extraordinary%20encounters

4 Abductions by UFOs
tion. Few observers believed that conscious
hoaxing played much of a role in abductionreporting.
Unlike contactees, abductees seldom
had any background in occultism or esoteric
interests, and hardly any sought profit or
publicity. To every indication they believed
that they had undergone frightening, bizarre
experiences. Some psychological studies
found that abductees often evinced all the
symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder of
the sort ordinarily associated with victims of
crime, personal assault, or other threatening
terrors.
In 1987 Thomas E. Bullard, author of an
Indiana University Ph.D. dissertation on the
relationship of UFOs to folklore, released a
two-volume study of all abduction accounts
then known, some three hundred. Through a
searching examination of the narratives,
Bullard concluded that a real phenomenon of
strikingly consistent features existed, that “abductions”
were not simply an assortment of
random fantasies. He noted patterns that had
escaped even the most attentive investigators,
including “doorway amnesia”—the curious
failure of abductees to remember the moment
of entry or departure from the UFO. Besides
establishing the uniform nature of hypnotic
and non-hypnotic testimony, Bullard determined
that the phenomenon’s features remained
stable from investigator to investigator,
thus casting doubt on a favorite skeptical
argument concerning investigator influence
on the story. Beyond that, Bullard wrote, it
was difficult to say more, except that “something
goes on, a marvelous phenomenon rich
enough to interest a host of scholars, humanists,
psychologists and sociologists alike as well
as perhaps physical scientists, and to hold that
interest irrespective of the actual nature of the
phenomenon” (Bullard, 1987).
Hopkins’s next book, Intruders (1987), introduced
fresh features that would figure
largely in all subsequent discussions. From his
latest investigations he had come to suspect a
reason for alien abductions: the creation of a
race of hybrid beings to replenish the extraterrestrials’
apparently exhausted genetic stock.
Female abductees would find themselves pregnant,
sometimes inexplicably; then, following
subsequent abductions involving vaginal penetration
by a suction device, they would discover
that those pregnancies had been suddenly
terminated. In later abductions they
would be shown babies or small children with
both human and alien features. The abductors
would explain that these were the women’s
children. Hopkins also uncovered a pattern of
cases of sexual intercourse between male abductees
and more-or-less human alien women
(perhaps adult hybrids).
Other investigators began finding similar
cases. Hybrids were a new wrinkle, significantly
augmenting the already considerable
peculiarity of the abduction phenomenon. As
long ago as 1975, in his book The Mothman
Prophecies, investigator John A. Keel noted, in
passing, a pattern of what he called “hysterical
pregnancies” in young women who had had
close encounters. Even so, the reports met
with skepticism among scientifically sophisticated
ufologists, for example, Michael D.
Swords, who said that such hybridization is
biologically impossible. Other critics argued
that mass abductions for such purposes would
not be necessary; once the basic reproductive
materials were collected, they could easily be
duplicated. Most damning of all, independent
inquiries by physician-ufologists found no evidence
of mysteriously ended pregnancies in
colleagues’ experiences or in the pediatric literature.
Still the reports continue.
Another significant development in 1987
was the publication of Communion by Whitley
Strieber, heretofore known as a novelist
specializing in horror and futuristic themes,
now a self-identified abductee with a series of
strange adventures in his past. The grayskinned,
big-eyed alien on the best-selling
book’s cover triggered a flood of “memories”
among many who saw it. Even ufologists who
had been abduction literalists grew puzzled,
then uneasy, at the apparent quantity of recovered
abduction recollections. Strieber also
was the first to express a kind of New Age
view of the abduction phenomenon, now seen