Most alien animals appear in CE-3 reports in the form of exotic entities, specifically as animal/human, animal/apparition, or other combinations. Few reports tell of extended communication, close involvement, or bonding between abductees and CE-3 animals; rather, encounters tend to be violent. Although abductees elsewhere have not encountered many animal abductors, three animal entities appear in the sixteen narratives of the 1977 Imaginary Abductee Study.
Type #4. Robot entities: CE-3 robots (Fig. 4) seem to be made of metallic or other non-organic materials, and they move at various speeds in a stiff or otherwise unnatural manner. They sometimes float or fly. Some have glowing eyes. Height: a startling range of 6 inches to 20 feet. Their shapes are mostly bipedal, but huge building-like machines are reported. Communication: voice and telepathy. Clothing includes “welder’s helmets,” padded space suits, and bubble-dome headgear (for improbable air-breathing robots?). Witnesses may have difficulty distinguishing robots from other creatures that would be perceived to move clumsily in bulky suits.
Type #5. Exotic entities: Exotic entities (Fig. 5) are mutants or combinations of two or more other entity types. They display extraordinary physical characteristics and may be grotesque and/or repulsive (at least to earthlings). A richly diverse category, exotics include the infamous Bug-Eyed Monsters of science fiction, mythical beings such as the Minotaur (a man/bull), creatures with anatomical deformities (e.g., Cyclops), assorted demons, and a group of reportedly bizarre CE-3 entities.
One subset of exotic entities may relate to birth memories. It includes tentacled placental/umbilical dragons of myth and legend, which are updated in sciencefiction and fantasy films as special-effects monsters dripping with birth gore (e.g., in the Alien film series). Although tentacled aliens are common in sci-fi magazine illustrations, they are paradoxically rare in CE-3 narratives.
Fig. 1. Human-type entities
A. MUFON idealization of a typical human entity. B. Australian case, 9/6/73. C. Example of legendary “Man in Black,” a shadowy being of official or unearthly origins notorious for alleged contacts with UFO witnesses after sightings. D. Christlike human in Winchester, England, 11/14/76. E. Vila Velha, Brazil, 2/3/73. Note puffy variation on usual jumpsuit. F. Early Contactee George Adamski’s “Venusian” friend, allegedly met 11/20/52. Most Contactee entities are human.
Fig. 2. Humanoid-type entities
A. MUFON idealization of a humanoid entity. B. Humanoid specter from the peak time of a major UFO flap, Goffstown, New Hampshire, 11/2/73. C. Policeman Herbert Schirmer’s humanoid, Ashland, Nebraska, 12/3/67. D. Policeman Lonnie Zamora’s two humanoids near their eggshaped craft, Socorro, New Mexico, 4/24/64. E. Paulo Silvieira humanoid, Itaperuna, Brazil, 9/22/71. F. Travis Walton’s explicitly fetal humanoid, Heber, Arizona, 11/5/75, reported about two weeks after the telecast of the Betty Hill abduction, The UFO Incident (on NBC-TV).
Fig. 3. Animal CE-3 entities
A. MUFON idealization of a CE3 animal (based on a Brazilian case). B. Animal reported during a major UFO flap, El Yunque Mt., Puerto Rico,10/20/73. C. A driver glimpsed this animal near Frederick, Wisconsin, 12/2/74. D. A Bigfoot-like entity, Beech Hills, Pennsylvania, 8/23/73. E. A froglike amphibian entity, Carignan, France, 5/2/76. F. An ape-like entity reported during the 1973 flap, Cincinnati, Ohio, 10/12/73.
Fig. 4. Robot CE-3 entities
A. A robot with a highlighted navel area, a pattern in other entity descriptions, described during the 1973 flap, Draguinan, France, 10/19/73. B. A trio of robotic entities in a spherical craft, Belo Horizonte, Brazil, 8/28/63. C. Goodland, Kansas, 6/20/76. D. Robot reported in Ashburn, Georgia, 10/19/73 on the same date as the robot in France (A.). E. Three robot machines, one 20 feet tall, Prospect, Kentucky, 1/27/77. F. A mummy-like robot in a much-publicized CE-3, Pascagoula, Mississippi, 10/11/73.
Fig. 5. Exotic CE-3 entities
A. One of several exotic entities, Kelly-Hopkinsville, Kentucky, 10/21/55. No UFO was reported. B. “Grasshopper-eyed” entity of the Judy Kendall CE-3, Woodland, California, 11/25/71. C. Mysterious head-tubes on an exotic, Athens, Georgia, 10/20/73. D. Weird exotic entity seen in Fargo, North Dakota, 8/26/75. E. Bizarre malformed exotic, Branch Hill, Ohio, 5/25/55. F. Reptile-skinned entity of the Garden Grove Case, reported in Apache Junction, Arizona, 3/14/71.
Fig. 6. Apparitionals
A. Apparitional humanoid emerged from a ball of light, Garden Grove, California, 11/21/75. B. A grinning “electric” apparitional, Albany, Oh., 10/16/73. C. A ghostly apparition, Riverside, California, 8/29/55. D. Little Lever, England, 1964. E. Talavera la Real, Spain, 11/12/76. F. Salisbury, Rhodesia, 5/31/74. The apparition in this case supposedly told the witnesses that they would see the apparition as whatever they wished — a duck, a monster, whatever. The witnesses called this entity a “multi” — aptly emphasizing its capacity for multiple changes of form. An Imaginary Abductee described a precisely similar multi event three years later.
Fig. 7. Children’s drawings of aliens
A. A female human UFOnaut, perhaps a self-portrait. B. Oddly, this humanoid was one of very few of its type in 180 drawings. It has just three fingers. Most of the sketches depicted exotics. C. This tentacled animal entity suggests that even young children are exposed to expectations of tentacled aliens in UFOs.
D. A beeping robot with antennae and clumsy joints—along with an apparent navel!
E. A very imaginative sketch of a one-eyed exotic with multiple arms—and a tail!
F. This animated LSD pill testifies to young people’s acute awareness of the real world about them. Is this drawing one youngster’s cynical assessment of CE-3 reports? Perhaps, but it also suggests the view that entity sightings are apparitions, whether spontaneous or hallucinogenic.
Fig. 8. CE-3 traditional entity parallels
Fig. 9. CE-3 entities’ navel and umbilical symbolism
Fig. 10. Six creature types from world folklore
A. Giant B. Pooka C. Kelpie D. Stock E. Fachan F. Fairies
A. Folklore’s giants, despite their great size, are essentially human in physical appearance. B. A pooka. Like elves, leprechauns, and brownies, pookas were humanoid, but they also had apparitional powers. C. The pony-like kelpies from Irish lore were mischievous clawed water-demons. D. A wooden image of a baby called a “stock” or a “changeling” was supposedly vivified and left by kidnapping fairies in place of a nursing infant or human baby, and for a time passed for a real child before sickening and dying. E. One of the most bizarre folk creatures was the Fachan of Irish belief, who reportedly had one eye, one arm that emerged from its chest, one leg, and a nasty disposition. F. Fairies, like demons and divinities, were “shape-shifters” or polymorphous.
Fig. 11. Six creature types from Alice’s Wonderland
A. The very human Alice can’t resist her curiosity about everything. B. Tweedledum and Tweedledee are a special type of humanoid—mirror images of each other known as enantiomorphs. C. The White Rabbit is personified, but is an animal nevertheless. D. The Queen’s gardeners, like the rest of her court, are playing cards brought to robotic life. E. The exotic Humpty Dumpty. F. The Cheshire Cat’s apparition.
Fig. 12. Six creature types in Shakespeare
Though Shakespeare particularized his nonhuman creatures in wondrous fashion, they were patterned after well-established models in folklore and tradition. These examples are from two fantasies, Midsummer Night’s Dream and The Tempest.
A. Theseus, the human Duke of Athens. B. Puck or Robin Goodfellow, a typically mischievous hobgoblin, brownie, or pooka, also had the shape-shifting powers of many other fairies. C. Bottom, after Puck changes him into an ass. Technically an exotic, he is the closest thing to an animal character in Shakespeare. D. Shakespeare’s only robot is shown in a 19th-century illustration of Snout’s costume for the part of the Wall in the ludicrous playlet about Pyramus and Thisbe. E. Caliban, the exotic monster of The Tempest, is the half human, half demonic offspring of a sorceress and a demon. F. Ariel, an a
pparitional fairy in The Tempest, spends much of his time on stage as an invisible presence.
Fig. 13. Six creature types from The Wizard of Oz
A. The adventurously human child heroine, Dorothy. B. Munchkin-style humanoids. C. The Cowardly Lion is a personified animal. D. The Tin Woodsman may be the world’s most famous robot. E. The Hammerheads are one of several exotics in Oz. F. The Wizard as an apparition: a scene he creates with technology rather than magic.
Type #6. Apparitional entities: Apparitionals (Fig. 6) may float, change form, materialize, or dematerialize. Akin to ghosts and fairyland creatures, apparitionals possess a rich tradition in mythology and contemporary folklore: angels, demons, trickster figures, and the “Beam me up, Scotty” teleportation technology of TV’s Star Trek. Through shape-shifting, apparitionals can mimic a human, animal, or any other creature or thing, thus temporarily masking their true identity; yet they are distinctive enough to be easily classified. Communication is verbal or telepathic but often is nonexistent. Height: 2 to 10 feet.
Apparitional capabilities are shared by other entities. Some humanoids become temporary apparitionals. They change shape unexpectedly, float, pass through walls and windows unscathed, or disappear and reappear at will—and then revert to being a humanoid. Similar abilities have been attributed at times to every supposed alien type that abductees describe. The presence of these powers—certainly among the most fantastic of reported entity faculties—underscores abductions’ linkages with folklore and myth.
PERSPECTIVES ON
CE-3 ENTITIES
Origins of entity types: The origins of entity types are open to speculation. Human entities could develop out of witnesses’ awareness of their own body. Humanoids are largely fetal and probably have perinatal roots. Resemblances among humanoids and brownies, imps, and hordes of other “little folk” seemingly link them all with human birth events. Numerous animals and robots in folklore, myth, and contemporary sources help explain them in CE-3 reports. Exotics may be traced to mutant human or animal births. Apparitional entities’ powers of rapid transformation may have entered myth via ancient peoples’ responses to sudden changes in individual human development and attitudes, or metamorphoses in the natural world.
The six entity types have appeared in countless contemporary formats—comic books, sciencefiction films, TV cartoons, advertisements, and other pop culture—though never in a context with identifying categories that provide perspective and awareness. Every schoolboy (and potential hypnotic subject) knows about the entity classes on some level and can sprinkle his imagined yarns with them, as our 1979 study of a group of adolescents in Orange County, California demonstrated. About 180 mentally gifted children in grades 6, 7, and 8 were asked to draw their conception of a UFO occupant. Their responses were readily classifiable and represented the complete range of six entity types:
Parallels in traditional and CE-3 entities: A well-established pattern in folklore and traditional literature is entity clothing: typically a seamless, one-piece jump suit or similar outfit that covers the body except for the head and the hands (which may be gloved). Compare the “UFOnaut” in Fig. 8-A with Fig. 8-B, a 19th-century sketch of traditional brownies from folklore. Both creatures are small in stature and have frail physiques. They wear similar one-piece, seamless, skin-tight garments that we may interpret as skin, for it is often described as slick and shiny like plastic, suggesting a newborn’s wet skin. Other birth parallels include many reports of instrument-carrying UFO entities (Fig. 8-C) and elves from folk tradition (Fig. 8-D). The tube-like instruments suggest another perinatal reminder: the umbilical cord. With ultrasound viewers, fetuses have often been observed grasping the umbilical, either in contentment or fright. A curious aspect of witnesses’ entity sketches is that facial features and extremities are sometimes missing, as in Figs. 8-E and 8-F. Inadequate drawing or observational skills may be responsible, though some witnesses maintain that certain entity features were not perceived. There are no analogs in traditional sources for such anatomical omissions.
Navel and umbilical symbolism: CE-3 entities often wear a large buckle, medallion, or similar device on their abdomen (as in Figs. 9-A through 9-C), sometimes with a diagonal strap or “Sam Browne” belt across the chest (as in Figs. 9-D through 9-F). Sometimes the buckle device glows brightly (Fig. 9-B). The emphasis on the navel area and the umbilical strap are distinctly perinatal, suggesting that memories of birth events have a significant role in CE-3 fantasies about entities other than the fetal humanoid. Researchers do not offer persuasive alternate interpretations of such details.
Entity types from various sources: I have compiled illustrated sets of creature types from folklore and literary traditions in support of the validity of the six-category CE-3 entity classification system. The six creature types thrive in diverse cultures worldwide. There are always human entities and diminutive fetal beings that resemble but are distinct from adult humans, as with the rest of the entity types. The patterns in CE-3 witnesses’ alien fantasies are operative in wide-ranging sources, including: Greek fables and mythology, Christian belief, de monology, science fiction, comic books, breakfast cereal-box heroes, and the Imaginary Abductee narratives. The following four examples are representative.
Frequencies of CE-3s and UFOs: Nobody knows how many abductions or other CE-3s there have been worldwide since 1947. The Bullard study of about 300 cases used data up to the early 1980s. Abduction proponents claim to have discovered thousands of unknown CE-3s in the 1980s and 1990s. If CE-3s now number 5000, as suggested by the very dubious Roper survey, they are still dwarfed by the guestimated three million or so raw UFO sightings worldwide over the past half-century (about 150+ daily).
Whether or not we conservatively dump 90 percent of UFO sightings as IFOs and 90 percent of CE-3s as hoaxes and mistakes, abductions total only about 0.167 percent of UFO sightings (5000÷3,000,000=00167). That means less than two of every thousand UFOs abduct someone. Although abductions are supposedly what UFOs do, these representative statistics argue otherwise. Why the discrepancy?
Proponents have traditionally explained the disproportion in three ways: 1) we encounter aliens only when they want us to; and 2) most abductees forget their CE-3, in strict obedience to their captors’ orders. A third explanation, witness reticence, at first glance seems better—who wants to admit being abducted by weirdoes from outer space? Proponent-investigators tell of scores of abductees in professional or otherwise sensitive positions (doctors, lawyers, politicians, etc.), who shun all publicity. Yet the public spotlight, such as that offered by Hopkins and others in the past twenty years or so, has obviously proved irresistible to many wannabe famous abductees. The numbers of alleged abductions and books about them since about 1980 has multiplied, while UFO/IFO sightings, corrected for population growth, are about the same. Even so, the ratio of CE-3s to sightings remains minuscule.
The most likely reason for the frequency imbalance between UFO sightings and CE-3s is that the two are separate and distinct experiences, and have nothing to do with one another—aside from the idea of ET visitors. There has never been an authenticated CE-3 in which two or more persons watch while a UFO lands, occupants get out and abduct someone, then the UFO takes off. This primal CE-3 scene, supposedly the initiating and definitive event of unknown numbers of typical abductions, has never been authentically witnessed. There is no unambiguous evidence that it—or anything similar to it—has ever occurred.
Abductions are most likely fantasy/hallucinations and are subjective experiences that probably date from the first shaman’s “vision quest” early in human prehistory. UFO sightings at best are objective physical events—whatever the UFO actually is. The lack of connections between these events helps account for the contrasting numbers.
Of course, many “experiencers” (now the preferred term for abductees) surely mistake their dreams or nightmares for CE-3 fantasies, or they really do forget them. Others may undergo their CE-3s as NDEs, OBEs, Marian visitation
s, or a dozen other abduction analogs. Also, it has been established that the CE3-like hallucinations of sick and elderly people are routinely ignored by clinical and institutional personnel, and thus are not counted.
Psychologists and other social workers—within and outside of UFOlogy—until recently have not provided a convenient, scientifically respectable, and supportive way for percipients to report, communicate about, and deal with supposed alien abduction events. Indeed, psychologists had not even acknowledged the CE-3 syndrome until a few national support groups for reported CE-3 witnesses, such as P.E.E.R. and T.R.E.A.T., were formed. Psychiatrist John Mack and hypnotherapist Edith Fiore are two of an increasing number of professionals (never mind that most are true believers) who have created CE-3 support groups as a regular part of their practice.
Low numbers of abduction reports could also reflect the fact that researchers have not embraced credible non-ETH theories to account for such experiences. More “hidden” abductees/experiencers might come forth if there were a viable alternative interpretation to being snatched by planet-hopping aliens. Compared to the ETH, the Birth Memories Hypothesis does not seem far-out at all.
Why only six types of CE-3 entities? If CE-3s are not real and witnesses are fantasizing wildly, why do they repeatedly describe the same few types of creatures-—rather than Grays or a sequence of uniquely different entity forms? And why are there only six categories?
To repeat, witnesses describe the same six classes of aliens because abductions are fantasies based on the only models they have: earthly folklore and tradition. As to the six types, it can be shown that they do not exhaust the range of creature types, even within traditional Earth lore. Ancient Middle Eastern cylinder seals (ca. 1000 B.C.) depict what were called “elementals,” a variety of creatures that would be unclassifiable under the six-part system. These archaic engraved figures are “heroes and deities” created out of elemental processes (fire, air, water, and earth). They have human or animal bodies, but are shown with water, flames, or light streaming out of their anatomy.
The Mammoth Encyclopedia of Extraterrestrial Encounters Page 10