Police Officer Alan Godfrey
The account
A patrol officer saw an object over the road, lost a few minutes, and under hypnosis described an abduction.
What investigators found
There is no physical evidence; the memories of being aboard emerged through hypnosis, a method that does not guarantee true memory.
The story
In the early hours of November 28, 1980, police officer Alan Godfrey was patrolling a road in Todmorden, in northern England, when he said he saw a large, shining object hovering over the pavement. He tried to sketch what he was seeing and suddenly realized he was farther down the road, with no memory of a few minutes.
Later, under hypnosis, Godfrey described being taken into a room and examined by strange beings. The case gained traction because it involved a police officer and because it happened months after another mysterious episode in the same town. Skeptics note that nothing was recorded by anyone else and that hypnosis can produce convincing accounts with no basis in reality.