Secret life: firsthand accounts of UFO abductions by David M. Jacobs

“screen” memories. And because the investigators did not know exactly what happened during an abduction, they could not identify false memories purposely placed in victims’ minds.
    Furthermore, most abductees did not report their experiences because they simply did not remember them. If they did remember something, they often linked the event to a psychic or religious experience and thus had no reason to call a UFO organization.
    Even with the investigating problems, by the mid-1980s there were so many of these reports that researchers could not keep up with them. The amount of data from each abduction experience was so extensive and rich in detail that even the most cursory look indicated that something extraordinary was occurring. In 1987 Dr. Thomas E. Bullard published a massive study of 270 published abduction cases. Although most of the cases were not investigated as carefully as they should have been, and many contained untrustworthy material, Bullard’s careful analysis was still able to show numerous structural similarities. 12
    Most researchers still did not understand the implications of the new data. They had been schooled in the older sighting-analysis techniques and were ill-equipped to study abduction cases with new “internal” methodology. Most of the analytic procedures that had been developed for deciphering what a person observed no longer applied as UFO research moved into the delicate area of recovering memories locked away in the mind. But once a few researchers, like Budd Hopkins and Dr. Richard Haines (who developed a more planned method of questioning abductees) slowly began to develop proper techniques of investigating abductions and to unravel the tangled web of data that the abductees related, the victims’ storiesbegan to take on a coherence and a structure, with extraordinary detail that had never before been revealed.
    In 1987 Hopkins published
Intruders: The Incredible Visitations at Copley Woods,
which for the first time revealed the extent of the UFO phenomenon’s intrusion into peoples’ personal lives. Hopkins found that, in addition to examinations, victims described aliens performing genetic experiments on them that included the taking of ova and sperm. He uncovered the idea that aliens were having abductees physically interact with odd-looking babies presumably grown at least in part from the abductees’ eggs and sperm. He also began to realize the extent of victimization that had occurred among abductees as a result of their experiences. The people he investigated were traumatized individuals whose lives had been profoundly affected by their abductions. 13
    By the late 1980s the phenomenon had begun to yield some of its secrets. The abductions, once considered the fringy “stepchild” of the UFO phenomenon, were irrevocably changing UFO studies. Researchers had begun to realize that the abduction phenomenon yielded far more information about UFOs than sightings had revealed. At last we had literally and figuratively entered inside the UFOs.

PART II
THE ABDUCTION EXPERIENCE

Chapter 3
Getting There

    “THIS IS NOT A DREAM.”
    Going from a normal environment into a UFO can be a shattering experience. People are engaged in normal activities when suddenly they are removed from their surroundings against their will and taken into the fringes of reality. The abductors seem to make a conscious effort to take people when they will not be missed or when their lives will not be overly disrupted. That still allows a wide range of opportunities for an abduction.
TRANSPORT

    An unsuspecting woman is in her room preparing to go to bed. She gets into bed, reads a while, turns off the light, and drifts off into a peaceful night’s sleep. In the middle of the night she turns over and lies on her back. She is awakened by a light that seems to be glowing in her room. The light moves toward her bed and takes the shape of a small “man” with a bald head and huge black eyes. She is