extraordinary%20encounters

In time, such abduction reports—the subject
of a separate entry—would overwhelm
CE3s as historically understood. Nonabduction
CE3s would diminish in number and, in
time, slow to a trickle, though they would not
entirely disappear.
One particularly well-documented incident
re p o rtedly occurred in the early morning
hours of Ja n u a ry 12, 1975, when seve
n t y - t w o - year-old George O’Barski was
driving home past New Yo rk City’s No rt h
Hudson Pa rk. He observed a glowing pancake-shaped
object hovering above the park
g round. A door opened, a ladder emerged,
and about ten small figures, dressed in onepiece
suits and helmets, climbed down to
collect soil and grass samples, which they
scooped up with “little shove l s” (Ho p k i n s ,
1981). An extensive investigation by thre e
New Yo rk–based ufologists uncove red a body
of apparent confirming testimony from an
a s s o rtment of witnesses.
In the most remarkable CE3 of the 1990s,
a large group of children at Ariel School,
Ruwa, Zimbabwe, while on recess on the
morning of September 16, 1994, reportedly
observed the landing of a UFO just beyond
the playground. They also saw one or two occupants,
small figures (slightly more than
three feet tall) with large, slanted eyes and
long black hair. They were wearing tight black
suits. Though teachers were alerted while the
incident was in progress, none believed the
children and refused to go outside. Later, they
changed their minds as the children produced
remarkably uniform accounts and drawings.
A British Broadcasting Corporation journalist,
accompanied by Zimbabwe ufologist Cynthia
Hind, interviewed the witnesses within a
few days of the incident.
See Also: Abductions by UFOs; Adamski, George;
Contactees; Keel, John Alva; Menger, Howard;
Van Tassel, George W.; Wilcox’s Martians
Further Reading
Basterfield, Keith, 1997. UFOs: A Report on Aus -
tralian Encounters. Kew, Victoria, Australia: Reed
Books.
Bowen, Charles, ed., 1974. The Humanoids. London:
Futura Publications.
Cocoon people 67
Clark, Jerome, 1998. “Close Encounters of the Third
Kind.” In Jerome Clark. The UFO Encyclopedia:
The Phenomenon from the Beginning, 207–239.
Detroit, MI: Omnigraphics.
———, 2000. “The Extraterrestrial Hypothesis in
the Early UFO Age.” In David M. Jacobs, ed.,
UFOs and Abductions: Challenging the Borders of
Knowledge, 122–140. Lawrence: University Press
of Kansas.
Fuller, John G., 1966. The Interrupted Journey: Two
Lost Hours “Aboard a Flying Saucer.” New York:
Dial Press.
Hind, Cynthia, 1996. UFOs over Africa. Madison,
WI: Horus House Press.
Hopkins, Budd, 1981. Missing Time: A Documented
Study of UFO Abductions. New York: Richard
Marek Publishers.
Hynek, J. Allen, 1972. The UFO Experience: A Scien -
tific Inquiry. Chicago: Henry Regnery Company.
Hynek, J. Allen, and Jacques Vallee, 1975. The Edge
of Reality: A Progress Report on Unidentified Flying
Objects. Chicago: Henry Regnery Company.
Keyhoe, Donald E., 1950. The Flying Saucers Are
Real. New York: Fawcett Publishers.
Lorenzen, Coral, and Jim Lorenzen, 1967. Flying
Saucer Occupants. New York: Signet.
McCune, Hal, 1987. “Man Sticks to His Report.”
Pendleton East Oregonian (June 24).
Mallan, Lloyd, 1967. “UFO Hoaxes and Hallucinations.”
Science and Mechanics 38, 3 (March):
48–52, 82–85.
Scully, Frank, 1950. Behind the Flying Saucers. New
York: Henry Holt and Company.
Cocoon people
In her book Taken (1994), the late psychologist
and abductee Karla Turner recounts the
experiences of a woman identified only as Pat,
at the time a fifty-year-old divorcee living in
Florida. Her abduction experiences began in
1954 on the family farm near Floyd’s Knob,
Indiana. Over the years other experiences occurred.
All of these were repressed in conscious
memory until 1986, when they came
flooding into her thoughts. One memory—
Pat could not put a specific time frame on
it—concerned “cocoon people.”
She found herself inside a large room with
soft white lighting. A gray-skinned humanoid
stood near her. “I vaguely recall seeing a
human male there,” she would tell Turner,
“but not what he was doing.” The room con-