Return
Eventually the abductors will return the abductees to terra firma, usually to exactly the same location and circumstances they were in prior to being taken. Usually, explicit memories of the abduction experience will not be present, and the abductee will realize they've experienced "missing time" upon checking a timepiece.
Sometimes the alleged abductors appear to make mistakes when returning their captives. Famed UFO researcher Budd Hopkins has joked about "the cosmic application of Murphy's Law" in response to this observation. Hopkins has estimated that these "errors" accompany 4-5% of abduction reports. One type of common apparent mistake made by the abductors is failing to return the experiencer to the same spot that they were taken from initially. This can be as simple as a different room in the same house, or abductees can even find themselves outside and all the doors of the house are locked from the inside.
David M. Jacobs recounts an interesting report of a more severe "wrong location" mistake. She claims that she was driving and the next thing she knew, about 5 hours had passed. She was standing in the middle of a cornfield with her car nearby. There was no evidence that she had driven there as the stalks of corn were all intact and upright. Suddenly she loses consciousness briefly and then finds herself on the road driving again. It was as if the abductors had accidentally returned her to the wrong place, realized what they had done, and then corrected their mistake.
Some abduction claimants have reported being returned to the correct location, but in a different circumstance. Common reports will have the abductee clothed when they went to bed, but nude when they awaken. Sometimes their clothes will be folded by their bedside, missing, or in rare cases, someone else's clothes will be there and their own clothing lost. Reports have been made of people awakening to find that their clothes are being worn improperly in bizarre ways (e.g. a long sleeve shirt apparently forced up over the legs like a pair of pants). The body or other objects may be covered with a fine dust.
It should be noted that some have speculated that these apparently bizarre, pointless behaviors were not mistakes at all.
Read more about this topic: Narrative Of The Abduction Phenomenon
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