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According to a poll conducted in 2017, roughly half of Americans believe in aliens. Considering the vastness of our universe, and all of its undiscovered secrets, it’s easy to believe that there’s life out there, waiting for us humans to make contact. That same poll also says that 20% of participants believe in alien abductions, the phenomenon in which extra-terrestrials kidnap people. There are a variety of explanations as to what causes these abductions, from mental illness and drugs, to people just wanting attention.

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Turns out, though, a number of prominent individuals claim to have had encounters with aliens that went beyond just seeing lights in the sky. Here are ten celebrities who claim they were visited by aliens, and lived to tell their tales.

Barney & Betty Hill

Here are to people who are famous because of their alien abduction story. Considered the best documented case of abduction in history, Barney and Betty claimed that they were abducted while driving through rural New Hampshire one night in September, 1961. After they were taken on board an alien craft, they claimed they were subjected to a number of invasive procedures, the graphic details of which were revealed by Barney when he was under hypnosis.

What exactly caused the couple’s encounter remains a mystery. While believers say they really were abducted, some have speculated that the encounter was a manifestation of their anxiety regarding racial discrimination and violence (they were, after all, a bi-racial couple during the height of the Civil Rights movement). Whatever the case, their story helped popularize many of the hallmarks of alien abductions, like lost time, gruesome procedures, and little creatures called ‘the greys.’

Anne Heche

Best known for her leading role in 1998’s remake of Psycho, Anne Heche claims that she possessed an alter-ego from another world. Celestia, a godlike being from another dimension, allegedly took control of Heche when she was 25. During this point in her life, the actress believed she was a reincarnation of God, and claimed to receive telepathic messages in an alien language.

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Her visions were later determined to have been symptoms of long-standing mental health issues, stemming from sexual abuse she suffered at the hands of her father. It also didn’t help that Heche has a history of abusing hallucinogenic drugs, which contributed to such delusions.

Kim Wilde

The singer behind 1981’s hit single, Kids in America, hasn’t been abducted, yet. While some would argue that we’re all due for a quick probing, Kim Wilde thinks her time in the mothership is going to happen any day now.

According to an article in Britain’s Evening Standard, Wilde claims that a UFO flew over her house in 2009. Since then, Wilde fears that the aliens will return for her and force her to play Kids in America for their youth for the rest of eternity. Maybe she should stock up on tinfoil while she still has a chance!

India Willoughby

A British news anchor and transgender activist, India Willoughby claims that she was abducted by aliens as a child. While competing on season 21 of Celebrity Big Brother, Willoughby told her fellow contestants that after she was abducted, a cluster of scars appeared on her back that still remain there to this day.

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Willoughby showed her scars to her skeptical housemates, though they remained unconvinced. If anything, the scars look like a bad cat scratch. Perhaps Willoughby’s close encounter was more of a feline kind than an extra-terrestrial one.

Zayn Malik

A former member of the boy band One Direction, Zayn Malik embarked on a successful solo career after leaving the group in 2015. According to an interview in Glamour, Malik’s decision to leave the band was done on the request of an alien that spoke to him in a dream.

Malik didn’t elaborate further, though sources close to him confess that he does have a fascination with aliens and the otherworldly. Still, if this was true, it would be kind of pathetic. Don’t these advanced beings have anything better to do than meddle in the affairs of pop stars?

David Bowie

Ziggy Stardust himself allegedly had numerous encounters with UFOs back in the day. In a number of interviews, Bowie claimed that he saw so many flying saucers in the skies of Brittan that he got used to them, the same way we regular folk are used to seeing airplanes.

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Bowie also alleged that he witnessed what could only be described as an alien portal to another realm open above him, or, as he called it, “a projection of my own mind trying to make sense of this quantum topological doorway into dimensions beyond our own.”

Whatever you say, Starman.

Fran Drescher

Best known for playing Fran Fine in The Nanny, Drescher has been outspoken in her claims that she was abducted by aliens. Over the years, she has recounted the story about how she and her ex-husband, Peter Marc Jacobson, had similar alien encounters when they were children. Long before they met, Drescher says, she was abducted while driving around with her dad that left a strange scar on her hand.

Turns out that Jacobson recalled an identical experience when he was a kid, and even had a similar scar on his hand. Dreshcer came to the conclusion that the aliens encouraged their union, though Jacobson later claimed that the mark on his hand was caused by a rouge drill bit. Considering the two later divorced, perhaps the aliens should stay out of the matchmaking business.

Sammy Hagar

‘80s rock legend Sammy Hagar claims that he got his gift of rock and roll from aliens. Seriously. In his book Red: My Uncensored Life in Rock, Hagar said that aliens invaded his brain one night, and transmitted something into his mind.

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The way Hagar describes it, it sounds like the aliens downloaded files into head, the same way we download stuff from the cloud. That’s kind of awesome if you ask us. Maybe the same aliens can make us rock stars too!

John Lennon

Noticing a pattern, here? Of all the celebrities who have alien encounters, musicians seem to have the most. Whether it’s because they have extremely vivid imaginations, or because aliens just want to meet their idols, pop and rock stars are magnets for extra-terrestrials and UFOs (though it’s probably drugs). In John Lennon’s case, the aliens seemed to want to pay him a visit, but forgot to knock first.

According to a friend of the late Beatles front man, Lennon was once confronted by a group of aliens in his New York apartment in the ‘70s. Lennon said that the beings had some sort of physic control over him, and were able to stop him dead in his tracks when he tried to kick them out. Thankfully, no harm came to him or his family, but we hope Yoko Ono changed the locks since then.

Elvis

The king of rock and roll, who himself may be chilling with martins as we speak, said that a childhood encounter with aliens gave him visions of the future.

In later years, Elvis recalled that long before he strutted his stuff on Ed Sullivan, an alien gave him a vision of himself in a white suit, standing in front of a giant crowd of people. Anyone who knows anything about the king can figure out what the greys were trying to convey, and the vision probably left young Elvis all shook up.

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