In August 1976, four men went on a fishing and camping trip in the Allagash Wilderness in northern Maine, roughly twenty-miles from the Canadian border. When the trip ended two weeks later, the men believed they had caught something more than the fish they brought home. The campers contended they had encountered something extraordinary from beyond planet earth.

Forty years after their Allagash excursion, one of the men says the claims of what they saw were embellished. The other three men, however, stand by their original story and continue to believe they had been “alien abductees.”

Aliens at Allagash?

Allagash, a town of fewer than two-hundred-fifty people, is in the North Main Wood region of Aroostok County, the northern most county in the Pine Tree state. The Allagash Wilderness covers thousands of acres. Mount Katahdin, named by the Abenaki Indians, is one of the terrain’s most prominent attractions.

On August 17, 1976, four men set up camp along Eagle Lake on the Allagash Waterway.

Eagle Lake on the Allagash Wilderness Waterway

The four campers were twins Jack and Jim Weiner, Charlie Foltz, and Chuck Rak. All were students at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design. For recreation, the men enjoyed the outdoors.

On August 18, during the second evening of camping at Allagash, the four men said they noticed a bright object in the sky that appeared for approximately thirty seconds before vanishing. They described the object as the sun shining in the dark. The campers were slightly spooked by the sighting but went to bed that evening thinking nothing more of it.

Left to Right: Jack Weiner, Jim Weiner, Charlie Foltz, Chuck Rak

While fishing in a boat two nights later, on August 20, the men said they rendezvoused with the object again, but this time it was not as serene. They said the object, whatever it was, suddenly shot out a bright light that followed them along the water. As it did so, the men began paddling to shore, but the light kept pace. The faster they paddled, the more the light gained on them.

Although none of the campers recalled coming to shore, each man said the next thing he remembered was being on shore and staring at the object in a state of mesmerization. Eventually, the bright light slowly faded away.

 

An Artist’s Rendering of the Encounter

The perplexed outdoorsmen said the fire they had set shortly before going fishing had burnt out. They felt as though they had been on the lake for only a few minutes, but they believe it would have taken several hours for the fire to dissipate.

Following the encounter, the men said they were so exhausted that they went to bed without discussing the incident.

The following ten days of camping and fishing produced no further signs of the bright object. When the men returned home, each told their families and friends about the strange sightings, but no one believed they had seen anything supernatural. The four fishermen hardly believed it themselves and tried to put the Allagash Affair behind them.

No Additional Sightings

Much as they tried, however, the campers could not put an end to the Allagash Affair. Instead, to their chagrin, Allagash became an affair to remember, and to haunt them.

In the decade following the bizarre camping trip, both of the Weiner brothers say they were plagued by recurring traumatic nightmares they believed were a result of their Allagash excursion. Outside of their respective wives, the twins told no one about the dreams until 1988, when they finally confided in one another.

Because the details of their dreams were so similar, the siblings were convinced their sleeping woes were related to their evening at Allagash a dozen years earlier.

The Twins’ Traumas

When the Weiner twins leaned Charlie Foltz and Chuck Rak had had similar nightmares, the four men met with UFO researcher Ray Fowler. He convinced them to undergo hypnosis in an effort to recall more details about that evening at Allagash.

Under individual hypnotic sessions, each man told essentially the same story in describing similar repressed memories of being taken aboard a craft where they were forced to strip naked. The men said the “aliens” seemed to be probing and conducting medical examinations on their bodies. Each man said the aliens took samples of their skin, body fluids, blood, urine, and semen. The only details the men could recall of the instrument used was that it was silver and curved.

All four men passed polygraph tests about what they claimed to have witnessed at Allagash.

A Drawing of a Hypnotic Session

The four artistic men, independent of one another, drew similar illustrations of their recollections.

These images were drawn by Charlie Foltz.

 Charlie Foltz’s Drawings

In this image, Charlie Foltz is depicted with a panel on his chest, while two of his companions are sitting on a bench. Charlie described what the “aliens” were doing to him as “it’s like a physical.”

Additional images are depicted below. All were shown on Unsolved Mysteries.

 

 

                                 

 

 

UFO researcher Ray Fowler was convinced the men had been abducted by aliens and wrote a book about the encounter entitled The Allagash Abductions.

Ray Fowler’s Book

Skeptics, however, do not believe aliens arrived at Allagash on that evening in 1976. They believe the supposed memories from the hypnotic sessions were derived from popular culture such as television shows and movies, in particular the 1953 science fiction movie Invaders from Mars, the first feature film to show aliens and their spacecraft in color.

Many UFO skeptics believe the Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation film is the catalyst for the common alien depictions and false subconscious claims of alien abductions.

A Scene from the 1953 Movie Invasion of the Body Snatchers

In 2016, forty years after the Allagash incident, one of the “Allagash Four” recanted most of the statements he had made regarding that evening in the Maine wilderness. Shown in a self-portrait oil painting below, Chuck Rak said he exaggerated his claims hoping to profit financially.

While still insisting he and his camping cohorts did witness an unidentified flying object during their canoe trip, both on the night of the alleged abductions and two nights before, Rak recanted his previous claims that his regressive hypnosis sessions revealed memories of being taken aboard what he perceived to be an alien spacecraft.

Rak claims he, Charlie Foltz, and the Weiner brothers believed the incident would make them millionaires but ultimately netted them little money. After having a falling out with the other three men, Rak said he decided to “come clean” about his experiences.

Rak stops short of calling his three former friends liars and of calling their claims a hoax. He still maintains the men saw the strange bright light but contends the claims of being taken aboard a spacecraft, having their bodies operated on, and, of the “lost time” are manufactured tall tales.

 

Rak Takes Much of It Back

The Weiner brothers and Charlie Foltz stand by their claims, saying Chuck Rak is angry at them for severing ties with him after they refused to go along with his wishes to exaggerate the claims in an effort to financially profit.

Charlie Foltz and Jim Weiner

SOURCES:

• Bangor Daily News
• Fiddlehead Focus
• Historic Mysteries
• Portland (Maine) Press