In 1998, The UPN network presented a documentary titled Alien Abduction: Incident in Lake County in which depicts the McPherson family being abducted by Aliens. This recreation of a supposed real tape was filmed using home video to give the appearance of the taping of actual events and has thus led to confusion about its validity. The question remains of where the real tape, if there is one, can be found.

The tape tells the story of the McPherson family gathered for Thanksgiving dinner. The camera is situated in Tommy’s left hand. The power goes out. Kurt and Brian go to check the fuses; Tommy follows with his camera. Brian makes attempts to open the box and gets burned. A transformer atop a pole down the road is throwing sparks. Tommy’s camera finds eerie lights in the woods. They go investigate.

They find a UFO in a field nearby. Two aliens exit the ship and zap some cows with ray guns. The boys rush back to the house. The men gather some shotguns. Suddenly, there a high-pitched noise and everyone but six-year-old Rose is affected. After strapping a flashlight to his gun barrel, Kurt grabs some keys. He is going to get the SUV and they are all going to leave.

Kurt goes outside; Tommy follows. The truck doesn’t start. They try to check the engine, but a light flashes starts smoking. He opens the hood to discover a melted battery. They return to the house. The family is gathered in the living room. Crawling sounds are head on the roof. Kurt leads the way up the stairs, where he is greeted by laser blasts and responds with shotgun blasts. He tells everyone to go downstairs.

A ball of light comes into the house and knocks Renee into a deep sleep. The men leave to find help. The tape jumps ahead an hour and they suffer some lost time. Gunshots can be heard outside and the power starts to flicker. Everyone starts feeling a burning sensation on the backs of their necks. They discover triangle-shaped burns.

Everyone is now hysterical as more shots can be heard outside. Tommy goes outside to discover a couple of mangled shotguns but not his brothers. The camera turns to the woods where we can see strange lights and two figures approaching. Everyone goes back in the house; they barricade the door. The camera is set down and the picture goes black.

Tommy then gives a tearful testimonial and wonders if he’ll live to see tomorrow. He searches all the rooms and his bedroom and then suddenly comes face-to-face with an alien. He drops and we see Tommy frozen in a trance-like state. The tape stops. The family and their guests haven’t been seen since.

The tape is a depiction of a supposedly real incident; the actors’ credits roll at the end. There are many components from pop-culture’s alien abduction scenario and that makes this tape a bit suspicious. Whatever you believe, this is an eerie and highly entertaining piece of footage.

While the vast majority of the reports of strange objects in our skies have been explained as some natural occurrence or object, there are still some that have defied all attempts to debunk or refute the event. One such sighting occurred May 11, 1950 at a farm near McMinnville, Oregon.

Mrs. Evelyn Trent was walking back to her house after feeding some of the livestock when she noticed what appeared to be a metal, disk shaped object moving slowly in her direction from the northeast. She called for her husband Paul, to come see the object as well. After witnessing the strange object, Mr. Trent went back into the house and got his camera. He was able to take two photographs of the object before it picked up speed and disappeared into the west. The speed of its departure was enough to cause Mrs. Trent's dress to rustle in its wake.

The Trent's, along with Mrs. Trent's father who lived next door, all saw the object. They described the flying object as being about thirty-foot across and silvery-bright mixed with bronze. The object had a flat bottom surface and was completely soundless.

The Trents believed what they had seen was most likely some unknown Army vehicle and did not get overly excited at the time. It was in fact some time before Mr. Trent even had the film developed. When he mentioned it to his banker friend, Frank Wortmann, the banker got him to allow the photos to be displayed in the bank's front window. There they drew the curiosity of a local reporter, Bill Powell, who convinced Mr. Trent to loan the negatives to him.

Thus began an odyssey in which the negatives were extensively examined and repeatedly published. It was during their publication in "Life" magazine in July of 1950 that the negatives were misplaced and remained lost for seventeen years in their photo archives. Once rediscovered, the negatives were again studied for indications of forgery. The astronomer and investigator for the Condon Committee UFO Research Project, William Hartmann, determined the photos genuine and one of the best examples of an unknown object being witnessed and photographed.

While the skeptics, Philip Klass and Robert Sheaffer, tried to debunk the photographs in the 1980's, their own analysis was subsequently shown to be flawed and biased. The McMinnville UFO photographs have continued for sixty years to be beyond anyone's ability to explain just what it was that passed over the Trent's farm that fateful day in 1950.