While speaking with Entertainment Weekly, Minear revealed a point of reference for the story of Kit and Alma: "The Betty and Barney Hill story of the fifties, sixties, was one of the first abduction stories."
Like Kitt and Alma on American Horror Story, Betty and Barney Hill were an interracial couple living in mid-20th century New England. They lived relatively normal lives until a strange night in 1961 turned their world upside down. While making a late-night drive home following a vacation, the couple reported seeing a strange light following them in the sky. They claimed that after seeing the light, they lost hours of time.
Strange dreams followed the events of that night, and eventually the Hills sought out the help of a hypnotist. It was under hypnosis that they were able to put to words what they believe happened during their lost time incident. The couple claimed that the strange lights following them that night were those of an alien spaceship, which descended on the couple and brought them aboard, where they were experimented on (via History).
The Hills' story wasn't the first account of alien sightings, but it was the first time someone publicly claimed to be taken by extraterrestrials. According to Quartz, this helped establish the phenomenon we now know as alien abduction, and all the tropes that come with it.
Many of those tropes were explored through the characters of Kit and Alma on Asylum, even though their story ended up being quite different from the Hills'.
