No U.S. personnel had had that opportunity in the past, so our boarding party was very enthusiastic to board a Russian spy boat. Everyone’s adrenaline was flowing faster than a class five whitewater rapid. It definitely wasn’t a fishing vessel, as we had suspected all along, even though everything about it looked fishy. We couldn’t find one fish onboard, let alone a fishing pole. There was however, a lot of fishy electronic equipment, enough that we wondered how the boat could stay afloat.
The Russian crew was completely disoriented. They appeared to be in shock and looked scared shitless. Only one of them spoke. He babbled in broken English, about some strange-looking flying machine, with small hairless creatures hitting them with a beaming light and a crewman gone missing. Nothing he said was making any sense to anyone in our boarding party, except maybe me.
I suspected I might know what they had experienced. Something in the back of my mind told me I had been there and done that. However, I felt it best to keep my mouth shut. We could smell Vodka on their breath, so it was assumed that they had to be drunk. What happened to the ship and its crew was later classified top secret, so if I were to tell you, I’d probably be in a heap of trouble. I can say it was another one of those big government cover-ups that you don’t hear or read about in the news.
This incident triggered a subconscious thought that human beings might not be the only living creatures in the universe after all. But that thought didn’t last long as we were fighting in the Vietnam War.
Back in the States, hippies were making love, smoking pot, and protesting the war. They would burn their draft cards and the American flag, while we were fighting and dying to protect the liberties they were protesting. They called us war-mongers and baby killers. We called them a bunch of draft dodging momma pussy boy cowards, who didn’t have the guts to defend the liberties they were protesting.
We dared not wear our uniforms while on leave as we were spat upon and cursed for serving our country. We surely weren’t being thanked for our service. Shame on you citizens for treating us that way. It was a bitter pill to swallow and left a bad taste in the mouth of all Vietnam veterans, as you can tell by the tone of my voice.
However, the horrific public disrespect that assaulted us then, has largely been put in its rightful place as a national shame. Turns out we were victims of misguided and shameful government officials.
Those who served their country knew it was the soldier, who salutes the flag, who serves beneath the flag, and whose coffin was draped by the flag, that allowed the protester to burn the flag.
CHAPTER FOUR
The Conundrum
During the Vietnam war, my four-year Navy tour of duty expired. They tried enticing me to reenlist by offering a $3,500 bonus, a lot of money in 1965. On top of the money, I was offered shore duty in Japan, every sailor’s dream tour.
How could I refuse?
It’s been said that the Navy is more than a job, it is an adventure. Well, I figured it was time to give up the adventure and get a job. Leaving the Navy was a bit scary, because they had provided three squares a day, medical, dental, and a roof over my head for the past four years. It was a somewhat frightening thought to be on my own. I had traveled half the world meeting some amazing people. I had served my country with honor and was proud to be an American, but something inspired me to seek greater heights.
After the Navy, I settled in the Kansas City, Missouri area. Not far from my home town of Clinton. With help from my birth mother, I acquired a job with TWA as an Instrument Mechanic. She and I had been exchanging letters during my Navy stint. It turned out to be a great opportunity to get to know her and my half-brother, from whom Dad had so adamantly shielded me in my youth.
However, Dad got so upset when he found out I had connected with her, that he wouldn’t speak to me for a couple of years. But I found out that she was not such a bad person as he had portrayed. My brother...now he was something else.
...Wild thing. I want to know for sure...
Mike and I shared an apartment together. He was thrilled to death to have a brother too, as he had been raised an only child. Now keep in mind, that at our age, the main thing on our minds was the pursuit of the opposite sex. We were at the age where a man’s penis took over and replaced his brain. Mike and I were no different, so we spent a lot of time beating the bushes and chasing a lot of tail. But he did most of the scoring.
I soon discovered that he was a bona fide Casanova. Girls were attracted to him like flies to honey. He had that Hollywood look and charm. All he ever had to do was smile and say, “Hi, I’m Mike,” and the girls would follow him anywhere.
However, his main objective was not romance. It was adding another notch to his bedpost. I witnessed more than a few heartbreaks. I never really understood why women would be attracted to a guy who would treat them in such a way.
I may have been a little jealous because I didn’t possess his looks and charm. I had to work it. I usually ended up with his leftovers and provided a shoulder to cry on.
It was during our prowling around that my life would become a bit more complicated. I would eventually discover that something else was in control of my life.
....Pretty woman walking down the street. Pretty woman, the kind I’d like to meet...
“You take the brunette, I’ll take the blonde,” I told my brother. After all, blondes have more fun. Right? This was one of those life changing decisions, which may have been planned, that would disturb, perplex, haunt, and taunt me for most of my life.
My brother and I were attending a singles dance at the Wyandotte County Center in November 1966. I didn’t really want to go that evening, but he talked me into it. I was still smarting from a previous girlfriend’s rejection, so I wasn’t all that thrilled about circulating.
But when I laid eyes on the green-eyed, blonde beauty, all my past heartaches suddenly disappeared, and my mood changed in the blink of a eye.
I looked into her eyes, smiled, and somehow uttered a Hello, I’m Tom. Forgive me for staring, but you are so darn pretty, I can’t take my eyes off of you. I had no idea that my world was about to be turned upside down and inside out, once again.
Claudia seemed to be the perfect girl at the time, ‘cause I was lookin’ to get hitched. I had traveled half the globe, sown my wild oats, and was ready to settle down and start a family. She was so pretty, a talented artist, and a virgin to boot. She expressed a desire to spread her wings and escape her parental nest.
She was just what a doctor—or maybe an abductor—would prescribe for our situation. Claudia made it clear, right from the start, that she was saving her virginity for marriage. We, or I should say I, found it difficult to be in a platonic relationship. So, after dating for only three months, I was hot to trot and convinced her to elope to Oklahoma to get married. Nowata, Oklahoma, was the place for quickie marriages.
Listen up now, ‘cause things are about to get very interesting.
While searching for the courthouse, I was directed by an invisible and taunting force to keep driving around. We ended up on an abandoned country road. I could sense something in the air, as I started having that tingling and hair-raising sensation again, just like I had experienced twice before.
Come on, man, what gives? I just wanted to get to the courthouse on time.
I should have turned around immediately and gotten the hell out of there, but for some strange reason, I couldn’t initiate the turn. It simply wasn’t in their plan.
We soon came upon a herd of cattle grazing in a field. As we approached, they suddenly stopped grazing and stared off in the same direction.
Claudia shouted, “Stop the car; we have to find out what the cows are looking at!”
“Okay,” I said, slamming on the brakes. “But you stay in the car.”
All I could see was an enormous cornfield. It was close to dusk, and the glare from the sun made it hard to see anything in that direction. I put my hand over my eyes and squinted. Then suddenly, I noticed a shallow
figure materialized right out of the corn stalks. My first thought was that a scarecrow was on the loose.
I was in a sleepwalking stupor as an invisible force propelled me toward the figure. A beam of light from the shadowy being, which was holding a gold-colored medallion, hit me in the chest. I was paralyzed but conscious as it walked up to me and measured my cranium. (Years later I would discover that I had been measured for a special type of helmet). The mysterious being then implanted another memory block and vanished with the sunset.
The next thing I knew I was standing alone in the darkening cornfield, not knowing how or why I had gotten there. The cows chewed on their cud as they all stared at me like I was an alien invader. When I returned to the car, Claudia was sound asleep. When I awoke her, she didn’t recall or see a thing, since I had gotten out of the car. Several years later she would reveal to me what had happened to her that evening:
I fell asleep in the car and had a most peculiar astral projection. I was out of my body and rising high above the trees. I looked to the sky and from the south approached a churning, rolling, gray wind. From the north came black rolling clouds with a beam of light in the middle. They were coming together over my head with tremendous speed. I assumed my body would be hit by the lightning that was created. The instant I became afraid, my astral spirit started to descend back into the car as I watched the ground and trees grow larger. I then felt warmth in my spinal area.
All of this, however, was unknown to us that evening. I got back in the car, and somehow, we found the courthouse, tied the knot, and returned to Kansas City. Unbeknown to us was a news article printed the next day in the local Tulsa newspaper. The paper reported that a farmer had discovered crop circles in his corn field a couple miles south of Nowata.
In June that same year, Claudia and I went on a belated honeymoon. We flew to Los Angeles and rented a car to drive up Highway 1, which ran along the coast towards San Francisco. Claudia was five months pregnant, which caused our parents to do some finger counting.
We stopped in Carmel and got a motel room close to the monastery grounds. Right away, I began to feel the tingling again. I tried to convince Claudia we should leave. However, she was unresponsive and seemed to be in a trance.
The boutique town of Carmel was set on gently rising bluffs above a sculpted rocky coastline. It was known for its neat rows of quaint shops and miniature homes. The place also had a thick air of pretention, and was peppered with tacky middle-brow galleries and mock Tudor tearooms. There were no street addresses, there was no mail delivery, and there were no franchise businesses in town. Three small museums in the Mission Basilica, built in 1771, traced the history of the area and revealed the darker side of the dainty building with the graves of more than three thousand local Indians buried in the cemetery.
It was somewhere in this area that Claudia experienced another encounter. This is what she told me a few years later: As we walked toward the monastery grounds, along the beach, I became very tired. It was dusk. Someway, we were suddenly on the grounds, while standing outside one of the monastery buildings, where I was attacked by a flock of wild geese. As they flew away over the ocean, our unborn went with them in spirit. I was upset and cried as we returned to the motel.
She continued to say: That night they abducted only me; you were left in the motel room. They took me back to the monastery. I was put on a table in one of the buildings. I couldn’t make out who or what they were. I screamed as they cut open my uterus and our unborn was suspended in the air as they examined her. (At this time, we did not know the sex of the child she was carrying). They must have installed another memory block, because my next memory was the next morning. While taking a shower I noticed a brown zipper scar from my navel down. It disappeared in a few days.
The next day we went on a twenty-five-mile drive through an exclusive neighborhood. (I remembered going on the drive, but none of the things she was relating to me). As we approached a gated community guard gate, you became very nervous. Your actions made no sense. (As if any of this does). It was as if you knew something would go wrong in there. You even screamed at me that you didn’t want to go in there. (I didn’t want to go in but something urged me on). The guard at the gate must have heard you, because he asked if everything was alright. It seemed strange to me that the guard would be wearing a military-type uniform.
Bizarre things started happening as we drove through the community. Flowers sprouted out of nowhere and lined the road as we passed. It was like a fourth-dimension manifestation; no other explanation could suffice. I was in awe, but you, Tom, were still terrified by something. As we approached the beach area, flowers were still sprouting, almost down to the ocean. We departed
the car and walked to a platform, which appeared to be some kind of a lookout. You were then attacked by a small being with blonde hair and wearing a one-piece metallic cloth outfit. Somehow, we both became paralyzed. The being probed and poked various instruments into our bodies. Perhaps you remember what was done to you. (I didn’t).
Rolling black clouds started to develop, emitting an intense laser-like light. All the flowers instantly disappeared. The whole area around us was stripped grey and bare. The being installed our memory blocks and sent us on our way. That’s all I remember, except that for the rest of the trip and our marriage, you were never the same. I saw them before we were married too.
Two kids and four years later my little paradise hit another major pothole in the road and I had another crash landing.
“I can’t live like this anymore,” Claudia told me one day, right out of the blue. “We need to get a divorce.”
Her words felt like someone had punched me in the stomach, as my breath was knocked right out of me. Claudia explained that she was becoming emotionally distressed and confused. She claimed to have had an out of body experience during which her spirit told her that she could no longer be in a sexual relationship, or in other words, she could not be a wife. I suspected that there had to be more to this than she was willing to reveal. Usually, in these type of situations, there was a third party involved. Little did I know who that third party would be. Nothing either of us, nor you, would ever suspect.
Whatever it was, it came on almost overnight. Suddenly, my paradise crumbled and I found myself divorced. Claudia packed up and moved to Virginia Beach with the kids. Her spirit told her that was where she had to be. Those days the woman always got custody of the children, so I was left with no other choice but to watch them go.
... Well, since my baby left me, I found a new place to dwell, it’s down on lonely street at Heartbreak hotel...
A few months after she had left, she would tell me about the abductions. She had learned how to melt her installed memory blocks by fasting and abstaining from sexual activity. Once these memory blocks were removed, she discovered the abductions, the aliens, and the things that had been done to her. She even told me that I had been abducted, not once but twice. I had no idea what she was talking about and didn’t believe her. I just assumed she was off her rocker, like most UFO abductees are alleged to be. At the time, I was concerned only with putting my life back together again.
Still, I had to wonder: how was it that my brother and I attended the dance that night when Claudia and I met? And why did I pick the blonde and not the brunette? Was it fate? Or was it planned?
CHAPTER FIVE
The Bewilderment
I spent the next few years wandering around like a lost puppy. Working for TWA, I could transfer in my job to any city they serviced. My brother Mike put a bug in my ear that helped me to escape my rut. He had transferred in his job a few months before and had moved to the San Francisco Bay area.
...All the leaves are brown and the sky is gray, I could leave today, California dreaming...
In February 1972, I transferred in my job and moved back to my old Navy stomping grounds.
Unfortunately, I had a hard time fitting into the hippy social environment. It appeared all everyone wanted to do was
smoke pot and make love. Not that I’m against those things, but surely, there must be more to life. I felt like an alien on a strange and distant planet.
So, in August of 1974, I again transferred in my job, this time moving to Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, the land of enchantment. Once again, it was Mike who inspired the relocation. He had transferred there a few months earlier, and it didn’t take much to convince me to leave California.
TWA had a contract with Saudi Airlines and provided staff to train their employees in the operation of their airline. This would be my task in the avionics field. I received a 10 percent salary raise, free furnished housing, and utilities, and didn’t have to pay any federal or state taxes on any of my earnings. What a deal! I would be able to save a lot of money. I planned to work there for five years and then return to my previous job in San Francisco with a nice nest egg.
There you go thinking again, Tom.
*****
ALLAHU AKBAR!
I jumped out of bed like my pants were on fire.
The Abduction Chronicles Page 4