Late this afternoon, I got a call from someone half way across the country. This particular person had had a lifetime of unexplained experiences. Apparently, most of them were not scary, but left the person with a tremendous sense of mystery - a big unresolved hole in life. For many, this seems to be the case. They don't have lot of fear, save for some anxiety about exploring the unknown. Just what might be behind the veil of amnesia? Mostly, they have an overwhelming curiosity - a desire to fill in the blanks in life.
For some reason, the last month or two has seen an upturn in calls like this. It's not clear whether the phenomenon is up to something new, whether people are remembering their experiences more for some reason, or whether this is simply a random grouping of events. Still, the content is interesting as always.
At the last MUFON meeting, another member told me about a presentation by one of the abduction researchers, describing a recent trend in abduction accounts. Apparently, the particular researcher (not sure which one) stated that nearly every abductee they worked with described how "They" seem to be integrating into our society. While, admittedly, I'm hearing this third or fourth hand, it still gives one pause for thought.
Over the last few years, I've written several articles about such "human-aliens" and their interaction with experiencers. Aparently, these beings/folks(?) are becoming harder to recognize, except by eachother and sometimes by experiencers. On more than one occasion, the Visitors have appeared to debrief the experiencer during an encounter. They seemed interested in how well the experiencers could recognize the ersatz-human. When the experiencer indicated that the being/person was difficult to distinguish from those around them, the Visitors said something like "good" (telepathically. of course).
There have been increasing indications that the Changes - to use David Jacobs' terminology - are pretty close to being upon us. For better or for worse, the Visitors seem about ready to do whatever it is they are going to do. Unfortunatley, researchers have very little idea what that is. However, such human-alien reports seems consistent with the Hopkins/Jacobs model.
Just how consistent is this flow of information from experiencers. Several researchers describe this as being nearly ubiquitous - a deep consistency in the accounts of alien abduction events. We hear about the small gray "away team", the escort to a waiting UFO, the reproductive/medical procedures while the experiencer is lying on the table. All seems powerfully consistent. The only problem is that people aren't telling me this same thing.
While I have a bit smaller of a database than does Budd Hopkins, David Jacobs, etc., in the last year, I have still had far fewer accounts in which experiencers tell me of the classic small-gray abduction. Granted about half of events seem to fit the mold, but about half of them don't.
In addition to the classic gray alien encounter, I hear people describe metaphysical events, metaphorical/symbolic (dreamlike) events, and even a few cases of "simply" (it's never simple to be an experiencer) Awareness during Sleep Paralasys.
In every case, the experience is powerful. I believe that the experience is very real for the person to whom it is occurring, and it is not mine to judge whether an event is physical, metaphysical or from some other source. From a hypnotherapy perspective, they are all important. Yet the discrepency between what I hear and what other researchers seem to describe raises questions.
Am I simply not digging deep enough? Am I not asking enough questions, probing enough for details? Or are other researchers pushing too hard - a case of seek and ye shall find? In a sense, the skeptics are right when they say that a person in hypnotic trance is very suggestable. It might be easy to unconsciously impress one's own beliefs onto a client, and I've noted that beliefs within the UFO community tend to be relatively strong. During deep hypnotic rapport, there even appers to be a psychic link between hypnotherapist and client. Thus, when a researcher tells me that all of his/her clients are describing the same thing, I tend to wonder...
The same person I was talking with this afternoon told me that they had noted a lack of professionalism in UFO research. Indeed, there is a lot of "religion" in UFOlogy, an emphasis on spirituality (which is just fine) and a lot of deeply held beliefs. There are always politics present in any endeavor, and UFO research is no exception. Yet most of the people I know in the field maintain a solidly professional attitude. So I suggest that rather than a lack of professionalism, what is lacking is more scientific rigor.
How can we establish a scientific method - in the field of abduction research especially. What do we need to do to establish a body of knowledge, backed by hard data. And does such hard data even really exist? - It would be an understatement to say that there a lot of subjective and metaphysical aspects to this field. So what can we establish as provable hypothesis in the field?
The objective of the opening phases of a scientific inquiry is generally to establish a model, a working hypothesis of the phenomenon under study. The mark of a good hypnothesis is its ability to make testable predictions about phenomenon. What must we see to know whether our model of the phenomenon is true or false?
In my article on the Indigo hypothesis, I offer a few testable predictions that would tell us whether my theory is or isn't true. One of these is genetic - do indigo children (a criterion we still need to define) have specific genetic markers? Do the families of experiencers have these same markers? Does the population of Indigos and the population of experiencers correlate? Is there an overlap or is there no relationship at all?
What other solid physical evidence can we use to determine the nature and reality of close encounters? Dr Roger Lier's work with implants is probably a good example of a solid scientific approach. Other areas might be measurements of the physical aspects of encounters, electronic monitoring of the experiencer's environment, etc. There are many possibilities for initial data and ultimately, I suggest that we can gather enough solid data to build a picture of the physics behind the Visitor presence - a working hypothesis that we can test further with observation and experiment.
In the mean time, most abduction resarch continues using tools such as witness interviews, hypnosis and, if we're extremely lucky, an occasional tidbit of physical evidence. Mostly, we are left in the subjective world of the anecdotal account. While extremely meaningful, it is not easly to glean concrete data from subjective human observations - especially when the human may be in fear an duress. It is also difficult to discern whether an event is physical, metaphysical, (para)psychological, etc. Thus, it becomes harder to develop a reliable picture of the nature oand purpose of the Visitors, etc.
Furthermore, while others describe a coherent picture of alien activity, a solid trend of activity leading toward - well, toward something..., I have not discerned this. While many researchers have described consistency between their own clients, I'm not sure how much similarity there is between researchers. To date, I'm aware of little if any rigorous meta-analysis of the data across multiple researchers (the Abduction Transcription Project, in the late 1990s was a good start).
Furthermore, I suspect that we know far less about close encounters than we think. Yet,I think the future of this research is bright. We are just beginning, and there is so much more to learn - assuming that the catastrophic changes such as those described in David Jacobs' book, The Threat don't occur and somehow hose us all. Truly, abduction research is at a crossroads.
What is happening? I have little or no idea, but something is. What is the phenomenon up to? There is the definite but subjective sense that, in the words of Sherlock Holmes, "The game is afoot." Unfortunately, we (or at least I) just don't know what that game is...
