UFO Abduction
During the 1980s, ufologists began to give a significant amount of their time to consideration of accounts of individuals who claimed to have not just seen various forms of spacecraft, but to have been forcefully taken aboard them and forced to undergo various kinds of medical-like procedures, the most typical being different types of body probes. The UFO community had to deal with accounts of people having direct contact with entities in control of spacecraft. These were most often stories of friendly contact with extraterrestrials who brought a message of warning about the current trend of society which should be countered by a new awareness of the Earth's role in the larger world of spiritual realities. The people claiming these kinds of relationships with extraterrestrials were labeled contactees and largely dismissed by ufologists.
The first reports that fit what was to become the general pattern of abduction stories came in the 1960s. In 1961, a New Hampshire housewife, Betty Hill, reported a UFO sighting to NICAP (the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena). During the course of the follow-up interviews by NICAP investigators, unclear parts of the account came to the fore. Among these were a missing two hours. The sighting had taken place while Betty and her husband were returning home. They arrived two hours later than they should have. Eventually the couple went into psychotherapy and under hypnosis described their meeting with a group of beings described as approximately five feet tall, with a large hairless head, greyish skin, large slanted eyes, a slit mouth, diminutive nose and ears, and long fingers. They were taken aboard a spacecraft and examined. A needle was stuck into Betty's stomach. Before they left, they were told to forget the experience, and as the space-ship left the ground, their recollection of what had just occurred faded.
The Hill's story would possibly have been lost amid the vast files of UFO reports if writer John Fuller had not discovered the Hills and authored a book detailing the story that had been revealed in the string of hypnotic sessions. Fuller's 1966 book, Interrupted Journey, along with the condensed version of the story published by Look magazine, placed abductions on the UFO community's agenda. Admittedly, other accounts of forced contact with extraterrestrials had been reported to various UFO organizations. One, the story of a young Brazilian man, Antonio Villas Boas, who claimed to have been abducted in 1957, was published in 1965 in Flying Saucer Review, the respected British UFO periodical. It was given a thorough review following the publication of the Hill case. Taken aboard the saucer, he allegedly had a blood sample taken and was forced to have intercourse with a human-like woman, after which samples of his sperm were retrieved and saved.
Though two thoroughly documented cases were now on record, additional accounts were slow in coming. It was not until the 1970s that a series of cases attracted renewed attention to the abduction phenomena. In 1973, two shipyard workers, Charles Hickson and Calvin Parker, were abducted as they were fishing in Pasacagoula, Mississippi. Several others also occurred that year. Then in 1975 six men in Arizona reported that a coworker had disappeared as he approached a hovering UFO. Travis Walton reappeared five days later and began to recount his story of a forced encounter with the being aboard the craft. Again that year, other less notable abduction cases were reported, but equally important, a made-for-TV movie about the Hill case ran on NBC on October 20. An increasing number of cases were reported annually through the end of the decade.
As the abduction reports often included an element of memory loss, the encounters themselves were frequently years if not decades prior to any investigator hearing of the abduction incidents. Typical was the Betty Andreasson case. Though her reported abduction occurred in 1967, the investigation by Raymond Fowler did not begin until 1976 and his book recounting the story did not appear until 1979. However, his The Andreasson Affair (1979) and The Tujunga Canyon Contacts (1980) by Ann Druffel and D. Scott Rogo prepared the UFO community for a fresh consideration of the abduction stories during the next decade.
Abduction stories would take center stage in the 1980s. Leading the demand that ufologists pay attention to the abduction cases was Budd Hopkins, a relative newcomer to the field, whose 1981 book, Missing Time, recounted a number of abduction cases he had uncovered. He also noted the similarities in the cases: the gray humanoids who conducted the abductions, the physical examination that included the taking of blood or skin samples and attention to the reproductive organs. Hopkins' work called attention to the fact that there were a large number of cases with a number of similarities that could be quantified. Growing interest in the work reached a new high in 1987 when popular horror fiction writer Whitley Streiber issued a book, Communion, in which he told the story of his own abduction. The book became a best-seller and brought attention to the UFO community that it had not enjoyed since the days of the Condon Report (1969). That same year, in a catalog of cases issued by the Fund for UFO Research, folklorist Thomas E. Bullard reported the existence of more than 300 cases. As a result of the attention given to abductions in 1987, the number of reports would rise considerably.
These hundreds of cases, which have arisen from people independently of others or awareness of abduction stories in general, while varying immensely in details, tell a very similar story. The abductee's life is interrupted by strange beings and their will to resist is impaired. They are taken aboard a space-ship, sometimes levitation being an instrumental part, and are subjected to an invasive physical examination. Generally, the victim is forced to forget the incident and only years later, prompted by troubling emotions possibly manifest in nightmares, the victim engages in psychotherapy or hypnosis, during which the memory of the abduction emerges.
The element of memory loss coupled with the intrusive invasion of the body during the examination has given rise to comparisons of the abduction stories with a very similar story of Satanic ritual abuse in which under psychotherapy and/or hypnosis, stories emerge of people having been forced to participate in a Satanic ritual where they were raped. Subsequently they forgot the incident (s). Together, the abduction and the Satanism tales have created a new designation of the forgotten memory syndrome.
As basic research on abductions occurred, investigators sharply divided over their interpretation. Many ufologists, such as historian David Jacobs, followed Hopkins in arguing for the basic truth of the cases and saw the cases as the best evidence of an extraterrestrial presence on Earth. More extreme elements wove increasingly paranoid tales of government conspiracies and compacts with hostile aliens. However, most abductees have only sought to discover what had happened to them, and have been happy to learn that others have had a similar experience. Over time, they have sought for some larger meaning in this incident. Most investigations have concluded that there is no psychopathology in the abductee's life and that he/she has no reason to tell such a negative story.
Criticism of the literal acceptance of the story as indicative of extraterrestrial contacts begins with the large number of reported contacts. Given the present state of interstellar travel, there is more than a little doubt that the number of spaceships could or would come to earth to account for all of the contacts. The many examinations, focused on reproductive organs, also raise questions of the purpose of the body probing. What is to be gained? Also, the stories, while supported by their consistency, are quite free of independent supporting evidence. In many cases, related to accounts of incidents far in the past, evidence may have been lost. But over all, there has been little collaboration. Some hoped for supporting evidence in items implanted in the bodies of contactees, but such foreign items discovered in abductees' bodies have proved to be purely mundane in nature. The lack of supporting evidence for the tales again emphasized the similarity of abduction and Satanic abuse stories.
Others, both supportive and critical of the abductees, have adopted alternate interpretations. Some UFO debunkers, led by tradition critic Philip Klass, have dismissed the abduction stories as either hoaxes or fantasies. Some psychologists have supported a purely psychological interpretation. The most appealing explanation, in that it also accounts for the very similar Satanic abuse stories, grows out of the definition of the forgotten memory syndrome. This theory suggests that the abductee has experienced a real trauma, usually sexual abuse during his/ her childhood, but during attempts to recover the memory, a story is constructed that both confirms the trauma but also disguises it either in a Satanic cult or spaceship.
During the 1990s, an additional significant factor was added to the abduction stories—they began to merge with the contactee stories. Whitley Strieber called attention to this aspect of abduction stories in the sequel to Communion, Transformation: The Breakthrough (1988). In the latter volume, Strieber told of a series of contacts with the "Visitors" that began in childhood and his growing belief that their intrusion into human life was essentially benevolent. He was eventually joined in this appraisal by Leo J. Sprinkle, who had been conducting annual gatherings for contactees each summer at the University of Wyoming. As abductees joined the gatherings, over time, he discovered the boundaries between their stories blurring. In like measure, psychiatrist John Mack also found the stories of the abductees whom he counseled also yielded to explanation when set in a larger context of personal transformation and changes in consciousness. They came to feel that the experience was best seen as a harsh but necessary lesson leading to change and spiritual growth. Both Strieber and Mack found a large audience in the New Age community.
One cannot speak of a consensus in the consideration of abductions, though through the 1990s, ufologists lost some of their focus upon the accounts, possibly due to the lack of new information. Research appeared to have reached somewhat of a dead end. Like other areas of UFO research, they have not led to hard physical evidence of extraterrestrials—a spaceship, alien materials, or an alien.
Sources:
Bullard, Thomas E. "Abduction Phenomenon." In Jerome Clark, ed. UFO Encyclopedia. Detroit: Apogee Books, 1999.
Druffel, Ann, and D. Scott Rogo. The Tujunga Canyon Contacts. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1980.
Fowler, Raymond. The Andreasson Affair. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1979.
Hopkins, Budd. Missing Time: A Documented Study of UFO Abductions. New York: Richard Marek Publishers, 1981.
Jacobs, David J. The Terror That Comes in the Night: An Experience-Centered Study of Supernatural Assault Traditions. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1982.
Klass, Philip J. UFO Abductions: A Dangerous Game. Buffalo, N.Y.: Prometheus Books, 1988. Mack, John E. Abduction: Human Encounters with Aliens. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1994.
Pritchard, Andrea, et al., eds. Alien Discussions: Proceedings of the Abduction Study Conference. Cambridge, Mass.: North Cambridge Press, 1994.
Strieber, Whitley. Communion: A True Story. New York: Beach Tree/William Morrow, 1987.
——. Transformation: The Breakthrough. New York: William Morrow and Co., 1988.
