102 lines
5.6 KiB
Plaintext
102 lines
5.6 KiB
Plaintext
SUBJECT: Dreams that chill ! FILE: UFO2278
|
|
|
|
|
|
PART 3
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
"It's very hard to think of this as some wonderful, new adventure,"
|
|
Mr. Hopkins says.
|
|
Maybe an extraterrestrial species is introducing a desirable human
|
|
characteristic into its own evolutionary cycle, say the researchers.
|
|
Maybe it is reducing the difference between its species and ours. Maybe
|
|
it is seeding another planet, or maybe it has a plan completely beyond
|
|
the comprehension and imagination of the human brain.
|
|
Yeah, right, say the skeptics. The astronomer Carl Sagan says that
|
|
he is open-minded to the prospect of intelligent beings living in space,
|
|
but he doesn't believe they're sneaking into bedrooms and tormenting
|
|
Earthlings.
|
|
"Tell me," he says, "which is more plausible: We're victims of a
|
|
massive invasion of alien sexual abusers, or people are seeing things
|
|
that just aren't there?"
|
|
Although abduction claims began surfacing nearly half a century
|
|
ago, not one shred of indisputable physical evidence has surfaced, say
|
|
Mr. Sagan, who recently wrote an article for "Parade" magazine debunking
|
|
those claims.
|
|
"Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence," he says.
|
|
"Somebody telling a story is not evidence, even many people telling the
|
|
same story isn't good enough. They're people that's the point, and
|
|
people intrinsically have certain fallibilities."
|
|
Abduction accounts may say something about how the brain works, or
|
|
how people can be deluded, or even how religions begin, he says from his
|
|
office at Cornell University. But they say nothing, he says, about
|
|
skinny, large-eyed aliens kidnapping humans.
|
|
"There's a better chance of your getting hit on the head by one of
|
|
Santa's reindeer than of you being abducted," says Philip J. Klass, a
|
|
retired senior editor and now contributing editor at "Aviation Week &
|
|
Space Technology" magazine. "I will say, slightly tongue-in-cheek,
|
|
there is better evidence of the existence of mermaids and Irish
|
|
leprechauns."
|
|
Mr. Klass, who lives in Washington, says he has tried to verify UFO
|
|
cases for nearly 30 years and has not found a credible one. In his 1989
|
|
book, "UFO Abductions: A Dangerous Game," Mr. Klass contended that
|
|
people who believe they've been abducted by aliens need treatment by
|
|
qualified psychotherapists, not UFO "cult gurus."
|
|
Robert A. Baker, a retired professor of psychology at the
|
|
University of Kentucky, has written derisively about abduction stories.
|
|
He says some are simply fabrications or the recounting of stories
|
|
gleaned from books or movies, while others are products of psychological
|
|
disorders.
|
|
The stories may be repressed memories of childhood sexual or
|
|
physical abuse surfacing in disguised form, he says. Or they may be the
|
|
type of vivid, realistic dreams occurring as a person falls asleep or
|
|
wakes up -- hypnagogic or hypnopompic hallucinations. And, he says,
|
|
some people who believe they've been abducted may be fantasy-prone or
|
|
psychologically disturbed.
|
|
"Anyway," Dr. Baker says, "if this phenomena were as common as
|
|
Hopkins and Jacobs would have us believe, the sky would be filled with
|
|
spacecraft abducting people back and forth. UFOs would be stacked up
|
|
like aircraft coming in at O'Hare."
|
|
The believers and skeptics counter each other point by point. Both
|
|
sides publish newsletters buttressing their claims. And both produce
|
|
mental-health specialists who pronounce judgment on the sanity of the
|
|
victims.
|
|
But in the end, what are we left with? The stories.
|
|
Lea started out thinking she was dreaming or hallucinating. After
|
|
coming to believe she had been abducted, she contacted a representative
|
|
of the Mutual UFO Network, an international group interested in UFOs.
|
|
She was referred to Bob Oechsler, a former National Aeronautics and
|
|
Space Administration mission specialist who lives in Edgewater in Anne
|
|
Arundel County.
|
|
Mr. Oechsler, who became interested in UFOs as a boy, is intrigued
|
|
with the technology of crafts from outer space: How do they get here
|
|
from there? For the past two years he has researched UFO sightings full
|
|
time. On his front door is a brass plaque that reads: UFOs _are real_!!!
|
|
Mr. Oechsler is starting a support group for abductees, one of
|
|
dozens forming across the country, he says. About 30 people, including
|
|
Lea, have signed up.
|
|
Bruce S. Maccabee, a research physicist for the Navy, will also
|
|
attend. The Frederick County resident has researched UFOs on his own
|
|
for years, and is a longtime leader in UFO research groups, one of
|
|
which, the Fund for UFO Research, in Mount Rainier, Md., sponsored the
|
|
abduction conference at MIT.
|
|
At the organizational meeting of Mr. Oechsler's support group, Dr.
|
|
Maccabee told the participants:
|
|
"This subject is so weird, so misunderstood. All we can do is hold
|
|
your hand and make you realize you're not alone."
|
|
That would be a relief to Lea.
|
|
Strange things continue to happen to her. Not long ago, she says,
|
|
while visiting friends in the West Virginia mountains, she was floated
|
|
out of the house, taken aboard a spaceship and handed a baby.
|
|
It was a boy, with leathery skin, a thin neck and an oversized head
|
|
with patches of red hair. It had huge eyes, she says, but they weren't
|
|
coal black like those of the adult aliens. They were blue.
|
|
"I don't know why, and I know this sounds strange," Lea says in a
|
|
voice trembling with emotion, "but as soon as I held him in my arms, I
|
|
knew he was mine. I felt like I was his mother."
|
|
End of part 3.
|
|
|
|
|
|
**********************************************
|
|
* THE U.F.O. BBS - http://www.ufobbs.com/ufo *
|
|
********************************************** |