Secret life: firsthand accounts of UFO abductions Read Free Page A

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, was published in 1981. In this pioneering work, he investigated a small group of people who he thought might have had abduction experiences. I was immediately impressed with his skillful research. Using a psychologist to administer hypnosis, Hopkins had collected data much more systematically than anyone had before. He meticulously uncovered important information about abductees having puzzling sustained lapses in time, mysterious scars, bizarre physical examinations, and screen memories (false memories masking what may have been abductions), and he even theorized a possible generational link between parents who were abductees and their children.
    Hopkins’s work was excellent, but I found that the overall situation was still confusing. After all, people have always claimed that many sorts of strange events have happened to them. They have lived past lives. They have been in communication with denizens of the spirit world and even Space Brothers. They have seen ghosts, danced with fairies, and had near-death experiences with religious implications. To my way of thinking, all of this might be a demonstration of the mind’s mysterious workings. Perhaps these paranormal phenomenaarose from the human tendency to create folklore. Or they might emanate from a collective unconscious. In any case, psychology rather than objective reality would explain these stories.
    The same might be true of abductions. The problem was that when I read abduction accounts I could get no real sense of the progression of events during an abduction from beginning to end. Most of the reports consisted of snippets of stories, beginning in some logical order but then either ending abruptly or swerving off into wild, fantastic flights of fancy. As a historian, I required a chronological narrative. Before I could accept a psychological answer to all this, I needed a clear idea of exactly what the abduction accounts consisted of. I wanted to learn the details on a careful, rigorous, second-by-second basis, beginning with an abductee’s first feeling that something extraordinary was happening to him and ending when the event was finally deemed to be over. I needed to be sure of my evidence.
    I knew that if I were to make sense of what was happening, I would have to do abduction research myself. This meant that I would have to learn hypnosis. I had never hypnotized anybody, and it was a frightening prospect, but I was determined to learn. By 1985 Hopkins was doing his own hypnotic regressions, and he invited me to sit in on his sessions. I discussed hypnosis techniques with him and other researchers. I read books about hypnosis. I attended a hypnosis conference. I learned about the dangers and pitfalls of hypnosis.
    Now Melissa Bucknell was on her way to my house, wondering if I could unravel whatever had been troubling her. She had written to Hopkins describing some of her unusual events and suspicions; because she lived in Philadelphia, he had referred her to me. I tried to exude confidence when she arrived, but underneath I was anxious. I had no idea what was going to happen, whether I could successfully hypnotize anyone or whether I could enable her to remember events in her past. Luckily, Melissa had been hypnotized before, so when I began the induction, she slipped quickly into a trance state. It was easy. The difficult part was asking the right questions, in the right manner.
    In the first regression session, Melissa described being a six-year-old child playing in a field in back of her house with a friend. Before she knew it she was being transported into a UFO by aliens. Herclothes were removed and a physical examination was performed on her. Her genitals were probed with a needlelike instrument. She felt that some sort of implant was inserted near her left ovary.
    I was amazed. On the first regression, Melissa had spontaneously “remembered” being taken on board a UFO, being given an examination, and having her genitals probed. What was I