impressions of these aliens whilst describing the shiny metal labs in great detail, and their accounts are always strikingly similar, probably because they live together, and have had loads of time to agree on the specifics. Donna even claims that when she got pregnant, the aliens picked her up, removed the baby, and then put her back to bed.

As these incidents have been happening as recently as 2005, the couple have become the go-to experts/lunatics on the topic, appearing on the O’Reilly Factor, Local 6 News in Orlando, Florida, and are both main subjects in the book Abducted: How People Come to Believe They Were Kidnapped by Aliens by skeptic psychologist Susan Clancy. But while the two may not be shy of opening up about their experiences, they also admit that they live every day in fear of being abducted at any minute, and simply want nothing more than their normal lives back.

3. The Common Assault of Robert Taylor

Around 1979 in Livingston, Scotland, a forestry worker named Robert Taylor was walking his dog, minding his own business, when he happened to cross a UFO hovering above a field, really big, couldn’t miss it. The spacecraft obviously panicked at being caught, and reacting by shooting out two metallic spheres which grabbed the man by his jeans and dragged him up into ship. The last thing Taylor remembers was a nasty odor filling his nostrils “like burning brakes” before he passed out.

When he awoke, he was lying on the ground where he had been standing before. The UFO was gone, but his dog was still there, running around, barking at the air, going absolutely mental. Taylor’s voice had completely disappeared and he found it very difficult to stand up, but he eventually managed to make it home, to which his loving wife informed him that he “looked terrible”.

Due to his torn clothes and grazed body, police took the matter more seriously than most on this list, and admitted that they struggled to explain the “ladder-shaped marks” found at the scene of the crime. Due to the police involvement, Robert Taylor’s story has become known as the “only example of an alien sighting becoming the subject of a criminal investigation” even if the cops ultimately shrugged it off as a common assault.

2. Whitley Strieber: A Fiction Storyteller’s Story

By 1985, Louis Whitley Strieber was already a well-known horror fiction writer, which is why so many find his imaginative story somewhat difficult to believe. According to the man himself, he was awoken by a noise in his isolated upstate New York cabin. He quickly sat up and watched as a 3.5 foot tall figure with two dark holes for eyes came rushing towards him. And the next thing he knew, he was alone in the woods outside of the cabin.

Thanks to regressive hypnosis, Strieber managed to piece together some of the details from his strange tale. He claims to recall that he was on a UFO, surrounded by aliens, screaming. One of the friendlier aliens asked what it could do to calm him down, and Strieber (being the peculiar type of guy he is) said he wanted to smell the being. The extraterrestrial complied, allowing Strieber to sniff its hand (which smelt like “cardboard and cinnamon” in case you were wondering) just before a needle got stuck into his head. The aliens then proceeded to probe his rectum, take some blood from his finger, and then let him go, thanking Strieber for his cooperation. 

Whether true or not, Whitley Strieber wrote extensively about this experience in a book called Communion: A True Story which sold more than 2 million copies and was made into a movie starring Christopher Walken. Profit!

1. Charles Hickson and Calvin Parker’s Undesirable Boat Trip

Nothing worse than when you go on a fishing trip with your co-worker and then get abducted by aliens, right? Just a part of life, I guess. Speak to Charles Hickson and Calvin Parker, who were on Pascagoula River, Mississippi in 1973, when three creatures with no eyes, no necks, and lobster claws for hands floated down from a spaceship and abducted them, ruining their Thursday night plans completely.

Apparently the whole ordeal was over quite quickly, as Parker claim he was hastily unloaded onto a slanted table, got a needle stuck into his penis, and then was plonked back onto the boat in no time at all. The two of them quickly downed a whole load of whiskey (which didn’t help their case in the slightest), and then ran to their nearest sheriff’s office, slurring to the unamused faces about their experience.

In their defense, Hickson passed a lie detector exam, and a secret tape recorder hidden in a private room provided nothing more than the sound of two men utterly freaking out about what had just happened. Unfortunately, the story eventually leaked to the press, and the pair were ridiculed by skeptics for the rest of their lives, but right until Hickson’s death at age 80, he stood by his story. Parker, on the other hand, made a few changes. Instead of aliens, he now claims that those creatures were demons from Hell, sent to taunt his soul whilst injecting his penis with stuff. That’s not much better.

Sources: Buzzfeed, Thought Catalog, Ranker