The Langford Budville Abduction ("Gabriella Versacci")

She was an Italian immigrant housewife from Taunton, married, with a daughter. Later retellings call her Gabriella Versacci, a pseudonym. She reported her experience four years later, and the British researchers Barry King and Andrew Collins investigated it for their magazine Strange Phenomena.

Tuesday, 16 October 1973. Night. She was driving her 1967 Mini to Wellington to visit a sick friend. Just past the Langford Budville signpost on the B3187, a very bright light hung over the field to her right. Then the Mini failed. Lights and engine died together. She coasted to a halt.

She lifted the bonnet. A very loud hum, like a generator, seemed to pervade the whole area. She shut the bonnet in panic. Then a very heavy hand grasped her left shoulder. She turned to face "a tall metallic dark coloured robot that reflected light from the source in the field." A strange coloured flashing light followed. She passed out.

She next stood in the field, the robot beside her. Before her was a large hemispherical object, as bright as an arc lamp. As the light faded to a glow, she saw a machine, silvery grey like aluminium, resting on at least two thick legs. About 12 metres across. About 6 metres high. Large oblong windows issued a yellow light. The hum came from the object itself.

She blacked out again and woke in a circular, freezing room, naked under a light blue blanket, wrists and ankles held by large rubber bands. Three men entered, "totally human, medium height, fair and slim," dressed like surgeons in skullcaps, face masks and aprons. Their eyes were slightly more rounded than normal. They never blinked. One spoke in perfect English. They called the robot a "trained retriever device."

An examination followed. In Bullard's version they took a fingernail paring and a blood sample. Then, she said, one of them returned and raped her "in a totally unemotional way." Some retellings end without the assault.

She came to fully dressed beside her car and drove home in shock, not knowing at first who or where she was. She arrived at 02:30 and told her husband straight away. Later, strangers who knew details of the incident came to the house and threatened her to keep quiet. Threatening calls and letters followed. A lorry tried to force her off the road.

King and Collins investigated her directly. Alan Bell retold their findings in Mersey News, and the case appeared in the New BUFORA Journal. Thomas E. Bullard included it in UFO Abductions: The Measure of a Mystery, and Jenny Randles cited it in 1988. No police or official report, physical trace or medical record is recorded.

The retellings disagree. Her age is given as 33, 37 or 43, and the time ranges from 23:00 to after 2:00 AM. Whether hypnotic regression played a part is unclear. UFO Insight rates the case inconclusive. General explanations for abduction claims, such as sleep paralysis and false memory, have not been applied to this case directly.

ThinkAboutIt classes it as a close encounter of the fourth kind and groups it with other robot cases, St-Cyrille-de-Wendover in Quebec and the Antonio La Rubia abduction in Brazil. It also falls within the October 1973 humanoid wave that included Pascagoula. Its sexual element invites comparison with Antônio Villas Boas.