"Visitations at Copley Woods" abduction

On the night of June 30, 1983, Debbie Jordan stood in the detached garage behind her parents’ home on the east side of Indianapolis and felt her skin begin burning “as if covered with acid.” She turned to run and was struck in the chest by a flash so intense she described it as being punched by a huge electric fist. The electrical sensation spread through every molecule of her body until she could not move or see clearly .

When her vision returned, Jordan said she saw six small figures in the yard. A basketball-sized ball of soft white light hovered at her eye level, moved up and down as if examining her, then entered the craft and disappeared .

A voice told her it was “unfortunate” she had to feel pain . Shortly afterward, it said “it’s over” and that her children were safe . Jordan was unaccountable for approximately two hours .

The following morning, Jordan’s eyes were swollen completely shut. An ophthalmologist diagnosed radiation-type burns consistent with unshielded exposure to an arc welder or the sun . In the backyard, marks were reported: an eight-foot circle and a 49-foot streak on the ground .

UFO researcher Budd Hopkins investigated the case using hypnotic regression and published his findings in “Intruders: The Incredible Visitations at Copley Woods” (Random House, 1987). Hopkins used the pseudonym “Kathie Davis” for Jordan to protect her family. The book spent four weeks on the New York Times best-seller list and drew on research from 125 claimed abduction cases .

According to Jordan, the mark in the yard remained for nearly five years: animals would not walk on it, insects did not inhabit the soil, and when grass returned it was thick, rubbery, and bluish-green . A transformer blew out on a power line above the site, melting wiring . Skeptics have questioned the case on several grounds. Philip J. Klass addressed the Kathie Davis case in his 1988 book “UFO-Abductions: A Dangerous Game,” critiquing hypnotic regression itself as a research method . Psychologist Robert A. Baker warned that hypnosis can transform dreams or fantasies into apparently real memories, and memory researcher Elizabeth Loftus identified suggestive cues in Hopkins’s sessions . No deliberate hoax has ever been claimed by any critic of the case .

In May 1992, CBS aired a two-part miniseries titled “Intruders,” directed by Dan Curtis and partially based on Budd Hopkins’s book . Jordan later used her real name in public. She co-authored a follow-up book with her sister Kathy Mitchell in 1993 and published “Extraordinary Contact: Life Beyond Intruders” in 2021 .

The area known by the pseudonym Copley Woods is now referred to as Kitley Woods .