You are 100% right and I have suggested this to them but they don't want to believe they have been abducted. Another story from one of my same
friends and another is they were sitting in his car. When out of no where they saw a very bright white light up the area they they were in. They
thought it was a police car shining a search light toward them. And got ready to be yelled at for being in the area they shoudl not of been. They
said they realised it was a white ball of light not very big in size less then a few feet hovering over the beach about 15-30 feet in the sky and it
started coming right toward them aswell. My other good friend the non-believer(at the time)said he knew it was a UFO and watched it do some strange
manuvers in the sky before it came right over to the car very fast. When it got next to the car it shined a very bright white light that would not let
them start the car for some reason even though he insisted he tried and tried. They said it kept shining the intense white light and the car would not
start. They said this all happened fairly quick but when the light went off they could start the car and got 'heck' out of there and won't ever go
back there during the night time.
I don't see any reason to suspect that Aliens abducted your friends.
Thousands of people around the world report seeing these balls of light every year.
Even I had a close encounter with one , and I can tell you I have no reason to think I was abducted. Just that these balls of light whatever they are,
are real things.
Ok just a wild guess here... could it of been a FIREWORK that was fired out of the house in their direction? Would explain the plethora of colors and
the sound. Someone maybe was playing a prank or somethin to scare them away?