Seven separate types of events were experienced by the five Tujunga women, three of which had two witnesses. In 1980 these events became the subject of a book by this author and parapsychologist D. Scott Rogo. This was The Tujunga Canyon Contacts published by Prentice-Hall in 1980 with an updated paperback in 1989.
The book was the first to describe multiplewitness abductions and the possibility of “defense techniques” to fend off abduction scenarios, leading to this author’s subsequent research presented in the 1998 publication of How to Defend Yourself Against Alien Abduction.
Since the Tujunga witnesses were of differing ages and were not in close contact during the 22-year period of the abduction events, it was hypothesized that Jan, who shared three of the experiences, might be somehow a “source of contagion” which made the other witnesses subject to abduction experiences. This “source of contagion” hypothesis was later interpreted by other researchers as being generational in nature, since many abductees have grandparents, parents, and children who have abduction experiences.
Scott Rogo and I wrote separate chapters on their interpretations of the events. Rogo hypothesized that the UFO phenomenon is essentially quasi-physical and is the product of a “supermind” that controls human consciousness and produces temporary energy forms that mold themselves into various shapes based on the predispositions of the viewer—in essence, a type of “mental projection.”
I hypothesized that, while ordinary UFO phenomena seem physical and possibly extraterrestrial, so-called alien abductors are an order of creation which share the Earth with us in a hidden form and are essentially posing as UFO occupants in order to frighten and overcome human beings. Orders of intelligent creation, such as the Al-Jinn described in the Muslim Koran, Sidhe or Faery-folk described in academic writings by W. B. Yeats and others, and Incubi researched by prominent theologians such as Lodovico Sinistrari of Italy, have many characteristics in common with our modern-day alien UFO abductor: (1) materializing and dematerializing; (2) shape-shifting in size and form; (3) passing through solid matter; (4) sexually harassing nature; and (5) deceptive, or traumatizing by nature.
The California town of Tujunga and its treasured, wild canyons has long been regarded as a “window area” for strange events, both paranormal and UFOlogical.
—ANN DRUFFEL
12th Planet, The (Stein & Day, 1976). Zecharia Sitchin translates Sumerian, Babylonian and Assyrian texts, along with the original Hebrew version of the Old Testament, to piece together a theory that visitors from an undiscovered 12th planet in our solar system inspired creation of the Sumerian civilization and Biblical stories of miracles and divine intervention. These visitors, called the Nefilim, came to Earth in search of minerals, mostly gold, and used genetic engineering to create humankind from Homo erectus. Some of the Nefilim opposed this experiment and caused the great flood to purify the planet of their creation.
—RANDALL FITZGERALD
2001: A Space Odyssey (Produced and directed by Stanley Kubrick for MGM, 1968). This Academy Award-winning motion picture pushed the boundaries of the popular imagination to new limits.
The movie was based on a short story by Arthur C. Clarke entitled “The Sentinel,’ which first appeared in 1950. In it, an extraterrestrial artifact was discovered on the moon by Earth astronauts. What made the discovery such a powerful case of “future shock” was not just its otherworldly origin, but its age: four million years. This meant that long before human development was under way, other beings of a very high order of intelligence had been winging their way across the cosmos. The rest of the story concerns the odyssey of the spacecraft Discovery, as its lone surviving astronaut encounters an unknown intelligence that turns out to be our lord and savior.
Although not a religious film per se, it was in effect a space-age Genesis—a creation story featuring mankind as the product of a cosmic experiment being carried out, not by the traditional Judeo-Christian God, but by extraterrestrial intelligences who, because of attributes acquired during their own long evolution, might themselves be defined as gods.
In other words, 2001 contained the essential elements of the ancient astronaut theory prior to the fame of Erich von Däniken.
Moreover, the artifact in the story was more than a stone monument, indicating the possible the existence of otherworldly visitors. The black monolith was both an alarm and a teaching device, which had been deliberately buried on the moon four million years before. Once excavated and exposed to light, it would serve as a signal to the beings who put it there. Thus, the “sentinel” would beam the message that man had reached a new step in his evolution—the capability of leaving the Earth and venturing into the cosmos.
In the novel version of 2001, Arthur Clarke tells of the monolith’s crystalline counterpart, used as a teaching machine for the man-apes back on Earth. It was in effect a highly complicated computer that thoroughly probed and mapped the brains and bodies of the early hominids, studied their reactions, evaluated their potential, and gave them “human” intelligence. Kubrick told Playboy magazine in 1968: “I will say that the God concept is at the heart of 2001—but not any traditional, anthropomorphic image of God. I don’t believe in any of Earth’s monotheistic religions, but I do believe that one can construct an intriguing scientific definition of God.” And so he did.
But Clarke and Kubrick gave their “gods” a much higher level of technology than von Däniken gave his. First of all, they were not of human form. Indeed, having freed themselves from matter, they existed as pure energy. Even the Earth people of 2001 that evolved from ape-men were far more advanced than von Däniken’s ancient astronauts. They had talking and thinking computers, an enormous space station, full-scale colonization of the moon, and artificially induced hibernation for long space journeys. No evidence of this kind of technology has ever been found as testimony to the presence of ancient astronauts. If and when it is, we will then have the kind of indications that can be taken seriously.
—RONALD D. STORY
References
Clarke, Arthur C. 2001: A Space Odyssey (New American Library, 1968).
Interview with Stanley Kubrick in Playboy magazine (September 1968).
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UFO Abductions: A Dangerous Game (Prometheus Books, 1988). Philip Klass writes that movies and books have inspired an epidemic of alien abduction hoaxes, delusions and fantasies. The use of hypnotic regression to extract memories of alien abduction is dangerous and deceptive because hypnotized subjects can willfully and convincingly lie, or hypnotic subjects can be pressured to produce pseudo-memories which can wreak psychological harm.
—RANDALL FITZGERALD
UFO and the Bible (The Citadel Press, 1956). Astronomer Morris K. Jessup believes that many miracles recounted in the Bible provide evidence of alien visitors sent here as “sheep dogs” to tend the human flock. This was the first booklength attempt to reconcile the miraculous events in the Bible with the modern UFO phenomenon and with science. Jessup gives numerous striking examples to support his view that the UFO is the missing link, or common denominator, uniting the “miracles” of the Bible with the universal concepts sought by modern science.
—RANDALL FITZGERALD
“UFO” defined One of the major confusions besetting UFO research is that of basic definition. Unfortunately, the term “UFO” (which was coined by Captain Edward J. Ruppelt, a former chief of the U. S. Air Force’s Project Blue Book) has been muddied, because it is both a technical term (i.e., given a specific meaning by various specialists) and a common-language term that has, in ordinary, everyday usage, taken on certain connotations, such as: UFO = extraterrestrial spaceship. The acronym has become so common, in fact, that it was defined in Webster’s New Twentieth Century Dictionary, as follows: “any of the unidentified objects frequently reported, especially since 1947, to have been seen flying at varying heights and speeds and variously regarded as light phenomena, hallucinations, secret military missiles, spacecraft from another planet, et cetera.�
� It has since been shortened in the 1997 tenth edition of Merriam Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary as simply: “unidentified flying object; esp: FLYING SAUCER.”
The dictionary definition is usually intended as a close approximation of how a word or term is actually used in common practice, i.e., as a word comes to have a “meaning” in ordinary use. No single person can “assign” an ordinary use to a word; all must go along with the “meanings” of ordinary language that have evolved culturally.
This phenomenon was made strikingly clear to me by an experience with my son. He was five years old at the time (in 1979). I had just compiled the first Encyclopedia of UFOs (published by Doubleday and NEL in 1980) and wondered—without having any prior discussions on the matter—what a typical five-year-old child would have in his mind regarding the subject of UFOs. I asked my son, Brian: “What is a UFO?” He answered without hesitation, “a flying saucer.” Just like the new Merriam Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, Brian thought “flying saucer” answered the question. So, I rephrased the question this way: “What is inside a flying saucer?” To which he replied, matter of factly: “People from other planets.” Nothing could better illustrate to me that “UFO” had become a living symbol in our culture for the vehicle that carries “humanoids from another planet.”
Technical definitions are another matter. Individuals do assign specific meanings to terms for a specific purpose. “UFO” has many such technical definitions, which vary from one “expert” to another. The Aerial Phenomena Research Organization defines a UFO as “any airborne object which cannot be identified by the witness.” The astronomer Carl Sagan says something similar, in that “A UFO is a moving aerial or celestial phenomenon, detected visually or by radar, but whose nature is not immediately understood.” A more precise definition is that offered by astronomer J. Allen Hynek: “We can define the UFO simply as the reported perception of an object or light seen in the sky or upon the land, the appearance, trajectory, and general dynamic and luminescent behavior of which do not suggest a logical, conventional explanation and which is not only mystifying to the original percipients but remains unidentified after close scrutiny of an available evidence by persons who are technically capable of making a common sense identification, if one is possible.”
There are, of course, instances in which the “UFO” is not “flying” and is not seemly an “object.” In fact, one possibility often suggested is that UFOs may be “psychic projections” (i.e., something like a hologram), which would not be definable as “objects” in the ordinary sense. Although a perfect definition is probably impossible (since, after all, the subjects of our study are “unidentified”), it may be advisable to limit the field of UFOlogy to those cases of sightings and encounters that do not seem (after a thorough and proper study by qualified persons) to be explainable in terms of any known phenomenon of nature or manmade device.
—RONALD D. STORY
UFO Enigma, The (Doubleday, 1977). Harvard astrophysicist Donald Menzel and psychiatrist Ernest Taves heatedly argue in this book that UFOs, ancient astronaut theories, parapsychology, and other pseudosciences are irrational aberrations which must be eradicated. Miracles described in the Bible have meteorological explanations. UFO sightings are all the result of liars, hoaxers, and misidentifications of natural phenomena. The authors admit their perspective is founded on a belief that we have never been visited, and we will never be visited by aliens from another star system.
—RANDALL FITZGERALD
UFO Exist! (G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1976). Paris Flammonde tries to make a case that powerful secret cabals “of enormous influence and incalculable economic strength” control human affairs and have conspired to keep the UFO secret from humanity. He believes UFOs could represent the private air force of a non-governmental cabal, or these craft could be a monstrous creation of human intellect, some sort of energies or entities, over which control has been lost. “The enigmas may be a more developed stage of life, of which Man is a low form. The possibility of contact in such a circumstance seems improbable in the extreme.”
—RANDALL FITZGERALD
“UFO Incident, The” This made-for-TV movie, starring James Earl Jones and Estelle Parsons, was first aired on October 20, 1975, on NBC. It was a two-hour, prime-time special presentation of the alleged UFOabduction experience of Betty and Barney Hill.
The Universal/NBC production was based on the book, The Interrupted Journey (1966) by John Fuller, that chronicled this most famous of all UFOabductions, which allegedly occurred in 1961. The movie was repeated many times and is believed to have triggered a number of other UFOabduction reports—as well as the popular image of the classic “Gray” alien. The large almond-shaped, wraparound eyes, no ears, small nose and mouth, and bald, oversized cranium—all of these features would later form the standard icon for the alien image.
Philip Klass, Martin Kottmeyer, and others have pointed out just how critical the timing of this media event happened to be in UFOabduction history. Within weeks after the show, UFO abductions were occurring in epidemic proportions and have continued that way ever since.
Some believe this TV alien was the prototype for thousands of imaginary abductions by the “Grays” that were to follow.
Among the famous cases to closely follow the first airing of the show were: Travis Walton (November 5, 1975), Charles Moody (claimed abduction was on August 13, 1975, but went public only after the show aired in November), and the Liberty, Kentucky, abduction (January 6, 1976). These cases, and most of the succeeding ones, followed the standard format that millions of viewers saw in “The UFO Incident”:
• captured and taken aboard a “flying saucer”
• undressed and placed on a table
• examined with special instruments, usually with special attention paid to the reproductive organs
• tour of the ship
• briefing or special message
• return to the original spot where the abduction occurred
• “missing time,” or temporary loss of memory regarding the details of the event, which are usually recalled later through the use of timeregression hypnosis
These elements of UFO abduction accounts did not originate with “The UFO Incident,” but for the first time ever, they were dramatized and shown to millions of TV viewers—in repeated showings—of a very well-made, realistic movie that was presented as a true story.
—RONALD D. STORY
UFO Missionaries Extraordinary (Pocket Books, 1976). Hayden Hewes and Brad Steiger explore the origins of the Heaven’s Gate cult two decades before most of the group committed mass suicide. From their start as UFO contactees recruiting followers on the West Coast, leaders Bo and Peep, two former Houston church choir members, expressed a desire for an ascension “to the next level” from planet Earth. Their philosophy of salvation by UFOs and the devotion of their followers remained largely unshaken even after their first apocalyptic prediction of mass deliverance aboard UFOs failed to come true in 1975.
—RANDALL FITZGERALD
UFO Retrievals (Blandford, 1995). British researcher Jenny Randles examines the chronology and evidence for thirty-two UFO crashes worldwide during the 20th century. She finds at most six accounts which may qualify as potential candidates for authentic spacecraft. But “the majority of evidence is peppered with misperception, mistaken identity and a pinch of fabrication.”
—RANDALL FITZGERALD
UFO Verdict, The (Prometheus Books, 1986). Robert Sheaffer concludes in this book that UFOs do not exist because they spring entirely from the imaginations of the observers. UFO photos are all hoaxes, for example, because “all supposed UFO photographs produced to date have been taken by a single photographer, using a single camera.”
—RANDALL FITZGERALD
UFOlogy (Celestial Arts, 1973). James M. McCampbell, a nuclear power technician, theorizes that UFOs and their propulsion systems are electromagnetic energy phenomena. He cites numerous cases where the reported effects of UFO
s—such as their interference with auto electrical systems and television and radio transmissions—resemble electromagnetic energy effects, especially those produced by microwaves.
—RANDALL FITZGERALD
UFOlogy Originally defined by Morris K. Jessup (in 1955) as follows: “UFOlogy (You-fol-o-gy) has been coined in The UFO Annual to cover the field of investigation of what the Air Force has called Unidentified Flying Objects. Thus we have the science and study of the Unidentified Flying Object.”
Jessup coined the term in 1955, which appeared in his book The UFO Annual, when it was published in 1956—the same year the term “ufology” also appeared, without any definition or explanation, in Britain’s Flying Saucer Review (January-February 1956 issue); so, it appears that credit must be shared between these two sources.
The term first found its way into The World Book Dictionary in 1969. UFOlogy (or ufology) is presently defined in Merriam Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary simply as “the study of unidentified flying objects.” (This entry was prepared from research conducted by Richard W. Heiden for the Aerial Phenomena Research Organization in 1983.)
—ETEP STAFF
References
Flying Saucer Review (Jan.-Feb. 1956)
Heiden, Richard W. “The Word ‘UFOlogy’,” The A.P.R.O. Bulletin (Vol. 31, No. 10, 1983).
Jessup, Morris K. The UFO Annual (The Citadel Press, 1956).
Merriam Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, Tenth Edition (Merriam-Webster, 1993; 1997).
UFOnauts, The (Fawcett, 1976). Ghost hunter Hans Holzer thinks space visitors are abducting humans for breeding experiments because they find something about us appealing. He says these alien abductors resemble us, with the same sexual appetites, and do not “consider us totally unworthy” or they would not seek us out for breeding.
The Mammoth Encyclopedia of Extraterrestrial Encounters Page 112