The Copley Woods Abductions (Kathie Davis / Debbie Jordan-Kauble)

In the summer of 1983, Debbie Jordan was living with her two young sons at her parents' home in the Indianapolis area. Indianapolis Monthly places the house on the east side. The book blurbs call it rural Indianapolis. She was 28 when her story reached print.

June 30, 1983. One summer night. She was standing at the kitchen sink when she noticed an odd light coming out of the swimming pool pump house.

She later described a blinding "fist of light" that struck her in the chest and paralysed her. Figures came toward her from the yard. At first she thought they were children. They were gliding, not walking. The messages came without words. "We're sorry that this hurts you," they told her. Her children, they said, were safe.

The craft, she said, was about the size of the pump house, "maybe 8 to 10 feet tall and shaped like an egg." Years later she compared it to a SpaceX Dragon capsule. It had landed in the backyard. The neighbors, one account says, were terrified.

Afterwards the flattened grass formed an 8-foot circle and a 49-foot streak. For years, it was said, nothing would grow there. Hopkins called them "landing trail marks." He collected soil samples, which had to be baked at 800°F before they could be analysed. No laboratory results have surfaced.

Budd Hopkins led the inquiry with Dr. Aphrodite Clamar, using hypnotic regression. Under hypnosis she described "multiple abductions and gynecological operations." She recalled being floated out of her room while she slept and examined inside a UFO. She remembered a strange house, full of toys, and a boy with "big brown eyes." Hopkins's investigation extended to the experiences of her children, relatives and friends.

In 1987 Random House published Intruders: The Incredible Visitations at Copley Woods. She became "Kathie Davis." Drawing on 125 claimed abductions, Hopkins argued the case showed "the apparent interbreeding of an alien species with our own." The book spent four weeks on the New York Times best-seller list.

No one has claimed a deliberate hoax. The criticism is about method. Philip J. Klass took on the Kathie Davis case in UFO-Abductions: A Dangerous Game in 1988, questioning hypnotic regression itself. Psychologist Robert A. Baker warned that hypnosis can "transform a dream, a hallucination or fantasy into a seemingly-real event." Elizabeth Loftus found "subtle but powerful suggestive cues" in Hopkins's sessions.

Carol Rainey, his later wife, became one of his harshest critics. Sceptics point to sleep disturbances and suggestion, and to the lack of physical proof. On the other side, Kirkus called the matching descriptions "a faithful fact that could sway many an ironclad skeptic."

In May 1992 CBS aired Intruders, a miniseries directed by Dan Curtis with fictional characters. That same year she revealed her real name. With her sister Kathy Mitchell she wrote Abducted! The Story of the Intruders Continues, which tells of her impregnation in 1977 and of seeing her semihuman child in 1983. In 2021 came Extraordinary Contact: Life Beyond "Intruders". Today Debbie Jordan-Kauble says she believes the experiences were ultimately beneficial to her.