Dean Alioto
PersonCreatorDean Alioto
PersonCreatorDean Alioto is an American filmmaker who made the 1989 found-footage film The McPherson Tape and the 2026 abduction documentary The Experiencers: Full Disclosure.
Dean Alioto is an American filmmaker who made the 1989 found-footage film The McPherson Tape and the 2026 abduction documentary The Experiencers: Full Disclosure.
Dean Alioto is an American writer, director and producer whose work has twice placed him at the center of the alien abduction story. He made UFO Abduction, the 1989 microbudget film now usually called The McPherson Tape, and its 1998 television remake, Alien Abduction: Incident in Lake County, two fictional films that many viewers took for genuine footage. In 2026 he returned to the subject as a documentarian with The Experiencers: Full Disclosure, a feature about people who report abduction and contact.
Alioto wrote, directed and produced UFO Abduction on a budget of about $6,500, and he also acted in it and shot it. The film presents itself as a home video recorded by a Connecticut family during a child's birthday in 1983, opens with an introduction that treats the footage as real, and closes by asking viewers for information about the missing family. Its limited release through Axiom Films ended when the distributor's materials were lost in a warehouse fire. Alioto has described how stripped-down copies later circulated as possible real evidence, until he had to publicly explain that the film was fiction. He reissued it on DVD and digital in 2018, and a restored Blu-ray followed in 2020.
In 1998 Alioto and screenwriter Paul Chitlik remade the story with professional actors for UPN as Alien Abduction: Incident in Lake County. The broadcast framed the film as footage recovered from the home of the vanished McPherson family and mixed in staged expert interviews. Because it aired without clear disclaimers, it caused confusion that has been compared to the War of the Worlds radio broadcast, and UFO researchers including Stanton Friedman were not told it was fiction. Both films are now treated as early landmarks of found-footage horror. Alioto has since directed and produced true-crime documentaries and extraterrestrial-themed series, largely for television.
The Experiencers: Full Disclosure, which Alioto wrote, directed and produced for Captured Pictures, was streaming on Amazon Prime Video and Apple TV by early June 2026. The 84-minute film includes Travis Walton, journalist Leslie Kean, Yvonne Smith and geneticist George Church, and revisits classic accounts such as the Betty and Barney Hill case and Whitley Strieber's alongside newer experiencer testimony. Reviewing it for Dread Central, Chad Collins said it "fascinates and thrills" but questioned how readily it validates its subjects' beliefs.
The release made Alioto a frequent guest on UFO shows through mid-2026, including appearances with Richard Dolan, Ryan Sprague's Somewhere in the Skies and Bryce Zabel's Sound, Light & Frequency. He argued that abduction accounts had faded from a disclosure conversation focused on craft and government secrecy, and he discussed the legacy of Harvard psychiatrist John Mack. On Zabel's program he presented a previously unaired excerpt in which Walton describes an encounter in childhood, years before his 1975 disappearance. Alioto's two careers in UFO film, one making fiction that audiences mistook for fact and one recording the testimony of people who say the experience was real, have made him an unusual commentator on how abduction stories are told and believed.
Debra Kauble (then Debra Tomey) came forward in 1986 under the pseudonym "Kathie Davis" in the book Intruders by Budd Hopkins. She was one of the first people to come forward in the dark days of the UFO stigma to talk about what she and her family had experienced with NHI. In 2026 Debra gave a moving speech for the Rice University Center for The Impossible's symposium on "Breaking the Taboo" detailing how she navigated this journey of being a public experiencer while also raising children and...
Dave Foley and Jeremy Corbell dicuss a jointly witnessed UAP that they also photographed. This is really compelling as its a jointly witnessed event with evidence. Dave has deeply researched this topic and would welcome your questions. The event is special guest hosted by Actor Thomas Jane (The Expanse, The Punisher, The Mist), Documentary Director Dean Alioto and Experiencer ("Kathie Davis" depicted in Budd Hopkins Intruders) Deb Kauble. Drop your questions in the linked post below: https://...
You may think you're prepared for the truth but the reality of having a contact experience is more complicated and nuanced then maybe the hardcore truth seekers are prepared for. Experiencers know this complication. Hey Everyone - this is pretty timely because YOU get to ask special guest host Thomas Jane, Dave Foley, Deb Kauble and Dean Alioto questions from Reddit about this or anything else this Sunday! Drop your questions for Dave, Thomas, Deb or Dean in the linked post below: https://www...
You may think you're prepared for the truth but the reality of having a contact experience is more complicated and nuanced then maybe the hardcore truth seekers are prepared for. Experiencers know this complication. Hey Everyone - this is pretty timely because YOU get to ask special guest host Thomas Jane, Dave Foley, Deb Kauble and Dean Alioto questions from Reddit about this or anything else this Sunday! Drop your questions for Dave, Thomas, Deb or Dean in the linked post below: https://www...
Hey Everyone - this is pretty timely because YOU get to ask special guest host Thomas Jane, Dave Foley, Deb Kauble and Dean Alioto questions from Reddit about this or anything else this Sunday! Drop your questions in the linked post below: https://www.reddit.com/r/UFOB/comments/1w85b2v/multisubreddit_livestream_ama_special_guest_host/ We're excited to announce a new multi-subreddit livestream AMA on the experiencer phenomenon — the people who say non-human intelligence has entered their lives...
The Anomalous Coalition presents Special Guest Host Thomas Jane with Dean Alioto, Dave Foley and Debra Jordan Kauble here — LIVESTREAM AMA — Sunday, September 13, 2026 @ 1:00 PM EST / 10:00 AM PST We're excited to announce a new multi-subreddit livestream AMA on the experiencer phenomenon — the people who say non-human intelligence has entered their lives directly. Actor and director Thomas Jane joins us as special guest host for this event, leading the conversation with filmmaker Dean Alioto...
The Anomalous Coalition presents Special Guest Host Thomas Jane with Dean Alioto, Dave Foley and Debra Jordan Kauble here — LIVESTREAM AMA — Sunday, September 13, 2026 @ 1:00 PM EST / 10:00 AM PST We're excited to announce a new multi-subreddit livestream AMA on the experiencer phenomenon — the people who say non-human intelligence has entered their lives directly. Actor and director Thomas Jane joins us as special guest host for this event, leading the conversation with filmmaker Dean Alioto...
The Anomalous Coalition presents Special Guest Host Thomas Jane with Dean Alioto, Dave Foley and Debra Jordan Kauble here — LIVESTREAM AMA — Sunday, September 13, 2026 @ 1:00 PM EST / 10:00 AM PST We're excited to announce a new multi-subreddit livestream AMA on the experiencer phenomenon — the people who say non-human intelligence has entered their lives directly. Actor and director Thomas Jane joins us as special guest host for this event, leading the conversation with filmmaker Dean Alioto...
Hi r/UFOB — I'm Dean Alioto, filmmaker and UAP researcher. Would love to get your take on this... After multiple years of congressional hearings on UAPs, and the grand presentation of murky inconclusive evidence, one might argue "disclosure" has reached its revelatory zenith. Even if we do see 100% glorious 4k footage of craft with rivets, warts, and all, does that push the needle above the red zone? Will we be satiated to the point of a resounding "hell yeah!"? Since the U.S. gov doesn't app...
What if the phenomenon is running a behavioral science program on humanity? Co-creation theory, high strangeness, future-human hypotheses with @DeanAlioto. https://t.co/r22it5kcoq
