Woody Harrelson details 'freaky' childhood UFO encounter

Woody Harrelson has recalled a "freaky" encounter he had with a UFO during his teenage years.

During a recent appearance on The Late Show, the 63-year-old Now You See Me star shared stories from an eventful Grateful Dead concert and revealed a bizarre tale about his 1974 encounter with aliens. It took some gentle coaxing from host Stephen Colbert to get Harrelson to open up about the experience.

As the two discussed Harrelson's appearance on SNL 50, where he joined Kate McKinnon for an alien abduction sketch, Colbert asked if the actor believed in aliens.

"Yeah, I'm open-minded," Harrelson said. When Colbert probed further, asking if Harrelson had ever had any close encounters himself, Harrelson expressed disbelief. "You’re really asking me if I've had an alien experience?" he asked, sparking laughter from the studio audience.

Colbert quickly clarified, "I'm not saying 'Have you been abducted?'" He joked, "But if you have been, now would be a great time to tell me! Have you seen a UFO? I’ve seen things I can’t explain."

Harrelson, after a moment of hesitation, admitted, "I’ll admit, I have.

"I wasn’t abducted. Or maybe I was and just forgot," he added with a laugh.

Harrelson explained the event took place in 1974 when he was a teenager in Ohio. “One night, I noticed everyone was outside, so I went out, and we looked up. There were these lights blinking, then they'd shoot across the sky, and other lights would appear and do the same thing," he recalled. "We watched it for a while, and after a few minutes, they just zoomed off into another world."

The Hunger Games actor was left puzzled when no one discussed the incident afterward. "Nobody talked about it. Literally, everyone just went inside and said nothing," Harrelson said. "It was so freaky, even for me, and I was young."

So, does Harrelson believe in aliens? "Of course it's true [that they exist]," he told Colbert. "Why wouldn't it be true?"

While Harrelson’s story was indeed memorable, it was far less intense than the experiences of McKinnon's SNL character, Colleen Rafferty, who has been “vacuumed” into space in several sketches. This time, her companions, including Harrelson, Pedro Pascal, and Meryl Streep, had a much more pleasant experience.

"We met these two beautiful, glowing aliens who took our hands and said, 'Welcome.' I've never felt so safe," Harrelson’s character says in the sketch.

"Little different for me," McKinnon’s Colleen interrupts. "I was less cradled by light and more grabbed by a giant rusty claw."