In this shocking abduction which occurred in 1976, four art students were out in the middle of nowhere, in the remote Allagash wilderness in northern Maine. They were on an 11-day guided canoe trip through a group of lakes that is connected, and eventually turns into the St. Francis river. Flying was the only way to get there, and the nearest farm is 70 miles away. Chuck Rak was the guide, and the others were Jim and Jack Weiner, identical twins, and Charlie Folz. They had met at the Massachusetts College of Art.

They glimpsed a craft on their second night out, and were abducted on the fourth night. During the first sighting, they saw a light in the sky. It was not a star, was in the wrong place to be a planet, and through binoculars had a very odd quality of light. It had a roiling look to it. They though it might be a weather balloon or helicopter. After 30 seconds it 'imploded' and disappeared.

On the fourth night they had made camp on Eagle Lake, and got the idea to try night fishing as soon as it got dark. They built a huge bonfire on the beach, using large logs to provide a beacon back to camp on this moonless night. It would burn brightly for a good 3-4 hours. Then they all got into one canoe and headed out into the lake. After 15-20 minutes of swatting mosquitoes, Chuck suddenly said, "That's a hell of a case of swamp gas."

The others turned and saw a giant ball of light, not more than 200 yards away from them, with a raised horizontal and vertical band, and colored patches of red and blue light streaming and pulsating all over it. It slowly rose, making no sound, and drifted off to the shore, its lights illuminating the treetops. It was much larger than any helicopter, about 2 1/2 stories tall. Charlie decided it might be interesting to shine a flashlight at it. "If you ever find yourself in this situation, DO NOT TRY IT!" It suddenly came closer, shined a tubular blue beam down on the water ("slammed onto the surface is the only way I can describe it"), then shined on them, and they all (except Charlie, who wanted to meet the aliens) panicked and paddled ferociously. Charlie was enjoying the rare encounter, watching in amazement as the craft jumped instantaneously closer, to only 50 yards. The beam was like a hollow tube, a scintillating layer of blue light, with the interior of the beam black.

They were paddling so fast, that the canoe seemed to go right up on the shore. The UFO was moving around over the water, and suddenly 'imploded', reappearing at intervals as it raced off into the sky. This gave the effect of a strobed object, except that it also changed like the phases of the moon as it left, similar to the multiple exposures of an eclipse. The blue beam was still on and illuminated first the front and then the rear of some altocumulus clouds (they form typically at about 14,000 ft).

They walked back to the camp and found the giant bonfire ONLY EMBERS. All of them had a peculiar disinterest in investigating what had happened to the time, but elected to just go to bed. They should have been animatedly discussing the whole event, but all were drained of energy. The next morning they didn't talk about it much, but later asked a ranger they ran into about it. He said it was searchlights crossing, and then asked, "Did you get your rayguns out, fellahs? Everyone's always complaining about the bugs and bears, and now Martians."

12 years later, Jim had an accident where he fell 1 1/2 stories which resulted in temporal epilepsy. He was diagnosed in 1983, and therapy reduced his seizures. In 1988 he started having terrible nightmares, where he was in a room and creatures were doing painful things to his body. Sometimes he woke up thinking there was something in his room, and once felt a tugging on his shoulder. Due to lack of sleep, his seizures began increasing. He went to his doctors and told them of John Mack's studies, which the doctors said was crazy. Luckily, one week later he went to a MUFON meeting and heard about Ray Fowler. Ray was interested in the missing time and the fact that 4 people were involved, two of them identical twins.

Jim recounted an experience when he was a kid, and had gone out into a wet snowstorm. He fell into a deep hole and was lost for 5 hours. While he was there, two beings with cloaked faces were looking down on him. When found, his clothes were perfectly dry. These beings reminded him of the Alagash aliens.

After hypnotic regression, all four told virtually the same story. They had been drawn up into a spherical craft which had roiling red and blue lights shifting all over its surface. Inside they were naked and paralyzed, lying on tables. Strange insect- like creatures told them very firmly, and telepathically, "You will cooperate. You will not be harmed." The aliens had very large 'wrap-around' eyes and four fingers on each hand that could oppose each other independently, giving them excellent dexterity for manipulating the probes. They examined them and took sperm and other samples, inserted probes and generally experimented on them, and then set the four back down at their camp, with one of them placed into the canoe.

Jack became obsessed with math and physics after the encounter, and had never been interested in this before. His artwork during this period became very bizarre, driven by obsessions with burned holes in graph paper. He noticed a lump on his leg, and soon had it surgically removed. The pathologist couldn't identify it, so they told him they were sending it to the CDC. After 5 months, they told him it still hadn't been identified. After 8 years, as part of investigating the recovered memories, he went to get the report. After searching for 5 minutes, the clerk came back and said, "You must have gotten this while you were in the military. They sent the sample not to the CDC, but to a DOD pathology lab." No, he wasn't in the military, but the report was signed by Air Force personnel. In the last 3 years, he has seen UFOs twice in the woods behind his house. He'd be glad to not have to deal with it again. His advice is to not approach a UFO; it could be dangerous.

Charlie remembered lying face up on a table, with a blue light coming from a slab about a foot over his chest. He received some sort of psychic images but not as much on the craft as the others. Occasionally he hears whispers in his ears, just at the threshold of understanding, but can never quite make it out. On August 8, 1994, he had an unusual dream, which he usually doesn't remember. He was being conducted down a passageway, and there were a lot of faces leaning in. The house next door has an ivy-covered wall facing his bedroom, and there is now a large circular patch in the stucco where the ivy is missing.

Since these were four art students, the stories they tell through their artwork are amazing. They have a tremendous amount of verbal and visual material, and have definitely been the hit of the conference so far (all four have wonderful senses of humor). I highly recommend the Fowler book, "The Allagash Abductions", or, if you can find it (currently out of print), "The Allagash Incident", in a very graphic comic-book format. Paramount Studios is interested in making this abduction into a movie.