‘Why not? You said I could hear it.’
‘That’s before
I heard it,’ Campbell said. ‘You’re not ready yet.’ He went to his desk, switched the tape recorder off, then sat down and scribbled something on the notepad and then looked up at Richard. ‘I want you to go home now,’ he said. ‘You should go to bed early. With a bit of luck, you won’t have any nightmares and you’ll get a good sleep. I want you to come back here next week. My secretary will give you an appointment. When you return, I’ll say something that will put you to sleep immediately, and the experience will be as painless as it was today. I’m taking you back gradually. I can’t do it too quickly. This means you’ll be coming back on a regular basis, for quite a few months. I don’t think this will bother you. In fact, you’ll probably want to come. At the end of the sessions, when all the pieces are together, you can hear what happened during those missing days. Okay? See you next week.’
Campbell pointed to the door and Richard left. The secretary gave him another appointment. He took the elevator down and stepped out into the street and headed straight for Baker Street station, melting into the jostling crowds. The journey home was uneventful. He changed trains at King’s Cross. The train was packed and the light stung his eyes and he felt very calm. He got out at Finsbury Park, feeling bright and exhilarated. There were drunkards in the long, tunneled exits that led up to the buses. Richard boarded the W7, bought his ticket and sat down, looked outside and saw darkness descending, the street lights flickering on. The bus took him to Crouch Hill. He stepped out and felt the cold. He walked along the dusty pavement, turned into a driveway, passed the parked cars and entered the apartment block, feeling strangely lightheaded. He opened the front door and closed it quietly behind him, then he went along the corridor and stopped when he came to the bedroom. Jenny was stretched out on the bed, fully dressed, her eyes open. Richard approached the bed and stopped there, saying nothing, just smiling. Jenny reached up for his hand. Their fingers locked and she pulled him down. Their tears mingled as they undressed one another and melted together. Richard poured himself into her. His remaining fear was drained away. He was surrounded by her arms, by the cradle of her thighs, and there, on that bed of flesh and bone, he slept the sleep of a child.
Chapter Eighteen
James S. Campbell, BA, MA, MD c/o Society of Medical Hypnotists 4, Victoria Terrace Kingsway, Hove Sussex, England
February 14, 1976 Dr Frederick Epstein
Aerial Phenomena Investigations Institute Massachusetts Avenue
Washington, DC
USA
Dear Frederick, Further to our telephone conversation of this morning, I am
enclosing a transcript of the most recent taped hypnotic session with
young Richard Watson. I am doing this with his permission. I should remind you again that there have been a total of eighteen
hypnotic sessions over a period of approximately six months, that the
editing of the transcripts has been undertaken as a means of eliminating
repetitions and verbal ambiguities, and that the complete tapes of all
sessions can be heard in my Harley Street office upon your arrival in
London. In the meantime, here is the background you requested. Richard Watson first presented himself at my office on 9
September, 1975, at the recommendation of a professional colleague
(the father of the young man’s girlfriend) and with the approval of his
personal physician. The patient had been suffering from persistent
nightmares, insomnia and acute anxiety, all originating in a three-day period of amnesia which apparently began on the evening of 7 March, 1974, when the young man, and an unknown lady who was driving him at the time, experienced what he believed was a close encounter with extraterrestrials. The alleged incident took place on the A30 on Bodmin
Moor in Cornwall.
According to the young man’s original story to both his doctor and
the Tottenham Court Road police (the medical records and a photocopy
of the police interview are enclosed), the incident began when the car,
being driven by its female owner, cut out and rolled to a standstill in a
desolate area between Bodmin and Bolventor. Almost immediately, a
strange aircraft described by the patient as ‘enormous’ descended
vertically and released two three-feet diameter flying disks. These disks
circled the car, appeared to be examining it by remote control, then shot
‘beams of light’ into it, allegedly stunning the woman, and then flew
away to re-enter the ‘mother’ ship.
Shortly after this (mere minutes) two larger flying disks emerged
from the mother ship and also circled the car. According to the patient,
these disks were piloted by strange creatures, they also shone beams of
light into the car, and those beams of light appeared to pull on the car
and draw it toward the mother ship. At this point the mother ship
descended, vertically, almost to ground level, appeared to split along the
bottom, and then the car, by mysterious means, was drawn up into it. The period of amnesia appears to have begun at this moment,
ending three days later when the patient awakened and found himself on
a hill in Dartmoor – approximately thirty miles from the scene of the
alleged incident. Neither the woman nor her car were to be seen. According to the medical report, the patient could remember
nothing of his ‘missing’ three days, but was suffering numerous
nightmares, all of which were obviously related to the period
immediately prior to the beginning of the amnesia. As a consequence of
the amnesia, or of the alleged incident itself, the patient became
alcoholic, suffered either insomnia or nightmares, developed severe
headaches and skin inflammations (usually around the face and neck)
and also succumbed to acute depression and anxiety.
Regarding this, it is to be noted that the young man’s physician
described him as being, prior to the incident, highly intelligent,
emotionally stable, and imaginative.
The patient was, at the time of the incident, a student at the
Hornsey College of Art in North London, where he was studying to be a
graphic designer, but he dropped out shortly after the incident and is
now living off what you Americans call ‘Welfare.’
According to the police, young Richard reported the incident about
a week after it allegedly occurred. According to Richard himself (a story
repeated under hypnosis), he was held in the police station all night and
then interviewed, the following morning, by two men in plain clothes
who claimed they were from a government data department. Also,
according to Richard’s conscious and unconscious statements, the men
who interviewed him told him that they had already located the female
driver of the car, that she had denied the whole incident, and that she
described Richard as being extremely drunk when she dropped him off
near Bodmin. Richard was, in fact, drunk at the time, but insisted, even
under hypnosis, that the incident had actually occurred and that the
woman had been a witness to it.
It was shortly after the interviews with the police and government
officials that Richard, obviously depressed and less confident about the
reality of his experience, began to develop the headaches and skin
inflammations. As you can judge from the transcripts, the skin
inflammations might well be psychosomatic manifestations of the ‘burn
mark’ on his neck which he believes was caused by one of the so-
called
extraterrestrials.
For the following sixteen months Richard continued suffering the
nightmares and attendant insomnia, and subsequently his drinking
increased. During this period he was regularly seeing his doctor for
unsuccessful treatment of the headaches and skin inflammations.
Dissatisfied with Richard’s progress, his doctor recommended
psychiatric treatment, which Richard was reluctant to undertake. Then,
in late August, 1975, his girlfriend’s father, my friend and colleague Dr
Robert C. Parker, recommended that he come to me for hypnotherapy.
The first session was, as I have stated, on 9 September, 1975, and there
were eighteen further sessions, the most recent being on 10 February
this year.
The reality or nonreality of UFOs is hardly my province; I
therefore centered my treatment on the patient’s anxiety reaction to the
amnesia which formed part of the alleged experience. Since Richard had obviously developed a strong aversion to the thought of reliving the experience, I was forced to attempt a penetration of the amnesia by taking him gradually through the three prime stages of hypnotism: light,
medium and heavy, the latter being a state of somnambulism. The treatment has so far been successful only to a limited degree.
As you will notice when you read the transcript of the most recent
hypnotic session, there is a point beyond which the patient simply
refuses to go – and to try to force him to do so could be dangerous. Whether the amnesia is a means of obliterating a real experience or
an extremely painful fantasy is, in a certain sense, immaterial; what
matters is that the memory appears to be real to the patient and that the
climax of the experience, or hallucination, was obviously traumatic. It is
therefore to be noted that in the period between the last two hypnotic
sessions – during which I attempted by suggestion to break down the
patient’s resistance to a total recall – his mental and physical condition
have degenerated, with a full return of the headaches and skin
inflammations. These symptoms have naturally led to a return of the
patient’s former acute anxiety.
This regression, brought about by the patient’s fear of a total
recall, has so far made me reluctant to use Sodium Amytal or Pentothal
to facilitate the breakthrough. However, should such a breakthrough fail
to occur during the forthcoming hypnotic session, which is scheduled
for tomorrow, I feel that these alternatives will have to be risked. Since the events leading up to the period of amnesia are detailed in
the enclosed police and doctor’s reports – and since these events have
been corroborated by the patient’s recall under hypnosis – the attached
transcript covers only the most recent hypnotic session, during which
the patient finally recounted what happened during the period of
amnesia. As you will note, there is a point beyond which the patient still
refuses to go.
I look forward to seeing you upon your arrival here in London. Yours fondly,
James S. Campbell
PATIENT: Richard Alexander Watson AGE: 19 yrs. 7 mths.
SYMPTOMS: Nightmares, attendant insomnia and acute anxiety centered around a three-day period of amnesia.
HISTORY: See attached police and medical reports, both released unofficially and in confidence.
DOCTOR: James S. Campbell
SESSION 18/February 10, 1976
DOCTOR You are relaxing, relaxing, you are very relaxed. You are sleeping, deep sleep, sleeping deeper, very deep. You are sleeping, very comfortable, relaxed, very relaxed, you are deeper and deeper in sleep, very comfortable, deeper. You are relaxed and comfortable. You are deep, deep in sleep. You are relaxed and you will remember everything and you will answer my questions.
RICHARD
Yes.
DOCTOR
All right, Richard. You are going back to the evening of March 7, 1974. You are going back now.
RICHARD
Yes.
DOCTOR
Do you know where you are?
RICHARD
I am in the car. The woman is beside me. The car has stopped… a roaring sound… a humming… I don’t know… And the light… Oh, my God, it’s all white! The whole sky is exploding!
DOCTOR
It’s all right. It won’t harm you. Calm down. Relax. You can see it. Are you all right? Can you see it?
RICHARD
Yes.
DOCTOR
All right, Richard, we’ve already discussed how you were given a lift by the woman in the Audi, how the car stalled in the middle of Bodmin Moor, how the sky became bright, and how the car was eventually drawn into the large saucer. Before discussing what happened inside the saucer –
RICHARD
I don’t want to remember that.
DOCTOR
Before discussing what happened inside the saucer, I would like to clarify some points about the previous period. I want us to do this, Richard.
RICHARD
Yes.
DOCTOR
I want to start with the emergence of the two smaller, three-foot diameter disks from the larger craft.
RICHARD
Yes.
DOCTOR
You said that the two smaller disks flew around the car as if they were examining it.
RICHARD
Yes.
DOCTOR
Why do you think they were examining the car?
RICHARD
They were humming. They made some whistling sounds… Not whistling… Strange, high-pitched beeping, almost like Morse Code. They made me think of computers. I was thinking of computers. I had the feeling they were examining the car, photographing it, making some kind of calculations.
DOCTOR
That’s a strange thing to think. Why did you think that? RICHARD
Because of the way the disks circled the car. Because of the sounds they were making. Because they shone lights into the car and the car began to shake and a beam of light fell on the woman’s eyes and made her act strangely.
DOCTOR
She changed when the beam of light struck her?
RICHARD
Yes.
DOCTOR
How?
RICHARD
She was very frightened initially. She seemed paralyzed with fear. Then the beam of light caught her in the eyes and she changed almost instantly. I remember this clearly. I was fascinated by it. The woman gasped and then shuddered, closed her eyes and settled back, then, when she opened her eyes again, she was remarkably calm. She told me not to be frightened. She kept saying, ‘It’s all right.’ She stared at me as if I didn’t exist, and she seemed almost happy. I thought that was strange. DOCTOR
Why didn’t the light affect you that way?
RICHARD
It didn’t reach my eyes. I doubled over on the seat. The light passed over the back of my head and just burned my neck.
DOCTOR
I see. Please continue.
RICHARD
Then the small disks flew away. They returned to the large object. Each disk went into a separate opening. Then the panels at each end of the large object winked out, leaving darkness.
DOCTOR
Describe the large object, the large saucer, again.
RICHARD
It was dark, but it grew bigger. It was surrounded by a glowing haze. The colored lights along the bottom started flashing on and off, and I could see the object itself very clearly. It was definitely solid. It appeared to be made of white metal. It had long, narrow windows running right along the front, curving back on both sides, as if running right around the whole object, as if the obje
ct was circular. There were people at those windows. I couldn’t see them in any detail – they were just silhouettes. They were moving to and fro across the windows, pretty small, faraway. That object, that saucer, was immense. At least three hundred or four hundred feet wide, two or three stories high.
Fine, Richard. Then the two panels opened again and two more flying saucers emerged.
RICHARD
Yes.
DOCTOR
Describe them, please.
RICHARD
They flew straight at the car. They hovered just above the ground. There was one on either side of the car and I saw that they were different from the previous ones. They were an awful lot bigger. About thirty-five feet in diameter. Their perimeters swept up to form a dome made of something like glass. There were people inside.
DOCTOR
That’s right. You mentioned two crew members.
RICHARD
Two crew members in each saucer.
DOCTOR
How far away was the saucer nearest to you?
RICHARD
The part of the circular perimeter closest to me was about three feet from the car. And the glass dome, maybe Perspex, about fifteen feet away, was just a little above the level of my head.
DOCTOR
You more or less looked directly at the crew members? RICHARD
Yes, I looked directly at them.
DOCTOR
You are relaxed. You are very relaxed. You have nothing to fear. I want you to remember. I want you to remember it clearly. I want you to tell me what the crew members looked like.
(The patient does not immediately respond.)
DOCTOR
There is nothing to fear. You are relaxed. Tell me what the crew members looked like.
(The patient moves into the present tense.)
RICHARD
Strange. They look strange. They look strange and I’m frightened. DOCTOR
There is nothing to fear. You are relaxed. What do they look like? RICHARD
No lips. A mask. It must be a mask. The cabin dome has a rippling effect, so it must be a mask.
DOCTOR
What else?
RICHARD
It has to be a mask. The nose is metallic. The nose is made of metal – it’s covered in metal – so it must be a mask.
DOCTOR
Go on.
RICHARD
The eyes are just slits. They seem a bit Oriental. I think they’re slits, but this could be the rippling effect again. They seem Oriental. DOCTOR
GENESIS (Projekt Saucer) Page 31