1976: The Allagash Abductions

The Allagash Four, from left to right, Jack and Jim Weiner, Charlie Foltz, and Chuck Rak, in 1993, 17 years after their abduction experience.

Artist Depiction of Allagash Abduction (Credit: UFO Casebook)

On Friday night, August 20, 1976, four young art students in their early twenties left Boston, Massachusetts for a canoe and camping trip in a wilderness area of Northern Maine along the Allagash River. The group consisted of identical twins, Jack and Jim Weiner, Charlie Foltz and Chuck Rak. Upon arrival at a staging point, they hired a pontoon airplane which flew them and their canoes to Telos Lake on the Allagash Waterway.

During the next several days they canoed and camped along the Waterway. On the evening of Thursday, August 26, they reached Eagle Lake, set up camp and decided to go night fishing for trout. The pitch darkness of the area necessitated the building of a huge bonfire to mark their campsite so that they could find their way back to it. Shortly after beginning to fish, Chuck became aware of a feeling of being watched. He told us that:

“I turned toward the direction from where I felt this and saw a large bright sphere of colored light hovering motionless and soundless about 200-300 feet above the southeastern rim of the cove.”

Chuck yelled for the others to look behind them. There, rising above the trees was a huge oval glowing object. As their eyes became adapted to its intense brightness, a gyroscopic motion was noted, as if there were pathways of energy flowing equatorially and longitudinally from pole to pole. This divided the sphere into four oscillating quadrants of bright colored light. The color changes were very liquid and enveloping, as if the entire object had a plasmatic motion to it, like a thick sauce does as it starts a rolling boil.

Charlie grabbed a flashlight and blinked it at the object. Instantly, the huge rising glowing object came to an abrupt halt and began to slowly approach the canoe. Simultaneously, a tube-shaped beam of light erupted from the object and hit the water. A glowing ring with a dark center reflected on the water’s surface, indicating that the beam was hollow. The object and its beam of light began moving toward the canoe. Terrified, the campers began paddling frantically toward their bonfire and camp as the beam swept across the lake directly at them and engulfed them.

It was from this point on that the conscious memories of the four differed according to each witness’ vantage point. The next thing Charlie remembered was paddling for shore and standing at the campsite with the others, watching the object move away.

Chuck Rak remembers staying in the canoe after the others had piled out in panic onto the shore. Transfixed, still holding his idle paddle, he could not take his eyes off the object.

Jack and Jim were able to consciously remember a bit more. Jack said that “It was just behind us and I could see that we were never going to outrun the Beam. It was advancing too fast and I remember thinking, ‘Holy shit! This is it! We’ll never get away.’ The next thing I knew, we were on the shore getting out of the canoe looking directly at the object which was now about 20 or 30 feet above the water. The beam was coming out of the bottom of it like the object was sitting on the beam. It hovered there, right in front of us, completely silent for what seemed like four or five minutes.

“Suddenly the beam was pointing up towards the sky. The object began to move up and away from us towards the southwestern sky and then shot into the stars and was gone in just a second.”

Jim Weiner said that “There was no mistake that it was coming directly to us. Then I remember standing on the lakeshore watching the object hovering above the lake 50 to 75 yards in front of us . . . Then the search beam went upward into the sky and we saw it moving away at a tremendous speed. We all seemed to be in a state of shock . . . We just stood there unable to move or talk.”

When the strange anesthetizing effect wore off, Chuck got out of the canoe and joined the others as they trudged dreamily up the beach to their camp. Even in this state, they were dumbfounded when they realized what had happened to the huge bonfire that had just been blazing several minutes ago. .

“When we left to go fishing,” said Jim, “we set very large logs on the fire to bum for a good 2 to 3 hours. The entire experience seemed to last, at the most, 15 or 20 minutes. Yet the fire was completely burned down to red. coals.” At that time, they had no memory of what happened during the time it took for their huge bonfire to burn down. This would remain a puzzle to them for years.

A few years later, Jim suffered a head injury which caused temporo-limbic epilepsy. During treatment, Jim’s doctors asked him to report any unusual experiences that might be symptomatic of his condition. Jim described strange experiences that he and his friends had experienced since the UFO encounter. These included awaking at night to see strange creatures, levitation from bed, and temporary paralysis while something was done to the genitals. He also described their encounter with a UFO and the period of missing time. Jim’s doctors advised him to contact a UFO researcher as they felt that Jim and his friends may have been involved in a UFO abduction experience. Jim contacted me during one of my UFO lectures in the Boston area.

In January of 1989, I initiated a formal investigation with MUFON Investigator and CEIII/IV specialist, David Webb (Solar Physicist) and with MUFON Consultant, Anthony (Tony) Constantino (Professional Hypnotist). It was conducted in a careful and meticulous manner over a period of 24 months.

It was obvious to us that the period of missing time had to be sandwiched between sighting the object and reaching shore. The beam of light hitting the canoe seemed to be the dividing point between memory and amnesia. During the first of a long series of hypnosis sessions, it was decided to concentrate on this segment of the terrifying encounter.

Under hypnosis, all four witnesses relived detailed and traumatic UFO abduction experiences during the period of missing time. All were transferred from their canoe into the UFO by the hollow tube-like beam of light. On board, they encountered strange humanoid creatures that exerted some kind of mind control over them so that they could not resist their demands.

All were made to undress and sit on a plastic-like bench in an area illuminated by diffuse white light. After looking at their eyes and in their mouths with a pencil-sized rod with a light on its tip, the aliens placed them in a harness and flexed their arms and legs. Then, one by one they were made to lie on a table where each was examined by a number of strange hand-held and larger machine-like instruments that were lowered over their bodies. During this segment of the examination, the alien entities removed samples of saliva, skin scrapings, blood, feces, urine and sperm from each of the abductees.

After the examinations, the abductees were made to dress and enter another room which had a round portal in one of its walls. They were lined up and made to walk into the portal. Strange sensations surged through their bodies as they found themselves floating down the hollow beam of light into their canoe which was now in shallow water near their campsite. The tube-like light seemed to hold the canoe steady as each was placed in it in the same seating positions they were in prior to the abduction.

As the hypnosis sessions continued, much detail was recovered about their on board experience. Also, it was discovered that the twins had had bedtime visitations by alien creatures and abduction experiences since early childhood. These experiences were relived in vivid detail under hypnosis.

During the course of the investigation an extraordinary event occurred. Jack and his wife Mary were abducted from their remote mountain home in Townshend, Vermont.

During the night of May 20, 1988, Jack’s dog woke him up when he scratched at the door wanting to go out to relieve itself. When Jack got up to put him out, he was shocked to see a blue light shining through the kitchen window. He went out to look and saw a glowing object hovering over the field adjoining his house. He decided to bring the dog back in. In the morning, he thought he had dreamed about the whole thing. However, under hypnosis, he relived a shared abduction experience with his wife in minute detail. Mary only remembered dreaming about deer with big eyes coming to their bedside. She did not respond to hypnosis. The following is an excerpt from Jack’s hypnosis sessions.

“It’s blue. A blue light. And I think, ‘That’s funny. That’s not the moon.’ And then I go to the window and I look out the window and what I see is amazing. I see a big, bright light and it’s right over the truck in the field outside the house. And I’m thinking, ‘Oh my God! I can’t believe that!’ And so I say, ‘Mary, get up. Get up and look!’ And I run to the door and I go out the door and I’m running towards the light up in the field . . . Then I see the dog running alongside me . . . And so I pick him up and I run back to the house . . . The light is still there and it’s moving . . . And then I put the dog back in bed and I’m thinking, ‘I don’t want to do this. I don’t want to do this now!’ I don’t want to look at the light . . . So I’m going back to bed. . . . And I’m thinking, ‘I don’t want to deal with this now. Why are they here now?’ And I’m scared . . . so I pull the covers over my head . . . and Mary’s next to me. And then I know, I know that something’s in the house. I just know that they’re there and I’m under the covers and I think, ‘Oh God, oh God! Why are they here now? I don’t want this to happen.’ (Gasps) And then the covers move and I feel something on the cover . . . And then the covers are down and I’m looking there and I was right. They’re right there! Oh God! They’re right there, right next to my bed . . . It has big eyes and a big head and it’s dark and there’s light behind it coming in the door. And it’s just taking the covers away and I don’t want to look at it . . . And I look at Mary . . . There’s another one there and it’s next to Mary. And I wish that I could do something but I can’t. I have to do what they want. And the light is out there and they want me to go out there . . . They’re lifting me. Mary’s standing and they’re making us move towards light . . . And the dog isn’t doing anything. We’re through the door . . . We walk up the lawn and I feel like I’m floating . . . our feet are on the ground, but my feet are not doing what I want them to.”

Jack and Mary were brought to stand in front of a huge house-sized glowing object sitting on a blue light that enveloped its underside. The glow around the object itself was changing colors from white to yellow to orange and purple and back to white. No noise emanated from the~ object, but the air was filled with the acrid smell of ozone. Then, Jack and Mary were made to walk into the blue light under the object. Instantaneously they were transferred inside of the glowing object. Mary was separated from Jack, who was made to undergo examinations similar to the one that he and his friends had experienced twelve years earlier. After the examination, Mary rejoined Jack and they were literally floated across the lawn from the craft to their house, through the unopened front door and to their bedroom, where they went back to bed in a strange lethargic state of mind.

This experience left physical evidence behind in the form of burns on the bottom of Jack’s feet. Jack also received a biopsy-like scoop mark above his ankle during another abduction. The scoop mark was located just above a scar left behind during an operation for an anomalous lump that had appeared overnight on Jack’s leg several years prior. Jack’s local doctor thought it was a cyst, but was unable to drain it so referred Jack to a surgeon who removed it. Jack was told that local pathologists did not know what it was and that it had been sent to the Center for Disease Control in Atlanta, Georgia, for further analysis. However, when we checked Jack’s medical records, we found that it was sent to military pathologists in Washington, D.C., where it was examined by a United States Air Force Colonel. Attempts for further information about the anomalous lump were thwarted as the surgeon would not cooperate with our enquiry.

During the course of the investigation we conducted witness background checks, examined medical records and diaries, cross-checked witness testimony, coordinated witness psychological profile tests, correlated witness accounts with other reports and conducted fifteen hypnosis sessions over a period of 14 months. The final 10-volume report numbered over 700 pages. It was made available to UFO researchers and became the basis of a book on UFO abductions to be published by Time-Life and several TV documentaries.

In summation, this UFO abduction case is unique in a number of ways. It involved four credible persons who all consciously shared the same close-encounter with a UFO in 1976 during a canoe trip along the Allagash Waterway in Northern Maine. All percipients experienced missing time and relived traumatic complementary UFO abduction experiences under hypnosis. Two of the abductees are identical twins, which was of great interest to their alien abductors. Our enquiry revealed that each of the witnesses exhibited the typical benchmarks characteristic of other abductees. Lastly, all of the witnesses are artists and were able to provide detailed sketches of different aspects of their experiences. This has provided the UFO research community some excellent impressions relating to the appearance of alien beings, their instruments and their craft.

The many-faceted and intriguing elements of The Allagash Abductions also provided a catalyst for a detailed correlation of the witnesses’ experiences with benchmarks exhibited in other abduction reports being investigated and studied. Such were derived from an exhaustive survey of 270 reported UFO abductions in the United States and abroad compiled by Dr. Thomas E. Bullard of the University of Indiana. Some major similarities noted were: alien interest in the reproduction system and the extraction of sperm from each of the witnesses; a series of UFO and related paranormal experiences that dated back to early childhood; physical marks on the percipients’ bodies typical of those on the bodies of other UFO abductees; and, the overnight appearance of a lump above the tibia of one of the twins.

In addition, all witnesses were subjected to detailed interrogations, rigorous character reference checks, 12 recorded/transcribed hypnotic regression sessions and a battery of psychological profile tests. We also examined a number of alternate theories advanced to explain UFO abductions: hoaxes, fantasy-prone personalities, psychoses, birth trauma memories and archetypical images from the collective unconscious. Each of these theories was critiqued ‘and eliminated in the light of the evidence collected during our investigation.
The investigation concluded that the moral character of the witnesses, the graphic reliving of their experiences under hypnosis and the extraordinary correlations between their experience and that of others provided overwhelming evidence that their experiences were objective in nature. Such evidence combined with typical physical effects on the witnesses’ bodies prompted me to evaluate this case in the great significance category.