Afraid of Being Abducted by Aliens? There’s Insurance for That.

Let’s say you’re relaxing on your couch at home, minding your own business, and suddenly the unthinkable happens: you’re abducted by aliens. Homeowner’s insurance doesn’t cover that. Fortunately, alien abduction insurance does.

The St. Lawrence Agency in Altamonte Springs, Florida has been selling alien abduction policies since 1987. Its motto: “Beam me up, I’m covered.”

Aliens abduct. Make sure you’re covered. Image courtesy of the St. Lawrence Agency.

Lifetime coverage costs just $19.95 with a $10 million policy—paid in increments of one dollar a year over ten million years. However, the policy includes double indemnity coverage if the alien wants conjugal visits or refers to the abductee as a “nutritional food source.”

The policy’s creator, Mike St. Lawrence, came up with the idea after listening to a Larry King interview with Communion author, Whitley Strieber. He decided to have fun with the UFO craze and wrote the policy. It wasn’t his first gag insurance offering though.

“The first satirical policy I wrote was reincarnation insurance, offered by the Future Life Insurance Company,” St. Lawrence told Weird Historian. “It was to spoof yuppies, who only think about themselves. So in your next life, you have money for yourself. If you come back as a rock or tree, we suggest you have someone help you fill out the claim form.”

St. Lawrence had placed a small ad for the policy and it earned attention from the media. The Florida Department of Insurance also took notice, but allowed his sales to continue. “They thought it was innovative,” St. Lawrence said.

He continued promoting reincarnation insurance by calling into radio shows, including Larry King and Coast to Coast AM with George Noory. When asked what kind of policy he’d be offering next, he mentioned the UFO insurance.

“I started selling them right away,” St. Lawrence said. “It happened to be during the Christmas season. It’s a unique gift. Most people don’t buy it for themselves—they buy it for someone else and make themselves the beneficiary.”

In fact, St. Lawrence won’t even sell the policy unless the buyer understands it’s a joke. In the 31 years he’s been in business, he’s sold more than 30,000 policies and only refunded one elderly man who apparently missed the humor.

“He didn’t really read it till ten years later and realized it wasn’t what he thought it was,” St. Lawrence said. “He got his twenty bucks back.”

Make sure you’re covered before being whisked away from Earth. Note: the opening credits to Napolean Dynamite borrowed Mike St. Lawrence’s concept and business card. Image courtesy of the St. Lawrence Agency.

Two customers, however, have submitted claims and had them approved. In 1990, a New York policy holder believed that an alien abducted him and left an implant in his body. An MIT professor analyzed the material and determined it was not from this planet.

“The professor couldn’t verify it came from his body,” St. Lawrence added. Yet he accepted the claim. “I sent him a dollar a year for eight or nine years and then lost track of him, which suggests he may have been abducted again.”

The other claimant sent in his form with a Polaroid from the inside of the UFO he supposedly had been aboard. “You couldn’t see much, but he indicated ‘This side up’ in the margin,” St. Lawrence said.

Amused, he decided to approve the payout. A check for one dollar is sent each year on April 1^st.

Aside from operating his alien abduction insurance business, St. Lawrence has made a living running a payroll service and doing income taxes. “If I come back in the next life and I can add, subtract, divide and multiply, I want you to shoot me,” he said. “It’s lot more fun making people laugh.”

He’s been doing just that with other insurance policies, too, including Y2K insurance and asteroid insurance. “Double indemnity if you actually kiss your own butt goodbye,” he said, regarding the latter. “With an exclusion for circus people.”

But none of these ventures have approached the success of the alien abduction insurance. “You’d think nobody would buy this, but to have a life for over 30 years, that’s amazing to me,” St. Lawrence said. “It shows you the possibilities of what can happen.”

Joke or no joke, at least a few of his policy holders may agree.