The late Budd Hopkins was an exceptional man. He was an artist of some note, and a visionary who took ufology into unchartered territory. He was also a philanthropist. The latter can be attributed to the enormous amount of time, effort and dedication he spent with people who are best described as 'abductees' - or put another way individuals who believe that they have been abducted by nonterrestrial beings. He did not take money from these often desperate people who had no other support mechanism. What he did do was everything he could to understand them and their plight, as well as elevating their cause to an almost acceptable status on an international platform. I say almost because sadly for these individuals even though within UFO research organisations abductions are taken seriously by some, unfortunately for abductees the phenonemenon is still treated as a joke by many. If you don't agree then just ask a friend if they believe alien abductions are real and you'll see for yourself. However open minded your friend might be I still doubt they will entertain the idea, even for a second.

Whether aliens are abducting people or not, what was truly remarkable about Budd Hopkins was that he did not judge these people who were obviously suffering in some way, and by founding the Intruders Foundation he provided them a place where they could attempt to make sense of their experiences, meet with others, and be supported. And he didn't charge them a penny. So how did Hopkins become one of the world's most prominent speakers on alien abuction theory? Time for some background...

Born in 1931 in West Virginia, he moved to New York City in 1953 to pursue a career in art after his degree at Oberlin College. Hopkins enjoyed considerable success as an abstract artist and sculptor and his talent won him several awards and fellowships throughout his life. His work was featured in many museums both at home and abroad. But in 1964 Hopkins and two others witnessed a UFO in broad daylight and the experience changed him forever. It had such an impact on the young artist that he began reading up on the topic and in 1974 along with Ted Bloecher investigated a multiple witness UFO report, the North Hudson Park sightings of New Jersey. Their account of the event was printed in The Village Voice and not long after reports from UFO witnesses all over began pouring in. Budd Hopkins became a UFO 'expert' of some note almost overnight.



A few of these cases involved people describing what we later came to know as 'missing time' (inexplicable gaps in the memory), and it was this area that most intrigued the eager investigator. With the aid of Bloecher and psychologist Aphrodite Clamar, he spent the next seven years employing professional hypnotherapists in an attempt to gain insight from the abductees. His conclusions were bold - and still strongly challenged - but in summary he believed that many of these people were in fact being subject to real abductions conducted by alien visitors.

What cannot be disputed is the help he provided personally to well over a thousand people who, at some time or other, were touched by his benevolence. He held weekly sessions at his home in NYC for over 20 years. Critics say that his well intentioned nature was his downfall, and indeed it does seem that in at least one of his cases - the Linda Napolitano abduction of 1989 in NYC - he did fall short of research fundamentals when it came to checking certain facts. That said, hoaxes within the abduction phenomena are very rare, and much of Hopkins' work was with a vast range of people from all walks of life.

One of his books, Intruders - The Incredible Visitations at Copley Woods, made the New York Times best seller list and inspired a CBS television series. It centres mainly around one of his cases, and turns out to be a truly terrifying journey of ongoing abduction. The relevations therein can only be described as either total insanity or a mind bending reality that turns our world upside down. To even suggest, however, that either Hopkins or his subjects were insane or looking to hit the headlines does them no justice. It appears to the reader that it was only answers that were ever sought by those involved.

The legacy Budd Hopkins has left to the subject of ufology, and in particular the abduction phenomenon, is truly invaluable. Perhaps the best way to approach his lifelong work in the field is to consider it his own words. In his 1987 publication, Intruders, he explains in the forward how a 'profoundly unsettling concept can be almost impossible to believe - to really believe - despite the weight of evidence'. He cites how in Walter Laqueur's book, The Terrible Secret, a work that deals with the Holocaust, Laqueur's research showed that in 1943 when the world had been told of Hitler's systematic genocide of the Jewish people that the horror was simply not believed by many who heard it. It was not that the people did not believe it, but that they could not believe it.

"The true skeptic cannot, at the beginning, accept the impossibility of anything."

Thank you for your wisdom, Budd Hopkins, you will be missed.




Related articles

• Budd Hopkins, Abstract Artist and U.F.O. Author, Dies at 80 (nytimes.com)

Myth-busting

Bill Hicks once joked how aliens always visited people in the middle of nowhere and mainly appeared to stupid people who could only think to point shotguns at them. As funny as the material was (if you have never seen 'Relentless' I strongly recommend you do) it actually couldn't have been further from the truth. Although much of that performance still resonates today I have to part company with my old comic hero when it comes to this point about close encounters and abductees being limited to small town America. Unfortunately old Bill only served to perpetuate the disinformation he loathed so much with this part of his material. Abductions are a global phenomenon, and happen to all kinds of people in all kinds of places. Fact.

The late Pulitzer Prize winning biographer and Harvard Medical School graduate, John Mack, to date possibly the most esteemed investigator into the abduction phenomenon, once wrote, "The idea that men, women and children can be taken against their wills from their homes, cars and school yards by strange, humanoid beings, lifted onto a spacecraft, and subjected to intrusive and threatening procedures is so terrifying... that the actuality of the phenomenon has been largely rejected out of hand or bizarrely distorted in most media accounts. The fact is that..thousands of individuals who appear to be sincere and of sound mind and who are seeking no personal benefit from their stories have been providing..consistent reports of precisely such events."

Quite a statement, especially considering Mack's skepticism and credentials. To be clear, he never once said he was certain that aliens were responsible, but what he did say was that the abduction phenomenon was of great clinical importance if for no other reason than the fact that the abductees are often deeply traumatized by their experiences. His investigations involved no less than 200 separate cases examined over a 10 year period.

It has been more than 5 years since Mack's death (he was hit by a drunk driver in 2004 whilst in London to give a lecture) and the phenomenon is still a matter of divide amongst ufologists, as no larger study has since been undertaken. To add to the problem, there appear to be no meaningful global statistics on the phenomenon either.

What does exist, however, is literally hundreds if not thousands of compelling accounts that have confounded investigators all over the world. Although all of the different evidence types such as implants, physical scarring, multiple witness accounts or post traumatic stress syndrome is utterly compelling (it will astound anyone who does even the smallest amount of research), it seems its not enough for the rest of us to take seriously. One aspect of abductions, however, cannot be disregarded too easily and is best summed up by T.E.Bullard, PhD, who says,

"..abduction reports bear extensive similarities to one another, no matter who investigates, how abductees recall the encounter and in what year or country the story originates".

This has to be one of the most compelling aspects of the abduction phenomenon that cannot be dismissed. What may be unknown to the casual reader is the sheer number of abductees who make almost identical reports and to high level of detail. It is often far more accurate than could be attributed to simple copycat hoaxing. The argument by skeptics goes that due to massive media exposure of the abduction cases it would be easy for anyone to hoax a story by merely regurgitating events that have been put on record elsewhere. Although this can happen it goes no way in accounting for all the cases that are virtually identical in precise detail, whilst being continents and sometimes years apart.

A good example of this involves the Australian abduction victim Peter Khoury, who had several encounters in the late 1980s. He was previously unaware of the abduction phenomenon until his own experiences in Sydney, and it wasn't until after his ordeal when he contacted Whitley Strieber that a fascinating detail emerged. Strieber, possibly the world's most famous (and controversial) abduction victim had purposefully left out a key fact about the beings in his best seller, Communion, to see if it would be validated independently in subsequent witness descriptions of alien beings. That detail was the presence of hair. According to Strieber, Peter Khoury was the only person that identified this particular detail out of the people that wrote to him. Strieber went on to say that the experience was strikingly similar and in ways that Khoury could not possibly have known due to certain facts having been withheld from the public.



Taking into account this type of data correlation between abduction cases, along with the fact that people like Khoury have no desire for fame and fortune, only serves to deepen the mystery around the phenomenon. But I know what you're thinking, that Strieber has sold millions of copies of Communion and made millions along the way. But Strieber is not, I repeat NOT, representative of all the thousands of ordinary people who have their lives shattered, suffer from post traumatic stress, have their relationships destroyed, don't make any any money and don't want to go public. Peter Khoury is one of these people. He is also the person who may have produced the only solid genetic evidence to date of such controversial encounters.

From his experiences, which involved multiple visitations to his home by two or more humanoid beings, he managed to keep a sample of hair from the 'visitors' which was independently and scientifically tested. The results were nothing short of astounding. Not only was the nearest human DNA match of this hair a very rare Chinese Mongoloid type, but it also had a second DNA type within it?! This second type was found in the root section and considered to be nearest a rare Basque/Gaelic type. In any normal human DNA we only get consistent DNA irrespective of where the sample comes from. Incredibly in this case there were found to be two types of DNA, depending upon which part of the hair was tested!? And was a combination similar to extremely rare human types from different continents, but not definitively human.

There is much more to Peter Khoury's case that makes it so compelling, not least being the fact that Khoury himself is such a reliable witness that only ever wanted answers to some very disturbing events. So why is it that we are so dismissive of such accounts, when people like Khoury have had their lives turned upside down and experience years of trauma? Let's look at it another way: should we stop listening to the plight of persecuted groups around the world just because there are terrorists that would hijack the injustices for their own maladjusted ends? Of course not. So why do we choose to ignore the plight of thousands of individuals all over the world who believe they have been abducted, and experience real trauma of their own? Just because people such as Strieber have made massive personal gains for their own ends?

I have strong inclination to what the answer might be, so brace yourself.

We simply cannot entertain even the idea that it might, just might, be actually happening. Its too much for our minds to take on board. How do we reconcile that? What do we do about it? What would it mean for the human race and where we fit into things? These are the big questions, and lets be honest we don't like to dwell on these things too much do we? But what if it was one of your friends or your partner who came home one evening, talking of seeing strange lights in the sky but couldn't remember half of the journey? Then over the coming weeks he or she started having nightmares, flashbacks, and goodness knows what other sanity testing moments? Would you just laugh at them and dig out Bill Hicks on DVD? To meet someone who has been subject to an alien abduction scenario is to know its certainly no joke to them, or their partners or families. Denial is something we all do at some point or other, when our minds cannot cope with certain truths at a given time. Its part of our natural defense mechanism to stop us losing our marbles. And it may be what most people choose to do when they decide that alien abduction is just too crazy a notion to be real in any way, and laugh at the thought. Well I can't say I blame them. I don't want to believe it either.

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]">

District 9 and UFO climatisation

The website for Peter Jackson's latest film, District 9, is a clever piece of marketing. The story is that aliens have landed and now living on earth in South Africa, and the website allows the visitor to check out the alien living zones playing it out as if for real. It has some neat little interactive touches and keeps the ad messages low key. In the director's chair for District 9 is Neill Blomkamp, a virtual unknown and his first feature release. The film looks like it will pack a punch, combining documentary style camera techniques with the high end special effects we've come to expect from Jackson, who takes a Producer credit this time round. The question of alien contact has of course featured many times in Hollywood blockbusters over the decades. The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951), Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977), ET: The Extraterrestrial (1982), Independence Day (1996), Men in Black (1997) - the list goes on. But the question is, how much of it has just been entertainment, and how much has been a covert attempt by the US government to propogate the idea of UFOs and alien contact as a possible reality?

It is undisputed that the CIA sponsored the Robertson Panel during the 1950s which had the purpose of discouraging the public's interest in UFOs because of the defense implications: the authorities worried that a real airborne threat from the USSR may not have been spotted early enough with the overwhelming numbers of UFO sightings they already had to contend with. The Panel set out to debunk UFO sightings through the mass media, specifically television and the movies.

But although this was evidence of government sanctioned debunking it was not to get us used to the idea that aliens existed, but that they didn't exist. We don't have to look very hard, however, to find evidence to suggest the US authorities also worked covertly behind the scenes of feature films to help or hinder some box office hits. Take Spielberg's classic, Close Encounters of the Third Kind. “If NASA took the time to write me a 20-page letter, then I knew there must be something happening,” Spielberg once said. “When they read the script they got very angry and felt that it was a film that would be dangerous." Independence Day, the 1996 Will Smith blockbuster, is another case in point. Denied any cooperation from the Department of Defense due to its reference to Area 51 and Roswell, the Pentagon specifically requested that any government connection to either had to be removed from the film.

But its not always been the US Government's tactics to oppose a film's release or deny assistance. In fact, in this next case they did the exact opposite. The 2007 blockbuster Transformers was given such complete access by the US Military and Air Force that they even allowed filming of the F-22 Raptor Fighter, which until then had never been shown on screen. Maybe its just coincidence that the storyline of this film makes the point that in fact the military are not to blame for the cover up of UFOs and alien visits? It's interesting to note that this time the US Government provided hundreds of millions of dollars worth of cutting edge military hardware, therefore not so much removing any connection from the film, but instead seemingly giving it an official endorsement.

In documentary, however, the plot thickens even further. The late Lt Col Phillip J Corso, who served on the National Security Council under Eisenhower claimed that the product­ion of UFO movies was actively encouraged by government-led UFO study groups during the 1950s. The goal, claimed Corso, was to climatise the public to the UFO reality.

And this wasn't the only occasion where the US authorities attempted to engage the public with the idea that UFOs were indeed of extraterrestrial origin. There are numerous cases, but perhaps a more famous one is linked to one of America's biggest entertainment exports. In 1979 Oscar winning Disney animator Ward Kimball revealed in an interview that during the 1950s the USAF had asked Walt Disney himself to assist them in making a documentary film that would have climatised the public to idea of the existence of extraterrestrials. Considering Disney had already made dozens of propaganda films for the government during WWII, he would have been the perfect choice for such a project. But perhaps the most startling aspect of this story was that the USAF offered Disney real footage of UFOs in exchange for his help, and that this material was to be used in the film. In the end, however, the USAF got cold feet and the project was eventually dropped.

Here in the UK the MOD have released documents of UFO sightings covering the period 1981-1996. Upon examination of the data from these reports it has been said that sightings of UFOs increase dramatically around the release of certain blockbuster movies such as Independence Day or tv hits like The X Files. This conclusion is supported by the likes of UFO skeptic Dr David Clark, who comments that people may be more inclined to 'look up' during these times and also report what they see. This seems entirely plausible. What isn't so convincing is the following statement made by Clark: "Maybe what they are seeing is ordinary, like an aircraft, but because they are looking for a UFO, they think it is one." How happy these people must be after taking the time to even file a UFO report in the first place, only to be told that they were probably just aeroplanes. And why the UK Government would withhold records of sightings involving 'ordinary aircraft' for more than two decades is certainly a mystery.

Not only do we have District 9 just about to open in UK cinemas, but in November audiences will see a remake of 'V' returning to the small screen in the US. A massive cult hit from the 1980s, V had a different take on alien visitation as the leader is a seductive woman and in fact a reptilian in disguise (cue David Icke..). The ABC network, who are behind the remake, has had previous success with the alien story. The Invaders, starring Roy Thinnes and shown in the late 1960s, was a huge international hit for the network and the first time that the Men in Black were portrayed on television. Clearly the series was taking its cue from real reports and sightings whilst X Files creator Chris Carter was still in high school. Coincidentally, its the Walt Disney Company that now owns ABC.

It would be interesting to see if reports of UFO sightings increase after the release of the latest blockbuster to deal with the alien topic. Unfortunately we may not know for decades, if indeed we're told at all, because the MOD will keep all this data under lock and key. Data which apparently is of no defense significance because the government takes no interest in UFOs sightings. Hmmm.. of course it doesn't. The MOD must simply keep all records of UFO sightings locked away under the Official Secrets Act to just give conspiracy theorists something to write about and computer hackers something to get out of bed for. Yes, that must be it.

Don't forget to hit the Follow button to keep upto date. Find it at the top of the page, in the right info bar.

An introduction...

Many would say that the question of whether we're alone in the universe was answered some time ago. We just decided not to listen.

Well that's not entirely true. The truth is that some people did listen. Some people had no choice by happening to be in the right place at the right time, whilst others found themselves in the right place at the wrong time. Gary McKinnon, you might say, is one such person.

Nineteen years ago when I first became aware of the UFO phenomenon, government cover ups on the scale suggested around this topic seemed unbelievable to many, me included. It has taken me almost two decades of consideration whilst searching through hundreds of case notes, meeting key witnesses and viewing countless photographic and video evidence that brings me to where I am today - in need of answers.

Many of you may still not accept what you read here, and some may completely reject the things you don't want to hear. But I know that many more of you already accept the possibility as, at the very least, a possibility. I imagine that some of you already believe there is a deeper truth we haven't been told. I know that even more of you want to know what that truth is.

The subject of UFOs is so massive spanning decades and covering all continents, that its almost impossible to know where to begin. So many different issues arise from it, from national security and freedom of information to philosophical debate and the state of the environment. The UFO story goes back as far as 1947 in recent history, and arguably much farther if some historical records are anything to go by.

Of course there is an enormous amount of evidence out there if you know where to look. There continues to be a large number of professional, trustworthy and dedicated UFO investigators around the world that that carry out vital work in the field, either individually or as part of organizations. There are other information sources however, that we would be well advised to consider with more caution. The trick is in knowing where to draw the line between the two.

And that's the reason behind this blog. To provide you with the information to find your own answers, do your own asking, or simply hear what I have to say and decide for yourself. Just a word of warning - what you will read here in the coming months might be hard to swallow, and will definitely challenge your views. I just ask you to keep an open mind, and base your opinions upon the balance of evidence presented.

A couple of points to consider: firstly, anything reported in these pages is only done so after considerable scrutiny has taken place by professional and reliable UFO investigators. It's often the case that a number of investigators work on cases over several months or even years. Secondly, there are so many compelling cases that I will offer what I believe to be the most important ones, both old and new.

I feel it important to point out that I have never seen a UFO myself, or had any personal experience with the phenomenon first hand. My part in all of this is simple: to bring the subject to a wider audience, but in such a way that it might make you think differently and give the UFO phenomenon the serious consideration it deserves. In doing so, maybe you will begin to ask your own questions.

So for now sit back and relax, because next time we meet the world as you know it might start to crack open..