—RONALD D. STORY
References
Story, Ronald D. The Space-Gods Revealed (Harper & Row, 1976; New English Library, 1977).
________. Guardians of the Universe? (St. Martin’s Press/New English Library, 1980).
Von Däniken, Erich. Chariots of the Gods? (G. P. Putnam’s Sons,1970; Bantam Books, 1971).
________. Gods From Outer Space (G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1971; Bantam Books, 1972)
________. Von Däniken’s Proof (Bantam Books, 1978).
ancient UFOs There is no question but that strange aerial objects have been described in roughly similar terms for thousands of years. Unknown lights and shapes seen in the sky, strange beings making contact with humans—these mysteries are a part of man’s oldest art and literature. And although we should view the very early reports with caution, it would be unreasonable to ignore them.
References are found all over the world, in ancient legends and written histories, of strange happenings in the sky. “Fiery globes” fluttering about the night sky, “circular shields” during the day—that is how the ancient Greeks and Romans described what they saw. The Egyptians of 3500 years ago left accounts of “circles of fire” and “flaming chariots” that sailed across the heavens. The American Indians had their legends of “flying canoes” and “great silvery airships” in the days of the covered wagons. Such accounts have been handed down through the ages by nearly all peoples of the world: from ancient Egypt, India, Tibet, Japan, China, Scandinavia, Ireland, England, France, Italy, Polynesia, and the Americas.
The following examples are quoted by the British author Harold T. Wilkins, in his book Flying Saucers on the Attack (1954), from reportedly ancient sources:
216 B.C.: Things like ships were seen in the sky, over Italy. …At Arpi (180 Roman miles, east of Rome, in Apulia), a round shield was seen in the sky.
214 B.C.: The forms of ships seen in the sky at Rome.
213 B.C.: At Hadria (Gulf of Venice), the strange spectacle of men with white clothing was seen in the sky. They seemed to stand around an altar, and were robed in white.
170 B.C.: At Lanupim (on the Appian Way, 16 miles from Rome), a remarkable spectacle of a fleet of ships was seen in the air.
In November 1969, there appeared an intriguing article entitled “Paleolithic UFO Shapes,” by the French UFOlogist Aimé Michel in the British Flying Saucer Review (Vol. 15, No.6). Michel had found that our Magdalenian ancestors fashioned works of art that are striking indications that they too had seen UFOs. On the walls of the famous les Eyzies, Laseaux, and Altamira caves in France and Spain are found renderings of objects that clearly resemble modern descriptions (and photographs) of disk-shaped UFOs. Just what the Magdalenian artists were attempting to portray—15,000 to 30,000 years ago—may never be known. But, without a definitive explanation, the UFO interpretation must at least be considered as a possibility.
Many more examples of ancient UFO interpretations can be found in the books of Desmond Leslie, Morris K. Jessup, W. Raymond Drake, et al.
—RONALD D. STORY
Andreasson abductions The UFO-related experiences and associated paranormal phenomena experienced by Betty (Andreasson) Luca and members of her family. Raymond Fowler’s research over a period of twenty years is broken down into five separate investigative phases. During this inquiry, it gradually became apparent that Ray and his family also bore distinctive benchmarks of the UFO abduction phenomenon. The five phases of the investigation are published in five consecutive books: The Andreasson Affair (1979), The Andreasson Affair, Phase Two (1982), The Watchers (1990), The Watchers II (1993), and The Andreasson Legacy (1997). A synopsis follows:
Betty (Andreasson) Luca
PHASE I
Phase I of the investigation took place between January 1977 and January 1978. Betty Ann Luca (then Mrs. James Andreasson) reported a UFO experience to J. Allen Hynek in response to an article that mentioned his interest in receiving such reports. Dr. Hynek referred her letter to the Massachusetts chapter of MUFON (the Mutual UFO Network). After an initial interview, a team was put together to investigate Betty’s reported experience. In addition to Ray Fowler, the Phase I MUFON team consisted of a physicist, an aerospace engineer, an electrical engineer, a telecommunications specialist, a professional hypnotist, a lie detector specialist, and a medical doctor (as a consultant).
Betty’s report to Dr. Hynek described only her conscious memories and those of her father, Waino Aho (since deceased). The date was January 25, 1967. At that time, Betty and her family resided in the small Massachusetts town of South Asburnham. She was in the kitchen when the event began. Her seven children, together with her mother and father, were in the living room. Her husband, James, was in the hospital recovering from an automobile accident.
At about 6:35 P.M. the house lights suddenly began to flicker and then blinked out. A pulsating pink, then reddish-orange light shone through the kitchen window; and a strange vacuum-like feeling settled over the house, as if time was standing still.
Betty told her frightened children to remain in the living room while her father checked to see where the light was coming from. When he looked out the window, he saw a group of strange-looking small humanoid creatures coming toward the house moving with a strange floating, jumping motion. As they passed by the window, one of the entities looked at him. He remembered nothing after that, as he was placed in what can only be termed as a state of suspended animation.
The five entities passed through the solid kitchen door and confronted Betty. As they passed through the door, they seemed to fade in and out of reality. This was essentially Betty’s conscious memory of the experience. However, during fourteen sessions of timeregression hypnosis, both Betty and her daughter relived what they think occurred after the entities entered the house.
The rest of Betty’s family was placed in a state of suspended animation. The entities commanded Betty to follow them outside. Betty felt strangely compelled to go with them but was concerned for her family. The entities then temporarily released Betty’s oldest daughter, Becky, from her suspended state to assure Betty that her family would be all right. Becky relived this segment of the encounter under hypnosis.
Betty floated through the solid-wood kitchen door in line with four of the entities. One entity was left behind. Under hypnosis, Becky remembered this entity again releasing her from suspended animation to ask questions about the rooms in the house and to amuse her with floating balls of light.
Outside, Betty was brought to a small oval-shaped craft on tripod landing gear, whereupon she floated into it. The craft accelerated upward and apparently entered a much larger craft. While on board she was subjected to the effects of strange equipment before and after a physical examination.
During the examination, a tiny BB-like object was removed from her nose. Attempts via hypnosis to learn how it got there were unsuccessful. Betty became terrorized during these probes and the hypnotist refused to press the matter further.
After the exam, Betty was placed into a tank of liquid and made to drink another liquid that had a tranquilizing effect. Soon after, she was removed from the tank and floated along a track into an alien place. While there, she underwent a traumatic experience during an encounter with a holographic-like portrayal of the death and rebirth of the legendary Phoenix bird.
During this experience, a booming chorus of voices told Betty that she had been chosen to show something important to the world. She then was returned home to find her family still in a state of suspended animation and guarded by the entity that was left behind.
Betty and her family, under mind control of the entities, were put to bed in a state of unawareness. Betty was told that she would forget her experience until an appointed time. During the abduction the entities related to Betty that: humans would fear them, but they were here to help the human race; human time is localized and they were not bound by time; their technology is paraphysical in nature, and man is not made of just flesh and blood.
The MUFON team was able to verify a number of facts associated with the initial segment of Betty’s UFO abduction experience, including the power blackout and the approximate time that the incident began.
Some of Betty Luca’s own drawings of the entities she encountered.
Under hypnosis, Betty related that the event occurred in 1967 on a Wednesday. She stated that her husband was in a Veteran’s Administration Hospital and that her parents were visiting to help out. She described the weather as balmy with traces of snow on the ground, melting and causing the neighborhood to be enshrouded with fog.
Betty’s drawing of a disk-shaped craft into which she was taken.
Betty’s husband’s hospital records showed that he was in the hospital between January 23 and March 17, 1967. A local weather station in South Ashburnham recorded a temperature of 33 to 54 degrees with mist rising from melting snow. Betty’s parents remembered the visit, and her father remembered his brief, conscious look at the entities, which he described as “Halloween freaks.”
The local power company confirmed the power failure and attributed it to an open circuit breaker, apparently tripped by an overloaded circuit. Unfortunately, the power company records did not give the time of the power outage. The time was established by other data.
Prior to the encounter, Betty’s children were watching a show on TV that featured Bozo the Clown. A check of TV records revealed that this show aired between 4:30 and 5:30 P.M. on that date. Since it was dark outside when the event began, the time of sunset was checked. This turned out to be 4:48 P.M. Under hypnosis, Becky remembered that it was around 6:35 P.M. when the lights went out.
Betty’s credibility was established through a character reference check, a lie-detector test, and a psychiatric interview. Only the weather, television show, and the power failure could be proved as objective reality. However, Betty’s (and Becky’s) reliving of the account was consistent during an interrogation, and while having her repeat various segments of their experience while under hypnosis. Her description of the entities and her experience were also consistent with other abduction reports.
PHASE II
Phase II of the investigation took place between June 1978 and June 1980. In addition to Ray Fowler, the investigative team consisted of a physicist and a behavioral psychologist.
The Phase I investigation had come to a halt because Betty had moved to Florida to live with relatives after her marriage ended. Her first husband, James Andreasson, was a childhood sweetheart who had returned from service in the Navy as an alcoholic. Betty had lived a rocky life with the ups and downs of this disease and had sought help for him many times. However, the time came when he decided to leave her for the family’s own good. Attempts to change his mind had been futile.
During her stay in Florida, Betty met Bob Luca. Bob and a friend had been on a cross-country trip to California. Bob had never intended to return to his home in Connecticut via Florida, but he suddenly had a compulsion to visit friends there. Coincidentally, Bob’s friends turned out to be mutual friends of Betty’s. In fact, they were people Betty worked with. They also told him about Betty’s UFO experience.
He was very interested in meeting her, as he also had a UFO sighting, followed by missing time, in the summer of 1967. At that time he was on his way to a beach near Wallingford, Connecticut, when he noticed a railroad crew looking up at two large silver cylindrical objects. He stopped the car and watched as the cylinders released smaller disk-shaped objects.
After the objects were out-of-sight, he continued to drive to the beach but was distressed when he arrived late with about two hours of missing time.
Bob was introduced to Betty, who informed the MUFON team of his UFO experience, and arrangements were made to conduct an investigation of his “missing time” as well. Bob and Betty were later married.
The team obtained the services of a MUFON consultant in hypnosis living in Connecticut, and Bob underwent two sessions in which he was hypnotically regressed.
During the first session, the hypnotist asked Bob to go back to his first UFO experience. We were amazed when he began reliving an encounter that had taken place at age five, in 1944. Bob began speaking like a child. He said he was sitting on a swing in the back yard, behind his house. He noticed a bright light coming in the sky. When it got close, he described an oval object with two gray entities in a bubble-like dome on top. They flashed a light at him, which induced paralysis. They told him telepathically that they were visiting others like him to help people not to be afraid of them. He was told that someday something good would happen to him, when he was older.
During the second session under hypnosis, Bob relived driving to the beach and watching the cylindrical objects release smaller objects. However, when he began driving to the beach, one of the smaller objects appeared and began descending like a falling leaf towards his car. The car was suddenly filled with red light and he found himself in the craft with small, gray alien beings. He could not resist their wishes. They had him remove his clothes and then placed him on a table, where he underwent a physical examination. While on the table he became terrified when one of the gray entities suddenly turned into a being of light. He refused to describe one of the procedures that the entities were performing on him. He was brought out of hypnosis and refused to undergo further sessions.
Betty underwent seven more sessions under hypnosis. Coincidentally, Betty also relived her first remembered UFO-related experience at age seven, in 1944, at Leominster, Massachusetts. While waiting for a friend in a playhouse, a buzzing glowing marble-sized object flew in and landed between Betty’s eyes. She felt tired and experienced a strange feeling in her head, as a chorus of voices told her that she was being watched and was making good progress. She was told that they were getting some things ready to show her and that it would make her and other people happy. These things would not be ready until she was 12 years of age.
Her second encounter took place at age 12, in 1949, when she lived in Westminster, Massachusetts. While walking in the woods, she was confronted by a small gray entity in a strange coverall suit with buttons and symbols on it. The entity pressed a button on the suit and a glowing marble-sized ball of light flew out and landed between Betty’s eyes. Again she heard voices which said that she was not ready yet and that what they were preparing for her would happen in another year.
True to the entities’ statement, when Betty was 13, in 1950, she was whisked up into an “orb-shaped” craft while walking in a field. The entities told her they were taking her home to meet the “One.”
They placed an instrument in her mouth that held her tongue down and placed her on a smooth rubber-like wheel. The craft took her to an underground installation, which was entered by going underwater. There she witnessed a Museum of Time consisting of lifelike (or real) people from different ages, encased in transparent cubicles.
The entities then caused Betty to undergo an out-of-body experience (OBE). In this state of being, she was told to enter a huge glass door. Through it she entered into a “world of light” and there encountered the One.
Under hypnosis, her face beamed in ecstasy as she described a feeling of unconditional love and a oneness with all things. Attempts to discover other things that she learned there were futile.
She was also subjected to a number of tests including being trained on a console. During the physical examination, the entities removed her eye and inserted a tiny object in her head through the eye cavity, which would be removed 17 years later.
Follow-on hypnotic sessions revealed that in 1961, at age 24, a strange force drew Betty from her home into the woods, where she encountered a tall gray entity. She was told not to be afraid, that the Lord was with her and that her faith in the light would bring many others to the light. She was warned of upcoming trials but to keep her faith for the Lord Jesus was with her.
Phase II of the investigation came to a halt due to a painful mental block when Betty started to relive her next UFO
experiences in the 1970s. This pain frightened her so much that she refused to undergo further hypnosis. She felt that the entities did not want her to relate these experiences at this time.
PHASE III
Phase III of the investigation took place between November 1987 and December 1988. It was conducted by Ray Fowler and a behavioral psychologist. At this time, Betty began experiencing dreams and memory flashbacks of a woman’s face. What disquieted her so much was the expression of intense fear on the woman’s face. The eyes of the woman literally cried out to her for help. Betty tried her utmost to remember who the woman was, as she felt that she had seen her somewhere before.
Betty decided that she would undergo hypnosis again to find out who the woman was, in spite of the chance that she would undergo a painful block again. An initial hypnotic session was not painful and revealed the woman was related to Betty’s UFO experiences.
This instigated 17 new hypnotic sessions, which revealed a number of UFO experiences involving both Betty and Bob Luca. It was during these sessions that the entities told Betty that they were the “Watchers.”
In 1973, at age 36, Betty described a bedroom visitation by an entity who informed her that it was now time to begin to remember her previous experiences and what she had been told.
In 1975, at age 38, Betty again experienced a bedroom visitation by an entity who told her that her first marriage would end and to prepare for hardships.
In 1977, at age 40, during yet another bedroom visitation by an entity, Betty was told about the impending death of two of her sons. Later, they were both killed in an automobile accident.
In 1978, at age 41, Betty described and shared an OBE abduction with her husband Bob. They were taken to a large round-shaped facility where they witnessed many incredible things, including an alien operation on three family members. During this same year, Betty, Bob, and one of her daughters sighted four UFOs from their car.
The Mammoth Encyclopedia of Extraterrestrial Encounters Page 13