FORTEAN TIMES UNCONVENTION 1997

"It" starts with the experience. What is a claimed abduction experience? The CUFOS/Rodiger criteria are (1) person taken from human surroundings against their will and (2) there follows an examination or a communication.

Twenty years ago not many people would claim to have been "abducted" - now they number in tens of thousands. A 1992 poll showed that 3.7 million people "could have been abducted" in America alone.
David Jacobs, one of the main academic supporters of the existence of "abductions", took a poll of students in his university and it showed that 5.5 per cent "might have had" experiences and 5.5 per cent of the US population is 15 million and of the Earth's population is 60-200 million.

Why should we question "abductees"? But why shouldn't we? Are separate cases with the same details coincidental or are they proof of "abductions"? Do "abductions" take place in an "imaginary reality"? Were Travis Walton and his friends "abducted" in that classic early case of the phenomenon? What happened to Walton's body while he was gone for a week? And the more recent case of Linda Napolitano, when she was supposedly carried through the air - that would involve a physical event. There are no witnesses of people like Linda passing through solid objects. Using Jacobs' logic, we can say that they must be invisible during this part of the "abduction".

Does it matter if the stories are true or not? The "abductee" is a victim and victims need help. That is true but what kind of help do they need? For example, if someone says they were raped, some deluded person fantasising it needs different kind of help to someone who went through the physical experience. It is exactly same for "abductees". Is the experience real? There is no evidence of "abductions" and there has been no scientific knowledge received from aliens or anything like that. The secondary evidence, that of witnesses, is wanting as well. We are left with the primary evidence, the evidence from the "abductees" themselves.

Don Warley, an American investigator, had two witnesses who saw a crowd of people "like zombies" at a fish shaped UFO. His witnesses had one and a half hours of "missing time". Warley was unable to find anyone that remembered such a thing. He believes the two witnesses and assumes that all the other people were "mindwashed" or something. The view is subjective.

The earliest "abductee", Betty Hill, wrote a book called COMMON SENSE APPROACH TO UFO'S. She had become a focus and therefore had the opportunity to speak to people who thought she would be sympathetic. An example. A woman contacted her in the 1970's. The woman had gone into a trance during a New Age class and saw aliens. Over a period of time she began to think her alien fantasies were real. She went to hypnotists and came up with more fantasies. Eventually, she ended up in psychiatric care. It turned out the woman had been physically abused by her mother and grandmother. She had transferred her fears to aliens. In the same book a woman under hypnosis said she had given birth and that her baby had been taken by an alien. In reality she had never been pregnant. It turned out that she had lost a doll, which had the same name as her "baby". The "alien abduction" scenario was a screen fantasy for her losing the doll. In another case a woman Betty Hill recognised as being bipolar and on lithium only saw aliens and demons when her lithium level was down.

In 1978 Alvario, a Brazilian student and UFO buff, had a strange experience. He saw an object in the sky. Other people saw it too but he was the only one to have "missing time" and he woke up in a field. Under hypnosis he related an "abduction" story in which he had sex with a female alien. This despite the fact that "debunker" James Oburg demonstrated that the object was a Soviet satellite.

In the Betty Hill book again, there was a man being constantly harassed by aliens but he never took photos of them and they disappeared whenever other people entered the room.

Evans says that there is a "different climate of opinion" in America. Michael Craft wrote a book called ALIEN IMPACT. He had given copies of Whitley Streiber's famous "abduction" book COMMUNION to friends and every one of them said they had "strange feelings of familiarity" while reading it, including ones that did not finish the book. Would even two out of three Europeans respond to COMMUNION in such a way?

In the Australian case of Maureen Puddy, she both experienced a "sighting" and heard a "voice". Two researchers went with her to a location the "voice" had told her to go to. While she was on the way there she saw a figure and while she was there she had an "abduction" experience but those watching her saw none of this. There are other cases of "abductees" being watched all the time.

In the Lawson/McCall experiments in 1977, leading questions given to subjects produced stories of UFO "abductions", stories that matched the content of "true abductions."

English cases in an experiment by Jenny Randles differed. This points towards cultural difference and cultural conditioning.

John Mack, another main supporter in America of the existence of "abductions" was taken in by a journalist pretending to be an "abductee." He went to sessions and to an "abduction" support group. He said he met Kruschev and JFK on a saucer during the Cuban Missile Crisis and Mack was taken in. The therapist could not tell the difference between the imaginary "abductee" and the "real abductee".

Edith Fior identified all her patients as "abductees". Every single one of her patients, and she is a clinical psychiatrist.

Then there was the Christy Dennis. Her book, describing her "abduction" she now sees as science fiction. Researcher Leo Sprinkel still believes she is an "abductee" despite her denials. In fact, Sprinkel now believes he is an "abductee" himself.

People can fantasise under very many different circumstances. For example, there was a case in Brazil in 1976 where a man was supposedly taken by female aliens for a massage and some sex. His wife's testimony was that he had come home from work in a strange state, went to sleep, a thunderstorm broke out, he woke up and ran off. He was a man strongly affected by meteorological conditions. Apparently one person in three is so affected, to varying degrees.

In the Bartholomew experiment, "abductees" did not register as fantasy-prone people but in the Richard Greene experiment the "abductees" did have enough in common to fit into a psychological profile.

Evans closes with two more cases. One was the Pat Roche case, which shows the value of looking at the "unimportant details" in an "abduction" story. Roche was divorced and had seven small children and on the night of her "abduction" she was spending her first night in a new home. THAT was the night the aliens came to "abduct" her!

The final case is also from the Betty Hill book. A woman came to her, telling the following story. She and her husband had seen a UFO while driving in their car. They then got a flat tyre, he got out to change it and she did not remember what happened next. Betty took the woman "skywatching" and noticed that the woman did not know the difference between planes and UFO's. The woman also told Betty about her life in Paris, Moscow and London but it turned out that she had never been to any of those places. She claimed to be a painter. She would buy paintings, draw her own name on them and display them in her home.

UnConvention '97 reviews

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