SUBJECT: MISSING TIME                                        FILE: UFO2743





   The Sysop's Bookshelf
   ---------------------
   TITLE: Missing Time: A Documented Study of UFO Abductions
   AUTHOR: Budd Hopkins
   PUBLISHED BY: Marek
   AT: New York, 1981
   VIEWPOINT: Zetetic
   258 Pages

   Budd  Hopkins is an artist of no little repute,  who has maintained  an
   interest.   in the UFO phenomenon for 20  years.  While writing  a  UFO
   column  for  the Village Voice,  he became involved in  a  particularly
   fascinating aspect of the field,.  the abduction cases.  Starting  with
   the famed Betty and Barney Hill case,  many.  people claim to have been
   actually taken aboard UFOs and examined by their humanoid occupants. In
   most  of these cases,  the actual abduction is erased from the victim's
   memory,   leaving only a vague fearfulness and an unexplained lapse  of
   several hours --  missing time.  The encounter with,  and abduction by,
   aliens is brought out only through the use of regressive hypnosis

   In  this riveting book,  Hopkins documents several abduction cases with
   the transcripts of the actual hypnotic sessions.  The basic accounts by
   the  various  subjects  so nearly match each other that  there  can  be
   almost no question of hallucination or fantasizing.  Unless Hopkins has
   written  a  work  of  total fiction,  the  reader  is  confronted  with
   inescapable evidence of alien encounters

   The  most  important  contribution the book makes is to  reinforce  the
   rather  sketchy image we have of our visitors.  The race we are dealing
   with  seems  to be humanoid,.about 4-5  feet in height,   with  slender
   bodies, bulbous, hairless heads, small mouths, nose and ears, and large
   almond-shaped  eyes.   Their  skin is grey,  with a  leathery  quality,
   alternately described as like "putty"  or "marshmallowy".  They  almost
   invariably communicate via a form of telepathy

   The  presentation of this knowledge counteracts yet another of the many
   insidious  claims  by arch-skeptic Phil Klass.  In a letter to  myself,
   Klass  maintained  that  "one of  the  characteristic  fingerprints  of
   'pseudo-science'   that distinguishes it from true science is that  the
   passage   of  time  and  effort  adds  no  increased   knowledge,    or
   understanding,  for pseudo-sciencetoday,  20  years after I entered the
   field of UFOlogy, we do.  not know an iota more about what UFOs 'really
   are'   than  was 'known'  two decades ago."  It would seem,   with  the
   publication of this book, that Klass himself has redefined UFOlogy as a
   true science

   Now  I'll offer a generalization of my own.  One of the surest signs of
   the  truthfulness of a paranormal phenomenon is when the  "explanation"
   offered by. its would-be debunkers is more extraordinary than the claim
   itself.   Just what.  do the skeptics make of the incredible tales told
   under  hypnosis in Missing Time?  "A subconscious reliving of the birth
   trauma." Besides being patently ludicrous on its face, this explanation
   ignores the palpable physical evidence presented in the book --   scars
   from wounds inflicted by the alien examiners Scars that appear, in many
   cases,   on the exact same place from victim to victim,  and  correlate
   perfectly with the description of the "operation."

   SUMMARY:  This is not a book I would recommend for those who prefer not
   to believe that we are under surveillance.  For the rest of us,  it may
   be the most important book written since the days of Donald Keyhoe




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