by Gary Bates
{See Communion (1987) — Whitley Strieber}
Why do so many researchers seem blind to the obvious ill treatment of humans? For many, the answer can be found in the belief that “the end justifies the means.” In other words, they believe the whole UFO phenomenon to be true and of vital importance. It must therefore be revealed, no matter the cost. The study of UFOs also has an addictive quality about it. It involves the mystical, containing fantastic stories, conspiracies, and intrigue. This feeds on itself — and carries other risks. Experienced UFO investigator John Keel explained that it causes a “suspension of disbelief.” He said:
I’m seeing more and more excellent UFO investigators going off the deep end… . They take in any strange theory, because they’ve been desensitized by all the strangeness for so long.[22]
The wackiness of it all may account for why so many have lost their objectivity. And as we have already seen, many deliberate frauds and hoaxes have been orchestrated in an effort to force the authorities to “tell the truth.” This only adds to the strangeness of it all. If the aliens want to change our world view, it would appear that we are already making it very easy for them.
Why is it so important for them to change our traditional spiritual beliefs? One cannot deny the consistency of the ET messages from across a huge and varied landscape. It is no secret that the space brothers have been threatening a global catastrophe — via our own carelessness or imposed by them — unless we change our ways. In some cases, they claim to have created humankind and therefore they have the right to do with us as they want. The way of salvation, it appears, is by following these new religious leaders into the New Age. And if the inhabitants of the earth do not change, then the select few who believe will be spared and saved. In the next chapter we shall look closely at the religious messages of the ETs.
The “big guns” of abduction research
The abduction phenomenon has been studied intently, and there are now researchers who have devoted their careers to this topic. Despite this, I think even the experts would agree that nobody really has a handle on it. Possibly the three highest-profile players in this area are Budd Hopkins, Dr. David Jacobs, and Dr. John Mack.
Budd Hopkins may be regarded as the pioneer in this field. He uses the method of hypnosis to garner reports, and was one of the first to report that abductees suffered from physical markings, lesions, and so on. He also noticed patterns of repeated abductions of the same individuals, and generational abductions; that is, occurrences among several members within a family group, including successive generations. He is a strong advocate of the idea that aliens are visiting the earth and conducting breeding experiments with humans, thereby producing the hybrids. His three books, Missing Time (1981), Intruders (1987), and Witnessed (1996), have all been best sellers, and Intruders was made into a CBS miniseries. It remains one of the most influential books about abduction research ever written.[23]
Hopkins introduced David Jacobs to this field. He holds similar beliefs but is not so enamored by the ET abductors. Currently, he is the associate professor of history at Temple University, Philadelphia, and has amassed nearly 40 years worth of research on UFOs. His doctorate came as a result of a dissertation about UFOs, and it was only the second time that a degree has been granted on the basis of a UFO-related theme. He says that initially he was excited at the thought of extraterrestrial contact but says that his years of research have led to a better understanding of the ETs’ motivation. He describes it as:
… a clandestine programme of physiological exploitation by one species of another for an alien agenda. I dislike what the phenomenon does to the lives of individual abductees, and I like even less the changes that the abductors intend for the society in which the abductees live.
I fully understand the fringe position that I occupy within the UFO research community, but I have, unfortunately, not found an alternative theory to account for the data.
… I confront the subject with dread. Studying its motivations results in my anxiety. I find myself in the position of having spent my entire adult life studying a phenomenon that I have come to abhor. I desperately wish I could say otherwise.[24]
Jacobs should be congratulated for his honest and candid assessment. His conclusions have put him at odds with many of his peers. One gets the impression that he would be happy to find the truth and a genuine solution to the abduction scenario. He has founded the International Center for Abduction Research (ICAR) and has written two books, Secret Life (1992) and The Threat (1998).
John Mack was a professor of psychiatry at prestigious Harvard University, and founded the Program for Extraordinary Experience Research (PEER). Mack claimed he was initially a skeptic and that he initially did everything he could to look for other root psychological causes, such as childhood abuse.[25]
In 1990, he met veteran abduction researcher Budd Hopkins and began working with experiencers, or abductees — over 100 of them were interviewed by Mack over the next few years. After what he described as a thorough psychoanalysis of these people, Mack concluded that they were solid citizens and of sound mind. He became convinced that something important was going on. It should be noted that Mack was already a Pulitzer Prize winner for his biography on T.E. Lawrence. However, like Hopkins, Mack became a true believer, and his fame grew with the publication of his best-selling 1994 book Abduction: Human Encounters with Aliens, for which he received a $200,000 advance.
It is said that this was not the first time Mack had flirted with the fringe of psychiatry. Douglas Jacobs, an assistant professor of psychiatry at Harvard, who has known and admired Mack professionally since 1975, commented:
His whole career has been about blazing trails… . There are people who think he’s an embarrassment to Harvard, that he’s gone off the deep end… . Many of my colleagues have rejected John Mack’s research outright.[26]
Mack built up a thriving business around his abduction research. He published further books, and received considerable financial advances for his publications. This, say some, caused him to lose his objectivity, and many skeptics have cast doubt on his methods of gathering evidence, particularly his hypnosis sessions (discussed later).
Like UFO phenomena, abduction theories lack a “smoking gun”; that is, physical evidence to substantiate the claims of abductees. Hardened skeptic Philip Klass comments:
If you assume that we do have extraterrestrial visitors who are engaging in crossbreeding and that they are very advanced, why don’t they abduct Olympic athletes? … And why is it that not one person who claims to have been aboard a flying saucer has ever brought back a paper clip or cigarette lighter or some other souvenir?[27]
Mack would have loved to have physical evidence. What abduction researcher wouldn’t? But he defended his research by saying:
If someone did bring back an artifact, though, the debunkers would just argue over its pedigree… . I’m not trying to prove this with physical evidence. I take the whole package. These abduction accounts are so congruent among healthy people, from all over the United States — people who are not in touch with each other, who have nothing to gain and everything to lose by telling their stories.[28]
Mack’s observations are very valid. Years of research led him to a conclusion similar to that of other researchers, namely that the aliens are interdimensional, from another reality or spiritual realm. However, despite their being from a spiritual (a presumably non-physical) realm, Mack agreed that there was a real breeding program being conducted by these entities:
Now, the effect of that is … in a number of abductees — not just people I see, but the ones Budd Hopkins and other people see — is to produce some kind of new species to bring us together to produce a hybrid species which — the abductees are sometimes told — will populate the earth or will be there to carry evolution forward, after the human race has completed what it is now doing, namely the destruction of the earth as a living system. So it’s a kind of later form. It’s an awkward coming together of
a less embodied species than we are, and us, for this evolutionary purpose.[29]
Once again, we can see the reference to evolution — that these beings have masterminded, or have been overseeing, human evolution. But what exactly is a “less embodied species?”
Are they spirit beings?
John Mack provides further insight into the form of these beings.
It’s both literally, physically happening to a degree; and it’s also some kind of psychological, spiritual experience occurring and originating perhaps in another dimension. And so the phenomenon stretches us, or it asks us to stretch to open to realities that are not simply the literal physical world, but to extend to the possibility that there are other unseen realities from which our consciousness, our, if you will, learning processes over the past several hundred years have closed us off.[30]
What Mack is saying is that they are both spiritual and physical beings, and that our scientific age has closed its mind to the possibilities of these other existences. One is mystified as to how something can be ethereal, spiritual, or ghost-like — whatever it is — and physical (or potentially manifesting as physical) at the same time. Yet this is what the experts are suggesting. Although this sounds unbelievable, it may give us a clue as to the origin and nature of these beings (remember that they can appear and disappear, pass through walls, and so on).
Interestingly, the Bible has already recorded experiences similar to those that Mack describes (see chapter 9). One such occasion involved the founder of Christianity, Jesus Christ. After His reported resurrection from the dead, many witnesses saw Him, as He walked, talked, and even ate with them. The apostle Thomas doubted Christ’s resurrection, but soon became convinced. In John 20:25–28, the Bible records the event:
So the other disciples told him, “We have seen the Lord!” But he [Thomas] said to them, “Unless I see the nail marks in his hands and put my finger where the nails were, and put my hand into his side, I will not believe it.” A week later his disciples were in the house again, and Thomas was with them. Though the doors were locked, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you!” Then he said to Thomas, “Put your finger here; see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it into my side. Stop doubting and believe.” Thomas said to him, “My Lord and my God!”
Thomas was able to feel him, and yet Jesus could appear and disappear at will. The apostle Paul also recorded that after His resurrection, Jesus appeared to over 500 other people (1 Cor. 15:5–8),
not just a select few who could have conspired to make up such a story. The account of the resurrected Christ is one of the most well-documented and witnessed events in history. Yet, scientifically, dead men do not rise from the grave. Jesus appeared in a form that seemed to be physical, yet it had ethereal qualities, according to the biblical testimonies. His body had been transformed in preparation to go to another place. Notably, Jesus himself said that He came from elsewhere:
… I am from above. You are of this world; I am not of this world (John 8:23).
And,
My kingdom is not of this world… . But now my kingdom is from another place (John 18:36).
If we are to take the Bible at face value, it suggests that Jesus was, and is, a visitor from another dimension — and one who may give us some insight into this phenomenon, this other dimension or reality, as Mack calls it. Moreover, it may lead us to discover the origin of the alien beings who are supposedly abducting people. In fact, the Bible frequently talks about other beings, such as angels, who reflect the same bodily characteristics that Mack describes.
Many in the pro-UFO lobby regard Jesus as an extraterrestrial visitor who was on the same “spiritual” mission as the current ET visitors. Cultists — such as Billy Meier and Rael, who claim to have met Jesus in His flying saucer — say they believe this. Many of these same UFO cultists also believe the Bible’s claim that Jesus will return to the earth again. Christians call this event the Second Coming or Second Advent.
However, the Bible clearly indicates that Jesus did not need a flying saucer to travel, nor did He even pretend to have one. It tells of His ascension to heaven in Acts 1:9–11.
He was taken up before their very eyes, and a cloud hid him from their sight. They were looking intently up into the sky as he was going, when suddenly two men dressed in white stood beside them. “Men of Galilee,” they said, “why do you stand here looking into the sky? This same Jesus, who has been taken from you into heaven, will come back in the same way you have seen him go into heaven.”
The Bible says that one of the ways that the world will recognize the real Jesus Christ is that His return will be in the same manner in which He left (note, there is no description of a craft of any kind — in the description of such an important event, surely a craft would have been mentioned). In addition, He will still bear the scars of his crucifixion as a further demonstration of His true identity.
In the aforementioned passage, the two people who appeared in white were angels. These are likewise beings that the Bible records as being able to manifest in and out of our reality. Note also that when manifesting in human form, they were recognized as men. This is a consistent feature of the angels that the God of the Bible sent on missions, and they were recorded as male in appearance throughout the thousands of years of history in the Old and New Testaments. We shall look at this in greater detail in chapter 8.
Non-supernatural explanations
The concept that aliens are traveling millions of light-years to stealthily abduct human beings has little appeal for most thoughtful persons, regardless of their background. But the idea that spirit beings are appearing from another dimension is totally abhorrent to atheistic, materialist skeptics. Quite simply, it doesn’t fit within their world view, which says that such things must have a naturalistic explanation.
Probably their most common view is that alien abductions are the psychological manifestations of the human mind, and that researchers like Hopkins, Jacobs, and Mack were complicit in perpetuating the delusions.
One of those views is called the “The Psycho-Social Theory;” that is, the aliens originate in the psychology of the individual and take their shape from social factors.[31] Debunker and psychologist Dr. Robert A. Baker says:
Raised on a steady diet of Star Wars, Star Trek, and The X-Files, and aided by wishful thinking, pseudo-science and pop-psychology, the average citizen was ready to be persuaded that the truth was, indeed, “out there” and that an evil and conspiratorial government was denying him and her their “right to know.”[32]
Some researchers tried to prove that abductees were typically “fantasy prone” or even “encounter prone,” suggesting that UFO events were likely to be experienced by some people more than others. The idea is that a certain percentage of the population is unable to separate inner fantasies from reality. Scientific testing has been unable to establish either of these theories, and they are not widely regarded today. Some have even suggested that the abduction experience resembles “birth trauma” and that the experiencer is subconsciously revisiting it. Research is also being done to understand the effect of magnetic fields on the temporal lobes of the brain, with the claim that it produces feelings and images similar to abduction experiences. One wonders, though, where the magnetic fields might come from when lying in bed at night.
It appears that skeptics have a multitude of psychological explanations, but one of the more popular ones is the idea of “sleep paralysis.” Dr. David J. Hufford defines this as:
… a period of inability to perform voluntary movements, either when falling asleep or when awakening, accompanied by conscious awareness. This condition has been ascribed both to hypnagogic [in the process of falling asleep] and hypnopompic [waking up] states.[33]
It is claimed that while in either of these states, hallucinatory images can be formed in one’s mind, which can be recalled later. Hufford claims that as many as 15 percent of the general population could have experienced this paralysis, and it has
been estimated by some that as many as 50 percent of abduction cases could be explained by this phenomenon. One of the strongest evidences for the sleep paralysis explanation is that most abductions occur at night and while people are in bed.[34] The similarity of descriptions, such as the presence of others in the room, or feeling as if one is floating out of the room, suggests that sleep paralysis may well explain many episodes of abductions. But the sleep paralysis theory fails to account for the in-depth, fine details of the interaction between humans and these strange beings in many instances. In short, how could a barrister in Birmingham have exactly the same experiences and receive the same messages as a bus driver in Bombay?
There is no question that pro-abduction researchers are keen to foster the idea of alien abductions and, as we have said, pursue this view to the exclusion of all other explanations. They might claim that polls suggest that 3 or even 4 percent of the general population have been abducted, and that this many people can’t be delusional. One such poll that fosters this idea is the oft-quoted “Roper poll.” Based on this poll, a report by abduction researchers Hopkins, Jacobs, and Westrum (1992) concluded that aliens had abducted almost four million Americans.