The “Grey” Menace??

Why is it that the “greys” seem largely absent from UFO data gathered in certain other countries (as examples, Russia and Peru). To what extent, I wonder, was our wave of “grey” awareness stimulated a few years back by the book Communion by horror novelist Whitley Streiber? Over and over, we have heard the countless stories of men and women (and those attributed even to children) describing how their own repressed alien memories first surfaced with their reactions and recognition to the alien depicted on the cover of Communion, and then their emotional reactions and recognition in reading through the contents of the book (which has often been described as a slow, difficult task, often accompanied by apparent flashbacks and nightmares relating to their own possible repressed encounters). The prevalence of the resulting “grey” menace and the archetypal wave that Budd Hopkins, David Jacobs, John Mack, and other “abduction researchers” pursued with great passion, all came to take center stage over all the other mixed bag of alien forms and “encounters” that had previously comprised ufology. It was as though they (but especially Streiber) had struck a deep-seated, responsive archetypal chord of some sort, and suddenly hundreds of people were coming forward and “support groups” were filling up.

How are those “support groups” doing these days? I have heard of many that have disbanded. I had heard stories back during the heyday of that movement that experiencers in some groups would have to talk outside the earshot of the “abduction researchers” chairing the groups if they wanted to talk about their paranormal experiences (i.e., out of body, poltergeist, etc.) because those researchers didn’t believe those kinds of reports were related. I suspect that many experiencers simply outgrew the groups they were in. They moved on with their lives. Perhaps they even evolved!

Back in the 1960s and 1970s, New York journalist John Keel (author of The Mothman Prophecies) had us all looking into “men in black” cases and Bigfoot sightings occurring around UFO hotspots. These reports were springing up practically everywhere. Now they’re very rare, isolated events. Interestingly, Keel had warned us back then, those many years ago, that the phenomenon was largely “reflective” - that is, it tended to reflect our beliefs and our expectations.

Back in the late 1960s, it was Keel who had also published his findings that the majority of UFO experiencers had latent or active psychic abilities. Soon his findings were confirmed by other independent investigators, and, in fact, as Prof. Jacques Vallee reported in his book Dimensions, during the 1970s the report of “paranormal events” in connection with UFO reports had become the rule rather than the exception. Dr. Berthold Schwarz, whose first article on UFOs back in 1968 appeared in Medical Times, had originally intended to fade from the UFO scene after making that contribution. But Keel had noticed Dr. Schwarz’s article, which detailed interviews from four separate close encounter cases, and soon the two became well acquainted. Dr. Schwarz, who had already been involved for years in parapsychology, soon confirmed for himself Keel’s findings. In fact, in one of the four original cases that he had studied Dr. Schwarz found that the witness claimed a poltergeist haunting after the UFO event. In a massive two-volume book entitled UFO Dynamics (1983, Rainbow Books) Dr. Schwarz detailed numerous cases that he had come to investigate first-hand, which again and again contained “paranormal” elements. But, alas, until Mr. Keel had come along in the 1960s and focused serious attention on the “paranormal” dimensions of the UFO enigma, two decades of “organized” ufology had ignored the subject.

Back in 1972, Dr. J. Allen Hynek had given the UFO “repeater” (any witness reporting more than one UFO experience) the proverbial kiss of death in his book, The UFO Experience. Hynek made a sharp distinction between credible and sincere witnesses and those he characterized as “rampant repeaters” who were “pseudoreligious fanatics.” He further described the genuine experiencer as typically being a one-time witness. But then along in the 1980’s came Whitley Streiber and Budd Hopkins, and a serious case was made for genuine and credible “repeaters” who could have alien encounters/interactions, that in many cases went back to childhood. Hmmm. There’s four decades of neglect and mishandling of data on the part of “organized” ufology.

Vallee, who had worked at Northwestern University in Illinois for four years in the 1960s and had become good friends with Dr. Hynek, noted in Dimensions that the U.S. Air Force had typically dismissed any UFO landing reports as “psychological.” The National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena (NICAP), founded back in 1956 by ex-Marine Major Donald E. Keyhoe, was one of the major respected movements in the UFO field. Although NICAP often criticized the Air Force’s Project Blue Book’s handing of UFO data, they themselves became notorious at suppressing any UFO occupant/contact data that came their way. After NICAP disbanded early in 1982, long-time ufologist James Moseley reflected: “In an effort to downplay the apparently ludicrous claims of the contactees, NICAP made arbitrary rules as to what kind of UFO cases it would ‘allow.’ At first a saucer could come close to the ground, as long as it didn’t land; then the unwritten rules were eased so that it could land as long as no one got out; and finally, under continuing pressure from us and from the Phenomenon itself, NICAP was forced to accept the ‘little men’ stories, though they still rejected the contactees.”

Good ‘ol John Keel again, who had investigated “abduction” and “missing time” cases himself back in the 1960s, claimed that the “abductees” were, in fact, a complex variation on the contactee phenomenon. And former NICAP hard-liner Raymond Fowler caused quite a stir back in 1978, with the publication of a book entitled The Andreasson Affair. Fowler and six other investigators conducted a very thorough and exhaustive investigation of the claims of a housewife named Betty Andreasson. Their investigations strongly indicated to them that the woman was sincere and credible. Her initial story was that in 1967 “UFO occupants” had forced their way into her Massachusetts home, badly frightening her and her family. Regressive hypnosis was utilized in an effort to penetrate through the partial amnesia surrounding the event, and what emerged in their twelve month investigation was an incredibly complex case rich in mystical, metaphysical symbology - alien “messages” - and many other “encounters” going back to childhood.

Massachusetts researcher Joe Nyman came to also investigate many of these alien “repeater” cases that often involved repressed childhood “encounters” that would emerge under hypnosis. Nyman also uncovered curious patterns of “entity familiarity” in his case studies. In a report that he allowed us to publish back in January 1989 (issue no. 15, our publication then titled UFO Perceptions), Nyman noted some of the strangest elements of all:

“Three experiencers have...independently gone back to images of themselves as alien entities. In one tear-filled session, the experiencer at first experienced his consciousness, disembodied and contained, in the presence of his special entity (this is the second instance of this type of image that has been reported to us). The imagery continued with communication taking place between the consciousness and the special entity. This was followed by another flashback, a precursor to the contained consciousness image, in which the experiencer saw himself as ‘one of them,’ deciding whether his consciousness or that of the special entity was to occupy a human form.

The experiencer’s relationship with the special entity was now very clear to him - the two were partners in a process in which the experiencer’s future human body was to be involved and which the special entity was to monitor.”

Nyman speculated as to the possible causes of such unusual memories. He came up with three. 1) They were part of the psychological make-up of the people describing such experiences; 2) the “memories” were somehow “induced” in these people by the “investigative process” itself; or, 3) they were “a reflection of something resulting from an imposition on the experiencer.”

It was the third possibility that has profound implications. Nyman then noted something that was quite intriguing. He wondered that if indeed there was evidence of an “alien intelligence taking up residence in the human body” was there also evidence for when it “leaves.” He then recalled: “...last year, in conversation, I was told by an individual that at this mother’s death in 1937, he and his two sisters were terrified to see a figure descending the stairs. The figure had a face that the man saw again years later - on the dust jacket of Communion.”

Ah yes, back to Communion again. I just checked with a friend from Peru who has not seen it in Peru, in Spanish, and noted that some leaders in the UFO movement there seem to suspect that “abductions” are “built up by government confederates in order to scare people away from direct friendly contact.”

“Organized” ufology is obviously everywhere. They say that being “organized” is a good thing! But in objective investigations of UFO experiencers it seems that the unstructured interview approach is superior. Simply allow the witness to put everything in his/her own words. Don’t jump in and try to immediately censor/edit anything. Obviously we don’t know enough about what we’re doing and dealing with to effectively manage that particular task just yet. We must learn to first listen and to then proceed on to the data evaluation process.

Crop Circle Conference

For those of you who remain interested in the ongoing “crop circle” debate, there’s a “Signs of Destiny” crop circle conference scheduled for November 22-24 in Tempe, Arizona. Well-known speakers will include Colin Andrews, John Anthony West, Chet Snow, Nancy Talbott, and many others. For more information, call 928-204-1962 or check out: http://www.chetsnow.com/signs.html