AN ABSTRACT OF THE THESIS OF

Frederick Clark Bryan for the degree of Master of Arts in English presented on

August 10, 1998. Title: Aliens and Academics: How Cultural Representations
of Alien Abduction Support an Entrenched Consensus Reality.

Abstract approved: Redacted for Privacy

Jon Lewis

The alien abduction phenomenon has garnered considerable media attention

in the last fifteen years, including many representations in books, film, and
television. An overview of significant abduction literature is presented.
Contrasts and comparisons are noted between popular written accounts and
both the visual representations they engender and reports outside the
mainstream, such as those compiled and statistically compared by folklorists.
Also considered are comparisons between popular fictionalizations of victims of
abduction and the relevant psychological literature on this population. Theories
bordering on the psycho-spiritual and New Age are briefly introduced in regards
to their connection to UFO phenomena and the popular belief in a changing
collective consciousness. Throughout, it is argued that most forms of cultural
production featuring themes of alien abduction, being subject to marketplace
demand, alter or fictionalize their source content for dramatic purposes. This
popularization and commodification of anomalous phenomena negatively
impacts serious study by encouraging dismissive attitudes towards evidence,

reports, and those individuals involved, informants, victims, and investigators.

This commodification thus serves to protect the status quo, in the form of a

consensus reality, from challenges by unknown or anomolous phenomena.

 Aliens and Academics:
How Cultural Representations of Alien Abduction

Support an Entrenched Consensus Reality

by

Frederick Clark Bryan

A THESIS
submitted to

Oregon State University

in partial fulfillment of
the requirements for the
degree of

Master of Arts

Presented August 10, 1998

Commencement June 1999

Master of Arts thesis of Frederick Clark Bryan presented August 10, 1998

Approved:

Redacted for Privacy

fteM r Professor, representing English

Redacted for Privacy

Chair of Department of English

Redacted for Privacy

uean of uralrate cnooi

I understand that my thesis will become part of the permanent collection of

Oregon State University libraries. My signature authorizes release of my thesis
to any reader upon request.

r-Th
Redacted for Privacy
Frederick Clark Bryan, Author
 TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page

INTRODUCTION 1

ACADEMIC INTEREST 5

PUBLISHED ACCOUNTS 14

POP CULTURE STATUS 37

Men in Black 38

X-Files 40

PSYCHO SPIRITUAL THEORIES 53

CONCLUSION 60

NOTES 65

BIBLIOGRAPHY 76

FILMOGRAPHY 87
 Aliens and Academics:
How Cultural Representations of Alien Abduction
Support an Entrenched Consensus Reality'

The UFO phenomenon, in its totality, is

surprisingly complex. Understandably
this is not recognized by the general
public .... The man on the street's
simple opinion that either UFOs are all
nonsense or that visitors from outer
space do exist is brutally destroyed by
close study.
J. Allen Hynek2

There are more things in heaven and

earth Horatio, than are dreamt of in your
philosophy.
William Shakespeare3

Introduction

The image of the "small gray" extraterrestrial is now a commonplace in

the culture. This image derives from reports of supposed human contacts with
aliens, frequently reported as abductions. A theme occasionally found in the
pulp magazines of the thirties and forties and the B-grade sci-fi movies of the
fifties, abduction by aliens was first presented to the public as a physical reality
with the published accounts of the Barney and Betty Hill case, culminating in
journalist John G. Fuller's book Interrupted Journey in the mid sixties.4 In the
thirty-five year period since it was first mentioned in print, the phenomenon has
undergone a transition from a gradual laboring into public awareness to a

meteoric popularity.
The near simultaneous publication in 1987 of Whitley Strieber's best-
selling autobiographical "non-fiction" book Communion and New York artist and

UFO researcher Budd Hopkins' book Intruders: The Incredible Visitations at

 2

Copley Woods brought alien abduction square in the face of the general public,
and the last ten years have seen a veritable explosion of such literature.' But
the phenomenon has become hugely popularized recently by the fictionalized
Fox television series X-Files, a massively popular program based on the
premise that extraterrestrial presence on earth, and intentional government
obfuscation of that fact, are not only a reality but a commonplace.'
In this paper I argue that the abduction phenomenon, regardless of its
verisimilitude or psychological causes, has changed status, moving from a
position as marginalized subject matter -- where it could be perceived as a
threat to consensus reality to a popularized commodity. This commodification
negatively impacts ufology's struggle for legitimacy by undermining the
recognition and acknowledgment of any importance, psychological or
otherwise, that alien abduction phenomena might hold. My argument is
presented in three stages. The first section outlines the growing academic
interest in abduction phenomena, its connection to legend and oral tradition,
and the psychic and parapsychological components as originally introduced by
Jung. This section closes with a recounting of Ron Westrum's model of the
stages that anomalous phenomena commonly undergo toward either
acceptance or rejection by the scientific community.'
The second section provides a roughly chronological review of the most
popular and influential abduction literature in modern American culture,
beginning with Fuller's Interrupted Journey, moving through Travis Walton's
Fire in the Sky, and touching on Whitley Strieber's books published after his
1986 abduction experience, especially Communion and The Communion

Letters.' Movie and TV renditions of these accounts are briefly compared with

their original written sources. In each case, statistical comparisons of reports

compiled by abduction scholars, notably folklorist Thomas E. Bullard, serve as a
 3

baseline or "norm" against which characteristic or uncharacteristic elements

found in this body of popular literature stand in relief.9 While noting these
differences helps establish the consistency of standard, less dramatically
presented, abduction reports, it also highlights the considerable variations
found in the popular visual media. Also considered in this section are popular
books by three influential UFO abduction researchers: Budd Hopkins, David M.

Jacobs, and John E. Mack.'°

Following this review are close readings of several episodes from the X-

Files which feature fictionalized renditions of alien abduction stories.

Contrasting the details of these popular accounts with information from research
about the abductee population provides further evidence of the ways in which
fictionalized and sensationalized renditions of abduction reports, such as are

found in programs like the X-Files, generate a "popular imaginary" concerning

this phenomenon, engendering and fostering a set of attitudes and
misconceptions which negatively impact the acceptance of "broader"
perspectives, including ufology's struggle for legitimacy.
The third section briefly touches on some of the current theories about

the possible relationship between alien abduction experiences and a globally

collective "psycho-spiritual" developmental shift. Many of these ideas border on
"New Age" thinking and are quite popular among UFO aficionados. Academic
theorists Keith Thompson, Karl Brunstein, Michael Grosso, Michael
Woodhouse, Carl Raschke, David Hufford, Kenneth Ring and others, argue that

our social and scientific paradigms must shift as a result of the challenges these
phenomena continue to present." Some of these theorists, grounded in Jung's

ideas of the collective unconscious, argue that abduction phenomena may

serve as an unconscious expression of present day culture's over-reliance on

abstraction and "objectivity." They suggest that individual confrontations with
 4

the unknown and the bizarre are designed to encourage increasing recognition
and practice, throughout the human collective, of other, equally useful, kinds of
intelligence inherent in us. Their theories support the idea that media practices
of fostering misconceptions and negative or dismissive attitudes about such
phenomena may have deep implications in terms of delaying, derailing, or

offsetting important, or possibly crucial, historical psychological developments.

Jung himself and many after him argue that all "anomalous" phenomena, a
category into which UFO experiences fall, serve as precursors to or
manifestations of fundamental psychological changes in either the individual

experiencer or the collective. The psycho-spiritual theorists firmly insist that a

full understanding of these phenomena will require conceptual frameworks far

different than those presently adopted.

 5

Academic Interest

Abduction phenomena offer opportunities for investigation in a variety of

research areas, particularly mythology, folklore, psychology, sociology, religious

studies, epistemology, cultural studies, and popular culture, to name but a few.

Beginning in the late 1970's, and partially as the result of increased media

attention, there was a corresponding, though gradual, increase in academic

interest in these phenomena, resulting in a small but growing body of quality

literature. Thomas E. Bullard notes in the introductory section of his doctoral

dissertation, "a surge of interest in psychological, social and cultural issues is
evident in the more intelligent UFO periodicals and symposia, which are
themselves increasing..."." Bullard asserts that though largely:

barred from academe, ufologists have set up a discipline-in-exile

with its own apparatus of organizations, journals, newsletters and
conventions of international scope and worthy to rival many
established disciplines in membership. Much UFO research bears
the stamp of slipshod amateur efforts and fan-club enthusiasm, but
the field has always sustained a backbone of sound work and in
recent years the standards approach those of university
scholarship."

As evidenced by the increasing psychological literature on the

phenomenon, accounts from alleged abductees also called "experiencers"

are difficult to classify." In addition, abduction reports vary in their quality at the
same time that informants, though for the most part sincere, can vary in their
integrity. In introducing his "UFO Abductions: The Measure of a Mystery:

Comparative Study of Abduction Reports," Bullard notes that:

The reports may describe objective events, true enough: but

research into dreams, altered states of consciousness, near-death
experiences and comparative religion suggests that subjective
reality is less individualistic than we usually think."
 6

Thus, even finding recognizable patterns of similarity in reports will not serve as
reliable evidence of their veracity.

A clear and definable explanation is further complicated by the fact that

any study of the phenomenon is, to a large percentage, only a study of the

reports of experiencers. For this reason, modern abduction phenomena can be

considered appropriate to the realm of folklore and legend. Indeed, there are
significant similarities with earlier traditions of abduction accounts. In "The
Belief Legend in Modem Society: Form, Function, and Relationship to Other
Genres" folklorist Linda Degh argues that:

UFO's are a particularly American phenomenon, and the press has

produced thousands of reports on them. Interest in them is reflected
by the multitude of paperback editions on the subject. These
publications vary in their approach as well as in their quality.
Scholarly, dilettante, pseudo-scientific, pseudo religious, and naïve
writings are lined up on the drugstore racks, quite a few at the
folklore level. Part of the material used in the literature originated in
folklore and reinforces oral tradition."'

The folkloric elements of the phenomenon, particularly its analogs in

earlier folkloric traditions such as abduction by fairies and other mythical
beings, while suggested in Jung's writings on the subject, were first fully noted
by Jacques Vallee in his book The Passport to Magonia." These and
synonymous ideas were later more fully explored by folklore scholars, most
notably Linda Degh, Thomas E. Bullard, David Hufford, and Peter Rojcewicz."
In "UFO Abduction Reports: The Supernatural Kidnap Narrative Returns in

Technological Guise," Bullard notes:

A recent development in UFO lore and one of its fastest growing

branches has been the abduction story, a first-person account of
capture by alien beings. Abductees are people from all walks of life
going about everyday activities when a sudden and unwanted
 7

encounter with the unknown occurs. Not only do these reports

surpass many folk narratives in circulation today for length and
elaborateness, but the contents include a richness of fantastic
elements seldom found outside the magical and religious lore of
preindustrial times.'

As a result of the magical and mystical characteristics of abduction

accounts, psycho-spiritual interpretations are quite popular in a subgroup of the

academics writing on the subject. This group includes authors Keith Thompson,
Mark B. Woodhouse, Michael Grosso, Carl Raschke and Kenneth Ring, to name
a few.' These theorists argue that anomalous phenomena of various kinds are
intended as instructional devices, emanating from some indefinable source in

order to expand human awareness, understanding, and capacity. While

varying in their thrust and content, all these interpretations are, to some degree,

dependent on Jung's ideas of the collective unconscious.

When the modern saucer myth began gathering steam in the late forties,

Jung began collecting data -- "newspaper clippings, reports issued by groups

dedicated to Ethel study [of UFOs], statements from the scientific, military, and

governmental establishments, letters from people all over -- he read virtually

every book on the subject."2' In 1958 he published Ein moderner Mythus von
Dingen die am Himmel gesehen werden. The English translation, Flying
Saucers: A Modem Myth of Things Seen in the Skies, appeared the following

year. In it Jung suggests that the UFO phenomenon presents "a golden

opportunity of seeing how a legend is formed."'

Though by no means convinced that UFOs are extraterrestrial in nature,

Jung nevertheless asserts that they are, in certain instances, a physical reality

the psychical manifestations of archetypal elements rising from the needs of the

human psyche. Jung coined the term "psychoid" for those phenomena, which

though initially generated in the individual or collective psyche, nevertheless

 8

leave physical trace evidence in the material world. Thus Jung cemented the
association of UFO phenomena with parapsychology, a relationship many
parapsychologists disdain. Jung also discussed the flying saucer as a kind of

mandala appearing in the sky, its roundness indicating a psychic expression of

the human longing for integration, wholeness, and connection.' Jung argues
this projection is increasing in recent times as a result of modernization and a

resulting fragmentation of the soul. In a supplement to his book, Jung

expresses his belief:

that the whole collective psychological problem that has been opened
up by the Saucer epidemic stands in compensatory antithesis to our
scientific picture of the world... [which] consists...very largely of
statistical or "average" truths. These exclude all rare borderline
cases.... The consequence is a view of the world composed of normal
cases.... Like the "normal" man, they are essentially fictions.... Since it
can be said ... that reality consists mainly of exceptions to the rule,
which the intellect then reduces to the norm, instead of a brightly
coloured picture of the real world we have a bleak, shallow
rationalism that offers stones instead of bread to the emotional and
spiritual hungers of the world. The logical result is an insatiable
hunger for anything extraordinary. If we add to this the great defeat of
human reason, daily demonstrated in the newspapers and rendered
even more menacing by the incalculable dangers of the hydrogen
bomb, the picture that unfolds before us is one of universal spiritual
distress.... It is therefore not surprising if... all sorts of signs and
wonders appear in the sky, or if miraculous intervention, where
humans have failed, is expected from heaven.'

In essence, then, Jung argues that such a transitional and stress-inducing time
as our own would naturally generate increased "psychoid" experiences and
psychologically rich material from the collective unconscious. The spiritual void
that results from an over-dependence on rationalism, the pure expression of

which is the hard sciences, would also engender a longing for some

intervention from beyond.

Many theorists and authors, including ufologists, have drawn from Jung
in this regard, some expanding on his ideas, others blatantly misrepresenting
 9

them. There is only a fraction more support in the academic mainstream for the
idea of the collective unconscious summoning unidentified flying objects as
messengers of our desire for wholeness than there is for the notion that small

gray beings have been regularly visiting earth, altering and manipulating our
genetic makeup -- and hence our destinies -- undetected. Though outside the
mainstream of academia, these two theories represent a major distinction
between the main camps within the UFO research community, the one group
supporting abduction as a physical reality of ominous intent from an extra-
terrestrial or extra-dimensional source, and the other supporting the psycho-
spiritual thesis more or less attributable to Jung.
In his article "Social Intelligence About Hidden Events: Its Significance
for Scientific Research and Social Policy," sociologist Ron Westrum attempts to
define the processes by which such ideas and concepts about anomalous
phenomena might or might not integrate into broader social paradigms.'
Westrum argues that there are a recognizable set of stages or categories of
recognition through which an event might pass, moving from an initial
awareness of such phenomena to either its acceptance or rejection by the
scientific community. This process, which often, though not always, involves a
dynamic between the populace and the academy, determines the acceptability
of a subject for scientific, or other intellectual, consideration. In presenting his
argument, Westrum uses historical examples from a wide range of social
concerns, including the reluctance of the Royal Society during the mid 18th
century to consider the possibility of rocks falling from the sky -- a subject that

remained in controversy for 44 years before meteorites were accepted as an

objective reality. Westrum does not argue that all reports of anomalous
phenomena are credible, but rather endeavors "to show...that the nature of the

social dynamics involved is often not appreciated by persons who must make
 10

decisions about the events in question."' By noting patterns of social obstacles

to acceptance that other important discoveries endured, Westrum draws
analogies to the present resistance by the scientific community to consider

features of UFO and related anomalous phenomena.

First Westrum explains that "an event may be described as 'hidden' if its

occurrence is so implausible that those who observe it hesitate to report it

because they do not expect to be believed." This implausibility, he argues, is
the "critical feature of the hidden event" and "may cause the observer to doubt

his own perceptions, leading to the event's denial or misidentification."" He

goes on to say that:

should the observer nonetheless make the report, he/she can

expect to be treated with incredulity or even ridicule. Since the
existence of a hidden event is contrary to what science, society, and
perhaps even the observer believes, the event remains hidden
because of strong social forces which interfere with reporting. The
actual degree of underreporting is sometimes difficult to believe, a
skepticism which itself acts as a deterrent to taking seriously those
reports which do surface.'

Because hidden events have few or no precedents, they are difficult to

fathom, and in many cases are unbelievable. This means there will be
numerous opportunities between the initial perception and an official
investigation where potential reports can be quashed.' Few reports then are
likely to find their way into a compilation of data. This is exacerbated by the fact
that there is rarely any central compilation of data for events that are not yet
recognized phenomena. In the case of UFOs, there is as yet no generally

available "indisputable evidence." As a result, alternate explanations -- such as

mistakes, confabulation, and hoaxes are offered readily and frequently.

"Thus, the combination of alternate explanations for the observed events and
 11

the lack of integration with current scientific theory" contribute "to a continued

'outlaw' status for each of these events.""

In detailing how this process affects social policy, Westrum delineates the

barriers to reporting and what he calls the "fallacy of centrality" in which

"persons who see themselves as experts on the topic in question often
overestimate how much they would know about the phenomenon if it were
taking place." The resulting attitude not only discourages "curiosity on the part
of the person...[but] also frequently creates in him/her an antagonistic stance
toward the events in question."' This is particularly evident in the case of alien
abductions, in part because such reports are colored by recollections of the
"contactee" phenomenon of the fifties and sixties. During this time, it was

common for various groups and individuals to allege regular social intercourse
with beings from a great variety of planets in and out of the solar system.32 By

virtue of their high media profile and the outrageousness of their claims,
contactees caused a vast majority of the thinking public to stigmatize any
investigation of UFO phenomena that was not sanctioned by the government.
Serious investigators had to work very hard to distance themselves from this
circus atmosphere. But the tabloid nature of the UFO fringe remains indelibly

etched in the thinking public's consciousness. This deeply entrenched attitude

is easily reaffirmed by the variety of schlock media professing "facts" about UFO
sightings, alien contacts or abductions, and government conspiracies to hide
these events." The absurd titles seen in the grocery line and the shoddy
research presented on tabloid TV continue to taint perceptions of any and all

UFO related investigations, regardless how objective or professional. It is

popular among conspiracy theroists to imagine this inundation of tabloid

nonsense is an intentional obfuscation perpetrated by the intelligence

community.
 12

In "The 'Alien Abduction' Phenomenon: Forbidden Knowledge of Hidden

Events," philosopher Michael Zimmerman extends Westrum's ideas, but
focuses more emphatically on the abduction phenomenon per se.'
Zimmerman is forthright in stating his belief that the abduction phenomenon is
"worthy of investigation by people from many different fields," arguing that it is

not socially healthy "that the . . . phenomenon is frequently discussed in popular

culture but is largely ignored by establishment sources."' Zimmerman feels

that because there are people honestly suffering as a result of this
phenomenon, it is the job of our institutions to fund research to reveal the cause
of this suffering. The refusal to do so, asserts Zimmerman, invites "the paranoid
fringe to conclude that the 'government' is not only covering up an alien
presence, but worse still is somehow in league with it."36

This strategy of ignoring the problem breeds divisiveness and mistrust,

as evidenced in the popularity of UFO lore and the productive harvesting of this
distrust and paranoia by programs such as the X-Files. Zimmerman argues
that "despite the fact that postwar popular culture has been saturated with
images and accounts of UFOs and ETs, most people are understandably
reluctant to conclude that accounts of alien abduction are veridical."37 He

agrees with researchers and theorists such as Ring, Vallee, Raschke,

Thompson, and Hynek that "the phenomenon itself seems to defy most attempts
to categorize it in terms either as a subjective event of 'inner space' or as an

objective event of 'outer space'."38

In further delineating Westrum's theory, Zimmerman recounts an

historical pattern such anomalous or hidden events commonly undergo:

First, scattered but uncorrelated reports begin to emerge that people

are experiencing an inexplicable anomalous phenomenon.
Second, 'The experiences are brought to public attention, but their
reality is questioned.' The phenomenon, whose boundaries remain
 13

blurred, remains taboo for mainstream scientists. . . . In these first

two stages, the academic 'experts' are usually 'a) ignorant [about
the phenomenon], b) unaware of their ignorance, and c) contributing
to the inhibition of reporting. . .
In the third and final stage . . . , scientists begin to study the
phenomenon, which by now has been relatively narrowly defined
and about which experts have significant information that can be
collated and compared."'"

In outlining some of the reasons why alien abduction phenomena

remain largely taboo to mainstream scientists, Zimmerman notes that: "For one
thing, abductions are associated with UFOs, which themselves are 'off-limits' to
mainstream researchers, in part because the US Air Force encouraged
journalists to ridicule those who made UFO reports."" This ridicule is often still
prevalent in reportage of UFO sightings or UFO related phenomena. Even
those programs, such as the X-Files, which support the idea of abduction
phenomena frequently evidence a heavy sarcasm, sometimes bordering on
cynicism, towards the subject matter.'
In the case of the X-Files, this wit, informed by postmodern gen-X
attitudes, may in part account for the show's popularity, but it is also generative
of attitudes the viewing public assumes in imitation of their favorite characters.
David Duchovny plays FBI agent Fox Mulder, the main character in the X-Files.
His character is both passionate and cynical at the same time, a paradox which
captures an ambivalence many feel. There are people who express a
desperate desire to be fully involved in life, yet nevertheless find themselves too
grounded in a learned objectivity to immerse themselves. Though they seem to
long for some kind of truth, they apparently want to perceive it as outside of

themselves, reclined on a slab for investigative probing, for dissection and

experimentation. They want life at the same distance that they get their

television accounts of life.

 14

Published Accounts

Abduction by extraterrestrials was a popular fictional subject of the pulp

magazines of the late thirties and forties as well as the science fiction stories

and films of the fifties.' John G. Fuller's The Interrupted Journey, published in
the mid sixties, was the first presentation of abductions by aliens as a "physical
reality."' Fuller's account of the Barney and Betty Hill abduction case is divided
between details described by the Hills in waking-state interviews and
transcriptions of hypnotic regressions of the Hills facilitated by Boston
psychiatrist Benjamin Simon. Dr. Simon, who worked with Fuller on the text to
ensure therapeutic propriety, notes in his introduction that the Hills had sought
help from him for a "crippling anxiety, manifested by [Mr. Hill] in fairly open
fashion and by Mrs. Hill more in the form of repetitive nightmarish dreams."'
He had originally guessed their symptoms might somehow be resulting from
social pressures related to their interracial marriage. Dr. Simon points out that
while he cannot endorse the notion that aliens abducted the Hills, he
nonetheless finds the accounts remarkable in their similarity and consistency,

which he attributes to a shared fantasy. Because various elements of the

account are common in later abduction recollections and, thus, indicative of
patterns found in research with the abductee population, I include here a

detailed summary of this classic story.

On the night of September 19, 1961, the Hills were traveling from
Canada, where they'd been vacationing, to their home in Portsmouth, New

Hampshire. During the journey they noticed a strange light in the sky which
seemed to be moving erratically about, then standing still, all the while seeming

to pace their car. Several times they stopped and got out of the car in attempts
 15

to gauge what the light could be. Finally, in a state of increasing agitation,

Barney again pulled to the side of the road, got out his binoculars, and walked
over to a nearby field to get a closer look. At this point the light seemed much
closer. Through the binoculars Barney was surprised to see a craft-like vehicle
and "at least a dozen living beings" looking back at him from behind some kind
of window.' Seized with the sudden conviction that they were going to be
captured, Barney ran back to the car and drove off. Shortly afterward, the Hills
remembered hearing a series of strange beeps coming from the back of the car.

Like many abductees after them, the Hills arrived home some two hours later
than expected but attached no particular importance to this. However, they
clearly felt that things were not entirely as they should be. Betty insisted that
they throw the leftover food away and not bring the things from the car into the
house. Barney described feeling 'unclean' and 'clammy,' to the extent that he
went to the bathroom, took a mirror and looked over his entire body, not
knowing exactly why. As Barney reported in his sessions with Dr. Simon: "... it
was a presence. Not that the presence was there with us, but something very
puzzling had happened."' In the weeks following, Betty began to have vivid
nightmares and partial recollections of certain "events" which she concluded

must have occurred that night.

When the Hills eventually sought help from Dr. Simon, it was agreed that
the treatment plan would include the use of regressive hypnosis. For
therapeutic purposes, all such treatment would be tape-recorded. In separate
hypnosis sessions, the Hills revealed similar stories about being stopped on the

road by small beings who took them aboard a strange craft and subjected them

to a variety of experiments, mostly of a medical nature. In addition, Betty

recalled communicating comfortably with the "leader" who gave her a "star map"

supposedly indicating the location of the aliens' home star.47 The map was
 16

taken from her, though, before they were returned to their car. She later
reconstructed the map from memory.
Long before they sought Dr. Simon's help, they had already reported a
good portion of their story to both the Air Force -- Fuller includes a copy of the

resulting Project Blue Book file in The lnterupted Journey and to Walter Webb,

a scientific advisor to the National Investigations Committee on Aerial

Phenomena and a lecturer at Boston's Hayden Planetarium." Brief accounts of
the abduction then appeared in 1962 in the January-February issue of the UFO
Investigator and again in the March, 1963 issue of APRO Bulletin. Between the
time they were abducted and the release of Fuller's book, the Hills spoke with
only a few people about their experience.
During the course of their work with Dr. Simon, the Hills were firmly
opposed to any notoriety. But in the late summer of 1965, a Boston newspaper
ran an article about both the abduction and the subsequent psychiatric
treatment. Because the paper misrepresented the case, and had run the article
despite the protests of both the Hills and Dr. Simon, the Hills decided to have
the story told in as reputable and complete a manner as possible. To this end,
they sought out Fuller's help. He was a respected journalist who had reluctantly
agreed to write an account of a separate UFO incident that occurred in the
Exeter, New Hampshire area around the time of the Hills' abduction." While
writing The Incident at Exeter, Fuller became increasingly intrigued with UFO
phenomena. So when the Hills approached him, he readily agreed to
investigate. Finding them sincere, and with the agreed participation of Dr.

Simon in selecting transcripts for publication, Fuller went on to write an account

of the Hills' story. As a promotional device, they agreed that the October, 1966

issue of Look magazine should run excerpts of the book, which came out in full

later that same month.

 17

The first alien abduction case reported in the U.S. media, the Barney and
Betty Hill case continues to define, in many ways, distinct elements of the
abduction phenomenon. One significant element is the use of hypnosis to

recollect what came to be known as "lost time," time for which purported

abductees are unable to account.5° As in the Hills' case, it is common for an

entire abduction scenario -- the period of lost time -- to take no more than a

couple of hours in any one episode. The traumatic nature of the experiences
often leads to repression. While some abductees are able to recall portions of
their abductions without the aid of hypnosis, the majority report being given
post-hypnotic suggestions to forget what happened to them during their

experiences.
The Hills were intelligent, responsible, hard-working people. Barney Hill,
despite an IQ of almost 140, worked as an assistant dispatcher at the Boston
post office where, for some time, he'd been working the night shift. Betty Hill
was "a child welfare worker for the state, handling a rather overwhelming
caseload of social worker with a caseload of 120 assignments at one time."'
They were both deeply involved in civil rights activism and gave generously of
their time and energy to this cause. They did not initially care to have their story

told, nor, in fact, did they think they had much of one to tell. They were aware
that they had seen a light in the sky which had acted strangely and that they had
heard beeps which seemed to come from somewhere near the trunk of their car.
Initially, they were also reluctant to share this information for fear they would be
ridiculed. Their uncertainty about their own observations and their fear of

ridicule are common elements in abductee reports. As Westrum and

Zimmerman note, this is a significant barrier to reporting. In addition, the

inexplicable loss of several hours and the generalized anxiety the Hills
experienced -- having no obvious conscious source, yet beginning after
 18

"sighting" an anomalous light while traveling in a remote area and relieved only
through regressive hypnosis -- are also quite typical in reports of these kinds.
Shortly after the publication in the late sixties of Fuller's account of the

Hill's experience, a psychologist at the University of Wyoming named Dr. Leo

Sprinkle distinguished himself as one of the first professionals to begin working
almost exclusively with abductees. Considered a groundbreaking step by many
ufologists, Sprinkle's efforts soon caused his colleagues at the University to call
for his early retirement. Sprinkle's case was the first in a series of cases which
have raised important questions about academic freedom and the impact of

investigating phenomena outside the bounds of consensual ideas about reality.

This issue of the struggles involved in gaining and maintaining the freedom to
investigate areas considered outside of the mainstream is a driving fictional
element of the X-Files program as well as a matter of heated debate
surrounding the UFO investigations of several prominent figures from various

disciplines.'
While reports of UFO sightings continued, including occasional sightings
of beings -- termed "close encounters"' by USAF consultant Dr. J. Allen Hynek
reports of actual abductions only began increasing in numbers after two

significant media events of the mid seventies. The first was "The UFO Incident,"
a television adaptation of Fuller's book, shown on NBC-TV on October 20,

1975. It starred James Earl Jones as Barney Hill and Estelle Parsons as Betty.

The second was Steven Spielberg's hit movie Close Encounters of the Third

Kind, released in 1977.

In Watch the Skies!: A Chronicle of the Flying Saucer Myth, aeronautics

historian Curtis Peebles writes about these media events. He says of "The UFO

Incident" that "the aliens in the film were depicted as short, with smooth grey

skins, bald, with slightly pointed heads, and having large, slanted eyes."'
 19

Peebles attributes this early-televised presentation as being, in part,

responsible for the popularity of the now hugely familiar "small gray." Close
Encounters further popularized the image of the spindly, big headed, insect-

eyed aliens, an image that is still the most commonly reported form of
extraterrestrial." Peebles asserts there was a rapid increase in abduction
reports as a result of the televised "UFO incident" and Spielberg's blockbuster,

Close Encounters."
Also published during the seventies were three other books important to

this study. The first was Temple University History Professor David M. Jacobs'
book The UFO Controversy in America, the first scholarly historical account of

the UFO phenomenon. In the next decade Jacobs, along with New York artist
Budd Hopkins, would become one of the most outspoken supporters of the
extra-terrestrial hypothesis. William Fowler published The Andreasson Affair in

1979, the first in a long list of abduction studies which established him as an
important researcher in this area. The majority of his work focuses on one case:

Betty Andreasson."
By far the most popular abduction book published in that decade was

Travis Walton's The Walton Experience." Walton's alleged abduction was

another high media impact, highly controversial account. On November 5,
1975, a seven-man brush clearing crew under contract by the US Forest
Service reportedly saw a UFO in the woods as they traveled from their work site
to the town of Snowflake, Arizona. Walton bolted from the truck to get a closer
look. The six others reported being terrified and calling to him to get back in the

vehicle. When a blue-green flash of light struck Walton in the chest area,
knocking him back some ten feet, Michael Rogers, the crew chief and driver of

the truck, panicked and drove off. After some time driving in terror, some of the

crew agreed to go back and look for Walton, but he was nowhere to be found.
 20

Local authorities were notified and an intensive three-day search turned

up no sign of either Walton, a UFO, nor any evidence of Walton's presence

alive or dead -- in the woods. On November 10, five days after the
disappearance, the remaining crewmembers took a lie-detector test to

determine if any one of them had knowledge of or had been involved in

Walton's murder. The test results, inconclusive in the case of one man,
indicated that the other five not only had not been involved in any foul play, but

truly believed they had seen a UFO the night of Walton's disappearance.59
Walton, after an absence of five full days, returned the day following the tests.
Walton's brother Duane took charge of getting him competent medical
help, keeping the barrage of news reporters and curious people at a distance,

and initiating the steps towards official verification of Walton's claim. But
Duane's efforts to contact a reputable UFO investigating agency resulted in the
involvement of the Aerial Phenomena Research Organization of Tucson, a
number of whose scientific consultants were on the National Enquirer's Blue
Ribbon Panel for UFOs. Ultimately, Walton and his fellow crewmembers each
received large checks from this tabloid along with certificates touting theirs as
the most reputable UFO story of the year. This did not help the case for

legitimacy. Though Hynek supported their account, debunkers and skeptics

came down hard, latching onto numerous inconsistencies and raising questions

of integrity.
For this and other reasons, Walton's case is still debated, but it is
generally not considered representative of the majority of abductee

experiences. The case is controversial for a number of reasons, and several of

these illustrate common problems ufologists confront in determining and

establishing the legitimacy of these claims. First off, few abductees are missing

for such an extended period.' Second, most abductees are disinterested in the
 21

amount of attention that Walton seemed to draw to himself, though this may
have resulted from his extended disappearance and the fact that a UFO sighting

was involved. Third, Walton recollects so little of his abduction, and the details
that he does recall do not entirely correlate with the vast majority of reports.

One example of this discrepancy of details is particularly illustrative of claims of

media influences on abduction reports. Walton reports that on first waking in

the ship, he could make out a rectangular light above him and a triangular
shape to the ceiling. By contrast, the majority of abductees report an
examination room that appears "circular and domed without sharp corners..., its

lighting ... diffused and uniform without any particular source."61 However, the
Hills had reported a wedge-shaped room. And this fact holds special
significance for debunkers who note that the NBC-TV version of the Hill's case

was televised one month prior to Walton's disappearance. Both Walton and his
brother admitted to watching the program.
Additional discrepancies show up in Walton's description of his
interactions with the beings. As he became conscious he was aware of
someone working over him. He thought at first that he'd been in an accident
and these were doctors. He describes them as "wearing unusual, orange-
colored surgical gowns," and "white masks and caps," highly unusual details to
find in an abduction report.' While the beings Walton describes roughly match
the profile of the "grays," it is quite unique to hear of them attired in such human
garb. Once aware they were not human, Walton reports striking out at them,
raising himself, despite his weakness, from the examination table, grabbing a

loose instrument or tool with which to keep the beings at bay, and finally

chasing them off. Here Walton's report is again highly uncharacteristic in that

the beings seem to have had little or no control over him. Walton attributes his
apparent ability to break their spell on him to his karate training, but abduction
 22

accounts rarely include descriptions of such heroics. When they do, it is

generally considered an indication of confabulation.
Walton then describes wandering about the ship until he encounters
another kind of being. This one was approximately six foot two inches tall, very
muscular, with blondish brown hair and beautiful features, and was wearing a
velvety, close-fitting blue uniform and clear spherical helmet. The physical
description matches reports of the second most commonly encountered alien,
called the "Nordic type," frequently reported in Scandinavian and surrounding
countries, including the British Islands, hence the name. The Nordic types also
most closely resemble descriptions of those beings contactees of the 50's and
60's alleged meeting, though their alien friends readily spoke while more recent
reports, such as Walton's, indicate a bemused silence on the part of this type.

Walton, thinking a human had rescued him, allowed the being to lead
him from the ship. They went through a large enclosed area, where Walton saw
two more crafts parked, and into a room where there were three more of the
Nordic beings, including a female. These beings -- whom Walton describes as
quite beautiful, with similar features as though from the same family -- smiled
benignly but would not respond in any way to Walton's questions. The first
being led Walton to a chair, then left the room. The three remaining beings then
gently but firmly stretched him out on a table and anesthetized him. The next
thing he recalls is waking on the road near Heber, Arizona, where he was
found. A craft was floating off as he gained consciousness.
Fifteen years after the publication of his first book, Walton wrote a revised

second edition, titled Fire in the Sky: The Walton Experience, in which he

addresses at considerable length, and in great detail, the "attacks" from

debunkers.' The revised edition also discusses the creation of a movie

rendition, entitled Fire in the Sky, that was released in 1993. Filmed in Oregon,
 23

scripted by Tracy Torme -- who also wrote the NBC adaptation of the Hill
incident -- the movie stars D.B. Sweeny as Walton and James Garner as the
investigating sheriff." While much of the movie version is at least congruent
with Walton's written account, the abduction scenes themselves have almost

nothing in common with what Walton presented in his book. The movie
rendition does not include any of the aforementioned interactions with the
aliens described in Walton's book. Rather, it is a terrifying scene of high
strangeness and brutality, ultimately amounting to an optic and oral rape scene.
While this representation may indeed capture something of the terror that
abductees experience in recollecting their abductions, it does not proceed from

Walton's own account nor does it match any category of abduction recollections

with which I am familiar.

Other popular books on the subject that are adapted for film also suffer
considerable alterations, ultimately presenting a skewed version of the account.

Such portrayals exemplify how popular media accounts of abductions --

presumably based in fact -- are adjusted to meet some kind of popular demand,
thus eroding the credibility not only of the specific report, but also of abduction
claims generally, and ultimately, the study of the phenomenon itself.

Several years after the release of Walton's first book, New York artist
Budd Hopkins firmly established himself as a major UFO abduction researcher
with the publication of Missing Time.' The book was the first popular non-
fiction text to suggest that earth and earthlings were the subjects of an ongoing
research project by some non-terrestrial source. In the book, Hopkins suggests

that a vast number of people may have been subjected to abductions

unknowingly. The book focuses, in large part, on the experiences of five

abductees, including transcriptions of portions of their hypnosis sessions with

Dr. Aphrodite Clamar. But Hopkins also extrapolates from his research,
 24

outlining a scenario of an unrecognized epidemic. The book is all the more

frightening and intriguing because Hopkins offers his arguments in a manner
both logical and clear. He takes great care to present his methodology, which
seems well considered, and his astonishment, which seems genuine. Further,
his evidence appears to lead inexorably in the direction that he concludes. A
section of his introduction supports the ideas put forth by Westrum:

It is ironic but true that the very possibility of an extraterrestrial cause

works against scientific interest in the UFO phenomenon. All of our
thinking, all of our boundaries are anthropomorphically determined.
Science is based upon human intelligence dealing with the empirical
world. The nature of other possibly 'superior' but surely different
intelligences studying us is literally ungraspable."

Hopkins followed his first book with Intruders: The Incredible Visitations
at Copley Woods in 1987, which was later made into a television movie titled
Intruders.° The movie version stars Richard Crenna as a psychiatrist who is
confronted with two similarly bizarre accounts by patients in a short span of

time. As he seeks to unravel these mysteries, he finds himself confronted with

questions of a deeper personal ethic than that delineated in the professional
codes of psychiatric hospital staff. This inner search leads him to risk his career
status, and the support of his peers, in a search for answers. This portrayal is a
loosely factual version of the inculcation of Harvard psychiatrist John E. Mack
into the inner circle of abduction researchers. During the 90's, Mack became a
major spokesperson for the phenomenon. Because of his prestigious medical
and academic background, Mack's involvement has been quite significant in

helping legitimize exploration of this phenomenon.

Both the movie and the book version of Intruders continue the ideas
Hopkins first presented in Missing Time: humans are the subjects of an ongoing
genetic experiment by extraterrestrials. But in Intruders, Hopkins introduces
 25

evidence suggesting that abduction phenomena frequently occur across

generations in families; that is, patterns of abduction occur multi-generationally.
From this, he concludes that the extraterrestrial study of humans includes
systematic investigations of bloodlines. In presenting the case of Kathie Davis
and her family, Hopkins eventually describes a virtually industrial pattern of
manipulation of human gene sequences as well as the use of unsuspecting

human females to cross breed and occasionally nurture alien/human hybrids.

The majority of abductees do report a notable focus, on the part of their

respective abductors, on reproductive organs and the generative process.

Classically, abductees have reported sperm or ova collection, but female
abductees increasingly report artificial insemination or implantation of fetuses
which are then removed in a later abduction -- usually near the end of the first

trimester. Hopkins, Jacobs, Mack, and others report working with female

subjects who have lost pregnancies with no evidence or memory of

spontaneous abortion. This has been referred to as "Missing Embryo/Fetus
Syndrome." Much like the alien implant issue, however, researchers who have
conferred with medical doctors in hopes of finding in these reports the "smoking

gun" have continued to be frustrated by the impossibility of isolating the

possible causes." Female abductees also report being shown rooms with
fetus-like creatures floating free in fluid-filled glass containers. In addition, they
report being asked to hold obviously hybrid infants, toddlers, or children, and
being told these are their young. These are featured elements in the movie

version of Intruders.
Though he includes highlights and supporting evidence from other

cases, Hopkins' book focuses on the case of Kathie Davis and her family.

Kathie's family is an example of the multi-generational nature of abductions,

and Kathie's experiences specifically involve an unexpected pregnancy

 26

followed by an inexplicable return to normal menstruation. Hopkins was also

intrigued by the case because of physical traces left in the back yard at the
presumed landing site, complaints by neighbors of extremely odd electrical
disturbances at the time of an alleged abduction, inexplicable physical
markings -- both internal and external -- on the abductees, as well as physical ill
effects suffered by those family members who wandered outside shortly after

the apparent departure of the craft.

In the beginning of the book, Hopkins relates his methods for eliminating
the possibility of logical psychological explanations for abduction experiences.
In association with Dr. Clamar and Ted Bloecher, and with financial support
from the Fund for UFO Research, Hopkins "hired a highly recommended, highly
qualified psychologist, Dr. Elizabeth Slater..., to administer a full battery of
psychological tests to nine people whose abduction experiences" had been
investigated previously. According to Hopkins, "Dr. Slater knew nothing about
the UFO connection." The three of them told her only that they "had a research
project that required the 'blind' testing of [the] nine subjects, [and] that [they]

were interested in any psychological patterns that might emerge among them,"
including any indications of psychopathology." The tests included the MMPI,
the Rorschach, the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale, the Thematic
Apperception Test, and a projective drawing test. According to Hopkins, Dr.
Slater:

found no major mental disorders amongst the nine; none was

paranoid, schizophrenic or otherwise emotionally crippled. There
was, however, something of a pattern. Though all nine were above
average intelligence, they all shared certain "deficits".... In general
terms, though several ... were extremely successful in life ... all
suffered a lack of self-esteem. None seemed at ease physically, "at
home in their bodies, and comfortable with their sexuality," in Dr.
Slater's words, and all suffered from a degree of distrust and
 27

wariness, though none could be called paranoid. "They're just more

vigilant, more hesitant to trust, than the average person," she said."

Dr. Slater reports that her results present a significant challenge to those

who would argue that abductions are the result of confabulation or various
forms of psychopathology, a common assumption.' In addition, Slater's
findings, according to Hopkins, support his belief that the disorienting,
incredible, and shame-inducing nature of these experiences, combined with the
apparent post-hypnotic suggestions the aliens allegedly plant to block abductee

recall, and the social forces which dictate against the recognition or acceptance
of such reports combine to make it virtually impossible for abductees to report
such incidents, thus making it immensely difficult for the true proportions of the

epidemic to be adequately assessed.

Hopkins' most recent book, Witnessed: The True Story of the Brooklyn

Bridge UFO Abductions, details the multiple witness abduction of Linda Corti le
from her twelfth floor New York apartment.' Here Hopkins continues his
customary methodology, presenting in tandem the "facts" of the case with a
dramatic account of his discovery of the story elements. In Witnessed, Hopkins
claims that, among others, a high level international diplomat and his two
bodyguards witnessed Linda, in the company of three small gray entities and
bathed in a beam of blue light, floating from her apartment into a strange craft
hovering above the building. The witness reports, which are revealed gradually
over a long period of complex interactions, correlate conveniently with his
ongoing regression work with Linda. As Linda relives her experiences through
hypnosis, they are corroborated through tape recordings sent to Hopkins by the

concerned guards, one of whom becomes increasingly mentally unstable. They

send tapes because they are extremely reluctant to reveal their identities,
presumably because of regulations related to their work. One of the guards
 28

comes to believe he has had an alien-fostered relationship with Linda since

childhood. Both he and Linda separately recall having a long-running series of
dreams of a sibling-like partner/friend that match the description of the other.
Eventually, the guard comes to believe that Linda's son, presumably by her

husband, might actually be his own. In this way, Hopkins introduces another
element into the genetic manipulation mythology. Aliens are apparently not
only interested in test-tube combinations of genetic material extracted from
helpless victims in quasi-medical procedures, but are also curious how two
people develop a consensual sexual relationship. And, according to Hopkins,
they investigate this by engineering simultaneous abductions over time.
The book is an extremely complex unveiling which reads more like a
detective novel than his previous work. The guards, identified only as "Richard"
and "Dan," have interactions with Linda, even abducting her themselves several
times, ostensibly in desperation to make sense of their own experiences. While
this interpersonal drama unfolds, Hopkins gradually uncovers the identity of the
guards and, thence, the diplomat, referred to as "the third man." Hopkins then
arranges communication with the diplomat who indicates an intractable
unwillingness to go public with his story. Hopkins agrees to maintain the
anonymity of the "third man," though "several publications identified him as
former United Nations secretary-general Javier Perez de Cuellar."' Because
Hopkins refused to reveal witness names, the case, which many initially hoped
would serve as indisputable proof of the phenomenon, gradually assumed a
quieter place among the growing catalog of abduction "legends."

The single most influential alien abduction book is Whitley Strieber's

1987 book Communion.74 It was published at about the same time as Hopkins'

Intruders. Both books made the New York Times best seller list, but

Communion remained there "for thirty-two weeks, and [stayed] in the number-
 29

one position for almost five months."' Its striking cover clinched in the mind of
the reading public the image of the spindly-bodied, big-eyed, bug-like alien.
When he first began recollecting his "visitor" experiences, Strieber sought help
from Hopkins. Initially friendly, it wasn't long before the two fell out, Hopkins

accusing Strieber of an aggressive maneuvering to eclipse him as

spokesperson regarding the extraterrestrial invasion. Regardless of what
caused friction between them, Hopkins was, in large part, responsible for the

inculcation of Strieber -- as he was for John Mack as well -- into the ranks of
supporters of the ET hypothesis and as a researcher of the alien abduction

phenomenon.
Communion details Strieber's encounters with the unknown during the

fall and winter of 1985. In addition, it chronicles Strieber's efforts to deal with
this contact and interaction with the beings Strieber came to call the "visitors."
Strieber, his wife, and their son went to their remote upstate New York cabin
retreat for the Christmas holidays.' During the night of December 26-27,
Strieber recalls being awakened by a noise and seeing strange creatures enter
his bedroom. Though sitting up, he was unable to react to their advance, nor
could he resist as they took him from his bed. Strieber recalls being taken to a
spot in the woods and then floated up to a craft. Once in the craft, he recalls
being left in a dirty anteroom to wait, interacting with a variety of beings in a
more or less conscious, though terrified, state during this time, and, finally,
being subjected to a moment of intense pain as the aliens apparently placed

something in his brain.

The book also recounts another, more terrestrial, drama as Strieber

struggles to make sense of what happened. He recounts seeing doctors and

psychologists, contacting ufologists and UFO related organizations, and

interrogating his friends about his behaviors. He undertakes all of these

 30

measures in efforts to ascertain first his sanity, then the veracity of his
experience, and gradually, its purpose in his life and any broader, global

implications.
It is worth noting that, like Walton's account, several of the details of

Strieber's story are notable departures from common abduction reports.

Especially telling is his description of the dirty anteroom where the silver thread

is injected into his brain. In The Threat, David Jacobs uses this example to

argue against the media contamination explanation for abduction accounts so

often offered by skeptics. Strieber, he says:

tells about being transported to a dirty anteroom where he sat on a

bench amid the clutter.... If media contamination were a problem, I
would expect some abductees ... who have read Communion to
describe a similar situation. That has not occurred. Similarly,
Strieber's movie, Communion, watched by millions of people, had a
scene of dancing, fat, blue aliens. Neither I nor my colleagues have
ever had a similar report.77

Other departures from characteristic abduction reports found in

Strieber's book include his description of sitting, as opposed to lying down, for

the "operation" wherein the thin, needle-like item is presumably placed in his
brain; his apparent consciousness and mobility during this interaction; the fact
that there are four different alien types involved in his experience; and finally,
the descriptions of several of these types -- notably the fat, blue dwarves.
Communion is intense and quite frightening. Strieber relates his terror
and disorientation, the strangeness of the experience and how it challenged
him. But the central issue for many UFO researchers is whether Strieber is

telling the truth or simply capitalizing on a popular topic. In Alien Contact: The

First Fifty Years, Jenny Rand les points out that "because of his high profile and

a brilliant publicity campaign, Strieber's book ... was a huge success all over the

world..., raising the stakes in the abduction mystery overnight."' But that he
 31

received a one million dollar advance for the book, that he was an experienced
writer in the horror genre, that his abduction account varies from most in so
many important details, and that he continues to maneuver for a central and
defining role within the UFO community despite the fact his personal accounts
offer nothing new or important to the body of data, all add up to big questions for

those interested in legitimate UFO research.

Yet Strieber continues to assert the truth of his experiences and his

sincerity in wishing to further the cause of legitimacy. Since Communion,

Strieber has continued to write books dealing exclusively with UFO and
abduction phenomena. In Transformation: The Breakthrough, which followed

close on the heels of Communion, Strieber exemplifies how abductees often

integrate the initially terrifying trauma of their experiences by reframing them as
transformative, ultimately positive learning opportunities.' He also details the
apparent abduction of his son from their upstate cabin. Majestic deals with the
presumed formation during Truman's presidency of the MJ-12 group.' This
group was allegedly created by executive order shortly after the Roswell

incident. It was to remain top secret, and its mission was to make decisions and

policies concerning the phenomenon of alien intrusion. Breakthrough is

another book about the importance of the interventions of the aliens and the
government cover-up.8' Strieber alleges our present time represents a crucially
important developmental stage for the human race. This growth spurt, he says,
is probably being initiated and engineered, and at the very least guided, by the

nearly invisible visitors. In The Secret School, Strieber recalls his youth and the

midnight "trainings" that he and other youths in the San Antonio area received

from a hooded and wrinkled alien "matron" in the Olmos Basin.' Strieber also
claims recollection of his, and the matron's, past-life involvement in educating
Octavius, intending thus to link aliens to ancient historical incidents of social
 32

import. His most recent book, Confirmation: The Hard Evidence of Aliens
Among Us, focuses on alleged physical proof of alien interactions in human
affairs." Included in this book are discussions of a number of video tapes made
of an unknown object sighted repeatedly over Mexico City and the documented
surgical removal and subsequent study of material "implants" found in five

separate individuals.
Strieber's opus has gone far to promote the popular imaginary about the
phenomenon. His recent book Confirmation may be important in terms of
aiding the legitimacy of abduction studies. Also perhaps significant along these
lines is the fairly recent Communion Letters, which he co-authored with his wife,
Anne.' This book reveals excerpts from a sampling of the more than 200,000
letters Strieber claims to have received since publishing Communion. He
credits his wife Anne with having individually read and catalogued each letter.
The published excerpts deal with experiences which support the idea that
visitation by extra-terrestrial or extra-dimensional beings is a regular
occurrence. Some of the related stories are spoken of as no more than dreams,
but each has elements familiar to the dedicated ufologist working with the
abductee population. An unusual percentage of the letter excerpts refer to one

or another of Strieber's books, and many express personal gratitude to him.

This again makes these testimonies suspect because of Strieber's apparent
conflation of his stated mission with his drive to self-aggrandizement.
Where Strieber has continually struggled to establish the legitimacy of
his claims, Harvard psychiatrist and Pulitzer prize-winning author John E. Mack

arrived in the fold of UFO abduction research with credentials firmly established.
Mack's inculcation into abduction phenomena is depicted, no doubt in

somewhat fictionalized manner, in a made for television movie entitled

Intruders, based on Budd Hopkins' book by the same name.85 Mack's 1994
 33

book Abduction: Human Encounters with Aliens caused a great deal of

controversy in psychiatric circles and on the Harvard campus, resulting in a lot
of unfriendly press and a review of his methodology by his peers, which he

passed apparently unscathed."

In "Epistemological Totalitarianism: The Skeptical Case Against
Abductions," folklorist Thomas E. Bullard gives an account of Mack's talk at the

1994 CSICOP (Committee for Scientific Investigation of Claims of the

Paranormal) conference in Seattle. Mack, Bullard tells us, believes "that

abductions represent a real and revolutionary encounter with intelligences

beyond the scope of our present understanding," and that "the abduction
experience mark[s] an opening of new knowledge, perhaps a new way of
knowing ...."7 Mack, in line with other theorists mentioned later in this paper,
argues that: "The rationalistic polarities of mental and physical, subjective and
objective may have proved too rigid and narrow to encompass the reality of
human experience. Abductees," Mack asserts, "often returned from their
encounters with new understanding, more flexible and tolerant in their
thinking."88 Mack's philosophy about the phenomenon is more akin to the
psycho-spiritual theories based in Jung's ideas than to the hard-core ET

hypothesis camp of Hopkins and Jacobs.

Researchers working with the experiencer population often report that
abductees, once having integrated their experience, feel their consciousness is
greatly expanded by the event. Further, they often feel a sense of importance in
their having been "chosen." The following is an excerpt from Mack's book

wherein he discusses the case of "Jerry," a woman originally from Kansas City,

Missouri who describes herself as an "ordinary housewife." Mack reports that:

Jerry's case demonstrates a broad range of abduction phenomena.

She has experienced complex, intrusive reproductive procedures on
 34

the alien craft, including insertion and removal of what appear to be

fetuses of some sort[,] and [she] has had encounters with hybrid
entities. At the same time she has undergone the intense personal
growth and philosophical and spiritual opening that often seem to
accompany abduction experiences."

Mack goes on to tell us that "a number of Jerry's writings are concerned
with the relationship of the material world to the spirit world and the limitations of

a purely technological way of knowing." As evidence that Jerry's

transformational outlook results more from her experiences than from her work
with him, Mack includes examples of her thoughts from two journal entries
predating the psychiatric intervention. The first states that "Technical data does

not lead to the discovery of other beings. Spiritual data does." Mack includes
an entry written one month later:

Science: manifested travel into space and time

Spirituality: unmanifested travel into space and time
Science: limited travel
Spirituality: unlimited travel
Both valid
Which ticket will you buy?9°

As a clinician, Mack is interested in helping abductees integrate their

experiences into their daily lives. He finds that the sexually intrusive
procedures that so many abductees report have a definite impact on their ability
to interact intimately with their partners. In Jerry's case, "the uncovering of core
memories of her abduction-related traumatic experiences" made it possible for
her "to psychologically separate human from alien reproductive and sexual
activity." With Mack's help, she was then able to "devise strategies for

reinforcing the distinction between them. Jerry and [her husband] Bob were

then able to enjoy a satisfying sexual relationship."' His book, which discusses
 35

thirteen such cases, also includes an overview of his methodologies and his

theories about the phenomenon.

Mack's work and status have made him something of a target. Tina
Landau's play, Space, which had its world premiere at the Steppenwolf Theatre

in January 1998, has as its central role a character based on Mack.92 Landau's

portrayal is less than flattering. In Allan Saunders, Landau conflates Mack's

position and some minor, though distinguishing, details of his life with the

frenzied dissociating personality traits commonly believed, by the uninformed,

to be characteristic of abductees. While the identity of Mack as the model for the

central character might be "poetically" legitimate, such a portrayal further

entrenches negative stereotypes of abductees, researchers interested in the
phenomenon, and the entire field of study, not to mention the potential damage
to Mack's own career. This is another instance of how the media, in this case a
nationally recognized theatre group usually known for its willingness to
challenge accepted positions, re-interprets for entertainment purposes key
elements of a story -- specifically here, the factual sources informing its storyline

at an inestimable cost to broader issues.

Last to be considered in this list of essential published accounts is the
work of Temple University history professor and UFO abduction researcher
David M. Jacobs. Jacobs, like Hopkins, learned hypnosis so he could carry on
his research without being a slave to the heavy schedules of available

psychologists. In 1992 he published Secret Life: Firsthand Accounts of UFO

Abductions.' Comprised mostly of transcriptions of his sessions with
abductees, the book also develops common themes, adds explanations, and

provides context for the sessions. Jacobs released a second book on the

subject just this year, The Threat, in which he discloses his belief that the aliens

are generating a hybrid army to interface with the human race for the nefarious
 36

purpose of gradually taking over the planet." His books have been very
popular, though by no means approaching the sales of Strieber's. However, by
virtue of his historical expertise, Jacobs has the distinction of pioneering the
only UFO course offered continuously at a major university in the United States.
 37

Pop Culture Status

The territory no longer precedes the

map, nor survives it. Henceforth, it is the
map that precedes the territory
PRECESSION OF SIMULACRA -- it is
the map that engenders the territory.
Jean Baudrillard.95

Modern media presentations featuring themes of abduction evidence

distinct patterns of representation of both abduction details and abductee
psychology which bear little resemblance to reports collecting in the files of

ufologists. Yet these representations clearly support certain culturally

embedded stereotypes about the phenomenon and those who allege

involvement. Instances of this have been evidenced in this paper in the cases

of the movie renditions of both Whitley Strieber's and Travis Walton's

experiences, to a lesser extent in their books as well, and in the Tina Landau

play Space. These and other popular representations have, in effect,

appropriated and normalized the abduction phenomenon, thereby lessening
the impact of these extraordinary reports and deflating their inherent challenge

to conventional ideas.
A recent television commercial exemplifies how contemporary references
to alien presence, even alien encounter phenomena, often present such
phenomena as average, everyday, normal. While out walking his dog in a

deserted field, that most average of men the Maytag® repair man -- meets

with an alien craft apparently delivering a new washing machine to mankind.

Magically, he is stripped of his outer garments by little elfin aliens intent on

providing a wash demonstration. When clothed again in his now freshly

laundered Maytag suit, and watching as the mother ship flashes off into the

distance, he remarks as if to his dog, "They'll never believe this: a washer that
 38

really cleans clothes!" The intended humor is also the subtextual message:

UFOs and alien contact are nothing special, nothing out of the ordinary, nothing
to be afraid of. The abnormal is, in fact, quite normal.

Men in Black

The recent popular movie Men in Black is a prime example of

fictionalization for popularization. Though the movie has nothing to do with

abduction per se, it is nonetheless a distortion of the MIB legend, a curious

subset of UFO and abduction phenomena. In the movie, the MIB's are
government agents working under the auspices of a highly secretive branch of

some area of the intelligence community. Their function is to keep tabs on

immigrating extraterrestrials, regulating their activity to ensure they abide by

their agreements and don't make trouble with the native populace.
The actual MIB legend is quite different in its defining characteristics.'
First, MI Bs are said to exhibit oddities of behavior which cause those who
encounter them to doubt not only their trustworthiness and intentions, but even
their very reality. They typically arrive on the scene of a UFO sighting, or
similarly anomalous event, shortly after the event itself or the report of the event.
Frequently they arrive before the percipient has had an opportunity to make any
report to any authorities or, as is frequently reported, they arrive immediately
after the individual makes a report, as though they were already around the
corner waiting. They frequently allege connection with government agencies,
sometimes flashing obviously imitation cards or badges. Their intent is usually

either to extract information from witnesses, and/or to warn them away from

further involvement, inquiry, or official reporting of the event. Experiencer

 39

descriptions tend to revolve around the combination of the almost laughable,

fake, or surrealistic qualities about these beings and the real fear they induce.
Though sometimes fumbling as though unfamiliar with the ways of

humans, MI Bs are clearly not the good guys. They frighten and intimidate

witnesses. Few people who have reported MIB experiences have not
expressed significant doubt about their terrestrial origin. The movie Men in
Black alters the content of the MIB myth in order to redefine it in terms of the

tired standard Hollywood formula: American hero worship. A much closer

approximation of the prototypical MIB experience is portrayed in the John
Say les film Brother from Another Planet. Here the MI Bs, though still evidencing

some fictional elements, are quite strange in their movements and behavior;
and their motivations and intentions, while clearly malevolent at some level, are

not in the least clear to the earthlings they encounter.

The film Men in Black also exemplifies the current trend in recent cultural
production representations of extraterrestrials as bug-like and nasty. The ultra
bad alien in the movie is, in fact, a monstrous cockroach. While this may be
nothing more than a tongue-in-cheek reference to the bug-eyed aliens common
in abduction reports, it is nonetheless curious how the greatest variety of recent
movie extraterrestrial monsters bear this resemblance to the aliens of abduction
reports. Other bug-like entities that attack Americans at the movies include the
recent Starship Troopers enemy, the Independence Day aliens, the creatures
from the various Alien movies, the changeable monsters in both Species and
Mimic, and even the invading bugs in Lost in Space, to name but a few. Aliens

are evil; by extension, otherness is bad.

While the scapegoating of otherness, of marginality, has been explored

in feminist and ethnic studies literature in terms of how similar projections of

otherness affect women or minorities in sociological and cultural frameworks, it
 40

has, to my knowledge, never been addressed as an attack, intended or

otherwise, on the projections of the collective unconscious sent as messengers

to the self. If, as Jung proposed, the UFO is a symbol of the desire for

wholeness, and, by extrapolation, encounters with "aliens" somehow indicative

of our collective sense of "alienation," then the depiction of that othemess -- that
part of the self inhabiting the UFO -- as an enemy only fosters the divisiveness

that makes wholeness an impossibility. It would then work against the purpose
that Jung and the humanistic psychologists have defined as the intrinsic nature

of the self, the movement through acceptance toward integration and

realization. In this regard, stereotypical depictions of aliens, abductees, UFO

researchers, and/or those who experience or research other kinds of

anomalous phenomena undercut the potency of the messages that the entities
or experiences are presumed to carry by redefining them as mere surface gloss.
The depth impact, though still very palpable for the experiencer, is thus made
incommunicable to any general audience, including specific groups such as an
experiencer's friends and family, by means of this standardized

superficialization.

X-Files

The five-year-old and increasingly popular X-Files derives in large part

from fictionalized distortions of abduction accounts. There are three reasons
why the X-Files is central to this discussion. First, the program is built on the

fictional premise that alien abduction is a reality, one which is current in

everyday America but which remains hidden, even from those who are most

affected by it, both by the omnipotence of the aliens depicted and, more
insidiously yet, by forces within our own government which regulate and guide
 41

our enculturation. This premise is reflective of certain pervasive trends in UFO

lore. Second, the program exerts a tremendous influence on its public. In so

doing, it is defining a criteria, a database of information, about this supposedly

hidden reality of alien abduction. The viewing public is acquiring a particular
understanding of the phenomenon from such presentations. But in being
fictionalized, elements of the phenomenon are also necessarily mitigated, or

filtered, by the constraints of entertainment marketplace value. Third, the

program defines an acceptable range of attitudes toward the phenomenon
among its viewers. In this way, the program can be said to be both capturing

and shaping various UFO related subcultures.

The principal character is Fox Mulder, played by David Duchovny, an FBI

special investigator driven to explore cases involving the paranormal.

According to the plot, certain FBI cases are relegated to a special file because

they either represent too much strangeness, are unanswerable by means

available to logic, or because they border too closely on work by "black" sub
organizations inside the intelligence community. Of specific interest to agent
Mulder are cases involving evidence of extra-terrestrial lifeforms, abductions of
humans by extraterrestrials, and/or genetic tampering, this last usually in

association with abduction. The fictional premise for his near obsession with
such phenomena is his guilt surrounding the disappearance, and apparent
abduction by aliens, of his younger sister when they were children. Mulder
recounts this story in the "Pilot" episode as something he allegedly witnessed,
but which was discounted by the authority figures around him at the time of the

incident, including his parents. He was only able to recapture his memory
about the event through deep regressive hypnosis which, as noted earlier, is a

common though controversial tool in abduction recollection. His search, then, is

for any shred of hard physical evidence that can support his contentions of alien
 42

intervention in human affairs or evidence pointing to government knowledge

and/or cover-up of such interventions or interactions. Authority figures lied to
him in his childhood, so naturally authorities have something to hide.
Conspiracy theories are a major driving force of the show.
Agent Mulder is accompanied in his investigations by agent Dana Scully,

played by Gillian Anderson, a medical doctor specializing in forensics.

According to Chris Carter, the producer of the show and writer of many of its

episodes, Scully offers a necessary skeptical balance to Mulder's infatuation

with the bizarre. It is implied, from the earliest episodes, that FBI headquarters
assigned Scully as Mulder's partner to check, in two senses of the word, his
peculiar inclinations. As Mulder and Scully explore the unknown and deal with
a variety of bizarre crimes, they are alternately aided and hindered by shadowy
figures who seem to act on behalf of even more shadowy figures. A host of
characters, named and unnamed, return to flesh out longer story lines which

carry the show between its variegated panoply of weekly incidents featuring the

bizarre.
In addition to the television program there are books, magazines, web-
sites and additional paraphernalia which fans of the show, often referred to as

'X-Philes' or 'X-Filers', can purchase, subscribe to, or visit, depending. Critics of

the show argue that it promotes belief in the paranormal at the expense of the
scientific. Some have pointed to the design of the show, in which the skeptical
mind, usually represented by Scully, is consistently proven wrong, as evidence
of its detrimental nature. At the same time, many of these critics are concerned

that the show presents as a given that extra-terrestrial visitors are regularly

visiting earth and that the US government is either in secret collaboration with
these beings or, at the very least, aggressively acts to keep their presence on

earth a secret.
 43

Like the discrepancies noted in both Walton's and Strieber's books, and
especially their movie renditions, the details of the abduction scenarios in the X-
Files vary considerably from the general patterns of accounts gathering in the

files of researchers. There are two important points to note about this. First,

while these fictionalized presentations have significantly increased awareness

about abduction phenomena among the general public, they do not seem to
influence trends in abduction reports per se. In other words, if, as many

debunkers have suggested, media "contamination" is responsible for abduction

reports, then the reports would have some variation based in some

recognizable part on those programs which feature abduction accounts.' So

far this does not seem to be the case. Second, these fictionalizations do
misinform, on the one hand conflating the source material with stereotypical
characterizations and, on the other hand, normalizing the extraordinary in ways
that de-emphasize and obscure the importance and seriousness of the

phenomenon.
The central premise and much of the fundamental mythos of the X-Files

is introduced in the "Pilot" episode, which is dubiously preceded by a

superimposed "title" claiming "The following story is inspired by actual
documented accounts."98 The episode begins with an abduction that is
uncharacteristic in several ways. First, there is a human drone who is
responsible for locating, and bringing to the apparently prearranged spot, those
who are to be abducted. To my knowledge, there has never been a case
reported that is even remotely similar. As the literature explored earlier in this

paper should indicate, the offending aliens are able to come and go pretty much
at will. They seem eminently able to intrude just about anywhere they choose.
Second, several abductees are returned dead. Though there have been

some deaths attributed to UFO phenomena, they are very rare and those I have
 44

read about do not appear connected to abductions per se." Third, neither the
kind nor the location of the telltale marks on the bodies of the returned
abductees (or of the drone) coincide with the physical markings reported in the
literature. The particular fictional abductees show marks not unlike large moles

on their lower backs. Real life abductees do report a variety of marks

presumably inflicted during examination by aliens. The most common of these
resemble biopsy scoop marks, usually found on the legs or the back. Moles on

the back are not referenced in any of the accounts I've seen.
Finally, the whirlwind which surrounds the drone as he stands at the pre-
appointed woodsy location, holding the body of the next victim so they can be
swept up into the craft, does not match accounts by abductees as the preferred
method of transport. There are, however, important corollaries of whirlwind
reports -- including helicopter-like crafts (some of which cannot be seen) --

associated with cattle mutilations (often conjoined with reports of UFO

sightings).'
Also in the "Pilot" episode, agents Mulder and Scully exhume the body of
a previous victim in hopes of finding these same marks. But the remains have
shriveled to an alien-like appearance, presumably the result of hybridization --
genetic tampering by the aliens. Scully, as the medically trained skeptical part
of the duo, performs an autopsy which reveals, among other things, a nasal
implant. Real-life abductees often recall suffering surgical insertion of implants
either in the nasal cavity, behind the eyes, or in the ears. These implants are
usually described as very small metallic balls. The implant that Scully recovers
from the corpse of Ray Somes, however, is mammoth enough to have killed him

instantly upon insertion. This is one more example of doing things big for
dramatic purposes. The real-life recovery of such devices by researchers
remains controversial, with some allegedly disappearing in the lab or in
 45

transport. X-rays of such implants are indefinite. Quite recently, T-shaped

metallic and diamond-like crystal implants, located in either the back of the

neck, the hands, or the feet have allegedly been recovered from abductees.1°1
Another fictional extrapolation which premieres in the "Pilot," and which

keeps resurfacing, is the X-Files rendition of the concept of "lost time." In

abduction accounts, lost time is time for which the abductee is unable to
account. Pondering this mystery often leads experiencers to spontaneously
recall portions of their abduction, often leading them to seek the aid of

professional care and guidance, sometimes including regressive hypnosis. The

missing time is most often those hours during which an abduction is said to
have occurred. Usually, this is no more than a few hours. Classically,
recollection of abductions occurring during travel result with the recognition by
the abductee that the trip took longer than expected. This is what happened in
the Barney and Betty Hill case. There are quite a few others on record.
By contrast, the X-Files rendition of lost time involves a few moments

during which time is suspended. Mulder is able to determine when he -- or

others, if he is near -- has had an actual experience by simply checking his

watch. If the time shown does not agree with time devices unimpacted by the
alien intrusion, then he has proof enough for himself that he has been party to
some kind of alien goings-on. This proves immensely helpful for Mulder when
he must distinguish between 'real' abductions and those staged by the dark
governmental forces which would use Mulder's passion to help them obfuscate

the truth.
An example of this kind of missing time is found in the two part episodes

"Max" and "Tempus Fugit." In "Max," an airline passenger plane crashes, killing
everyone on board. The 'accident' is actually the result of a military attack on a
UFO which happened to be in control of the airliner at the time it was targeted.
 46

Before its hasty and deadly descent, those on board witnessed Max Fenig,
unconscious and bathed in a globe of light, being floated out the open side exit.
During their investigation, Mulder and Scully find that all watches have been
removed from the victim's bodies. In the following episode, titled "Tempus
Fugit," viewers are privy to another such abduction where everyone on board is
eerily suspended in time, unable to move. Upon their return to the ground, they
do not recall the incident itself, but all their watches are several minutes off from
the rest of the world. This is enough to alert Mulder that something out of the
ordinary has occurred.

The X-Files mythos, though fictionalized extrapolations, is nonetheless

heavily dependent on and borrows generously from sources of UFO lore,
sometimes almost verbatim. In the same way that stories become fact through
legend transmission, so too does pop culture recreate history, essentially
directing and designing human beliefs, ideas and ideals. It is characteristic of
legend lore, urban myth or fairy tale -- that a story once told becomes the
property of those who have heard it. And in their retelling of the story, they have
full rights to embellish. X-Files producer and writer Chris Carter is certainly
within the purview of his poetic license, then, when he alters the substance of
those accounts which serve as material for his program. One could conceivably
argue that, as is presumably the case in myth, no matter how the stories of the
X-Files are altered from their source material, they nonetheless are rooted in
some deeper or larger "truth." One could even say of the X-Files that it uses lies
to tell the "truth." Such open doubt and fostered collective uncertainty makes
the program all the more creepy, clearly establishing the value of uncertainty

and mystery in the marketplace. Interestingly, it is this very doubt and

uncertainty which our sciences seek to dispel.
 47

However, in the process of adaptation, there are often gross

misrepresentations. Most disturbing is the stereotyping of abductee
psychology. Examples from the X-Files include the characters Duane Barry, in
the episodes "Duane Barry" and "Ascension" and the character of Max Fenig, in

"Fallen Angel," "Tempus Fugit," and "Max." Duane and Max are classic media-
inspired stereotypes of alien abductees. '2 They are certifiably pathological,
mentally incompetent, and must be heavily medicated in order to function. The
character of Max, nervous, somewhat paranoid and subject to violent seizures,
is essentially harmless; Duane, on the other hand, is deadly. It is implied in the
fiction that both came to their conditions as a result of their abduction
experiences. Duane, it turns out, was a highly decorated FBI agent and happily
married family man before his misfortune befell him. Max, on the other hand,

was a child abductee and, thus, suffered throughout his short life.
In contrast to these dire presentations, most of the published
psychological studies of abductees indicate no significant patterns of
psychopathology compared to the general population. The report prepared by
clinical psychologist Dr. Elizabeth Slater at the request of UFO researchers Ted
Bloecher, Budd Hopkins and Dr. Aphrodite Clamar was mentioned earlier in the

paper. In The Alien Files: The Secrets of Extraterrestrial Encounters and

Abductions, Gregory van Dyk relates that the "five men and four women" who
participated in the study were from a variety of backgrounds, including:

a college lecturer, an electronics expert, an actor/tennis instructor, a

corporation lawyer, a commercial artist, a business executive, a
research chemist, a salesman/audio technician, and a secretary....
[Dr. Slater] found them to be a diverse group, but with certain
common characteristics. She described them as anxious, suffering
from low self-esteem, wary, cautious, oversensitive and vulnerable to
insults but not paranoid or psychotic in any way. She was very
surprised when she was told that the subjects were abductees....103
 48

There have been a number of other psychological studies conducted in

efforts to determine any illuminating patterns in the psychology of alleged
abductees. Work by Susan Powers, Mark Rodeghier, and others has indicated
no significant patterns of psychopathology in experiencers beyond some mild
dissociation and post traumatic stress disorder, syndromes which make sense
in light of the experiences recounted.'" As Bill Ellis relates in "The Varieties of
Alien Experience," "We need to admit that sane, intelligent people may

sincerely perceive, or come to believe, that they have been attacked or

abducted by paranormal agents."1°5 According to John Mack and other clinical
psychologists who work with this population, something is happening to cause
people to have these experiences. The only treatment which seems to have
any long-lasting, positive effect for experiencers appears to be hearing them

out, taking their stories at face value, and helping them gradually make what
sense they can of their experience while working to relieve their anxiety. 106
That the X-Files "Pilot" episode begins by proclaiming the elemental
truth of the stories from which the show is based, along with the pseudo-
documentary style of presentation, suggests that reality somehow underscores
the fictional content of the program.' Viewers then consider each episode a
puzzle that is part real and part fiction. Websites and chat rooms on the Internet
are regularly dedicated to teasing out the "out there" truths hidden in each
episode. An example of this mixing fiction and fact is found in the interview
introduction to the video release of the episode "Duane Barry." Writer/producer
Chris Carter refers to a story by "a friend about a friend of his" as a source for

one specific detail about the character of Duane, a psychopathic abductee.

Supposedly, this friend of a friend of Carter's believed he'd been abducted and
that his abductors had drilled little holes in his teeth. Upon going to the dentist
he was told that, indeed, he had holes in his teeth so tiny that they could not
 49

have been drilled with current equipment. Carter, in relating this as a source,
leaves open the doubt of its authenticity because, of course, it is a story about a

story. This folk tradition of oral transmission feeds both the body of UFO lore

and the X-Files mythos, in certain ways conflating the two. This offhandedness
lends even greater ambiguity, greater doubt and uncertainty to the viewer,
about how much in these fictions is based in fact. To complicate matters further,
liberal sprinklings of science fact and technical terminology, along with the
official status of the main characters as FBI, lend the show a degree of credibility

and authority.
Doubt may well be one of the program's strengths, at least in terms of
staying power. The technique parallels that of the inexplicably popular "Shaver
mystery" of the forties, credited by some as the source of the whole UFO

phenomenon. The Shaver mystery was a series of stories published in the pulp
magazine Amazing Stories by editor Ray Palmer. They concerned a race of
beings who lived in the earth and directed mind control rays at certain
individuals on the surface, causing them to do what they were bidden.
Charolette A. O'Connor states in "Abduction: An Alien Experience?" that: "The
power of the Shaver stories to disturb the imagination rested on the claim that

they were a fictionalized account of something factual."1°8 Her contention is that

Palmer "without quite knowing how he did it, but cognizant of the human race's
capacity to objectify its psychological terrors . . . contrived to give the world

nightmares. In essence, he provided a new technological skeleton on which

could be hung all the prescientific folklore of the past."'
Perhaps this suggested element of partial reality lends the X-Files its

edge of fright. Indeed, Carter, in interviews that begin the video releases of
each season's viewer favorites, has stated that his intention is to "scare the

pants off of people." That Carter and the other writers on the show use any
 50

interesting or strange information they can find as source material, occasionally

pulling from historical or personal accounts, news reports, or other shows, etc.,
is openly discussed in the video interviews, books, and web sites dedicated to

fans of the show.' '° In addition, Carter has repeatedly stated that he never
intended the program to present UFO lore, theories of extraterrestrial visitation,

or government conspiracy as truth.'" Nevertheless, many viewers, enthralled

by the presentation of UFO lore and conspiracies, find it easy to believe that he

must say such things publicly to maintain network support. There are clearly

those who believe that many of the episodes are based on accounts of real-life
events, and that the show is a thinly veiled information conduit.
It is interesting to note how closely the confusion in the X-Files mythos

mirrors the confusion in UFO lore. In the introduction to Revelations: Alien

Contact and Human Deception, Jacques Vallee bemoans the creation of
hoaxes and disinformation by forces working to intentionally obfuscate the
available data and confuse those who would investigate its true nature. He

asserts that:

the proliferation of spurious material that confuses the real issues . .

. . should be analyzed and exposed for what it is: at best, a

dangerous delusion, the germ of new cults that would extinguish the
light of reason and free inquiry; at worst, an attempt to draw attention
away from the real nature of the UFO phenomenon, a deliberate
effort to drive serious research into the quicksands of speculation. ...
[This activity] adds another factor of confusion to the bewilderment of
sincere witnesses who wonder what they have seen and who are
looking for a helping hand."2

It is exactly this state of affairs that the X-Files pretends to present. But in

so doing, the program does less to clarify the situation than it does to further

confuse matters. The general media influx surrounding the concept of alien
abduction does little to help the case of those researchers who wish to seriously
 51

investigate the phenomenon. It does even less to improve life for those who
allege experience with alien visitors, for not only are they continually re-
stimulated by images in the culture which re-evoke for them the terror of their

experiences, but they find themselves publicly represented in an unfavorable

light. In presenting abduction accounts, the tabloids, the popular books, the
fictionalized horror stories, the docu-dramas, and even those science programs
which feign an objective consideration, this panoply of press jaded by either a
rampant sensationalism or by the blinders of culturally defined social paradigm,

serve only to add to the general confusion.

Meanwhile, the X-Files producers are firm in asserting that their product
is fictional. Yet, a portion of their public still reads the program as a mixture of
fact and fiction, a form of infotainment wherein the truth (which is "out there"
somewhere) is suggested and hinted at in ways supposedly in sneaky defiance
of a silence purportedly imposed on the standard American media. The
paradox is that such programming is entertainment based, thus subject to the
machinery of media culture and the laws of supply and demand. Paradoxically,
in that the X-Files is probably the most guilty party, the character of Mulder
sometimes speaks to this very issue. At the close of the sarcastically playful
episode "Jose Chung's 'From Outer Space'," Mulder appeals to the writer Jose
Chung not to publish his book about an alien abduction. The monologue can
serve as a general appeal to the producers of fictions, half-fictions, and
distortions of fact which clutter and confuse an already complex and difficult
phenomenon. During his visit to Chung, the Mulder character pleads:

Don't write this book. You'll perform a disservice to a field of inquiry

that has always struggled for respectability. You're a gifted writer,
but no amount of talent could describe the events that occurred in
any realistic vein because they deal with alternative realities that
we're yet to comprehend and when presented in the wrong way, or
in the wrong context, the incidents and the people involved in them
 52

can appear foolish if not downright psychotic. I also know that your
publishing house is owned by Warden Wright Inc., a subsidiary of
McDougal-Kessler, which makes me suspect a covert agenda for
your book on the part of the military industrial entertainment
complex.'"
 53

Psycho-spiritual Theories

While confusion continues to multiply in popular culture representations

of the abduction phenomenon, researchers seek terrestrial explanations

ranging from masked memories of birth trauma and childhood abuse to

temporal lobe epilepsy magnetically induced by tension-releasing shifts in

tectonic plates.'" Beyond these theories, and other efforts in both psychology
and the hard sciences, are the psycho-spiritual interpretations of Thompson,
Woodhouse, Ring, Raschke, and others. Their approaches to the abduction
phenomenon lean heavily on Jung's ideas. While most consider the
phenomenon indicative of changes in human consciousness occurring on a
global scale, all agree we have yet to find a way to think about the

phenomenon.
In "UFOs: Ultraterrestrial Agents of Cultural Deconstruction," religious
studies scholar Carl Raschke suggests that the UFO abduction experience may

be merely one portion of a vast strategic deconstruction of our consensus belief

systems."' Attacking the literalist thinking he finds prevalent on either side of

the debate, Raschke insists that we "must remain curious... whether the
purpose of UFO sightings and contacts is mainly to undercut the ingrained
human longing for secure knowledge and faith, rather than to gratify it."' '6
Similarly, Keith Thompson, in Angels and Aliens, argues that historical

"mythic" manifestations such as UFO sightings, alien abduction, visions of the

virgin Mary are related in that they remind us of the possibility of other realms
beyond our immediate awareness, realms we traditionally seem able to engage

only through magic, sacred ritual, accident, or intentional faith.H7 He posits that
unbidden anomalous occurrences erupt into the consciousness of experiencers

as a kind of counterbalance to our extreme reliance on rational thought. In

 54

other words, these imaginal experiences, these entities peeking through the
curtain of our understanding of reality, whether angels or aliens, come

specifically as messengers of the non-rational.

Thompson insists that the question of the "reality" of these experiences

cannot be satisfactorily answered in the terms that we customarily employ. He

invokes Heisenberg's uncertainty principle in "that nature never reveals itself to

us as it is but rather through the questions we put to it," a concept he feels is

essential to keep in mind whenever approaching any aspect of UFO

phenomena."$ "From this perspective each UFO hypothesis can in both

Heisenberg's and Campbell's terms -- be taken as a reply to a particular

question ...." According to Thompson, doing so "effectively shifts our

observation from ontological to epistemological concerns, from 'What is the
UFO's absolute nature?' to 'How do we know what we believe?' and even
'What is knowing'?"' 19 For Thompson, as for other psycho-spiritual theorists,

UFO and related anomalous phenomena involve a challenge to accepted

understanding through a reawakening of the mythic realm -- the nearly lost
realm of the imaginal. Furthermore, they argue that this mythic eruption signals

a need to re-integrate this fundamental part of ourselves -- i.e. the spiritual, for
lack of another word -- with the materialistic dimension we have too much and
too long over-emphasized.
Psychologist Kenneth Ring, highly regarded as the premiere pioneer
researcher in Near Death Experiences, or NDEs, takes a slightly different tact.'2°

In "Near-Death and UFO Encounters as Shamanic Initiations: Some

Conceptual and Evolutionary Implications," and in his popular book The Omega

Project, Ring points out patterns and similarities in the reports of those who

experience UFO abductions and NDEs.'2' Because these similarities, he

argues, are analogous to steps in the training of shamanic initiates, he suggests
 55

considering abduction and near-death experiences as intentional training and

development in spiritual realms.'" Just as the classic shaman undergoes
certain ordeals in his or her training in order to move between the material and
the spirit worlds, so those who endure repeated encounters with the unknown
begin to bridge, in themselves, these two worlds. The gradual integration of the
two occurring in those individuals so touched will eventually generalize to the
human race, encouraged by the quiet and invisible guidance of the initiating

forces, whatever they may be.

While these theories contrast considerably with those of Hopkins and
Jacobs, discussed earlier, other popular writers, such as Strieber and Mack,

endorse the idea that humanity is collectively undergoing developmental shifts

in understanding through a gradual awakening to additional dimensions of
reality. The three dimensions -- or four, if time is included -- we now perceive as
our concrete and inviolable reality may serve as a veil limiting our awareness of
other "broader" and more encompassing realms. Physicists, confronted by
frustrating inconsistencies in our present explanations of "reality," have long

argued notions of extra-dimensionality.

In Beyond the Four Dimensions: Reconciling Physics, Parapsycholoay,
and UFOs, physicist Karl Brunstein argues the possibility that a fifth dimensional
realm is rippling into our flat four sided consciousness.''' He points to Rhine's
studies of psi phenomena in the thirties, forties and fifties as evidence that
replicated laboratory experiments reveal phenomena that lie outside our
present understanding of the laws of nature. As Brunstein says:

At first thought, psychokinesis, that is, the movement of physical

objects through the direct action of the mind, appears to bear most
directly on what we are trying to establish. Rhine conducted some
carefully conceived experiments that prove, to my mind, incontestably
the reality of this effect....
 56

Subjects were instructed to will the dice to land with either a given
face or a combination of faces uppermost. The dice were then rolled,
either by hand or by a mechanical device, and the results recorded.
There were no spectacular effects noted, that is, no impossibly long
runs of sevens, etc. The experimenters instead concentrated on long,
protracted sessions, their intent being to amass through a relentless
effort a large enough quantity of data to establish the effect through
statistics. They were successful. Statistical odds against chance
occurrences of the results obtained were, in many cases,
astronomical...
Telepathy, clairvoyance, and precognition were also explored by
Rhine and his associates. Of particular interest ... are Rhine's results
with precognition.'"

That this is so, Brunstein argues, suggests that there are either forces or

dimensions, acausal in nature, which we might expect to find occasionally

breaching the parameters of our present understanding. "Therefore, if there
exists a force that propagates faster than the speed of light, we residents of the

electromagnetic world can expect to see it manifested occasionally by violations

of causality."' Dreaming as a source of information and inspiration is one
significant example of the perceived visitation -- or intrusion -- of an otherness
guiding or informing our lives. Yet directive dreams are a common enough
phenomenon, as are occasional experiences of precognition.
Brunstein makes the point that the scientific community is in no hurry to

accept evidence that flies in the face of accepted understandings of universal

physical laws:

In the UFO problem, the scientist is asked to choose, in a now

historically familiar way, between established theory and observation to
the contrary. In this case, either the scientist must label as crackpots by
the thousands those otherwise reasonable men who report anomalous
and scientifically embarrassing observations, or he must incorporate
something into his view to make their observations acceptable. To do
the latter, he must accept, essentially, that there are properties
ultimately fundamental to space and time that have as yet somehow
escaped his formal scientific notice. This is a hard pill to swallow. It is
tantamount to confessing that modern science is still paddling about in
the backwaters; this aspect of the UFO phenomenon sticks in the craw
 57

and makes the alternative more attractive. This second alternative is a

necessary corollary to the acceptance of the reality of UFOs, and it
cannot be expected that there should be much scientific enthusiasm
associated with it.' 26

Folklorist David Hufford, in "Humanoids and Anomalous Lights:

Taxonomic and Epistemological Problems," challenges all scholars to

recognize and acknowledge their mindsets, their controlling "paradigms," in

their investigations of what Linda Degh has termed "belief materials," a category
into which UFO experiences easily fie' The reluctance to do so, Hufford

argues, results in a major taxonomic inadequacy and effectively "imposes upon

us a set of blinders which are derived from our assumptive set." Hufford

invokes Thomas Kuhri129 in asserting that:

Paradigms are not simply theories or aggregates of theories. They

are much more powerful than that. They specify not only suggested
answers to questions already posed, but also indicate what kinds of
questions may legitimately be asked and what kinds of answers
may be considered acceptable. Their tyranny is the greater, then, in
that they make certain lines of inquiry very difficult to think of in the
first place, let alone to objectively consider.'"

In light of the theories of Jung, Raschke, Thompson, Ring and others, it

seems reasonable to posit that the fictionalization of 'anomalous' phenomena,

such as alien abductions and visitations, garners such popularity because the
experiences themselves are, in effect, the material or dimensional response to

profound and fundamental human psychic needs. Historical correlatives

evidencing such needs exist worldwide. For instance, that most abductees
report being "floated" up to a craft wherein they undergo their ordeal, suggests a

longing for ascension. Mircea Eliade, in Myths, Dreams, and Mysteries: The
Encounter between Contemporary Faiths and Archaic Realities, notes that:
 58

the motifs of flight and ascension to Heaven are attested at every

level of the archaic cultures, as much in the rituals and mythologies
of the shamans and the ecstatics as in the myths and folk-lore of
other members of society who make no pretense to be distinguished
by the intensity of their religious experience. In short, the ascension
and the "flight" belong to an experience common to all primitive
humanity. That this experience constitutes a profound dimension of
spirituality is shown by the subsequent history of the symbolism of
ascension.'

Eliade continues, saying that "if we consider the "flight" and all the related
symbolisms as a whole, their significance is at once apparent: they all express a

break with the universe of everyday experience." The idea of escapism and
masochism has been presented as a possible explanation for abductee reports.
But Eliade's line of thinking takes us further:

A dual purposiveness is evident in this rupture: both transcendence

and, at the same time, freedom are to be obtained through the
"flight" The creation, repeated to infinity, of these countless
imaginary universes in which space is transcended and weight is
abolished, speaks volumes upon the true nature of the human
being. The longing to break the ties that hold him in bondage to the
earth is not a result of cosmic pressures or of economic insecurity
it is constitutive of man.' 2

By Eliade's standard, then, we are wired for transcendence. Transcendence, it

could be argued, is a higher order actualization of the same impulse which
leads us to seek the harmless comfort we find in books, movies, or TV. Such
popular media may actually serve to titillate, without fulfilling, our collective, but
vaguely and often individually felt, longing to transcend.
There may be as many good reasons to consider UFO related

phenomena a reminder of our desire to transcend ordinary existence as there

are sightings and encounters. Even after 50 years, the chimerical nature of the

UFO phenomenon continues, at every turn, to challenge our understanding and

our accepted concepts of "reality." It has remained immune to definition.

 59

Because the UFO is elusive and plastic, it accepts whatever meanings or

interpretations people would impose upon it. Its challenges to our
understanding collapse the spaces that are difference, those betweens that
make distinction, and thus definition, possible. Baudrillard, commenting on the
age and practice of simulation, tells us: "it is no longer a question of either maps
or territory. Something has disappeared: the sovereign difference between

them that was the abstraction's charm."' It is as though the UFO functions as a
kind of floating signifier, a sign without a 'material' signified, acting out in

dreamlike ways a continual deferral, an almost 'material' example of Derrida's

assertion that all signifiers point away from the real, deferring meaning in an
endless chain of signifiers, referring only to further signifiers, producing only
greater differences and more interpretations.'
And so the UFO presents itself as a jumping off place, not only for
discussion of specific contemporary cultural problematics, but as the

groundlessness from which the culture leaps into another level of the unknown.
It acts, in effect, as a realized abstraction of that othemess which opposes

materiality, which brings into being the possibility of signification, but which
holds itself aloof, as if incorporeal, unable to fully materialize because it has not

yet been fully invited, being thus staved off by our attachment to differences, our
need for the distinctions which mediate abstraction. And because it refuses,
with frustrating consistency, the limitations of any polarized categorization, UFO
related activity, as a phenomenon for academic discussion, continues to be
marginalized. At one and the same time, it is idealized by those social

processes which would render it powerless, which would make it vanish without

trace. This collective idealization is evident in the phenomenal growth of media

attention which the UFO phenomenon almost magically has seemed
continually to garner during the last fifty years.
 60

Conclusion

The stereotypical representations of abductions and abductees, such as

are shown on programs like the X-Files, while pretending to encourage
awareness about such phenomena, in actuality aid and abet a derisive attitude
toward this growing pandemic. This act of co-option or appropriation of this
"fringe" -- or marginal -- activity works against the interests of those who would
legitimize ufology. At the same time, it undercuts the importance and valuing of
"non-ordinary" states in general, thus robbing the culture of the rich traditions

and psychologically important functions of our "mythic" past. In presenting

controversial and marginalized issues, the popular media mitigates the nature
of the material so as to make it palatable for the masses. This effectively
redefines the presented materials in such a way that they can no longer function

as challenges to the hegemonic cultural structure. Instead, they become little

more than hip clichés, trinkets of the culture.
Issues of misrepresentation are further exaccerbated by examples of the
extremist nature of reporting on UFO related phenomena still prevalent
throughout the press and other presented media. As evidenced in this paper,
high media impact reports are most often either sensationalized, ridiculed, or, in
the cases of programs like Sightings, overdramatized. There is very little in the
way of objective reporting, either in the popular media or, for that matter, in

"research."
The obviousness of the problem, in this particular area of study, invites

questions of tremendous implication for all areas of research and investigation.

Any research is subject to biases based on the prevailing belief systems of the
investigator(s), who cannot help but be deeply influenced by the prevailing
order of belief in the culture(s) in which he, she, or they live and work. It is in
 61

fact the case that any particular culture is defined, in part, by the collective
beliefs of that group.' In "The Order of Discourse," Michel Foucault reminds us
that "in every society the production of discourse is at once controlled, selected,
organized, and redistributed by a certain number of procedures whose role is to
ward off its powers and dangers, to gain mastery over its chance events, to

evade its ponderous, formidable materiality."' Foucault is arguing here that

ideological control requires the safety of abstraction, the avoidance of the

messiness of corporeal materiality. It is interesting to note that the "weightless

thoughts" of the UFO ruffle both extreme edges of the abstraction comfort zone,

being at once an ultra-abstraction which nonetheless invades materiality to

leave its mark, gliding effortlessly past all barriers designed to admit no

intrusions.'"
In order for alien abduction and related anomalous phenomena to garner
the careful, open-minded, yet scientifically sound research they deserve -- at the

very least by virtue of their cultural prevalence -- fundamental attitudes will need
to be examined and adjusted. The call for such changes extends throughout
this paper, from Ron Westrum's outline of those social processes and
paradigms which limit our perceptions to the psycho-spiritual theories of Jung,

Ring, and Thompson. Considerable evidence suggests that alien abduction

and related anomalous phenomena are marginalized, in large part, because
the evidence for them does not fit any prescribed paradigm or consensual

notion about reality. The media, consciously or not, supports this academic
marginalization by popularizing the phenomenon, thereby stripping it of its

mystery and power.

Psycho-spiritual theorists such as Thompson, Ring, Raschke, Grosso,

Woodhouse, and others argue that anomalous experiences, including UFO

abductions, may serve an intended purpose of presenting humans with
 62

significant perceptual and epistemiological challenges, forcing those who

encounter such experiences to encompass broader perspectives than those
defined by consensus reality.
The specific arguments and intentions of these theorists vary, but general
themes include discussions of how these phenomena instigate, motivate,
generate, or otherwise inspire the broadening of consciousness. These
theorists feel that the issue of whether or not such occurrences are objectively
perceivable as physical reality is moot. What is important to them are the ways
in which these anomalous phenomena are connected to, informing, or informed
by issues of expanded awareness and increased consciousness, including the
re-integration into daily life of what they consider an inherent mythic/spiritual
intelligence. Insistent that important connections between these phenomena
and human consciousness do in fact exist, these theorists argue that it is at the

least irresponsible, and could prove quite dangerous, for the culture at large to
ignore or make light of these phenomena simply because they do not fit into

accepted social and scientific paradigms.

Media exploitation of sensationalism surrounding abductions and
similarly anomolous phenomena further crystalizes a collective belief among
thinking people that there is little or nothing important about these events
beyond their entertainment value. This attitude is in some ways analogous to
Westrum's example of the Royal Society's reaction when French peasants
brought them rocks, insisting they had seen them fall from the sky as balls of
fire.'38 Acceptance of the meteorite by the academy as a physical reality

occurred nearly one half century after popular reports began surfacing. The

year 1997 was celebrated by Americans as the fiftieth anniversary of the first

modern flying saucer sightings over U.S. territory.

 63

It is understandable, given the psychological nature of the human

organism, that people will collectively seek to diminish the importance of those
experiences they do not understand. However, on occasion it happens that
aggregates of information, evidence, or experience gradually accumulate
around some controversial issue in such concentration as to warrant a more
measured consideration. When such a critical mass presents itself, despite, as
in the case of the meteorite or the UFO, fifty years of efforts to suppress

recognition of such impulses, it could suggest that new approaches to the data
are warranted. Conventional wisdom concerning alien abduction does not
address nor even acknowledge any collective ignorance about the
phenomenon, but insists rather that such experiences cannot occur in objective
reality because the range of human understanding has no logical framework in
which to couch them. Such a fundamental perceptual limitation, culturally
defined and maintained by the media, needs to be reconsidered, altered, or
completely cast aside before abduction and related anomolous phenomena
can be fairly investigated. Until that time, UFO alien abduction and corollary
paranormal and psycho-spiritual phenomena will remain as ethereal mysteries,
considered only of interest to the "fringe" and those who are victims of these
consciousness-changing encounters.
In addition, it seems inescapable that until such collective and cultural
perceptual blinders are fully reevaluated, forms of cultural production featuring
alien abduction, such as those noted in this paper, will continue to capitalize on
the alternating popular fascination and repulsion for the unknown. In so doing,

their representations will continue to entrench negative and dismissive attitudes

about the phenomenon, diminishing in the public mind the importance of

serious research in this area. This circular dynamic continues to reaffirm the

present consensus belief that these phenomena present for humanity neither
 64

danger nor opportunity, but serve only as entertainment. And while this
maintains the status quo in terms of a collectively experienced reality, in the
long run it can only further confuse and obfuscate any true understanding of the

nature of this very bizarre, complex, and intriguing phenomenon.

 65

Notes

The term "consensus reality" is herein intended as a derivation of the manufactured consensus discussed in
Stuart Hall, "Culture, the Media and the 'Ideological Effect'," Mass Communication and Society, ed. J.
Curran, M. Gurevitch, and J. Woollacott (London : Edward Arnold, 1977) pp. 315-48. Drawing from
Marx, Gramsci, Althusser and others, Hall outlines processes which, overall, closely align with Gramsci's
concept of hegemony. For my purposes, hegemony is slightly too strong an idea in that the issues
addressed here are less obviously ideological. It is, of course, eminently possible to make an argument that
the commodification of alien abduction themes is being engineered by a faction of ruling classes interested
only in maintaining their control. But this is not my purpose and so, while I believe that the hegemonic
processes are by and large the closest representational model defined for what I am arguing here, the term
consensus reality seems just that much less politically informed or organized. Hall's article is more directly
relevant to the concept of consensus reality as I mean it to be understood here than, say, Peter Berger and
Thomas Luckmann's, The Social Construction of Reality (New York : Doubleday, 1966). Academic
consensus reality is also addressed, in terms of ideological scientism, in David J. Hufford, "Traditions of
Disbelief," New York Folklore 8 (Winter 1982), pp. 47-55; "The Supernatural and the Sociology of
Knowledge: Explaining Academic Belief," New York Folklore 9 (Summer, 1983), pp. 21-30; and "Reason,
Rhetoric, and Religion: Academic Ideology Versus Folk Belief," New York Folklore 11 (1985), 177-194.
Peter Berger also addresses issues of academic traditions of belief in "Relativizing the Relativizers," A
Rumor of Angels: Modern Society and the Rediscovery of the Supernatural (Garden City: Doubleday &
Co., 1970). pp. 28-48.

2 J. Allen Hynek, From the preface to Raymond E Fowler, The Andreasson Affair. (Englewoods Cliffs,
NJ: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1979). A professional astrophysicist, Hynek served as the principal consultant to
the United States Air Force's various UFO investigative arms -- Project Sign, Project Grudge, Project Blue
Book -- between the years 1948 to 1969. Hynek's gradually accumulating frustration with the cavalier
attitude of the USAF towards what he increasingly recognized as a serious problem requiring serious
research eventually led him to retire his work with the government and form an independent agency, the
Center for UFO Studies -- CUFOS -- headquartered in Evanstan, Illinois. Because he was one of the first
professional scientists to devote his life to UFO investigations, Hynek is considered one of the grandfathers
of ufology.

3 Hamlet. V. iv. 166.

4 The January-February, 1962 issue of the UFO Investigator had a brief account. Also the March, 1963
issue of APRO Bulletin had an article. In the late summer of 1965, a Boston newspaper ran an article
about both the abduction and the psychiatric treatment that Barney and Betty Hill had sought for symptoms
presumably resulting from their experience. Because the paper misrepresented the case, and ran the article
despite the protests of both Barney and Betty Hill and the attending psychiatrist, Benjamin Simon, the Hills
agreed to have the story told in as reputable a manner as possible. To this end, they sought the help of
John G. Fuller, a respected journalist then writing an account of a UFO incident that occurred in the Exeter,
New Hampshire area. In early October of 1966 Look magazine ran excerpts of the resulting book, which
came out in full later that month.

5 Whitley Strieber, Communion: A True Story (New York: Avon. 1987). Budd Hopkins, Intruders:
The Incredible Visitations at Copley Woods (New York: Ballantine Books, 1987).

6 X-Files television series. FOX Broadcasting. Prod. Chris Carter.

Ron Westrum, "Social Intelligence About Hidden Events: Its Significance for Scientific Research and
Social Policy." Knowledge: Creation, Diffusion, Utilization 3:3. (March 1982): 381-400.

8 John G. Fuller, The Interrupted Journey: Two Lost Hours "Aboard a Flying Saucer, (New York: Dell.
1966). Travis Walton, Fire in the Sky: The Walton Experience (New York: Marlowe and Co. 1996).
Originally The Walton Experience: 1979. Strieber, Communion. Whitley Strieber and Ann Strieber, The
Communion Letters (New York: HarperPrism, 1997).
 66

9 Thomas E. Bullard, UFO Abductions: The Measure of a Mystery. Vol. 1: Comparative Study of
Abduction Reports (Bloomington, Indiana: Fund for UFO Research, 1987).

'° Budd Hopkins, Missing Time (New York: Ballantine Books, 1981). Hopkins Intruders. Budd
Hopkins, Witnessed: The True Story of the Brooklyn Bridge UFO Abductions (New York: Pocket Books,
1996). David M. Jacobs, Secret Life: Firsthand Accounts of UFO Abductions (New York: Simon and
Schuster, 1992). David M. Jacobs, The Threat (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1998). David M.
Jacobs, The UFO Controversy in America (Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1975). John E. Mack,
Abduction: Human Encounters with Aliens (New York: Charles Scribner, 1994).

" Keith Thompson, Angels and Aliens (New York : Fawcett Colunbine, 1991). Keith Thompson,
"Angels, Aliens, and Archetypes--An Introduction," Ed. preface in ReVISION 11:3 (Winter 1989): 3-4.
Keith Thompson, "Angels, Aliens, and Archetypes--Introduction to Part Two." ReVISION 11:4 (Spring
1989): 3-4. Keith Thompson, "Wrestling with Angels: The Mythic Dimensions of the UFO
Phenomenon," ReVISION 11:3 (Winter, 1989): 31-47. Karl A. Brunstein, Beyond the Four
Demensions: Reconciling Physics_Parapsychology, and UFOs (New York : Walker and Co., 1979).
Michael Grosso, The Final Choice: Playing the Survival Game (Walpole, New Hampshire: Stillpoint
Publishing, 1988). Grosso, "UFOs and the Myth of the New Age," Cyberbiological Studies of the
Imaginal Component in the UFO Contact Experience, Ed. Dennis Stillings (St. Paul: Archaeus 5, 1989).
Reprinted from ReVISION 11:3 (Winter 1989). 5-13. Mark B. Woodhouse, Paradigm Wars:
Worldviews for a New Age (Berkeley, CA.: Frog, Ltd., 1996). Carl Raschke, "UFOs: Ultraterrestrial
Agents of Cultural Deconstruction," Cyberbiological Studies of the Imaginal Component in the UFO
Contact Experience, Ed. Dennis Stillings (St. Paul: Archaeus 5, 1989). David J. Hufford, "Reason,
Rhetoric, and Religion: Academic Ideology Versus Folk Belief," New York Folklore II (1985): 177-194.
David J. Hufford, "The Supernatural and the Sociology of Knowledge: Explaining Academic Belief,"
New York Folklore 9 (Summer, 1983): 21-30. David J. Hufford, "Traditions of Disbelief," New York
Folklore 8 (Winter 1982): 47-56. Kenneth Ring, "Near-Death and UFO Encounters as Shamanic
Initiations: Some Conceptual and Evolutionary Implications." ReVISION 11:3 (Winter, 1989). 14-22.
Kenneth Ring, The Omega Project: Near Death Experiences, UFO Encounters, and Mind at Large (New
York : William Morrow and Co., Inc., 1992). Kenneth Ring, "Toward an Imaginal Interpretation of
'UFO Abductions'." ReVISION 11:4 (Spring, 1989): 17-24.

'2 Thomas E. Bullard, "Mysteries in the Eyes of the Beholder," diss., Indiana U, 1982, 2.

Is Bullard, "Mysteries in the Eyes of the Beholder" 4.

James Chequers, Stephen Joseph, and Debbie Diduca, "Belief in Extraterrestrial Life, UFO-related
Beliefs, and Schizotypal Personality," Personality and Individual Differences 23.3 : 519-21. Alvin H.
Lawson, "A Testable Theory for UFO Abduction Reports: The Birth Memories Hypothesis,"
Cyberbiological Studies of the Imaginal Component in the UFO Contact Experience, Ed. Dennis Stillings.
(St. Paul: Archaeus 5, 1989). "Perinatal Imagery in UFO Abduction Reports," The Journal of
Psychohistory 12:2 (Fall 1984). Mack, Abduction. Caroline C. McLeod, Barbara Corbisier, John E.
Mack. "A More Parsimonious Explanation for UFO Abduction." Psychological Inquiry 7:2 (1996) :
156-168. Leonard S. Newman, Roy F. Baumeister, "Toward an Explanation of the UFO Abduction
Phenomenon: Hypnotic Elaboration, Extraterrestrial Sadomasochism, and Spurious Memories."
Psychological Inquiry 7:22 (1996) 99-126. 0. Parnell, and R.L. Sprinkle, "Personality Characteristics
of Persons Who Claim UFO Experiences," Journal of UFO Studies 2 (1990): 45-58. Michael A.
Persinger, "The 'Visitor' Experience and the Personality: The Temporal Lobe Factor." Cvberbiological
Studies of the Imaginal Component in the UFO Contact Experience. Ed. Dennis Stillings (St. Paul:
Archaeus 5, 1989). Susan Marie Powers, "Dissociation in Alleged Extraterrestrial Abductees."
Dissociation 7:1 (March 1994) : 44-50. Ring, "Near-Death and UFO Encounters," 14-22; Kenneth
Ring The Omega Project: Near Death Experiences, UFO Encounters, and Mind at Large (New York :
William Morrow and Co., Inc., 1992) and "Toward an Imaginal Interpretation of 'UFO Abductions'."
 67

Nicholas P. Spanos, Patricia A. Cross, Kirby Dickson and Susan C. DuBreuil. "Close Encounters: An
Examination of UFO Experiences." Journal of Abnormal Psychology 102:4 (1993) : 624-632. Glenn G.
Sparks, Sherri W. Sparks, and Kirsten Gray, "Media Impact on Fright Reactions and Belief in UFOs: The
Potential Role of Mental Imagery." Communication Research 22.1 (1995) : 3-23. Glenn G. Sparks, C.
Leigh Nelson, and Rose G. Campbell, "The Relationship Between Exposure to Televised Messages About
Paranormal Phenomenon and Paranormal Beliefs" Journal of Broadcasting and Electronic Media 41.3
(Summer 1997) : 345-359.

15 Bullard, "UFO Abductions: The Measure of a Mystery," iii.

16 Linda Degh, "The Belief Legend in Modern Society: Form, Function, and Relationship to Other
Genres." In American Folk Legend: A Symposium. Berkeley: University of California Press. 1971.
58.

" Carl G. Jung, Flying Saucers: A Modern Myth of Things Seen in the Skies, trans. R.F.C. Hull
(Princeton UP : 1978). Extracted from Volume 10 of the Collected Works of C. G. Jung Civilization in
Transition, (Princeton UP : 1964, 1970). Jacques Vallee, Passport to Magonia: on UFOs, Folklore, and
Parallel Worlds (Chicago: Contemporary Books, 1993). Originally published by H. Regency Co., 1969.

" See Bullard, "Mysteries in the Eyes of the Beholder," "UFO Abduction Reports: The Supernatural
Kidnap Narrative Returns in Technological Guise." Journal of American Folklore 102.404 (April-June,
1989) : 147-170; "The Relationship of Abduction Reports to Folklore Narratives," Andrea Pritchard, David
E. Pritchard, John E. Mack, Pam Kasey, Claudia Yapp, eds. Alien Discussions: Proceedings of the
Abduction Study Conference, (Cambridge, MA: North Cambridge Press, 1994). See also Peter M.
Rojcewicz, "Between One Eye Blink and the Next: Fairies, UFOs, and the Problems of Knowledge," The
Good People: New Fairvlore Essays, ed. Peter Narvaez (New York: Garland Publishing. 1991); "The
Boundaries of Orthodoxy: A Folkloric Look at the UFO Phenomenon," diss., U of Pennsylvania, 1984;
"Folklore of the 'Men in Black': A Challenge to the Prevailing Paradigm." ReVISION 11:4 (Spring,
1989). 5-16; "Signals of Transcendence: The Human-UFO Equation." Cyberbiological Studies of the
Imaginal Component in the UFO Contact Experience, ed. Dennis Stillings. (St. Paul: Archaeus 5,
1989). Though not dealing directly with abduction phenomena, the work of Linda Degh was seminal in
generating interest in UFO experiences as folklore. See Linda Degh, "The 'Belief Legend' in Modern
Society: Form, Function, and Relationship to other Genres," American Folk Legend: A Symposium, ed.
W.D. Hand (Berkeley: University of California Press) 55-68; and "UFOs and How Folklorists Should
Look at Them. Fabula 18:242-48. And see David J. Hufford, "Afterword to 'Traditions of Disbelief.' "
Talking Folklore 1 (1988): 3; "Ambiguity and the Rhetoric of Belief." Keystone Folklore 21 (1977): 11-
24; "Awaking Paralyzed in the Presence of a Strange 'Visitor'." Pritchard, et al. eds, Alien Discussions
348-353; "Humanoids and Anomalous Lights: Taxonomic and Epistemological Problems," Fabula 18
(1977) 234-41; "Reason, Rhetoric, and Religion: Academic Ideology Versus Folk Belief," New York
Folklore 11 (1985): 177-194; "The Supernatural and the Sociology of Knowledge: Explaining Academic
Belief," New York Folklore 9 (Summer 1983): 21-30; "Traditions of Disbelief," New York Folklore 8
(Winter 1982): 47-56.

19 Bullard, "UFO Abduction Reports: The Supernatural Kidnap Narrative Returns in Technological
Guise," 148.

2(1 Thompson, Angels and Aliens; "Angels, Aliens, and Archetypes--An Introduction." Ed. preface in
ReVISION 11:3 (Winter 1989). 3-4; "Angels, Aliens, and Archetypes--Introduction to Part Two."
ReVISION 11:4 (Spring 1989). 3-4; "Wrestling with Angels: The Mythic Dimensions of the UFO
Phenomenon." ReVISION 11:3 (Winter, 1989) 31-47. Woodhouse, ParadigmWars; Michael Grosso,
"Plato and Out-of-body Experiences," Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research 69:61-74.
(1975); The Final Choice: Playing the Survival Game, (Walpole, New Hampshire: Stillpoint
Publishing, 1988); "UFOs and the Myth of the New Age," Cyberbiological Studies of the Imaginal
Component in the UFO Contact Experience, ed. Dennis Stillings (St. Paul: Archaeus 5, 1989).
 68

Reprinted from ReVISION 11:3 (Winter 1989). 5-13. Carl Raschke, "UFOs: Ultraterrestrial Agents of
Cultural Deconstruction," Cyberbiological Studies of the Imaginal Component in the UFO Contact
Experience, ed. Dennis Stillings (St. Paul: Archaeus 5, 1989). Ring, "Near-Death and UFO Encounters
as Shamanic Initiations, The Omega Project, and "Toward an Imaginal Interpretation of 'UFO Abductions'."

21
Editorial note by W.M. in C. G. Jung, Flying Saucers: A Modern Myth, vii.
22
Jung, Flying Saucers: A Modern Myth, 16.

23 Jung, Flying Saucers: A Modern Myth, 19-20; and 117.

24
Flying Saucers: A Modern Myth, 135-36.

25 Westrum, "Social Intelligence About Hidden Events.

26
Westrum, "Social Intelligence About Hidden Events, 383.
27
Westrum, "Social Intelligence About Hidden Events, 382.
28
Westrum, "Social Intelligence About Hidden Events, 382.

29 Westrum, "Social Intelligence About Hidden Events, 383.

30
Westrum, "Social Intelligence About Hidden Events, 384.
31
Westrum, "Social Intelligence About Hidden Events, 392-93.
32
See George Adamski, with Desmond Leslie. The Flying Saucers Have Landed, (New York: British
Book Center. 1953). See also Curtis Peebles, Watch the Skies: A Chronicle of the Flying Saucer Myth.
(Washington D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press. 1994) 93-108.

33 Conspiracy theories about government and contactees have become conflated with discussion of
abductions. There is a prevailing belief that Eisenhower, in conjunction with the mythical organization
known as MJ-12, signed a secret treaty with aliens agreeing to turn a blind eye and ear to reports of human
abductions and animal mutilations in exchange for advance technologies from the aliens. Examples of this
are found in Jim Marrs Alien Agenda: Investigating the Extraterrestrial Presence Among Us (New York:
Harper Collins. 1997); Charles E. Sellers, UFO (Chicago; Contemporary Books, 1997); Philip J
Corso, with William J. Birnes. The Day After Roswell (New York: Pocket Books, 1997); Stanton T.
Friedman, Top Secret / Majic (New York: Marlowe & Company, 1996); Timothy Good, Above Top
Secret: The World-Wide UFO Cover-up, (New York: Quill, 1988); and Alien Contact: Top-Secret UFO
Files Revealed (New York: William Morrow and Company, Inc., 1991). Revised ed. 1993. These are
but a few of the many titles available.

34Michael Zimmerman. "The 'Alien Abduction' Phenomenon: Forbidden Knowledge of Hidden Events."
Philosophy Today 41:2 (Summer, 1997), 235.

35 Zimmerman, "The 'Alien Abduction' Phenomenon," 235.

36 Zimmerman, "The 'Alien Abduction' Phenomenon," 235.

37 Zimmerman, "The 'Alien Abduction' Phenomenon,"235.

38 Zimmerman, "The 'Alien Abduction' Phenomenon,"235.

Zimmerman, "The 'Alien Abduction' Phenomenon,"239. Those parts quoted are from Westrum,
"Social Intelligence About Hidden Events."
 69

40 Zimmerman, "The 'Alien Abduction' Phenomenon," 239.

41 The playful ruminations of writer Darin Morgan in the X-Files episode "Jose Chung's 'From Outer
Space' are examples of what we might call "production sarcasm." A quote from this episode is included
later in this paper. "Jose Chung's 'From Outer Space'," X-Files. Writer: Darin Morgan. Dir. Rob
Bowman. FOX Broadcasting. Originally broadcast 4/12/96.

42 See Eric Nesheim and Leif Nesheim, Saucer Attack: Pop Culture in the Golden Age of Flying Saucers
(Los Angeles: Kitchen Sink Press. 1997). See also John Keel, "The Man Who Invented Flying
Saucers," The Fringes of Reason: A Whole Earth Catalog, ed. Ted Schultz (New York: Harmony Books,
1989) 138-45; Peebles, Watch the Skies!; and Robert Sheaffer, "A Skeptical Perspective on UFO
Abductions," Alien Discussions: Proceedings of the Abduction Study Conference. Andrea Pritchard, et al.,
ed. (Cambridge, MA: North Cambridge Press, 1994) 382-386.
as Fuller, The Interrupted Journey. Excerpts from Fuller's book ran in Look magazine the same month
the book was released.

44 Fuller, The Interrupted Journey. From the introduction by Dr. Benjamin Simon, 5.

45 Quoted in Peebles, Watch the Skies!, 160-61.

46
Fuller, The Interrupted Journey, 35.

47 This was the source of the Zeta Reticuli myth. For a discussion of the star map see Peebles, Watch the
Skies! 225. See also Jerome Clark, "Hill Abduction Case," The UFO Book: Encyclopedia of the
Extraterrestrial (Detroit: Visible Ink. 1998) 286-293.

48 Fuller, The Interrupted Journey, 42-44. Project Blue Book, overseen by the Air Force and consultants
led by astronomer J. Allen Hynek, quoted at the beginning of this paper, was little more than a clearing
house for public relations.

John G. Fuller, Incident at Exeter: The Story of Unidentified Flying Objects Over America Today
(New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1966).

50 While the Hills reported losing several hours they could not account for, the concept of "missing time"
was first fully introduced to mass public awareness through Budd Hopkins' book of the same name. See
Hopkins, Missing Time.

'I Fuller The Interrupted Journey., 21.

52 Temple University history professor David M. Jacobs has also been the subject of some concern among
his fellows, especially after he began using hypnosis to further his investigations. His books Secret Life:
Firsthand Accounts of UFO Abductions (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1992) and The Threat (New
York: Simon and Schuster, 1998) augment and support those of New York artist and UFO researcher Budd
Hopkins. The essential similarities in their theories involve a concerted genetic manipulation of the human
species by an alien race. In addition, Harvard psychiatrist John E. Mack has had his methodology reviewed
by a board of his peers as a result of his outspoken involvement with the abduction population. Though he
passed muster, his book Abduction: Human Encounters with Aliens (New York: Charles Scribner, 1994)
caused many to ask questions of appropriateness in the research "freedoms" defined by tenure. Courtney
Brown, an associate professor of political science at Emory University, has created an uproar with his recent
account of two distinct alien life forms, one living on the moon and one in the earth, involving themselves
in human affairs. The book, Cosmic Voyage: A Scientific Discovery of Extra-Terrestrials Visiting Earth
(New York: Dutton, 1996) asserts that his evidence is incontrovertible. His method of gathering data is
the controversial "remote viewing," a process wherein trained individuals are presumably able to witness
 70

events at great distance through a psychic scanning of earth coordinates. The defense department is reported
to have spent considerable sums developing and testing this psychic spy method, and Brown alledges he was
trained by a military trainer. For more on remote viewing see Howard Blum, Out There: The
Government's Secret Ouest for Extraterrestrials (New York: Simon and Schuster. 1990). For more on
academic freedom and questionable research see Jill Neimark, "The Harvard Professor and the UFOs,"
Psychology Today 27:2 (March/April 1994) : 46+; Harold Orlans, "Lost Faculties," Change: The
Magazine of Higher Learning 27.5 (September/October 1995) : 8; Scott 0. Lilienfeld, "The Courtney
Brown Affair and Academic Freedom," Skeptical Inquirer 21:3 (May/June 1997) 51-54; Martin Gardner,
"Courtney Brown's 'Cosmic Voyage' into Preposterism," Skeptical Inquirer 21:3 (May/June 1997) 14+.

53 Originally from J. Allen Hynek, The UFO Experience: A Scientific Inquiry (New York: Ballantine
Books, 1974). The following descriptions are taken from C.B.G. Bryan, Close Encounters of the Fourth
Kind: Alien Abductions, UFOs, and the Conference at M.I.T., (New York: Dutton, 1996) 7-8. Hynek
categorized close range sightings into three types. Close encounters of the first kind involve sightings at
close range with little or no "interaction with the environment (other than the impact on the observer);"
close encounters of the second kind involve sightings at close range where "physical effects on both animate
and inanimate material are noted. Tree branches are reported broken; animals are frightened, sometimes to
the extent of injuring themselves in their fright. Inanimate objects, most often vehicles, are reported as
becoming momentarily disabled, their engines killed, radios stopped, and headlights dimmed or
extinguished. In such cases, the vehicles reportedly return to normal after the UFO has left the scene."
Close encounters of the third kind involve cases wherein "the presence of 'occupants' in or about the UFO is
reported. Here a sharp distinction must be made between cases involving reports of the presence of
presumably intelligent beings in the 'spacecraft' and the so-called contactee cases." In the 1950's the
contactees were a group of individuals who reported interactions -- including conversations, mystery
initiation, trips to other planets and etc. -- with superior intelligences from outer space who had come
specifically to aid the planet in avoiding self-destruction. The contactees were very energetic in their use of
the media for the purposes of self-aggrandizement. Their high media profile and circus antics caused many
to conflate all matters concerning UFOs with confabulating attention seekers. Hence their impact seriously
damaged the credibility of later reports and UFO investigations generally. Some later conspiracy theorists
have postulated that contactees may have been under the employ of those government agencies whose job it
was to discredit groups investigating UFOs as well as individuals making UFO sighting reports. Research
into government documents after the Freedom of Information Act has, at least, revealed a concerted effort --
in the form of injunctions to journalists by government agencies connected to national security -- to harass
UFO investigative groups, individuals, and anyone who seeks to report UFO activity in the press.

54 Peebles, Watch the Skies!, 226-27.

55 For a full catalog of types of aliens reported see Patrick Huyghe, The Field Guide to Extraterrestrials
(New York: Avon, 1996); or Kevin Randle and Russ Estes Faces of the Visitors: An Illustrated Reference
to Alien Contact (New York: Fireside, 1997). Also, the following four articles are found in the section
titled "Descriptions of Aliens" in Chapter II of Pritchard, et al., eds., Alien Discussions: David M. Jacobs,
"Aliens and Hybrids," 86-89; Thomas E. Bullard, "The Variety of Abduction Beings," 90; John S.
Carpenter, "Other Types of Aliens: Patterns Emerging," 91-94; and Martha Munroe, "Drawings of New
Types of Aliens," 95-99.

56 Peebles, Watch the Skies! 234-35.

5' Raymond E. Fowler, The Andreasson Affair (Englewoods Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1979); The
Allagash Abductions: Undeniable Evidence of Alien Intervention (Tigard, OR.: Wildflower Press, 1993);
The Andreasson Affair: Phase Two (Englewoods Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1982); The Watchers:
The Secret Design Behind UFO Abduction (New York: Bantam Books, 1990).

58 Travis Walton, The Walton Experience (New York: Marlowe and Co. 1979). A second edition was
published as Fire in the Sky: The Walton Experience, (New York: Marlowe and Co. 1996).
 71

59 Peebles, Watch the Skies!,. 227-28. See also Walton, Fire in the Sky.

60 There have been some such reports. Of particular note is the case of Dr. Gerardo Vidal and his wife as
reported in Jenny Rand les, Alien Contacts and Abductions: The Real Story from the Other Side (New
York: Sterling Publishing Co., Inc. 1993). In their account they "set off from the town of Chascomus,
eighty miles south of Buenos Aires, Argentina, to drive 100 miles or so further to visit relatives in
Maipu." (p. 108). They recalled their car being immersed in a dense fog "and their very next memory is of
finding themselves still in the car but on an unknown side road and now in broad daylight." But it was two
days later and they were in Mexico, 4,000 miles away. Their car was impounded for study and the Vidal's
were flown home, where Mrs. Vidal was admitted to a local hospital because of her distress. No
explanation was ever found.

61Bullard, "UFO Abduction Reports: The Supernatural Kidnap Narrative Returns in Technological
Guise," 154.
62
Walton, Fire in the Sky, 90.
63
Walton, Fire in the Sky.
64
Fire in the Sky. Adapted from Walton's accounts by Tracy Torme. 1993.
65
Hopkins, Missing Time.
66
Hopkins, Missing Time, 5.
67
Hopkins, Intruders.
68
A careful explanation of the problems involved is presented in John G. Miller, M.D., "Lack of Proof
for Missing Embryo/Fetus Syndrome," In Pritchard, et al. eds., Alien Discussions, 262-270. See also
Intruders. CBS. Starring Richard Crenna. Air dates May 17 and 19, 1992.; and Hopkins, Intruders; and
Jacobs, Secret Life and The Threat.

69 Hopkins, Intruders, 31.

70 Hopkins, Intruders, 31.

71See Newman and Baumeister, "Toward an Explanation of the UFO Abduction Phenomenon: Hypnotic
Elaboration, Extraterrestrial Sadomasochism, and Spurious Memories." Psychological Inquiry 7:22
(1996) 99-126.

72 Hopkins, Witnessed.

73 Marrs, Alien Agenda, 243.

Strieber, Communion.

75 Jacobs, The Threat, 42.

76 The Hudson Bay area is particularly active in terms of UFO sightings. For information see J. Allen
Hynek, Philip J. Imbrogno, and Bob Pratt, Night Siege: The Hudson Valley UFO Sightings (New York:
Ballantine, 1987).

77 Jacobs, The Threat, 42.

 72

78 Jenny Rand les, Alien Contact: The First Fifty Years (New York: Sterling Publishing Co. 1997)
112.
79
Whitley Strieber, Transformation: The Breakthrough (New York: Avon. 1988).
SO
Whitley Strieber, Majestic (New York: Berkley Books, 1989).
81
Whitley Strieber, Breakthrough: The Next Step (New York: Harper Collins, 1995).
82
Whitley Strieber, The Secret School (New York: Harper Collins, 1997).
83
Whitley Strieber, Confirmation: The Hard Evidence of Aliens Among Us (New York: St. Martin's
Press, 1998).

84 Strieber and Strieber, The Communion Letters.

85 Intruders. CBS. Starring Richard Crenna. Air dates May 17 and 19, 1992. See Tony Scott, "The
Intruders," parts 1 and 2. Variety 347:5 (May 18, 1992) pg. 49.

86 Mack, Abduction.

87 Thomas E. Bullard, "Epistemological Totalitarianism: The Skeptical Case Against Abductions,"

International UFO Reporter 19:4 (Sept./Oct. 1994) 9-16.

88 Bullard, "Epistemological Totalitarianism," 10.

89 Mack, Abduction, 138.

9° Mack, Abduction, 138.

91 Mack, Abduction, 139.

92
Space, Tina Landau, Steppenwolf Theatre, Chicago, January 12-25, 1998.

93 Jacobs, Secret Life.

94 Jacobs, The Threat.

95Jean Baudrillard, "The Precession of Simulacra," Cultural Theory and Popular Culture: A Reader, ed.
John Storey (New York: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1994) 361. Excerpted from "Simulations." Semiotext(e)
(New York, 1983) 1-30.

96 The information included here is derived from Hilary Evans, Visions. Apparitions, Alien Visitors,
(Wellingborough, Northhampshire: Aquarian Press, 1984) 136-145. See also Peter M. Rojcewicz,
"Folklore of the 'Men in Black': A Challenge to the Prevailing Paradigm." ReVISION 11:4 (Spring,
1989), 5-16; Dennis Stacy, "UFO Folklore: The Men in Black." The Fringes of Reason: A Whole Earth
Catalog. ed. Ted Schultz (New York: Harmony Books, 1989) 154-55. See also Jenny Rand les, The
Truth Behind the Men in Black--Government Agents or Visitors from Beyond (St. Martin's Paperbacks,
1997); and Jim Keith, Casebook on the Men in Black (Lilburn, Georgia: IllumiNet Press, 1997).

97
See Bullard, "Epistemological Totalitarianism," 13.
98
"Pilot." X-Files. Writer/Producer: Chris Carter. Dir. Robert Mandel. Original Broadcast date 9/10/93.
 73

" The case of Thomas Mantell is the only official report of loss of life by a US military service person
related to UFOs. See also Jacques Vallee, Confrontations: A Scientist's Search for Alien Contact (New
York: Ballantine Books, 1990).

1°° See Linda Moulton Howe, An Alien Harvest: Further Evidence Linking Animal Mutilations and
Human Abductions to Alien Life Forms (Huntington Valley, PA : Linda Howe Productions, 1993).
Many abductees also report inexplicable surveillance and/or harassment by unmarked black helicopters
and/or the classic "men in black". See Dennis Stillings, "Helicopters, UFOs, and the Psyche," ReVISION
11:4 (Spring, 1989) 25-32; and T.R. Adams, The Choppers--and the Choppers (Paris, Texas: Project
Stigma, 1980).

"The Alien Invasion." A five part report on FOX TV. Broadcast January 19-23, 1998. 9-11pm EST.
See also Strieber, Confirmation.

102 X-Files. FOX Broadcasting. Prod. Chris Carter.

103 Gregory van Dyk, The Alien Files: The Secrets of Extraterrestrial Encounters and Abductions
(Shaftsbury, Dorset: Element Books. 1997).

1°4 Susan Marie Powers, "Dissociation in Alleged Extraterrestrial Abductees," Dissociation 7:1 (March
1994) : 44-50. Mark Rodeghier, "Psychosocial Characteristics of Abductees." In Pritchard, et al. eds.,
Alien Discussions, 296-304. Also, in the same volume, "Evidence for Abuse Among Abductees," 338-
341. Chequers, et al., "Belief in Extraterrestrial Life, UFO-related Beliefs, and Schizotypal Personality;"
Parnell and Sprinkle, "Personality Characteristics of Persons Who Claim UFO Experiences;" T. Bloecher,
A. Clamar, A. & B. Hopkins, Final Report on the Psychological Testing of UFO Abductees (Mount
Rainier, MD: Fund for UFO Research, 1985); R.E. Bartholomew, K. Basterfield, & G.S. Howard, "UFO
Abductees and Contactees: Psychopathology or Fantasy-Proneness?" Professional Psychology: Research
and Practice 22 (1991) 215-222; Kenneth Ring and C.J. Rosing, "The Omega Project: A Psychological
Survey of Persons Reporting Abductions and Other UFO Encounters," Journal of UFO Studies 3 (1990)
59-98. An entire issue of Psychological Inquiry (Vol. 7. No 2: 1996) is devoted to discussion of the
theories put forth by Newman and Baumeister (see target article, that issue) as possible alternative causes to
the alien abduction syndrome. Their review of the literature can be very helpful in gaining a perspective on
this phenomenon.

I' Bill Ellis, "The Varieties of Alien Experience." The Hundredth Monkey and Other Paradigms of the
Paranormal: A Skeptical Inquirer Collection, ed. Kendrick Frazier (Buffalo, NY: Prometheus Books,
1991) 70-77.

'° Mack, Abduction; McLeod, et al., "A More Parsimonious Explanation for UFO Abduction."
Psychological Inquiry 7:2 (1996) : 156-168.

'° "Pilot." X-Files. Writer: Chris Carter. Dir. Robert Mandel. Original Broadcast date 9/10/93.

Charolette A. O'Conner, "Abduction: An Alien Experience?" UFOs" The Final Answer? Ufolo_gv for
the 21st Century, ed. David Barclay and Therese Marie Barclay (London: Blanford. 1993) 167.

O'Conner, "Abduction: An Alien Experience?" 167.

"0 For an interesting exposé on source material for the show, see Jane Goldman, The X-Files Book of the
Unexplained (New York: HarperPrism, 1995). Goldman introduces articles not unlike those collected by
Charles Fort early in this century. Fort may have been an early progenitor of the UFO phenomenon, but
he was indiscriminate in his passion for collecting reports of the strange and bizarre. The Fortean Times is
still published.
 74

1'1 "The X-Files Meets the Skeptics," Skeptical Inquirer 21:1 (January/February 1997) 24-30. This is an
edited transcript of Chris Carter's talk as "luncheon banquet speaker for the first day of World Skeptic's
Conference and CSICOP Twentieth Anniversary Conference in Amherst, New York."

112Jacques Vallee, Revelations: Alien Contact and Human Deception (New York: Ballantine Books,
1991) 4. Vallee is an astrophysicist and computer scientist who has worked as a consultant for NASA. He
met J. Allen Hynek at Northern Illinois University while Hynek was head of the Astronomy Department
and Vallee was completing his Doctoral work in computer science. They formed a close friendship there
and continued to work together right through the last years of Hynek's life. Vallee has explored the UFO
phenomenon since the great French UFO wave of 1954 when he witnessed the willful destruction of radar
tapes containing the tracking of anomalous activity. He has written, alone or with others, more than seven
books about UFO phenomena and is considered by many to be, after Hynek, the most informed ufologist of
our time. Vallee served as the real-life model for the character of the French scientist in Steven Spielberg's
Close Encounters of the Third Kind.

113 "Jose Chung's 'From Outer Space'," X-Files. Writer: Darin Morgan. Dir. Rob Bowman. FOX

Broadcasting. Originally broadcast 4/12/96.

114 Lawson, "A Testable Theory for UFO Abduction Reports;" and "Perinatal Imagery in UFO Abduction

Reports." The Journal of Psychohistory 12:2 (Fall 1984). Persinger, "The 'Visitor' Experience;"
Michael A. Persinger, "Geophysical Variables and Behavior: LIII. Epidemiological Considerations for
Incidence of Cancer and Depression in Areas of Frequent UFO Reports" Perceptual and Motor Skills 67.
(1988) : 700-803; with J. S. Den-, "Geophysical Variables and Behavior: LXII. Temporal Coupling of
UFO Reports and Seismic Energy Release within the Rio Grande Rift System: Discriminative Validity of
the Tectonic Strain Theory," Perceptual and Motor Skills 71. (1990) : 567-72; Persinger with Brian Hart
and Alex Thomas, "Geophysical Variables and Behavior: LXXX. Periodicities and Energetic
Characteristics of a Strobe-light Luminosity During a Geomagnetic Storm,"- Perceptual and Motor Skills
82. (1996) : 683-688.
115
Raschke, "UFOs: Ultraterrestrial Agents."
116
Raschke, "UFOs: Ultraterrestrial Agents," 25.
117
Thompson, Angels and Aliens.
LIS
Thompson, Angels and Aliens, 15.

119 Thompson, "Wrestling with Angels," 32.

120 Kenneth Ring, Life at Death (New York: Coward, McCann and Geoghegan, 1980); and Heading

Toward Omega (New York: William Morrow, 1984). The information included here is a distillation of
his later ideas as presented in "Near-Death and UFO Encounters as Shamanic Initiations," The Omega
Project," and "Toward an Imaginal Interpretation of 'UFO Abductions'."

'2' Ring, "Near-Death and UFO Encounters as Shamanic Initiations," 15. The four stages which are
common to the UFO abduction are as follows: "(1) a sense of being taken away, usually against one's will,
by one or more humanoid beings and (2) brought into a strange, alien environment where (3) one is
subjected to an invasive physical examination that in some instances seems to have to do with one's
reproductive organs, following which (4) one is returned to the physical world, though not necessarily to
exactly the same location where the abduction apparently originated" (15). Interestingly, this pattern of
abduction is similar to accounts throughout history. For an in depth exploration see Bullard, "UFO
Abduction Reports: The Supernatural Kidnap Narrative Returns," or Vallee, Passport to Magonia.

122
Ring credits the following works as his sources for a definable pattern of stages of shamanic initiation:
Mircea Eliade, Rites and Symbols of Initiation (New York: Harper and Row, 1958) and Shamanism
 75

(Princeton: Bolligen, 1964); also S. Nicholson, Shamanism (Wheaton Ill.: Theosophical Publishing
House, 1987); and H. Kalweit, Dreamtime and Inner Space (Boston: Shambala. 1988).

123Karl A. Brunstein, Beyond the Four Dimensions: Reconciling Physics, Parapsychology, and UFOs
(New York : Walker and Co., 1979).
124
Brunstein, Beyond the Four Dimensions, 153.
125
Bronstein, Beyond the Four Dimensions, 158.
126
Brunstein, Beyond the Four Dimensions, 135.
127
David J. Hufford, "Humanoids and Anomalous Lights: Taxonomic and Epistemological Problems."
Fabula 18 (1977) 234.

128 Hufford, "Humanoids and Anomalous Lights," 236.

129 Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press,
1962. 2nd Ed. 1970. Kuhn defined the stages of crisis which the inculcation of new information bring
about in philosophical systems, such as consensus scientific reality, and which result in necessary shifts in
thinking, or changes in "paradigm."
130
Hufford, "Humanoids and Anomalous Lights," 235.
131
Mircea Eliade, Myths, Dreams, and Mysteries: The Encounter Between Contemporary Faiths and
Archaic Realities, trans. Philip Mairet (New York: Harper Torch Books, 1967) 106. Originally
published as Mythes, Reyes et Mysteres in 1957 by Libraire Gallimard, Paris.
132
Eliade, Myths, Dreams, and Mysteries," 106.
133
Baudrillard, "The Precession of Simulacra," 362.
134
the meaning of meaning (in the general sense of meaning and not in the sense of signalization)
is infinite implication, the indefinite referral of signifier to signifier?" Jacques Derrida, Writing and
Difference, trans. Allan Bass (London: Routlegde and Paul Kegan; Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1978) 25.

135 Definition 5b in Webster's Third International states: "the body of customary beliefs, social forms, and

material traits constituting a distinct complex of tradition of a racial, religious, or social group." Webster's
Third New International Dictionary of the English Language Unabridged (Springfield, Mass.: G. and C.
Merriam Company, 1969) 552.

136 Michel Foucault, "The Order of Discourse," The Rhetorical Tradition: Readings from Classical Times
to the Present, ed. Patricia Bizell and Bruce Herzberg (Boston: Bedford Books of St. Martin's Press.
1990) 1154-64.

137 In Flying Saucer: A Modern Myth of Things Seen in the Skies, Jung says of UFOs that they "behave

rather like weightless thoughts." Jung, Hying Saucers: A Modern Myth. Trans. R.F.C. Hull. Princeton
UP : 1978.

Westrum, "Social Intelligence About Hidden Events," 381-82.

 76

Bibliography

Alexander, Victoria. "The UFO Cabal in Movies." Films in Review 47.5-6

(September/October 1996) : 20-28.

Anderson, Kurt. "The Culture Industry: The Origin of Alien Species: A Taxonomy of
Extraterrestrials." New Yorker (July 14, 1997). 38-39.
Andrews, George C. Extraterrestrials Among Us. St. Paul, Minn.: Llewellyn. 1986.

Baird, John C. The Inner Limits of Outer Space. Hanover, NH: University Press of New
England, 1987.
Baker, Robert A. "The Aliens Among Us: Hypnotic Regression Revisited." The
Hundredth Monkey and Other Paradigms of the Paranormal: A Skeptical Inquirer
Collection. Ed. Kendrick Frazier. Buffalo, NY: Prometheus Books, 1991. 54-
69.
Baudrillard, Jean. "The Precession of Simulacra." Cultural Theory and Popular Culture:
A Reader. Ed. John Storey. New York: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1994. 361-368.
Excerpted from Simulations, Semiotext(e). New York, 1983. pp. 1-30.
Blum, Howard. Out There: The Government's Secret Quest for Extraterrestrials. New
York: Simon and Schuster. 1990.
Bova, Ben. Science Fiction and Faith. The Universe and Its Origins: From Ancient Myth
to Present Reality and Fantasy. Ed. Fred Singer. New York: Paragon House,
1990. 269-275.
Brown, Courtney. Cosmic Voyage: A Scientific Discovery of Extra-Terrestrials Visiting
Earth. New York: Dutton, 1996.
Brunstein, Karl A. Beyond the Four Dimensions: Reconciling Physics, Parapsychology,
and UFOs. New York : Walker and Co., 1979.
Bryan, C.D.B. Close Encounters of the Fourth Kind: Alien Abduction, UFOs, and the
Conference at M.I.T. New York: Alfred A, Knopf, 1995.
Bullard, Thomas E. "Epistemological Totalitarianism: The Skeptical Case Against
Abductions." International UFO Reporter 19:4 (September/October 1994). 9-16.
Bullard, Thomas E. "Mysteries in the Eyes of the Beholder," Ph.D. dissertation,
Folklore, Indiana U, 1982.
Bullard, Thomas E. UFO Abductions: The Measure of a Mystery. Vol. 1: "Comparative
Study of Abduction Reports." Bloomington, Indiana: The Fund for UFO
Research. 1987.
Bullard, Thomas E. "UFO Abduction Reports: The Supernatural Kidnap Narrative
Returns in Technological Guise." Journal of American Folklore 102.404 (April-
June, 1989) : 147-170.
 77

Bynum, Joyce. "Kidnapped by an alien: Tales of UFO Abductions." Etc: A Review of

General Semantics." 50.1 (Spring, 1993) : 86-95.
Campbell, Joseph. The Hero with a Thousand Faces. Princeton: Princeton UP. 1949.
Carlsberg, Kim; Anka, Darryl (illus.). Beyond My Wildest Dreams: Diary of a UFO
Abductee. Sante Fe, NM: Bear & Company, 1995.
Chambers, John. "Three Who Saw the Future: Time Travelers." Magical Blend 55
(May, 1997) : 6+.

Chequers, James; Stephen Joseph and Debbie Diduca. "Belief in Extraterrestrial Life,
UFO-related Beliefs, and Schizotypal Personality." Personality and Individual
Differences 23.3: 519-21.
Clark, Jerome. "UFO Folklore: The Humanoids." The Fringes of Reason: A Whole
Earth Catalog. Ed. Ted Schultz. New York: Harmony Books, 1989. 155-56.
Clark, Jerome. The UFO Book: Encyclopedia of the Extraterrestrial. Detroit: Visible Ink.
1998.

Conroy, Ed. Report on Communion. New York: Avon Books. 1989.

Cousineau, Phil. UFOs: A Manual for the Millennium. New York: Harper Collins, 1995.
Crews, Frederick. "The Mindsnatchers." New York Review of Books 45:11 (June 25,
1998) 14-19.
Curran, Douglas. "In Advance of the Landing: Folk Concepts of Outer Space." The
Fringes of Reason: A Whole Earth Catalog. Ed. Ted Schultz. New York:
Harmony Books, 1989. 146-51.
Davenport, Marc. Visitors from Time: The Secret of the UFOs. Rev. ed. Tuscaloosa, AL:
Greenleaf Publications, 1994.
Davies, Paul. Are We Alone?: Philosophical Implications of the Discovery of
Extraterrestrial Life. New York: Basic Books. 1995.
Degh, L. "Legends and Belief." Folklore Genres. Ed. D. Ben-Amos, 93-124. Austin:
University of Texas Press. 1976.
Degh, L. "The 'Belief Legend' in Modern Society: Form, Function, and Relationship to
other Genres." American Folk Legend: A Symposium. Ed. W.D. Hand.
Berkeley: University of California Press, 1971. 55-68.
D6gh, L. "UFOs and How Folklorists Should Look at Them. Fabula 18:242-48.

Degh, Linda and Andrew Vazsonyi. "The Hypothesis of Multi-Conduit Transmission in

Folklore," Folklore: Performance and Communication (The Hague: Mouton,
1975).

Drasin, Daniel. "Zen . . . and the Art of Debunkery." in Zen and the Art of Close
Encounters: Crazy Wisdom and UFOs. Ed. Paul David Pursglove. Berkeley: The
New Being Project, 1995. 43-58.
 78

Eliade, Mircea. Myths, Dreams, and Mysteries: The Encounter Between Contemporary
Faiths and Archaic Realities. Trans. Philip Mairet. New York: Harper
Torch Books. 1967. Originally published as Mythes. Reyes et Mysteres in 1957
by Libraire Gallimard, Paris.

Ellis, Bill. "The Varieties of Alien Experience." The Hundredth Monkey and Other
Paradigms of the Paranormal: A Skeptical Inquirer Collection. Ed. Kendrick
Frazier. Buffalo, NY: Prometheus Books, 1991. 70-77.
Emery Jr., C. Eugene. "Season of the Supernatural." Skeptical Inquirer 21.3
(March/April 1997) : 21+.

Emery, Jr., C. Eugene. "Who Plays the Fool when Discover Magazine Hoaxes its
Readers?" Skeptical Inquirer 20.1 (January/February 1996) : 13-15.
Esslin, Martin. "The Television Series as Folk Epic." Superculture: American Popular
Culture and Europe. Ed. C.W.E. Bigsby. Bowling Green OH.: Bowling Green
University Popular Press, 1975. 190-198.
Evans, Hilary. "Believing the Unbelievable: Child's Play or Con Game?"
Cyberbiological Studies of the Imaginal Component in the UFO Contact
Experience. Ed. Dennis Stillings. St. Paul: Archaeus 5, 1989.
Evans, Hilary. Visions, Apparations, Alien Visitors. Wellingborough, Northhampshire:
Aquarian Press, 1984.
Evans, William. "Science and Reason in Film and Television." Skeptical Inquirer 20.1
(January/February 1996) : 45+.
Foucault, Michel. "The Order of Discourse." The Rhetorical Tradition: Readings from
Classical Times to the Present. Ed. Patricia Bizell and Bruce Herzberg. Boston:
Bedford Books of St. Martin's Press. 1990. 1154-64.
Fowler, Raymond E. The Allagash Abductions: Undeniable Evidence of Alien
Intervention. Tigard, OR.: Wildflower Press, 1993.

Fowler, Raymond E. The Andreasson Affair. Englewoods Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall,

Inc., 1979.
Fowler, Raymond E. The Andreasson Affair: Phase Two. Englewoods Cliffs, NJ:
Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1982.
Fowler, Raymond E. The Watchers: The Secret Design Behind UFO Abduction. New
York: Bantam Books, 1990.
Friedman, Stanton T. and Don Berliner. Crash at Corona. New York: Paragon House,
1992.

Friedman, Stanton T. Top Secret / Majic. New York: Marlowe & Company, 1996.

Fuller, John G. Incident at Exeter: The Story of Unidentified Flying Objects Over
America Today. New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1966.
 79

Fuller, John G. The Interrupted Journey: Two Lost Hours "Aboard a Flying Saucer."
New York: Dell. 1966.
Gardner, Martin. "Courtney Brown's 'Cosmic Voyage' into Preposterism."
Skeptical Inquirer 21:3 (May/June 1997) 14+.

Gardner, Martin. "Heaven's Gate: The UFO Cult of Bo and Peep." Skeptical Inquirer
21.4 (July/ August 1997) : 15-17.

Genge, N.E. The Unofficial X-Files Companion II. New York: Avon Books, 1996.
Genge, N.E. The Unofficial X-Files Companion: An X-Philes Guide to the Mysteries,
Conspiracies, and Really Strange Truths Behind the Show. New York: Crown
Trade Paperbacks, 1995.
Genoni Jr., Thomas C. "Art Bell, Heaven's Gate, and Journalistic Integrity." Skeptical
Inquirer 21.4 (July/ August 1997) : 22-23.
Gilbert, Joy S. It's Time to Remember: A Riveting Story of One Woman's Awakening to
Alien Beings. Eugene, Oregon: Laughing Bear Publishing. 1995.
Goldman, Jane. The X-Files Book of the Unexplained. New York: Harper Prism, 1995.
Good, Timothy. Above Top Secret: The World-Wide UFO Cover-up. New York: Quill,
1988.

Good, Timothy. Alien Contact: Top-Secret UFO Files Revealed. New York: William
Morrow and Company, Inc., 1991. Revised ed. 1993.
Gordon, James S. "The UFO Experience." The Atlantic Monthly 268:2 (August 1991).
82-92.
Grossinger, Richard. "Giving Them a Name." ReVISION 11:4 (Spring, 1989). 43-48.
Grosso, Michael. "Plato and Out-of-body Experiences." Journal of the American Society
for Psychical Research 69:61-74. (1975).
Grosso, Michael. The Final Choice: Playing the Survival Game. Walpole, New
Hampshire: Stillpoint Publishing. 1988.
Grosso, Michael. "UFOs and the Myth of the New Age." Cyberbiological Studies of the
Imaginal Component in the UFO Contact Experience. Ed. Dennis Stillings.
St. Paul: Archaeus 5, 1989. Reprinted from ReVISION 11:3 (Winter 1989). 5-
13.

Hall, Stuart. "Culture, the Media, and the 'Ideologial Effect'." Mass Communication and
Society. London: Edward Arnold. 1970. 315-48.
Hopkins, Budd. Intruders: The Incredible Visitations at Copley Woods. New York:
Ballantine Books. 1987.

Hopkins, Budd. Missing Time. New York: Ballantine Books. 1981.

 80

Hopkins, Budd. Witnessed: The True Story of the Brooklyn Bridge UFO Abductions.
New York: Pocket Books, 1996.
Howe, Linda Moulton. An Alien Harvest: Further Evidence Linking Animal Mutilations
and Human Abductions to Alien Life Forms. Huntington Valley, PA : Linda
Howe Productions, 1993.
Hufford, David J. "Afterword to 'Traditions of Disbelief.' " Talking Folklore 1 (1988): 3.

Hufford, David J. "Ambiguity and the Rhetoric of Belief." Keystone Folklore 21 (1977):
11 -24.

Hufford, David J. "Awaking Paralyzed in the Presence of a Strange 'Visitor'." In

Pritchard, Andrea; Pritchard, David E.; Mack, John E.; Kasey, Pam; Yapp,
Claudia: Editors. Alien Discussions: Proceedings of the Abduction Study
Conference. Cambridge, MA: North Cambridge Press, 1994. 348-353.
Hufford, David J. "Humanoids and Anomalous Lights: Taxonomic and Epistemological
Problems." Fabula 18 (1977) 234-41.
Hufford, David J. "Reason, Rhetoric, and Religion: Academic Ideology Versus Folk
Belief." New York Folklore 11 (1985): 177-194.
Hufford, David J. "The Supernatural and the Sociology of Knowledge: Explaining
Academic Belief." New York Folklore 9 (Summer 1983): 21-30.
Hufford, David J. "Traditions of Disbelief." New York Folklore 8 (Winter 1982): 47-56.
Hynek, J. Allen; Vallee, Jacques. The Edge of Reality: A Progress Report on
Unidentified Flying Objects. Chicago: Henry Regnery Co. 1975.
Hynek, Dr. J. Allen; Imbrogno, Philip J.; Pratt, Bob. Night Siege: The Hudson Valley
UFO Sightings. New York: Ballantine, 1987.
Jacobs, David M. "From Arnold to Hynek: the End of an Era." MUFON Symposium
Proceedings. 1987.
Jacobs, David M. "UFOs and the Search for Scientific Legitimacy." The Occult in
America: New Historical Perspectives. Ed. Howard Kerr and Charles L. Crow.
Urbana, Univ. Of Illinois Press : 1983.
Jacobs, David M. Secret Life: Firsthand Accounts of UFO Abductions. New York:
Simon and Schuster, 1992.
Jacobs, David M. The Threat. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1998.
Jacobs, David M. The UFO Controversy in America. Bloomington: Indiana UP,
1975.

Jordan, Debbie; Mitchell, Kathy. Abducted! The Story of the Intruders Continues. New
York: Carroll & Graff Publishers. 1994.
 81

Jung, C.G. Flying Saucers: A Modern Myth of Things Seen in the Skies. Trans. R.F.C.
Hull. Princeton UP : 1978. Extracted from Volume 10 of the Collected Works of
C. G. Jung, Civilization in Transition, Princeton UP : 1964, 1970.
Keel, John. "The Great Phonograph in the Sky." The Fringes of Reason: A Whole
Earth Catalog. Ed. Ted Schultz. New York: Harmony Books, 1989. 164-68.
Keel, John. "The Man Who Invented Flying Saucers." The Fringes of Reason: A Whole
Earth Catalog. Ed. Ted Schultz. New York: Harmony Books, 1989. 138-45.
Korff, Kal K. "What Really Happened at Roswell." Skeptical Inquirer 21:4
(July/August 1997) : 24-30.

Kottmeyer, Martin S. "Ufology Considered as an Evolving System of Paranoia."

Cyberbiological Studies of the Imaginal Component in the UFO Contact
Experience. Ed. Dennis Stillings. St. Paul: Archaeus 5, 1989.
Kuhn, Thomas. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Chicago: The University of
Chicago Press, 1962. 2nd Ed. 1970.
Kurtz, Paul. "UFO Mythology: The Escape to Oblivion." Skeptical Inquirer 21:4
(July/August 1997) : 12-14.

Lawson, Alvin H. "A Testable Theory for UFO Abduction Reports: The Birth Memories
Hypothesis." Cyberbiological Studies of the Imaginal Component in the UFO
Contact Experience. Ed. Dennis Stillings. St. Paul: Archaeus 5, 1989.
Lawson, Alvin H. "Perinatal Imagery in UFO Abduction Reports." The Journal of
Psychohistory 12:2 (Fall 1984).
Lilienfeld, Scott 0. "The Courtney Brown Affair and Academic Freedom."
Skeptical Inquirer 21:3 (May/June 1997) 51-54.

Maccabee, Bruce. "Response to James Oberg's Comment Paper." The Universe and Its
Origins: From Ancient Myth to Present Reality and Fantasy. Ed. Fred Singer.
New York: Paragon House, 1990. 255-259.
Maccabee, Bruce. "UFOs: Fantasy or Present Reality?" The Universe and Its Origins:
From Ancient Myth to Present Reality and Fantasy. Ed. Fred Singer. New York:
Paragon House, 1990. 229-247.
Mack, John. Abduction: Human Encounters with Aliens. New York: Charles Scribner,
1994.

Mans, Jim. Alien Agenda: Investigating the Extraterrestrial Presence Among Us. New
York: HarperCollins. 1997.
Mattsson, Dan and Michael A. Persinger. "Geophysical Variables and Behavior: XXXV.
Positive Correlations Between Numbers of UFO Reports and Earthquake Activity
in Sweden." Perceptual and Motor Skills 63. (1986) : 921-922.

McKenna, Terence. The Archaic Revival: Speculations on Psychedelic Mushrooms, the

Amazon, Virtual Reality, UFOs, Evolution, Shamanism, the Rebirth of the
Goddess, and the End of History. San Francisco: Harper, 1991.
 82

McKenna, Terence. "A Conversation Over Saucers." ReVISION 11:3 (Winter, 1989).
23-30.
McLeod, Caroline C., Corbisier, Mack. "A More Parsimonious Explanation for UFO
Abduction." Psychological Inquiry 7:2 (1996) : 156-168.
Milligan, Linda Jean. The UFO Debate: A Study of a Contemporary Legend. 2 Vols.
Ohio State University, 1988. Ph.D. Dissertation.
Morris, Meaghan. "The Truth is Out There . . . ." Cultural Studies 11:3 (1997). 367-75.
Murphy, Patrick D. "Reducing the Dystopian Distance: Pseudo-Documentary Framing in
Near-Future Fiction." Science Fiction Studies 17 (March 1990) : 25-40.
Neimark, Jill. "Dispatch from Dreamland" Psychology Today 30:5 (Sept/Oct 1997) :
50+.
Neimark, Jill. "The Harvard Professor and the UFOs." Psychology Today 27:2
(March/April 1994) : 46+.

Nesheim, Eric; Leif Nesheim. Saucer Attack: Pop Culture in the Golden Age of Flying
Saucers. Los Angeles: General Publishing Group, Inc. 1997
Newman, Leonard S., Baumeister, Roy F. "Toward an Explanation of the UFO
Abduction Phenomenon: Hypnotic Elaboration, Extraterrestrial Sadomasochism,
and Spurious Memories." Psychological Inquiry 7:22 (1996) 99-126.
Nugent, Tony. "Quicksilver in Twilight: a Close Encounter with a Hermetic Eye."
Cyberbiological Studies of the Imaginal Component in the UFO Contact
Experience. Ed. Dennis Stillings. St. Paul: Archaeus 5, 1989.
O'Connor, Charolette A. "Abduction: An Alien Experience?" In UFOs: The Final
Answer?. Ed. David Barclay and Therese Marie Barclay. London: Blanford,
1993. 154-171.
Oberg, James E. "Comment on Bruce Maccabee." The Universe and Its Origins: From
Ancient Myth to Present Reality and Fantasy. Ed. Fred Singer. New York:
Paragon House, 1990. 248-254.
Orlans, Harold. "Lost Faculties." Change: The Magazine of Higher Learning 27.5
(September/October 1995) : 8.

Parnell, 0. and R.L. Sprinkle, "Personality Characteristics of Persons Who Claim UFO
Experiences," Journal of UFO Studies 2 (1990): 45-58.

Peebles, Curtis. Watch the Skies!: A Chronicle of the Flying Saucer Myth. Washington
D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1994.
Persinger, Michael A. "The 'Visitor' Experience and the Personality: The Temporal Lobe
Factor." Cyberbiological Studies of the Imaginal Component in the UFO Contact
Experience. Ed. Dennis Stillings. St. Paul: Archaeus 5, 1989.
 83

Persinger, Michael A. "Geophysical Variables and Behavior: LIII. Epidemiological

Considerations for Incidence of Cancer and Depression in Areas of Frequent UFO
Reports" Perceptual and Motor Skills 67. (1988) : 700-803.
Persinger, Michael A., J. S. Derr. "Geophysical Variables and Behavior: LXII.
Temporal Coupling of UFO Reports and Seismic Energy Release within the Rio
Grande Rift System: Discriminative Validity of the Tectonic Strain Theory."
Perceptual and Motor Skills 71. (1990) : 567-72.
Persinger, Michael A., Brian Hart, Alex Thomas. "Geophysical Variables and Behavior:
LXXX. Periodicities and Energetic Characteristics of a Strobe-light Luminosity
During a Geomagnetic Storm." Perceptual and Motor Skills 82. (1996) : 683-
688.
Powers, Susan Marie. "Dissociation in Alleged Extraterrestrial Abductees." Dissociation
7:1 (March 1994) : 44-50.

Pritchard, Andrea; Pritchard, David E.; Mack, John E.; Kasey, Pam; Yapp, Claudia:
Editors. Alien Discussions: Proceedings of the Abduction Study Conference.
Cambridge, MA: North Cambridge Press, 1994.
"Pursuing the Paranormal: What's Behind the New Interest in the Unexplained?" The CQ
Researcher. 6:12 (March 29, 1996) : 265-288.
Randle, Kevin; Russ Estes. Faces of the Visitors: An Illustrated Reference to Alien
Contact. New York: Simon and Schuster. 1997.
Rand les, Jenny. Alien Contacts & Abductions: The Real Story from the Other Side. New
York: Sterling Publishing Co., Inc. 1994.
Rand les, Jenny. Alien Contact: The First Fifty Years. New York: Sterling Publishing
Co. 1997.
Rand les, Jenny; Peter Hough. The Complete Book of UFOs: An Investigation into Alien
Contacts and Encounters: From the Why Files. New York: Sterling Publishing
Co., Inc., 1996.
Raschke, Carl. "UFOs: Ultraterrestrial Agents of Cultural Deconstruction."
Cyberbiological Studies of the Imaginal Component in the UFO Contact
Experience. Ed. Dennis Stillings. St. Paul: Archaeus 5, 1989.
Ring, Kenneth. "Near-Death and UFO Encounters as Shamanic Initiations: Some
Conceptual and Evolutionary Implications." ReVISION 11:3 (Winter, 1989). 14-
22

Ring, Kenneth. The Omega Project: Near Death Experiences, UFO Encounters, and Mind
at Large. New York : William Morrow and Co., Inc., 1992.

Ring, Kenneth. "Toward an Imaginal Interpretation of 'UFO Abductions'." ReVISION

11:4 (Spring, 1989). 17-24.
Rojcewicz, Peter M. "Between One Eye Blink and the Next: Fairies, UFOs, and the
Problems of Knowledge." The Good People: New Fairy lore Essays. Ed. Peter
Narvaez. New York: Garland Publishing. 1991.
 84

Rojcewicz, Peter M. "The Boundaries of Orthodoxy: A Folkloric Look at the UFO

Phenomenon." Ph.D. dissertation, Folklore and Folk life, U of Pennsylvania,
1984.

Rojcewicz, Peter M. "Folklore of the 'Men in Black': A Challenge to the Prevailing

Paradigm." ReVISION 11:4 (Spring, 1989). 5-16.
Rojcewicz, Peter M. "Signals of Transcendence: The Human-UFO Equation."
Cyberbiological Studies of the Imaginal Component in the UFO Contact
Experience. Ed. Dennis Stillings. St. Paul: Archaeus 5, 1989.
Sagan, Carl and Thorton Page, Ed. UFO's: The Scientific Debate. New York: W.W
Norton and Company, Inc. 1972.
Sagan, Carl. Contact. London: Arrow Books. 1985.
Sellers, Charles E. UFO. Chicago; Contemporary Books. 1997.
Shapiro, Deane H., Jr. "Exploring Our Most Deeply Held Belief about Ultimate Reality."
ReVISION 12:1 (Summer 1989). 15-28.
Shermer, Michael. Why People Believe Weird Things. New York: W.H. Freeman and
Co. 1997.
Spanos, Nicholas P., Cross, Dickson and DuBreuil. "Close Encounters: An Examination
of UFO Experiences. " Journal of Abnormal Psychology 102:4 (1993) : 624-632.

Sparks, Glenn G. and Sherri W., Gray, Kirsten. "Media Impact on Fright Reactions and
Belief in UFOs: The Potential Role of Mental Imagery." Communication Research
22.1 (1995) : 3-23.
Sparks, Glenn G., C. Leigh Nelson, and Rose G. Campbell. "The Relationship Between
Exposure to Televised Messages About Paranormal Phenomenon and Paranormal
Beliefs." Journal of Broadcasting and Electronic Media 41.3 (Summei 1997) :
345-359.
Stacy, Dennis. "UFO Folklore: The Men in Black." The Fringes of Reason: A Whole
Earth Catalog,. Ed. Ted Schultz. New York: Harmony Books, 1989. 154-55.
Stiebing, Jr., William H. "Comment on Bruce Maccabee." The Universe and Its Origins:
From Ancient Myth to Present Reality and Fantasy. Ed. Fred Singer. New York:
Paragon House, 1990. 260-265.
Stillings, Dennis. "Editor's Preface." Cyberbiological Studies of the Imaginal Component
in the UFO Contact Experience. Ed. Dennis Stillings. St. Paul: Archaeus 5,
1989.

Stillings, Dennis. "Helicopters, UFOs, and the Psyche." ReVISION 11:4 (Spring,
1989) 25-32.
 85

Stillings, Dennis. "Intermezzo 4: Some Observations on UFO 'Abductions' with Special

Reference to Budd Hopkins' Missing Time." Cyberbiological Studies of the
Imaginal Component in the UFO Contact Experience. Ed. Dennis Stillings.
St. Paul: Archaeus 5, 1989.
Stokes, Trey. "How to Make an 'Alien' for 'Autopsy'." Skeptical Inquirer 20.1
(January/February 1996) : 19-23.

Strieber, Whitley. Breakthrough: The Next Step. New York: Harper Collins. 1995.
Strieber, Whitley. Communion: A True Story. New York: Avon. 1987.
Strieber, Whitley. Confirmation: The Hard Evidence of Aliens Among Us. New York:
St. Martin's Press. 1998.
Strieber, Whitley. Majestic. New York: Berkeley Books, 1989.
Strieber, Whitley. The Secret School. New York: Harper Collins, 1997.
Strieber, Whitley. Transformation: The Breakthrough. New York: Avon. 1988.
Strieber, Whitley; Ann Strieber. The Communion Letters. New York: Harper Prism,
1997.

Sullivan, Walter. We Are Not Alone: The Continuing Search for Extraterrestrial
Intelligence. Rev. Ed. New York: Plume. 1993.
Thompson, Keith. Angels and Aliens. New York : Fawcett Columbine, 1991.
Thompson, Keith. "Angels, Aliens, and Archetypes--An Introduction." Ed. preface in
ReVISION 11:3 (Winter 1989). 3-4.
Thompson, Keith. "Angels, Aliens, and Archetypes--Introduction to Part Two."
ReVISION 11:4 (Spring 1989). 3-4.
Thompson, Keith. "Wrestling with Angels: The Mythic Dimensions of the UFO
Phenomenon." ReVISION 11:3 (Winter, 1989) 31-47.
Tudor, Andrew. Monsters and Mad Scientists: A Cultural History of the Horror Movie.
Oxford, UK: Basil Blackwell. 1989.
Von Daniken, Erich. Chariots of the Gods. New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1969.
Vallee, Jacques. Confrontations: A Scientist's Search for Alien Contact. New York:
Ballantine Books. 1990.
Vallee, Jacques. Dimensions: A Casebook of Alien Contact. Chicago: Contemporary
Books. 1988.
Vallee, Jacques. The Invisible College: What a Group of Scientists has Discovered about
UFO Influences on the Human Race. New York: E.P. Dutton, 1975.
Vallee, Jacques. Passport to Magonia: on UFOs, Folklore, and Parallel Worlds. Chicago:
Contemporary Books, 1993. (Originally published H. Regency Co., 1969.)
 86

Vallee, Jacques. Revelations: Alien Contact and Human Deception. New York:
Ballantine Books. 1991.
Vallee, Jacques. UFO's in Space: Anatomy of a Phenomenon. New York: Ballantine
Books. 1965.
Vallee, Jacques; in collaboration with Martine Castello. UFO Chronicles of the Soviet
Union: A Cosmic Samizdat. New York: Ballantine Books. 1992.
van Dyk, Gregory. The Alien Files: The Secrets of Extraterrestrial Encounters and
Abductions. Shaftsbury, Dorset: Element Books. 1997.
Walsh, Roger. "Shamanism and Early Human Technology: The Technology of
Transcendence." ReVISION 12:1 (Summer 1989). 34-40.
Walsh, Roger. "The Shamanic Journey: Experiences, Origins, and Analogues."
ReVISION 12:2 (Fall 1989). 25-32.
Walton, Travis. Fire in the Sky: The Walton Experience. New York: Marlowe and Co.
1996. Originally The Walton Experience: 1979.

Westrum, Ron. "Social Intelligence About Hidden Events: Its Significance for Scientific
Research and Social Policy." Knowledge: Creation, Diffusion, Utilization 3:3.
(March 1982). 381-400.
Woodhouse, Mark B. Paradigm Wars: Worldviews for a New Age. Berkeley, CA.:
Frog, Ltd. 1996.

Zimmerman, Michael. "The 'Alien Abduction' Phenomenon: Forbidden Knowledge of

Hidden Events." Philosophy Today 41:2 (Summer, 1997), 235-254.
 87

Filmography

Alien. Dir. Scott Ridley. 1979

Aliens. Dir. James Cameron. 1986.
Brother from Another Planet. Dir. and Written by John Say les. 1984.

Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Dir. by Steven Spielberg. RCA/Columbia,

1977/1980.

Communion. Dir. Phillipe Mora. Screenplay by Whitley Strieber, adapted from his book
by the same name. 1989.
Contact. Dir. Robert Zemeckis. 1997. Based on book by Carl Sagan.
Fire in the Sky. Dir. by Robert Lieberman. Screenplay by Tracy Torme. Adapted from
Travis Walton's The Walton Experience. 1993.

Independence Day. Prod. Dean Devlin. Dir. Roland Emmerich. 1996.

Intruders. CBS-TV. Starring Richard Crenna. Original air dates May 17 and 19, 1992.
Available in video.

Men in Black. Prod. Walter F. Parks and Laurie MacDonald. Dir. Barry Sonnenfeld.
1997.

Mimic. Dir. Guillerma Del Toro. Derived from short story by Donald Wolheim. 1998.
"Pilot." X-Files. Writer: Chris Carter. Dir. Robert Mandel. Original Broadcast date
9/10/93.

Species. Dir. Roger Donaldson. 1996.

Starship Troopers. Dir. Paul Verhoven. 1997.