Empire unusual suggested

94 PASSPORT TO MAGONIA
when they communicated with the Hills, their thoughts came
through in English. Betty thinks that they spoke English "with
an accent," while Barney feels that the words and the presence
of the entity were two separate things:
I did not hear an actual voice. But in my mind, I knew what he
was saying. It wasn't as if he were talking to me with my eyes open,
and he was sitting across the room from me. It was more as if the
words were there, a part of me, and he was outside the actual creation
of the words themselves. 7
This very remarkable statement, an excellent description of
the mechanism that triggered the communication, may well be
a clue to the entire episode, and it certainly places the case in the
domain of the Theory of Apparitions—as it is treated, for instance,
by Tyrrell in his celebrated 1942 Myers Lectures before
the British Society for Psychical Research. Thus it is noteworthy
that the apparent absurdity of the sequence of actions constituting
the episode should be reducible to the triggering of high-level
perception patterns within the witness's brain, and not necessarily
through an actual normal physical process. And this characteristic,
in its turn, is reminiscent both of neurophysiological
experiments and of reports by the most reliable observers of
"ghosts," although, of course, ghosts are distinguished from the
class of phenomena we are studying here by the absence of
material traces—-which makes their interpretation a good deal
simpler. And while it is probable that a complete theory of
ghosts could confine the phenomena to parameters within the
human nervous system, the same is not true of UFO's. For this
reason, therefore, it is crucial to pursue the investigation of cases
of apparitions in older times, in relation to reports such as that
of the Hills.
The recognition of a strong psychological (or psychic, if you
prefer) component in UFO manifestations makes such a study
imperative. If the phenomena are to be ascribed to psychological
causes, then the causes must have manifested themselves during
all epochs, although naturally sociologists could give various reasons
to expect a considerable increase in such manifestations
since World War II. On the other hand, if the phenomenon
TO MAGONIA AND BACK! 95
is not wholly psychological in nature, then the discovery of historical
antecedents would be a valuable clue to its nature.
The "experiment" performed on Betty Hill by the entities is
therefore quite remarkable. It will be recalled that while she was
in the craft, Betty was submitted to a simulated medical test.
Under hypnosis, she reported that a long needle was inserted into
her navel, that she felt pain, and that the pain stopped when the
leader made a certain gesture with his hand in front of her eyes.
A fifteenth-century French calendar, the Kalendrier des Bergiers,
shows the tortures inflicted by demons on the people they have
taken: the demons are depicted piercing their victims' abdomens
with long needles. In fact, the psychological invariable in all these
stories is unmistakable. The problem, then, is not to identify it,
but to relate it in a rational manner to the physical features encountered
during the observations—for example, the tracking by
military radar operators of the UFO seen by the Hills.
Perhaps we should illustrate the difficulty of this problem by
using a case that is less well known than the Hills incident, though
it is quite as dramatic. It has never appeared in English UFO
literature and therefore cannot have influenced American UFO
lore. Even in France it is practically unknown. The incident took
place on May 20, 1950, at about 4:00 P.M. I cannot reveal the
name of the witness or the exact location. I can say, however,
that the witness was a woman, and that the episode took place
in the central region of France, near the Loire River. An official
investigation by French local police has substantiated the physical
traces mentioned in this report, which can be translated thus:
I was hurrying back home to prepare dinner. I was happy and
content and I was singing some popular tune. Everything was calm
and still, without any breeze or wind; I was alone on the path.
Suddenly, I found myself within a brilliant, blinding light, and
I saw two huge black hands appear in front of me. Each one had
five fingers, of a black color with a yellowish tint, somewhat like
copper. The fingers were roughly formed, slightly vibrating, or quivering.
These hands did not come from behind me, but from above,
as if they had been hanging over my head awaiting the proper time
to catch me. The black hands did not immediately apply themselves
to my head. I probably took two or three steps before they touched
me. The hands had no visible arms! The two black hands were ap-