The Allagash Maine Abductions
On a summer night in August 1976, a group of friends went camping near the Allagash River in Maine. Imagine this: fishing, laughing, friends. It doesn’t get more relaxing than that, right? Charlie Foltz, Jack Weiner, Jim Weiner, and Chuck Rak would disagree after their experience the night of August 26th.
The four friends were out canoeing that evening when Chuck started to feel a little off. It was almost as if the four were being watched by some unseen presence in the wilderness. He shouted a bit to alert his friends and maybe scare off whatever creeps were eavesdropping. But, instead of a few goofy kids running off scared at Chuck’s call-out, a strange oval aircraft began to rise from the trees on the shore.
As the craft rose, rippling paths of colors began to travel through it, which one of the men later compared to, as a visual reference, hot sauce coming to boil in a pan.
Still in their canoes, the men tried to get a better look at this phenomenon and pointed their flashlights at it, prompting the craft to shine a searchlight beam at the boats. As the beam passed over them, all four men claimed they felt strange sensations such as drained energy and time moving too quickly. They believe they all went unconscious for an unknown amount of time.
Later, the men made it back to shore, and while it was still night, their once blazing fire had been reduced to embers, which indicates that a significant amount of time had passed since the incident, and they reached the shore. The men reported that it only felt like minutes.
All the men grappled to understand and deal with what happened, but Jim Weiner suffered. His doctor diagnosed Jim with post-traumatic epilepsy, and he had to receive continued treatment for strange sensations in his genitals, sightings of apparitions/hallucinations, especially in his bedroom, and a sense of not being quiet in his body.
The men headed back home the next morning and shared their sighting with an on-duty ranger on their way out. The ranger suggested the sighting may have been due to the lights coming from a grand opening at a hardware store in Millinocket, a town over seventy miles away from where they had their experience. The men did not speak of their experiences together until years later.
After Jim suffered a fall that triggered seizures, he claimed he was having visions of alien-like creatures levitating in his bedroom and poking him with needles. Jim got in touch with Raymond Fowler, a UFO researcher. Fowler suggested the four men get together again and undergo a shared regressive hypnosis session to see if any other experiences came to light.
During this session, Jim, Jack, and Charlie would all resurface memories of small grey creatures taking them aboard the craft that they had witnessed. The men then said they saw the aliens performing medical examinations of them.
Chuck, decades later, would then claim parts of the story were exaggerated and recanted much of his experience. He also claims that the men had smoked hashish before fishing. However, Charles continues to deny any drug use. He also claimed this was part of a get-rich-quick scheme and the men believed they could make millions by sharing their story.
Despite this, Chuck still claims he did see a craft and did feel as if he was being watched. The rest of it? According to Chuck, it’s simply “brilliant storytelling.” The other 3 men continue to defend their experience as truth and no longer speak to Chuck.
The blog header image is unrelated to this story. It depicts a camping site on the Allagash River taken in 2017 by Tim Foster timberfoster. It is licensed under the Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication.