Inconvenient Facts About Abductions
Here we have the last straw in my credibility with the “believers.” This will separate those who are serious from the dogmatic lapdogs.
In the course of researching an article, I stumbled upon an essay at the Committee For The Scientific Investigation of Claims Of The Paranornal (CSICOP) site written by Martin Kottmeyer. Entitled “Eyes That Spoke,” it discussed the Barney and Betty Hill abduction case and the effects of pop culture.
Kottmeyer argues that the broadcast of “The Bellero Shield” episode of the Outer Limits television series may have been the source for the Hill’s description of their suspected alien captors. Although the incident occured on September 20, 1961, the Hills did not seek help from psychologist Dr. Benjamin Simon until December of 1963. “The Bellero Shield” first aired on September 10, 1964. Barney Hill first described the aliens’ “wraparound eyes” in a hypnotic session on September 22, 1964.
Barney Hill’s first drawing under hypnosis.
Of course, while Kottmeyer merely suggests that the influence of the show may have had a strong influence on the Hill’s recall, and many subsequent abduction accounts, most likely CSICOP gleefully published the piece with the idea that this “solved” ALL abduction stories. I could not disagree more, but the inconvenient facts that Kottmeyer discusses point in the direction of a serious issue at the center of abductions. I daresay the book about the Hill case (The Interrupted Journey) has been digested and deeply ingrained in the minds of all UFO researchers who engage in hypnotic regression with supposed abductees. There is almost no way that anyone who is interested in the subject can put this template out of their minds when investigating extra-human encounters. As one researcher (a psychologist)–and one very sympathetic to the issue–told me, “Many of these people have little respect for or knowledge of the unsconscious.”
What may have occurred is that the influence of this particular episode and its subsequent dissemination in the abduction literature provided researchers and abdcutees with a convenient template for their experiences, whatever they were (and are.) I am reasonably sure that many hundreds, if not thousands of people may be latching on to this image to come to terms with something completely outside of their experience, if only to have a place to put it in their minds, and come to some sort of peace with it. For the “aliens’” part, it may be just fine with them that we do this. Perhaps they even influenced the minds of the creative people on the show, if only passively. I’ll go into the subject of “The Symbolic Dimension” in a later entry.
By the way, when I was a kid, this episode scared the living crap out of me for weeks after I saw it on a rerun!
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Dec 22 2006 
December 22nd, 2006 at 1:31 pm
If the abduction phenomena is primarily one of consciousness, and not nuts and bolts, then these cultural influences are easily explained as the result of human minds using familiar images and catagories to try and put cognitive frameworks around what are essentially transcendental experiences.
It is well understood in the realm of religious mysticism that Christian mystics see Jesus, Buddhists see Buddhist deities, Hindus see Krishna, etc. This is a similar attempt to use cultural templates to try and “make sense” of unfamiliar states of consciousness.
As Vallee and others have pointed out, it used to be fairies elves succubi demons etc, and now its aliens. Same explanation.
So it is not at all (as the CSICOP dullards would have it) a choice between abductions being real 3D events and their being pop-culture induced hallucinations. Rather, it is just more evidence that Jung had it right from the beginning and much of UFO/Abduction research (eg. Jacobs) has been barking up the wrong tree (the late great John Mack, who quickly understood the spiritual dimension of contact, excepted).
December 22nd, 2006 at 2:23 pm
Jeremy Vaeni recently asked me why I don’t think I’ve been abducted, given my sighting of not one, but two UFOs, missing time, a cover memory, and weird dreams –so weird I sought therapy. Basic UFO Abduction 101.
But I can’t, and won’t, say I was “abducted” because I didn’t see any aliens or entities, and didn’t experience being inside a craft, or having an examination, etc.
I could make that leap I suppose, but I won’t do it. It’s not honest, it’s not what I remember. (and, I have difficulty with the option that it’s literally aliens from outer space literally abducting humans — or if it is, then there’s a lot more going on behind that scenario.)
I am still of the opinion that these events occur on different levels, or for different reasons; the whole Jungian - Vallee - Mack thing, as well as literal beings in literal craft. Either way, a lot of people experience a lot of very odd things.
Outer Limits; I loved that show, and I agree Greg, that episode scared me too! I remember it well…
Regan Lee
Orange Orb
December 22nd, 2006 at 3:04 pm
Another aspect to the “abductee” phenomenon is that many people who are attracted to the subject deeply desire to be able to claim they, too, are a part of it.
Case in point is another well known forum I spent some time viewing, much of which was dedicated to “abductees”. It was clear from what I would estimate were the overwhelming majority of participants that they coveted the claim of “I’m an abductee”.
One gal wrote a post saying that she felt certain aliens were observing her through her bedroom window at night, preparatory to or as a part of the process of abducting her. She said that she lived alone out in a fairly rural area, though she did have neighbors. She expressed deep certainty that these observations through her window were in fact taking place. Her post was aimed at the other forum participants, asking them what they thought of her experiences.
It was totally predictable that she was deluged by responses that hers was a clear-cut case of alien foul play. In short, she got the validation from them that she craved and in fact I would suggest KNEW she was going to get by posting on that particular forum.
I come from a professional background dealing with personal security. So I responded to her post by asking her a few questions. For instance, had she contacted the local police to see if there had been any reports made regarding strangers in her neighborhood, perhaps casing homes for robberies or rape? Did she have an alarm system installed in her home, and if so, was she consistently arming it each night? Had she checked with neighbors to see if any of them had noticed anyone around her house or around her neighborhood in general, poking about in a way that didn’t seem quite right? Or had she gone to any of her neighbors and expressed to them her fears that there might be someone looking into her window at night, asking them to keep an eye out? I also suggested a few very inexpensive ways she could make her home more secure, as well as to verify whether there was in fact anyone at her window. I finished my entry by pointing out to her that burglaries and rapes, especially where a single woman living alone was concerned, offered a far more likely possibility than observation by aliens through a window.
Not only was I blasted by other forum participants, but this gal herself wrote a rather caustic response to me. Apparently I had spit on her sacred cow by even suggesting there could be any explanation other than ET.
It was blatantly obvious that this woman’s desire to be a member of the abductee club greatly outweighed even common sense precautions aimed at protecting herself from harm. Even those other forum participants ignored the potential danger she was in by completely focusing their answers on the one thing both they and she wanted to hear.
I’ve heard interviews with people claiming abduction who ask the question, “Who in their right mind would WANT to have an experience like I’ve had, and who would WANT to be stigmatized in the eyes of most of the world as one of those crazy flying saucer people?” And I believe some of them are sincere when they ask such questions, and they feel victimized. But if abductee forums are at all representative of the true feelings of the majority of abductees, then in my estimation have a strong desire to be members of the club.
If there is a legitimate abduction phenomena going on it gets buried in such a “wannabe” mentality.
December 22nd, 2006 at 6:06 pm
Three commentary posts in sequence above…in addition to Greg’s own headliner… and each one of them making telling points about the nature of the “abductee” psycho-emotional phenomena. Love this blog—you get people who actually THINK here, yet not in that knee-jerk CSICOP “automatically-anti” sort of way, NOR in the “our space brothers are here and have let me join their club” brand of credulous silliness.
And one of these above even refuses to be LED into “reimaginings” of things experienced….or not. Gotta tell ya, this is refreshing as hell.
By the way, I guess you’ve heard that CSICOP is..or has…changing/changed its name. I caught a blurb of that this past week.
Seems they have dropped the “COP” part of their name and are going with…how clever of them…just “CSI” now (this to try and appeal more to the public…whom studies show is enthralled with that letter sequence due to the popularity of certain tv shows). The new “CSI” seems now to stand for Committee for Skeptical Inquiry, named for the Skeptical Inquirer magazine. Seems that they want to use the “CSI” imagery of these clever, hustling, brilliant techo-science types working to get to the bottom of seemingly unsolvable mysteries. Oh sure.
December 23rd, 2006 at 3:50 am
Do we have any evidence that Barney Hill watched Outer Limits, or was a science-fiction fan of any sort?
All that imagery in the popular culture about bug-eyed monsters and the CSICOPs (or CSIborgs or whatever they want to call themselves) focus on this one thing? I guess they base it on the proximity of the dates. Invasion of the Saucer Men came out in 1957 and was redone for TV as Eye Creatures in 1965. Those critters had more grey-like eyes than the dude with that squishy button attached to his wrist. Ew! I too remember that episode well…
Half-perceived, half-created, as Yeats said. Jack Kirby did a story called “Face on Mars” in a 1957 comic book.
December 23rd, 2006 at 9:16 am
Kenn
Remember too the Tom Corbett Space Cadet View-Master story? Another early incarnation of the Face/Pyramids on Mars controversy.
December 23rd, 2006 at 9:31 am
I would hazard a guess that there is no way in the world to know if “The Bellero Shield” episode of “Outer Limits” was ever seen by either one or both of the Hills. None whatsoever. That this episode aired twelve days before Barney Hill described “wrap-around eyes” to his shrink is interesting…and a “synchronicity” that would amuse Carl Jung greatly…but it “proves” absolutely nothing (except perhaps to CSI-CROCK).
I’m sure this will all later become “established fact” by them, as are most of their “solutions” to strange mysteries (anyone out there on the crypto front ever seen another of those 12-foot tall Barn Owls that Joe Nickell said was mistaken for the Flatwoods Monster?).
What I look to see here is the same sort of thing that Allen Hynek said he saw happening with the Air Force in regard to UFO “identification” percentages. We have lots of stats on “identifieds” re: Blue Book records, supposedly showing what “was” and “was not” explained. And there is much ballyhoo to the effect that “even the small percentage that remained unexplained is enough to suggest that there is a real mystery here”. Yadda, yadda, yadda.
Yet Hynek stated that the REAL percentage of unknowns and unexplained was much higher that the AF claimed…because the “zoomies” regularly “cooked the books” on these stats.”Massaged” the determinations.
He said they’d take an incident and start evaluating it, and put forth a pure hypothesis on what MIGHT have POSSIBLY been seen. This, he implied, was almost always off-the-top-of-the-head CONJECTURE. This would constitute the initial evaluation report to ATIC.
Then he said the second draft of the case report…typically with NO new evidence to add to the interpretation…would DROP the speculative-sounding word “possibly” and replace it with “PROBABLY” , with, seemingly, no truly sustainable rationale for the word change. But the difference in the two words would constitute a considerable change in the implications of the event analysis. It would slickly remove the onus of pure conjecture from the thing and start giving it an undeserved air of “the sober analysis of developing fact”.
Hey, Hey, Hey! It’s a really great day! Semantic Evolution is underway!” (Sounds like the Ramones, huh?).
Lastly, Hynek would confide, the END report would say such that “It has been shown that…”, or “It has been determined that…” and then the thing that started out as PURE CONJECTURE…and never actually proved out AT ALL…would be credited as the
“fact”-finding “solution” to the inci- dent under review. And such would enter the AF stats list as “solved”.
This sort of thing is what started Hynek’s backing up from the conclusions drawn by Blue Book and ATIC and which eventually led to his split with them.
What this has to do with Betty and Barney Hill and “The Outer Limits” is that we have another one of those pure conjecture situations arising here that one can THINK “might have”/”could have”/”possibly” affected the Hills…but which can never be proved out in any way, shape, or form. Is it not then worth assuming that CSI-CROCK and others will take the old Blue Book route and soon turn THIS “possibly” into “Probably”, and then after that, “Absolutely and undoubtedly”?
I’m just going to wait and watch.
December 23rd, 2006 at 9:54 pm
Greg, I strongly recommend reading the following book, if you haven’t already. Its main thesis is that The Interrupted Journey created the alien abduction book genre, especially for those written not be abductees themselves, but by outside researchers (echoing your post above)
Alien Abductions: Creating a Modern Phenomenon by Terry Matheson
Yes, it is published by Prometheus (and therefore is in league with the now ridiculously named CSI). But it is a good analysis of the various major abduction texts, and the importance of the particular research/author on the abduction accounts in those texts.
That said, I can’t stand the style of “it was in the media” explanations for fortean phenomena. Something need not be in the media to inspire a single case, and so many times this “just so” is suggested, it ends up being wrong due to lack of attention to the chronological or other details.
Anyway, take a look at Matheson’s book.
December 24th, 2006 at 9:58 am
What I’m basically saying here is that whatever the actual nature of the phenomenon, cultural and psychological influences have a great effect on whatever it is that is happening in abductions. As Bill says, there is pressure to SOLVE a case with ANY answer. As Raven says, there is peer pressure, even if those peers may be off the mark. Finally, there is the mind’s own “pressure” to put an extraordinary experience in some sort of mental “box” so that it (and you) can go on with life.
There is a great paragraph in Joe McMoneagle’s book “Mind Trek.” He theorizes (and I agree with him) that whatever is out there in “reality” has been processed to conform to conscious expectation before you’re even aware of what you are perceiving. Before that, if it is unexpected, the subconscious is furiously shaping and stuffing whatever it is that comes in from your senses into the proper “box.”
What happened to the Hills? I’m not sure, but Kottmeyer suggested that Barney Hill at least might have seen the Outer Limits episode. What I was suggesting was that maybe he didn’t even need to have seen it for the meme to enter the collective subconscious through him, Dr. Simon, and Betty. It’s just a wild theory, but we have to chip away at dogma wherever we find it, and on this site we are concerned mostly with the UFO phenomena.
If we have no “aliens” to ask about this, at least on demand, we’ve got to use the tools in our box, even if they are rarely used tools. They may turn out to be one of the keys to opening up the mystery to better understanding.
December 28th, 2006 at 12:10 am
[...] 9) September 19, 1961 - Hill Abduction On a drive home from Montreal, Barney and Betty Hill sighted a strange light in the sky near Lancaster, New Hampshire. After hearing a “beeping” sound, they felt dizzy and disoriented, but continued the rest of their trip. Upon arriving at home in Portsmouth, they found that the trip had taken almost 2 hours longer than it should have. After months of lost sleep, ulcers, and unrelenting nightmares, they sought help from a Boston psychologist. What was revealed under hypnosis was to affect the Hills and the entire abdcution phenomenon forever (see post for details.) [...]
January 3rd, 2007 at 2:15 pm
This is a great thread!
I’m an abductee. I don’t mind writing that but I won’t say it to you in person. I won’t wear it as a badge of anything and I will more than likely misdirect you in conversation if the subject ever comes up or just defer to this one amazing UFO sighting I had early on. It is an embarassing subject because I know (or presume to know) what Joe Blow’s response will be: “Are ya nuts or putting me on?”
When I meet alleged abductees I don’t give them the benefit of the doubt. I generally feel uncomfortable believing anyone who wears it on their sleeve. I have met the character types some of you are referring to. Add to them the number of people who have replaced “creek in the floor” with “ghost” and then ghost with “aliens” and you’ve got the same problem in the abduction field that you have in the UFO field: a far larger percentage of frauds and misidentifications than the real thing.
So what is the real thing? And who is to say what that word “real” means anyway? Me. I am. I mean you’re not gonna do it, right? So I elect me. Here’s what’s real: alien abduction is a hard nut to crack precisely because it is both nuts-and-bolts and something to do with consciousness. It may be that ultimately whatever these beings are doing involving consciousness falls under the nuts-and-bolts category, we just haven’t the science to understand it yet.
Compounded with that is the added layer of the subject with his/her cultural and personal interpretation of what’s taking place. Just because there is a subjective response to it, interpretation of it, does not mean that there’s nothing objectively happening. Not being able to see ships in the water didn’t mean the Spaniards were a figment of the Mayan’s imagination. Mel Gibson’s, certainly, but not the native peoples’.
I’ve toyed with this notion that there are not individual beings abducting me–that it’s either all in my head or perhaps some invisible god-like entity that has the ability to appear and act like people. If I’m gonna believe that based on nothing I might as well believe it’s aliens, though, right?
Here’s the thing–here’s where I get to judge and be an authority figure on this, if only in my blog: I have had vivid dreams. I have had visions not unlike what’s described with remote viewing. I have had waking dreams, the illusion of my mother walking into my bedroom, sitting on the bed, and saying goodbye before going off to work. I have had abductions. I have currently, and ever-presently, some seemingly other energy in my body that acts as if a cohabitation or possession by someone who knows martial arts and gnostic-type stuff. It’s been evolving in me since early 2001.
Hang with me on this, here….
I have also had multiple-witness UFO sightings. One was spectacular and if everything else ends up being a new form of schizophrenia, I’ll always know that in spite of myself THAT was real.
So add all that up, assume I’m not lying, and you’ve got a guy who can tell the difference between all of those experiences. They are not the same thing. The UFO stuff had multiple witnesses so that’s not all in my head. Two of the abduction-related scenarios had witnesses–my dad and my ex girlfriend, respectively. (Actually, she was knocked out through the whole thing and doesn’t remember anything but she was there.) The energy/cohabitation/whatever the F— it is is demonstrable at any time. I’ve put myself out there to play lab rat in a legit consciousness/brain research project via UFO Magazine and on the radio, but no one’s taken me up on it. If you know of anyone, please write me. I’d like to get to the bottom of it.
But I digress….
The energy thing is actually the reason I’m writing this uber-winded comment. See, it didn’t dawn on me ’til reading this here thread that that’s how I know I’m not interpreting some mystical state of consciousness for abduction, which is a popular hypothesis of late. It is all too possible that this energy is, in fact, a product of said mystical mumbo jumbo. It’s possible that there is an energy that lies dormant in humans until triggered by meditation or steady prayer or what have you. Once triggered, it expresses the language of the body (these martial arts/gnostic ritual looking body movements) that can only be expressed when our personas shut up. This would necessarily look and feel like another entity has taken control of the body, but that’s just an illusion.
I’m not saying that’s what’s happening, I’m saying it’s certainly a possibility. What I’m also not saying is that aliens are inside of me. What I’m also not doing is misinterpreting this energy for abductions.
You see my point?
That energy is the very thing you’re referring to when you say that abductions are the cold, scientific Western interpretation of the spiritual enlightenment process. THAT is what I–of all people–SHOULD be misinterpreting as aliens. But I’m not. Because it isn’t.
The aliens are.
Plus, didn’t, like half the U.N. watch Linda Cortile float out of a window in Brooklyn?–Come on, people! Snap out of it! Just because some fruit loops and wannabes have latched onto this subject like moths and groupies doesn’t mean there’s nothing more to the subject than the Old Hag Syndrome.
I’m just sayin’.
January 3rd, 2007 at 7:32 pm
“Valiens,”
My personal model is that yes, something other than human is interacting with us. Past that, it’s all open to each person’s belief system. Maybe that’s what them “aliens” want.
January 4th, 2007 at 7:15 am
Hi, Greg:
In terms of who or what these beings are, I agree. But are all aspects open to each person’s belief system? If I say I experienced nonhuman people in the same spacial sense that one experiences humans, can someone who didn’t have the experience say it’s an intelligent force projecting the illusion of beings–and both takes on the experience are equal?
I’m not saying that’s your take, mind you, I’m just asking because I’ve met a lot of people who share that intelligent force opinion, as if a Trickster archetype has somehow come alive and stepped outside of human consciousness and is now attacking its maker. I feel like that only makes sense in theory; when confronted with the real situation, it falls apart because you immediately know you’re dealing with real, live beings, whoever they are.
January 4th, 2007 at 1:16 pm
I recently commented that there seem to be three stages to anomalous interaction:
1) Interest
2) Belief
3) Knowing
I can’t presume to tell people what they are experiencing, so if or until it happens to me, I think on abductions, I’m hanging somewhere between #s 1 and 2.
January 24th, 2007 at 12:38 am
[...] In comments to another post, I posited a three-step echelon of reaction to the anomalous. Perhaps they are more akin to categories: [...]