Alternate Perceptions Magazine, September October
UFOs: Caught in a Web of Deception
by: This paper was originally presented at the Gulf Breeze UFO Conference, Gulf Breeze Florida, February 12, 1994 © R. W. Boeche, 1994, Revised 2021, 2022. All Rights Reserved
Note: This work was first presented as an address to a conference, and so is not exhaustively footnoted. Those endnotes which appear were inserted after many requests were received for a printed copy version of this presentation. The original text is unchanged except for minor corrections of typos and necessary updating of the mention of certain events, such as the Heaven’s Gate mass suicide which occurred after the original presentation.
In this paper I will address the phenomenon of UFOs generally, by addressing an often ridiculed, little explored, subset of the UFO phenomenon. This area, known as the Men-in-Black or MIB1 phenomenon contains some of the strangest and most bizarre events in the annals of UFO research. And before anyone asks, I don’t mean the Will Smith, Tommy Lee Jones movies. What are UFOs? Some 85–95% of sightings have mundane explanations. Planes, birds, meteors, space junk, astronomical bodies, etc., observed under unusual conditions explain most events. Hoaxes explain a few more. But what about that 5–15% of reports which defy explanation? Are they extraterrestrial in origin?
Results of secret military development projects? Or something else altogether. Let’s look and see what we find. The Men-in-Black phenomenon has been part of UFO research since 1953. That’s when an early researcher, Albert Bender,2 disbanded the International Flying Saucer Bureau after having been threatened by three “men in black” who allegedly explained to him the horrible secret behind the saucers. At roughly this same time, Edgar Jarrold, an Australian researcher was silenced, as were New Zealand researchers Harold Fulton, John Stuart, and Doreen Wilkinson, and Canadian researcher Laimon Mitris. Not only were these researchers visited by men ostensibly from a “secret government agency,” but they and their families suffered a barrage of poltergeist-like activity, which included — in at least two of the cases — physical attacks by invisible entities, and even an alleged rape.
The MIB enigma, is first and foremost, a subject about which many would prefer to forget. In this group of those who would like to invoke selective amnesia, one could include those “serious” investigators who feel embarrassed about these reports, and the way in which they seem to reflect poorly on their attempts to legitimize the bastard science of Ufology. One would also need to include in this group, those serious investigators who have experienced the phenomenon firsthand. A group of men and women who would much rather have lived out their days without adding an MIB encounter to their catalogue of life–experiences.
Many relegate the MIB question to some dusty mental shelf where they like to hide all the oddball data, they would rather not have to deal with in developing theories regarding the UFO phenomena. This is the shelf where they think they can safely put all the objectionably bizarre events. What is considered objectionably bizarre has changed over time.
Once, such things as UFO landings and sightings of UFO occupants were ignored by the ‘serious’ investigators for years. And then there is the problem of the contactees 3: those chosen few who — beginning in the late 1940’s — believe they were visited by our benevolent space brothers and encouraged to remake society. UFO abductions 4were once considered solely as fantasy or psychological pathology. And this MIB topic must be hallucinations, or pathetic cries for attention. . . MIBs don’t seem to have much of anything to do with the real issue (many ‘serious’ investigators conclude) — UFOs are from another planet and are here doing terrible things to us (or very good things for us, depending on your point of view)!
I have been privileged to have many colleagues — names who would be known to most of you reading this — who have felt confident enough to confide in me their MIB experiences. I believe that if you knew who these individuals were, and were able to question them, they would deny their experiences. I wouldn’t blame them. The MIB experience is something that is extremely disturbing at the time it occurs, something that is very difficult to discuss with anyone, and something that continues to haunt the victim for the rest of their lives.
Today, I want to talk about the absolute reality of these experiences. They are, most emphatically, not hallucinations, and except for a few instances, not hoaxes. The MIB event is long overdue for serious study. I want to discuss very briefly, the history of the MIB phenomena, several MIB encounters of prominent investigators, who will remain anonymous, and a look at how ignoring the oddball data, especially MIB reports, may have diverted us from a study of the real nature of the UFO phenomena, and left us, as it were, on the sidewalk, admiring the window dressing.
Traditional accounts of the devil, from the folklore of many societies, have obvious connections with the Men in Black. Reginald Scot, in The Discoverie of Witchcraft, 5 published in 1584, described the Devil as being repugnant in appearance, ugly, and with black skin. Charles Wall, in his 1902 book Devils, 6 cites an 11th century Greek manuscript in which the Devil appears human-like, and black. The Devil also traditionally must possess some defect when appearing as a human, much like the MIB who walk awkwardly, or display some other obvious and usually blatant defect. In The Devil in Massachusetts, 7 historian Marion Starkey relates Cotton Mather’s experience with a poltergeist-like devil, the “black man”, who as Mather said was, “damnably dangerous and eternally a nuisance.” Native American tradition speaks of the Trickster, a figure which has close ties to descriptions of the MIB, and a figure whom Carl Jung described in his hierarchy of archetypes, as possessing a “compensatory relationship to the saint.” There are ties to the Eastern mystical tradition’s enigmatic Brothers of the Shadow, whom Michael Talbot describes as “. . . cunning and evil; intent upon keeping the student of the occult from finding out the proverbial answer. The Brothers of the Shadow, like the MIB, are known for threatening students whenever they get too close to [the truth].” 8
Several mysterious visitors who seem to fit the description of our modern day MIBs were active across the United States during the great mystery airship 9 wave of 1896–1898.These strangers usually appeared to collect some artifact left (either intentionally or accidentally) by the airship and its crew.
The Welsh airship flap of 1909 resulted in many MIB-like encounters, the mysterious visitors usually reported to have been speaking in some strange, unknown language. An event from four years earlier, in 1905, may be even more interesting. During the spring of that year, Wales was inundated with sightings of mysterious aerial lights. On March 30, 1905, the Barmouth Advertiser carried this item: “In the neighborhood dwells an exceptionally intelligent young woman of the peasant stock, whose bedroom has been visited three nights in succession by a man dressed in black. This figure has delivered a message to the girl which she is too frightened to relate.” It is interesting to note that this event comes during the great Welsh Christian revival of 1904–05. A researcher whose name would be recognized by everyone in this auditorium has been plagued at various times by MIB incidents. This man’s story begins in 1969, when, after investigating several incidents which included low level UFO sightings, occupant sightings, and even one apparent UFO attack 10 of sorts on a witness, this researcher began to receive a series of harassing telephone calls.
Many times, there would be nothing on the line. Often a strange, metallic whistling sound, mixed with what he could only describe as “electronic noise” would be present. Sometimes a garbled voice speaking in an unintelligible language would be heard. Sometimes threats against himself, or his family would be made by a voice which sounded vaguely “unhuman.” Changing his telephone number didn’t seem to help. The telephone company could find no tap on his line and was never able to locate the perpetrator of the calls.
His mail began to be tampered with. Letters to other researchers would go astray, as would letters to him from others. Tape recordings vanished in the mail, samples of “angel hair” (a fine filament-type substance of unknown origin, observed being dispersed from UFOs as they fly overhead) being sent to a laboratory for analysis disappeared en route, important letters of a non-UFO nature would fail to arrive, and much mail would arrive having obviously been opened and tampered with. He received numerous threats through the mail, and many documents which consisted of odd hieroglyph–like symbols with no explanation.
On three different occasions, the office located in his home was ransacked, files rifled, and in two instances, research material of significance to current cases disappeared. This was made even more mysterious since his home was protected by an elaborate electronic security system connected directly to the police department. The alarm system was never triggered.
This man and his family experienced many bouts of very intense poltergeist-like activity. Objects would fly across rooms, doors open and shut by themselves, strange sulphureous smells would plague them, shapes and shadows would be seen fliting around corners, or in a few instances, rushing through well-lit rooms towards some hapless person, who would usually scream, expecting some sort of physical contact, but nothing would happen. Lack of physical contact didn’t last long enough, however.
On six different occasions, the researcher’s wife, in the presence of at least two other people, and on one occasion, in the presence of six others, was attacked by an invisible entity. The woman was slapped, clawed, bitten, punched, and thrown across rooms by something that was invisible, yet possessed enough substance to raise welts on her face, gouge her arms, and leave animal-like teeth marks on her breasts, back and legs.
Four of these attacks were followed almost immediately by telephone calls warning the researcher to, in the words of the caller, “leave the flying saucers alone.”
This researcher on three different occasions was approached by a proto-typical MIB type figure, described as about 6’6” tall, thin, and cadaverous in appearance, who made threats against the researcher. He experienced one visit at his home, one at work, and one at a restaurant while waiting for his wife to return from the rest room. This man, who describes his state at the time this occurred as one of “abject terror. . . I thought I was losing my mind, and I was afraid that my wife might be killed,” left research for an extended period. This is still an extremely painful subject for him to discuss, and one which his wife cannot discuss without breaking into near-hysterical weeping.
These events are all in the past. Is MIB activity continuing? Emphatically, yes! I am aware of a handful of researchers who have, collectively, almost one hundred current MIB cases under investigation, an escalation from about 30 cases some three years ago. Almost all of them involve so-called abductees.11
I’d like to present an interview transcript from an MIB case I was investigating at the time of writing this paper. The victim, a “typical” abductee, described her abduction and MIB experiences during this interview, and was tape recorded. I attempted to forward a copy of this tape to another researcher, and he discovered that the interview had been erased, leaving nothing but a vague sort of electronic noise. Subsequent examination of the original master tape revealed that it, too, had suffered some sort of unexplained “erasure,” subsequent to the copy having been made. Here is an excerpt from the transcription of this interview.
Note: Interview with SW, on November 18, 1992. Interview was to discuss details of MIB experiences which occurred after what is believed to have been the first of 2 abduction episodes uncovered now. Date of the first abduction was 10–28–89, approximately 11:00 pm, south and west of Princeton, NE. Second abduction occurred from SW’s bedroom, at her home in Lincoln, on 8–13–92. She is 29 years old, single, 2 years of community college, and works as a secretary/clerk for an insurance company in Lincoln. No prior interest or knowledge of UFOs. Verbal colloquialisms have been maintained in this transcript. The abduction events were “routine,” in that they followed the typical pattern of abduction, medical examination, and return. No indication in testimony to this point in time (1–11–93) of “breeding activity.”
RB: So, tell me what happened over the next couple of weeks following this first abduction event.
SW: Well, it’s like, you know I only really remembered seeing this strange light that seemed to land off on the side of the highway, you know, but something just felt real funny about the whole thing.
RB: What do you mean by funny?
SW: Well, I just seemed to know that more had happened out there that night than what I was able to remember, and, uh, I was just kinda spooked by the whole thing — it just gave me the creeps thinkin’ about it, more than maybe it really should have.
RB: Did it disturb you a lot? I mean, were you able to go to work and do the things you normally do, or did it bother you enough that you couldn’t function?
SW: No, I was able to be. . . I could do all the normal stuff I was supposed to, it’s just when I started to think about it a lot, I knew somethin’ just wasn’t right.
RB: OK, tell me about the stranger that came to visit you.
SW: Well, there was that guy that called first. . .
RB: That’s right, tell me about the phone call first.
SW: It was about two days after I’d seen the light come down by the road, and I hadn’t really told anybody much about it, I maybe mentioned it to somebody at work, like, you know, I maybe saw this UFO kinda thing, but I hadn’t really told anybody about it like it was important or anything. And my. . . I picked up my phone at work to make a call, and I punched onto an outside line, and then this voice says “Sharon, we have a message for you.” And it sounded all hollow-like, and lots of squeaky-squealy electronic like noises in the background, and so I figured it was somebody on a cellular phone, you know how they sound sorta like a tin can sometimes?
RB: Uh-huh.
SW: And so they says, “We have a message for you,” and so I said, “May I ask who’s calling?”, and this voice says, “We speak for the searchers who carried you.” I said, “Excuse me?” And the voice says, “It would be wise not to discuss your travels. It would be safest if no one knew,” and then there was like this high-pitched whistle, and the line went dead.
RB: Did this mean anything to you? I mean, at this point all you knew was that you had seen something kind of strange, in a place that you had no reason to drive to, except for some kind of inexplainable urge, and that you had about an hour that somehow you couldn’t account for, and a funny wound on your back that had bled.
SW: No, it didn’t really mean anything at all. I think the only reason I can remember it so clear, is that the voice sounded so strange, and then all the funny noise and stuff in the background. RB: What do you mean the voice sounded so strange?
SW: Well, it was, like, uh, you know, like it was human but a machine too — it was a very strange sounding voice, the. . . kind of a monotone, flat thing, and buzzy and tinny. RB: What happened next?
SW: Well, it was that same night, I went to bed about 10:30 or so, and I had this terrible dream about these little things with great big heads and huge black eyes carrying me out of my car, and toward this light. It was really scary, and I sorta woke up with kind of a jerk, you know, and was so. . . I was so scared I was actually crying, and then I see this big black shape standing right next to my bed. It was like I thought it was a man, I guess, but I couldn’t really see. . . just a darker spot in the dark of my bedroom. The light from the apartment building parking lot shines in through my window, so it’s not like totally dark, you know. And then seeing this thing scared me even more — I didn’t know whether. . . I mean, you know, was it some guy going to rape me, or something? I tried to scream, but I couldn’t, it was like I couldn’t even breathe. I tried to reach over and turn on the light on my night table, and then this big black shape sort of leaned toward me, and the next thing I remember, I woke up and it was, the black thing was gone, then I seen. . . I mean, everything was knocked off the nightstand — the lamp, and my glasses and a picture that’s there.
RB: What time was it when you woke up?
SW: About 2:30 — I was still awful scared, but the black thing wasn’t there anymore, and I calmed down in about an hour or so, and tried to go back to sleep, but I had to spend the rest of the night with the light on. I slept the next two nights I think with the bedroom light on.
RB: Did the nightmare you had mean anything to you?
SW: Well, it was the next day, when I started to really think about what. . . I, like well, you know, I started to wonder if maybe the light I seen, and why did I drive way out where I didn’t even know where I was going, and then the, well, the little guys in my dream, and that spot on my back that bled, and stuff, I think that was when I started to thinking that maybe something I didn’t understand happened that night.
RB: So, after the dream, what was the next strange thing to happen?
SW: Well, the next night after work, I was walking to the lot where I park, and when I get toward where my car is, I see this guy next to my car. So, I figured first, he’s tryin’ to get into his car next to mine. But then when I, well when I get closer, he doesn’t look right.
RB: What do you mean: he doesn’t look right?
SW: Well, he’s like, it’s . . . sort of. . . Oh, this sounds like I’m nuts!
RB: No, it doesn’t at all. What was so strange about the man?
SW: Well, he was real tall and skinny, and he looked like. . . it was like, you know, he looked like he was made of wax. Real pale, and you know, waxy lookin’. Like maybe he was dead or somethin’.
RB: How tall was he?
SW: Well, my boyfriend’s six feet even, and this guy woulda been 4 or 5 inches taller than him, I guess.
RB: What happened when you got to your car?
SW: Well, that’s when I saw the guy was, you know, he was just there, not gettin’ into another car or anything, and so I just, you know, I just walked up and unlocked my car and started to get in, and he was lookin’ at me all the time, and I thought, ‘What a creep this guy is!”, then when I’d got into the car, and was shuttin’ the door, he says to me, “Do not discuss your travels. It is not safe.”
RB: What did you do?
SW: I wasn’t sure I had heard him right so I say, “Pardon me?”, and he says again, “Do not discuss your travels. It is not safe.” Real precise sort of, but in a funny flat voice, like, um, you know, no emotion or somethin’.
RB: So, this man was about six foot 4 or 5, and thin. . .
SW: Really skinny, like if he was a girl, I’d guess he was, oh you know, anorexic or somethin’.
RB: Very skinny. How was he dressed?
SW: He had on a dark suit, I think, it didn’t really stick out or anything in my mind. You know, a dark suit and a white shirt and dark tie. The suit maybe coulda been navy or black; black, I think. And a hat, like guys used to wear in old movies, you know? It was black too.
RB: What happened after he repeated his statement?
SW: I slammed the door and started the car and got outta there as fast as I could. I . . . well, it scared me, you know? He looked so weird, and I thought about the . . . the phone call from before, and the. . . well, it started to make me real scared.
RB: Was he still in the parking lot when you pulled out?
SW: No, the weird thing is, I, you know, I got to the entrance to the lot, and looked in my mirror, and like, he was completely gone. There wasn’t any way he coulda gotten away from where I’d seen him in that little space of time! So, I got outta there!
RB: What were you thinking after this?
SW: Well, I was, you know, I got home and was changin’ my clothes, and I started thinking about the weird phone call, and the thing about my travels, and then this, I mean, I’ve never been further away than Kansas City my whole life, so I don’t have travels to discuss with nobody, so I start thinkin’ about the phone call and my travels, and then this weird dead guy talking about my travels, and somehow, it’s like a big bubble inside my head busts, and I remember the nightmare, and getting, being carried toward that light, and I start to remember more about what happened that night, about bein’ inside something on like a table thing and those big-eyed things examining me, and I, I couldn’t. . . I just fell down on. . . I, I just started to cry . . . and. . . I musta, I probably cried for an hour, ’cause I knew that somebody had taken me and done somethin’ to me, and I didn’t even know it.
RB: Well, let’s take a break for a few minutes so you can kind of catch your breath, and have a good cry if you want to. Just let it out and see if you feel better. (10–minute break) RB: I’m sorry that this is so hard on you, but I really appreciate your willingness to go ahead and discuss these things. What was the next event after the encounter in the parking lot? SW: Well, the next big thing that happened was when the 2 dead-looking guys came to my door, but there was all kinds of stuff going on in between.
RB: When did the 2 dead-looking guys come to your door?
SW: This would have been about. . . let’s see, I think I maybe wrote it down in my check register, you know, circled the date, ’cause I was makin’ out my bills when it happened. . . let me look. . . yeah, here it is, that would have been on November 15, 1989.
RB: Ok, before we get into that, tell me what the other stuff that happened was all about.
SW: You mean between the parking lot dead guy and the other two dead guys?
RB: Yes — what happened in between? You mentioned all kinds of stuff happening.
SW: Well, it was like. . . Stuff would go on that I couldn’t figure out, like, one night I went out to the store about 7:30, I guess, and when I came back a little after 9:00, it was just, I mean, I know that I had shut off all of my lights in the apartment before I’d left, ’cause it was just something I was kinda taught to do as a kid, you know, you just didn’t leave the lights burning, and when I got home, every light in the place was on! I kinda snuck in, cause I kinda thought, you know, that maybe somebody had broken in, but the door was locked and everything, and I’m the only one who has a key to the apartment.
RB: You’re sure you might not have just forgotten and left them on?
SW: No way. It’s just an automatic thing. I don’t leave a light on if I’m not in the room. I guess my dad yelled at me too many times when I was a kid.
RB: And your boyfriend doesn’t have a key to your apartment?
SW: I was between boyfriends when this happened. We’d broken up about two months before, and nobody but me had keys.
RB: OK, what other kinds of events took place?
SW: Well, three or four times. . . I mean, . . . Look, I’m afraid you’re gonna think I’m nuts again, this is just so strange. . . I guess, you know, I’d think you were crazy if you told me this stuff! But, three or four times, I was kind of . . . you know, I was sure somebody was staring at me. I’d be watching TV, or reading, or you know, just sitting around listening to music, and I’d look up, and I’d just catch a glimpse of like somebody moving around the corner into the kitchen or down the hall, but there’d never be anybody there. Each time, there’d be this really, you know, kinda musty, rotten eggy smell after it would happen. I never. . . I mean, have you ever heard of this kinda stuff happening before?
RB: Look, please don’t worry. I don’t think you’re crazy, and yes, I’ve heard of all of this stuff happening before. Don’t worry, you aren’t the only one this has ever happened to. OK? Don’t be embarrassed to just tell me straight out what happened. OK?
SW: OK. It’s just kinda hard to talk about some of this stuff, you know?
RB: I know. What else happened?
SW: Well sometimes I’d pick up my phone at home, you know, to make a call, and I’d hear that same funny squealy electronic noise like with that first phone call at work, you know, and nobody would be there when I’d say hello, and then I’d push the button down a couple of times, and eventually get the dial tone back. This happened to my phone at work five or six times, when I’d punch an outside line, and get this noise, you know? I’d ask at work, and nobody else would have the problem with their phones, just me. Oh yeah, and there were two other times when I’d woke up at night and the black, you know, that big, black-like thing would be over me. That scared me an awful lot. I’d have to get up, you know, and turn on the light to calm down, and then try to go back to sleep with the lights on. RB: Anything else you can think of?
SW: No, I can’t remember anything else, if I think of anything, I’ll write it down, you know, and save it for you. But that’s about it until the two dead looking guys showed up at my door. RB: When was that?
SW: Let me look again. . . yeah, November 15, 1989
RB: And what happened then?
SW: Well, I was paying bills, I was, you know, I was sitting on the floor, working on my coffee table, about 8:30, with, like, you know, everything all spread out around me, making out checks. . . I was trying to get stuff paid, ’cause I was gonna go home to Holdrege for Thanksgiving, and stay for a week, and I wanted to, you know, get all my December 1 bills paid, in case I got snowed in out there or something, and I was there working, and kinda watching TV, and somebody knocked at my door. So, I get up and go to the door, and I . . . I mean, I guess it’s a lucky thing, ’cause I put the chain on the door first, and when I opened it up and said “Hello,” there was the dead looking guy from the parking lot, or at least somebody who looked a lot like him, and another guy who stood behind him a ways, and looked like he almost could have been his brother, you know, except he was shorter. They both had that dead, waxy look, you know, and the tall one, he was, you know, closest to the door, said, “We want to warn you not to discuss your travels with anyone. It would not be safe to do so.” And I said, “What travels are you talking about?” and he says, “Your travels with the searchers. It would be unwise to discuss them with anyone.”
And then, you know, what was weird, was that I started to get like pictures in my mind of me being out at that spot by Princeton, and those big eyed things from my dream carrying me toward the light I saw land, and I, well you know, I began to get really scared and started to cry again, and I told these guys, “Just get outta here, leave me alone,” and just then, this car pulls up in the parking lot, and the headlights sweep across these guys, and they get real nervous, sorta, and start lookin’ back and forth at each other, real fast, and then the tall guy says once more, “Don’t discuss your travels with anyone. It wouldn’t be safe,” and then they kind of real jerky-like, walk away, like maybe, you know, some kind of wind-up walking doll that sorta rocks back and forth when it walks, but real fast and jerky-like. And then they went out of sight from the crack in the doorway, and, well. . . I was so scared by the whole thing I broke down and cried again and locked the door and spent the night in the living room with the lights on.
RB: Have you had any more visits or phone calls since?
SW: No, but I’m like, you know, I’m always sorta like lookin’ over my shoulder, ‘cause I’m afraid they may show up again, and much more of that kind of stuff, and I don’t know if I could take it. I’m afraid I’d just go crazy from it.
End of transcript excerpt.
MIB activity continues, and in fact, seems to be increasing in intensity. Why is it significant, and what does it mean to the UFO enigma as a whole? Upon close examination, it becomes apparent that literally all aspects of the UFO phenomenon have manifested throughout human history, albeit in somewhat different and varying guises. The same can be said of, if you will, the very “dark side” of Ufology, the menacing activities of the MIB. The UFO phenomena certainly seem to be culturally reflective.12
If one begins with the ancient accounts of humanity’s interaction with deities, fairies, and demons, you will find almost exact parallels between those historically recorded manifestations and what is occurring today. There is no difference in the phenomenon, only in the cultural references we use to define it.
In Uninvited Visitors, the noted zoologist Ivan Sanderson asks whether: “Could the MIB be extraterrestrials, the descendants of extraterrestrials, or agents of extraterrestrials? . . . [W]ho are these MIB who show this particular interest in UFOs. . ., especially in people who have said for the record that they have seen occupants or flights near our military installations? . . . we will need to accommodate a new category of intelligent beings interacting with us on earth. . . creatures of super intelligence who come here, supervise us, control us, or think they own us. . .” 13 Sanderson hints, correctly I believe, that we must acknowledge a different category of being — we must awaken to the realization that we are caught in a web of deception, and that the web is closing in on us. I’m convinced that while logic dictates that it is impossible to prove that no UFO activity could be of an extraterrestrial nature, most is not.
There are direct links between the UFO enigma as a whole, UFO abductions, MIB activity, contactee activity, and government-sanctioned attempts at interaction with what they term “non-human entities.” (See Appendix for details on one of these alleged government programs.) Department of Defense sources involved with research along these lines have demonstrated to me conclusively that this “web of deception” began to irreversibly close on us with the recovery of the Roswell crash material of 1947.
People are being manipulated for sinister purposes. We are being watched, probed, and manipulated by forces from outside our known physical universe. We are not alone, and we may not like it much when we find out what sort of company we have.
Over the past few years, innumerable new accounts of abduction encounters with beings from space, or, more, accurately, from “somewhere out there,” and in some cases accompanied by individuals apparently connected with our government, have been reported. Most have the ring of authenticity. From all over the world, men and women are stepping forward and describing how they have come face-to-face with strange creatures which are certainly not of this earth.
Almost without exception, no one who has met these beings has described the experience as enjoyable. Almost without exception, not one person involved has actively sought such an encounter. Those who have been “visited” have expressed fear, nervousness, and a desire that the strange events would end.
And yet, surprisingly, many of those who have encountered the “visitors” also have concluded that they are here for our benefit. They may scare us, but they don’t really mean to. Although feeling at first that they were in the presence of evil, many of those who have been visited have later decided that they felt frightened because of their innate fears of the unknown, not because the beings intended them any harm.
One of the most outspoken promoters of his encounters with “whoever they are” is Whitley Strieber, the author of several books dealing with these encounters, including Communion, 14 and Transformation. 15 The visits which Strieber and others have described with these weird beings who’ve come to them in the middle of the night are very similar. Because these visitors are often accompanied by strange lights in the sky, most have assumed that these beings must have come to earth from outer space. The victims of these visits always feel helpless and uneasy in their presence, and angry because they feel violated. The creatures never ask permission to conduct their experiments on their victims. In fact, they almost never come in the light of day, but almost always in the darkness, leaving their victims frightened, depressed, suffering from nightmares, and fearing for the safety of their spouses and children.
Wouldn’t it all be worth it though, if a civilization millions of years ahead of us technologically were coming to visit us? And, so the reasoning goes, because they are so advanced in matters of science and technology, they also must be far ahead of us in matters of the heart and soul. Not only wise, but they’re also loving and kind, even though their loving kindness may seem cruel and harsh to us in our primitive state.
And because of the advanced nature of their personal and ethical evolution, we could be sure that everything they say is the absolute truth. There would be no need to question a single thing they tell us. Wouldn’t it be worth it? Wouldn’t it be nice if they are already here and ready to give us the answers to all our problems?
Whitley Strieber and many others believe they are. After all, they’ve talked to them. They’ve seen evidence of their power and wisdom. They say these beings want to help us deal with our fears so we can move on to “new realities.” They want to share their deepest secrets with us, but they can’t confront us all at once because, among other excuses, the shock would be too much for us. Instead, they are revealing themselves to a selected few and allowing those few to carry their message to the masses. When we have put aside our old ways, our old superstitions, and perhaps even our old gods, they will reveal themselves to us more fully — and our entire civilization will take a quantum leap into the type of future we’ve always dreamed of having. And so, the new prophets go forward, carrying the message that a new age is about to dawn. Are these visitors monsters, or benevolent friends, or uninterested observers? Is it right to think that any creature coming from space is going to be a hideous monster? Of course not.
Is it right to expect that any being that comes from space has a halo and a harp hanging in the closet back home? No. Since when has technological superiority implied moral and spiritual superiority? Let me illustrate. One of my favorite television shows was Rod Serling’s The Twilight Zone. In one particularly memorable episode, aliens land, and present mankind with a book, entitled How to Serve Mankind. The aliens inform the recipients that they will have to translate the balance of the book, as a teaching tool to help them understand the wonderful things which they are going to tell us.
Assuming this book will solve all of humanity’s problems, linguists and cryptographers work feverishly to translate it. Meanwhile, the aliens have invited thousands of people to travel back to their planet with them. As people are flocking on board the spacecraft, a secretary runs to catch her scientist–boss who is climbing the ramp into the ship. She screams to stop, and he asks what the problem might be. The secretary replies that they have finished the translation, and discovered that How to Serve Mankind, is a cookbook.
Why don’t the visitors help us with our problems of hunger, war, cancer, AIDS, racial strife, and all the rest? Many say it is because we are not yet ready to receive their help. We are not advanced enough, and whatever these wise, all-knowing beings would impart to us would be used for evil instead of for good. In the mid-1970s, a man and woman calling themselves The Two, or Bo and Peep traveled the country, recruiting members to join them and their group of believers who would soon be transported to another planet, free from all the troubles of earth, where they would go to live in peace and harmony for the next several million years. As they traveled from city to city, they were able to recruit several dozen followers, who literally gave away everything they owned to follow this pair. Reports of the Two continued to surface from time to time, but the group eventually faded into obscurity. How were they able to convince people to abandon their lives and property and follow them toward this extraterrestrial paradise? That was nothing. In 1997, people were stunned to read about a group called Heaven’s Gate, the name of a UFO cult led by The Two, Marshall Applewhite (Bo) and Bonnie Nettles, (Peep).16 Coinciding with the appearance of Comet Hale-Bopp in 1997, Applewhite convinced 38 followers to commit suicide so that their souls could take a ride on a spaceship that they believed was hiding behind the comet. Thirty-nine people were found dead in a rented mansion in the upscale San Diego community of Rancho Santa Fe, California on March 26, 1997. You see, just like this poor group of misguided souls, we think we’re in need of someone to “save us” in a physical sense, but that’s not the real problem on our planet. Our real difficulties lie in matters of the spirit. We want to know that there is more to life than just getting out of bed in the morning and going to work. We want to know for sure that love and life can truly last forever. We would give anything if someone wiser than we could tell us for certain that there is a spiritual reality and a spiritual truth to the universe. Is it any wonder then, that in a world so often touched by sorrow and pain, the Two found people ready to believe in them and their paradise? Strieber says in Transformation, “We hide from the visitors. We hide in beliefs. They're the gods. They're gentry, dwarfs, elves. They're demons or angels. Aliens. The unconscious. The oversoul. Hallucinations. Mass hysteria. Lies. You name it. But what they never are, what we never allow ourselves to face, is the truth. “We can face the reality of the visitors. The first step is to admit that they exist but that we do not know what they are. We can then make a tentative beginning, seeking to understand what they may mean to us. “We can do this by developing our side of the relationship with calmness, objectivity, and determination, seeking to find what we can extract from their presence, and what we might be able to give in return. To continue to refuse to entertain the possibility of relationship would be tragic. “If we do that we will deny ourselves the flowering of understanding that seems now to lie just within our grasp.” 17
Strieber and other proponents of the idea of these creatures being “benevolent alien interventionists” urge us to open ourselves up to the reality that the visitors are here for our good, and to try to understand who they are and what they may mean to us. But is it our reluctance that holds us back from understanding these visitors? We’re not running and hiding. We’re here, living in the open. We’re not sneaking into people’s homes in the middle of the night. We don’t stay hidden within the shadows. If these beings want to give us a helping hand, why don’t they step out into the broad daylight and let us know who they are and why they’re here? There’s something suspicious about any savior who sneaks into town under cover of darkness. So, are these events real, are they hoaxes, or are they the product of overactive imaginations? Are they cut out of the whole cloth of mythology and fantasy? No, not at all. There are hoaxes, there are deluded individuals who make fantastic claims to gain attention but remember — the presence of the counterfeit does not eliminate the existence of the authentic.
How should we approach this problem? The solution is to be open-minded about such experiences without being flat–out gullible: to be discerning and critical without being too cynical — and that’s a hard line to walk. Most people lean in one direction or another. Warren Wiersbe, the late distinguished theologian has said, “A realist is an idealist who has gone through the fire and been purified. A skeptic is an idealist who has gone through the fire and been burned.” By the grace of God, I am a realist. The British poet Steve Turner very eloquently describes the muddled state we have gotten ourselves into in his 1983 poem titled
“Creed.”
We believe in Marx, Freud, and Darwin.
We believe everything is OK
as long as you don’t hurt anyone,
to the best of your definition of hurt,
and to the best of your knowledge.
We believe in sex before during and after marriage.
We believe in the therapy of sin.
We believe that adultery is fun.
We believe that sodomy’s OK.
We believe that taboos are taboo.
We believe that everything’s getting better despite evidence to the contrary.
The evidence must be investigated.
You can prove anything with evidence.
We believe that there’s something in horoscopes, UFOs and bent spoons;
Jesus was a good man just like
Buddha, Mohammed, and ourselves.
He was a good moral teacher although we think
His good morals were bad.
We believe that all religions are basically the same,
at least the one that we read was.
They all believe in love and goodness.
They only differ on matters of
creation sin heaven hell God and salvation.
We believe that after death comes The Nothing
because when you ask the dead what happens
they say Nothing.
If death is not the end,
if the dead have lied,
then it’s compulsory heaven for all excepting perhaps
Hitler, Stalin, and Genghis Khan.
We believe in Masters and Johnson.
What’s selected is average.
What’s average is normal. What’s normal is good.
We believe in total disarmament.
We believe there are direct links
between warfare and bloodshed.
Americans should beat their guns into tractors and the Russians would be sure to follow.
We believe that man is essentially good.
It’s only his behavior that lets him down.
This is the fault of society.
Society is the fault of conditions. Conditions are the fault of society.
We believe that each man must find the truth
that is right for him.
Reality will adapt accordingly. The universe will readjust.
History will alter.
We believe that there is no absolute truth
excepting the truth that there is no absolute truth.
We believe in the rejection of creeds, and the flowering of individual thought.
Postscript:
If chance be
the Father of all flesh,
disaster is his rainbow in the sky,
and when you hear
state of emergency
sniper kills ten
troops on rampage
mobs go looting
bomb blasts school
it is but the sound of man worshiping his maker.
I stress the importance of evaluating all our research in terms of absolute truth. Let us not forget — something is not true simply because you or I say it is. There is absolute truth. Our belief or lack of belief in that absolute truth does not in the least affect its standing as absolute truth. It is true because it is true.
Truth is non-contradictory.
These are the foundational laws of logic:
A=A (The Law of identity).
A ≠ non-A (The Law of Non–Contradiction).
Everything is either A or non–A (The Law of the Excluded Middle).
If A = B and B = C, then A = C (The Law of Transitive properties).
They are axiomatic truths. They are foundational truths from which all logical thought follows.
Regarding foundational questions — origins, meaning, morality, destiny — one simply can’t say, ‘well that may be true for you, but it certainly isn’t true for me.’ That kind of argument is just as ridiculous in philosophy, or theology, or metaphysics as it is in mathematics. Truth is truth. We can choose to accept it or reject it, but our decision won’t make it any less true. Truth is something we acknowledge; it is not something we create.
There are those who put on flowing robes and claim to be ambassadors from the Planet Lanulos or even from Venus. There are others who speak in affected voices and tell us they are the spokesmen for spirits tens of thousands of years old. Phonies and frauds are everywhere.
Then there are those, and I have worked directly with many, who have suffered undeniable spiritual and psychological trauma during encounters with these “others” and have begun to look within to understand what has happened to them. Somewhere along the way many of them were transformed from seekers to disciples. There is something compelling about those who have suffered through experiences that have left them in emotional tatters, trying to sew the pieces of their lives together again. A man named Paul experienced a traumatic encounter of this nature, when he was given a special revelation of the real source of absolute truth and became the most ardent and powerful spokesman his “visitor”, Jesus Christ, ever had. This is the “old truth” our visitors warn us against.
Whitley Strieber and others have also had their Damascus Road experience, and now it seems they won’t be satisfied until we have all heard this “new” truth. And not only heard but believed. What about this new truth which Strieber and so many others hold to? How does it differ from the old truth? And an even more important question: Which do we believe when the “new” truth conflicts with the “old” one?
And make no mistake about that. They are in direct conflict.
I have made my position clear in the past — the source of absolute truth is logically, historically, archaeologically, philosophically, and cosmologically provable as Jesus Christ. (See the Selected Bibliography for further exploration of these topics). If space allowed, I would be happy to offer those proofs to you for your consideration. Unfortunately, we don’t have that luxury, so let me state simply the most basic law of logic — the Law of Non-contradiction: Something cannot be, and not be, at the same time and in the same relationship. That would be a contradiction, and all contradictions are logically indefensible.
There is an absolute truth — Jesus Christ — and thus every conflicting claim must be false. It is an either/or situation — either it is true, or it is false. You may choose not to believe the truth claims of Christianity, but they are exquisitely logical.
The heart of the problem is that we are pitting two truth claims — old and new, or, if you will, true and false — against one another. As I mentioned earlier, the Men in Black enigma began in earnest with Albert Bender and his experiences in 1953. One little-explored facet of Bender’s experience deals with several questions he was allowed to ask his mysterious visitors. Bender specifically asked his visitors several of his deepest questions. I will paraphrase his questions and the responses: Q: Was there life after death?
A: Not that they knew of.
Q: Was there a God?
A: No, at least not as we conceive of Him.
Q: Who was Jesus Christ?
A: A good man who tried to bring justice and kindness into the world, but who had paid with his life. The resurrection was just a story created by his followers.18
Bender has stated that after hearing their answers to these questions, he was convinced he couldn’t believe anything they had told him.
There is one major difference between Al Bender’s goblins and the new group of strange visitors who have become a part of so many lives. Where Bender’s “friends” told him they did not believe in life after death, the new visitors have told many, such as Whitley Strieber, that they are quite sure it exists. They have had much to say about the existence of the soul apart from the physical body and have given instructions in the art of “soul travel.” But where both sets of visitors agree, and where both part company with the truth, is that neither accepts the God of the Bible as Lord nor Jesus Christ as His Son. We cannot believe Jesus and the visitors because their claims contradict one another. There is no way to reconcile the two. If Jesus is who He claimed to be, the visitors cannot be who they claim to be. Perhaps they realize that the only way to increase their influence in this world is to try to diminish the influence of Christ. Through the efforts of well-orchestrated UFO-related “propaganda” efforts, people today are easily convinced that they don’t need God because they have “the visitors.” But is it a fair exchange: dropping the hand of a loving, self-sacrificing God to take hold of the hand of an insect-like creature that won’t make a move outside the cover of darkness? In his book Guardians of the Universe? Ronald Story states, “Whether or not such phenomena are being controlled by a non–human intelligence or whether they are merely the ‘psychic concomitants’ of a ‘visionary rumour’, as Carl Jung implied, we do not know. But it can be said, with certainty, that a psychological ‘conditioning process’ is taking place, which is either directly or indirectly related to the UFO phenomenon.” 19 In the early 1970s, a group, which in many ways was a forerunner to Dr. Steven Greer’s CSETI 20 program was begun on an informal basis by a student named Bill Fogarty and a group of graduate students at the University of Indiana. These five young men were all drug and alcohol free, and two were Vietnam combat veterans. Having laid out a plan to initiate contact with UFOs, they began to get together nightly to search the skies for alien spacecraft. After establishing rudimentary contact with nocturnal lights on several occasions, in much the same way as Greer seeks to do today, they began to undergo a series of bizarre events. Fogarty said they “all witnessed UFIOs cavorting in the midnight sky. On one occasion I stood within ten feet of two nocturnal lights hovering silently in midair. Later we heard rappings in the dark; hollow voices; heavy breathing and the crushing footsteps of unseen entities.” Soon, the experiences became violent. One of the men was terrorized in his home by furious pounding on the walls and the violent shaking of his bed. Not long afterwards, he was struck hard in the face by an unseen ‘something.’ Team members noticed they were followed by “unmarked” dark-colored automobiles wherever they went. Some experienced awakening in the night to find strange “dark clothed” men standing in their apartments. Radios and TVs switched on when nobody was close to them; locked doors sprang open. One of the members reported being “teleported” from his bedroom to the middle of a wooded area on the outskirts of the city. Fogarty began sleeping with the lights on, and a gun under his pillow. They all eventually decided to abandon their experiments. One of the men invested heavily in weapons and joined a neo-pagan group that offered animal sacrifices to Odin. One became a Christian, one committed suicide, and the remaining two dropped out of college a month before they would have graduated and spent the next several years drifting around the country.21 These young men had stumbled into a deception that was both frightening and uncontrollable. They looked for escape in various ways — two by running away, one by getting deeply involved in the occult, one by ending his life, and one by turning to the God of the Bible. Who were the men who showed up uninvited in their apartments in the middle of the night, and who followed them in the dark, unmarked cars? What was the purpose of the intrusion? Do the visitors really want to help us? If so, why go about it by frightening people half to death? It seems a strange way to bring enlightenment. In the years following the events, the originator of the group finally concluded that they had tapped into some sort of “energy” that has always been present on earth. He claimed that there wasn’t anything alien or particularly sinister about it, it was just a force — like the one George Lucas got so much mileage from in his Star Wars trilogy. But there is a major flaw in his assessment of the situation. A non-personal, non-caring energy doesn’t take on human form and invade people’s homes in the middle of the night. Neither does it drive an unmarked car — or any kind of car for that matter. Suppose we were to send astronauts to some distant planet, and they were to discover intelligent life there. Would we make our presence known to those inhabitants by playing weird tricks on them and sneaking into their homes? Of course not. We would determine what the proper channels were, and in as non-threatening a way as possible, announce that we had come for a visit. If our astronauts went instead to the citizens of that world on a covert, one-to-one basis, and recruited individuals to welcome and support them in their mission, the lawful government (and the rest of the citizens of that planet) would have good reason to wonder about our intentions and worry about what we were up to. That, it seems, is what’s happening here on earth. Recruits are being sought one at a time, sometimes in totally unorthodox ways, but successfully just the same. The true shepherd goes through the main gate instead of jumping over the fence. The real homeowner walks through the front door instead of climbing through the window. And the man who wants to tell us the truth — even if he comes from another planet — broadcasts it openly instead of whispering it into the ears of helpless captives in the middle of the night. Ruth Montgomery’s 22 book Aliens Among Us, relates the story of Peggy Otis, who had a close encounter with a UFO, and during the experience was in telepathic communication with one of the occupants. As is often the case following a UFO encounter, Peggy Otis soon became immersed in the occult. She began to channel messages stating that she and her husband should leave Denver because the climate was unhealthy and move to California. She now conducts weekly classes in which she and her students attempt to “raise the vibrations of the world.” Here is just one of many situations which confirm evidence from researchers such as Jacque Vallee, Dr. Berthold Schwarz, John Keel, Ivan Sanderson, Allen Hynek, and others who suggest in the strongest terms that the world of UFOs and the psychic or occult are inextricably intertwined. Montgomery, along with many of the current abductees, feels that we are especially in need of the aliens’ presence because the earth is about to undergo a tremendous cataclysm in which millions — perhaps billions — of us will be killed. The scenario has been presented variously as one of nuclear war, accumulation of toxic waste, new diseases, famines, or in Montgomery’s case, her informants have told her the earth is going to shift on its axis right around the turn of the century. Thelma Terrell, better known to her followers as Tuella 23 (the name given to her by her space friends who evidently thought it sounded cooler than Thelma), published several booklets containing messages given to her by Commander Ashtar, also warning of impending doom from a planetary shift. Andromeda Rex, another space being who speaks through Tuella has explained how their rescue ships will be able to levitate the chosen of mankind onto their ships to save them. Sources of mine involved at the highest levels of research and development of non-lethal weapons systems within the Department of Defense claim contact with and receipt of messages from what they term nonhuman entities. What is the content of these messages? Essentially the same as that received by others — “Humanity is innately divine, but hasn’t realized it yet, but we’ll be glad to awaken the divine within you if you’ll just follow us. And yes, the planet’s in trouble, but just believe in us, and we’ll save you.” Among those channeling, the various spirit guides heartily approve of the messages from space beings with names like Ashtar, Andromeda Rex, Lord Kuthumi, OX-HO, and Monka, but also make it clear that Jesus wants to channel messages to us from his galactic command center near the planet Venus, to which he returned after his rude treatment here among all of us unwashed, unenlightened deities-to-be. Again, it becomes obvious that we cannot have it both ways. If Jesus Christ is who He says He is, the only begotten Son of the Creator of us all, these space beings are not who they claim to be. Otherwise, they would acknowledge the Lordship of Christ. Ruth Montgomery is hearing from someone. Tuella is hearing from someone. The government researchers are hearing from someone. And if they aren’t hearing from spiritual beings of goodness and light, just who are they hearing from? According to many of the visitors’ proponents, we can all communicate with our astral superiors. We are told that these communications can come to those who will practice meditation and whose minds are open to them. In other words, if you allow your mind to become as quiet as possible, if you empty it of all thought and reach out to the visitors, they will answer. And it’s true. There are voices whispering in the wind. There are beings who would like nothing better than for us to be open to their message. But because they rarely tell the truth about anything, it’s extremely unlikely that we’re really hearing from Commander Ashtar, Andromeda Rex, or any of the other Space Brothers. Let me give just two examples of the literally thousands of failed prophecies, bogus inventions, and other cosmic drivel passed on to countless people who have embraced the visitor’s message. Jacques Vallee describes a meeting with a woman he calls Helen who had encountered a UFO. Vallee checked out her story and was convinced she was telling the truth. After the encounter, Helen became obsessed with building a type of motor, the instructions for which were given to her by the UFO occupants. Nothing mattered to her except building a working model of that motor, and thereby revolutionizing earth’s technology. There was only one problem. The motor can’t work. It’s based on a “perpetual motion” theory that has been put forth many times throughout the years, usually by some con man trying to get a hefty investment for his invention. Howard Menger, another contactee, devoted much of his time and energy developing a “free energy” motor designed by beings from space. But, once again, the invention that would revolutionize life on earth was worthless. Is it possible these “guardians of the planet” are simply cruel practical jokers instead? Did they titter and clap their hands over their mouths while they watched Peggy Otis and her friends attempt to “raise the vibrations of the world?” Were they convulsed with laughter as they watched Helen spend every waking hour trying to build a motor that never had the slightest chance of working? Did they break into guffaws when Howard Menger went on television to explain how his “free energy motor” would work? Are they beside themselves with hysterical laughter when they give Tuella another one of their lengthy messages and ask her to get it published so we can all be warned of the earth’s impending doom? They must have laughed like crazy when they told Whitley Strieber he was going to die on an upcoming plane trip, and he landed. In the 1950s, many UFO contactees were told that the Space Brothers would reveal the truth about flying saucers within a few years. It didn’t happen. The TWO promised to take their followers with them to a faraway paradise. They were led to an early grave instead. Helen and Howard spent countless hours working on motors that space beings said would revolutionize the earth’s technology. Both were worthless. Whitley Strieber wasn’t killed on that plane trip. How do most people who are deeply involved in this field respond to these failed promises and predictions? They push them another 10 or 15 or 25 years into the future. In other words, “When is a lie not a lie?” When it’s told by someone who claims to be from outer space. Why do I believe the messages of the prophets recorded in the Bible carry so much more weight? Because God established performance standards for His prophets. God said, Deut. 18:20–22: “But a prophet who presumes to speak in my name anything I have not commanded him to say, or a prophet who speaks in the name of other gods, must be put to death.” You may say to yourselves, “How can we know when a message has not been spoken by the LORD?” If what a prophet proclaims in the name of the LORD does not take place or come true, that is a message the LORD has not spoken. That prophet has spoken presumptuously. Do not be afraid of him.” How many who are currently proclaiming prophecies from Ashtar and his buddies would like to work under the same conditions? Any takers? I doubt it. I believe the extraterrestrial hypothesis 24 is too simplistic, and my contacts with Department of Defense researchers tend to substantiate that opinion. I agree with Jacques Vallee, when in response to a review of his book Confrontations, 25 he made the following statements regarding both abductions and the extraterrestrial hypothesis. “I have stated (and will continue to state) that much of what passes for abduction research today is unscientific, unethical garbage that reeks of standard cult recruitment techniques. My appeals to more caution have infuriated some abduction researchers, who have made up the story that “Vallee rejects all abduction cases.” Nothing could be further from the truth. Not only do I accept these cases, but I believe their evidence is much too important to be treated in the superficial way evidenced in the work of many “abductionists.” I refer the reader to the ten-page discussion of the issue in Confrontations, starting on page 170.” 26, 27 On the extraterrestrial origin of UFOs, the ETH (extraterrestrial hypothesis) my position is clear, too. If the witnesses are telling the truth about the behavior of the phenomenon, then it could be from anywhere at any time. This naturally includes other planets in outer space, and I have not rejected this hypothesis; I only think it is insufficient. And there are many other hypotheses — far more promising in my opinion — that have not been seriously considered. We have mountains of data which now contradicts the first-level ETH (extraterrestrial hypothesis) to which most of American ufology is still clinging. It is time to open our minds to other possibilities. Are we being toyed with by extraterrestrials? Are there sinister entities somewhere out there waiting to gain entrance into our minds and hearts and souls through any means possible? And if so, why? Are we pawns in a cosmic chess game between the forces of light and darkness? The visitors tell us they are here to help us find ourselves in the light of eternity. Time and again, the Bible warns us about forces that would like nothing better than to deceive us and take us down the road to destruction. After all, Paul, who as we mentioned had his own encounter with The One True Visitor, warned that “. . . Satan himself masquerades as an angel of light.” My friend, the late J. Allen Hynek 28, once said. . . “I have the impression that the UFOs are announcing a change that is coming soon in our scientific paradigms. I am very much afraid that UFOs are related to certain psychic phenomena. Certainly, the phenomena has psychic aspects. I don’t talk about them very much because to a general audience, the words ‘psychic’ and “occult” have bad overtones. They say, “Aw, it’s all crazy.” But the fact is that there are psychic things. For instance, UFOs seem to materialize and dematerialize. There are people who have had UFO experiences who’ve claimed to have developed psychic ability. There have been reported cases of healings and of injuries in close encounters and there have been reported cases of precognition, where people had foreknowledge or forewarning that they were going to see something. There has been a change of outlook, radical change of philosophy of persons’ lives. Now you see, those are rather tricky things to talk about openly, but it’s there. Many people. . . feel that it might be a conditioning process.” 29 How interesting. Somebody wants us to change our views about reality, science, religion, God, and thenature of life beyond the grave. Ruth Montgomery believes “our space friends are now ready for us to know that they are here.” Not only ready, in fact, but anxious. It seems unlikely, however, that they are anxious to take off their masks and let us know who they really are. The “visitors”, the “Space Brothers”, the “greys”, or whatever we decide to call them, seem disinclined to tell the truth about their origins — or anything else for that matter. Yet thousands of people go on listening to them, hanging on to every word as if it were coming from God Himself. And that most definitely isn’t so.
They have made up one story after another about where they’re from, why they’re here, and what’s going to happen in the future. Although thousands of people believe every word that purports to come from outer space, I personally would have a difficult time buying a used car from Ashtar and his buddies. As far as I know, the only reason for lying is to conceal the truth. A person who lies wants to hide something that might be unpleasant — for you, for him, of for both of you. People tell lies every day, some more than others. But there’s almost always a reason behind the deception. For instance, if you were to admire a tie I happened to be wearing, and asked me where I purchased it, would I lie and tell you Bloomingdale’s when I’d actually gotten it at Macy’s? If I told such a lie, would I do so without some kind of reason? Perhaps I don’t want you to get a tie like mine. Maybe I don’t want you to know how much I paid for it. But regardless of the reason for the lie, there is a motivation to conceal the truth which has caused me to lie. It doesn’t make much sense to think, “Well, during the 1940’s and 50s, the visitors used to say they came from Venus or Saturn or the back side of the Moon, and now they say they’re from Zeta Reticuli — but they’re just giving us information that we can understand.” If they really come from Zeta Reticuli, or Wolf 24, or some other star system, why haven’t they told their contactees that right from the beginning? Are they lying because they know we wouldn’t like it very much if we knew who they really were and where they really came from? And there is an even more important question to ask: Are they lying to us because they are playing a cosmic game of follow-the-leader? Perhaps they want to be like the Pied Piper, leading us who-knows-where, and they know we wouldn’t follow them even one step if we knew who they were really working for and where they really want to take us. Listen carefully, and see if you catch the sleight-of-hand here, near the beginning of human history. Genesis 2: 15: The LORD God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it. And the LORD God commanded the man, “You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it you will surely die.”
Now watch closely . . .
Gen. 3:1–5: “Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the LORD God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden’?” The woman said to the serpent, “We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, but God did say, ‘You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.’ ”
“You will not surely die,” the serpent said to the woman. “For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” That was the first deception, the first occasion when the Word of God was given a slight twist to make it more palatable to us human beings. The serpent lied because, for reasons of his own, he wanted to see mankind rebel against God and fall into disgrace. We would do well to remember that serpents come in many forms, and they are still twisting eternal truths to suit their purposes. They give us new “holy books” to supplement or replace the Bible. They tell us that Jesus was a great Teacher, but that His death on the cross had no deeper meaning than that a good and innocent man was killed by an angry mob. And, like the serpent from Genesis, they tell us we are gods. Why are they lying to us like this? It’s not likely that they are doing it out of love and respect for humankind. There is a war going on in our universe, a to-the-death battle between the forces of good and evil. All is not peace and harmony in the cosmos. There are bad guys out there — and they’re doing their best to convince us they are really the good guys. The war isn’t over land, or ideology, or our genetic material. It’s being fought for the souls of men. We will go to the victors.
Consider: beginning in the early 1970s, the United States, as well as many other countries have been plagued by waves of animal mutilations. Having been blamed on normal predation, government testing of chemical and biological weapons, Satanic and occult groups, and extraterrestrials, the mutilations are an intriguing mystery. In 1975, a 1500-pound female buffalo was mutilated at Colorado’s Cheyenne Mountain Zoo. El Paso County Coroner Dr. Raoul W. Urich said: “The cutting was done neatly, cleanly, obviously with a very sharp instrument. The dissection was of the type that would eliminate any type of predator.” He said the hide was removed by someone who did not puncture the tissue layer directly under the hide.” It was better than I could do if I were trying. It was really an expert job.” 30 Later that same year, 1975, Colorado Governor Richard Lamm stated that the “widespread livestock mutilations were ‘one of the greatest outrages in the history of the western cattle industry’. . .” and added that it was “no longer possible to blame predators for the mutilations.” 31
That was certainly true. It takes a giant leap of logic to blame the classic mutilation wounds on coyotes and crows. Suffice it to say that the mutilation question is far from settled. As a theologian who specifically studies occult and cultic religious groups, I can assure you that while ritual killing and mutilation of animals occurs, no such group can be held responsible for what are known as “classic mutilations.” No group of this type has the money, manpower, or equipment to accomplish it. With access to thousands of acres of grazing land, and all the tax dollars that can be drawn from the American public, it is somewhat nonsensical to believe that the government would conduct planned testing of chemical-biological weapons systems on the north-forty of the old Jones place. We can make a few assertions — and some logical speculations — regarding a connection between animal mutilations and human abductions. Those responsible for these acts must have the ability to interact with real physical matter the same as you and I. The mutilators and abductors may be doing the bidding of someone who remains behind the scenes, unseen and undetectable. And there may be some force involved that allows them to do their work without detection, but that is speculation. It is also speculation that the cattle mutilations and the abductions have something to do with the glowing objects seen flying through the skies around the time and places where many of these events have taken place. Most victims are quick to say they believe there was a connection. It seems as if somebody is sending a message to the United States, and indeed to the rest of the world, a message that says, “We can come and go as we like. We can do whatever we like. And there’s nothing you can do to stop us.”
Jacques Vallee spent years researching the UFO enigma and came to a simple conclusion: The UFOs are real. He readily admits he has no idea what they are, or where they come from, but they are out there. While originally convinced that if real, UFOs would undoubtedly have an interplanetary origin, his continuing research made him begin to doubt this assumption. In his book Messengers of Deception, he wrote: “I had become aware of some pretty shady business behind the apparently harmless antics of the contactee groups. Now I wanted to focus my attention on the problem at hand: the question of who was doing all this and what their designs on us might be.” 32 Over the years, Vallee had talked to many UFO cultists who believed that they alone held the key to changing this world into what it was meant to be, and they were ready to do what they could to usher in the “New Age.”
They were, in short, interested in taking control of the planet. They talked about a unified, one-world government that would put an end to centuries of wars and rumors of wars. A new economic system would be established in which money would be eliminated and all people everywhere would share equally in the planet’s wealth. All political parties and such “outmoded” ways of choosing leaders as holding elections would be eliminated for the sake of worldwide unity. (Apparently aliens believe they are better qualified than we are to say who our leaders should be.) A new worldwide religion would be ushered in, revealing the real nature of the universe, and sweeping away all the false notions we have about eternal truth. This would mean the destruction of all current world religions, including, Islam, Judaism, Buddhism, Hinduism, and of course, Christianity. As I first wrote this in 1994, the UFO cultists and contact groups were still small in number, and seemingly politically insignificant. They could talk all they want about bringing in a new world order, but they can’t do it with an army of only a few thousand. But now, as I revise this paper in 2022, that army is growing. The push for disclosure of UFO information by the government, particularly after the military’s recent admission that unidentified craft are real — and really unidentified — is mounting. On the periphery are thousands hearing the message being spread by the UFO proponents that the pilots of these craft can solve our energy needs, eliminate pollution, and provide answers to all our problems. They are being conditioned to think, feel, and react in new ways. They may not be sure that aliens exist, but they haven’t ruled it out. And if a landing of an alien spacecraft shows up on the eleven o’clock news some night, they won’t be terribly surprised, nor perhaps terribly upset. They must not mean us harm since they don’t appear to be hostile. Well, except in those accounts of cattle mutilations, many of which seem to happen when these strange craft are spotted over fields and pastures.
But it’s not as if human beings were being mutilated in the same way as cattle and other animals. Whoever was responsible at least made a distinction between the murder of a human and the slaughter of an animal. If the animals weren’t tortured, was it so terrible? After all, cows and steers are killed in slaughterhouses every day. And yet they’ve left a sinister message: “Look what we’ve been able to get away with. And if we can get away with this, just think what else we might be able to do.” Regarding the so-called “alien abductions,” we know that apparently thousands of persons believe they are taken against their will, many sexually tortured, subjected to painful physical “examinations”, and left with traumatic psychological damage. And in several instances, deaths have been connected at least tenuously with UFO activity. In 1967, in a rural area near Cherry Hill, New Jersey, a young man’s body was discovered by a roadside. Two subsequent autopsies revealed no discernible cause of death, but UFOs had been observed and reported to the police by multiple witnesses in that area, at the approximate time of the young man’s death. Two Brazilian electronics technicians, Manoel Pereira da Cruz and Miguel José Viana, who had last been seen by their families on August 17, 1966, were found dead on a hill side, their faces covered by crude lead masks, after they had gone to “meet with the saucer occupants.” There are dozens of documented cases of physical injuries from contact with UFOs. There are many so-far unproven stories of human mutilations. The question of human mutilations is one which is difficult to address, recognizing the reluctance of law enforcement officials to comment or cooperate with investigators. But it seems almost certain they have occurred. The visitors wow us with their wisdom and love. Then they show us they can get away with murder if they want to. They want us to stand in awe of them, to welcome them with open arms, but apparently it serves their purposes to have us fear them too — at least a little bit. Jacques Vallee admits that his own conclusions about UFOs have set him at odds with his colleagues. But he is confident of his conclusions: “I don’t think we should expect salvation from the sky. “I think we have a very real UFO problem. I have also come to believe that it is being manipulated for political ends. And the data suggest that the manipulators may be human beings with a plan for social control. Such plans have been made before and have succeeded. History shows that having a cosmic mythology as part of such a plan is not always necessary. But it certainly helps. 33 “Let me summarize my conclusions thus far. UFOs are real. They are an application of psychotronic technology; that is, they are physical devices used to affect human consciousness. They may not be from outer space; they may, in fact, be terrestrially based manipulating devices. Their purpose may be to achieve social changes on this planet. Their methods are those of deception: systematic manipulation of witnesses and contactees; covert use of various sects and cult control of the channels through which the alleged ‘space messages’ can make an impact on the public.” 34 Vallee goes on to give six social consequences of belief in UFOs, consequences which I believe are becoming more self-evident with each passing year.35 1. Belief in UFOs will widen the gap between the public and scientific institutions.
As we discard old scientific realities, new ones will take their place, even if these new “realities” are nothing more than lies, fables, and superstitions, promoted by the manipulators. 2. The contactee propaganda undermines the image of human beings as masters of their own destiny. Christians believe that our lives are in God’s Sovereign hand, as is the existence of the entire universe. However, it is one thing to depend on a gracious, merciful God who has revealed himself to humans openly throughout history, and something else to depend on visitors who won’t tell us who they are or why they’re here. Contactees put absolute faith in something they know absolutely nothing about. And doing so is absolutely dangerous.
3. Increased attention given to UFO activity promotes the concept of political unification of this planet.
Here again, a primary question is whether the forces at work here have the ultimate benefit of mankind in mind or if they’re preparing to control our society — whether that control is psychological, intellectual, political, or spiritual. Writing of silent contactees, those who have had UFO experiences and have no conscious recall, or who have suppressed the memories of the events because of their traumatic nature, John Keel says, “We have no way of knowing how many human beings throughout the world may have been processed in this manner, as they would have absolutely no memory of undergoing the experience; and so, we have no way of determining who among us has strange and sinister “programs” lying dormant in the dark corners of his mind. Suppose the plan is to process millions of people and then at some future date trigger all of those minds at one time.”
Would we have a world brought together in peace and harmony, or one forced together through fear and violence?
4. Contactee organizations may become the basis of a new “high demand” religion.
People always have had and always will have a spiritual nature. We hunger after eternal truths. One of the best ways to use this innate human need for an ulterior purpose is to invent a new religion and draw people’s allegiance to it. Witness Hitler’s development of the Nazi party, and its foundations in the occult, and ultra-nationalism as defined by the occultic Schutsz Staffel, the SS. This organization at its core was dedicated to breeding — on actual “farms” — the Übermensch, the superman of Hitler’s twisted dreams, while at the same time the ovens of Dachau and Bergen-Belsen and Auschwitz burned away those the Nazi party had deemed the Üntermensch — the subhuman — literally, the under-man, the human detritus that stood between Hitler and his goal of Aryan superiority.
This was the unifying force behind Hitler’s terrible rise to power. He gave people something transcendent to believe in. People want and need to believe something, and once we make up our minds about what to believe — whether it regards religion, politics, or any other area of life — it takes a lot more than a few facts to convince us we’re wrong. There are plenty of facts to prove that the UFO religions are wrong, but those facts aren’t enough to dissuade true believers.
Please understand me. I am not saying that anyone who has seen a UFO is a cultist, nor am I implying that abduction victims or unwilling contactees who have had an experience with these “visitors” have turned their backs on God or will do so. Not at all. These experiences occur to people from all walks of life, as Budd Hopkins points out in his book Intruders: “Abductees are not “believers” in some religion of outer space, they are not seeking publicity or other rewards, and they are at heart, confused and frightened by their experiences, which they regard more as a profoundly unsettling problem in their lives than as any kind of advantage. These abductees are neither paranoid nor suffering from delusions of grandeur; they are honest people who have suffered traumatic experiences they do not understand.” 36
Abductees are victims and should in no sense be necessarily considered members of the new UFO religions, but nonetheless, these religions have most definitely grown up around them. 5. Irrational motivations based on groundless faith are spreading hand in hand with the belief in extraterrestrial intervention.
Biblical faith, while ultimately a gift from God, rests on a logical foundation: Scripture, the Word of God (His special revelation), and science, God’s general and natural revelation, and is proven in God’s outworking in the life of the believer. Faith in the Space Brothers is based primarily on the desire to believe that they are who they say they are and will do what they say they will do. A track record which we have seen is dismal indeed.
6. Contactee philosophies often include belief in higher races and in totalitarian systems that would eliminate democracy. One UFO contactee group leader was told that democracy was obsolete. Another was told that those humans alleged to be “hybrids” are far superior to those with only earthly blood flowing in their veins.
There have always been two schools of thought concerning UFOs and related phenomena: (1) It’s all nonsense; (2) We are being visited by beings from outer space. Jacques Vallee has concluded that neither statement is true. It’s not nonsense. And we are not being visited by beings from outer space. Someone just wants us to think this is the case. Vallee says: “If the Manipulators do exist, I certainly salute their tenacity, but I am curious about their goals. Anybody clever enough to exploit the public’s expectation of UFO landings, or even to simulate an invasion from outer space, would presumably realize that human institutions are highly vulnerable to changes in our images of ourselves. It is not only the individual contactee who is manipulated, but the global image in humanity’s collective psyche. One would like to know more, then, about the image of humanity such Manipulators harbor in their own minds — and in their hearts. Assuming, of course, that they do have hearts.
There is another system. It is sending us messengers of deception. They are not necessarily coming from nearby stars. In terms of the effect on us, it doesn’t matter where they come from. I even suspect that “where” and “when” have no meaning here. How could we be alone? The black box of science has stopped ticking. People look up toward the stars in eager expectation. Receiving a visit from outer space sounds almost as comfortable as having a God. Yet we shouldn’t rejoice too soon. Perhaps we will get the visitors we deserve.” 37 So why would anyone trust beings who sneak into houses in the middle of the night, and who won’t tell us who they are, why they’re here, or where they’ve really come from? Aliens told Strieber that he was their chosen one, as he relates in Communion. The idea of his being a ‘chosen one’ struck him as ridiculous — some sort of joke. When he told his captors he didn’t believe them, they seemed indignant — as if they couldn’t believe he wouldn’t believe them. Perhaps the visitors discovered a simple truth about the human species — that a little bit of flattery will go a long, long, way.
Strieber recognizes that these alien creatures seem to be “orchestrating our awareness of them very carefully.” He also recognizes that they seem to be trying for a “degree of influence or even control over us.”
In C.S. Lewis’ masterful work The Screwtape Letters, the experienced demon Uncle Screwtape had some
good advice for his nephew, the apprentice demon named Wormwood. (Nota bene: High Command is Satan, and the Enemy is God.) He explains the ways that human beings may be manipulated by demons: 1. Get them to think too much about demons.
2. Get them to completely ignore demonic involvement in the world.
3. Get them to believe in a neutral force that is neither good nor evil.
Regarding the second and third points, Uncle Screwtape said,
“I wonder you should ask me whether it is essential to keep the patient in ignorance of your own existence.
That question, at least for the present phase of the struggle, has been answered for us by the High Command. Our policy, for the moment, is to conceal ourselves. Of course, this has not always been so. We are really faced with a cruel dilemma. When the humans disbelieve in our existence we lose all the pleasing results of direct terrorism and we make no magicians. On the other hand, when they believe in us, we cannot make them materialists and sceptics. At least, not yet. I have great hopes that we shall learn in due time how to emotionalise and mythologise their science to such an extent that what is, in effect, a belief in us, (though not under that name) will creep in while the human mind remains closed to belief in the Enemy.
The “Life Force”, the worship of sex, and some aspects of Psychoanalysis, may here prove useful. If once we can produce our perfect work — the Materialist Magician, the man, not using, but veritably worshipping, what he vaguely calls “Forces” while denying the existence of “spirits” — then the end of the war will be in sight. But in the meantime, we must obey our orders. I do not think you will have much difficulty in keeping the patient in the dark.” 38
Let’s see if Uncle Screwtape’s advice is working. In acknowledging the negative nature of some of these visitors, Strieber discusses the importance of negative experiences. We all need them, he believes, because they cause us to grow stronger, wiser, develop compassion for others, and so on. If all we had was one positive experience piled on top of another, none of us would ever become anything other than shallow, self-important, spoiled brats.
Strieber’s right about that, of course. Christians have the same sort of idea. In the Bible, the book of James reminds us that we should rejoice when we have trials because those trials have come to make us more like Christ. But that’s a long way from saying that anyone who attempts to harm us is really trying to help us because he knows his attempts to harm us will make us stronger. But follow Strieber’s reasoning to its logical conclusion and we come to believe in a universe where there is no such thing as good and evil, only a force used to bring about personal growth. It would be wonderful to believe in a universe where there is no such thing as out-and-out evil, but practical experience, not to mention the Word of God, tells us otherwise. There is a great temptation to believe in such a supernatural force. It’s just there — a neutral, and yet incredibly powerful fountain of energy just waiting for us to tap into it. That is the idea behind “the force” in the Star Wars trilogy. That was fine, because Star Wars was only a movie, but the idea of an impersonal, supernatural force is not the reality behind our universe. Good exists, and so does evil. There is spiritual warfare in heavenly places, and no matter how much we want it, it’s impossible to be neutral. There’s no such thing as a spiritual Switzerland — a place that refuses to align itself with either of the warring parties. As Uncle Screwtape told Wormwood, if you can get them to believe in a neutral force that is neither good nor evil, you have gained control over them.
In considering contact with the “visitors”, we should also recognize the similarity between contact with similar entities who spoke through spiritualist mediums through the years. Vallee and Keel cite extensively the very, very close parallels between the contents of the messages received from both sources. The spiritualist and contactee landscapes are strewn with the wreckage of men and women who thought they were in touch with kindly spirit guides, departed loved ones, or benevolent space brothers, only to find the whole thing was a screen for vicious supernatural forces, which eventually ruined their lives.
We have visitors, alright. Someone is standing at the door of our world and knocking. Knocking very loudly, in fact. And all our experiences, viewed objectively, reveal that he’s not the sort of person to whom we want to open the door.
Strieber, in Transformation, eventually comes to the point of complete trust in the visitors. In one of his most terrifying statements, he writes: “What is interesting to me now is how to develop effective techniques to call them into one’s life and make use of what they have to offer. I have described gross versions of such techniques, such as developing real questions and being willing to be taken on a journey through one’s fears. The most effective technique seems to be simply to open oneself, asking for what one needs the most without placing any conditions at all on what that might be.” 39
As one of my research contacts phrased it when discussing this open invitation to extra-dimensional forces to invade our psyches, “We don’t know where the line is drawn between dabbling and demonism, or between curiosity and commitment, nor do we know how and when that line is crossed. It may be that the question of “how much” has less to do with it than we think. I would suggest that the neural and mental pattern set up by psychic involvement provides an interface with other forms of consciousness, which are extradimensional and demonic in nature. If that is the case, then psychic dabbling is a little like entering the cage of a man-eating tiger. You may or may not be eaten, depending on how hungry the tiger is. The significant point is that once you enter the cage, the initiative passes to the tiger.” 40
Something is going on out there. Something real. It is not a dream or a hallucination. We are not alone in this universe, nor are we alone on this planet. Strange beings pilot glowing, silver disks through our skies. They come into our houses in the middle of the night and wreak havoc with our minds. They take humans aboard their craft to be painfully, pointlessly “examined”, and often sexually molested. And, finally, they try to change our perceptions about life — in both the physical and spiritual sense. Sometimes we forget that acknowledging the truth means much more than just superficial mental assent. After all, if one claims to believe in God, and yet that belief makes no visible impact on one’s life, then you are still, for all intents and purposes, a practical atheist.
There is a compelling force to the truth. It needs to be lived, not just agreed with. There is great security in the truth, but we can’t sit on the fence about it. The truth will not allow us that luxury. If something is true, then one can and should abandon oneself to it with great confidence. Where the truth is concerned, there are only two choices: either something is true, or it isn’t. Jesus Christ is the Son of God as He claimed to be, or He is not. But we can’t have it both ways or live as though both things were true at the same time. We must choose to abandon ourselves to one or the other. You must choose. Either stake your confidence on the false, conflicting claims made by our whisperers in darkness, or accept the truth as Christ presented it in Himself. Don’t hesitate — don’t vacillate. Cast your vote and cast it now, or you may no longer possess the ability to choose. The door to the tiger cage may swing closed behind you. Our visitors come to us not with the flutter of angels’ wings, or the leathery flap of a demon’s pinions but with Uncle Screwtape’s neutral whir of the engines of an interstellar spacecraft. I heard an interesting radio interview some time ago. On this program, the host was interviewing two alleged abductees. The discussion concerned the importance of the truth about these mysteries being revealed. In support of this, one of the speakers encouraged the government to release whatever information they may have on these fabulous visitors. She used a verse of Scripture which seemed appropriate. All the others agreed with its validity. The quotation? “You will know the truth and the truth will set you free.” (John 8:32) The speaker? Jesus Christ, who shortly after this declared, “I am the way, and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” (John 14:6). Somehow, I don’t believe that was the truth they were talking about. Let me state here, without apology, so that there is no doubt in anyone’s mind, that I am a Christian. Am I a Christian because it is an easy thing to be? No. Am I a Christian because it is a popular thing to be? No. Am I a Christian because I have stepped blindly by faith into the culturally accepted dogma of our time? Again, no. No, I accept Christianity because it is THE TRUTH. The easiest thing would be to do no more than tell you only what you want to hear. I could regale you with spooky stories based on over 1500 cases of MIB activity in my files. I could expound on the endless speculation put forward to explain these strange events. The explanations which everyone wants to hear because they seem exciting and mysterious.
But I cannot in good conscience do that. I can and will make myself available to anyone who seriously desires counsel on these matters. I will do all I can to help guide anyone who is seriously looking for answers to these mysteries. I can and will explain the truth in Christ that does make us truly free. After all, even if the visitors do turn out to be extraterrestrials from another planet, who truly deserves your worship — them, or the God who created the entire universe? Do I have all the answers? No! But I know Who does, and I know His willingness to share them. I am compelled by a spirit of love and concern for all of those involved — abduction victim, contactee, and researchers alike — to point us back to the real meaning of the statement, “You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.” In the conclusion of Transformation, Whitley Strieber writes that through the visitors, “We will discover truths about ourselves, truths that will change each of us — and all of us — forever. We will pierce the fog that has for so many long years obscured our vision. At last, we will see.” 41 There are many reasons to believe, however, that the visitors will not help us dispel the fog, but lead us deeper into it, until we are hopelessly lost. As Jesus Himself said, “If a blind man leads a blind man, both will fall into a pit.” APPENDIX The following is a copy of my notes concerning information given to me in late 1991 and early 1992, by two scientists who claim to be working in weapons research and development for the Department of Defense. I am not able to comment on the truthfulness or accuracy of the information. The two men who have spoken to me do, in fact, exist; are who they claim to be; and for all intents and purposes seem to be who and what they claim. The very nature of the claims makes verification difficult, if not impossible. My Author and researcher Nick Redfern confirmed much of this information as he researched his book Final Events and the Secret Government Group on Demonic UFOs and the Afterlife, published in 2010. I was told that their willingness to divulge this information was the result of a moral dilemma: these two individuals, both Christians, became alarmed at the uses to which their research was being placed under the direction of their (unnamed) superiors. They described the development of an obsessive effort to contact and attempt to control what they referred to as “non-human intelligences” (NHI), or “non-human entities” (NHE) and to harness these NHI for military and intelligence uses. The efforts had progressed well past attempts at practical applications of David Bohm’s theories, and had grown to encompass the use of, according to their statements, “satanic rituals / ritual magic along the lines of that espoused by Aleister Crowley, including human sacrifices.” These gentlemen stated their concerns that, even when they were apparently able to harness or channel these forces or abilities for “good” uses, the force would “turn,” and ultimately all those subjects involved suffered varying degrees of negative effects from contact with these forces. They are convinced that what is being tapped into in all instances is evil, and that this research should cease. Contact has continued in a limited manner, with no new information of significance forthcoming. HISTORICAL BACKGROUND 1972 — President Nixon, on his visit to the USSR complained of “unusual feelings.” His physician, and others in the party also displayed inappropriate behavior, including unaccountable weeping. 1979 — President Carter visits Soviet embassy while in Vienna to sign SALT II. Carter began to display bizarre behavior on his return to Washington; cancelling a major speech on energy policy, and suddenly leaving Camp David, where he invited a number of experts for consultation, then suddenly took off for visits with a PA machinist, and a retired Marine in West Virginia. In both instances, intelligence specialists with a knowledge of Soviet psychotronics speculated that both Presidents may have undergone “psychic tampering.” 1960 — Kruschev delivers a speech in which he states: “We have a new weapon just within the portfolio of our scientists, so to speak, which is so powerful, that, if unrestrainedly used, it could wipe out all life on earth.” 1975 — Leonid Brezhnev refers to a novel weapons system, “more terrible than anything the world has known.” 1978 — Col. Tom Bearden, referring to information which would eventually become The Excalibur Briefing stated that Brezhnev and Kruschev were referring to “extinguishing electrical currents flowing in circuits by means of virtual–state electron–negation patterns modulated in electromagnetic carriers.” The upshot of this being that “nervous systems can be disabled to varying degrees, including total disablement resulting in death.” At the same time, intelligence sources believe that the Soviets had begun experiments with psychotronic phenomena ranging from black magic to “hyperspatial nuclear howitzers,” weapons capable of exploding a single nuclear device, then, by paranormal means, duplicating the blast in any number of other locations. During a speech given by Brezhnev at the Chkaliov aircraft factory in Tashkent, a scaffolding which Brezhnev was standing near collapsed, sending him to the ground. Reports indicated that Brezhnev had suffered a stroke, that he was critically ill in a coma for some days, and that he was unable to speak for several weeks. U.S. intelligence assets in the USSR reported that the scaffolding collapse was an assassination attempt which had been achieved psychotronically. Following a summer of recuperation, Brezhnev was beginning a major speech televised live throughout the USSR, when it became obvious that his spoken words did not match the prepared text handed outearlier. Following 7 minutes of confusion, Brezhnev’s national security advisor moved to the podium and shoved a pile of papers in front of him. Brezhnev began again, muttering, “It wasn’t my fault.” How could the speeches have been switched and Brezhnev not been aware of it for 7 minutes? In 1967, three years after Brezhnev came to power, Yuri Andropov, future successor of Brezhnev was put in charge of the KGB, and pushed for research into psychotronic devices by such institutes as The Laboratory of Bio-Information, and the Institute of Control Problems, who were rumored to have developed “psychic energy accumulators,” and other mind control devices . . . One leading American researcher stated that a division exists in the field of paranormal research between “black” and “white” projects but maintains that there are no “good” paranormal research efforts because “the occult is inherently evil”. There is a growing awareness that this type of research is very dangerous, not only in a physical sense, but “in a spiritual sense as well.” “Whatever doesn’t come from God is evil, and Satan can counterfeit many of God’s miraculous actions.” Research is being done on teleportation, healing, extracting information from the brains of dead subjects, remote viewing, developing computers with the ability to interpret and record the waveforms of thoughts, enabling them to be recorded and or transmitted. Several projects have been designed to study “negative healing”, the psychic infliction of pain, injury, and death. PROPOSED MECHANISM OF PARANORMAL EVENTS, BASED ON THE RESEARCH OF DAVID BOHM Take 2 glass cylinders, one smaller than the other, place the smaller inside the larger, and fill the space between with glycerin, a colorless, thick, viscous fluid. Introduce a drop of ink into the glycerin and revolve the outer cylinder. As you do, the ink will stretch into a thread, growing longer, thinner, and fainter, until it completely disappears. The ink is now enfolded into the glycerin — you can no longer see it, but you know it’s there. Where is it? It is no longer in any single position. It is spread out, nowhere and everywhere. In extensive research, here and abroad, there is much evidence to suggest that everything that exists today, or ever did exist, is similarly enfolded in an invisible medium. We become aware of things only when they are unfolded out of the invisible medium into our reality. Now, if you reverse the direction of the cylinders, the thread of ink begins to reappear, much as if a film of the enfolding process were being run backward. One could enfold any number of ink droplets into the medium, and by turning the cylinder backward, very rapidly, they would suddenly appear, as if out of nowhere. This is the mechanism of how we become aware of the reality of our world. Enfolding and unenfolding the ink drops in the glycerin is comparable to enfolding and unenfolding an object backward and forward through time and space. Everything exists everywhere at once, enfolded into an invisible, seemingly timeless medium. Any object you could imagine may not be visible to you right now, but nevertheless, a portion of it exists with you, invisibly enfolded, just as the ink drop existed invisibly enfolded throughout the glycerin. When you throw a pebble into a pond, the ripples expand from the point the pebble strikes the water, hit the edge of the pond, create more ripples that move back toward the center of the pool, and all these ripples run into each other and the points at which they cross are called interferences. If you could suddenly freeze the pond, the points at which the ripples interfered with each other would provide information about the weight, shape, and movement of the pebble that caused them. Theoretically, you would have enough information to create a 3–dimensional representation of the pebble. This is exactly the principle behind the hologram. Every point in a hologram contains the entire picture, just as in our first example, every point in the glycerin contained ink. What this means, to go back to our other analogy, is that to form a picture of the pebble we don’t have to have all the points where the ripples interfered with each other, we need only some of them, perhaps only one of them. Highly complex wave patterns can be reduced to a collection of simple waves that can be represented numerically. These numbers are called Fourier components, and the transformation of those waves into these numerical components is called a Fourier transform. Using this process, we can search the enfolding medium of space and time for the Fourier components of any object, forward or backward through time. Everything that has ever existed in the universe has produced lasting interference patterns in the sea of radiation created at the instant God said, “Let there be light.” Holography and Fourier transforms are simply a way of separating an image from its object, then viewing the image at a distance. Your mind does this every time you remember something. You see the image in your mind, though the object itself is somewhere else, distant in time and space. There is quite probably more than one medium. Each is itself enfolded within another, a regressing series of enfolding media. The controlling agent behind this enfoldment process is a Person, the Creator, transcendent, and existing prior to His creation. The world is composed, in one sense of interference patterns — of frequencies. Just as the frequency of music over the radio can be disrupted by a static-inducing appliance in the next room, the frequency of things in this world can be interfered with by disruptive static frequencies. If any object is characterized by, that is, it is the product of, certain frequencies, certain Fourier components, then it will be altered if those frequencies are altered. The human brain itself constantly performs Fourier analysis on all the interference patterns in the enfolding medium. The universe itself is a hologram, and the brain is part of that hologram. The brain contains all of space and time, just as each fragment of a hologram contains the entire picture. If you had full access to the content of your brain, you’d be able to see everything. This is how the paranormal works. That’s how psychics know what is happening remotely. And by interfering with the Fourier components of objects, whether inanimate, or living cells, they can heal, induce illness, or influence electronic components, or the roll of dice. Their minds are tuned to the universal hologram — they have access to all the Fourier components. All human brains perform Fourier analysis, and some can access the Fourier transforms to achieve paranormal feats. These feats, performed by humans, are unreliable and unquantifiable. However, a psychotronic device could perform these functions better than humans, much as a computer performs mathematical functions better than humans. In addition to being able to see and predict, to perform these passive functions, the device would also be able to exert an effect upon both animate and inanimate objects. Psychokinetic capability appears to follow an inverse-square law — that is, the degree of motion which can be caused, decreases as the square of the mass of the affected body. What is being attempted is to electronically recognize frequency interference patterns in space, screen them for the desired Fourier components, transform the components into viewable holographic images, and then sharpen these images with holographic image deblurring.
In this way, you can see anything you want, particularly with laser assistance. The psychotronic device operates by performing Fourier transforms on background radiation. This is achieved by analysis of laser radiation. Light from an airborne excimer laser can easily penetrate cloud cover and seawater, for instance. Large areas of ocean, to a depth of several thousand feet could be scanned; by analyzing the laser return from molecules ejected by a submarine, for instance, one could tell how many and what type of missiles are aboard, how many men in the crew, etc. Laser radiation can be used to observe electrons moving in silicon chips. The psychotronic device could divert those electrons. It has the potential capability to defeat any computer, every electronic or mechanical device, using nothing more than the natural radiation present everywhere in the universe — electromagnetic radiation. These Fourier components can be stored like any other numerical data. After capturing the interference patterns, the entire “imaging process” is computerized, so saving and transmitting the data would be routine. Enfoldment Technology — produces research on the use of various waves to influence physical health and behavior. The human brain operates as a receptor for portions of the electromagnetic spectrum. EM energy, when modulated, can act as a stimulus at some point in the sensory systems. This provides a physiological basis for the degradation of behavior and for emotional and physical changes. The degree to which brain stimulation can be limited to a discrete locus is a complex function of the wavelength of the energy, the scattering that occurs as the energy passes through tissue layers, and the nature of the antenna. Air ions and electro-aerosols have been demonstrated to have physiological and behavior consequences. Effects have been demonstrated on emotions, reaction times, flicker fusion frequency, blood pressure, sedimentation rate, serum protein, and metabolism. Charged particles penetrating the alveolar wall are transferred to blood cells and act on the central nervous system by stimulating the pulmonary nerves. The effect of photon waves, sound waves, and other oscillatory disturbances of free space, such as neutrinos and gravitons are also under investigation. Fourier transforms are produced because everything produces an interference pattern that is either an amplified signal or a scattered wave pattern containing information that was present in the brainwave oscillations, or, in the case of the inanimate, in the object itself. The atmospheric carrier wave spreads the interference pattern over the surface of the earth, and certain people or devices can perform Fourier transforms to pick off the interference patterns and reconstruct the originals. The Fourier components of entire scenes — buildings, landscapes, individuals, etc., are directly decodable by the receiver. The human organism is a liquid-crystal-like assembly of biomolecules and is capable of coherent and monochromatic amplification of incoming electromagnetic waves in the kilohertz region by more than a millionfold. Not only the incoming waves are amplified, but if the liquid crystal rotation levels are modulated by bioelectrical potential fluctuations induced by the brain, the outgoing field will carry this modulation information. A second person, or device, capable of perceiving and demodulating this kilohertz wave modulated information, can then “read” the first person’s mind. Some lower frequency neutrinos can stimulate the deexcitation of biophysical rotationally excited molecules in the rain. Neutrinos can be responsible for the release of coded thought waves. Since neutrinos can travel unimpeded through the earth or other barriers, this is consistent with the independence of psychotronic effects to distance and to magnetic shielding. Regarding macroscopic influences, experimental evidence indicates that will-influenced events do occur, for example, when tumbling dice are influenced to come to rest in a desired position. By psychotronically influencing the atomic nuclei in the die, a person can generate gravitational forces of the magnitude of about 15% of the earth’s gravitation. According to some quantum-mechanical theorists, all matter is indeterminate and dispersed, and actual reality must be described by a wave function with an infinite set of sine states extending over all of space and time. David Bohm believes that matter must be described by a multistate wave function. The quantum wave is a wave of knowledge and information. This information is not arranged in terms of position and time, as we have come to perceive it, but rather as frequency and amplitude information, and the human consciousness essentially performs Fourier transforms on this to order that information into the more familiar form. Consciousness may, by this mechanism, access any portion of space and time to acquire information. Further, since it is known that a particle with wave properties is not located in a strictly determined place, but can be all over the entire universe, or at different points, simultaneously, a generalization from microcosm to macrocosm makes possible the appearance of a macro–object anywhere in the universe. Each object present as a standing wave in a specific location in space and time is all present at all points in space and time. (Example: The paper on which this is being written always exists everywhere and at every time, simultaneously. It was present last year in the Zeta Reticuli system, except that there was less of it there then, than there is here now.) Information regarding physical objects can be enfolded and carried in electromagnetic waves, by electron beams, neutrinos, gravitons, quantum-matter waves, and numerous other forms of movement. Planck’s equation states that frequency and energy are the same thing. Since we know from Einstein that energy & matter are convertible, it follows that frequency can be matter. So, from frequency interference patterns we should be able to manifest the physical objects that produced these patterns. This is the principle on which psychotronic devices function. The function of the psychotronic device is to bring out, by appropriate focusing, the wave structure of a distant object, which is latently present in any given point in space. Likewise, human psychological processes have wave characteristics, and the mental images and thoughts of all people are present in every point in space and time. Recording and manifesting images as standing waves that have been ejected outside the brain and externalized is another accomplishment of this device. The wave functions of quantum mechanics represent real matter waves that permeate all space and time. It requires only the will of a capable person or a suitably designed device to perform an operation on these waves that would permit the perception of any scene in space and time. It is through Fourier analysis of these waves that objects and events distant is space and/or time can be captured and visualized. Researchers are now working on means to interface thought and behavior directly through a transducer attached to the head and read directly by a computer. The computer can monitor, modify, and control behavior without the subject’s awareness. Research has established that the most effective psychotronic subjects are highly temperamental and emotionally open females in the 16–21 age grouping. Side effects, including inappropriate behavior, neurasthenia, psychasthenia, and hallucinations and hysteria were noted. There have been demonstrations of the psychotronic manipulation of consciousness, and correlations shown with systematic EEG recordings. Tests have included sending to the percipient the anxiety associated with suffocation, and the sensation of a blow to the head. After transmitting negative emotions to the human subject, the white blood cell count decreased by 1600. Such a psychotronically imposed shift in white cell count could be used to alter human health. Control and manipulation of physical health, as well as human consciousness, thoughts, emotions, and will, has been achieved. During such “negative healing”, field pulsations were noted that were synchronous with the subject’s respiration rate, heartbeat, and brain alpha rhythm pattern. Effects on human subjects have included pain, paralysis, burns, and other tissue damage, and acute coronary thrombosis. While electrical fields have been measured successfully between healers and subjects, knowing these field potentials has not yet led to the duplication of human–induced beneficial effects by means of mechanically–generated fields. Consequently, more success has been achieved with negative healing than with the positive type.
To a significant degree, we are dealing with the supernatural, and positive supernatural entities are superior to the negative. Satan, being an “evil angel” has far less power than God. A psychotronic device is virtually impossible to defend against, and its effects, including changes in brain wave characteristics, disturbance of equilibrium, and dizziness, can result in personality changes and/or physical discomfort that, employed broadly against troops, would alter combat effectiveness, and when employed selectively against military and political leaders would reduce the ability to command and govern. Such a device, capable of negatively affecting healthy tissue as well as disrupting fundamental brain rhythms, heart control, and biological clock mechanisms, would pose a severe threat to enemy command, military, intelligence, embassy, and other security functions. INFORMATION GIVEN, BUT NOT ALLOWED TO NOTE DURING MEETING: Shown 3 series of photos, 4 photos per series, purporting to show individuals being killed during psychotronic weapons experiments. 1. Male, white, 25–30 yrs., allegedly death by remotely induced cardiac arrest. 2. Female, white, 20–25 yr., allegedly death by remotely transmitting and creating head trauma equivalent to crushing of right anterior portion of the skull. 3. Male, white, 30–40 yrs., allegedly death by remotely controlled suffocation. Setting was laboratory environment, alleged victims were wired for EKG, seated in reclining chair, somewhat like a dentist’s chair. In effort to establish contact with non-human entities, every avenue is being explored. Satanic rituals involving human sacrifice have been performed. Much study is/has been given to writings of Crowley. Bentwaters experiment was the projection of an actual, physical three-dimensional object, which could and did interact with its environment, but was created (?) controlled by individuals involved in this research. No project names given because sources were too concerned leak would be traced back to them. THOUGHTS ON INFORMATION: Presentation seemed very much “scripted” as if they were presenting material memorized from master script. Presentation was deliberately slow enough to allow me to take notes almost verbatim, except for portions when I was told to cease writing. Disinformation probability seems very high — why shift emphasis on Bentwaters to psychotronic warfare? It seems like a bizarre cover story to use for an actual event which in itself is so bizarre. Why talk to me? What can I do to rectify situation? Portions of eyewitness testimony would be easily explained by this theory, but is the type of work they are describing even possible? If these techniques are well developed, why not assassinate Sadaam Hussein psychically, for instance? Possibly another way to try and hide experimentation with alien technology? (if that is a true scenario). Could this possibly be the first chink in the coverup of the true story: that the entire UFO question, including abductions, alleged alien/government, and alien/human interaction and all the rest, while apparently true, are ultimately a spiritual deception of some kind? Select Bibliography on Christianity Bush, L. Russ, ed. Classical Readings in Christian Apologetics. A.D. 100–1800. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Academie Books, 1983. Douglas, J. D. The New International Dictionary of the Christian Church. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan, 1978. Frame, John. Apologetics to the Glory of God. Phillipsburg, New Jersey: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Co., 1994. — — — The Doctrine of the Knowledge of God, Phillipsburg, New Jersey: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Co., 1987. Geisler, Norman. Christian Apologetics. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Book House, 1976. — — —. Baker Encyclopedia of Christian Apologetics. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Book House, 1999. Grudem, Wayne. Systematic Theology: An Introduction to Biblical Doctrine. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing House, 1994. Harrison, E. F., ed. Baker’s Dictionary of Theology, Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, 1960. Lewis, C. S. The Problem of Pain. New York, NY: Simon & Schuster, 1996. — — —. Mere Christianity. New York, NY: Macmillan Publishing Co., Inc., 1960. McDowell, Josh. Evidence That Demands a Verdict. San Bernardino, CA: Here’s Life Publishers, Inc., 1979. — — —. More Evidence That Demands a Verdict. San Bernardino, CA: Here’s Life Publishers, Inc., 1981. McDowell, Josh & Stewart, Don. Answers to Tough Questions Skeptics Ask About the Christian Faith. San Bernardino, CA: Here’s Life Publishers, Inc., 1983. Moreland, J. P. and William Lane Craig, Philosophical Foundations for a Christian Worldview. Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2017. Runes, Dagobert, D., ed. Dictionary of Philosophy. New York, NY: Philosophical Library, 1942. Van Til, Cornelius. Christian Apologetics. Phillipsburg, New Jersey: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Co., 1976. Notes 1 The term Men in Black (MIBs), in popular culture, is used in UFO conspiracy theories to describe men dressed in black suits, sometimes with glowing eyes or other monstrous features, claiming to be government agents who attempt to harass or threaten UFO witnesses into silence. “All MIB are not necessarily garbed in dark suits”, writes American researcher Jerome Clark. “The term is a generic one, used to refer to any unusual, threatening or strangely behaved individual whose appearance on the scene can be linked in some fashion with a UFO sighting.” The phenomenon was initially and most frequently reported in the 1950s and 1960s; it is con-temporaneous with many other conspiracy theories. Some versions of the Men in Black conspiracy theory lead some to believe that the Men in Black’s odd mannerisms and dress are because they are aliens or alien-human hybrids, and that their job is to eliminate physical evidence of alien involvement on earth. Others believe that they are actual government agents who intentionally dress and act ridiculously, in an attempt to get UFO witnesses to discredit themselves if they ever report such an encounter. 2 The “International Flying Saucer Bureau” was a small UFO organization founded in 1952, at Bridgeport in Connecticut, USA directed by Albert K. Bender, who was determined to uncover the truth about the flying saucer phenomenon. The association edited a small magazine publication known as the “Space Review” which contained news about UFOs. It was a very small organization with only a small membership and the publication circulated amongst hundreds rather than thousands, but its members and readers valued the publication a lot. It also presented the idea that flying saucers were spacecraft of extraterrestrial origin. 3 Contactees are persons who claim to be in regular contact with extraterrestrials. Contactees have typically reported that they were given messages of profound wisdom by aliens, and that they were compelled to share these messages. As a cultural phenomenon, Contactees perhaps had their greatest notoriety from the late 1940s to the late 1950s, but individuals make similar claims to the present day. 4 The abduction phenomenon is an umbrella term used to describe several hypotheses, claims or assertions stating that nonhuman creatures kidnap individuals — sometimes called “abductees” — usually for medical testing or for sexual reproduction procedures. Many such encounters are described as terrifying or humiliating, but others describe them as transformative or even pleasant. Reports of the abduction phenomenon have been made from around the world but have perhaps seen most mainstream attention in the United States. 5 Reginald Scot, The Discoveries of Witchcraft, wherein the Lewde dealing of Witches and Witchmongers is notably detected, in sixteen books ... whereunto is added a Treatise upon the Nature and Substance of Spirits and Devils (London: William Brome, Printer; 1651). 6 J. Charles Wall, Devils (London: Methuen & Co., 1904) 7 Marion L. Starkey, The Devil in Massachusetts: A Modern Inquiry into the Salem Witch Trials (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1950), 242. 8 Brad Steiger, Alien Meetings, (New York: Ace Books/Grosset & Dunlap, 1978), 114. 9 The Mystery Airships were unidentified flying objects reported in newspapers in western states of the US, starting in 1896 and continuing into 1897. The reported ships were usually said to be a type of dirigible and were usually differentiated from gliders or hot air balloons. The first wave of airship tales was largely confined to North America, but later “flaps” included similar reports from around the world, as late as the eve of World War I. While the range and variety of reported sightings is many ways analogous to twentieth century flying saucer flaps, most, though not all reports assumed the crafts to be airships of human invention.
Some speculated that the airships had extraterrestrial origins, an early example of the extraterrestrial hypothesis; most airships, however, were attributed to (or suspected to be made by) earthly inventors. In one account from Texas, three men reported an encounter with an airship and “five peculiarly dressed men” who reported that they were descendant from the lost tribes of Israel; they had learned English from the 1553 North Pole expedition led by early British Arctic explorer, Hugh Willoughby. It is suggested that most of these “Airships” were hoaxes perpetrated by (or on) newspaper writers. Though such pranks and tall tales would be considered quite unprofessional if perpetrated by today’s news writers, they were not uncommon in the late 1800’s. Early citations of the extraterrestrial hypothesis, all from 1897, include the Washington Times, which speculated that the airships were “a reconnoitering party from Mars”; and the Saint Louis Post-Dispatch, which suggested of the airships, “these may be visitors from Mars, fearful, at the last, of invading the planet they have been seeking.” In 1909, a letter printed in the Otago Daily Times (New Zealand) suggested that the mystery airship sightings then being reported in that country were due to Martian “atomic-powered spaceships.” At least two airship tales were taken as at least possibly genuine by generations of later ufologists: An account by Alexander Hamilton of Leroy, Kansas supposedly occurred about April 19, 1897, and was published in the Yates Center Farmer’s Advocate of April 23. Hamilton, his son, and a tenant witnessed an airship hovering over his cattle pen. Upon closer examination, the witnesses realized that a red “cable” from the airship had lassoed a heifer but had also become entangled in the pen’s fence. After trying unsuccessfully to free the heifer, Hamilton cut lose a portion of the fence, then “stood in amazement to see the ship, cow and all rise slowly and sail off.” Some have suggested this was the earliest report of cattle mutilation. (In 1982, however, UFO researcher Jerome Clark debunked this story, and confirmed via interviews and Hamilton’s own affidavit that the story was a successful attempt to win a Liar’s Club competition to create the most outlandish tall tale). An 1897 account from Aurora, Texas (as related in the Dallas Morning News) reported that an airship had smashed into a windmill — later determined to be a “sump pump” belonging to a Judge Proctor, then crashed. The occupant was dead and mangled, but the story reported that presumed pilot was clearly “not an inhabitant of this world.” Strange “hieroglyphic” figures were seen on the wreckage, which resembled “a mixture of aluminum and silver ... it must have weighed several tons.” (In the 20th Century, unusual metallic material recovered from the presumed crash site was shown to contain a percentage of aluminum and iron admixed.) The story ended by noting that the pilot was given a “Christian burial” in the town cemetery. In 1973, MUFON investigators discovered the alleged stone marker used in this burial. Their metal detectors indicated a quantity of foreign material might remain buried there. However, they were not permitted to exhume, and when they returned several years later, the headstone — and whatever metallic material had lain beneath it — was gone. 10 The man in question, along with his wife and another couple, were run off a state highway when a silver disc-shaped craft swooped down on his vehicle in broad daylight. 11 Most victims of kidnapping by non-human creatures — called “abductees” — usually for medical testing or for sexual reproduction procedures describe their experiences as terrifying or humiliating. While it is virtually impossible to prove that the phenomenon literally occurs as reported, there is little doubt that many apparently stable and sincere persons report alien abductions they believe are utterly genuine. As reported in the Harvard University Gazette in 1992, Dr. John Edward Mack investigated over 60 claimed abductees, and “spent countless therapeutic hours with these individuals only to find that what struck him was the ‘ordinariness’ of the population, including a restaurant owner, several secretaries, a prison guard, college students, a university administrator, and several homemakers ... ‘The majority of abductees do not appear to be deluded, confabulating, lying, self-dramatizing, or suffering from a clear mental illness,’ he maintained.’ He has encountered only one person who showed psychotic features. As folklorist Dr. Thomas E. Bullard has noted (UFO Abductions: The Measure of a Mystery, 1987), most abduction accounts feature the following events. They generally follow the sequence noted below, though not all abductions feature all the events: a. Capture (Abductees taken from room/area and find themselves in the “ship”) b. Examination (a seeming medical or physiological exam) c. Conference (“Aliens” speak with abductees) d. Tour (Not always described but some abductees claim to be shown the ship) e. Loss of Time (Many abductees suffer from periods of time lost from their memory, often coming back to them later) f. Return (Returned, sometimes with environ mental changes) g. Theophany (a profound mystical experience, a feeling of oneness with God or the universe) h. Aftermath (Sickness, phobias, ridicule, etc.) Such alleged abductions are often closely connected to UFO reports and are sometimes supposedly conducted by so-called Greys: Short, grey-skinned humanoids with large, pear-shaped heads and enormous dark eyes. Budd Hopkins — a painter and sculptor by profession — and Dr. David Jacobs, a professor of history at Temple University, and later, Dr. John Mack, professor of psychiatry at Harvard University presented alien abduction as a genuine phenomenon through their research efforts in the 1970s through the 1990s. Jacobs and Hopkins argued that alien abduction was far more common than earlier suspected; they estimate that tens of thousands (or more) North Americans had been taken by unexplained beings. Furthermore, Jacobs and Hopkins argued that there was an elaborate scheme underway, that the aliens were attempting a program to create human–alien hybrids, though the motives for this scheme were unknown. There were anecdotal reports of phantom pregnancy related to UFO encounters at least as early as the 1960s, but Budd Hopkins and especially David M. Jacobs were instrumental in popularizing the idea of widespread, systematic interbreeding efforts on the part of the alien intruders. 12 The manifestations which occur, while strange and remarkable, seem to reflect the culture and technology of the times. Elves and fairies in the Middle Ages, airships in the 1890s, spacecraft in the 1950s. 13 Ivan T. Sanderson, Uninvited Visitors (New York: Cowles Education Corp, 1967) 164 14 Whitley Strieber, Communion (HarperCollins Publishers, 1987). 15 — — — Transformation (HarperCollins Publishers, 1988). 16 Bonnie Nettles had died of cancer in 1985, 12 years before the cult’s mass suicide in 1997. 17— — — Transformation (HarperCollins Publishers, 1988) 237. 18 Albert K. Bender, Flying Saucers and the Three Men, Clarksburg WV: Saucerian Books, 1962) 122. 19 Ronald Story, Guardians of the Universe? (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1980), 150. 20 Steven M. Greer is an emergency physician, and as founder and director of CSETI (Center for the Study of Extraterrestrial Intelligence), has led research teams throughout the world “investigating” the existence of ETI and claims to have successfully established contact and communication with extraterrestrial spacecraft at close range on several occasions using flashlights and meditation. He says that a spiritual level of consciousness is required to make the inter-dimensional contact with extraterrestrials. He also charges hefty fees for teaching people these “secrets.” 21 Brad Steiger, The UFO Abductors, (New York: Berkey Books, 1988), 30-32. 22 Ruth Shick Montgomery (1912–June 10, 2001) was an American journalist and self-described Christian psychic in the tradition of Jeane Dixon and Edgar Cayce. She was a protégé of Arthur Ford who claimed he (like Cayce) could access the Akashic Records (or database) of the Universe. Montgomery initially believed her mission on Earth was to educate the public on her belief in life after death, which is common among spiritualists. However, she also studied reincarnation and came to believe that mental and physical illnesses often have their origins in past lives. Her many books (which she says were channeled via automatic writing from her spirit guides) popularized spiritualist notions in public the consciousness in the 1980s and 1990s and helped pave the way for what is now known as New Age religion. Montgomery is particularly noted for her popularization of walk-in theory where-by a person’s soul can depart a hurt or anguished body and be replaced with a new soul to take over the body. In her books, Montgomery revealed that in a past incarnation she had been alive during the time of Christ and known as Lazarus’ sister Mary. 23 Accessed June 18, 2022: https://extraterrestrial-wiki.com/index.php/Tuella 24 The Extraterrestrial Hypothesis (ETH) is the theory that UFOs are best explained as being physical spacecraft visiting Earth, piloted by creatures from other planets. 25 Jacques Vallee, Confrontations (New York: Ballantine Books, 1990). 26 Jacques Vallee, The Reality of Abduction. A response to the review of Confrontations in UFO Magazine, Vol. 5, No. 3. Accessed June 18, 2022. https://cdn.preterhuman.net/texts/alien.ufo/SIGHTINGS/jaqvals.txt First posted to ParaNet, April 18, 1991, by Don Ecker. 27 Chapter 11 excerpt from Jacques Vallee, Confrontations (New York: Ballantine Books, 1990) 168–180. 11 Happy Camp . . . The Happy Camp events encompass abductions, suffocating fog, large birds, small beings with welder helmets, chases by jets, poltergeists, gravity anomalies, and broken trees. Coming from an isolated town that does not even have a movie house, this concentration of cases is remarkable. But it would not be complete without its own Man in Black episode. Thus I was almost relieved to learn how, early in 1976, a stranger who had never been seen in town happened to stroll into Lois’s Cafe. Helen and Pat were there, quietly having dinner at different tables. All conversation stopped when the man came in. He ordered a steak dinner but proved unable to use a knife and fork, and eventually left without paying, a sure way to be remembered by the local people. Pat told me that he had pale skin and “oriental” eyes. He wore a bizarre sort of shirt and no coat, although it was the middle of winter. He smiled constantly at people in a strange, forced grimace. Among the peculiar things he did during his extraordinary dinner was a brave attempt to drink Jell-O out of his glass. THE ABDUCTION QUAGMIRE Helen White’s account is an illustration of the abduction reports that have come to dominate the study of UFOs in recent years. Starting with the Hill case of 1961, researchers have frequently noticed that UFO witnesses failed to remember some key features about their sighting and even experienced amnesia between the moment when they had their close encounter and their return to normal reality. The missing period was measured in hours or even days. To many investigators, hypnosis appeared as an ideal tool for the recovery of missing memories. Indeed, whenever it was applied to the UFO abduction cases it opened the floodgates to a veritable torrent of new material. Not only did witnesses suddenly describe in great detail the inside of the UFOs, but they gave precise data about the occupants, their behavior, their actions, and the dialogue with them. In some celebrated cases this interaction seemed to continue beyond the sighting itself. When Dr. Andrija Puharich hypnotized Uri Geller, he claimed to recover not only information about an extraterrestrial civilization called Hoova but an entire plan that involved Geller, Puharich, and many others in a grandiose psychic plan for the conditioning of the earth. 5
More mundane, but more reliable, is the data retrieved from their subjects by two assiduous researchers: Wyoming psychologist Leo Sprinkle and New York City artist Budd Hopkins, who has published two books on the subject. Both are strongly convinced that the phenomenon is due to the intervention of extraterrestrial visitors. Sprinkle and Hopkins, who separately have performed hypnotic regressions on several hundred abductees, find somewhat different patterns in their data. The aliens reported by Sprinkle’s patients tend to be helpful and benevolent. Those reported by Hopkins, on the contrary, are sinister and even sadistic, performing outrageous operations on the bodies of their victims, especially women. Fetuses are removed, needles are inserted in helpless bodies, devices are implanted for future tracking. Both Sprinkle and Hopkins are convinced that such operations, bizarre as they may seem, are necessary for the aliens to pursue their systematic program of scientific analysis of our planet. In recent years Sprinkle and Hopkins have been joined by other researchers who have used hypnosis specifically to perform regressions of abductees. Among them is Dr. David Jacobs, a history professor at Temple University. Another prominent researcher who has been using similar techniques since the Sixties is Dr. James Harder, an engineering professor at the University of California at Berkeley.
The growing body of information retrieved from the minds of abductees has been tabulated statistically by Thomas Bullard under a grant from the Fund for UFO Research.6 It has been found to be exceptionally consistent and robust, a fact cited by most UFO researchers today as evidence that we are indeed visited by aliens from outer space. Only a few exceptional cases do not seem to fit. For example, the experiences of Whitley Strieber, as described in his best-selling books Communion and Transformation, do not follow the standard template.7 Neither do numerous cases of interaction with entities that do not entail medical examination or space travel. Such discrepancies have created a new cleavage among ufologists, The majority follow Sprinkle, Hopkins, and Jacobs, although they do not necessarily buy all their conclusions, while a minority questions the validity of the hypnosis technique and the preconceptions that seem to propel the whole research into the extraterrestrial framework. Given the high level of expectation that is created by numerous books and television programs in the minds of witnesses who suspect they have been abducted, perhaps it is not surprising that a majority of them do “recall” highly structured situations and similar beings. Lurking in the background are two other relevant thoughts. First, a very creative series of experiments conducted by Alvin Lawson and several hypnotists in Los Angeles has shown (under admittedly contrived conditions) that imaginary abductees, who had never seen UFOs but were asked to imagine that they did, came up with stories practically indistinguishable from those of true abductees.8 Second, UFO skeptic Philip Klass has raised the important question of “pseudo-memories” that can so easily be planted in a subject’s mind under hypnosis. In a 1979 paper entitled “The Use and Misuse of Hypnosis in Court,” Dr. Martin T. Orne cited experiments showing the possibility for fabrication and elaboration of evidence even under deep trance, and reminded the reader that the patient’s fantasies and the unconscious pressure exerted by the hypnotist commonly introduced false memories.9 As usual, Mr. Klass uses such well: observed critical material as a springboard to deny the existence of the entire UFO problem.10 In the course of my own investigations I have not invited abduction cases, but many have naturally come my way. I have in my files statements and tape transcripts going back to the mid-1960s that include continuing abductions monitored before, during, and after the event. In several cases I referred the witnesses to experts in hypnosis, and I studied the results with them. I have also investigated several firsthand events, like the cases of Mrs. Victor in Gilroy, of Oscar in Argentina, and of Helen White in Happy Camp. All three involved abductions I felt to be actual events. I have emerged from these experiences with a healthy respect for the complexity of the human mind and a great deal of skepticism regarding the methods used by some ufologists. One psychiatrist whose help I tried to enlist in a particular case declined to be involved because he did not feel that he had enough recent clinical experience with hypnosis. Furthermore, he said he knew too much about the subject of UFOs to be unbiased. In another case, a team of two doctors (an M.D. who uses hypnosis in his work and an expert hypnotherapist) agreed to conduct a regression of a witness I brought before them, but only under the guidelines for the acceptability of hypnotic evidence before a California court. A video recording was made of the entire session, including the induction phase; a pulse monitor and a galvanic skin response monitor gave continuous data throughout the session. At the end of the evening we agreed that we could not ethically continue the process without a therapy contract with the witness and funding to take future sessions as far as they needed to be taken. The experts I consulted, when I showed them the current UFO literature, were amazed and upset at the superficial conditions under which UFO investigators used hypnosis. Unanimously, they considered it unethical for anyone who had already reached a strong personal conclusion about UFOs to interrogate a witness under hypnosis. Yet one is forced to admit that of the leading abduction researchers I have mentioned, none has a medical degree, none has professional knowledge of psychopathology, and all have extremely strong personal conclusions regarding the UFO phenomenon and its cultural or religious meaning. In other words, in every case there’s much more than scientific curiosity involved: although working with the best intentions, the hypnotist is already committed to a particular conclusion and is trying to verify it. This sense of commitment is especially strong in Dr. Sprinkle, who stated in 1988 that he had been abducted by aliens as a child and regarded himself as having a “mission” on their behalf. 11 An interesting book published in 1964 by Helix Press in New York under the auspices of Garrett Publications has some fascinating observations to contribute on this subject. In Hidden Communion, the author, Dr. Joost Meerloo, an associate professor at the New York School of Psychiatry, draws on his clinical experience in hypnosis and telepathy to illustrate the strong evidence for “unobtrusive and unconscious communication.” He points out: Exploration of the psycho-therapeutic process has brought to light the existence of unconscious pre-verbal communication as well as unobtrusive subliminal communication, both making use of infinitesimal verbal and gestural clues, and also extrasensory perception. 12 What Dr. Meerloo calls “mental induction” is a communication phenomenon that is enhanced by hypnosis. Yet enthusiastic UFO researchers who hypnotize their witnesses in an effort to validate their established theories are ignoring this fact. Even when they are careful to avoid leading questions and blatant contagion, their belief system is already obvious to their subjects and it can only be strengthened by the hypnotic process—not to mention possible telepathic contamination. These observations do tend to discredit much of the hard work that has gone into hundreds of case investigations over the last decade. Yet I cannot agree with Philip Klass’s conclusion that the witness is making up the whole episode. The abduction experience is real, even if the “missing time” is filled in after the fact with fictitious material. I have a problem with the very concept of “missing time” for the simple reason that the time in question has never been shown to be missing in the first place in the time line of the abductee. Given an interval of one hour, as measured by the watch of an outside (reference) observer while a close encounter witness is “abducted,” it is not necessarily true that time is passing at the same rate within the region of space occupied by the phenomenon. Some theories of UFOs, whose authors I respect, would, in fact, demand relativistic effects under which the abductee might spend only a few minutes or a few seconds inside the phenomenon during the full hour of “reference time.” The mind of the witness, to retain its sanity, might later fill itself with an imaginary overlay drawn from collective unconscious material or personal fantasies to account for the discrepancy. Even if time inside the object flows at the same rate as reference time, an altered state of perception might be created that would also demand such an imaginary overlay. When the experience is over, subsequent hypnosis would retrieve and amplify the overlay rather than “what really happened.” Abduction researchers raise a valid objection against the idea that many recollections are fantasies. Not only do hypnosis subjects remember certain patterns, but witnesses who recall the whole episode consciously (like Oscar in Venado Tuerto) describe similar patterns. Yet current research on memory, and especially research on the recollections of crimes by witnesses in court, should make us very cautious on this point. An article in the October 14, 1983, issue of Science magazine tested the validity of the forensic use of hypnosis. Subjects tried for a week to recall sixty previously presented pictures. “They were then either hypnotized or not and encouraged to recall even more pictures. Most of the newly recalled material was incorrect, especially for highly hypnotizable subjects in the hypnosis condition” 13 (my emphasis). As for lie detector tests, which are routinely used by ufologists and the media to “prove” that UFO abductees are “telling the truth” their effectiveness is practically nil, as a long list of scientific references would show. Most recently, the University of California's Wellness Letter pointed out that such devices are “a good example of pseudo-science in action.”!* The Congressional Office of ‘Technology Assessment has concluded that the tests were highly flawed, and a recent Harvard Medical School study has shown that truthful people flunked polygraph tests more often than actual liars, A possible explanation is that innocent people react to the stress of the test, while the guilty do everything in their power to remain calm. In the midst of these conflicting indications, can help be provided to the traumatized witness who has experienced a close encounter and possibly an abduction? Absolutely, He or she should be directed to a qualified, professional hypnotherapist who is open-minded on the question of UFO reality and who has reached no personal conclusion regarding the nature and origin of the phenomenon. And the ufologist should only be in the room at the request of, and under the control of, the therapist. Any other procedure, in my opinion, is unethical and unprofessional. Besides, it runs the risk of polluting the delicate, complex abduction database with fantastic and spurious material. It can drive UFO research over a very dangerous cliff. Even if we disagree with skeptics like Mr. Klass, we must acknowledge the fact that after recording more than a thousand abduction reports, we may have accumulated countless pages of very fascinating material but not be any closer to an understanding of the precise nature of UFOs. None of the abductees have provided verifiable information on their origin and purpose. On the contrary, every theory logically deduced from the data leads to absurd conclusions. Budd Hopkins’s conclusion, for instance, that the ufonauts’ purpose is genetic experimentation and hybridization as part of a scientific mission, is contradicted by several obvious facts: even in our current primitive knowledge of medicine the operations performed on the abductees by the aliens would be cruel, unnecessary, and unreliable. Simpler procedures could yield more accurate results without leaving scars. Memory could be erased in the subject beyond any chance that a hypnotist, amateur or otherwise, could retrieve any information at all about the event. We are compelled to conclude that many abductions are either complete fantasies drawn from the collective unconscious (perhaps under the stimulus of an actual UFO encounter acting as a trigger) or that actual beings are staging simulated operations, very much in the manner of a theatrical play or movie, in order to release into our culture certain images that will influence us toward a goal we are incapable of perceiving, Neither theory is completely satisfactory. If the second scenario is correct, the more we engage in the kind of abduction research advocated by Hopkins, Jacobs, Sprinkle, and others, in search of a first-order explanation for the overt behavior of the ufonauts, the more we do, in fact, play their game and reinforce the artificially projected imagery. Perhaps we have no choice. One of the most powerful images in our society is that of the extraterrestrial alien. Over the past twenty years he has assumed a powerful persona, so much so that expectations are now high that he actually exists among us, looking like a tall, blond Aryan or a stocky humanoid with large, dark eyes. There is another very important aspect to the entire abduction problem that has never been considered seriously by American ufology, obsessed as it is with immediate facts and first-order explanations. By ignoring this other aspect, we reduce considerably our chances of understanding the entire question. What I am referring to is the simple fact that abduction stories are not specific to the UFO phenomenon and certainly did not begin with Betty and Barney Hill in 1961. I pointed out in Invisible College that the structure of abduction stories was identical to that of occult initiation rituals. Several years before, I had shown in Passport to Magonia that contact with ufonauts was only a modern extension of the age-old tradition of contact with nonhuman consciousness in the form of angels, demons, elves, and sylphs. Such contact includes abduction, ordeal (including surgical operations), and sexual intercourse with the aliens. It often leaves marks and scars on the body and the mind, as do UFO abductions. Reaction to the publication of these facts was curious. In the United States, many ufologists simply denied or ignored them. As late as 1988 Budd Hopkins summarily rejected the Magonia data as “folklore of obviously uncertain authenticity.” After all, if one has a strong personal commitment to the view that UFOs are extraterrestrial aliens on a scientific mission to earth, it is difficult to accept that they have interacted with us for centuries. Yet the material studied by ufology is only valuable to the extent that it fits into the much wider tapestry of worldwide beliefs about contact with aliens throughout history. Even the excellent and scholarly analysis of UFO abductions compiled by Thomas Bullard under the aegis of the Fund for UFO Research falls into the same trap with its very first sentence: Perhaps the least controversial generalization about abductions is to say that they are a recent phenomenon. Most UFO events have a prehistory reaching back through ghost rockets, ghost fliers (etc.), Among those few novel exceptions are abductions. Since they went public with the... revelation of the Barney and Betty Hill case, abductions have built up a substantial literature of their own as the most spectacular aspect of the UFO phenomenon. Such a statement ignores not only the repeated invitations by 1897 airship occupants to take human witnesses on aerial trips, but the persistent stories of abductions by dwarfish creatures throughout the folklore of every culture. Archbishop Agobard of Lyons, France, in the ninth century, has left a very clear description of the four individuals who were about to be stoned to death as sorcerers because they came out of a “cloudship” from Magonia. The abduction stories began with Ezekiel on the shores of the river Chebar in 593 b.c. and never stopped. In Europe, to my amazement, Passport to Magonia had the opposite result. Some researchers embraced the idea that ufology was modern folklore and carried it to an extreme: everything was folklore and there was no physical reality behind the sightings at all. This gave rise to a series of psychological exercises tending to explain UFOs by various psychic mechanisms where the actual material facts of the case were now completely ignored. It is time to restate the argument in its simplest terms: the UFO beings of today belong to the same class of manifestation as the entities that were described in centuries past, abducting humans and flying through the sky. If my research into this aspect of the UFO enigma was perceived as heretical, later research by experts like Bertrand Meheust was even less welcome. Yet Meheust has thrown an extraordinary new light (along with buckets of cold water) on the entire question of abduction cases and his analysis should not be ignored. In his diligent, painstaking research, Meheust has found new material that had been missed by all of us. Typical of his case material is the following abduction report, involving Mr. Belans, a Belgian who suffered missing time and amnesia following an encounter with a flying craft. The incident occurred at dusk, as he was walking in an isolated area of Brabant where suspicious traces—notably crushed vegetation—had been noticed by farmers in their wheat fields. At the site he saw a man dressed in black waiting for something under a tree. Intrigued, Belans stopped and watched. Soon a strange feeling of tiredness came over him, as if another entity had taken control of his actions. He heard a buzzing sound, soon followed by a very bright light, as an elongated craft landed near him. A door opened over a faintly luminous rectangle, and the man in black climbed into the object. A force impelled Belans to follow. He found himself in a room that was evenly lit but without any observable source of light. A faint vibration was felt and the craft took off. An opening then became visible in the wall of the room and a very tall man entered. He seemed to “guess” Belans’ every thought and was able to answer him in French. He revealed that he came from a faraway star. “Why don’t you establish open contact?” asked Belans. “Because we do not wish to force the rapid evolution of elements that are foreign to our own civilization,” the tall ufonaut responded. Belans was eventually returned to earth, with a significant period of missing time. The most interesting fact about the Belans abduction case is that it is a science fiction story written in 1930 by Ege Tilms. Entitled “Hodomur, Man of Infinity,” it was first published four years later.
Meheust has accumulated an enormous textual and pictorial database covering such science fiction material published before World War II, and in many cases before World War I. This material contains stories of UFO beings chasing trains and automobiles, stalling cars, hitting people with strange beams, and abducting them into spherical structures. Abduction by alien beings constitutes a central theme of the science fiction literature of the early twentieth century. Meheust has found it in hundreds of stories, especially in French and English, published between 1880 and 1940. When this research is extended to earlier folklore texts, it becomes obvious that the accumulated material about alien abductions (real or imagined) published before 1940 literally dwarfs the database studied by modern ufologists.
It is predictable that many researchers will go on ignoring this fact and hypnotizing traumatized witnesses in a futile, desperate effort to regain control over a phenomenon whose elusiveness is a key feature. To me, the abduction of Helen White, like that of Mrs. Victor and of Oscar, is interesting precisely because it matches a much wider pattern that extends through the centuries. These cases are new examples of a motif that repeats endlessly in the tapestry of alien contact. I feel privileged to have touched them, but I do not know what they mean yet. Notes to Chapter 11, Confrontations by Vallee
5. Stuart Holroyd, Prelude to the Landing on Planet Earth (London: W. H. Allen, 1977).
6. Thomas Bullard, “Comparative Analysis of UFO Abduction Reports” (Washington: FUFOR, 1987).
7. Streiber, Communion; and Transformation (New York: William Morrow, 1988).
8. Alvin Lawson, “A Touchstone for Fallacious Abductions: Birth Trauma Imagery in CE3 Narratives,” in The Spectrum of UFO Research, 71.
9. Martin T. Orne, “The Use and Misuse of Hypnosis in Court,” International Journal of Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis (October 1979).
10. Philip Klass, UFO Abductions—A Dangerous Game (Buffalo: Prometheus Books, 1987).
11. About Sprinkle’s statements regarding hypnosis and his own UFO experiences, see: “Some Uses of Hypnosis in UO Research,” Flying Saucer Review (Special Issue no, 3, September 1969), 17; and “Psychologist Recalls Space Ride,” Fort Collins Coloradan, 10 July 1988.
12. Joost Meerloo, Hidden Communion, New York: Helix Press, 1964.
13. J. Dywan and K. Bowers, ‘The Use of Hypnosis to Enhance Recall,” Science 222 (October 14, 1983): 184-185. A clear summary of this research was published in the Wall Street Journal, Wednesday, 2 March 1988 under the headline “Memory on Trial. Witnesses of crimes are being challenged as frequently fallible; Courts allow Defense to give psychologists’ testimony about unreliable recall; the effect of Personal Biases.” Another relevant article, entitled “Flashbulb Memories: The Picture Fades,” appeared in Science News 133, 4 June 1988, “Do Lie Detectors Really Detect Lies?” UC-Berkeley Wellness Letter 4, issue 6.
28 Josef Allen Hynek (May 1, 1910–April 27, 1986) was a U.S. astronomer, professor (Ohio State University, Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, Northwestern University), and ufologist. He is probably best remembered for his UFO research: Hynek acted as scientific advisor to three consecutive UFO studies undertaken by the U.S. Air Force: Project Sign (1947–1949), Project Grudge (1949–1952), and finally, Project Blue Book (1952–1969); for decades afterwards, he conducted his own independent UFO research. On April 27, 1986, Hynek died of a malignant brain tumor at Memorial Hospital in Scottsdale, Arizona.
29 Story, Guardians of the Universe? (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1980), 149, 150.
30 The Colorado Springs Sun, October 23, 1975
31 The Fort Collins Coloradoan, August 26, 1975, page 7.
32 Jacques Vallee, Messengers of Deception, (Berkeley, CA: And/Or Press, 1979) 137.
33 Vallee, Messengers of Deception, 157.
34 Vallee, Messengers of Deception, 157.
35 Vallee, Messengers of Deception, 217-220.
36 Budd Hopkins, Intruders: The Incredible Visitations at Copley Woods (New York: Random House, 1987) 150.
37 Vallee, Messengers of Deception, 219-223.
38 C. S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (New York: Macmillan, 1943) 37.
39 Strieber, Transformation (HarperCollins Publishers, 1988) 235.
40 Personal correspondence with Brooks Alexander, January 25, 1985.
41 Strieber, Transformation (HarperCollins Publishers, 1988) 242.
In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107, some material in this paper is provided for research and/or educational purposes only, without permission from the copyright owner(s), under the "fair use" provisions of the federal copyright laws. These materials may not be distributed for other purposes without permission of the copyright owner(s). In general, the copyright owner is the author or publisher of the material.
Editor’s Note: The author, Ray Boeche, has given this editor permission to reproduce his paper here, instructing me to cite the webpage from which it originated: https://independent.academia.edu/RayBoeche
Rev. Dr. R. W. Boeche
Theologian, Apologist, Researcher
