Allagash Waterway, Maine

46°35′N, 69°15′W — Aroostook County, northern Maine — Allagash Wilderness Waterway

What's documented

The Allagash Wilderness Waterway is a 92-mile protected canoe route through the conifer forests of northern Maine. On the night of 20 August 1976, four canoeists — twins Jack and Jim Weiner, Charlie Foltz, and Charlie Rak — reported being beamed up from Eagle Lake by a large luminous craft. The incident was documented in 'The Allagash Affair' by Raymond Fowler (1993). Three of the four men passed polygraph tests; Charlie Rak later in life partially retracted his account, then partially re-affirmed it.

Notable & intriguing

All four Allagash witnesses underwent independent polygraph examinations administered by examiner Ernest C. Reid of Portland in 1988, twelve years after the event. Three of four examinations indicated truthfulness on key questions; Reid concluded the men 'believed their accounts.' Charlie Rak's results were inconclusive.

Reid's signed polygraph reports, December 1988, in Fowler, 'The Allagash Affair' (1993), Appendix B
Jim Weiner suffered onset of temporal-lobe epilepsy in 1980, four years after the incident; subsequent MRI revealed multiple small lesions in the right hippocampus and a small mass on the pineal gland, biopsy-confirmed cyst. The medical history is documented in his published medical records released with consent in Fowler (1993).

Beth Israel Hospital Boston medical records, 1980-1989, in Fowler, 'The Allagash Affair' (1993)

Public-record imagery

Eagle Lake in the Allagash Wilderness Waterway, Maine — the lake where the four canoeists reported being beamed up in August 1976.Wikipedia Commons · Public domain · Unknown author Unknown author · 1927

The Allagash River — the wilderness waterway in northern Maine where, on the night of 20 August 1976, the Weiner brothers, Charlie Foltz, and Charles Rak said a sphere of light pulled them up from their canoe through a beam over Eagle Lake.Wikimedia Commons · Public domain · Shadow2700 · 2003

Allagash Falls. The four witnesses independently underwent hypnotic regression with Dr. Anthony Constantino in the 1980s and each produced similar accounts of small grey beings; the Allagash case became foundational to Budd Hopkins's abduction model.Wikimedia Commons · Public domain · Shadow2700 · 2003

Pancake ice on the Allagash. The Allagash Wilderness Waterway is 92 miles of protected river through the North Maine Woods — sparsely populated, the closest human settlements 30+ miles in any direction from Eagle Lake.Wikimedia Commons · Public domain · U.S. Geological Survey · 2013