The Sinister Side of the Alien Abduction Phenomenon

There can be very few people who are interested in the domain of supernatural phenomena who have not heard of the so-called alien abduction phenomenon. It’s a subject that has captured the attention of not just UFO enthusiasts, but also the mainstream media and the public, too. To demonstrate how the subject has become part of the mainstream, one only has to take a look at the story of Whitley Strieber’s 1987 book, Communion. In no time at all, Strieber’s book – which told of his very own encounters with abductors that he called “the Visitors” – became a New York Times bestseller. Such a thing was previously unheard of in the domain of Ufology. On top of that, Strieber and his late wife, Anne, received quite literally hundreds of thousands of letters from the readers of Communion, all wanting to share their own, personal stories. Clearly, the phenomenon resonates with people to an extraordinarily high degree

It’s hard to say with one hundred percent certainty when the first alien abduction event occurred. Many, early encounters may have never been revealed, chiefly due to concerns and fears of ridicule. There is, however, no doubt at all about which case was responsible for bringing the issue to a wide audience. It was a curious affair that occurred on the night of September 19, 1961 and which was chronicled at length in John Fuller’s very appropriately-titled book of 1966, The Interrupted Journey. The story revolves around a married couple, Barney and Betty Hill, from New Hampshire. They had taken what promised to be a welcoming vacation in Canada. It was: the pair had a great time, one of the highlights of which was a trip to Niagara Falls. It was on the way back home, however, that everything went wrong and their lives rapidly unraveled. All was normal until, on one particular, dark stretch of road near Lincoln, New Hampshire, the Hills saw something strange in the black skies above them. What it was, Betty and Barney had no idea. But, it certainly didn’t look like a regular aircraft or helicopter, that’s for sure. They were particularly attracted by “its shape and the intensity of its lighting as compared to the stars in the sky,” reported Major Paul W. Henderson, of the U.S. Air Force, in an official dossier on the incident – dated September 21, 1961 – which has been declassified under the terms of the U.S. Freedom of Information Act.

So amazed by what they were seeing, Betty and Barney stopped their car and they got out to take a closer look at it, with Barney’s binoculars, which he had fortunately brought along on the vacation. The object – perhaps reacting to the actions of the pair – shot away, performing erratic maneuvers, such as constantly changing its flight pattern and even briefly hovering silently in the sky. Then, something even more incredible happened: what appeared to be a pair of wings came out of the craft, which now gave the vehicle an appearance that was somewhat airplane-like. According to Major Henderson, in his aforementioned report, the pair saw the craft “swoop down in the general direction of their auto.” As the UFO closed in, both husband and wife could now hear a curious series of “buzzes” coming from it. The object soon shot away again and the Hills, amazed and more than a bit alarmed over what had happened, couldn’t do much beyond continue with their drive. Interestingly, although they did not see the craft again, they did hear the odd “buzz” once more – this time as they were in the area of Ashland, roughly around thirty miles from Lincoln.

While that, in essence, is what the Hills consciously remembered, there was also the matter of what was deeply buried within the minds of Betty and Barney – and which they couldn’t remember; at least, not consciously, anyway. In the days and weeks after the event, both Betty and Barney began to experience traumatic and frightening dreams – of not just seeing a UFO, but also of being taken on-board it and, essentially, being treated like lab rats. They were subjected to a number of trauma-filled experiments – which included the painful experience of Betty having a needle pushed into her navel. It sounds vaguely like an amniocentesis test, but it was clearly something else, as during an amniocentesis procedure, the needle is inserted into the wall of the abdomen, finally reaching the amniotic sac. When the nightmares grew ever worse for the Hills, and continued for no less than a couple of years, the pair knew that they finally had to do something about it, which they eventually did. In doing so, they alerted the world to the alien abduction phenomenon – although that was certainly not their intention.

In December 1963, Barney and Betty decided to consult a Massachusetts-based psychiatrist named Benjamin Simon, who was also a neurologist. A wealth of hypnotic sessions soon followed, which showed that the Hills had experienced a significant amount of what, in UFO research, is known as “missing time.” Something very strange had taken place on the drive home, something which finally led the Hills to the conclusion that alien entities had wiped their memories clean of what really happened on that dark, September night in 1961. Such was the interest in the case – which, back then, was largely unique in the field of Ufology – it led John Fuller to pen The Interrupted Journey. The alien abduction phenomenon was duly born. It not only continues to live: it positively thrives. And on a worldwide basis, too.

Since the now-historic encounter of Betty and Barney Hill in September 1971, literally thousands of reports of alien abduction have been reported all across the globe. How many cases remain completely unreported – for fear of ridicule, or of being labelled a liar or a crank – is anyone’s guess. There is, however, one aspect of the alien abduction controversy that most assuredly does not get the coverage that it deserves. It is an issue that involves the syphoning and even the ingesting of the human soul – by creatures from some other realm of existence that appears to be definitively soul-less. It’s an aspect of the UFO phenomenon which takes us down an avenue that is far removed from what generally passes for tales of flying saucers and little green men. Many UFO researchers are reluctant to address the “aliens are eating our souls” theory. The fact is, though, that there are far more than a few such reports on record. In fact, it’s fair and accurate to say there is an incredible number of such cases. The problem is, however, that for so many in Ufology, the subject is so troubling and disturbing they choose to outright ignore it. Before we get to the “eating” angle, let’s first make a case that there is indeed a connection between the alien abduction issue and the human soul. You may be surprised by the scale of such encounters.

One of the earliest – and most intriguing – cases on record came from a man named Paul Inglesby. Just one year before the Second World War broke out in 1939, Inglesby – who died in 2010 – went down with a very serious case of malaria. So serious was it that for a while Inglesby perilously hovered in that mysterious domain between life and death. It was while in this limbo-like state that Inglesby had a frightening dream. Years later, he recalled how it all went down: it was an undetermined time in the Earth’s future and UFO-like craft were soaring across the fire-and smoke-filled skies of our ruined, radioactive planet and launching nuclear missiles at our major cities – killing billions and causing planet-wide destruction. The UFOs were not piloted by extraterrestrials, though, but by demonic entities whose goal was to suck out the souls of those killed in the fiery inferno, which was rapidly overwhelming the Earth and just about everything on it. For Inglesby, it was quite literally a wake-up call. The malaria cleared up, Inglesby came out of his unconscious state, and he spent the rest of his life pursuing a career in the church and warning people to avoid the UFO issue – fearing that it would lead people to become ensnared by malevolent demonic monsters, all of which Inglesby described in his 1978 book, UFOs and the Christian.

The unsettling story of Paul Inglesby dates back to the 1930s, and it was in the 1950s that he largely began talking about his nightmarish dream – after he realized that what he had seen back in 1938 were images of nuclear explosions and “mushroom clouds” of the type that were all too familiar by the 1950s. It’s important to note, though, that the issue of a connection between UFOs, aliens and the human soul didn’t really surface to any kind of meaningful degree until the latter part of the 1980s – which takes us back to the issue of Whitley Strieber’s bestseller of 1987, Communion. When word of Strieber’s planned book first got out, most Ufologists assumed that the book, in terms of its content and its theories, would be fairly akin to John Fuller’s The Interrupted Journey of 1966 and to Budd Hopkins’ 1981 book, Missing Time. Both books adhered to the now-familiar theory that aliens are stealing our DNA to save their waning species. Well, they are certainly stealing something, but it’s not our DNA. Strieber’s revelations were, in many respects, far removed from the writings of Hopkins and Fuller, which is why the book created such a firestorm in those locales where ufologists hang out.

In Communion, Strieber made it very clear that his own encounters with the Visitors – and those of others he had spoken to – revealed a startling connection between alien abductions and the human soul; even a paradigm-shifting connection. In his book, Strieber talked about how abductees experienced their souls “dragged” from their bodies during abductions. Strieber himself was told by his abductors that they “recycled” human souls. That sounds quite comforting, as it suggests reincarnation may be a reality – something which will ensure us further lives after this one. But, was Strieber being told the entire truth by his captors? Or, was this an attempt on their part to push thing down a different, more appealing path? Certainly, Strieber admitted something notable that suggests he recognized that not everything was good and positive. Strieber said that, the more and more he dig into the matter of his encounters, and as he tried to get a handle on what was afoot, he was unable to banish from his mind the theories of Charles Fort. For those who may not know, he was an acclaimed writer on all manner of paranormal phenomena. His books included Lo! and Wild Talents. Fort had darkly suggested that, in Strieber’s own words in his 1988 book, Transformation, we the human race, are “animals here for the slaughter and incapable of seeing the greater and more terrible meanings that surround us.” As for more on Charles Fort’s opinions, they can be read in his classic title of 1919, The Book of the Damned. Fort wrote: “I think we’re property. I should say we belong to something: That once upon a time, this earth was No-man’s Land, that other worlds explored and colonized here, and fought among themselves for possession, but that now it’s owned by something: That something owns this earth – all others warned off.”