The Andreasson Affair

by Raymond E. Fowler

  It is especially unnerving to realize that the glasslike chairs in the half-cylinder room were shaped to the stature of a human body. The tubes connected to Betty’s nostrils and mouth were designed for air-breathing persons. The entire operation seems to have been tailored for human beings!

  Indeed, according to Quazgaa, Betty is just one of many persons who have undergone such an experience. And before bringing this comparative analysis to an end, we must turn to one of the most striking similarities discovered during our investigation of the Andreasson Affair. It has to do with the needle and possibly implanted BB-like object in Betty’s nose.

  CHAPTER 12

  Hints of an Earlier Encounter

  Other cases seem to have parallels to Betty’s experience of having a needle inserted into her nose—for example, the Lehi, Utah, case mentioned earlier. When Aerial Phenomena Research Organization (APRO) hypnosis consultant Dr. Harder asked the abductee, “Where was the needle?” she replied, “I could see it coming toward me…to the front of me.” Dr. Harder tried unsuccessfully to break through an apparent mental block instilled by the entities that prevented any further details about the needles. APRO consultant Dr. Leo Sprinkle was more successful concerning a case at Fargo, North Dakota. Under hypnosis, the abductee, Mrs. Sandra Larson, described a portion of the physical examination administered to her by the aliens: “It was like somebody took a knife and made the inside of my nose sore.” Because her eyes were closed during the examination, she could describe only what she was feeling. When asked to describe the instrument being used, she continued by saying that it felt like a “little knife” placed in her nose.1

  One of our most provocative questions concerns the BB-like object at the end of the needlelike probe that was apparently removed from Betty’s nose. How did it get there? What was its purpose? The answer to this puzzle may very well be connected with the following case. It is of high significance for comparison purposes, because it has not been published outside of a certain circle of investigators who specialize in the study of UFO occupant reports.

  To the best of my knowledge, it is the only other report on record describing this particular procedure. The following is quoted from the investigators’ report on this fascinating case. (The witnesses’ and investigators’ names are on file, but must be kept confidential at this time.)

  Witness: And they released this little tiny thing, like a buckshot.

  Investigator: What did they release it from?

  Witness: From the needle.

  Investigator: What was the needle like?

  Witness: It was sort of like a long needle that was sticking in my side.

  Investigator: Was it a hollow needle, and then ejected through the hollow needle, or attached to the—

  Witness: I didn’t see the needle [i.e., when the tiny device was released]. They had my arm up over my head, like that, so I couldn’t see what they were doing here. And then they said, “I hope your body doesn’t reject it. With this implant we’re putting in there is going to come better communications and power, and we hope your body doesn’t reject it. If it doesn’t reject it, we’ll activate it in, uh, three or four weeks.” And then they turned me over on my back and said, “Now you’re going to sleep.”

  Was this object Betty described, then, an implant? And how did it get there in the first place? The answer seems couched in an astounding revelation by Betty during our last hypnotic session.

  At one time, Betty’s captors had mentioned to her where they had come from. But Betty couldn’t pronounce it. We attempted to obtain the phonetic pronunciation of their place of origin.

  Fred: In one of the previous sessions, you told us a little bit about a place where the beings came from. You had trouble spelling or saying it. Would you try once again to recall that?

  Betty: It’s a Z…[Pause] some S’s and a P in it.

  Fred: Are there more than four letters in that?

  Betty: There’s a lot more than that, yes.

  Fred: Do you recall it well enough to spell the whole word?

  Betty: I don’t know. They talk it funny.

  Fred: Can you say it the way they talk it?

  Betty: No.

  Fred: Mimic it?

  Betty: Uh, mimic it. Let’s see—um…[Attempts to pronounce it without success, sighs] I can’t do it.

  Fred: All right. Where did you get the information?

  Betty: He told me it.

  Fred: Who told you?

  Betty: The beings told me it.

  Fred: Do you know which one told you?

  Betty: [Sighs] There are so many of them.

  Fred: Was it one that you’ve told us about?

  Betty: No.

  Fred: Then when did you get the information?

  Betty: When I was there.

  Fred: When you were there?

  Betty: Yes.

  Fred: How long ago was that?

  Betty: A long time ago.

  Betty’s answer caused quite a stir in the room. It came as a complete surprise, although we should have expected it when she had described the removal of the object through her nose.

  Fred: You mean in 1967? Is that when you got the information? [25-second pause] Was it before 1967, Betty?

  Betty: Yes.

  Jules: It was! Do you remember how long before 1967? [25-second pause] Can you tell us any more about it? Maybe you can’t remember the date, but can you tell us any more about that?

  Betty: No.

  Fred: How do you know that that is the place where the beings come from?

  Betty: That is where they come from.

  Fred: I didn’t hear you. Did you say that is where they come from?

  Betty: Yes.

  Fred: Why do you—how do you know that? Why do you know that is where they come from? Because they told you?

  Betty: Yes, they told me. And I was there.

  Joseph: You went to the place where they came from?

  Betty: Yes.

  Joseph: Did you see other ships still there?

  Betty: Yes, there’s other ships there. They live in a gray atmosphere, hazy all the time.

  Fred: Can you recall anything about the occasion?

  Betty: Seems very gray and dark.

  Fred: How old were you at the time that this happened?

  At that point Betty became very upset.

  Jules: What are you upset about, Betty?

  Betty: I don’t like this place. It’s so dark and gray.

  Joseph: Which place? Are you back there now?

  Betty: Yes.

  Fred: You don’t know how old you are?

  Betty: No.

  Fred: Was it before 1967?

  Betty: Yes.

  Joseph: Are you frightened of the place?

  Betty: Yes.

  Fred: Would you like to leave that place?

  Betty: Yes.

  When we tried to bring her back to relive what appeared to have been a pre-1967 UFO abduction experience, Betty became literally terrified. Harold strongly suggested that we should not inquire further because it upset Betty too much.

  A prior UFO experience would solve several puzzling aspects in this case. First, in an earlier session, Betty inadvertently gave us information that could not have been obtained during the 1967 abduction. It hinted of an earlier incident.

  Ray: Betty, you indicate that the ship was sectioned off and had different levels. Somehow the lower section whirled, and the top section remained stationary. At times the top also moved—especially when there was to be a change in direction. What confuses me is, at what point during your experience did you actually see something like this? As far as I can remember, you have never seen the object in flight or at a distance.

  Betty: I really don’t know, Ray, when I saw it. But I know it.

  Moreover, psychic phenomena have played a part in the lives of many who have had a Close Encounter UFO experience. And the Andreasson family was no exception. Several months after her harrowing UFO experience of Januar
y 1967, Betty stood at the sink doing dishes. Abruptly and without warning, something took control of her mind.

  Betty: It was as if the infinite opened up to me. And it scared me to death, because I was seeing inventions so far advanced—thousands of years advanced—and yet it seemed just a pinpoint or scratch in the infinite. I was afraid ‘cause it wasn’t me controlling it. It was something else. As soon as I became fearful, it shut off.

  For several years after the incident, Betty received similar flashes of insight, some of which may have been connected with her UFO experience. One of these involved a being of light in her home: “I was lying there, and I turned my head toward my husband, who was asleep. And then, I heard noises like somebody opening and closing drawers. I turned my head to the direction and I saw this ‘light-being.’ This was a bright, illuminated being about four to five feet tall. It wasn’t fat or slim. It was just right. The hands were there, the arms, the legs, and the head, but it had no features. It was just all light. It leaped down the stairs.”

  One night in 1975, Becky had an experience of her own. As Betty tells it: “The upstairs kitchen of our house was not as yet finished. Only the bedrooms were finished which we were using. We were cooking and eating in the cellar kitchen until the new one was ready. Becky had been awakened by her new baby in the early morning hours and had gone to the cellar apartment to heat the baby’s bottle on the gas stove. Before going down to the cellar, she flicked on all the lights. Suddenly all the lights went out and huge glowing eyes peered at her from the cellar window. She screamed and ran upstairs, leaving the gas burning. There was a power failure that night only in our area. We learned the next day that the lights had come on by themselves, and the power company did not know what had caused the failure just in our area.”

  Hallucination? Imagination? Paranormal phenomena? Who can tell for sure? Prior to the UFO encounter recalled under hypnosis, the Andreasson family had considered these odd but still isolated events. Now they took on a new meaning, as did the several strange events that occurred when Betty lived at Westminster, Massachusetts, way before the 1967 UFO encounter.

  One evening in the mid-1950s, when Betty was very young, she was lying in bed. Suddenly she had a feeling that someone was staring at her through a second-story window. She was so fearful that she couldn’t force herself to look at the window. On the following morning, she noticed that small trees near the window were bent over.

  On an evening during the early 1960s, Betty had another strange experience. She was reading her Bible on the sofa when again she had the same strong feeling of being watched. Looking up slowly, she was startled to see a face staring at her through the window. The figure had red hair, red eyebrows, and black, piercing eyes. His gaze was fixed and appeared malevolent. She forced her eyes away from his hypnotic expression and looked back down at her Bible. Then she slowly got up and left the room before running to the front door and shouting to her father for help. (Her parents lived next door.) When her father arrived, the Peeping Tom had vanished. Betty said he looked like a normal person except for the penetrating black eyes.

  The final incident in Westminster—the only one recalled when something akin to a UFO was involved—occurred when Becky was about 8 years old, which would place it around 1964. One night Becky woke up to see a glowing yellow-orange ball hovering outside her bedroom window. The object had directed a narrow beam of light at her. Becky’s screams of terror caused Betty to rush upstairs to her aid, but by the time she arrived, the strange phenomenon had disappeared. Shortly after this, Becky developed the uncanny ability to automatically write page after page of strange symbols. The strange script was found to be very similar to the so-called spirit writing practiced by the Shakers, an early American religious sect.

  Strange incidents also occurred after the family moved to South Ashburnham. Whether or not they were connected with an earlier UFO abduction must remain in the realm of speculation. But the fact remains that a pre-1967 abduction would explain why the entities registered surprise at Betty’s having “parts missing,” the result of the 1965 hysterectomy. It would also explain the presence of the tiny object in Betty’s head. It is interesting to note that the entities made a puzzling statement just prior to its removal: They told Betty that they were awakening something. Perhaps this bristled object was a highly sophisticated monitoring device emplaced within her during an earlier abduction!

  This theory brings to mind some experiments that man is conducting with lower life forms here on earth. We go to great lengths to study habits, environment, and idiosyncracies. Consider the following analogy:

  A black bear is out rummaging for food in a heavily wooded area that he shares with a goodly number of other wild creatures. Sniffing the air cautiously, he cuts across a large field on the way to a river to fish for salmon. Suddenly, a foreign noise coming from above causes him to look up. Terrified, he sees a strange, noisy, whirring, birdlike thing hovering directly above him. He starts to run back to the woods with the huge “bird” in hot pursuit. Suddenly, a sharp, brief pain stabs into his side. He continues to run, but an inexplicable feeling of drowsiness overwhelms him. The bear slumps to the ground in a sound sleep.

  The “bird” lands. It is a helicopter, and out of it step several scientists. One still holds the rifle that has just fired a tranquilizer-filled dart into the fleeing bear. Carefully, a wildlife biologist tags the bear and places a radio transmitter collar and temperature probe about the sleeping bear’s neck. The scientists then board the helicopter and depart.

  Later, the bear stirs. Perhaps vague images of the frightening chase still linger in his mind. Most likely they are dismissed as a bad dream brought on by eating decayed rabbit meat earlier that morning. He is hungry. So he lumbers off to the river, where there are fat, migrating salmon just waiting to be caught.

  Seven hundred miles above him, a highly sophisticated satellite dubbed Nimbus wheels around the planet in a predetermined course. It signals the radio transmitter attached to the bear. It, in turn, begins to transmit data gathered by special sensors. Nimbus then re-transmits the signals to a ground radio station in Fairbanks, Alaska.2 Then the data is sent to Goddard Space Flight Center at Maryland, where it emerges as a computer readout.

  Meanwhile, the bear continues to fish, hunt, sleep, and hibernate. He remains completely oblivious to the fact that his bodily functions and exact whereabouts are being monitored by a super-intelligent species—man. How could a bear even begin to comprehend such a thing? Similarly, how could a human even begin to understand how a super-intelligent race might similarly monitor man’s doings? Could it be that the little BB-shaped object that the entities were “awakening” was a monitoring device?

  The entities knew where to find Betty at Ashburnham. They knew her name and told her that they had known all of the trouble she had been going through. This could be ascribed to the “mind reading” aspect of telepathy, except that the entities seemed surprised to find “parts missing”—evidently the result of Betty’s hysterectomy, which would, of course, have taken place after Betty’s first abduction.

  This also brings to mind a statement made by an alien to Betty Hill, another abductee, back in 1961. In the book The Interrupted Journey, Betty Hill is quoted in a conversation with her alien captor:

  But there are other people in this country who…would be most happy to talk with him, and they could answer all his questions. And, maybe if he could come back, all his questions would have answers. But if I did, I wouldn’t know where to meet him. And he [the alien] said, “Don’t worry. If we decide to come back, we will be able to find you, all right. We always find those we want to.”3

  Perhaps even now, individuals like Betty Hill and Betty Andreasson are being monitored by instruments far out in space. In any case, succeeding events were to prove that the entities were keeping a most unsettlingly close check on Betty’s activities.

  EPILOGUE

  A New Investigation

  So long ago and still my init
ial investigation into the abduction experience of Betty Andreasson in 1967 remains fresh in my mind. At that time in 1977, I was 42 years of age. Now, at the age of 80, I find myself writing an epilogue to yet another edition of The Andreasson Affair. So where do I begin? The best place would be where the book left off with Betty’s 1967 experience with the Phoenix. At that time she was told in no uncertain terms that she had been chosen to tell the world about the alien entities that had abducted her. How has this come to pass since that terrifying encounter? Let us see.

  Her experiences were first revealed in the original publication of The Andreasson Affair by Prentice-Hall in 1979, which made the New York Times Best-Seller List. Soon after that the book was reprinted by Bantam in 1980 and again in 1988. Bantam sponsored a two-week nation-wide book tour during which Betty and I appeared on radio and TV throughout the United States. The Andreasson Affair was reprinted in several foreign countries and movie rights were purchased by Universal Studios, which still holds the rights.

  This certainly was a good start to informing the public about her experiences, but it did not end there. The information obtained from the original investigation documented in this book was just the tip of the proverbial iceberg of Betty’s startling experiences revealed during my follow-on 17-year investigation into the UFO and paranormal experiences of Betty and her family. These were documented in my four follow-on books that were published between 1982 and 1995. Now here we are again with yet another reprint of The Andreasson Affair and also the beginning of negotiations with Universal Studios to obtain the rights for a movie. So much, so far, for Betty’s experiences being made known to the world. The rest of this epilogue is a summary of what Betty and her family have gone through since her 1967 experience. It will be divided into four sections that encompass the four phases of my overall investigation of Betty’s and Bob Luca’s families.