Dean Cheeseman
Put on your foil hat, hide in your basement and tremble under your bed, Alien Abduction Day is here!
March 20 isn’t just the first day of Spring, it’s Alien Abduction Day. Also known as E.T. Abduction
Day.
The holiday was popularized by the 2008 Alien Abduction Day festival and street party in Toronto.
Back in 2008, the Toronto-based toy company Happy Worker hosted the one-day Alien Abduction
Festival on March 20. The point of the event was to celebrate “all things extraterrestrial & sci-fi, for
alien fanatics and creative types alike.”
Despite extensive research, no one knows who created the day or for what specific purpose. We
can only assume it’s a special day chosen by our alien overlords themselves. (Tongue firmly in
cheek)
Apparently, every year on March 20 the aliens (our friends?) swoop down and select lucky humans
from around the globe for a personal tour of their spaceships and to take part in various exciting
informational testing procedures. The tests aren’t graded, although there may be a pop quiz.
This fascination with alien abduction stories can be traced back to the case of Betty and Barney Hill,
whose papers are collected at the University of New Hampshire. They claimed that in September in
1961 somewhere in the White Mountains of New Hampshire they saw lights in the sky while driving
home from Montreal and were abducted.
Page 28
Our Valley Santa Clarita