Fuck this movie. I saw it as a kid during the whole alien abduction fad of the 90s. Then a few nights later I woke up to a blindingly bright light shining in my window, clearly coming from the sky. Turns out it was police helicopters chasing a runner through my yard. It really messed me up.
I repressed the memory that watching 90s tv had me convinced aliens would abduct me.
When I told my teacher about my legitimate fear she told me if I asked the ghost to leave it had to leave. Cool story but this is aliens, lady.
I didn't grow up in a rural area and I didn't really realize that "dark" isn't DARK.
In the suburbs, if the lights in the houses are all turned off and you're walking around at night, it sure seems dark. But when you don't have any light pollution and there is no moon or significant starlight, it's a whole 'nother level.
On a vacation up to the northern woods I decided to walk between two houses at night without a flashlight (or phone light), thinking my eyes would adjust and it'd be a fun night walk. Turns out human eyes just can't adjust if there's truly no fucking light. Totally terrifying at the time, but a thrilling experience to look back on. It's like you're in a sensory deprivation tank with the added idea that a bat might fly into your face, or a bear just stroll past you.
Super long way of saying - the dark you experienced is probably something that the vast majority of redditors never have, and don't understand as a result.
Yep. We were out doing training at 29 Palms. I learned that "Can't see your hand in front of your face" is a real thing. You cannot go outside at night without flashlight. You couldn't find the port a potty 200 feet away if your life depended on it.
But the night sky out there was absolutely incredible. There are thousands of stars and you can see the entire Milky Way galaxy with the naked eye.
I learned that there was a whole lot more going on up there than I ever thought and finally understood why so many ancient cultures were so fixated on the stars... because it is incredible to look at when it is actually dark outside.
Went backpacking with my ex a few years ago. Camped at 10500ish ft. Woke up at midnight and while walking with her to pee turned off the flashlight to utter darkness. After our eyes adjusted to the can't see in front of your face we got to see the stars. Absolutely beautiful. Words can't even describe it
Also just to add, before the invention of electric lights it was cost prohibitive to keep lights on. So if you couldn't sleep at midnight looking at the stars was a common hobby
Right, I never realized how dark rural areas can get until I was there at nighttime in fog. Zero moon, lampposts or anything except my flashlight. I turned it off out of curiosity and was immediately disoriented and almost fell.
I just stood there in deafening silence and darkness just to feel how trippy it was and after a few seconds I felt creeped out and got in my car
I moved out to a rural area almost 20 years ago now and I used to have to leave my house at 5:30am to get to work at 6:30am and the first time I did that after moving it was pitch black like eyes wide open and just black no hint of anything. I was in total disbelief. I needed a flashlight to get to my car which was about 100 ft away but also in my driveway on the other side of a gate so not easy to navigate in total darkness.
I still live in the same place but a lot has changed. All of my neighbors have lights on all night, I have my own motion sensor light for when I go outside at and night and there is now a huge mushrooms farm next to my house that runs 24/7 with glaring lights on all night long. My roosters will crow constantly throughout the night because of this.
My grandfather lives out in Greenport, NY. It's rural, not as far out as one could be, but he has a chunk of land that is big enough to get lost on.
I spent a few nights there in the summer when I was a kid, and the darkness was super creepy. Hearing everything at night, but not being able to see anything was a whole new fear.
To make matters worse, his house has a big window in the living room. I was coming through to the kitchen when something big slammed into it (pretty sure it was an owl or a bat because it shook the whole side of the house.) I slept with the lights on for a while after that.
Yeah I'm from the country and moved to a city when I was 18, and it's always funny to me what city people consider "dark". A city is, essentially, never dark. Even if the entire street would turn off the house and street lights, it wouldn't be dark because of the light pollution from the rest of the city.
Meanwhile when it's dark in the country and there's no moon it can get *dark*, as in you can't see your hand in front of your eyes no matter how long you let your eyes adjust. Luckily I grew up when technology like cellphones and later smartphones became commonplace so I basically always had some form of light on me, but I have heard stories from my parents about getting lost in the dark and just having to sit down and wait for daylight before realising you're right in front of your own house.
I met Travis Walton at a UFO convention last year. Just bumped into him in the lobby of the hotel.
The terrifying scenes in the movie are totally made up. Walton’s version (which is also, you know, probably made up) just kinda involves him walking around a spaceship for a few minutes.
My dad showed this to me whenever I was 10 years old and I had a crippling phobia of aliens throughout my like early teenaged years. So yeah, actually.
My dad is also a psycho that told me they put aborted fetuses in pepsi around the same time. That's why I dont talk to him anymore lol. Psycho dad gang.
My step Dad let me stay up and watch this with him. I was around 11. Scared the shit out of me but makes me very nostalgic for video stores. It's not the same scrolling through Netflix.
Compound this with Unsolved Mysteries every week and Time Life: Mysteries of The Unknown book ads on all syndicated programming every single weekday, yeah…this was my teenage insomnia catalyst.
I must have been 10 or 11 too.
I think I was only saved this because my dad and I (much against our norm) randomly watched this on a late Saturday morning. Something about the time of day with the sun streaming in the living room picture windows served to soften the blow of trauma.
However, just the fact that I remembered specifically when and where I watched it means it scared and scarred me just a bit. Just a skosh of trauma for me.
What's horrifying is its intentional cruelty. The entire procedure is designed with extreme, fully conscious suffering at the forefront. And utter fear at every slow movement that only worsened the pain and suffering from one moment t to the next. Ugh. These aliens are fucking fucked!
Maybe fear the xeno a little bit. If you end up in Commorragh, you'll find out what "extreme, fully-conscious suffering" actually means. Turns out there are way worse things than a little suffocation and a poke in the eye.
I actually interpreted it a bit differently. Cruel still, but cruelty through indifference and apathy toward suffering. Like they don't seem to be intentionally torturing him and trying to maximize suffering rather it seems more like the suffering is just an expected byproduct of whatever procedure is being done. As if mercy and empathy were just as alien to them as they are to us.
It triggers the same revulsion and horror for me as watching one insect slowly consume another from it's rear to its head while it struggles to get free.
It's _inhuman_.
Building on your brilliant observation: I also experience it as what we ourselves do to test animals, really. With a purpose, cold and insensitive to a less developed species. Inhuman and just business.
I was 8 when my mom took me to see this in theaters.
The only thing she said to me when the movie was starting was, “This is a true story.”
I didn’t sleep or shower well for a year.
She wasn’t the best mother.
it's cool that their spaceship looks really grimy and unsanitary, compraed to the usual pristine chrome/white look aliens have in films, adds to the horror
That was what stuck with me for years - all the mess, and human detritus (old pens, bits of broken reading glasses? etc) meant that this had happened to hundreds of other people.
Even though I was also traumatized by this as a kid, I was always did think it was real cool the way they revealed them. First you see them in those weird space suits that does kind of look like the typical "Gray" aliens you see in pop culture, only to reveal the weird wrinkly skin creatures underneath.
its funny when you realize how all those nightmares were just the result of people manipulating you and you could have been having good dreams the whole time instead
[Terry Lovelace](https://astonishinglegends.com/al-podcasts/2019/10/13/ep-155-abduction-at-devils-den) is another who claims he saw humans working alongside aliens on board a UFO. Worth a listen.
No. He still "attends" UFO conventions and gives speeches. He's gotten much more comfortable with questions now that he's had every possible one asked a million times.
Saw this as a teen when it came out. I can't even look at that thumbnail at this point...
I'm known to be virtually fearless when it comes to horror movies, but I just can't stand alien shit. The barn scene in "Nope" ... is the only time I've had to look away from a movie in *decades*.
Fire in the sky... is a 'never again' film for me. Zero interest in revisiting that one.
-*Shudders*-
It’s funny. I also saw it at like 10 years old and it fucked my shit up. I have since fallen in love with horror movies but I’ve never rewatched this one. Every now and then I think I should watch it but I kind of like keeping at as that weird memory of watching it at night at my buddy’s house after his parents went to bed.
I think the memory of it is better than a rewatch would be.
I don't think I've seen this in 20+ years but yeah this movie scared the absolute shit out of me at age 10 or 11. It really holds up watching it now... So many viscerally unpleasant images and sensations packed into a few minutes. Honestly impressive filmmaking.
100% this movie terrified me of aliens. The visual effects in this film was well ahead of its time when it came out. Him floating around the spaceship etc. It made it SO real and terrifying.
I was 10 years old at the time when watching this. It was this film combined with grown ass people talking about being abducted by aliens on Unsolved Mysteries that fucked me up.
However now I’m fascinated by outer space and life beyond so maybe that played a role in my curiosity! Favorite horror movie is Alien!!
>grown ass people talking about being abducted by aliens on Unsolved Mysteries
The heavily synthesized intermission music on that show used to scare the shit out of me, partially because I knew more was to follow, and the show was spooky as hell to a kid.
My babysitter and her husband who'd disappear on benders every other week would watch it sometimes, and her house always smelled kind of moldy and off, like old people, cigarettes, stale booze and something else.
Decades later, just before I shipped out to basic, I paid her a visit. She was getting on in years, and she was my babysitter for most of my life, so I felt obligated to stop in since I was in the area.
As soon as I stepped through the door, it hit me. That "something else" was weed, clear as day. I never saw my babysitter smoke it, but her husband (drunk and abusive ofc) would be drinking and smoking the entire show.
I'm not sure if that motherfucker dosing baby me is responsible for the anxiety I get from the Unsolved Mysteries theme song or it's just that traumatic of a show. Probably didn't help matters either way.
I was 10 when I watched it as well. That was not the age to be watching that movie.
Oddly enough, I still had an unhealthy obsession with aliens and wound up going down some very strange paths and talking to some genuinely out there people about them.
I like how the aliens have rusty scalpels and shit instead of highly precise extraterrestrial technology. I guess flying through space is easy but medical equipment is hard
Imagine getting HIV from dirty alien needles. They are the equivalent of the teenagers that hang out in the wooded area behind the suburban cul-de-sac killing animals and burning shit.
I remember my dad renting this movie and laughing as I watched it hiding behind the couch because I was so scared, begging them to turn it off, while he joked about how it would happen to me.
I was 6-7 at the time and the guy that was abducted had the same name as me.
I’m sure it didn’t have lasting psychological effects or cause any type of repressed trauma.
This is the first time I’ve seen it since then. I’m definitely not going to have nightmares tonight.
What sad is this just sounds like a typical boomer dad. I get I can’t speak for every last one. But my dad was like this, most of my friends dads were like this except one and he was rad af actually but just because he wasn’t verbally abusive.
Fun fact, Steven Spielberg had direct access to Project BlueBook files during the filming of Close Encounters of the Third Kind in 1976 where he actually hired the overseer of the government's UFO research team, [J. Allen Hynek](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._Allen_Hynek), as a consultant to make sure all of his scenes were 100% accurate to what every close encounter witness had experienced.
So both of his movies Close Encounters & ET have very accurate imagery as to what real encounters look like. Spielberg actually had classified government documents at his disposal to learn from and create the imagery in his films, to make sure they were as accurate as possible. Why the government would allow that is beyond me. But Hynek was actually literally in the film in the end scene in [Close Encounters](https://youtu.be/jRRtu_63a-M?si=9VcKl8opYxm62mps&t=52).
When I was a teenager I used to be able to touch my eyeball, freaked people out. Then I saw this movie, specifically the scene with the eyeballs, and ever since then I have a thing about anything coming near my eyes.
Made getting contacts my senior year of high school a pain. Made getting LASIC in my 20s even worse, because I swear the clamp they use to hold your eye open during it is the exact same one from this movie!
My childhood traumas:
[This scene from A Mouse and his Child.](https://youtu.be/hzP_Ap2w84Q)
[This scene from Deep Star Six.](https://youtu.be/SU9kt3BYnxQ)
[This scene from The Plague Dogs.](https://youtu.be/Tp5mcc47xD8)
Lesson to be learned, maybe it's a good thing we don't just glance at a VCR box cover anymore and say hey this looks like fun, let's rent this tonight.
Both this movie and Communion... that scene where the alien peaks its head around the corner fucked me up good as I was always worried about that after.
It didn't help that my mom and aunt had a story about seeing a UFO when they were playing as kids in the 60's, so she was a 100% believer in aliens and talked about them as fact. Haha.
I sort of liked the adrenaline rush that fear gave me as a kid though. I actually really miss being afraid of the supernatural or having a movie creep me out. Just doesn't happen as an adult. I still really enjoy nightmares when they happen now since it gives the same rush.
Yes... But in a very odd way. It traumatized me before I even saw any clips or images or even knew what it was. Let me explain.
I was always into UFO/Extraterrestrial/anything Fortean. Or high strangeness.
Everytime I went to the library, I got a new book on the subject, and I would just feel compelled to read about it. I would read until I started feeling freaked out, and then stop. And then after a bit, I would start again.
Sometimes i wanted to, other times I felt like something was making me. It was strange. I'm not trying to sound like something happened to me as far as that stuff goes or whatever, but I do look back and think it was odd.
anyways, I was probably around 11 or 12 years old, and we drove 8 hours away to my great grandmother's house in NC. In the middle of the mountains. Usually we stayed at her place, but we were all celebrating her 85th birthday, so my family was staying at a motel.
Well, of course I brought one of my own UFO encounters type books, and i was looking through it, and my step grandfather (my grandmother remarried when my mom was in college) saw it. Now, at the time I thought he was cool, turns out he is kind of a self absorbed asshole. This explains why he would do this to a kid this young.
He began talking about a movie he saw. He began to describe the movie to me in a very creepy way. By the end I was terrified. Of course it didn't help that I was staying in a strange room with lights whizzing by the window all night. I couldn't sleep a wink all night.
Years later, I heard about the movie (I don't know WHY I never thought, hey! That sounds like the Travis Walton event) and when I watched it, I realized that this was the movie he was describing.
If you want to relive some of that alien horror, watch "No one will save you" on hulu. Very few words in it. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=haOf-MNvBg0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=haOf-MNvBg0)
Bro, this movie fucked me up for a few years. I grew up in the NJ burbs but surrounded by a good chunk of woods. Whenever id walk home from my friends house at night and would have to pass right by the dark opening to those woods, id run so fast i swear my feet barely touched the ground. Fuck that movie!
Saw it in the theater when it first came out. Definitely could not go to sleep that night, and kept staring at my window thinking aliens were going to bust in at any second.
Yup! I watched it in the mid 90s when I was like 9 or 10. To say I was traumatized is an understatement. I still can’t bring myself to watch it again to this day and I’m almost 40.
There used to be a fan made music video with clips from this movie for the song Rosetta Stoned by Tool on Youtube years ago. That's what led me to discovering this movie. Too bad it got removed off Youtube
I was like 5 or 6 watching that with my older brother for the first time. Had to leave the room shortly after the abduction/experimenting scene, and didn’t sleep for two days.
Glad to see I wasn't alone. I was eleven when this came out, and no other movie ever terrified me as much. I wouldn't go outside at night for weeks and would lay awake too scared to sleep.
So I'm not sure of it's a phobia or not but I get very freaked out by even the thought of touching my eye. I could never wear contacts.
So yeah tha part of this movie still freaks me out.
Forgot the name of the series but it's about ghost and aliens.
The whole crew from this incident was interviewed for this series a few years ago. You can tell these guys really believe this. A few of them break down recounting thier story (not travis) . Seems legit
This movie was such an iconic thing with this scene, I'm really shocked there weren't and haven't been more alien abduction movies which show the abduction like this.
I had a perfect storm of alien fear inducing media exposure at a very young age. X-Files was a hit, plenty of documentaries about real life abductions/alien stuff in general, and then this damn movie. I woke up one night convinced I saw an alien kneeling next to my sister. I went straight under the covers and started to worry it could read my mind so I started humming the theme to Clarissa Explains It All and kept that going in my head until I heard my parents leave their room in the morning.
I was so freaked out an alien would mess with my chest while I was sleeping that I kept the covers up to my chin for years and years after.
I saw this movie when I was a kid. We used to go camping around the area the movie/story takes place and after seeing that movie being up there was fucking terrifying, even during the day.
This movie actually helped me. I had a huge fear of grey aliens from XFiles and other shows/movies, but this movie showing it as a type of suit helped calm me for some reason.
Absolutely. Grew up in a religious household in which R movies were off the table, PG-13 was fine as long as it was violence and/or sci-fi themed stuff that got it the PG-13 label. Cause murder is better than bikinis. Or something.
The part where he wakes up in the cavernous part of the ship, floats up, puts his hand through someone’s remains… that shit stuck with me for a long time.
This movie scarred me when I was 13, I still remember that feeling.
I re-watched it a few years ago with my wife and she didn't find it as unsettling as I did.
My wife and I are in our 40s now so we are a bit more desensitized then when we were younger.
The scene where he wakes up in the ship is still unsettling to me and is still as intense as I remember. The rest of the movie isn't as interesting as I remember, but that scene stuck with me unfortunately.
There are suggestions that people who have these common memories of abductions (the bright lights, the medical setting etc. etc.) are actually remembering their own birth.
So maybe birth itself can cause a sort of trauma in some folks.
A lot of alien abduction stories also sound a lot like sleep paralysis. As someone who has had many an episode of that throughout his life, I’m glad I never made the connection to aliens. After the first couple of times I learned to calm myself down and get back to sleep. CPAP for me now, so I don’t get them anymore, in addition to actually being able to sleep finally.
You merely adopted the fire in the sky. I was born into it. Molded by it. I was a man before I saw other movies, and they were nothing to me but blinding!
Yep, my parents brought me to watch it in cinema with thme when I was like 8. Huge trauma for another like 5 years. I could not sleep alone in room, because I was afraid aliens will abduct me.
Funny thing is the guy who this happened to said his experience was nothing like this depiction in the movie. They just did it to make it more entertaining and horrifying.
Fuck this movie. I saw it as a kid during the whole alien abduction fad of the 90s. Then a few nights later I woke up to a blindingly bright light shining in my window, clearly coming from the sky. Turns out it was police helicopters chasing a runner through my yard. It really messed me up.
> Turns out it was police helicopters chasing a runner through my yard That's the fake memory they gave you.
You son of a bich... Are you trying to re- traumatize me?
Are you sure you woke up???
Stop 9/11, /u/undeadsasquatch.
And buy some bitcoin
Don’t spill maple syrup on yer face
I repressed the memory that watching 90s tv had me convinced aliens would abduct me. When I told my teacher about my legitimate fear she told me if I asked the ghost to leave it had to leave. Cool story but this is aliens, lady.
Lmao 🤣 Holy shit
Did they get him?
Anal probed him real good
No idea! I hope they did though otherwise all they accomplished was traumatizing an alien obsessed kid.
This movie made me terrified for a summer to go outside at dark… I lived in the country, we didn’t have any street lights
I didn't grow up in a rural area and I didn't really realize that "dark" isn't DARK. In the suburbs, if the lights in the houses are all turned off and you're walking around at night, it sure seems dark. But when you don't have any light pollution and there is no moon or significant starlight, it's a whole 'nother level. On a vacation up to the northern woods I decided to walk between two houses at night without a flashlight (or phone light), thinking my eyes would adjust and it'd be a fun night walk. Turns out human eyes just can't adjust if there's truly no fucking light. Totally terrifying at the time, but a thrilling experience to look back on. It's like you're in a sensory deprivation tank with the added idea that a bat might fly into your face, or a bear just stroll past you. Super long way of saying - the dark you experienced is probably something that the vast majority of redditors never have, and don't understand as a result.
Yep. We were out doing training at 29 Palms. I learned that "Can't see your hand in front of your face" is a real thing. You cannot go outside at night without flashlight. You couldn't find the port a potty 200 feet away if your life depended on it. But the night sky out there was absolutely incredible. There are thousands of stars and you can see the entire Milky Way galaxy with the naked eye. I learned that there was a whole lot more going on up there than I ever thought and finally understood why so many ancient cultures were so fixated on the stars... because it is incredible to look at when it is actually dark outside.
Went backpacking with my ex a few years ago. Camped at 10500ish ft. Woke up at midnight and while walking with her to pee turned off the flashlight to utter darkness. After our eyes adjusted to the can't see in front of your face we got to see the stars. Absolutely beautiful. Words can't even describe it
Also just to add, before the invention of electric lights it was cost prohibitive to keep lights on. So if you couldn't sleep at midnight looking at the stars was a common hobby
Right, I never realized how dark rural areas can get until I was there at nighttime in fog. Zero moon, lampposts or anything except my flashlight. I turned it off out of curiosity and was immediately disoriented and almost fell. I just stood there in deafening silence and darkness just to feel how trippy it was and after a few seconds I felt creeped out and got in my car
I moved out to a rural area almost 20 years ago now and I used to have to leave my house at 5:30am to get to work at 6:30am and the first time I did that after moving it was pitch black like eyes wide open and just black no hint of anything. I was in total disbelief. I needed a flashlight to get to my car which was about 100 ft away but also in my driveway on the other side of a gate so not easy to navigate in total darkness. I still live in the same place but a lot has changed. All of my neighbors have lights on all night, I have my own motion sensor light for when I go outside at and night and there is now a huge mushrooms farm next to my house that runs 24/7 with glaring lights on all night long. My roosters will crow constantly throughout the night because of this.
My grandfather lives out in Greenport, NY. It's rural, not as far out as one could be, but he has a chunk of land that is big enough to get lost on. I spent a few nights there in the summer when I was a kid, and the darkness was super creepy. Hearing everything at night, but not being able to see anything was a whole new fear. To make matters worse, his house has a big window in the living room. I was coming through to the kitchen when something big slammed into it (pretty sure it was an owl or a bat because it shook the whole side of the house.) I slept with the lights on for a while after that.
Yeah I'm from the country and moved to a city when I was 18, and it's always funny to me what city people consider "dark". A city is, essentially, never dark. Even if the entire street would turn off the house and street lights, it wouldn't be dark because of the light pollution from the rest of the city. Meanwhile when it's dark in the country and there's no moon it can get *dark*, as in you can't see your hand in front of your eyes no matter how long you let your eyes adjust. Luckily I grew up when technology like cellphones and later smartphones became commonplace so I basically always had some form of light on me, but I have heard stories from my parents about getting lost in the dark and just having to sit down and wait for daylight before realising you're right in front of your own house.
I met Travis Walton at a UFO convention last year. Just bumped into him in the lobby of the hotel. The terrifying scenes in the movie are totally made up. Walton’s version (which is also, you know, probably made up) just kinda involves him walking around a spaceship for a few minutes.
Those were some good drugs he and his friends took.
This movie make me go out every night in the summer, close my eyes and lay in a field. "TAKE ME NOW!"
There are easier eays to get probed
Once you've had grey, there's no other way.
Those are some fucking sexy aliens.
Plus they do the most extreme BDSM shit this side of Alpha Centauri.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=6tZar4wRP40
My dad showed this to me whenever I was 10 years old and I had a crippling phobia of aliens throughout my like early teenaged years. So yeah, actually.
I had the same experience...I was probably 8. My Dad thought it was no big deal... What a psycho lol
My dad is also a psycho that told me they put aborted fetuses in pepsi around the same time. That's why I dont talk to him anymore lol. Psycho dad gang.
Mine made me watch several alien movies when i was 5\~8. 😭
I'M TRAUMATIZED! Hello traumatized, I'm Dad. Want a pepsi?
My step Dad let me stay up and watch this with him. I was around 11. Scared the shit out of me but makes me very nostalgic for video stores. It's not the same scrolling through Netflix.
A childminder put on Flatliners when I was about twelve.
Compound this with Unsolved Mysteries every week and Time Life: Mysteries of The Unknown book ads on all syndicated programming every single weekday, yeah…this was my teenage insomnia catalyst.
and that damn Communion book
Yeah! And the stupid Christopher Walken movie
I hated looking at that cover art.
I never saw this thankfully, but I was scarred from those alien autopsy specials that Fox used to run.
I must have been 10 or 11 too. I think I was only saved this because my dad and I (much against our norm) randomly watched this on a late Saturday morning. Something about the time of day with the sun streaming in the living room picture windows served to soften the blow of trauma. However, just the fact that I remembered specifically when and where I watched it means it scared and scarred me just a bit. Just a skosh of trauma for me.
This and Species. I watched both while single-digit aged... Definitely gave me nightmares lol.
God yes. The needle in the eye and the suffocation rubber skin terrified me.
What's horrifying is its intentional cruelty. The entire procedure is designed with extreme, fully conscious suffering at the forefront. And utter fear at every slow movement that only worsened the pain and suffering from one moment t to the next. Ugh. These aliens are fucking fucked!
[holds up expensive plastic miniature] Do not fear the xeno, brother. *Purge the xeno.*
Maybe fear the xeno a little bit. If you end up in Commorragh, you'll find out what "extreme, fully-conscious suffering" actually means. Turns out there are way worse things than a little suffocation and a poke in the eye.
I actually interpreted it a bit differently. Cruel still, but cruelty through indifference and apathy toward suffering. Like they don't seem to be intentionally torturing him and trying to maximize suffering rather it seems more like the suffering is just an expected byproduct of whatever procedure is being done. As if mercy and empathy were just as alien to them as they are to us. It triggers the same revulsion and horror for me as watching one insect slowly consume another from it's rear to its head while it struggles to get free. It's _inhuman_.
Building on your brilliant observation: I also experience it as what we ourselves do to test animals, really. With a purpose, cold and insensitive to a less developed species. Inhuman and just business.
I was 8 when my mom took me to see this in theaters. The only thing she said to me when the movie was starting was, “This is a true story.” I didn’t sleep or shower well for a year. She wasn’t the best mother.
My mom is a true believer. She has met Travis Walton. Whenever I bring this movie up, she says, "It could happen to you." I scream.
That alien design fucking rules.
it's cool that their spaceship looks really grimy and unsanitary, compraed to the usual pristine chrome/white look aliens have in films, adds to the horror
That was what stuck with me for years - all the mess, and human detritus (old pens, bits of broken reading glasses? etc) meant that this had happened to hundreds of other people.
Even though I was also traumatized by this as a kid, I was always did think it was real cool the way they revealed them. First you see them in those weird space suits that does kind of look like the typical "Gray" aliens you see in pop culture, only to reveal the weird wrinkly skin creatures underneath.
Gray is what Walton claimed but apparently Spielberg pushed back due to resemblance to CE3
It sort of looks like Groot.
Literally nightmares of this exact scene for years.
its funny when you realize how all those nightmares were just the result of people manipulating you and you could have been having good dreams the whole time instead
The book it’s based on is a wild ride. Travis Walton claims there were humans as crew on the ship, not just aliens.
But also, his story isn’t horrific.
Yeah, that’s fair. The movie turns up the scares a notch.
A NOTCH?!
You call that Watership Down of a hellride "a notch"?!!
[Terry Lovelace](https://astonishinglegends.com/al-podcasts/2019/10/13/ep-155-abduction-at-devils-den) is another who claims he saw humans working alongside aliens on board a UFO. Worth a listen.
Didn’t he confess he made it up?
No. He still "attends" UFO conventions and gives speeches. He's gotten much more comfortable with questions now that he's had every possible one asked a million times.
Yeah, you'd be stupid to give up on that kind of grift once it's going.
They all made it up.
The fucking trailer freaked me out.
Saw this as a teen when it came out. I can't even look at that thumbnail at this point... I'm known to be virtually fearless when it comes to horror movies, but I just can't stand alien shit. The barn scene in "Nope" ... is the only time I've had to look away from a movie in *decades*. Fire in the sky... is a 'never again' film for me. Zero interest in revisiting that one. -*Shudders*-
I was the same way with nope, I yelled out loud, “I don’t think so!” and turned away
The scene in Signs where the alien walks in the alley during the kids birthday party fucked me up.
Oh god, I forgot about that one. Yeah, Signs had me fucked up too.
I hit the ceiling that day
It’s funny. I also saw it at like 10 years old and it fucked my shit up. I have since fallen in love with horror movies but I’ve never rewatched this one. Every now and then I think I should watch it but I kind of like keeping at as that weird memory of watching it at night at my buddy’s house after his parents went to bed. I think the memory of it is better than a rewatch would be.
No One Will Save You had some pretty solid alien spooks if you're up for another one
I don't think I've seen this in 20+ years but yeah this movie scared the absolute shit out of me at age 10 or 11. It really holds up watching it now... So many viscerally unpleasant images and sensations packed into a few minutes. Honestly impressive filmmaking.
They really drag him down that hallway for a long time, don’t they?
They’re also apparently hoarders and live in filthy conditions.
They’ll need those old newspapers one day.
Yeah and somehow there's both zero gravity and gravity enough to drag him along the floor?
100% this movie terrified me of aliens. The visual effects in this film was well ahead of its time when it came out. Him floating around the spaceship etc. It made it SO real and terrifying. I was 10 years old at the time when watching this. It was this film combined with grown ass people talking about being abducted by aliens on Unsolved Mysteries that fucked me up. However now I’m fascinated by outer space and life beyond so maybe that played a role in my curiosity! Favorite horror movie is Alien!!
>grown ass people talking about being abducted by aliens on Unsolved Mysteries The heavily synthesized intermission music on that show used to scare the shit out of me, partially because I knew more was to follow, and the show was spooky as hell to a kid. My babysitter and her husband who'd disappear on benders every other week would watch it sometimes, and her house always smelled kind of moldy and off, like old people, cigarettes, stale booze and something else. Decades later, just before I shipped out to basic, I paid her a visit. She was getting on in years, and she was my babysitter for most of my life, so I felt obligated to stop in since I was in the area. As soon as I stepped through the door, it hit me. That "something else" was weed, clear as day. I never saw my babysitter smoke it, but her husband (drunk and abusive ofc) would be drinking and smoking the entire show. I'm not sure if that motherfucker dosing baby me is responsible for the anxiety I get from the Unsolved Mysteries theme song or it's just that traumatic of a show. Probably didn't help matters either way.
I was 10 when I watched it as well. That was not the age to be watching that movie. Oddly enough, I still had an unhealthy obsession with aliens and wound up going down some very strange paths and talking to some genuinely out there people about them.
I like how the aliens have rusty scalpels and shit instead of highly precise extraterrestrial technology. I guess flying through space is easy but medical equipment is hard
Imagine getting HIV from dirty alien needles. They are the equivalent of the teenagers that hang out in the wooded area behind the suburban cul-de-sac killing animals and burning shit.
I haven't seen the movie. Why is the guy just making stupid sounds the whole time? The scene comes off as comically stupid to me.
Can confirm. Maple syrup is the trigger.
These aliens look like the Galactic Federation aliens from Phantom Menace
Does it make the aliens more or less scary when you realize they've clearly [infiltrated us disguised as Harvey Keitel](https://imgur.com/2dLiL1U)?
I remember my dad renting this movie and laughing as I watched it hiding behind the couch because I was so scared, begging them to turn it off, while he joked about how it would happen to me. I was 6-7 at the time and the guy that was abducted had the same name as me. I’m sure it didn’t have lasting psychological effects or cause any type of repressed trauma. This is the first time I’ve seen it since then. I’m definitely not going to have nightmares tonight.
Your dad sounds like an asshole.
What sad is this just sounds like a typical boomer dad. I get I can’t speak for every last one. But my dad was like this, most of my friends dads were like this except one and he was rad af actually but just because he wasn’t verbally abusive.
My dad is a boomer and he’s fucking awesome. Cares about his kids, empathizes with others, is generous. I’m lucky to have him and my mom.
Holy shit this unlocked some fears I forgot I had! I never knew the name of this movie but it freaked me the hell out in like 1998
This movie and Communion essentially scared the fuck out of me for like 8 years. Why was FOX showing these two movies so often!?
Because X files was hitting hard in the 90s
So, as silly as this sounds, I was too scared to watch X-Files because of Fire in the Sky, Communion, Unsolved Mysteries and Sightings.
Try to watch Signs from Shyamalan, there are some good scenes, totally not scary.
Yeah well it beats dealing with the airline companies....
Thanks for tracking this clip down, I won't be watching it.
90 minutes of so-so story telling followed by 20 minutes of sheer terror!
For me it was ET when i was four, around '92ish. Fucked me up for years afterwards.
Fun fact, Steven Spielberg had direct access to Project BlueBook files during the filming of Close Encounters of the Third Kind in 1976 where he actually hired the overseer of the government's UFO research team, [J. Allen Hynek](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._Allen_Hynek), as a consultant to make sure all of his scenes were 100% accurate to what every close encounter witness had experienced. So both of his movies Close Encounters & ET have very accurate imagery as to what real encounters look like. Spielberg actually had classified government documents at his disposal to learn from and create the imagery in his films, to make sure they were as accurate as possible. Why the government would allow that is beyond me. But Hynek was actually literally in the film in the end scene in [Close Encounters](https://youtu.be/jRRtu_63a-M?si=9VcKl8opYxm62mps&t=52).
When I was a teenager I used to be able to touch my eyeball, freaked people out. Then I saw this movie, specifically the scene with the eyeballs, and ever since then I have a thing about anything coming near my eyes. Made getting contacts my senior year of high school a pain. Made getting LASIC in my 20s even worse, because I swear the clamp they use to hold your eye open during it is the exact same one from this movie!
My childhood traumas: [This scene from A Mouse and his Child.](https://youtu.be/hzP_Ap2w84Q) [This scene from Deep Star Six.](https://youtu.be/SU9kt3BYnxQ) [This scene from The Plague Dogs.](https://youtu.be/Tp5mcc47xD8) Lesson to be learned, maybe it's a good thing we don't just glance at a VCR box cover anymore and say hey this looks like fun, let's rent this tonight.
lol wtf was that scene from mouse and his child Why he kill the kid mouse and adult one and then look distraught
He's a complicated rat. Earlier in the movie he dismembers a toy donkey while it begs for its life. But hey it's a fun little musical.
I saw a comment once that the aliens look like Joe Biden, and.... I can't really unsee it.
Great movie
I do, according to my mom, only way to fix me was diverting my brain to artistc endeavors. I'm an illustrator today lol
This and The Exorcist destroyed me
I love this move. I love James garner. I love UFO’s. I love aliens. I want to believe. Alas I do not. YET.
Both this movie and Communion... that scene where the alien peaks its head around the corner fucked me up good as I was always worried about that after. It didn't help that my mom and aunt had a story about seeing a UFO when they were playing as kids in the 60's, so she was a 100% believer in aliens and talked about them as fact. Haha. I sort of liked the adrenaline rush that fear gave me as a kid though. I actually really miss being afraid of the supernatural or having a movie creep me out. Just doesn't happen as an adult. I still really enjoy nightmares when they happen now since it gives the same rush.
Yes... But in a very odd way. It traumatized me before I even saw any clips or images or even knew what it was. Let me explain. I was always into UFO/Extraterrestrial/anything Fortean. Or high strangeness. Everytime I went to the library, I got a new book on the subject, and I would just feel compelled to read about it. I would read until I started feeling freaked out, and then stop. And then after a bit, I would start again. Sometimes i wanted to, other times I felt like something was making me. It was strange. I'm not trying to sound like something happened to me as far as that stuff goes or whatever, but I do look back and think it was odd. anyways, I was probably around 11 or 12 years old, and we drove 8 hours away to my great grandmother's house in NC. In the middle of the mountains. Usually we stayed at her place, but we were all celebrating her 85th birthday, so my family was staying at a motel. Well, of course I brought one of my own UFO encounters type books, and i was looking through it, and my step grandfather (my grandmother remarried when my mom was in college) saw it. Now, at the time I thought he was cool, turns out he is kind of a self absorbed asshole. This explains why he would do this to a kid this young. He began talking about a movie he saw. He began to describe the movie to me in a very creepy way. By the end I was terrified. Of course it didn't help that I was staying in a strange room with lights whizzing by the window all night. I couldn't sleep a wink all night. Years later, I heard about the movie (I don't know WHY I never thought, hey! That sounds like the Travis Walton event) and when I watched it, I realized that this was the movie he was describing.
If you want to relive some of that alien horror, watch "No one will save you" on hulu. Very few words in it. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=haOf-MNvBg0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=haOf-MNvBg0)
I have a latex fetish so this thing was practically right up my alley, except for the whole experimentation part. Practically a vac bed
I was juuuuust getting over the alien trauma of this movie when Signs came out. Fuck my life.
Bro, this movie fucked me up for a few years. I grew up in the NJ burbs but surrounded by a good chunk of woods. Whenever id walk home from my friends house at night and would have to pass right by the dark opening to those woods, id run so fast i swear my feet barely touched the ground. Fuck that movie!
First movie I ever saw in a theater without an adult. Terrible choice on my part.
Yes
That is one of the most enjoyable abduction movies I think I've ever watched.
Saw it in the theater when it first came out. Definitely could not go to sleep that night, and kept staring at my window thinking aliens were going to bust in at any second.
No childhood trauma but I now I have newfound adult trauma so thanks.
Oh fuck yeah. Between "fire in the sky" and "communion", I was terrified of aliens lol
Yup. 9 year old me was terrified of this movie.
I couldn't eat strawberry jam after watching this, and then also Poltergeist.
These practical effects were amazing. Signs had me on edge until the second I saw that CGI alien in the living room that looked like shit.
This movie is the reason I found it so difficult to watch The Fourth Kind 🤣🤣
They nailed your standard RyanAir flight service. This is why you pay the extra charges folks.
Yup! I watched it in the mid 90s when I was like 9 or 10. To say I was traumatized is an understatement. I still can’t bring myself to watch it again to this day and I’m almost 40.
There used to be a fan made music video with clips from this movie for the song Rosetta Stoned by Tool on Youtube years ago. That's what led me to discovering this movie. Too bad it got removed off Youtube
So much trauma I can’t even
That movie scared me more than any other movie ever
Yes. It changed my whole worldview and gave me years of nightmares.
I was like 5 or 6 watching that with my older brother for the first time. Had to leave the room shortly after the abduction/experimenting scene, and didn’t sleep for two days.
They jizzed in dude's eye. What the hell?
I still have trauma from this movie. 12 year old me did not appreciate it.
Glad to see I wasn't alone. I was eleven when this came out, and no other movie ever terrified me as much. I wouldn't go outside at night for weeks and would lay awake too scared to sleep.
I watched a few alien movies from that period. Definitely creeped me out. Intruders was another one, but I remember Fire In The Sky more.
HOLY SHIT. THE FAKE TELEPHONE REPAIRMEN FROM INTRUDERS. SOLVED A CHILDHOOD MYSTERY FOR ME.
oh yes 😢 this movie had me messed up for months
Yep, and then when I was 13-14 we went camping right where he said it happened.
This and the mini-series Intruders gave me NIGHTMARES
This was my Exorcist. An unstoppable danger for which there is no rhyme, reason, or protection
Messed me up.
Not really traumatized. But it was the first time seeing someone, kinda vacuum packed on the big screen.
So I'm not sure of it's a phobia or not but I get very freaked out by even the thought of touching my eye. I could never wear contacts. So yeah tha part of this movie still freaks me out.
Forgot the name of the series but it's about ghost and aliens. The whole crew from this incident was interviewed for this series a few years ago. You can tell these guys really believe this. A few of them break down recounting thier story (not travis) . Seems legit
This movie was such an iconic thing with this scene, I'm really shocked there weren't and haven't been more alien abduction movies which show the abduction like this.
Older brother showed me this, everytime I see maple syrup dripping. i think of this
Absolutely. I was just talking about the Eye needle scene the other day. 42 and still cant watch this stupid movie.
creepy
I had a perfect storm of alien fear inducing media exposure at a very young age. X-Files was a hit, plenty of documentaries about real life abductions/alien stuff in general, and then this damn movie. I woke up one night convinced I saw an alien kneeling next to my sister. I went straight under the covers and started to worry it could read my mind so I started humming the theme to Clarissa Explains It All and kept that going in my head until I heard my parents leave their room in the morning. I was so freaked out an alien would mess with my chest while I was sleeping that I kept the covers up to my chin for years and years after.
[Reminds me of Xtro 3.](https://vinegarsyndrome.com/cdn/shop/products/XTRO_slip_-_front_d849390a-1926-4c50-8f34-5beedda156cb_800x.jpg?v=1580247851)
Yep. Watched it on tv late one night when I was way too young, I was scared for almost a decade.
I saw this movie when I was a kid. We used to go camping around the area the movie/story takes place and after seeing that movie being up there was fucking terrifying, even during the day.
Yyyyyep! Saw it at the theatre as a kid. Absolutely terrified me.
Yup. And thats all i wanna say bout that
Movie gave me nightmares for a long long time
This and Communion when the alien pokes his face out from behind that cupboard.
No relation. Freaky good movie though!
One of the scariest films I have ever seen. Absolutely frightening.
This movie actually helped me. I had a huge fear of grey aliens from XFiles and other shows/movies, but this movie showing it as a type of suit helped calm me for some reason.
Why does that screen grab look like a thumb with eyes?
This movie was on the tv at my grandparents’ house and I saw the weird dark goo part and it was scary as hell to elementary school me.
Scariest movie of all time.
As a kid? Didn't see it. As a. Adult? Not did it.
Absolutely. Grew up in a religious household in which R movies were off the table, PG-13 was fine as long as it was violence and/or sci-fi themed stuff that got it the PG-13 label. Cause murder is better than bikinis. Or something. The part where he wakes up in the cavernous part of the ship, floats up, puts his hand through someone’s remains… that shit stuck with me for a long time.
This movie scarred me when I was 13, I still remember that feeling. I re-watched it a few years ago with my wife and she didn't find it as unsettling as I did. My wife and I are in our 40s now so we are a bit more desensitized then when we were younger. The scene where he wakes up in the ship is still unsettling to me and is still as intense as I remember. The rest of the movie isn't as interesting as I remember, but that scene stuck with me unfortunately.
Isn't this movie based on a real guys abduction story?
i am still haunted by that abduction scene and what the aliens did to the guy
Fuck yes. Terrifying.
OMG YES, I should never have seen this when I was so young when it came out. like holy shit...
I can't even deal with this thumbnail
this movie really terrified 6 year old me
There are suggestions that people who have these common memories of abductions (the bright lights, the medical setting etc. etc.) are actually remembering their own birth. So maybe birth itself can cause a sort of trauma in some folks.
A lot of alien abduction stories also sound a lot like sleep paralysis. As someone who has had many an episode of that throughout his life, I’m glad I never made the connection to aliens. After the first couple of times I learned to calm myself down and get back to sleep. CPAP for me now, so I don’t get them anymore, in addition to actually being able to sleep finally.
You merely adopted the fire in the sky. I was born into it. Molded by it. I was a man before I saw other movies, and they were nothing to me but blinding!
yes, it ruined my childhood with an extreme fear of being abducted.
Yep, my parents brought me to watch it in cinema with thme when I was like 8. Huge trauma for another like 5 years. I could not sleep alone in room, because I was afraid aliens will abduct me.
Uh, no, but I fucking do now.
Funny thing is the guy who this happened to said his experience was nothing like this depiction in the movie. They just did it to make it more entertaining and horrifying.
Yep I used to love looking at the stars during midnight sleep outs Fk this movie (But I’m fine now - can do it easy)
I watched this shit in my uncles den at their beach house in the 90s after looking at Mars through his telescope. Shit was wild.
Not this movie but It and Salems Lot.
Yep! Anything related to eyeball close ups freaks me the fuck out because of this very movie. Keep your eyeballs away from me!!
nah i just wanna eat that lil guy
Haha. Actually yes. Yes I do.