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explain away abductions) and no greater tendency toward fantasy-prone thinking or hypnotizability in UFO experiencers. Furthermore, UFO experiencers were found to have higher intelligence, on the average, than the two comparison groups. "In short," the article stated, "reporting UFO experiences was not associated with either social or intellectual marginality" Finally, skeptics point out that the lack of independent witnesses to alleged abduction events is a major deficiency of the abduction phenomenon. Considering the dramatic descriptions of alien craft nearby, abductees being floated out of windows, passed through walls, etc., skeptics argue that one would expect many of these encounters to have been witnessed by neighbors or passers by. Indeed, if recent polls are to be believed, it is estimated that hundreds of thousands if not millions of people have experienced abduction events.'”? To paraphrase one skeptic, "If that many people are being abducted by aliens, then we should see armadas of UFOs floating above the cities of the United States waiting to abduct the millions of people who have alleged such events." On February 1, 1991, abduction researcher Budd Hopkins received a letter he claimed provides the first confirmation of a witnessed abduction. The letter, which Hopkins claimed was from two security officers, "Dan and Richard," recounted an event they claimed to have witnessed on November 30, 1989, at approximately 3:30 A.M. While providing an escort for a "prominent diplomat," they noticed a strange reddish glow coming from the sky. They looked up and saw a glowing oval object hovering above an apartment building two to three blocks up from their location underneath the elevated FDR Drive in Brooklyn, New York. As they watched the object, it descended to the side of the apartment building adjacent to the 12th-floor windows. Both officers observed the event and quickly reached for their binoculars in the glove compartment. What they saw next they could not believe. While the UFO hovered next to the 12th floor of the apartment building, they observed an adult female wearing a full white nightgown being floated out of the 12th story apartment building accompanied by "three ugly but smaller human like creatures, one above her and two below '*” The woman was escorted into the bottom of the craft and disappeared inside. After she was escorted up and into the object, it "whisked away" and then plunged into the river adjacent to pier 17, behind the Brooklyn Bridge. In their letter to Hopkins they stated, "Someone else had to have seen what we saw that morning. I know what we saw and we'll never forget it?! Hopkins, who had been studying abductions for many years at this point, had never heard of an abduction account that was witnessed. There were cases where abductees were reported missing when alleged abductions occurred, but an actual eyewitness report had never been filed before. When Hopkins received the letter from the two security officers, he claims he knew exactly who had been abducted. He had been in contact with a woman named Linda Cortile (an alias for Linda Napolitano), who wrote Hopkins claiming she had experienced frequent abductions in the past. He became acquainted with Linda Napolitano in spring of 70 WITNESSED?