56 lines
3.4 KiB
Plaintext
56 lines
3.4 KiB
Plaintext
09-May-88 09:07 EDT
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Sb: APn 05/06 2057 Alien Abductions
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Copyright, 1988. The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
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By BRIAN MURPHY Associated Press Writer
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BOSTON (AP) -- Joann Berte swears she was paralyzed by three-fingered aliens
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and taken aboard their spaceship. Marianne Shenefield, who claims to have twice
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encountered extraterrestrials, said people who have seen them have an aura.
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Their stories are likely to be heard in dozens of variations this weekend at
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a conference in Waltham expected to draw more than 250 UFO experts and people
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who claim to have been abducted by extraterrestrials.
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"I was immobilized. I couldn't move and I didn't think to speak. I just
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watched," said Berte of a warm night on Dec. 10, 1979, when she says she was
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awakened on a friend's porch in Rhode Island and carried in a paralyzed state
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aboard an alien spacecraft.
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Berte tells of observing a small, three-fingered alien in an incubator and
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being brought to a glass-enclosed platform overlooking a table where her friend
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lay with a tube extending from her navel.
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"It makes you very angry," said Berte. "They don't ask your permission. They
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just take you away."
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Arthur Myers, a conference coordinator and member of a church group
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interested in the paranormal, said the gathering is one of the first public
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meetings of people claiming to have had close encounters of the third kind.
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"It reminds me a lot of alcholism or homosexuals coming out of the closet,"
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said Myers. "There's a stigma attached to the abductees. But once someone comes
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forward with their story, others are willing to speak."
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Marianne Shenefield of Agawam is one of those yearning to let people know
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about her two experiences. Thirty-five years ago, she was an 11-year-old girl
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building a tree house in Agawam on a July afternoon.
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"Then I turned around and there was what I thought was a little boy in a
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scuba outfit," said Shenefield. "Then I felt this floating sensation and the
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next thing I knew I was in this round craft."
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Shenefield said the aliens put her under an X-ray device and she was
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observed by several aliens, who tried to communicate with her by a sound-making
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unit.
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In 1972, Shenefield said, a female-like alien captured her outside her home
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and brought her into a small compartment. Shenefield said she was released
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hours later, dazed but unharmed.
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A degenerative eye disorder has reduced her sight to dim shadows and bold
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streaks of light. But the ailment enables her to see auras, she said.
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"I can immediately detect someone who has been abducted," she said. "They
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are surrounded by an indescribable color. Believe me, I can tell."
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Author Ray Fowler said about 80 percent of all UFO sightings can be
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explained.
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"But there are those instances that defy any explanation," said the former
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Air Force intelligence officer, a keynote speaker at the conference Saturday.
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"It's imperative that we study these things with an open mind, not gullibly
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accept them or reject them out of hand. There are too many people who come
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forward with nothing to gain and everything to lose."
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Fowler, whose book "The Andreasson Affair" describes a family's encounter
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with aliens, said he became interested in UFOs after seeing flying discs in
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1947.
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He is director of the Mutual UFO Network, an international group that
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documents UFO sightings.
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