SUBJECT: CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE CHILLING KIND FILE: UFO3201
CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE CHILLING KIND. By Tom Keyser. The
Baltimore Sun, SUN Magazine; April 4, 1993.
The nightmares wouldn't stop -- the sudden, bizarre, unsettling
nightmares. They were always the same; they seemed almost real: Lea
was sitting in a booth in a small, empty room with gray walls. A
monotonic voice behind her said: "Don't move, or you might be hurt."
She felt paralyzed. She heard clicking noises, like an X- ray
machine. Suddenly she was lying on a table. A bright light shone in
her eyes. She sensed people moving around, examining her.
Then she was sitting up, facing a short creature so hideous she
could not look at its face. From a box the strange being removed a
shiny needle. At the tip was a silver marble. The creature moved
closer to Lea.
At that point Lea would jerk awake in her bed, terrified and
drenched with sweat. Her screams would awaken her parents. But her
mother, Lea recalls, would always admonish her: "It's just a nightmare.
Everybody has them. You shouldn't watch all that scary stuff on TV."
Lea now believes it wasn't just a nightmare. She believes it was
real. She is one of the people whose stories you might expect to see in
a supermarket tabloid under the heading "Humans Who Believe They've Been
Abducted by Aliens."
Lea is 25, lives in Prince George's County, works at a bank and is
engaged to be married. She is thin and has blue eyes. She is, in her
words, average-looking and average in every way. Knowing that most
people react with scorn and ridicule at the mention of UFOs and
extraterrestrial life, she asked that her last name not appear in this
story.
"I used to think I belonged in a mental institution, to be honest
with you," she says. "But I don't think anymore that I'm crazy. I go
to school. I work full-time. I pay my bills like anybody else... I
think other people think I'm crazy."
The subject of abductions by space aliens is so far-out, so utterly
fantastic that most people, even with their wildest imaginations, cannot
begin to fathom it. Many will not take it seriously. It is
unbelievable, unthinkable. The subject is also deeply disturbing.
These are not pleasant stories of people out raking leaves suddenly
beamed into a UFO, subjected to a little cosmos comedy and sent back to
their yards chuckling.
These are chilling accounts of people who say they've been
kidnapped, confined in spaceship examination rooms, probed, prodded and
examined by aliens who seem primarily interested in sexually related
activities. Their stories more resemble reports of rape than they do a
heartwarming visit by "E.T."
Around these alien abduction stories, an industry has been
launched. It soars far beyond the tabloids. There are best-selling
books, popular films and prime-time television shows. Mental health
professionals gathered at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology last
summer for a conference on abductions. In Maryland and across the
country have blossomed support groups, where people who believe they've
been abducted can share their stories -- away from the ears of those who
might mock, exploit or be titillated by their anguish.
And, of course, there are the scientists -- from the
internationally known astronomer Carl Sagan to a Navy physicist from
Maryland -- and a plethora of researchers, lining up on either side of
the highly charged issue.
What's really happening? No one knows for sure. But one thing is
clear: Something has shattered Lea's and others' calm, secure existence
on planet Earth. Whether the rest of us accept or reject their stories
is irrelevant. We cannot assuage their fear: It is palpable. The
torment is real.
Lea's began while she was in the fourth grade. She remembers
clearly: She was outside her apartment in Prince George's County
playing with her sister and other children. It was dusk. They heard a
hum, or a buzz, like a swarm of bees. They saw a disk-like object --
wingless, silver-gray, a row of lights along the edge -- creep at
treetop level over the apartment complex. It hovered above a parking
lot between buildings, and then drifted away.
Lea and her sister ran inside to tell their parents. The girls
even drew pictures.
"My father wanted to call somebody," Lea says. "But my mother said
no, we'd made it up. But all of us saw it. We talked about it for days
at school."
Shortly after that, Lea says, the recurring nightmare began. She
dreamed it on and off for a decade, from when she was 10 until about 20.
Dreams are only part of her story. When she was 12 or 13, she and
her sister, who is two years younger, were staying at their
grandparents' house in St. Mary's County. They were in separate beds in
the same room when a ball of lighting, as Lea describes it, passed
through a window and curtain into the room.
About the size of a tennis ball, it glided between the beds,
bounced off a door and vanished. A couple of seconds later another
lightning ball did the same thing, and then another. Lea says there
might have been 20 in all.
She and her sister screamed. Five other people were in the house,
but no one heard them. Lea finally escaped into the hallway. Her next
memory is of waking up in bed the next morning.
None of this made sense. She says her sister remembers the balls
of light, as well as the UFO over their apartment building years before.
But her sister, Lea says, won't talk about it with strangers.
For a long time afterward, Lea feared she was losing her mind. But
then, five years ago, she and a friend were at a mall outside a
bookstore. Lea spotted a display of books, the covers of which featured
a drawing of a grotesque creature with big, black, almond-shaped eyes.
The book was "Communion," the writer Whitley Strieber's account of
his abductions by aliens. Lea pointed at the drawing and screamed:
"Oh, my God! Oh, my God! That's them! That's them!"
They were the creatures in her nightmare.
"That's when it registered," Lea says. "That's when I said: 'Wait
a minute. Something's going on here.'"
It was the first she had heard of abductions by space creatures.
She read the book, and then a couple of others on the subject. She
became convinced that the terrifying events -- the nightmares, the night
of the lights, perhaps other unexplained events as well -- had been
abductions.
Lea's not alone. Some researchers estimate that thousands -- if
not millions -- of humans have been abducted and studied by aliens.
They base that estimate on a 1991 survey of 5,947 Americans by the Roper
polling organization. The survey was commissioned by believers in the
abduction phenomenon.
The survey asked 11 questions, including: Have you ever woke up
paralyzed and sensing a strange presence in the room? Have you ever
"lost" an hour or more you can't account for? Have you ever felt as if
you were flying? Have you ever seen balls of light in your room? Have
you ever found scars on your body you could not explain?
Two percent of the respondents answered yes to at least four of
those questions. From these results, the poll sponsors concluded at 2
percent of adult Americans may have been abducted by aliens.
David M. Jacobs was a sponsor of the poll. The author of "The UFO
Controversy in America," published in 1975, is an associate professor of
history at Temple University. In recent years he interviewed 60 people
who believe they've been abducted, and last year his book about them,
"Secret Life," was published. From his office in Philadelphia, Mr.
Jacobs says:
"This subject is as far-out as it gets. It just seems too crazy,
too out of the question. The skeptics say: 'This could not be
happening; therefore it is not happening.' But you have to go where the
evidence takes you, even though kicking and screaming while en route."
Evidence? Budd Hopkins, another of the poll sponsors, says he has
interviewed witnesses and has found physical evidence, such as
unexplained body scars and mysterious burn marks on lawns where
spaceships may have landed. But primarily, he and other researchers
rely on the abduction stories -- stories told by people of different
races, all ages, both sexes; police officers, psychiatrists, scientists,
lawyers, entertainers, nurses, journalists, farmers, an Army colonel, a
golf pro.
Mr. Hopkins, who is a painter and sculptor in New York City, became
interested in aliens after seeing a UFO in 1964. Eleven years later, a
72-year old friend told him of watching a spaceship land in a New York
park, and of watching about 10 alien passengers take soil samples. Mr.
Hopkins found others willing to tell their stories, and since the
mid-1970s he has been at the forefront of abduction research. He has
studied more than 400 cases and written two popular books, "Missing
Time" and "Intruders," from his interviews with people who claim,
sometimes while under hypnosis, to have been abducted.
"The overall patterns in these cases are so remarkably consistent,
often down to tiny details, and people reporting these experiences are
often so inherently credible that the phenomenon simply cannot be
dismissed," he wrote in "Intruders."
Most abductees report being taken first as children, when a small
implant, which could be remembered as a marble at the tip of a needle,
is placed deep into the ear or nose, the researchers say. The implant's
function is unknown, but these researchers say it might serve as a
locator so the person can be abducted again later.
The aliens described in the stories are small, no more than 4 feet
tall, and extremely thin. They are light-colored, often gray. Their
heads are oversized, yet their mouths and noses are tiny; they have no
ears or hair. Their eyes are large and black.
Nearly all the stories involve spaceships parked on the ground or
floating in the air. The victims are examined in a room resembling a
hospital operating room. The methodical creatures use a variety of
devices to examine humans from head to toe, occasionally leaving scars.
But the aliens, it seems, reserve special interest for the human sexual
organs.
Here is where the story, if it hasn't already, "will almost
certainly strain your credulity to the breaking point," Mr. Hopkins
wrote in "Intruders."
Through interviews with people who report abduction stories, Mr.
Hopkins and Mr. Jacobs came to believe that these aliens are -- and have
been for several decades -- conducting some sort of breeding experiment
with human beings.
This involves the taking of sperm and egg samples; the implanting
of a genetically altered embryo into women; the extraction of the fetus;
and, finally, the external incubation of the fetus. Women have
sometimes reported they were presented hybrid babies and expected to
nurture, even breast-feed, them.
"It's very hard to think of this as some wonderful, new adventure,"
Mr. Hopkins says.
Maybe an extraterrestrial species is introducing a desirable human
characteristic into its own evolutionary cycle, say the researchers.
Maybe it is reducing the difference between its species and ours. Maybe
it is seeding another planet, or maybe it has a plan completely beyond
the comprehension and imagination of the human brain.
Yeah, right, say the skeptics. The astronomer Carl Sagan says that
he is open-minded to the prospect of intelligent beings living in space,
but he doesn't believe they're sneaking into bedrooms and tormenting
Earthlings.
"Tell me," he says, "which is more plausible: We're victims of a
massive invasion of alien sexual abusers, or people are seeing things
that just aren't there?"
Although abduction claims began surfacing nearly half a century
ago, not one shred of indisputable physical evidence has surfaced, say
Mr. Sagan, who recently wrote an article for "Parade" magazine debunking
those claims.
"Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence," he says.
"Somebody telling a story is not evidence, even many people telling the
same story isn't good enough. They're people that's the point, and
people intrinsically have certain fallibilities."
Abduction accounts may say something about how the brain works, or
how people can be deluded, or even how religions begin, he says from his
office at Cornell University. But they say nothing, he says, about
skinny, large-eyed aliens kidnapping humans.
"There's a better chance of your getting hit on the head by one of
Santa's reindeer than of you being abducted," says Philip J. Klass, a
retired senior editor and now contributing editor at "Aviation Week &
Space Technology" magazine. "I will say, slightly tongue-in-cheek,
there is better evidence of the existence of mermaids and Irish
leprechauns."
Mr. Klass, who lives in Washington, says he has tried to verify UFO
cases for nearly 30 years and has not found a credible one. In his 1989
book, "UFO Abductions: A Dangerous Game," Mr. Klass contended that
people who believe they've been abducted by aliens need treatment by
qualified psychotherapists, not UFO "cult gurus."
Robert A. Baker, a retired professor of psychology at the
University of Kentucky, has written derisively about abduction stories.
He says some are simply fabrications or the recounting of stories
gleaned from books or movies, while others are products of psychological
disorders.
The stories may be repressed memories of childhood sexual or
physical abuse surfacing in disguised form, he says. Or they may be the
type of vivid, realistic dreams occurring as a person falls asleep or
wakes up -- hypnagogic or hypnopompic hallucinations. And, he says,
some people who believe they've been abducted may be fantasy-prone or
psychologically disturbed.
"Anyway," Dr. Baker says, "if this phenomena were as common as
Hopkins and Jacobs would have us believe, the sky would be filled with
spacecraft abducting people back and forth. UFOs would be stacked up
like aircraft coming in at O'Hare."
The believers and skeptics counter each other point by point. Both
sides publish newsletters buttressing their claims. And both produce
mental-health specialists who pronounce judgment on the sanity of the
victims.
But in the end, what are we left with? The stories.
Lea started out thinking she was dreaming or hallucinating. After
coming to believe she had been abducted, she contacted a representative
of the Mutual UFO Network, an international group interested in UFOs.
She was referred to Bob Oechsler, a former National Aeronautics and
Space Administration mission specialist who lives in Edgewater in Anne
Arundel County.
Mr. Oechsler, who became interested in UFOs as a boy, is intrigued
with the technology of crafts from outer space: How do they get here
from there? For the past two years he has researched UFO sightings full
time. On his front door is a brass plaque that reads: UFOs _are real_!!!
Mr. Oechsler is starting a support group for abductees, one of
dozens forming across the country, he says. About 30 people, including
Lea, have signed up.
Bruce S. Maccabee, a research physicist for the Navy, will also
attend. The Frederick County resident has researched UFOs on his own
for years, and is a longtime leader in UFO research groups, one of
which, the Fund for UFO Research, in Mount Rainier, Md., sponsored the
abduction conference at MIT.
At the organizational meeting of Mr. Oechsler's support group, Dr.
Maccabee told the participants:
"This subject is so weird, so misunderstood. All we can do is hold
your hand and make you realize you're not alone."
That would be a relief to Lea.
Strange things continue to happen to her. Not long ago, she says,
while visiting friends in the West Virginia mountains, she was floated
out of the house, taken aboard a spaceship and handed a baby.
It was a boy, with leathery skin, a thin neck and an oversized head
with patches of red hair. It had huge eyes, she says, but they weren't
coal black like those of the adult aliens. They were blue.
"I don't know why, and I know this sounds strange," Lea says in a
voice trembling with emotion, "but as soon as I held him in my arms, I
knew he was mine. I felt like I was his mother."
She rocked him and talked quietly to him, she says, as several
aliens watched. Suddenly one stepped forward and snatched him back. She
wanted to hold him longer, she says, but the next thing she remembered
she was back in bed in West Virginia. She longs for him sometimes, she
says, "like a piece of me's missing." She believes she'll see him
again.
Lea hesitates and says, almost apologetically: "I know this
doesn't make any sense."
Even though she has trouble sleeping and often feels as if she's
being watched, she says she has "kind of gotten used to the idea" of
being abducted.
"I don't like it, but there's nothing I can do about it, as far as
I can see," she says. "If they were going to hurt me, I think they
would have done it a long time ago."
She knows what the skeptics say. But, she says, they don't give
people enough credit for knowing the difference between what's actually
happened to them and what they might have imagined. Lea says she was
never abused as a child. She says she has no reason to make up a story
so crazy and bizarre.
Why does she think the aliens chose her?
"I have no idea," she says. "I don't know who they are, where they
come from, what they're doing, nothing."
"I just want people to understand that this is real, this is
happening. It's out there, and you're going to have to accept it sooner
or later."
Is she absolutely sure that her torment has been caused by aliens?
"There's no doubt in my mind," she says. "And I know they'll be
back."
===========================
[Sidebar of above article.]
===========================
"A NIGHTTIME VISITOR THAT HAUNTS HER STILL".
Leslie is not her real name. She does not want to be identified
except by these facts: She is 35, lives in Southern Maryland, has two
children and owns a business.
She has seen strange, moving lights in the night sky. She has lain
in bed terrified while an "electrical light" the size of a grapefruit
passed over her repeatedly, she says. And she has had a dream in which
she grabs frantically at a spaceship holding one of her children
captive.
To this day Leslie resists believing she and her children have been
visited or abducted by aliens.
"I have to do that to keep from losing it," she says. "I've got to
be reality-based. I've got two kids to raise. I've got a business to
run. I can't be worrying about little aliens flying around my bedroom."
Little aliens, however, populate the story she tells to the few
people willing to listen. And even to them, she says, "it's the
craziest story I've ever heard -- my own story."
"I did all the logical rationalizations I could do," she says.
"For a long time I thought I was seeing things...hallucinating, or
dreaming. I even came to doubt my own sanity."
Leslie knows that her story parallels those of people who believe
they've been taken aboard spaceships and examined by small beings with
large heads and huge eyes.
What bothers Leslie most is her sense that both her children have
been affected as well. They've described the strange beings and the
spaceship she saw in her dream. They've described undergoing
examinations by aliens.
One night, one of her boys, who was 8 or 9 at the time, appeared in
her bedroom doorway and told her he'd awakened to see a little man
kneeling over him in the air. The man had a big head and big eyes.
"Then he got small, real little,": the boy said, "and flew down the
hallway into your room."
Leslie says she had seen the same mysterious creature, floating
above her, a few minutes before her son saw it.
"I can't tell you the feeling that went through me," she says.
The experiences have left Leslie with more questions than answers.
"You peek under the skirt of God when you talk about this," she
says. "Who created us? Why are we here? What are we supposed to be
doing here?
"Whatever is happening is far beyond our ability to understand it
at this time," she says. "We're infants as far as all the things there
are to know."
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