Secret life: firsthand accounts of UFO abductions (6 page)

By the late 1970s and early 1980s, abduction accounts began to be reported in ever-increasing numbers. Some researchers were beginning to theorize about an apparent reproductive link that recurred in these accounts. As early as 1972 researcher Marjorie Fish hypothesized that a needle inserted in Betty Hill’s navel might have been for experimentation with human eggs, and in 1977 psychiatrist Berthold E. Schwarz discussed the idea of a laparoscopy (a method of examining internal organs by using a viewing scope) being performed on Betty. Based on cases that she investigated, in 1980 researcher Ann Druffel suggested that aliens might be interested in human sexual life-styles.
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Most UFO researchers, however, still considered abduction reports to be exotic and bewildering anomalies—perhaps true and perhaps not. Although patterns were slowly emerging from the abduction stories and the people involved seemed to be credible, the specter of the contactees still intimidated most UFO researchers. In fact, some 1950s-style contactees were still around, claiming trips to the planets and gab sessions with friendly aliens. To complicate matters, some abductees who seemed to be sincere individuals and who did not fit the contactee model were reporting contactee-like abduction experiences. They claimed that they were given prophecies of death and destruction for our society, or that they had experienced Christian religious experiences. Others were enamored with kindly, handsome, space people who were here on a benevolent mission of some sort. How these reports could fit into the scheme of “legitimate” abductions was impossible to comprehend.

To make matters worse, there was the increasing popularity of “channeling,” a process in which, by placing oneself in the proper mental state, a person could contact benevolent aliens at will. Prior to the 1950s, channelers, whose activities are related to automatic writing, speaking in tongues, and a number of other “psychic” phenomena, had mainly communicated with spirits. Now aliens, a phenomenon that had been known in UFO cult groups for more than thirty-five years, became the contacts of choice. In channeled messages, the Space Brothers, frequently said to be from the Pleiades or Zeta Reticuli star systems, freely discussed their reasons for visiting Earth, the propulsion systems of their vehicles, and life on the idyllic planets where they resided, and their philosophy of life. They took Earth people to task for befouling the environment, causing wars, and so forth. They expressed love for Earth and Earthlings, and gave advice on how we should be more loving to each other. Much of the channeled information was taken up with trivial matters along the lines of “pop” psychology and self-help advice—urging vegetarianism and other health measures, providing metaphysical and spiritual messages, and discussing the place of Earth and its people in the universe. Ultimately they wished to lead us through a spiritual passage into a New Age. For some UFO researchers, channeling confused the issue and made the abduction phenomenon seem all the more improbable.

In 1981 UFO research was fundamentally altered by the publication
of Budd Hopkins’s
Missing Time
. Unlike most UFO researchers, who treated abduction cases as simply another “sighting” category, Hopkins investigated seven abduction cases for patterns, similarities, and convergences.
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He found that the question of inexplicable oneto two-hour gaps of time was more pervasive than had been realized in the past. Among other things, he discovered the significance of an unaccountable bodily scar that often accompanied abduction reports. He demonstrated that a person could be an abductee without having a UFO sighting and that abduction accounts could be hidden beneath the surface of strange “screen memories.” Hopkins’s research confirmed the prevalence of the examination that seemed to take place with nearly every abductee. He showed how the people who had experienced these events were normal people who had not manifested serious mental disorders. He also demonstrated that many of the abductees had family members who were also abductees and that the phenomenon might be intergenerational.

In
Missing Time
Hopkins invited readers who felt that they might have been abducted to write to him. He received hundreds of letters as a result of the book and more after his subsequent radio and television appearances. UFO researchers began to realize that the scope of the phenomenon was far larger than anyone had imagined.

Yet the question remained: why were there so many abduction accounts now and not after the Hill case? The answer may be that when John Fuller published
Interrupted Journey
in 1966, he did not embark on a television and radio tour for the book and make the idea of abduction accessible via the media to millions of people. Nor did Fuller include a note in his book asking people who might have had these experiences to write to him. Therefore, abductees did not have an easily reached outlet for their stories. Furthermore, as researchers looked back at older cases, it became evident that some abductees did try to report their experiences as they remembered them, often with fragments and screen memories, but UFO researchers could not understand the import of what they were hearing. For instance, people would report that they had had a close view of the underside of a UFO; or that they had the strange feeling that they had floated out the window upon seeing a UFO; or that they had seen a UFO from their car, had the urge to stop the car, and become confused over what happened next; or that, although they had seen a UFO hovering 100 feet from them, they had the idea that they
could tell what was inside. The UFO investigators would record the details of the case, but there would be no back-up or in-depth investigation other than of the sighting itself.

If the UFO investigators had suspected that there was more to the case than a simple sighting, they had no idea how to investigate it. Since most investigators lacked expertise in hypnosis, the majority of cases went uninvestigated. Even when competent hypnotists were called in on cases, they were not well versed enough in abduction research to ask the proper questions. They could not tell if the subject was “filling in” with false information, if the witness had slipped into channeling, or if they were hearing dream material or “screen” memories. And because the investigators did not know exactly what happened during an abduction, they could not identify false memories purposely placed in victims’ minds.

Furthermore, most abductees did not report their experiences because they simply did not remember them. If they did remember something, they often linked the event to a psychic or religious experience and thus had no reason to call a UFO organization.

Even with the investigating problems, by the mid-1980s there were so many of these reports that researchers could not keep up with them. The amount of data from each abduction experience was so extensive and rich in detail that even the most cursory look indicated that something extraordinary was occurring. In 1987 Dr. Thomas E. Bullard published a massive study of 270 published abduction cases. Although most of the cases were not investigated as carefully as they should have been, and many contained untrustworthy material, Bullard’s careful analysis was still able to show numerous structural similarities.
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Most researchers still did not understand the implications of the new data. They had been schooled in the older sighting-analysis techniques and were ill-equipped to study abduction cases with new “internal” methodology. Most of the analytic procedures that had been developed for deciphering what a person observed no longer applied as UFO research moved into the delicate area of recovering memories locked away in the mind. But once a few researchers, like Budd Hopkins and Dr. Richard Haines (who developed a more planned method of questioning abductees) slowly began to develop proper techniques of investigating abductions and to unravel the tangled web of data that the abductees related, the victims’ stories
began to take on a coherence and a structure, with extraordinary detail that had never before been revealed.

In 1987 Hopkins published
Intruders: The Incredible Visitations at Copley Woods,
which for the first time revealed the extent of the UFO phenomenon’s intrusion into peoples’ personal lives. Hopkins found that, in addition to examinations, victims described aliens performing genetic experiments on them that included the taking of ova and sperm. He uncovered the idea that aliens were having abductees physically interact with odd-looking babies presumably grown at least in part from the abductees’ eggs and sperm. He also began to realize the extent of victimization that had occurred among abductees as a result of their experiences. The people he investigated were traumatized individuals whose lives had been profoundly affected by their abductions.
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By the late 1980s the phenomenon had begun to yield some of its secrets. The abductions, once considered the fringy “stepchild” of the UFO phenomenon, were irrevocably changing UFO studies. Researchers had begun to realize that the abduction phenomenon yielded far more information about UFOs than sightings had revealed. At last we had literally and figuratively entered inside the UFOs.

“THIS IS NOT A DREAM.”

Going from a normal environment into a UFO can be a shattering experience. People are engaged in normal activities when suddenly they are removed from their surroundings against their will and taken into the fringes of reality. The abductors seem to make a conscious effort to take people when they will not be missed or when their lives will not be overly disrupted. That still allows a wide range of opportunities for an abduction.

An unsuspecting woman is in her room preparing to go to bed. She gets into bed, reads a while, turns off the light, and drifts off into a peaceful night’s sleep. In the middle of the night she turns over and lies on her back. She is awakened by a light that seems to be glowing in her room. The light moves toward her bed and takes the shape of a small “man” with a bald head and huge black eyes. She is terrified. She wants to run but she cannot move. She wants to scream but she cannot speak. The “man” moves toward her and looks deeply into her eyes. Suddenly she is calmer, and she “knows” that the “man” is not going to hurt her.

This is a typical beginning of an abduction. Virtually all abductees have experienced this. From the first few seconds of an abduction, nothing is within the realm of normal human experience. It is an
instant descent into the fantastic and bizarre. Technology and biotechnology that seem like magic are immediately apparent. Once the event begins, humans are powerless to stop it. When it is over, most victims cannot remember it.

Often the abductee forms “screen” memories that mask the beginning of an abduction event. For example, one abductee said she saw a wolf in her bedroom one night. The wolf was standing squarely on her bed looking her in the eyes. She clearly remembered its fur, fangs, and eyes. Other abductees have claimed to have seen monkeys, owls, deer, and other animals. Some say that they have seen an “angel” or a “devil.” Through the use of hypnosis to recover the details of these events, each of these cases turned out to be the beginning of an abduction sequence. It is common for abductees to refer to out-of-body experiences that they had or, more commonly, that they succeeded in “preventing” at what was the beginning of an abduction. They sometimes remember that they felt themselves floating out of bed but then “fought it” and were able to lower themselves back onto the bed and abort the experience. When these memories have been examined, they have turned out to be a combination of the first few seconds and the last few seconds of an abduction.

Secrecy appears to be critically important to the aliens in determining the opportunities for abductions. They commonly take place when the abductee is in an automobile, alone in the daytime, or with a small group of people. Victims have reported aliens doing procedures on them in their homes without being abducted. The majority of abductions, however, begin at night when the victim is alone, either awake or asleep. No abductions have surfaced that took place in the middle of a very large group of people, in full view at a public event.

The greater the victim’s seclusion and the less others will miss her, the longer the experience tends to last. If a person is alone and is not likely to be missed for hours, she will experience more events during the abduction. Similarly, an abduction of a person walking alone in a secluded place will last longer than an abduction originating in a small group of people. Most abductions last from one to three hours.

Nighttime presents an ideal time for an abduction. During the night, the abductee’s disappearance has a greater chance of going unnoticed and the aliens can maintain maximum “cover.” Also, if the abductee is asleep, the event can become concealed as part of a dream. Although the “dream” may be much more vivid and have a different quality than usual, it is still within the acceptable cognitive realm.

At the beginning of the nighttime abduction, the Beings enter into the room through a light source coming from the window. How the use of light can transform and transport matter is unknown. The frightened victim is calmed when the Beings come close to her and stare into her eyes. A Small Being then touches her shoulder or arm. She finds herself floating up and out of bed. She is drawn to the light and enveloped in it. She floats toward the light. Small Beings are with her. Then, without hesitation, she and her escorts go directly through the closed window to the outside. She has no particular physical sensation when passing through the window.

Although abductees frequently report going directly through walls and ceilings, the Beings appear to seek out a window. Sometimes the aliens will take abductees out of their bedrooms and into another room and then out through a window there. Windows that are blocked, for example with boxes after a move, are avoided in favor of unblocked windows. One woman was visiting friends with her son. They slept in two different rooms in the basement. An abduction sequence began, and the aliens took her out of her bed and walked her into her son’s room. Then they took her son and walked both of them into the bathroom. She wondered why they were crowding into the bathroom and then she realized that the bathroom was the only room in the basement with a window. Soon a bright light entered and they flew out the window.