My problem with “ufology” is my own personal experiences. I’ve been at the receiving end of enough weird shit that nobody needs to tell me this stuff is real. For this essay, I am going to mostly ignore all the sighting accounts and focus on what is pertinent to me—the so-called abduction phenomenon.
My other focus is owls, and how they seem to show up, either literally or symbolically, in relation to UFO contact. This traces back to my own first-hand experiences with owls, lots of them. When I first started seeing owls it coincided with a booming voice in my head that said, “This has something to do with UFOs!” Their arrival and that message consumed my life. I started collecting stories with both owls and UFOs and it culminated in a nearly-400-page book. This essay will steer clear of owls—there is plenty to be said without opening that can of worms.
Before going any further, I need to state something as clearly as possible—I am not an objective researcher. I am immersed in these dark waters and there is no way to separate myself from the tangled knot of emotions that come with what has happened in my life, things that go way beyond seeing little lights in the night-time sky. So, just know, whatever I say is coming from a place of obsessive self-examination, and how it ties into what I’ve heard from others. This would be true for any researcher who has had the direct experience. I don’t know if it’s possible to stay unbiased and detached in a field as highly charged as UFOs.
There has been a series of events peppered throughout my life that seem to imply some sort of otherworldly contact. As a boy I saw a weird orange flash in the sky while walking home from school and arrived home nearly two hours later than I should have. That same year I had a close-up sighting of a coffee-can-shaped UFO that vanished in the blink of an eye. As a young man, I awoke to see five skinny big-eyed “aliens” out my bedroom window. I could talk about any of these memories around the dinner table, but they were all framed as just a funny little anecdote. I have more stories like these, and they all implied the same thing, but I wasn’t going there.
All that changed on Sunday, March 10, 2013. I call this my Confirmation Event.
That night, I was on a lonely road in southern Utah driving home from a UFO conference. Rather than getting a hotel room I simply pulled off and slept out under the stars. It was cold and beautiful, and at some point I awoke to see a giant round structure positioned on the top of a nearby hill. It had a ring of lights around its outer surface and my first thought was, “That looks just like a landed flying saucer.”
I lay there probably for an hour, staring at it. I figured it was nothing more than a big house, and I eventually rolled over and went to sleep. This was the opening salvo in a long set of weird events.
As an aside, I went back to that same spot a year later to see if there really was a big round house on that hill spot. There was nothing.
The day after arriving home from the UFO conference, while standing next to my desk, I had what I can only call a psychic flash. I clearly saw a map of southern Utah with a straight yellow line running west to east with three points along its length. The image lasted no more than a second, and I immediately sat at my computer and began to create a map to match what I had seen.
I knew the easternmost point was the event from the previous day. I also knew the westernmost point—it was the sight of a terrifying experience in a tent from the spring of 2010. I was camping with a close friend, Natascha, just outside of Dolores, Colorado, and both of us woke up screaming. The next thing I remember was floating up, passing through the top of the tent and arriving in an endless white realm. The next morning I awoke with an eleven-inch scratch across my chest. It looked as if it could have been made by a single rose thorn dragged across my skin. But when examined closely, it wasn’t a scratch at all. Instead, it was a row of tiny fluid-filled blisters all bunched together. I have no memory of how this could’ve happened.
The site along the center of the yellow line was an event from 2011, again with Natascha. We slept in a secluded spot in the glorious red rock desert of southern Utah; no tent, just lying out on the sand. It was a cold, clear moonless night with amazing stars, and Natascha decided to go for a walk along the dirt road. She hadn’t gone very far when she saw something odd. Her first thought was there was someone with a very bright flashlight out in the sagebrush, but it was moving along too smoothly and too low. After a few moments, she realized she was looking at a glowing orb of light, maybe two-feet wide. She watched in amazement as it floated towards her, then suddenly exploded in a bright flash, and vanished.
Natascha was scared and ran back to our campsite. I’d been lying there awake the entire time she had been gone and I was listening to the loud hooting of a great horned owl, seemingly in the bushes right near my head.
While sitting at my computer creating this map, I was stunned when these three separate events all lined up exactly along a perfectly straight line, 231 miles long. You could zoom in to view the line at one-pixel thick, and it crossed right over the spot in the sand where I had been listening to the owl. Seeing the exactness of those three sites along that line changed everything. My old life had ended. From that moment on, I could no longer deny what had been happening to me.
There is so much more to this story, and to tell it properly requires about an hour, or over 20 pages (with illustrations) in my book. A flood of other events reverberated outward from this moment of confirmation. Synchronicities, more psychic flashes, number sequences, ethereal floating mandalas, a shamanic ceremony, birthdays, and coyotes, all play a part in this frenetic narrative. It’s impossible truly to describe what it’s like to be swallowed up like this. It’s not just one isolated event; it’s a lot of them, and this barrage can take its toll.
That was a long story that seems to imply something, but what that might be is unknown. Each weird experience is like a spoke on a wheel, but I want to know what is at the hub holding them all together. It’s an abduction story without an abduction.
Though imperfect, I’ll be using the term ‘abduction’ throughout this essay. I’m also using a few other imperfect terms: abductee, experiencer, and contactee. These words might seem interchangeable, but they all imply something different, each having its own conflicting baggage.
“Abductee” would imply something negative—individuals being taken against their will by UFO occupants. “Contactee” would imply something positive. Such people might see themselves as being asked to take part in a grand cosmic fellowship. “Experiencer,” in the middle, is a little more neutral.
There seems to be an induced amnesia created by the UFO intelligences, making the issues of contact terribly difficult to study. Someone might have had a lifetime of repeated experiences, yet remember nothing. These profound events might be buried in the unconscious, yet with impressions that can still influence the person. If so, we should expect some repercussions from these hidden experiences, enough to create personality quirks, like phobias or compulsions.
The word “alien” is used throughout this chapter, and some object to this because it implies a being from another planet (an assumption). Others prefer visitors, ETs, UFO Occupants, or Star Beings. I know one woman who refers to them only as “creatures.” The dictionary has several definitions for “alien.” One of them is: “differing in nature or character typically to the point of incompatibility.” For me, this seems entirely acceptable. Sadly, all these words fall short because none of this is straightforward.
Abduction accounts can be exceedingly complex. A person might remember just little bits of the beginning and the end of an event, with their memories erased between these bookends. They might recall only a fleeting image, or have clear memories of events in their entirety. I struggle because there’s no simple way to sum up the conflicting experiences that get reported by people.
Some will tell hellish nightmare stories at the hands of their alien kidnappers. Others will tell blissful stories, as if they are communing with angels. I try my best not to weight one side more than the other. So
mething real is happening. There is both deep trauma and mystical transcendence woven into this phenomenon, and these opposite extremes need to be acknowledged. Ignoring one aspect means wilfully denying part of the mystery. There can be an overlap and blurring between these poles; a disparate gray zone where easy answers seem impossible.
Dr. Leo Sprinkle is one of my heroes in this field. This big-hearted man has been actively researching UFO contact for over 50 years, and his biography reads like a checklist of every major event in the modern era of UFOs. He has a Ph.D. in Counselling and was a Professor of Psychology at the University of Wyoming.
I sent Leo a copy of my owl book right after it was published, and, a few weeks later, he sent me a handwritten letter scolding me for using the word abductee. I love this man dearly, and my heart sank on reading his review. He had been a college professor for decades, and I sensed this role in his stern feedback. He argued that the better word should be ‘inductee.’ Induction means being brought to something, while abduction means being taken away. Fair enough, but “abduction” and “abductee” are the words we are stuck with.
Leo told me a wonderful story about a reporter asking him this question: What do you say to skeptics?
First, he clarified the difference between skeptic and a debunker: “Well, if they are truly skeptics that’s one thing, but if they are debunkers I don’t really like to talk to them because they’re no fun (laughs). But if a person is truly skeptical and wants to know how to be involved with the UFO research, I say read a thousand reports, talk to a hundred witnesses, have your own experience and then we can really talk.”
The reporter replied, “Oh, I guess the experience is important.”1
Yes, the experience is important, but it’s also messy and confusing. With these experiences come mixed-up emotions and ideas, everything getting filtered through our own fragile psyches, and all the assumptions that come with it. It’s also important to know that Leo has seen strange flying objects at several points in his life and has come forward with his own memories of direct alien contact.
A UFO researcher with abduction experiences is very common. When talking to researchers I will ask if they are an abductee, and, more often than not, they’ll cautiously share their memories of contact. I’m at this point now where I just sort assume that most of the researchers in this field are also abductees. But what does it mean if so many of the people investigating UFOs are abductees? One way to look at it would be that such a defining life event would create an interest in the subject. Or, could they have been zapped with a psychic ray gun that derails their normal life and puts them on the thankless path of obsessive UFO research? On some subconscious level have they been ordered to study UFOs? How many UFO books are the result of this kind of manipulation? I’m wrestling with exactly these questions—I mean, why did I write my book?
If we are trying to reframe the UFO debate, just know that many of the debaters on the stage have probably been abducted. If these experiences are what they seem to be, then it should be no surprise that they can come across like fanatical zealots.
In the summer of 2014, I interviewed the editor and staff of Open Minds, an online UFO news source. The audio interview took place shortly after they ended their paper magazine and switched over to digital content. Alejandro Rojas, Maureen Elsberry and Jason McClellan were all full-time UFO journalists, and that seems remarkable given the hostility, which this topic generates.
The site does an excellent job of covering the mainstream accounts of UFO sightings, and would occasionally cover abduction accounts. The articles on abduction were most often a review of classic cases from decades ago (Betty and Barney Hill, Pascagoula, The Allagash Abductions) or they would cover pioneering researchers such as Budd Hopkins.
I had immersed myself in abduction research and felt the three UFO journalists were barely dipping below the waterline, and avoiding the strangest reports and their implications.
During the interview, I pressed them, telling them they should dig deeper and cover more of the bizarre aspects of this phenomenon, especially in connection with abduction accounts. Their response was a polite but firm, “No.” Listening back now, my pleading came across as sort of desperate. It’s awkward to hear me acting so pushy, telling a magazine to change their editorial stance. I was almost, but not quite, acting rude.
They were unyielding, not wanting to stray from journalism and into conjecture. Maureen said, “It’s almost like mixing religion and news… there’s a fine line with this and it would be difficult to do.”
Alejandro was aware of the magazine’s focus and said, “We try to balance this as best we can… If there’s a mission of ours, it’s to penetrate the mainstream.”2
Listening again to that audio interview for this essay, the anxiety and tension in my voice was clear. There was a neediness in how I was acting, and it was hard for me to hear. I was tempted to edit this exchange from the podcast because I sounded like such an impatient zealot. These were my true emotions, so, although it was awkward, I left it in.
Author, blogger and researcher Christopher Knowles wrote to me afterwards: “I listened to your interview with Open Minds. I think you should realize that at this point the only people who are interested in abduction material are mostly abductees. So I think they did have a point there.”
Yes, but here’s the problem—I feel strongly precisely because I’m one of those abductees.
Within the literature are repeated statements that most abductees feel burdened with a strong sense of mission. I hear this all the time, but rarely have I heard anyone say just what that mission might be. There is something about this that just feels so terribly important—it’s like living your life with a flashing red sign that reads “urgency” front and center in your mind’s eye. Adding to this is a burning need to make sense of my experiences, and this angst can get overwhelming.
After my pleas during that interview, Jason suggested I write something for their site. He was right. What I had asked was for them to publish more of the articles that I would want to read. So I sat down at my computer, began typing and, two months later, they posted my article with the headline “The Possible Unsettling Implications of UFO Sightings.”3
The ideas in the article came from a series of conversations I’d had with the late Elaine Douglass. She had been with MUFON for 25 years as the state director for Utah and Washington DC, and most of her research had focused on abductions.
While conducting a sightings investigation she would ask the witnesses the standard set of questions—what time, how big, and so on. But she would follow up with deeper, more personal questions, asking them to describe any unusual personal events. She would ask, “So, what else, in your whole life, has ever happened to you that you cannot explain?” More often than not, a big story would emerge. Many of the witnesses told Elaine about unusual events that might imply some sort of direct contact experiences. Her conclusion, after a quarter century of research, was that over half the people who see UFOs are abductees.
This may seem like a bold statement, but it’s very similar to what other investigators have concluded. Abduction researcher Budd Hopkins spoke openly that if someone sees a UFO, they are most probably either seeing it arrive or leave, and some length of missing time is hiding an abduction event. The implication being that memories have been erased by the “occupants” of these elusive “craft.” Hopkins also publicly speculated that there are probably more abductions than UFO sightings, a comment that surely rankled some of the more conservative researchers.
Assuming the role of journalist, I called a bunch of abduction researchers and asked each of them the same question, “What percentage of people who are reporting an unambiguous UFO sighting are actually abductees?” The word unambiguous was included in the question to separate the more close-up structured reports from just little dots of light way off in the distance.
The article quoted five researchers, and, although they all felt it was impossible to come up with
an actual percentage, most agreed with Elaine’s conclusion. The others were more cautious, yet still acknowledged her point.
When asked the same question, abduction researcher and hypnotherapist Yvonne Smith was quick to agree with Elaine’s conclusion, saying the majority would be abductees. She said, “Many of the close-up sightings will have clues that this was a probable contact experience, things like distorted or missing time, or a car engine sputtering and mysteriously stopping.”
Joe Montaldo is both an abduction researcher and an abductee, and he said, “ET never has to show himself to anybody. There is no need to ever let anyone see a craft, ever.” This implies that their technology is so advanced that making their craft invisible is effortless, meaning if anyone actually sees a UFO it’s because they want to be seen for a reason. When asked to give a percentage of how many people who see a UFO are actually abductees, Joe said, “I’d put it at 100 percent.”
Any of these statements would be terribly difficult to quantify, yet one thing all the researchers agreed on was that the closer the UFO to the witness, the more likely an abduction event has occurred. There is an implication that many, if not most UFO sightings have a buried abduction component.
The thought that most sighting reports might be abductions is more than a little bit disturbing. It’s at odds with how most of us are even capable of thinking about the issue, and this includes seasoned UFO investigators.
My article generated a lot of traffic for the Open Minds site. There was a stat counter that displayed the online hits, and the numbers were quite high. This gave me the sense that there are plenty of people out there who are eager to read about some of the stranger aspects to the UFO phenomenon. The only other post I could find with higher hits was an article where the actor Dan Aykroyd recounted his personal UFO sighting.
UFOs- Reframing the Debate Page 6