[...] It’s been 44 years and people are still wondering: is the Pascagoula

By www.stltoday.com 10-11-17

alien abduction all a hoax or were two fishermen really picked up by a UFO in Jackson County on October 11th, 1973? Retired Jackson County Deputy Glenn Ryder was working the night the call came into dispatch. “That boy was so upset, he was crying. He was scared to death and literally begging Charles not to talk to us.”

After 42-year-old Charles Hickson and 19-year-old Calvin Parker frantically told deputies they were just abducted by aliens, the two men were brought in for questioning in a room secretly rigged with a tape recorder. Ryder and other authorities left the two men in the room alone. “That boy was still crying, saying ‘don’t talk to them Charles. Those people are going to come back and get us. I’m scared. I’m scared.’ And I when I played it, I knew something was wrong.”
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Over the past 44 years I have interviewed more than 160 U.S. military veterans regarding their involvement in nuclear weapons-related UFO incidents. For an overview of their testimony please view CNN’s live-streamed coverage of my September 27, 2010 press conference, or watch my documentary film or read my book. Declassified documents relating to some of these incidents are also available. Many of the cases occurred at Minuteman Intercontinental Ballistic

By Robert Hastings The UFO Chronicles 8-8-17

Missile (ICBM) sites during the Cold War era. Typically, a two-man team of missile launch officers at an underground Launch Control Center (LCC) would receive an alarm on their missile-status console, indicating a possible security breach at one of the ten, widely-scattered Launch Facilities (LFs) they controlled. A two-man Security Alert Team (SAT) would then be dispatched to that location to investigate.

Usually, upon arriving at the LF—commonly known as a “silo”—the SAT team would observe a UFO silently hovering directly over the site at low altitude. Depending on the case, the aerial object was described as a disc-shaped, or spherical, or triangular, or cylindrical-shaped craft. After a few seconds, the craft would leave the vicinity, typically at high speed. On occasion, as revealed by former missile maintenance personnel, the functionality of the ICBM would be disrupted during the incident, whether deliberately or inadvertently, requiring lengthy repairs.

In every case reported to me over the years, the SAT team members were debriefed upon returning to base and sternly warned never to discuss the incident. Sometimes they were required to sign national security non-disclosure forms which stipulated severe legal penalties for violating secrecy. Often, each team member was quickly transferred to another base, without his partner, probably to prevent them from discussing their experience between themselves and spreading stories about it within their squadron.

Recently, one such case was brought to my attention which appears to be far more dramatic in nature, in terms of its immediate and long-term impact on the security personnel involved. Indeed, based on the available information, it seems probable that the SAT team members were actually abducted by those aboard the UFO and transported—along with their vehicle—to a location some five miles away, where they were eventually discovered by other Air Force security teams.

What follows here is the written summary of that incident provided to me by USAF veteran Mario A. Woods Jr. who was stationed at Ellsworth AFB, South Dakota, from 1975 to 1979, as a member of the 44th Security Police Squadron. The narrative has been edited for the purpose of brevity and clarity:

In November 1977, while assigned to the November Flight Launch Control Facility (LCF), I was a Security Alert Team member on the night shift—6:00 p.m. to 6:00 a.m.—paired with Sgt. Michael -------, who outranked me thus making him the team leader. I'm not certain of the exact date but Thanksgiving was approximately two weeks later and, as a newlywed, I was looking forward to being home with my wife. On that particular night it was clear and very cold and the ground was spotted in snow.

While at the LCF, I walked outside several times to stretch my legs, have a cigarette, and look at the stars. The clarity of the sky in South Dakota is like you've never seen. We were positioned just a few miles north of the small town of Newell.

On one occasion—I really didn't look at the time but I'm guessing it was around midnight—I noticed a very bright star that I had not seen before. I first thought it was a large helicopter or a B-52 bomber flying one of the low-altitude sorties they sometimes did out on the prairies, but it was not. It was hovering at about a 30-degrees above the horizon. The way it shimmered and pulsated led me to continue to watch it for some time, say 20 minutes.

I eventually walked back inside the LCF and made a comment about it to Sgt. -------. He laughed and said, ‘Sure’, whatever that meant. Then I told the Flight Security Controller (FSC), who acts as a go-between the response team and the Missile Capsule Crew Officers below ground. The FSC also keeps Wing Security Control (WSC) back at Ellsworth apprised of all activities on-site.

After perhaps 30 minutes, I walked back outside and saw no star so I thought, ‘Okay, it was a plane or helicopter.’ But as soon as I said that to myself, it lit up again, not quite in the same place but at the same elevation and more north. So, instead of being due east of my location, it was more northeast.

I thought for a minute and, all of a sudden, got the idea to flash the facility lights off and on as a signal. Why? I don't know. I guess because that's what is done at sea, from ship-to-ship. My father was a merchant seaman and I had sailed with him in my youth.

So, anyway, the LCF had approximately 15 sets of super bright spotlights, located on all four corners of the security perimeter fence and along the roofline of the main building—all controlled by one switch in the FSC's office. I walked inside and told the FSC what I was doing and he laughed at me. I think it was SSgt. ---- --------- from North Carolina. He said go ahead so I proceeded to flash the facility lights at this object, not knowing if it was anything unusual or just a plane or chopper doing night flying.

I was not following any particular sequence, like an SOS or anything like that. My SAT team partner, Sgt. -------, got curious and after I had flashed the lights six to eight times we walked outside together to look at the object. There it was, no change in its appearance or position but, a moment or two after ------- made some comment about the light, it went out! The night sky was clear as a bell, so I know it hadn’t gone behind a cloud. But ------- went inside, laughing at me. I somehow knew I needed to keep watching the sky and, just like that, it re-appeared to the north and seemed closer, as it was brighter.

I turned and walked in and flashed the facility lights six to eight times again and told them both about the object’s new position. Neither took me seriously. I then went outside one last time but the object was gone. So I went back inside, thinking how strange all that had been and feeling stupid about flashing the facility lights at it. I went into the day room and sat down to read or watch some TV.

At approximately 0130hrs we received a [Situation]-4 alert from LF November-5, which was the closest to our LCF and also closest to the town of Newell. Sgt. ------- and I donned our heavy winter parkas and cold weather gear and I placed my ditty bag in the F-150 pick-up police vehicle. I then went back inside to receive our USKAPP 55 code tables, weapons and ammo from the FSC and our safety briefing from the LCC crew underground. WSC back at Ellsworth was also contacted and our estimated travel time to and from the site was discussed.

A Sit-4 meant that the outer zone antenna on the missile site and the underground soft support building had been penetrated or had alarmed for some unknown reason. That was no problem as I had done this type of clearing and reset procedure many times at other locations.

We left the LCF and headed toward Highway 79. I was in the passenger seat and, as we were nearing the highway, I looked off in the distance and could see that the bright object was apparently near the missile site, which was seven or eight miles away. I immediately turned to Sgt. ------- and said, ‘Look man, that light is over November-5!’ He replied, ‘No way!’ but I could see his face and he was hoping not!

We didn't inform anyone about that on the radio, to the best of my knowledge, but I continued to view the object. As we approached Newell we made a right turn onto the road that led to November-5. As we did, we immediately saw the object hovering directly over the site. It made no noise and was a huge glowing, reddish-orange sphere. It was only 15-20 feet above the ground and it was roughly the width of a Wal-Mart building! I’ve thought a lot about its size and I think that estimate is fairly accurate. It was enormous!

Its surface was shimmering with the red and orange colors constantly swirling and churning. When I recently watched your documentary film [UFOs and Nukes: The Secret Link Revealed] there’s one scene where a [computer-generated image of a] UFO is hovering over the front gate of an LCF at Malmstrom AFB and its colors are swirling around. What we saw looked just like that.

We stopped the vehicle and sat some distance from the security gate. There was no radio communication as neither of us really knew what to do. As we stared at this thing—it seemed like forever—all of a sudden I could not breathe, I mean I really could not breathe! It was like pressure on my chest. I could not figure out what was happening and turned to look at ------- and saw that both his hands were on the steering wheel and he was looking straight ahead with a blank stare on his face. Some kind of glow was all around him and I noticed that suddenly he too was gasping for air.

I carried a three D-cell Mag Light, a huge flashlight by today’s standards but the best back then. All I wanted was relief for me and him so, for some reason, I rolled the window down and pulled myself out and sat on the window frame and flashed the light at this object until the suffocating pressure seemed to go away. Then, after 15 to 30 seconds, I slid back into the seat. I remember my M-16 weapon was positioned between my legs so I guess I grabbed it as I sat back down.

At that point I didn't look at Sgt. ------- as I was in some kind of daze. But I saw something like shadows on the right side of the vehicle and I have a memory of voices in my head, more than one, saying , ‘Do not fear’, over and over. I think I remember small figures, maybe five or six, walking toward the vehicle. Standing behind them was a taller figure who I think was in charge. Then I believe I passed out.

The next thing I remember—and it seemed as if only a minute had passed—was the crackle of our radio and someone saying, ‘November-1, what’s your status?’ I turned to Sgt. ------- and said, ‘You get that and I’ll strike the site,’ but he said nothing. He simply stared off into the distance so I picked up the mike and informed our FSC that we would begin the strike and were positioning the vehicle. There was a long pause and then he came back and said, ‘Where are you located?’

This response seemed very odd and I said something to Sgt. ------- but again he said nothing. I asked the FSC to hold on as I didn't see the facility lights that were normally on at night. I put the mike down and stepped out of the vehicle only to find that we were somewhere other than at November-5. My first step was into wet mud; even though it had been really cold that night and the ground should have been frozen solid, the entire area was soft mud and our vehicle was almost in the middle of it.

But to my right, just feet away, was a tall concrete wall of some kind. The sun was just coming up and I could see that it was a dam that held water in a reservoir. It turned out to be located north of Newell, and is called Newell Lake, quite a few miles from the LF. We were parked next to a road that went past it. That made no sense to me!

The radio came back on and we were told to stay where we were. Our radio signal had been triangulated—something I knew very little about—and then the WSC came on and told me that our sister flights’ SAT teams had been dispatched to find us. A back-up sister team reached us first and I was told to follow them to the edge of their patrol boundary where we would be met by our November-1 back-up team.

When their vehicle arrived, I started asking them questions about what was going on but they told me that they had been ordered not to discuss the situation with us. I again tried speaking to Sgt. -------. I kept asking him if he was okay but he still would not respond.

Then it hit me like a chunk of lead: We or I never went onto the November-5 site! I didn’t understand why at that moment but I was certain that we never got past the LF’s security gate.

Because he was still just staring into space, I moved ------- over to the passenger seat; he was not a large man and I was in good shape. We maintained [radio] security checks for the entire ride back, met up with the sister team and proceeded to November Control.

The Flight Chief, MSgt ----- ------, and Assistant Flight Chief, TSgt. ---- ------, met us at the facility for a debrief. Sgt. ------- was in a pitiful condition and I later heard that he couldn't tell them anything; that he made no sense at all. He was removed from November Control and assigned to base duty for some time. Me, however, I remembered everything up to hearing voices and blacking out and everything after coming to and standing in the mud. Everything: the craft, the suffocating atmosphere, flashing lights at the object, not going onto the site and, yes, thinking only minutes had passed from first seeing this thing to being somewhere else.

During debriefing, I was told that nearly four hours had passed and that six security police back-up Alert teams had been searching for us. I did fill out an AF Form 1000 UFO sighting report and wrote all I knew about that night and early morning, before I was allowed to sleep.

The next day, I returned to Ellsworth and was interviewed by the 44th Missile Wing commander. There was a guy in civilian clothing with him who I think was from the [Office of Special Investigations]. Then I was also ordered to take a urinalysis at the base hospital, and two skin samples were taken—one from the back of my right hand and another above my right eyebrow—as I was sunburned for some strange reason.

Back home, as I slowly came to grips with all of this, I began to have strange dreams of that night. Every time, as something was about to happen or show itself, a great dread came over me. I would awake in a pool of sweat and afraid.

Two weeks went by and Sgt. ------- came by my apartment, out of the blue, and we sat down and talked about the incident in front of my wife. She just laughed at us. But he said one thing I’ll never forget: He had been terrified during the incident but didn't know why, as he had heard voices, many voices, saying not to be afraid. But he wasn't in the vehicle when he heard them, he was lying down somewhere.

Then he said something that shocked me: He said he saw my mittens on the floor, next to where he was lying down, as he was hearing the voices. I reeled when I heard this! It meant that I was probably there with him and that we were no longer in the vehicle. I had not even thought about the mittens after that night—those heavy Air Force-issue gloves with open fingers, so you could fire a weapon—but, when he said that, I ran to my ditty bag to check and they were not there. I got shivers when I saw that. I can’t explain why I didn’t miss them.

One more thing: I have two small puncture marks on my skin that I can’t explain. They’re identical; a perfectly round depression with a raised dimple in the center. One is under my left armpit and the other is on my left foot, above the ankle. I don’t remember any time or situation when I could have gotten them. (Woods subsequently sent me photos of these marks.)

After a few weeks, I was removed from November Control and reassigned to Kilo Control near Sturgis, South Dakota. I had the sense that I could pick that object out of the sky, find it among the stars, even at Kilo—it made no difference where I was—but I never saw it close up again. But it was out there visiting all of our bases. We heard stories about other flights seeing things near the LFs on many occasions. Also, National Enquirer had heard rumors about UFO activity in our region and was patrolling our areas looking for stories. We were told never to speak with anyone about any of this so I never did, as ordered.

Sgt. ------- was transferred somewhere else a month or so after the incident. I found out somehow. I remained at Kilo Command, working with a different guy, Sgt. --- -------, as a SAT team member, then leader, and then FSC. Stories about sightings were all over the missile complexes, even reports of cattle mutilations; I once saw two of the dead cows myself while traveling to Kilo-1.

Later in the year, when Close Encounters [of the Third Kind] came out, the mailbox scene freaked me out so badly that I had to get up and walk out of the theatre. (In the movie, Richard Dreyfuss’ character, Roy Neary, looks out his parked truck’s window and sees a rack of mailboxes violently shaking. A moment later, a UFO that had been hovering over him directs a beam of light onto his vehicle.)

Having spoken with Woods a number of times, I consider his recollections of his experience to be credible if incomplete. I of course have his DD-214 service record, which confirms his presence at Ellsworth AFB in 1977 and his service as a missile security policeman. I am attempting to locate others who were present that night, to see whether any of them remember the events he describes and, if so, are willing to talk about them.

Also, although the technique remains controversial, I have arranged for hypnotic regression sessions for Woods, to attempt to draw out still-suppressed or long forgotten memories about the incident. For example, I am curious to know whether he can remember his SAT team partner driving them to the reservoir, in a dazed state following their sighting at November-5, or whether the UFO had actually lifted and transported the security vehicle to that location. And, of course, it would be interesting to learn whether Mario Woods’ memories of voices and small figures approaching his security vehicle might be augmented via the regression technique.

A follow-up article is planned, to update interested readers on this matter.
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A Twin Falls attorney reported that a "Flying Saucer" swooped down on his ranch south of here Friday night and apparently made off with a 400-pound steer.

By Nampa Idaho Free Press 9-10-1956 From Curt Collins

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PASCAGOULA - When Charles Hickson and Calvin Parker told the world in 1973 they were abducted by aliens while fishing on the Pascagoula River, few people believed them. Now after 28 years, it appears they weren't alone in their experience on that Oct. 11 night.

By Natalie Chambers The Mississippi Press 10-21-01

A retired Navy chief petty officer recently contacted The Mississippi Press about the sighting that he can't forget.

Mike Cataldo of Rotonda West, Fla., said he was on the pre-commissioning crew of the USS Tunney under construction at Ingalls Shipyard. Dusk was setting in as he and crew mates Ted Peralta and Mack Hanna were on U.S. 90 heading to Ocean Springs. Peralta was driving, Hanna was in the front passenger seat and Cataldo was in the back seat.

"We saw a very strange object in the horizon going from northwest across Highway 90. It was going pretty fast. It went down into a wood area and into the marsh. It hovered over the tree line, I guess, maybe a minute. We actually pulled off the road and watched it. We said, 'My God, what is that."' Cataldo said.

"We saw it, no question about it. We talked about it. Was it a shooting star, a meteorite? This was very different," he said.

Cataldo said the object looked like a large tambourine with little lights flashing on it.

"As quickly as we saw it, it just vanished," he said.

Cataldo said he had a second sighting minutes later, this time in St. Andrews as he neared his home.

"It wasn't as high up as we saw the first time. It was real," he said.

Cataldo said he rushed and told his wife what happened.

"I was almost hyperventilating. I wasn't shook up, but I was excited I saw this thing," he said.

The next morning, Cataldo contacted his executive officer on the submarine and made a report.

The following Monday, he contacted Keesler Air Force Base in Biloxi and left his telephone number, he said.

"My executive officer and crew members thought we were just lunatics, just whacked out," he said.

"It never came up again. Keesler never called or did anything," he said.

"It was the strangest thing. It was kind of scary," Cataldo said.

Cataldo retired from the Navy 19 years ago. He was last in Jackson County in 1974.

Cataldo said he has never met or talked to Hickson.

Hickson said neither he nor Parker wanted their story given to the media. Their only objective was to notify the proper authorities, the sheriff's department.

"I've had a few people who said they didn't believe it, but I've never had any ridicule and my family never had. That's one reason when this thing first happened to Calvin and I didn't want to talk about it because I didn't want to be called crazy. But it seemed to me we had to tell the proper authorities," said Hickson, 70, who lives in Gautier.

The rest is history.

Hickson said he knows other people saw the space craft but wouldn't come forward.

"They would have sure helped us if they would have said something," he said.

Hickson penned a book about the encounter, was interviewed numerous times by the scientific community and made the circuit at seminars on extraterrestrial. In 28 years, he never deviated from his claim of the occurrence behind the old Shaupeter Shipyard building on the Pascagoula River - even under hypnosis.

Parker, who was 19 then, had trouble dealing with what happened. He is now living in Louisiana.

"He's not the same man as before. It just ruined him," Hickson said.

Hickson described the three creatures that floated out to them as pale, ghostlike and about 5-feet high. They had crab-like claws or pinchers and rounded feet. He said they appeared to glide rather than walk.

Hickson said he was taken aboard the oval-shaped, well-lit space craft and examined with some type of "eye."

"Some kind of way they examined me. I've had a feeling ever since it happened that they know where I'm at all times and what I'm doing," he said.

"These things are robots. I didn't see any eyes. They had no indication of breathing. They didn't have a mouth. It was a straight slit. It seems they had something to do and they just actually done it. Took us back out there, put us down and they left," he said.

Hickson said he does not know how long they were with the aliens but he would like another encounter with them.

"When it first happened, I wouldn't go in the night by myself. I would have nightmares. My wife really helped me get through this thing," he said. "Now the fear is all gone. I want to meet them again and see if they will take me to their world. I believe if they do, they'd bring me back. Our whole world here is getting into a terrible shape."

Glenn Ryder, sheriff's department shift captain that night the call came in from Hickson, said it was a busy night, around 11 p.m. when Hickson called from a pay phone and was insistent on talking to then-Sheriff Fred Diamond, who happened to be in bed.

Ryder said Hickson then asked for the second person in charge. That happened to be Ryder. Hickson told Ryder he had something to tell but feared Ryder would laugh.

Ryder told him to go ahead and when Hickson finished, he did laugh.

"I told him to wait there and I would come and talk to him. He said he was going back to his house and gave me the address so I could come there," Ryder said.

"Calvin Parker was just hysterical. He was having fits. I took them in the patrol car to the sheriff's office," Ryder said.

Hickson and Parker were questioned extensively apart and then put in a secluded room together where a tape recorder had been planted to catch them in a lie.

"That boy (Parker) was really shook up. Charles was composed. The boy had just come down here from Jones County had always lived out in the country. He kept telling Charles on the tape not to talk to us. He said if (Charles) told them anything about what happened they would come back and get them," Ryder said.

"One thing led to another. We went to the site at Shaupeter, where Colley Towing is now. He showed me where it landed and picked him up."

Ryder said no physical evidence of a landing - burn marks or footprints - were found.

He said after the story broke calls came in from across the United States, England and Canada.

"They were pretty well convincing something did happen to them," he said.

Ryder said there were other calls fielded about sighting of a streak of light that night, but only Parker and Hickson reported being taken aboard the space craft.
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Serious UFO-related journalism has often been hard to come by via the conventional media, especially in the U.S., but recent events may encourage more credible reporting of the seemingly incredible.

Mike Cataldo, now long retired from the Navy, served in 1973 as a chief petty officer in Mississippi. Like most of the country, he was familiar with the Hickson-Parker report and never met or spoke with either man, but for all the years that followed he shared with friends and family another side to the story, something of vital significance

By Robert Barrow robert-barrow.blogspot.com 4-25-07

that he finally decided to impart publicly late last year. He tried to locate a reporter in Pascagoula who wrote the original UFO story, and eventually was put in touch with Natalie Chambers of the Associated Press.

Chambers' interview with Cataldo appeared in The Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal of October 21 last year, but it failed to make the coast-to-coast splash it should have, though even famed radio commentator Paul Harvey realized Cataldo's importance and devoted part of his Saturday, October 27 national broadcast to Natalie Chambers' shocker.

"When Charles Hickson and Calvin Parker told the world in 1973 they were abducted by aliens while fishing on the Pascagoula River, few believed them," her article began. "Now, after 28 years, it appears they weren't alone in their experience on that October 11 night." Indeed, at about the same time and in the same area as the UFO incident, Cataldo and fellow crew mates Ted Peralta and Mack Hanna were driving on U.S. 90, heading to Ocean Springs. Cataldo was in the back seat.

"We saw a very strange object in the horizon going from northeast across Highway 90," Cataldo recalled. "It was going pretty fast. It went down into a wood area and into the marsh. It hovered over the tree line. . .maybe a minute. We actually pulled off the road and watched it. We said, 'My God, what is that?'" Cataldo said the thing looked like a large tambourine with little lights flashing on it. "As quickly as we saw it, it just vanished." Some daylight still remained as dusk approached, so the men got a good look at the object. But Cataldo tells of a second sighting minutes later, this time in St. Andrews, as he neared his home. "It wasn't as high up as we saw the first time. It was real."

Almost hyperventilating when he ran inside to tell his wife, Cataldo knew he had to tell Navy officials. As a member of the pre-commissioning crew of the USS Tunney, under construction at Ingalls Shipyard, he reported for work the next morning and immediately contacted his executive officer to make a statement. After the weekend, he contacted Keesler AFB in Biloxi and left his phone number. However, if Cataldo expected tea and sympathy, he was mistaken. "My executive officer and crew members thought we were just lunatics, just whacked out," he told Chambers. "It never came up again. Keesler never called or did anything."

UFO researcher Kenny Young (Author's April, 2007 notation to this 2002 article: Mr. Young is now deceased) also contacted Cataldo following Natalie Chambers' article, also attempting - so far unsuccessfully -- to locate his two fellow Navy witnesses. Cataldo provided a few more details of the object, perhaps the most intriguing being that it "was less than half a mile away and looked as big as any big American airliner I've ever seen." He also confirmed that other motorists had slowed down to look at the seemingly inexplicable sky object. "We were the only ones on the road to stop and look at it though," he advised.

Importantly, Cataldo admitted, "I never knew of the Hickson-Parker abduction until days later. It happened on Thursday and it was not until the following Sunday that I saw the headline in the morning paper about two men taken aboard a flying saucer, I'm telling you I about died." He emphasizes that he can't be absolutely sure that his UFO and the fishermen's were the same, but the place and time were so close that the relationship must surely be taken seriously.
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Accounts of mysterious flashing lights in the sky, spacecrafts and encounters with “real” aliens reflect high levels of public interest in UFOs and the belief that there is “something out there”. However, many

theconversation.com 1-27-17

psychologists are less convinced, and think they can provide more down-to-earth, scientific explanations.

Belief in aliens has increased steadily since the birth of modern alien research in the 1940s and 1950s, following the news surrounding a classified US military project at Roswell Air Force Base, New Mexico. Surveys in Western cultures estimated belief in aliens to be as high as 50% in 2015. And despite the fact that it is considered rare, a significant number of people also believe they have experienced alien abduction.

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ROSWELL N.M. (KRQE) – Remember the teen who was caught last year for stealing the flying saucer that used to be on the outside of the Roswell UFO Museum? It was a prank caught on tape.

Cheyenne Cope krqe.com 1-19-17

You may be surprised at what kind of punishment he got for that dumb move. If you were thinking that teen probably got a slap on the wrist, guess again. KRQE News 13 has learned the judge sentenced him to up to a year in a juvenile facility.

Surveillance video caught him and two friends stealing the UFO back in March. It was sitting behind the museum after it was damaged during a blizzard when 17-year-old Newman Seely and two others swiped it and took off.

A pilot who disappeared nearly 40 years ago after reporting a UFO is one of the inspirations for the plot of the new television drama series The Kettering Incident.

By Carol Rääbus www.abc.net.au 7-11-16

While the show revolves around fictional mysterious disappearances in the Tasmanian bush, the disappearance of Frederick Valentich was very real.

Valentich was a 20-year-old pilot who went missing over Bass Strait in 1978, leaving nothing behind except a mysterious radio transmission.

Historian Reg Watson has been researching the disappearance for many years.

"I've looked at it for gosh, three decades," he told Leon Compton on 936 ABC Hobart.

"I have to say, in my opinion, he had an encounter with a UFO — and I don't say that lightly."
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Many claiming to have been abducted by a UFO have described it as a terrifying experience. But for one alleged Teesside abductee, what should have been an

By Ian Johnson www.gazettelive.co.uk 6-26-16

ordeal simply turned into a trip to Durham.

Data disclosed by Cleveland Police has revealed details of all the 999 calls made by people who think they’ve spotted a flying saucer.

And in one incident last December, police found a missing Middlesbrough man “safe and well”.

However he couldn’t offer an explanation about his disappearance as he had apparently “been on a UFO to Durham”.

And he wasn’t the only Teessider to have a close encounter in 2015. ...
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ROSWELL, N.M. (KRQE) – Police have made an arrest in the case of the flying saucer stolen from Roswell’s International UFO museum last week. They also say they are still looking for the two other suspects. Police say they were able to track down one of the thieves because of a phone call.

Cheyenne Cope krqe.com 3-28-16

The flying saucer that used to hang on the side of the museum was stolen while being stored behind the museum for repairs.

The museum’s security camera caught three people loading the spaceship into the bed of a red pickup and taking off. [...]
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ROSWELL, N.M. (KRQE) – Police believe they found the UFO stolen from a Roswell museum. However, they found the spaceship in pieces.

By Cheyenne Cope krqe.com 3-22-16

“We’re sad, we thought maybe we would get it back in one piece but doesn’t look like it; its in several pieces,” Karen Jarmaillio, interim museum director.

Police say they found what they believed to be pieces of the destroyed spaceship on the side of a road near West Second Street.
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ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — In a caper that could only happen in New Mexico, Roswell police say a flying saucer has been stolen from a UFO museum.

www.abqjournal.com 3-22-16

“Be on the lookout: missing spaceship,” the Roswell Police Department said in a post Monday on its Facebook page (see below).

The silver-colored saucer made of fiberglass, metal and stainless steel was allegedly stolen about 3:30 a.m. Saturday from behind the International UFO Museum and Research Center on Roswell’s main drag. [...]
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Let's start with qualifying that I don't consider myself an expert on UFOs and the state of ufology. Like many, I developed an interest in the subject matter and came to know much more about it than the average individual. Of the things I learned, a lot of it is probably not worth knowing. Just ask the people that tolerate me. My descent into ufology resulted in my book, "The Greys Have Been Framed: Exploitation in the UFO Community,"which contains a lot of the things I think are relevant about the genre. I'm very pleased with the reviews it has received, and I'm grateful for the websites, radio shows and podcasts which have interviewed me about it. Thank you!

By Jack Brewer ufotrail.blogspot.com 3-17-16

Those interviews and related circumstances have provided me opportunities to reflect. Following are a few points that typically come up and I've recently been giving particular consideration:


I think there are essentially three kinds of information when we're discussing UFOs, aliens and the related claims and research:

1) That which can be verified to be correct and accepted

2) That which can be confirmed to be incorrect and rejected

3) That which cannot be conclusively confirmed one way or the other, requiring suspension of judgment

While we can often take a pretty good guess at which category a claim or researcher's thesis might fall in, there is no substitute for verification. We then have responsibilities (if we are going to purport to be conducting professional research or scientific investigation) to follow protocols, and particularly the recognition of standards of evidence, as established by the professional research community and academia. We also have responsibilities to recognize those standards of evidence if we purport to be advocates of professional research when promoting various investigators and their work as credible. Which brings us to:

I think, therefore I recognize standards of evidence

We're entitled to believe pretty much anything we choose, but if we desire others to share and embrace our beliefs, we have responsibilities to present those people with factual information to sway their perspectives. To expect or demand the agreement of others while providing no credible information, as described above, is unreasonable. The reasonable and intelligent person is not convinced by anecdotes, repetition and volume, but by facts and verifiable evidence.

We have responsibilities to accurately differentiate between beliefs and facts when arguing our points. We are allowed to believe as we choose, as well as disagree with one another and debate with passion, but if we neglect to respect professional standards of evidence, we promote confusion rather than clarification.


I find it rather insulting that hypnosis as a memory retrieval tool even continues to be an issue at this point - and is a glaring example of disregard for the points made in the above paragraphs. Here's the bottom line, guys: If a researcher or organization claims to promote scientific investigation and conducts hypnosis, they are incorrect; the two stances are mutually exclusive of one another. That's not my opinion, but the platform of the current scientific paradigm. I just cite it.

What's more, work conducted by professionally qualified researchers concludes that not only are memory enhancing techniques unreliable, but their use may be detrimental. It has additionally been conclusively demonstrated - repeatedly - that the manners questions are asked greatly alters the responses. See the work, which includes clinical trials and peer review, of Shaw, Loftus, French, Lilienfeld, Morgan, etc., etc., etc. All of this and much more is addressed in my book and references are thoroughly provided.

The cow is long out of the gate on this one. Let's move on and recognize unsubstantiated assertions for what they are.


The big MC. I find the topic of interest and I try to write about it responsibly. I think that can be defined as clarifying my opinions, citing facts as to how I form my opinions and suspicions, and differentiating between those and facts.

Director of Project MKULTRA, Dr. Sidney Gottlieb

It is my opinion that unethical activities conducted by intelligence agencies, such as now declassified documents confirm about the CIA, may have become enmeshed with the UFO subculture and resulted in reports of alleged alien abduction. I form this supposition, pending further information, based on the fact the mind control projects existed, combined with the fact the involved agencies were manipulating the topic and public perception of UFOs during the same era. Given such profiles that can be made of CIA, additional intel agencies, and their activities, I am of the opinion that further research is justified into the possibilities. I suspect some of the targets of behavior modification projects misinterpreted the circumstances as alien abduction, particularly with the encouragement of so-called and often overeager ufologists.

There are a number of additional possible scenarios which could be relevant to the UFO community. I think that angle of research deserves more attention than it typically receives, and I find it interesting. Much more about this is offered in 'The Greys Have Been Framed'.


First of all, I'm not sure anything should be done. I'm a rather big advocate of allowing people to find their own ways and their own solutions. People usually don't want suggestions until they become convinced they need them, so "alien abduction" might not be much different.

That stated, if I were to make recommendations, based on my own observations and in my admittedly professionally unqualified opinion, I'd say the first thing to do would be to encourage treatment for trauma. Alleged abductees, as well as a number of UFO witnesses, describe the circumstances as traumatic. It therefore stands to reason that professional treatment for trauma would be appropriate regardless of the possible origin of the perception.

Next, I'd say that witnesses, as well as investigators and their organizations, should consciously identify the kind of support they are seeking and providing. Emotional support, therapeutic treatments, and objective investigation are different activities, require different areas of expertise, and should not be intermingled haphazardly for many reasons. All too often, fragmented simulations of such activities are provided by groups and individuals who are qualified at none of them, mix them all together without even realizing it, and the quality suffers of both the life of the witness and the investigation.

So-called "UFO investigation" appears to me, based on years of observations and the work I conducted while writing my book, to frequently become some bastardization of mental health therapy, particularly in the alien abduction genre. However, the investigators typically are neither therapists nor any kind of mental health professional. It would therefore be very beneficial to the community and the well-being of the witnesses if all involved made intentional decisions as to what type of support, be it emotional, therapeutic or investigative, was being sought and offered, and conducted themselves accordingly.
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It seems timely now, in this era of frighteningly extreme beliefs, to make public my own personal story of how even the unlikeliest person can find herself drawn to enter into an extreme belief system. How she gets caught up in its mythic power, becomes part of the community, and finally, faces the painful fact that she must leave it and people she loves behind. What are the forces that collude to cause a thoroughly modern, educated woman like me to embrace such an unconventional set of beliefs as that of alien abduction and UFOs? It would be easy to explain away by blaming it on my falling in love with and marrying the charismatic leader of this community at the far edges of society. But it’s more than that. There’s a deeper reason, even, than love.

By Carol Rainey The UFO Trail 2-5-16

Author at work, 1994

Some readers may dismiss my story for that very reason. The angry ex-wife…motives…too close for objectivity. But there is no one else to tell this story. On a day-to-day basis, abduction researchers work alone, with no peer review and no one to double-check their methods and ethics.i It was only the abductionist’s wife who saw, first-hand, how researchers could and did shape the alien abduction narrative they wanted -- the terrifyingly invisible alien takeover of the planet and the human species. It is my hope that The Abductionist’s Wife digs far below the surface of the UFO community to reveal the compulsion and complexities of any belief. What I want to offer is a poignant, but clear-eyed story about a great love gone awry in a tangled, emotionally taut search for answers to a human mystery.


The events in this excerpt occurred early on in our marriage. “The Singer’s Hybrid Daughter” involved two fragile and volatile people, a case that I found particularly disturbing. Pseudonyms are used for the singer and her daughter, as well as for Linda Cortile. All other events and people are depicted as I remember them, aided by personal journals, correspondence, planning calendars, emails, and extensive audio and video.

Serious inquiries from publishers are welcome.

One late afternoon in the winter of 1997, snow began falling all over Manhattan. Not much at first, barely four or five inches, but rumors of a coming snowstorm cast a spell over the city. I was headed home up Seventh Avenue, arms full of groceries, delighted as a child to be out in the fresh falling snow. For a brief moment in time, New York seemed to have been draped in reams of shimmering white silk. Everything had become equally beautiful, simple and pure – a sculpture in the park, potholes, a bus-stand, gargoyles in the architecture. The surprised city forgot its city-ness. Traffic thinned to almost nothing; yellow taxis crept along. Avenues and streets grew hushed and the trees that lined them made pale, blunt shapes with their boughs. I’d only been living here for two years and had never seen the city like this, so still and quiet. It seemed in a rare mood for listening.

Blizzard on West Sixteenth Street

I thought: This is the kind of enchantment that happens in fairy tales, when the world suddenly turns strange and the girl wandering in the woods somehow knows that her life is about to change. It needed to; it must.

I juggled the bags for balance and twisted to look back through a scrim of falling snow. A single set of footprints trailed behind me. They were dark holes punched in the snow, like bullet holes in a wedding gown. At the sight of those lone footprints, I felt joy begin to leak out of me. It was for the promise of a true partnership that I’d taken the chance of marrying again. But, so far, even as recently as last night, evidence suggested that I might have been an idealistic fool.

A middle-aged broad with a middle-school girl’s swoony notion of a couple’s side-by-side stroll through marriage. Sad, sad, sad.

On West Sixteenth Street, I let myself into the lobby of the modest two-family brownstone that Budd had owned and shared, before me, with two earlier wives and a now-grown daughter. There were signs of these women all through the house. Hanging here in the hallway, for instance, his daughter Grace’s abstract photographs, so like her father’s canvasses – vibrant with color, intentionally flat, and devoid of the human figure. In that same hallway laid a woven wool rug of cerise and green stripes that was made by Wife #1 sometime in the sixties. I thought it looked dated and homely, but Budd liked things to stay as they were. The heavy snow slid down off my hair and coat, forming a dark pool of water on the rug.

And here she stands now, poor thing, hemorrhaging enchantment all over the ugly rug.

I considered my immediate options. If I went downstairs now, we’d probably run into each other – two people who’d barely spoken all day - and I’d know he still hadn’t forgiven me for the question I’d asked last night. The injustice of that would then trigger the anger I’d been so good (so far) at keeping under wraps. Oh, what a volatile pair, the two of us!

Rainey and Hopkins Lake Lucerne, Switzerland, 1996

A scar, often called a "scoop mark," photographed on the leg of an alleged alien abductee

They’d roll up their pants legs and reveal scars that might have been made by scalpels; they’d brought snapshots of a large circular burn in the field next to their house. Innately more skeptical than my husband, I simply couldn’t explain what had happened to the people who were here to consult with Budd. But the abductees saw that my interest in them was genuine and so trusted me to document their stories. It pleased me, too, to watch the way my artist husband worked with them. You might have thought he was a pastor, this silver-haired, attentive man. It was his unusual combination of humor, fatherly compassion, and complete acceptance that provided these baffled and angry people with the safest of places for saying the craziest things.

Our plan had been this: I’d begin the production phase of a documentary about my husband’s strange work, while Budd would carry on as usual, bringing in new individuals for initial interviews and hypnosis sessions. I’d shoot with him every step of the way, knowing that I’d end up not using most of this early footage. I’d bide my time until Budd would zero in on one individual’s story, the way he’d done with Linda Cortile (Witnessed) and Kathie Davis (Intruders). Both of these women had complex narratives that Budd had turned into influential and popularly successful books.

But after fourteen months, I was getting concerned. What if we continued like this for another year – even two or three years? There didn’t seem to be any end in sight, no goal we were moving toward. If only I could make out a method or specific process in the way Budd worked with new people! There was rarely, if ever, any second, third or fourth session with the people I had on tape - over forty individual cases, so far. They were all “one-offs,” still at the anecdote level: a first interview, followed by a single hypnosis session. Then goodbye and good luck and we rarely saw a single one of them again. Meanwhile, all production costs were coming out of my own pocket. The nature of the subject matter itself made my movie a funding pariah to foundations and state arts organizations. Add in the sad truth that low-budget indie docs rarely returned a profit and you just might feel my growing panic. Goodbye, my life-savings! Hello, my dread future as a bag lady.

Possible new witness to Cortile abduction, 2003

Over dinner last night, I’d explained my production worries to Budd. I was genuinely baffled, I said, puzzled about what he was looking for: “What criteria do you use to select that one person whose abduction experiences you want to investigate?”

I’d been taken aback by his instant reaction. He stopped eating, pushed back from the table and said he wouldn’t sit here pretending to have a nice dinner with his wife, when he was actually being attacked. He left the apartment so abruptly that I remember my mouth open to respond but he was gone before any words emerged. Later, looking from the kitchen across the rooftop garden, I could see him in his studio writing-loft, banging away on the keyboard. I was sorry to have caused such turmoil and turned the question this way and that in my mind to see what disturbance it held. I couldn’t put my finger on it. The question had been logical; my tone genuinely puzzled.

After a while, I gave up and read myself to sleep. In the morning, a three-page typed letter lay folded on my nightstand. In it, he said I constantly discouraged and disempowered him with my “innocent-seeming” questions. That I clearly knew nothing about research, which must always begin as an exploration with no known outcome in sight. From here on out, he ordered, it was essential that I not interfere with the exploratory phase of his research.

The letter set me back on my heels. What could a person do with such condescension, bordering on contempt? He knew full well that I’d come to New York, to this house, straight from years of making films with epidemiologists. He knew that the scientists and I had co-written dozens of hefty proposals to the National Institutes of Health – and that we’d been awarded a high percentage of them. If he’d ever read one of the proposals, he’d have seen the way we developed hypotheses and designed the study; reviewed similar research in the field; described the goals of our own project; and wrote protocols for collecting data and protecting our research subjects. The section I most loved was always this one: “Describe how your research [and related film] will advance knowledge in the field.” Imagine actually doing that – or trying to! There was something sacred, really, about a person’s desire to add even one true thing to the body of human knowledge.

Hopkins writes in loft during snowstorm, 1997

Reading Budd’s letter to me was unsettling, disturbing on several levels. My right to question him was certainly the front and center issue, but was he actually denying that my very recent past life in the academic and scientific worlds had ever happened? Or did he mean that whatever I thought I knew about mainstream research was utterly meaningless when facing a phenomenon this enormous and mysterious and menacing? Or that only a select few investigators like he and David Jacobs knew how to “ask the right questions” about alien abduction? Or that they were “the only two people in the world who really knew what was going on” in this silent, largely unseen invasion of the planet by alien forces? They did say things like that to each other. Often, in fact. But if that’s what he meant, he should say that, not make seemingly factual statements about the questioner, me, that almost made me doubt my own sanity.

Gaslighting. Such a strange old word to come floating into my head. But I couldn’t recall what it meant.

In the lower studio, I went quickly past the long wooden staircase that led up to Budd’s studio – then turned around, went back and stood at the base. Okay, I could let the evening drag on with both of us miserable….or I could send out a white dove to test the waters, so to speak. Misery or the dove?

I called out: “The snow’s still falling, Budd! And the city seems so strange. Why don’t we go out for dinner? Make an adventure of it?”

From upstairs, the silence stretched on just long enough to suggest that he was still angry at me. But then my husband, handsome, silver-haired and grave, was standing at the top of stairs. He seemed to be looking down at me from a great distance. “It will have to be inexpensive,” he said.

As if that was news! I said I knew just the place.

Half an hour later, we were slipping and sliding on unshovelled walks toward a Jamaican joint on Greenwich Avenue, a few blocks away. Snow was falling more heavily now. City snowplows were missing in action and most of the shops had closed. It was so hard not to fall that Budd and I were forced to grab onto each other. We stopped to take in the utterly surreal sight of three cross-country skiers in high-end wilderness apparel making their way up a deserted Seventh Avenue. That gave me an idea. I grabbed a garbage can lid, took a running start on a downhill slope and jumped on. The saucer spun me around and around, gaining velocity, before it crashed into a mailbox. Here came Budd on a sheet of cardboard, zipping right past, a big grin on his face. It was this man’s constant buzz of energy that had first drawn me to him, already sixty-five when we met. We shot the avenue’s downhill slope again and again, competing to be the one who’d slide the greatest distance. In the course of all that silliness, breathless action and flirting with danger, the tensions of yesterday’s accusations and hurt fell away. We helped each other struggle through the drifts without falling, which involved a lot of body contact and touching. Any fool who had eyes could see that both of us were relieved to be back in love again. That’s the way it went with us: one day, we’d be in despair, in a fury; and the next, unable to keep our hands off each other.

The “Day-O” was a relic of old Greenwich Village, a downscale ethnic restaurant that featured coconut lampshades, metallic paint, and loud soul music, but the price was right and the food was good. Waiting for our grilled shrimp and coconut rice, Budd sipped his evening Scotch and warmed my frozen hands in his own. He told me he had a promising lead on a new case, a couple from Ohio he’d spoken to today. I told him about the documentary scene I’d just rough-cut. It was barely a fragment of the convoluted Witnessed case, Budd’s latest and most controversial book yet, claiming over twenty witnesses. At conferences and to book reviewers, he consistently referred to it as the “UFO case of the century,” while I carefully refrained from commentary on the uses and abuses of hyperbole.

Linda Cortile talks of her fear of security agent Dan

Months earlier, I’d filmed the heroine of the story, Linda “Cortile,” in my studio. I’d seated her in front of a monitor with videotape playing on a loop. Poised and immaculately groomed as usual, Linda hadn’t a shade of reluctance about being on camera. She flipped her heavy brunette tresses back over the right shoulder, turning a now unobstructed face toward me. She explained how she’d come to be screening six hours of recorded television coverage of the 1991 international peace negotiations going on at the United Nations. It was a long shot, but she hoped to spot the two elusive federal agents, known only to Budd (and to readers) as “Richard” and “Dan.” They’d written to him about the early morning events of November 30, 1989, when they said they witnessed Linda’s abduction out of her 12th story apartment and into a glowing red UFO that hovered over her building down near the Brooklyn Bridge. In their car that night, they added, was another witness, an international VIP they were protecting. Budd based much of his book’s narrative on the traumatized men’s letters and Linda’s hypnotic recall of events. Although they refused to ever meet with Budd, the men’s fascination with Linda drove them to repeatedly pursue and abduct her for questioning. If anyone were an ideal candidate to identify the two men, it would be Linda.

The waiter brought our dinners and Budd asked how Linda did on camera. I said she’d been surprisingly capable at re-enacting the emotional, gut response she’d had when her tormentor Dan, against all odds, suddenly appeared on the screen. In fact, like a pro hitting her mark, she’d given me three or four slightly different re-enactments to choose from.

Linda identifies Dan at the United Nations, 1991

In the interest of sustaining our harmony, I kept my thoughts to myself: But if these men, “Richard” and “Dan,” really did work for one of the federal intelligence agencies, it was quite likely that their actual names and job titles were fully protected from being disclosed to anyone.

My own research had turned up “The Intelligence Identities Protection Act,” passed by Congress in 1982. It had established criminal penalties for unauthorized disclosure of information that identified U.S. intelligence agents.1 2 3 Clearly, Budd himself wasn’t familiar with the Act, although he’d discovered that local security agencies played their cards close to the chest. I wondered if Linda, with an ear much more attuned to popular culture, had known that intelligence agents were protected from identity disclosure? Might it have been a plot point in the television programs she watched or in the many mid-list novels she read? If Linda knew that, then she’d know that making a “positive ID” of Dan posed no risk at all to her. Budd could approach a hundred federal agencies, waving “Dan’s” photograph, and never find out a thing.

Dinner and the night out had been an oasis of time for us to purely enjoy each other again. A place apart from a home that sometimes felt to me like Grand Central Station for all of ufology – not only for abductees, but for other researchers, writers, journalists, foreign visitors, and camera crews. By the early 1990s, it was clear that UFOs had captivated the public’s imagination and, right behind them, the media -- and they all came calling on Budd Hopkins, eventually. Reluctantly, I stood to leave while Budd retrieved our coats. Then we heard his name shouted from across the room. A woman’s voice, volume at full throttle. Not your usual restaurant etiquette, even for the Day-O. A stout woman I didn’t know was waving Budd over to her table. She seemed to have materialized straight out of the anti-fashion ‘seventies, liberated from make-up and the tyranny of fitness and style. This woman had a fuzzy ball of big hair topping a plump, bespectacled face. Latching onto Budd’s arm with great affection, the woman was bursting to tell him some news.

“Listen, Budd, there’s been a major development with the kid. Something freaky as hell.”

People at nearby tables glanced over. Budd leaned in closer, a subtle suggestion to hold her voice down. But this woman had no patience for subtleties. Her voice raised a few more decibels.

“I’ve been meaning to call….Budd, you’re the only one who’s really gonna get it!” She drew in a great breath. “Not one of her doctors can explain what’s happening to Julia. They don’t have a friggin’ clue!”

Now diners on the other side of the room were sneaking a discreet look, the way New Yorkers do when they spot a celebrity out in public but would rather die than reveal their uncoolness quotient by staring.

Budd quickly moved to contain the situation. I felt his arm encircle my shoulders, pulling me forward. The wife in her body-blocking role! Make way for the abductionist’s wife! I was used to it by now. In those first years when we were madly taken with each other, I’d been both pleased and embarrassed at the openness of Budd’s elation. Whether it was at his friend’s book-signing party in George Plimpton’s apartment or at a summer art opening in Provincetown, he always had one arm around my shoulders, steering me from one group of old friends to the next.

He’d say to each of them what he said now: “Arlene, this is my wife, Carol. The one I thought I’d never find. My soul mate.” Each time, he flashed that Hopkins bad boy grin and added: “The third time, we finally got it right!”

Arlene beamed, genuinely happy for us. She struggled to her feet and gave me a hug that was the real thing, a squeezing, rocking big old body hug. I had no idea who she was to Budd. But she wanted me to know that she’d come to see him ten years ago and that he’d helped her “discover some mind-blowing shit.” This husband of mine, she said, had saved her friggin’ life.

Okay, now I understood. One of Budd’s earlier abductees, someone he worked with years before I’d moved to New York in the spring of ‘95.

That evening in the restaurant, I’d seen Arlene as a drama-queen, a cut-up, a fat, foul-mouthed broad. I liked her immediately. I liked anyone who spoke straight from the gut, no filters. She seemed to approve of me, too, saying I had to come meet her daughter. Would I do that? She persisted until I said yes, we’d be glad to come.

“Then get ready to have your hair blown back,” she warned me. Swiveling to Budd, she added: “These are medical records you’re going to want to see, m’dear.”

I saw something flare briefly in his eyes when the woman said “medical records” – and I saw that she glimpsed it, too. Maybe she’d intended this reaction, set him up somehow. I knew nothing of their history together or what the child meant to Budd. Such a great talker and storyteller, my husband had filled me in on the back-stories of literally hundreds of abductees he’d worked with. But there’d never been mention of an “Arlene.” He glanced at his watch, exclaimed it had gotten so late and when he looked up again, the earlier flare of interest had been tamped down into an air of detachment.

“That would be great.” He concentrated on holding my coat for me. “Listen, lady, if we can find a free spot on the calendar, we’ll take a drive over – You could show the records to Carol while we’re there. She’s made quite a few films with scientists and doctors. She understands the lingo.”

You could almost call that an apology….

Out on Sixth Avenue, I asked what that had been all about. We were walking through old Greenwich Village, past the Waverly diner, its iconic red neon sign a bit bedraggled; past the old guys at the West 4th Street subway stop who’d set up folding tables under the shine of street lamps and laid out their used books and music to sell, snow or no snow. The clanking plows were out in force now - bullies and thieves - re-claiming the avenues for vehicles. Sturdy Latino men and boys, the brawn employed by many shop owners, had scooped hobbit-sized pathways through the drifts. It was a sorry business, really, watching how quickly the city gave up the ghost of its fairytale interlude.

Budd said it was his usual Mexican standoff with this woman. Every couple of years or so, Arlene got in touch, promising him the girl’s medical records, but something always came up so she couldn’t hand them over. It made him angry to talk about it. He knocked the still falling snow out of his hair. “Arlene’s a difficult woman, but she’s not stupid. She knows full well that the stakes are huge!”

“Really?” My pulse quickened. The pursuit of a cosmic mystery, I’d discovered, had a familiar addictive quality about it. In recovery from intoxicating substances for many years now, I remembered quite well that heightened sense of being alive, a rush, a buzzing in the blood. You grew convinced that any day now, just around the corner, some experiencer would show up and present us with a piece of material evidence that definitively proved the existence of aliens and their superior aircraft. If it weren’t the person in my viewfinder right now, it would be the one right around the next corner, or the one after that. Any day now, it would happen - if you just kept at it. You felt compelled to break that mystery open, even just a crack. Press your eye to it and you’d get a glimpse of something grand, a sideways slice of the cosmos, an exaltation of patterns that made up our everything.

I asked to be brought up to speed on the significance of Arlene and her daughter.

“You do know who she is, don’t you? Arlene Love?”4

“Never heard of her.”

Budd’s bushy dark brows shot up and he peered over to see if I was kidding. “Arlene Love, the star who shot to the top and made the cover of ‘Rolling Stone?’”

I shook my head.

He named a certain song, evidently quite popular, and asked if I knew it. Arlene’s break out song.

Plymouth Brethren in Illinois, 1952 (Carol’s family)

I shook my head again. We’d apparently stepped into another one of the many black holes in my knowledge of popular culture. Each time he encountered one, Budd fumed about my Midwestern Plymouth Brethren family, calling them “religious extremists who seal off their kids from the world so they can brainwash them.” Once, I’d have been pleased to beat that drum right alongside him. But over time my feelings about my strict upbringing had grown more nuanced and complex - more aware of my own role in bringing down the curse of banishment and a long exile from family and community. It seemed impossible, though, that I’d ever be able to fill in all that cultural missing time. Cut off from most “worldly people,” television, movies, radio, novels, magazines, parties, dancing, and the aforementioned intoxicating substances, you’d have to concede that I’d missed some rather large chunks of ‘fifties and ‘sixties popular culture.

“Now you’re making me feel all Amish,” I complained.

“Oh, baby,” he said, reaching for my hand, “I can definitely take care of your Amish condition.”

“I’ll bet you can,” I said, flirting right back. He was a big hand-holder, this sweet man who had eighteen years on me. I told him the only way he could redeem himself was to tell me the whole story about this singer.

That was like tossing a Frisbee to a retriever. A born storyteller like Budd didn’t hesitate to seize the invitation. He launched into the dramatic arc of Arlene Love’s tragic rise and fall in the music industry. A singer with almost no formal training, she’d been gifted with an extraordinary vocal range – a contralto with a bluesy growl, capable of sweeping over four octaves. That sound had made her extremely, yet fleetingly famous in the 1970s. She’d been on the cover of Rolling Stone, sang hits with Paul Simon and Linda Ronstadt, appeared on “Saturday Night Live” and was nominated for a Grammy as Best New Artist. Her first album went gold and she’d entertained presidents and kings. Then she gave birth to a severely handicapped daughter and rumor had it that Arlene had gone a little mad. Her career took a steep dive and never recovered. She went from those early glory days to full time caregiver for Julia, a child so profoundly malformed and brain damaged that many people said she should have been institutionalized. The star fell and was lucky these days to get gigs doing commercials. It was during one of the terrible downswings in her life that Arlene had first come to see him.

At home, Budd rummaged in our merged record collection, pulling out one of Arlene’s earliest albums. “There’s a UFO on the cover!” I exclaimed. Budd smiled and dropped the vinyl LP on the turntable. I turned up the volume and we stood there listening, touching, swaying to the rhythm.

It was a lilting, guitar-based song. It was rumored that she’d written it for a married lover. Before we’d met, Budd and I had each endured our own times of love lost, pain and longing. In Arlene’s voice, we felt the authenticity and regret of that bluesy passion in our very bones. It made us wrap our arms around each other and dance the length of the faded Oriental carpet.




Two weeks went by and the brief encounter with Arlene Love had faded into the background of more pressing problems at home. I was only hearing about them now -- the alarming debt Budd had been kicking down the road for years; and the hazardous conditions of the one hundred year old house we lived in. Frazzled wiring cried out for attention by sometimes creating small fires that broke out inside the walls of the house. The insurance company, at one point, refused to renew the building’s policy until the falling down chimney, another fire hazard, was repaired. But nothing was done, so the building went uninsured. On this particular day, I’d just paid a carpenter out of my own account to replace the full set of tall but leaky windows that ran the length of my studio’s rear wall. They let in sunlight and air all year around; in warmer weather, I could step over one windowsill and sit out back in the narrow garden I’d started there. When one of the lower studio’s old floorboards caved in, you could reach down with one finger and touch the rocky earth of old Manhattan. It was the one place in the house where I felt safe – literally grounded.

Overhead, I could hear Budd making end-of-workday sounds. He’d been painting earlier, small collages with paper and acrylics, and now his chair rolled over to the phone machine where he’d listen to his messages. Our studios were separated by only a rough wooden floor and I couldn’t help hearing them too. A man reporting a triangle of lights hovering over his house; he was sending video. A woman anxious for advice - her five-year-old said that little people came through the window at night. People hopeful of booking a hypnosis session with Budd. A plea to hold another abductee support group. The PR woman from Simon & Schuster with more radio programs for him to do.

Then came a very different message, a full-throated voice that soared right out of the phone machine, swelled up into the rafters, and poured down the old wooden stairs into my studio. It was Arlene Love’s rough contralto, belting out: “Hey-hey-hey, Budd, are you and Carol still coming over for drinks this afternoon? Left a coupla messages for you, never heard back. But you’re not going to believe your eyes when you see this fucking kid. I swear, Budd, it has to be something they’re doing to her. Come see for yourself!” She let out a final chord that was a whoop combined with a moan and then wrapped it.

Budd came clattering down the stairs, wild-eyed. “Honey, oh god,” he said. “Can you believe it? Arlene Love just called and wants us to be in Jersey at six, I think it is. Forty minutes from now--” He was jittery and rushed, pulled abruptly out of the day’s dream of color romancing shape.

He forgets to write down some appointments, but never admits it. I sighed, put my arms around him and leaned my head on his chest. “Yeah, I heard her.” His neck still smelled sweet from this morning’s shower, an odor now mixed with acrylic paint and glue-stick. Budd hugged me back, dropped a kiss on the top of my head and was gone, a bird on the wing. Headed up to the second floor apartment. He could sure move fast, for a sixty-seven year old man with a bad leg from childhood polio.

“You better give her a call!” I cried after him, rapidly recalibrating my own plans for the evening. I’d reserved a seat at a screening where a director I admired would speak afterwards. A sharp tang of regret stung my palate. I hated to give up the screening, but Budd had asked me for help with Arlene and the missing medical records. I have to confess that Arlene’s case intrigued me, maybe for the same reason it had kept a grip on Budd’s hopes for so long: the once-famous singer and her damaged child would make one hell of a story!

I would go with him tonight and ask for more consideration, please, in giving me advance notice of such events. Three years in, I still hadn’t gained the art of living gracefully in the middle of a whirlwind. On any given day or night, you couldn’t predict who might turn up on the doorstep: a camera crew, a sheriff’s deputy, or a prince from a far-away land. It was a way of being that Budd seemed to thrive on. I definitely did not thrive on this level of anxiety or the sudden reversal of all your plans. Evidently, if you were the abductionist’s wife, you shouldn’t expect to have any plans at all, other than being a happy camper on the support team for “the most important discovery in human history.”

Speakers from 1999 UFO conference in New York

An hour late, we pulled up to Arlene’s building in a New Jersey city across the river from Manhattan - one of those many bland, nondescript high-rises built in the ‘fifties. As the elevator rose, Budd squeezed my hand, always pleased to be able to introduce me to somebody whose art I respected. “I’m going to get the daughter’s medical records from Arlene tonight,” he assured me. “For ten years, she’s been promising to give them to me…”

“What if she doesn’t?”

He let go of my hand. “Then there’s nothing else I can do with her case! I’m not going out on a limb if she’s not willing to back me up with proof.”

“Sounds reasonable. But I’m not certain what you want to prove.”

“It’s not the time to get into that.” Budd didn’t feel like talking about it anymore. A bell clanged, the door slid open directly into Arlene’s apartment, and he grinned, back to his old genial self. “Here we are!” He pulled me forward quickly.

And there was Arlene, beaming and moon-faced. She hugged us each in turn against her belly, sloshy as the waterbeds so loved by her fans back in the day. Her cloud of curly dark hair brushed my face like steel wool. Dark moles spotted her face, magnified under those unfashionably large spectacles. I’d forgotten just how loud and brash her normal speaking voice was.

“I swear, Hopkins, you’d stand up the goddamn Pope.”

“No, no, I didn’t forget, did I, honey?” He pulled me in close to be his false witness. “It was a hectic day, one thing after another, and I lost track of time.”

Hopkins working on Witnessed

Arlene jabbed me with an elbow. “Next thing you know, this guy’ll be handing us some bullshit about ‘missing time.’”

We all laughed. Arlene clearly felt affection for Budd, as most of the abductees did. I teased him that it was because he reminded people of their fathers, or of fathers they wished they’d had. A silver-haired, generally sweet-tempered father, a natural-born raconteur, an intelligent man who loved the arts, and leaned left in all the right ways. An aging father, but one whose energy rarely flagged and who would sit down, give you his undivided attention for two hours, and seriously consider any crazy-sounding, illogical thing you’d come to tell him.

“Come in. Entrée, entrée! Missing time or not, I'm just friggin’ glad you're here to share her with me!”

Arlene led us into a modest-sized living room that was plumply filled with round-edged, overstuffed furniture, all in beiges and browns. It was like a rabbit’s nest, one lined by the doe with fur plucked from her own belly. A place to fall down in and not get hurt. It was as utilitarian and unpretentious as Arlene herself.

Budd placed both hands on Arlene’s shoulders and stooped a bit to look directly into her eyes. He said he worried when he hadn’t heard from her for a long time.

“We have been away, my friend. I found two really fabulous doctors in this Mexican alternative clinic. Great big promises, right? They did alternative this and alternative that with Julia. They tested her up the wazoo, but medically? They did jackshit. Still, that kid kept amazing them. Things that are friggin’ impossible, scientifically! The medical team couldn’t believe it. I’ll show you their reports.”

Budd said yes, he wanted to see them. “But I’m not one whit surprised that you’re still Julia’s greatest advocate.”

“I'm in love with this child,” Arlene said, shrugging, with a big grin. “As simple as that.”

Budd glanced up, catching movement in the dimly lit hall coming from the bedrooms. Arlene turned, saw what Budd saw. And her normally loud voice grew louder, almost heraldic. This mother’s voice, announcing the coming of her damaged child, carried an undertone of golden trumpets and strings.

“Here she comes! Isn’t she beautiful?”

I turned around, a little too fast for polite. Unexpectedly, I was terribly afraid to meet this eighteen-year-old girl. There’d been so much hushed talk about multiple deformities and extreme brain damage, that I dreaded seeing an unbearably grotesque version of a human youngster. One whose own mother had hinted that the girl was only partly human. I wasn’t entirely clear where Budd stood on that question.

The girl wobbling down the hall toward us was small, her frail body topped with a head that seemed disproportionately large. Her spine curved sideways, turning her chest into a shallow bowl. Her pale face was strikingly triangular, with large dark eyes set so far apart they seemed mounted on the sides of her head. A small, flat nose made barely a bump above a long upper lip. Her ears were so low-set, I half-expected them to pivot backwards like a dog’s. Everything about Julia seemed crooked, out of sync, like she'd been cut out of the same basic material as other people, but the parts had been glued together wrong. She didn’t look like any human being I’d ever seen.

Budd and I were both stunned into silence. He’d only met Arlene’s daughter briefly, years earlier. The girl’s jolting gait came to a stop in front of us, her head low and swaying. “Say hello to our friends, sweetheart,” Arlene said.

Julia fell against me. I felt her skeletal arms surround me and her head wedged itself under my chin. Ashamed I wasn’t ready for this closeness, I gave her an awkward hug back. She didn’t quite see me, or maybe she saw two of me. One eye pointed east, the other tugged west. The movement of her eyeballs was not a smooth, continuous turning. Sunk in large, dark sockets, her hazel eyes jerked past me like digital video, in tiny mechanical jolts.

She wavered over to bump her dark, curly head against Budd’s chest. Arlene was quite pleased. "She remembers you, Budd, you see that?" Budd looked uncertain about that. This girl with low-slung ears that could not hear, who had only learned to walk at sixteen, and had never spoken a word – who could say what she remembered?

Budd seemed so oddly disconcerted that my heart went out to him. In his last two books, Intruders and Witnessed, he’d written about people with abduction experiences who, under hypnosis, recalled how the “beings from elsewhere” had presented them with their hybrid, half-alien children aboard a craft. These recollections emerged damply out of hypnotic regression, wet with tears. The experiencers had to leave the hybrid children behind. I’d always mentally filed these reports in my “Maybe/Maybe Not” box. It held all things that were hypothetically possible, but that lacked any material evidence. Now one of Budd’s abductees had presented him with an actual child-in-the-flesh instead of the theoretical ones he wrote about and he was clearly having a hard time taking it in. I slipped a hand into his elbow as we sat down.

Arlene thumped a thick album of photographs on the coffee table. Julia sat slumped sideways next to her mother. For the next hour, she was silent and immobile, except for two fingers that listlessly picked, picked, picked away at invisible lint.
“I want you to see what a goddam weird kid she was right from the start.”

Budd and I sat forward, fascinated at first, but with a growing sense of horror and sadness. In the first pages, Arlene showed off images of a newborn that could have sprung full-blown from the mind of David Lynch. This might be Eraserhead’s mewling child. Arlene’s insistence was that we look, not back off from what we were seeing. Her doughy body stretched, reached, and spread across the tabletop, never letting up. She kept doling out photos of a big-headed, listless baby with a face as flat as a dinner plate and nearly as featureless.

“Look, no lips to speak of…A little splat of a nose, almost not there. Like you-know-who, the little grey guys….And here, at fifteen months, see the long smooth upper lip, the turndown? That’s called a ‘fish mouth.’”

Arlene sorted quickly through a number of shots and then triumphantly produced the one she wanted. "Here's the neck webbing she was born with. Like a little rhino or baby lizard. That really spooked people. You were just Momma's little freak show, right, Stinky?”

Budd’s eyes met mine briefly. The whole scene made us both very uncomfortable. For one thing, Julia was sitting right there and her mother was going on as if she didn’t exist. When we’d first arrived, Arlene had let me know that she believed the girl was secretly and profoundly wise, preternaturally gifted even. I glanced over at Julia. The lint-picking mission was ongoing.

Hopkins talking with Rainey during production, 1995

For one moment, I wondered and allowed the thought to grow: what if Julia was a genius, a super-being trapped inside that frail, droopy body? But something didn’t add up here. If Arlene really believed that her daughter was an über-genius, she’d hardly be making such brutally frank comments about her grotesqueness right in front of her. And if she had proof of something so extraordinary—in the form of medical records, say—then why hadn’t she long ago shown that evidence to Budd?

He was now shooting me a meaningful look. It was time for me to give it a try. But, without warning, everything in me resisted. Now that I was here, at the very center of the life these two were forced to share, all my desire to “investigate” Arlene’s abduction story had vanished. Like her, I’d been the single mother of a young daughter for many years. And for me, too, there had been those times when a pit yawns open in front of you and says: All is not right with your beloved girl. Our maternal experiences were similar – yet utterly different by orders of magnitude.

Stalling, my eyes followed the photographs that Arlene was slapping down in front of us like an expert blackjack dealer. One showed a young-ish man with big hair and bellbottoms, awkwardly holding the infant Julia. The camera’s flash had captured a glint of shamed panic in his eyes. With a red marker, someone, presumably Arlene, had scrawled a caption across the bottom: “O, Happy Man!”

I could feel Budd’s eyes on me. His leg was doing an anxious jig-jig-jig. Finally I managed a question: “Arlene, I’m sure you’ve taken Julia to a clinical geneticist or two. What was the diagnosis?”

“From the time this kid was born until just last year--” Arlene pounded the sofa for emphasis. “Nobody’s come up with a diagnosis. She’s been in and out of every hospital, every specialist’s office on the Eastern seaboard. Nobody in medicine has ever seen anything like the number of defects that Julia has. Twenty-one dysmorphologies! It’s one for the record books….But they can’t explain them. She doesn’t have Down syndrome, she doesn’t have Turner’s; she doesn’t have the usual ‘syndromes’—a fancy word for some kid that’s been born with a wackadoodle shit-load of major physical defects.”

“And none of those specialists could come up with a diagnosis?” Budd asked the question kindly, but I was surprised to hear a hint of doubt in his voice. Arlene picked up on it, too.

Her voice rose sharply: “Julia’s no textbook genetic fuck-up, Budd! That’s the whole point of you coming here to see her.”

From the moment we’d walked in the door, I’d sensed that Arlene had an agenda for the evening. It was as if she had seized an audience and intended to hold us hostage until she’d delivered herself of a shameless bid for…what, exactly?

“I’m sorry I don’t know the full story,” I said. “What do you mean? What’s ‘the whole point’?”

Arlene sat forward, focused and intense. “So you’ve got this kid who’s a complete mystery to the medical profession. But it gets wilder still. Fast forward to the present--to the insanely wonderful part of it. You listening, Budd?” Arlene was pleased to see that she had our full attention. “This kid’s genetic defects are being reversed! Yeah, I said ‘Reversed.’ Neuromuscular defects—she can walk now, she can hold up her own big head. Chronic edema of the hands and feet—gone. Bladder and bowel constrictions—greatly improved.” She turned to me. “You know it’s medically impossible to reverse shit like this, right?” I nodded. “They don’t have a clue how it’s happening.”

She closed the album with a thump and swung back to Budd. Her smile was broad and beatific, triumphant in its certainty. “But we know. We know why and we know how it’s happening, don’t we, Budd?”

My husband’s own smile was constrained, his voice quiet. I was relieved to see that he’d regained his footing. “Well, it’s something we can only speculate about….”

Arlene stared at him. Behind the thick glasses, her eyes seemed to bulge. “‘Speculate?’ Fuck that!” Her good humor suddenly went on the fritz. She glared at him, genuinely shocked. “You were right there with me the whole way! During those friggin’ long hypnosis sessions. On that puke green living room couch of yours. Bawling like a baby. ‘Waa-waa. Is she a bug? Oh, god, she’s one of them!’ Speculate?”

Budd was kind, but firm. He reached over and covered both her hands with his own. “We can be fairly certain that the aliens—whatever, whoever they are--they were involved with you, Arlene. With you, from childhood on. But nobody can say for sure that they had anything to do with Julia.”

She glared at him again. “What the fuck? You said they did, Budd! I’m not making this stuff up.”

I was puzzled, my unease deepening by the minute. Somebody’s memory was terribly skewed. Whose? My aging husband completed the Times crossword puzzle every morning before getting out of bed. His memory, long-term and short-term, was extraordinary.

Budd stood his ground. “We only explored your early childhood experiences, Arlene. We didn’t get much further than that.”

“Bullshit. I must be losing my mind.” Arlene stared at him, then whirled and confronted me. “What, am I nuts, Carol? Do you think I’m a wack job?”

“No, I don’t.”

“Thank you very much! Because this is all that keeps me going.” She jabbed a forefinger skyward like a preacher implicating God. “What I found out with Budd about their intervention. I’ve been caring for this kid for so long, I got nothin’ left….The career, the man—long gone. It’s no picnic, I can tell you.”

“I can certainly understand that,” I said, trying to rally. “But Budd’s right—he needs you to provide him with documentation. Nobody’s going on record about genetic defects being reversed unless there’s solid, gold-star medical evidence for it. That would be a major scientific discovery!”

“Let Carol take the records home,” Budd urged. “Maybe there’s something the doctors overlooked.”

Arlene flipped back around to Budd. “Now you’re changing the subject. I guess there’s all kinds of games going on around here.” She stared at him in furious disbelief. “I’m really pissed off at you, Budd Hopkins. Unfuckingbelievable.”

His smile was sad, gentle, and charming all at once. “Arlene, I’m very sorry you’re angry. I just want to be straight with you about what happened.”

“Bullshit! That’s not being straight with me! It’s not what happened. For some reason, Hopkins, you want me to think I’m nuts! Making up stuff…” Arlene was struggling to get to her feet from the soft depths of the sofa. Her face was red and congested. Dislodged, Julia fell onto her side and began to squeal. Budd jumped up to help them, but Arlene waved him away.

“…That I’m nuts and don’t remember what happened. But I know this for a fact, Budd: This kid is proof positive that the grey guys make mistakes in this genetic game they’re playing with our silly little species. And she’s also proof positive that they can and will fix whatever they screw up. Do you read me loud and clear, Hopkins? They can fix her.”

Panting, Arlene planted her feet and glared at him one final time. Her daughter’s sounds of distress escalated and her hands flapped like the wings of a downed bird. Arlene bent down and lifted the girl up against her sturdy body, held her until the panic eased.

“Momma’s girl,” she crooned into the cap of curly dark hair so like her own. “Momma’s little freak show.”






Everyone had been relieved when the evening had come to a rapid close. We’d left Arlene’s apartment shortly after Julia went into a second meltdown and needed to be taken to bed. On the way out, Budd had asked Arlene, one more time, if she’d mail us the medical records. She’d handed us our coats, yessed him, and said that she would. I was certain that she wouldn’t. The woman’s sense of betrayal was palpable.

It clung to us like a bitter odor on the trip back to the city. We were both quiet, each of us caught up in our own thoughts and turbulent emotions. Behind the wheel, Budd’s face was grim. I wished that I could offer sympathy for my husband’s discomfort—a touch or a word--but I suddenly dreaded finding out that some part of what Arlene accused him of might be true. If it was, if Budd had led this volatile woman to believe otherworldly beings were the cause of her child’s deformities and brain damage, he’d made a terribly self-serving call. If he had – he surely intended to push the envelope on what he believed was an historic discovery about alien intervention in the human gene pool. But in medical terms, Budd Hopkins was not qualified to diagnose even a case of measles in a child!

But there in Arlene’s apartment, Budd had been adamant: he denied and denied again that he’d ever made such a claim to Arlene.

Our silence lasted across the George Washington Bridge, with its elevated and northernmost view of Manhattan stretching to the right. The old blue Toyota shifted into the right lane and curved around and down, merging onto the Hudson River Parkway. With the roar of bridge traffic left behind, I broke the silence.

“I don’t understand what happened back there.”

Budd said ‘nothing happened.’ It was just Arlene being Arlene. She was a very difficult woman. He’d researched her case the way he did every other one: somebody has an experience, it disturbs their life, they come to him, and together they start to explore it through hypnotic regression. Perfectly routine. But, I countered, nothing about Arlene’s case seemed routine. I hesitated to say directly what it was that I most wanted him to explain away, but there was no way around it.

“She said you led her to believe that her daughter’s deformed because she’s a hybrid, a half-alien kid.”

“If there’s one thing you know, it’s that I do not lead people!” Now he was angry. The Toyota drifted into another lane. A horn blared. Budd jerked the wheel to the right and a red BMW shot past us on the left, doing ninety. Budd swore.

“Don’t get mad at me, please,” I said. “You asked me to be part of this and I’m trying to understand how the abduction investigation might have influenced Arlene’s care of her child. Maybe she ran wild with the idea of a cure all on her own. I don’t know. I wasn’t there. I’m asking you.”

He didn’t seem inclined to answer. He stared ahead at the winding parkway.

“Budd, after the first half hour in that apartment, I felt sick about even being there…. Like we were a MUFON delegation on a field trip to a children’s cancer ward.”

“Oh, great. First, my work’s an abomination. Now it’s all a big joke.”

“Not at all. Hardly! Budd, you know I’ve always defended your right to work with abductees. But when people are as vulnerable as Arlene and Julia… Isn’t there a possibility for real damage? Please help me understand one thing – something so important to Arlene that she said it two or three times. She said you told her Julia’s condition was caused by alien intervention.”

He slapped the steering wheel. “I did no such thing! What is this third degree I’m getting from you?”

I looked out my passenger window at the silver river unfurling on the right, bearing along the gleaming facets of stars. After a moment, I said quietly: “Any time you don’t like the questions I ask, I always know that something’s wrong.”

Hudson River at dusk

The work presented in both parts one and two of this post, including all written content and photos, is credited to Carol Rainey. I am pleased to provide a venue for it. - Jack Brewer


i I do not count the small coterie of psychologists and academics who were groomed by the researcher to help him counter critics’ claims that he wasn’t qualified to do this work. These people were happy to be invited to the house once or twice a year and sit in on several hypnosis sessions with the researcher and one or two abductees he had pre-selected. He’d worked with them before; he knew how they’d respond. The credentialed observers had no knowledge about possible previous telephone or in-person contact between the two. Neither did they seem familiar with the substantial body of academic research regarding “the suggestive environment” and the influence of “context” on the creation of recalled memories. They left after this limited and staged presentation, believing they had witnessed the great man at work. They reported that they had observed no leading of subjects. There was nothing wrong with the researcher’s methodology.

1 NYTimes, June 11, 1982, “Bill to Penalize Uncovering of Agents Passed by Senate.”

2 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligence_Identities_Protection_Act: The Intelligence Identities Protection Act of 1982 (Pub.L. 97–200, 50 U.S.C. §§ 421–426) is a United States federal law that makes it a federal crime for those with access to classified information, or those who systematically seek to identify and expose covert agents and have reason to believe that it will harm the foreign intelligence activities of the U.S.,[1] to intentionally reveal the identity of an agent whom one knows to be in or recently in certain covert roles with a U.S. intelligence agency, unless the United States has publicly acknowledged or revealed the relationship.[2]

3 CRS Report for Congress, Intelligence Identities Protection Act, Jennifer K. Elsea, Legislative Attorney, 7-5700, April 10, 2013. wwww.crs.gov. RS21636

4 Pseudonyms are used for both Arlene and her daughter Julia.


A deeply felt thank you to the following people for ongoing friendship, their trust in me to get it right, and intelligent feedback on this part of the memoir:

Jeremy Vaeni Jeff Ritzmann Jack Brewer Tyler Kokjohn Peter Brookesmith Penelope Franklin

Ryan Harbage Fred Thompson Lynda Cooper George Hansen Marianne Macy S.G. Collins

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