As families and friends gathered together for the Thanksgiving holiday last week, there was probably at least one relative who, prompted by no one, piped up about how insurance is one big racket.

Policies from car rental agencies. Extended warranties on electronics. The Affordable Health Care Act. They’re all just legal con games created to tear away hard-earned dollars from the average American working man and woman.

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Unfortunately, that’s a true description of some insurance companies and their policies, which seem designed to fleece customers by playing on their fears. Take, for instance, the history surrounding alien abduction coverage.

Reddit user _-dO_Ob-_ posted about this unusual coverage in the Here’s a Fun Fact community, citing the claim by British-based insurer GoodfellowRebecca Ingrams Pearson that it had sold more than 30,000 policies by the beginning of the 21st century. What did the policy’s $155 annual premium cover? An abductee would see a $160,000 payout if he or she could prove an ET-instigated kidnapping, and that total would double if the abductee was impregnated, according to a report.

In 1996, the insurer’s first and only claim turned out to be a publicity stunt. But GRIP’s most famous policyholders were members of the Heaven’s Gate cult, many of whom committed suicide in an attempt to contact alien life in 1997. GRIP dropped its alien abduction coverage after that incident but only for a brief time.

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GRIP—it was bought out and became British Insurance Services, which doesn’t offer alien abduction policies on its website—and its founder, Simon Burgess, were never shy about mocking its policyholders. This is the same company that insured three Scottish sisters in 2000 in case they gave birth to the Second Coming (the policy was withdrawn in 2006).

“I’ve never been afraid of parsing the feeble-minded from their cash,” Burgess is reporting saying in the San Francisco Examiner in 1998.

Amazingly, GRIP wasn’t the first company to offer alien abduction insurance. The Florida-based Saint Lawrence Agency still provides a $10 million policy that it began in 1987 through the UFO Abduction Insurance Company. But it’s done in an intentionally tongue-in-cheek spirit. Customers shelling out a single $19.95 lifetime premium are doing so for the novelty of having the gold-embossed policy certificate.

Company president Michael St. Lawrence claimed his company had sold thousand of policies by the late 1990s, including some covering FBI agents (thanks to the popularity of The X-Files) and NASA space shuttle crews.

Even though there’s humorous intent behind these policies, company president Michael St. Lawrence says he has covered at least one claim by a New York State policyholder who had an implant that wasn’t made from any earthly substance. That claimant has been entitled to a $1 check on April 1 annually for the rest of his life or for 10 million years, whichever comes first.

“He’s gotten about $8 or $9, and I’ve gotten a few Christmas cards from the guy,” St. Lawrence said during a TV appearance in the late ’90s.