An Essay By VIDEO GAMER X

On a clear starry night we human beings sometimes find ourselves gazing skyward toward the vast expanse above pondering, "Are we alone? Do I live upon the only life-bearing place in the universe? Who might be up there looking back at me from some distant star or planet? If an examination is made of the available and compelling evidence that awaits those who are willing seek it, it will become clearly evident that the human race is not the sole intelligence in the universe, or even on this very planet, and has never been without a sublime eye watching it.

In today's society the existence of extraterrestrials and the topic of UFO's is summarily looked upon with scorn and disbelief partially due to Hollywood's portrayal of extraterrestrials as grotesque monsters who crawl from the depths of space to consume or incorporate mankind into slavery. Tabloids and supermarket newspapers often exaggerate and exploit the truth with headlines like, "Aliens Capture the President and Return Him to Earth" or "Woman Has Three-Eyed Alien Baby," thus, discrediting genuine UFO encounters. All that can be obtained from these sources is deception. Often this contributes to the average uninformed individual having no knowledge as to the nature of the real phenomena that is transpiring in our skies, but there are those who have seen and have become acquainted with that which is dubbed the unknown. These people share a common bond, for they all know that reality is not what it appears to be.

The origin of the UFO emerged during World War II when pilots would encounter unusually shaped craft that could execute maneuvers impossible for conventional aircraft of the timeframe to perform. Americans believed that the crafts were secret enemy devices used to confuse allied pilots. These anomalous aircraft were nicknamed "foo fighters." Both sides witnessed the transient appearance and disappearance of these during the war, but foo fighters made little news and were generally ignored by the media. It wasn't until Kenneth Arnold, flying over Mt. Rainier, Washington, who encountered unidentifiable metallic craft and dubbed these strange crafts flying disks because of the way they skipped across the sky, did the phenomena start receiving headlines. The media was abuzz with the discovery of flying saucers at the time. Eventually, as the years passed, Hollywood capitalized on the idea with Science Fiction movies like, "The Day the Earth Stood Still," "The Body Snatchers," and "War of the Worlds." These movies expressed the notion that aliens were among us and were a direct threat to humanity but interestingly enough it was the UFO sightings that initiated this barrage of UFO and alien invasion movies that started in 1947.

News spread about flying saucers and more unusual reports of encounters with the crafts surfaced. People claimed that the crafts were not always circular, and that they ranged in distinction from cigar shaped, to spherical, and to boomerang shaped. The mysterious nature of the phenomena prompted the government to assign the US Air Force to investigate sightings to determine whether they were a threat to national security, in 1948. This investigation called Project Sign headed by astronomer J. Allen Hynek, then later renamed Project Grudge, came to a closure in 1950 when the military determined that UFO's, Unidentified Flying Objects, were not communist weapons. Project Grudge was unsuccessful in determining the nature of the phenomena and blamed most sightings on mass hallucination or explainable occurrences because no physical evidence was found. It failed in investigating the "unknowns," in essence, the things the military couldn't explain, and they fell by the wayside becoming ignored even when highly credible individuals reported their encounters with extensive description.

Although the military would have hoped it not so, the issue of UFO's remained. Reports continued to surface of "strange lights" or "silver-metallic craft." The Air Force persisted in claiming that UFO's were not real, but secretly they reopened Project Grudge, later named Blue Book, and now headed by Capt. Edward Ruppelt. The Air Force failed to find a connection between publicity and the number of UFO sightings. A 1952 Air Force study tried to determine a connection between media coverage and distribution of UFO sightings including actual location and number of sightings but it found no correlation.

In one month in 1952 the Air Force found itself buried in reports, more than the last several years. UFO's were sighted and detected on radar above the White House and Capitol building in Washington D.C. The military was unable to quiet the existence of UFO's due to the multitude of sightings and was in danger of purging its security, so the CIA took over control of the project with the Robertson Panel. This would alter the way the government handled the issue of UFO's for more than the next decade. The CIA determined that UFO's were not a threat, but also that UFO reports were because they could be used by communists to spread "mass hysteria." It decreed that the Air Force's mission was to discredit the issue any way possible and dissolve all notions that UFO's were real. In accordance with the CIA's directive the Air Force shelved its plans to scientifically investigate future sightings and shifted to a position where it fervently trampled upon the public's overall idea of the phenomena. Scientists refused to investigate it for fear of ridicule.

Simultaneous to the Air Force's effort to diffuse any reference to the phenomena, there were a group of individuals who called themselves "Contactees" claiming that they had made contact with the peace loving occupants of UFO's and were taken aboard to discuss the issues of atomic energy and world peace. They contributed to the overall paranoia of the issue and further diminished its investigative value in scientific circles. (Note: Contactees are not to be confused with modern era abductees who have been proven legitimate through investigation and examination. Most Contactees merely wanted media attention and many of their claims were outlandish and of little believable value. Perhaps a very few of these individuals saw a UFO or were even abducted, but there is no evidence as of yet to support that assumption.)

Since the Air Force and the scientific community refused to investigate UFO's in an unbiased manner many public investigations emerged. Organizations like APRO and NICAP, led by retired Marine Corps Major Donald Keyhoe, expressed the legitimacy of the phenomena and proclaimed that the government was covering up the truth, which in fact it was with the Robertson Panel and the Roswell incident as examples. By 1958, the Air Force's continued attempts to eradicate reports were failing. UFO sightings persisted at a steady rate. The wave of 1957 UFO incidents created much public criticism of the Air Force's handling of the problem.

UFO's began to become an increasing encumbrance for the Air Force to bear and they eventually began looking for organizations to pawn it off on. Some of the groups who it wanted to relieve its public relations burden of UFO's on were scientific areas within the military, the Brookings Institute, even NASA was requested, but none of these groups wanted the public tribulation and investigative problems that accompanied the subject of UFO's. The public and media were harsh in attacking the military's explanation of reported sightings, and even though J. Allen Hynek described that many UFO's were most likely swamp gas, many believed that the military was attempting to hide the truth. Congress took notice of the failure the Air Force was having in finding an explanation for UFO's and suggested that it transfer the investigation to another entity. The Air Force responded by contracting the University of Colorado to determine again whether or not UFO's were a threat to national security. This was the beginning of the Air Force's official public retreat from the investigation. Physicist Edward Condon led a committee that arbitrarily came to the opinion that no further study was needed and recommended that Project Blue Book be shut down. According to him the UFO issue was simply a waste of time loaded with false stories, misidentifications, and UFO buffs too willing to believe. Using the determination of the Condon Committee as the definitive answer the Air Force officially concluded Project Blue Book in December of 1969. Although the Condon committee had arrived at its final verdict on UFO's there still remained more than 30 percent of cases investigated that the committee could not accurately identify. The scientific community used the declaration of the Condon report to dismiss the existence of UFO's and consented that UFO's were a "case closed" issue.

Interestingly enough, like before, UFO's did not simply vanish when the government closed its study and concluded that they were merely figments of the public's collective imagination. Waves of sightings occurred during the seventies, and some left traces of their fleeting visitations in the form of burn marks in fields. The newly formed UFO organizations attempted to investigate them where the government had fallen short. At this point there was mountain of photographs and some degree of physical evidence. When these organizations attempted to present their findings to the scientific community, they were chastised and ridiculed.

At the time, one of the most controversial aspects of the phenomena was alien abduction. During the mid sixties, a famous case known as the Betty and Barney Hill case brought the realism of abduction into the public light. The Hills claimed that while driving their car in New Hampshire, they encountered a UFO that compelled them to stop. They were subsequently taken aboard the craft by aliens with large heads and eyes who conducted an examination on them. They were then returned to their car a few hours later and remembered nothing of what had transpired during their interrupted journey. It wasn't until after the event transpired did they begin to feel that something unusual happened during the missing time. This disturbed them to the point where they felt it would be helpful to seek psychiatric consultation. Under hypnosis they described the bizarre and eerie experience they both endured. It was hard to discredit their story because Barney Hill was a respected member of the NAACP and the New Hampshire Civil Rights Commission and Betty was a social worker. They were both well-known members of their community and would have no reason to confabulate a preposterous hoax of this magnitude. The psychiatrist determined that they both experienced a shared fantasy, but was unable to explain the unusual rashes on Barney's body and disturbing dreams that only appeared after the incident.

An aspect of ufology that continues to provide worthwhile proof that what is occurring is unmistakably real is the testimonials of highly credible eyewitnesses with impeccable backgrounds. Some of the most famous reports were filed by political figures. For instance, according to the Miami Herald, on April 25, 1966, Florida Governor Haydon Burns and eleven others flying in the state plane encountered two yellow globes of light south of Ocala. The lights stayed with the aircraft for about 40 miles. A very similar situation happened to Jimmy Carter prior to his presidency when a UFO performed unearthly maneuvers around a plane he was flying in. He reported his experience through official channels, but nothing was ever done about it. Usually it's the individuals who spend lengthy periods of time in flight, military, commercial, and private pilots, that have come in contact with and reported a majority of official sightings. Often times, pilots who do file reports with agencies like the FAA are ignored, reprimanded, and/or reassigned, and, similarly, military pilots are threatened into secrecy or ordered to take psychological evaluations. The truth regarding these incidents usually becomes evident only after these individuals retire and are not under the umbrella of governmental influence. The men and women who have encountered these unknown aerial devices have arrived at a new understanding of man's place in the universe, and developed a keen belief that we are not a solitary intelligence. In 1981, the course of UFO research was profoundly aided by the publication of Budd Hopkins book, Missing Time, in which he related the accounts of abductees and changed the overall opinion of abduction from just another aspect of a sighting to another category entirely. Budd Hopkins investigated several abduction cases and made the determination that there were connections and similarities between them. He made several astounding discoveries like the fact that abductions were intergenerational, or that they each often involved a sexual examination. He showed that people who had these encounters were not mentally dysfunctional but were credible individuals who were seeking answers about their experiences. His book marked a milestone in UFO study.

After publication of his book, Hopkins received a multitude of letters from people who solemnly felt that they too had been abducted but were apprehensive about declaring it publicly. For years UFO research had devoted much effort and time into finding the root of the sightings and why UFO's were here, but it had never really addressed the enigma of alien abduction. At this time there began a change in the main focus of their investigation.

By the middle eighties there were so many reports that researchers could not investigate all of them with the level of precision that this kind of uncharted inquiry demanded. There was so much information involved that it became obvious that something extraordinary was happening. In 1987 Dr. Thomas Bullard published a massive study on abduction that included 270 cases. There were few researchers like Budd Hopkins that knew entirely how to how to examine and study the abduction component properly because most UFO researchers were devoted to studying UFO's themselves and not the psychological component of abduction.

Budd Hopkins continued to study alien abduction and was eventually joined by others like David M. Jacobs Ph. D. and Dr. John E. Mack, a professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. Together these two professionals made a comparative study of the internal psychological dynamics of alien abduction under criticism of their colleagues.

UFO's have never totally been a domestic issue and worldwide there have been multitudes of sightings and experiences with UFO's. With the end of the Cold War, many reports emerged from the Iron Curtain of the former Soviet Union of UFO sightings and the Kremlin's subsequent investigation of them. UFO's had, quite similarly to their American counterparts, plagued Russian pilots and were even filmed over well-known places like St. Basil's Cathedral in broad daylight seen by many people. In a documented Soviet incident, a cluster of UFO's hovering over a Soviet military installation almost triggered a nuclear war when, mysteriously, the missile launch sequence activated itself, and for several agonizing seconds personnel were not able to regain control. Like the United States the Soviets performed various inquiries into the phenomena but they too ended by leaving behind more questions than answers.

In recent years it is becoming more apparent that the United States government and its military are playing a more than passive role in the concealment and denial of UFO related material and covert investigations including the use of back-engineered extraterrestrial craft in its classified experiments. Since the end of the forties, periodic recoveries of crashed UFO's and the constructions of secret installations gave confounded the civilian press and investigators alike. Clandestine recoveries and subsequent denials, involving an unspoken cooperation between military, political, and departmental agencies, has been a rather disturbing cornerstone of the governmental relationship with the UFO phenomena.

The most famous case of the government obscuring and trampling upon the truth occurred near a New Mexico desert town named Roswell. During the summer of there was a major wave of UFO sightings in the west and on July 2 a group of UFO's were sighted near Roswell flying in an erratic pattern. Hours later Mac Brazel, a local rancher, discovered metallic wreckage in his field. He called the police who then called the military. The military subsequently recovered the debris and held it in a base hanger for a day or so, then sent it away, but not until after many civilians and Air Force personnel had come in contact with the physical remains. People who witnessed the debris described that what had crashed was composed of metal tinfoil-like panels that felt weightless and could be crushed but when this was done it would reshape itself exactly into its original form. This metal was also indestructible to cutting and flame. Several other I-beams pieces were seen that had some kind of hieroglyphic writing on them. The farmer and his family had seen the occupants of the craft, two of which were dead, and the a third that was alive. Nurses working at the base hospital were requested to assist military doctors in performing autopsies on these bodies, and interestingly enough several child sized coffins were obtained by military officers from the local undertaker.

That first day of the recovery the military released the affirmation that they had indeed recovered a flying saucer and this astounding news spread across the morning radio broadcasts and newspaper headlines nationwide. The next day that announcement was quickly retracted by the Air Force and replaced with decree that what they had discovered was in actuality a weather balloon. Pictures of a torn weather balloon were taken and released to the press and a neat cover story was given to the media. Following the events that took place on July 2, military officers and civilians who had witnessed the wreckage and the recovery of alien bodies were threatened into lifelong secrecy by directive of the highest sources. A military official said to a twelve year old girl that was the daughter of a fireman who had brought a piece of the wreckage home, "You didn't see anything. You got that. Nothing happened. There is a big desert out there and it would be easy to make it possible for someone to only find your bleached bones out there. You didn't see nothing!" Even in the many years that have passed since the Roswell crash the rancher who owns the property where the crash site was, has observed government archeologists combing the site with the intent of verify the total eradication of evidence. Recently, a New Mexico congressmen who attempted to pry loose the truth regarding this event was himself stonewalled by the military and given the run around by every single government agency involved with record keeping and document declassification.

The Roswell incident was one that did not remain silent forever though. As the eyewitnesses aged, those who observed the physical evidence and assisted in the recovery of the debris have come forward. They described the mental anguish that was imposed upon them by military threats and their collective agreement that the issue was morally uncomfortable. The "official" release of 1947 has proven to be fallible even by the very government that created it, which as of lately has been attempting to cover up a cover-up with claims that what actually crashed was a secret reconnaissance device used to monitor Soviet transmissions. In essence, it was a classified weather balloon called Project Mogul. In 1994 a 1000+-page report was released describing the project. Opponents to this point out that the wreckage seen by the witnesses does not conform to the specifications of the project Mogul balloon, and that the level of secrecy placed on this device was too massive to be realistic. Another point that is posed is that originally it was the military that after a day to decide finally realized it was a weather balloon. On Tuesday, June 24, 1997, the Air Force presented the public with a 231-page report, where it offered several explanations in an effort to debunk the persistent tale that in July 1947 a spaceship crashed outside the sparsely populated town of Roswell, New Mexico. According to the report alien bodies were misrepresentations for dummies that were dropped from planes during the 1950's. The report itself went into exhaustive detail to take apart all the established facts, and discredit highly credible individuals involved with the recovery and transport of the wreckage. Taken as is, the whole governmental protection and concentration on an issue so mundane is itself a compelling argument in realizing that there is a widescale cover-up of the truth. They seem to be using a tomahawk missile to swat a 50 year old fly. Weather balloons and dummies just are not issues that demand the kind of security the Air Force paid to it in 1947.

Roswell is not the only example of the government and the military displaying some level of blatant duality regarding their connection with the UFO phenomena. Crash recoveries are not entirely unique, and military threats and cover-ups are a rather routine accompaniment to these events. In some sightings witnesses have observed unmarked black helicopters in pursuit of or flying in formation with a bizarrely shaped craft that cannot be identified as being conventional. Secluded installations constructed in remote locations display signs that adamantly indicate that those who trespass to observe or photograph the technological miracles residing there will be swiftly terminated by armed security guards. One of the most infamous and deceptive of these bases is Area 51, also known as "Dreamland," located in the Nevada desert. The government and Air Force deny the very existence of such a base yet some have managed to photograph it and the various aforementioned signs lining all incoming roads. Even on public land located near the base there is always a regiment of white trucks and helicopters poised to escort an intruder from the area. This use of the "national security" umbrella has shielded this location from being publicly scrutinized. Implementation of the plausible deniability factor has been a policy of the United States government since the very inception of the military's involvement and investigation of the UFO phenomena and remains in the present day. In the 1990's some scientists have finally began to take an objective viewpoint of extraterrestrial life. Projects like SETI, the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, look for alien signals from the stars via immense radio telescopes around the world. With the aid of the Hubble Space Telescope, new planets are being discovered around distant stars bringing us closer to the realization that life is most likely not a unique occurrence in the universe. Although currently there are few orthodox scientists willing to entertain the notion that UFO's are even real, together these open-minded individuals will join with others who believe and they may uncover the hidden truth and usher in a new age of enlightenment for all mankind. But this can only transpire if people are willing and socially able to accept the implications of such circumstances. Until then those who investigate the phenomena will continue to amass the evidence needed to convince the rest of the scientific community and someday the world that we are not alone.

In retrospect of the history of the phenomena, ufologists, individuals who investigate UFO's and related material, have created a scale of "encounters" ranging from 1 to 5, each being more involved than the previous. In the early years of research the sale of encounters only had three tiers, but modern investigators have added levels four and five to denote a more selective set of circumstances. A close encounter of the first kind involves the sighting of a UFO from 500 meters or less. Often UFO's are only seen at night and exhibit a luminescent appearance in the sky. They usually fly too erratically to be domestic aircraft or may hover motionlessly for a period of time that concludes with the anomalous craft streaking away faster than any device constructed by man. In the daytime a UFO is identified as a silver-metallic disk, chevron, sphere, or triangle. UFO's have been known to fly in formations imitating planes, or for that matter, even physically change their appearance to resemble a conventional aircraft. At night witnesses have claimed that some strange lights have "winked" out instantly disappeared. Pilots sometimes encounter lights or unidentifiable craft that affect the performance of their aircraft causing compasses and flight instruments to malfunction. In addition, air traffic controllers and military installations (those forthright in releasing reports) have reported registering anomalous objects on their radar screens that seem to defy the laws of physics. With the invention of the personal video camera, multitudes of average citizens are now able to capture these sightings of extraterrestrial craft on film. Before video cameras, UFO analysts were limited to examining photographs that were either poorly taken or too deceptive to be reliable. Although there are some unscrupulous individuals who want to receive attention by falsifying photographs and video footage, there are many others who have genuine footage or unexplainable lights and craft. When analyzed with modern computers, it is much simpler to determine if a sighting captured on film is a hoax or authentic. With the volume of worldwide encounters and sightings made each year, and the credibility of the individuals involved, it is truly evident that the phenomena is vast enough to call a great deal of attention to itself.

The difference between a close encounter of the first kind and a close encounter of the second kind is the existence of tangible evidence including a witnessed sighting of the UFO that caused the localized disturbance of the surrounding environment. The forms of substantiation that are included within a close encounter of the second kind include burnt foliage in fields or on trees, depressions in the soil, and electromagnetic spikes or radioactive traces detectable with proper equipment. Sometimes after examination of the soil where an alleged UFO touched down is conducted, there is a noticeable alteration of the chemical composition of the soil in that location. In some cases ufologists have unearthed anomalous pieces of metal at the landing site. Furthermore, after encountering a UFO in close proximity, a few individuals incurred physical trauma in the form of cancers, lesions, and radiation sickness. UFO's are known to interfere with radio signals and disrupt electrical fields as well as cause compasses to become depolarized.

Close encounters of the third, fourth, and fifth kind can all be grouped together because they all involve the interaction with extraterrestials in one form or another. In a close encounter of the third kind, a UFO is sighted but its occupants are seen as well. In the past, most notably the 1950's and early 60's, abduction was blurred with the outlandish claims of contacteeism, whose respective members believed that they were representatives or ambassadors of Earth in an interstellar council. This minority group was generally ignored by serious investigators, and dismissed as a fringe cult deviant from UFO sightings. It wasn't until more legitimate claims were made and psychiatrists begun to analyze cases did it gain acceptence as a true aspect of the UFO phenomena.

A close encounter of the fourth kind involves the abduction of human beings by extraterrestrials, witch is coupled with a close encounter of the fifth kind involving the actual communication and transference of information between a human and a being. Abduction is the most hidden, bizarre, and personal aspects of the UFO phenomena. Pulitzer Prize winning author and psychiatrist John E. Mack M.D. said after collaborating with Budd Hopkins in 1990, "What struck me initially about the cases I saw with Hopkins, then my own, was the consistency of the stories told by the individual who had not been in communication with other, had come forth reluctantly, and feared the discrediting of their accounts or outright ridicule that they had encountered in the past," Often abductions remain hidden within the abductee's subconscious mind only to be revealed under hypnosis by a trained psychiatrist or hypnotherapist. Aliens have the uncanny ability to block out memories or even alter them so that the abductee remembers nothing of what transpired during the abduction. The "missing time" often reported by people in conjunction with a close UFO sighting is an example of what occurs after the aliens eliminate conscious membory of the incident. The abductee may remember seeing the UFO then doing something entirely incongruous the next moment. Just as the aliens can switch cognitive recollection off they can allow an abductee to remember a particualar message, or set of scenes that have a particular meaning or purpose. Abductees will also have strange "screen memories." These are memories induced by the brain as a way of remembering subconscious information hidden by the aliens or a psychological device to supress traumatic events. For example, an abductee may say, "There was an owl in my window last night," or "The moon was shining very brightly last night." Both of these statements represent ways that the brain deals with a traumatic occurance like alien abduction. Similar psychological processes can be observed in victims of rape and abuse, especially children who will block out the trauma being inflicted upon them and replace it with more subdued or comforting imagery. In the case of alien abduction, and owl is not as horrifying as an alien, and the moon is less disturbing than a UFO hovering over the house. Nosebleeds often are indicative of irritation that peculiar BB sized spheres cause when they are inserted inside an abductee for what investigators believe to be monitoring and tracking the individual.

The most common form of extraterrestrial being encountered by abductees are the "greys." These aliens have grey skin, large bulbous heads that come to a pointed chin, small or nonexistant ears and nose holes, a thin slitlike mouth, and small frail looking body. The most memorable and profound feature of this creature's physiology is its large almond-shaped black eyes that seem to be a conduit for thoughts, emotions, and visions. In most cases investigated by phsyciatrists the aliens communicate with a kind of telepathy, mind to mind. Telepathy is the ability to transfer throughts, emotions, ideas, and mental images, without verbalization. Physically there is no way of determining the sex of the "greys" because there is no evidence of external genitalia or human feminine characteristics like breasts.

Distinct among greys these has been reported a taller grey, who seems to be the leader or controller of the other shorter aliens, who act almost as drones. An abductee usually interacts with just the taller being. It is the one that communicates with and attempts to pacify the abductee during an examination. Like its shorter counterpart, it looks neither masculine nor feminine, but the abductees often have an intuition or feeling that it is a particualr sex usually opposite to their own. It may soothe in a feminine mothering way or be authoritative and strong willed like a man.

On rare occasions other aliens have been reported like reptilian beings with scalelike skin and insectoids that have manislike features. Another form of extraterrestrial seen, mostly in South America, are called the "nordics," who have scandinavian features like blonde hair, blue eyes, and a robust physique. These types are not common, and I personally don't think I've read any reputable book written by psychaitrists or scientists that have delt with cases where there was strong repetition of this lifeform. This doens't preclude though that races in space could be vastly different in appearance.

It is difficult to define a typical abduction but there are a set of similarities that most abductees share. There is no specific season or period of the year when aliens abduct humans. Instead abduction has been shown to occur randomly. Most abductions do occur at night but not all have. The average abductee may feel uneasy during sleep and will find himself/herself awakening with a discomforting feeling of invasion as if a burglar has entered the home. He or she will attempt to wake their spouse or lover and find that it is impossible to do so. Abduction investigators have determined that aliens are capable of "switching off" the activity of another person or even the abductee's spouse. A blue or white light usually then beams in from a nearby window. When this occurs the abductee feels instantly terrified. They may attempt to move or walk and find that they have been paralyzed. Their eyes dart about the room looking for the intruder that has penetrated their home. From two to five aliens may either walk straight through the wall or window. The aliens will then surround the bed. The taller one of them may have a rod or metal stick that it will wave over the abductee's forehead to calm him or her down. Telepathically this taller being may communicate, "It is time to go now," and "Don not be afraid." The abductee will then watch helplessly as his or her body is levitated into the air and floated through a nearby window with the aliens following in tandem. Outside, a UFO may be hovering above the house, up in the air, or in a nearby field. Together they fly upward in a beam of light, or rise from the ground upon a platform of some kind into the floor of the UFO.

If a particular abductee is driving his or her car, he or she w2ill feel compelled to drive to a secluded region or to some place where the individual would have no reason to be. They may stop or will just continue driving unaware that a UFO is hovering nearby. The aliens will appear and abscond the abductee into the UFO, leaving the car behind. In Communion: A True Story, Whitley Strieber described a similar situation to Dr. Donald Klein on March 10, 1986, under hypnosis:

If the abductee is with other individuals who are not chosen by them, they may abduct the entire group and put the others in a separate waiting roomlike area. After the aliens have finished with the abductee the entire group's memory is erased. They ignore the abductee until the abduction is over. On occasiion the aliens may make an error when there is a group of individuals involved. Someone may notice the missing abductee, or will remember events of the previous day that were supposed to have been forgotten. Witnesses often lend credence to an abuductee's claims and often enable the abductee to be more convincing to family members and relatives.

After the abductee is taken abourd the craft he or she may be brought down a corridor and placed upon a long, grey, metallic table that is cold to the skin. The abductee's clothes are stripped and he or she is rendered immobile. The aliens examine the body. With its dark black eyes the taller being will gaze into the abductee's eyes and attempt to calm him or her. The aliens take skin and bodily fluid samples from the abductee including the extraction of semen and ovum from men and women. To do so a device is placed over the penis, and it triggers instantaneous ejaculation. For women a needlelike device is inserted through the navel into the reproductive system and ovum is extracted. In some abductions a fertilized zygote is inserted into the uterus. The fetus develops and the woman will think she is pregnant, but after four or five months the woman is reabducted and a strange alien-human fetus, including the intact placenta, is removed from her. The hybrids are what would seem to apparently be a conglomeration of the alien and human genes. Often when women are abducted and brought into nurseries they are instructed to hold and caress hybrid babies that the aliens communicate are dying from lack of touching and motherly contact. When the more healthy hybrids age they exhibit features that are not quite human and not quite alien in nature. For example, a hybrid has larger sized eyes like a grey but it has whites like a human, usually with bright blue irises and pupils. Like humans a hybrid has petite ears, nose, and small pink lips. Hybrids do not have pubic hair, but do have head hair that is usually white-blonde and sparser than a human's. When a female hybrid grows up a male abductee may be forced to have sexual relations with her. From all the genetic experiments that the aliens are conducting it is obvious to ascertain that they are attempting to create a new race of beings to carry on their lineage, or even perhaps our own.

Another type of examination that aliens conduct involves a scanning of the mind, or "mindscan" a term coined by hypnotherapists/abuction investigators. In this procedure the taller being stares into the abductee's eyes with it's piercing black eyes and induces strong emotionas or an out of body experience while simultaneously examining to see just how a person reacts to certain stimuli. Mindscan is often used to induce sexual arousal and read memories of the abductee.

Mindscan and induced OBE's (Out of Body Experience) go beyond just the simple examination into something else far more profound. In mindscan abductees have been shown images of great meaning and given messages that have deceptive double meaning. On January 25, 1967, Betty Andrasson was supposedly abducted by aliens from her country home. Over the next several months the mental block of the aliens began to break down and Betty and her daughter Becky started to remember the bizarre events that transpired before the abudction that winter night. It wasn't until 1977 that she decided to undger go hypnosis and find out exactly what took place during the missing hours. In the trance state of hypnosis induced by Dr. Raymond E. Fowler with MUFON she claimed that she was given the usual physical examination, then shown profound supernatural images of an endless golden city with a green sky, and a phoenix becoming reborn. Others like her have been shown images on a viewer of planet Earth being destroyed by a glow that emerges as a bulge and creates a worldwide shockwave. In conjunction with this image the alien communicates that, "The greed of men caused this," Some believe that aliens are actually us from the far distant future coming back in time to repopulate a dying Earth of the future. Another theory states that the aliens can actually see into the future and are attempting to advert a possible demise by nuclear war. Over time "...the human/alien relationship itself evolves into a powerful bond. Despite their resentment and terrization, the abductees may feel deep lover toward the alien beings, especially toward the leader figures, which they experience as reciprocated, despite the cold businesslike way the abductions themselves are conducted." (Abduction, John E. Mack M.D. Pg, 414)

More unusual procedures have been done to abductees for instance, in Secret Life, by David M. Jacobs Ph.D., under hypnosis an abductee, George Kenniston, and attourney, related a navigator experience he endured when he was sixteen. He said this:

This is not the only example of a type of test that is performed on abductees. A unique case involved a woman being placed in a tub of thick blue fluid, and another involved the abductee having to endure severe pain. Medical "cleansings" have been performed on a couple of the abductees investigated by David M. Jacobs Ph.D.

After the aliens are finished with the abductee, they will return him or her to their home,car, or group from which removed. In some cases abductees were not returned to their house, instead, they were hurriedly dumped off miles from where they were abducted creating a disorienting situation.

As abductees begin to realize that what they percieve to be something sinister has altered their lives, they may seek psychiatric consultation and discover that the psychiatrist will deal with them as a rape victim suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome. If a psychiatrist is untraid in abduction cases he will often misdiagnose an abductee and claim that they must be having night terrors, or fantasies interfering with their perception of reality. With this they may prescribe an unneeded medication. If the psychiatrist is aware of the phenomena, he may place the abductee under hypnosis or refer them to someone who can. After hypnosis occurs the subconscious hidden memories are revealed to the abductee and he or she will become afraid or paranoid of it happening again. But in time they learn to deal emotionally with the abductions and seek to learn more about them. Ultimately, the abductee finds himself/herself reflecting upon events of their life, contacting relatives to determine if they ever remembered any unusual events involving them, and coming to terms with the themselves and their reality.

Looking beyond the modern era, into the past, there are indications that UFO's and Alien Abductions are not entirely a contemporary phenomena. Since the dawn of modern science archaeologists and historians have studied ancient cultures and resolved that each culture, although sharing some general traits sometimes inherited by another, was essentially unique. One thing that many ancient cultures shared in common was that they worshipped almighty spirits called "gods." These supreme beings were the controllers of birth, life, the elements and nature, and many aspects that encompass human existance. Ancient people devoted much attention to the gods and scribed verses and epics about them and their explots with man. Were the gods merely figments of the civilization's collective imagination or were they real alien beings who visited and observed these ancient cultures? Erich Von Daniken theorizes that we are the descendants or genetic manipulation of ancient space colonists and that the gods so frequently described in myths are actually extraterrestrials who either visited Earth or interacted with those fledgeling cultures on some level.

The world is inundated with evidence of what could certainly be called universal connections. For example the Pyramid complex including the sphinx at the Giza Plateau in Egypt may very well be a good example of a monument constructed by high technological means, something the Egyptians didn't have. The commonly held belief regarding the contruction of the pyramids involves a collossal effort of manpower whereby prior to the invention of the wheel masses of workers moved 20 to 30 Ton stone cubes 2, 600,000 of them, using logs and with great effort over fifty or more men pulled the immense bricks along the ground to the building site, then dragged them up a ramp to the height needed. With all this primitive building and engineering work they somehow managed to construct immense structures that are not misaligned along a north south axis by less than an inch, and the bricks are so perfectly formed that not a credit card can be inserted between them to this day jointed to one thousandth of an inch tolerance. According to ancient accounts the Great Pyramid could be seen from miles away, and before the surface stones were dismantled to construct other structures in Egypt in later ages, it had an almost mirror like surface. More open-minded archaeologists believe that the pyramids and surrounding structures were constructed by outside forces with technology far superior to the Egyptian's at the time. They claim that it may have been a land mark or remnant of a pre-human civilization, perhaps even relatives of Plato's Atlanteans. A recent discovery involves the connection between the Giza plateau and the constellation of Orion. Looking from above, the layout of the pyramids, matches exactly that which is seen in Orion's belt, with the brightest star represented by the largest pyramid. Recently found shafts inside the pyramid lead directly to the surface and are aligned exactly with the rising and setting of the constellation of Orion from about 5000 years ago. Currently the shafts do not line up, however, it has been discovered that the Earth itself wobbles on it's axis like a top over a period of about 20,000 years, and computer models have put the location of the constellation directly over those shafts at about 3,500 BC.

On an English plain in Salisbury lies an enigmatic structure that has baffled archaeologists and anthropologists alike. Anyone who has gazed at it for centures has often wondered its origin and purpose. Stonehenge consists of two rings of massive errected stones approximately 5000 years old. There are no other surrounding ancient structures, temples, or cities. In early Brittish history the Celtics settled the Brittish Isles, and constructed hundreds of henges, some similar to Stonehenge although not as large, circular regions of piled dirt and stones, but the one that stands out most in everyone's mind is always Stonehenge. Stonehenge is aligned so that the summer solstace rises directly over a special stone marking this occurance. An anomaly exists when archaeologists have deduced that the Celtics were a simple tribal almost barbaric people who seemed to have no intellectual use for an observatory yet that is what Stonehenge is. Why did ancient people continue to construct this over and over again for thousands of years? It has been proposed that the "gods" would appear here and people would be "sacrificed" to them. Perhaps a UFO landed here once, left an impression in the field, and somehow they managed to quarry massive stones weight up to 20 tons from a couple dozen miles away and transport them, down a river and across a plain, to this remote location and errect this particular structure, although even scientists are completely astonished that the Celtics accompished it. A group of scientists have even attempted to duplicate the process with a team of hundreds of men using modern tools to quarry the stones, and it proved to be an almost impossible task. Who built stonehenge? Extraterrestrials? Humans? It remains a mystery.

Another mystery across the world from England on a high plateau in Nazca Peru are thirteen thousand parallel and criss-crossing lines stretched across miles of desert, at least 100 geometrical shapes consisting of spirals, trapezoids, triangles, and 800 animals. From the ground these images are rather undescernable but when observed from an aerial vantage point these images become distinct. Surface markings are so large that they can even be seen from space by astronauts. This begs to ask the question, why would an ancient culture create an enormous carving that could not be seen by them? Certainly these people did not have planes. Erich Von Daniken believes it is a vast extraterrestrial landing site for craft that occupied the region thousands of years ago. What we see today are the remains of what likely was a spaceport, and the images were designed to be viewed upon by "the gods" that came from the sky.

Also uncovered in South America are ancient caves that were mined by with what look like laser cutting devices. In the Mayan City Palenque a seventy foot limestone pyramid called "the temple of inscriptions" was discovered by archaeologists. Years later, a secret chamber was stumbled across and within it there was a carving of what looks like a man seated at the controls of a spaceship or highly advanced vehicle. Furthermore hinting at an extraterrestrial connection, some Mayan figurines have the appearance of beings inside of metal suits.

Often in Sumerian texts there are depictions of flying machines, used by, Marduk, the supreme god, to travel from place to place. In ancient documents that are the cornerstones of modern religions like Christianity, Islam, and Judism there are referances to flying chariots, flaming bushes and clouds, virgin births, beings that ascend and descend from the sky, and symbolic revelations. Ezekiel Verse 1: $ - 7 describes a "vision" that Ezekiel was experiencing that parallels an alien abduction on many counts. It says:

After examining the words spoken by men of antiquity, taken as an account of things they saw with their eyes, one can realize that extraterrestrials have been with our race for many centuries likely watching humanity age as a species. It becomes instantly evident that the alien abduction phenomenon is broader and more profound than anything that could be imagined. Proof of the existence of this exterrestrial bond may be hidden within other planets in our solar system.

In 1976, the Viking space probes photographed brand new pictures of the planet Mars. One of these probes proved that there was no intelligent life on Mars, however it may proven that there once was. On its orbiting flybys it revealed that there were once rivers of flowing water on the surfaces of the planet, but it also discovered something extraordinary. On a Martian Plateau known as Cydonia it photographed what seemed to be a human face. At the time the face made headlines in the newspapers, but NASA claimed that the face was a "trick of light and shadow." Over time the face was filed away in NASA archives as a fluke and ignored. It wasn't until an astronomer, and NASA consultant, named Richard C. Hoagland, uncovered the images and gave it the investigation it deserves that it was looked at in a new light.

Hoagland colaborated with others in determining the validity of the images, and what meaning there was behind what was discovered. An analyzation of the entire area around the face reveals that there are pyramids and what seems to be a ruined city on Cydonia. A five sided pyramid nicknamed, by Hoagland and scientists working with him, the "D and M" This pyramid became the basis for deriving key angle relationships with the other "Monuments of Mars." From these angle relationships he and his collegues derived the Cydonia Geometric Relationship Model. From this table of angles, angle ratios, and trigonometric functions, they discovered a constant called the "e prime" or tetrahedronal e. With the shape of a tetrahedron they inscribed it within a sphere allowing one point to touch the pole and the other three to meet to coincide with the latitude 19.5 degrees north and south respectively.

Looking for correllations with their mathematical discovery they examined planets across the solar system and made a startling discovery. Hoagland and his team found that every single planet that has been observed in our solar system including the sun has an upwelling of energy isolated at 19.5 degrees aligned to the magnetic north or south pole of the planet. On Earth the upwelling of internal energy at 19.5 degrees is represented by the Hawaii Volcano hot spot in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. On Mars it was found to be Olympus Mons. On Jupiter the telltale upwelling was the great red spot, a massive super vortex 3 times the size of the entire planet Earth. Amazingly, even the sun fits into the equation with peak sunspot activity occurring at 19.5 degrees north and south. The mathematics of the tetrahedron allowed Hoagland and those people working with him to connect what NASA called "tricks of light and shadow" to real physical evidence that can be observed. According to Hoagland physical properties derived from the tetrahedronal principles combined elements of energy, gravity, and movement to create a working model for inexhaustible sources of energy athat would conquer the force of gravity. He described it as a literal "physics of a new age." Proof of this theory exists when we look at the planet Neptune which mysteriously emits three times the energy it receives from the sun. Hoagland collaborated his information with other physicists like, Dr. DePalma, who determined that a rotating sphere moves further, higher, and faster, than a non rotating sphere of equal mass when launched from a spring.

The profound connections of the Monuments of Mars went beyond just mathematical formulas. It also hada very terrestrial connection to our planet Earth. The fact that the face was pre-hominid or similar to what antropologists have determined to be a Homo-Erectus was suggestive of the possible age of the artifact. When thinking of a face it dawned on him that there is another famous face on the Earth called the Sphinx. This face was a conglomeration of a man and a lion, but was it the same as the one on Mars? It was. When the Martian stone face was halved and flipped

Back to the Millennium Crossroads