The True Story That Inspired 'American Horror Story: Asylum's Alien Abduction Storyline

FX's American Horror Story has been haunting fans with chilling stories for more than a decade. Now heading into its 12th season - American Horror Story: Delicate premieres on Wednesday, Sept. 20 – Ryan Murphy's buzzed about horror anthology series is set to pull from the pages of Danielle Valentine's novel Delicate Condition, but not every aspect of the show has been based in fiction, including the terrifying alien abduction storyline in Season 2, American Horror Story: Asylum.

Debuting in 2012, Asylum follows the patients at the fictional mental institution Briarcliff Manor. Among the patients there is Kit Walker (Evan Peters), who was committed following an encounter with extraterrestrials several years prior. His wife, Alma (Britnie Oldford), was abducted, only to return years later with a newborn child, whom she believed the aliens would eventually return for. Although Kit's story was deemed a delusion, flashbacks appeared to prove he was speaking the truth, and it turns out that the story has some basis off the screen, too.

Asylum's alien abduction storyline is heavily based on the alleged real-life alien abduction of Betty and Barney Hill, an interracial couple, similar to Kit and Alma, who claimed they were abducted by aliens in 1961. Later dubbed the "Hill Abduction" and the "Zeta Reticuli Incident," the alleged abduction occurred in a rural portion of New Hampshire on September 19, 1961. The Hills were driving down rural roads in New Hampshire's White Mountains when they witnessed a strange flying object in the sky. The object, they said, descended, got closer to their vehicle, and followed them. When they finally returned home to Portsmouth at around 5 a.m., they were dazed, felt dirty, their watches had stopped working, Barney's shoes were scuffed and Betty's dress was ripped, and, perhaps most oddly, they could not account for two hours of the night.

Although the Hills initially could not remember much of the encounter, History.com reports that with the help of a psychiatrist, they slowly began to remember the evening. According to the couple, they encountered gray beings with large eyes, who walked them into a metallic disc, where they examined the couple and erased their memories.

While the Hills' story was not the first account of alien sightings, it did mark one the first abduction stories. Their experience was widely publicized and became a bestselling book, The Interrupted Journey, as well as a 1975 TV movie The UFO Incident. It also became a pivotal storyline in Asylum.

"The Betty and Barney Hill story of the fifties, sixties, was one of the first abduction stories. It was an interracial couple, we weren't taking from that specifically, but it was in the water, in our experience, the stories that we all knew," AHS: Asylum producer Tim Minear told Entertainment Weekly back in 2013. "When Ryan first pitched out that first story, he pitched it in that order, and he was like, 'And then we meet him at his farm, and then he's abducted by aliens.' And my jaw was on the floor, but it felt exactly right to me for the period. If you think about it, those aliens are the closest things to angels, on our show about sort of religion versus science, there was nothing incongruous to me about any of that stuff."

Asylum found real-life inspiration in more ways than one. The season's setting, Briarcliff Manor, was based on the Willowbrook State School, per Screen Rant. Sarah Paulson's Lana Winters, who went on to appear in Season 6's Roanoke, was based on American journalist Nellie Bly. Other characters in the season, including Dr. Arthur Arden and Dr. Oliver Thredson, were also based on real people.

AHS: Asylum, as well as all previous seasons of the show and the spinoff series American Horror Stories, is available to stream on Hulu. AHS: Delicate Part One, consisting of five episodes, premieres on FX on Wednesday, Sept. 20. Episodes will also be available to stream on Hulu the next day.