Other sources of contamination were found. Much of the description of the interior of the ship came from an article in UFO Report that Roach, in her first letter, acknowledged reading. Many of her descriptions match those of Llanca, not because she had seen the same things, but because she had read about them months earlier.
In my original entry for The Encyclopedia of UFOs (1980), I concluded that “…until something more was added, an admission by Roach, or a new development in psychological study (or the landing of a spaceship), there didn’t seem to be any place to go with the case.” That development has since occurred, in what we now know about a psychological phenomenon called “sleep paralysis.” (See SLEEP PARALYSIS.) The Roach abduction now appears to be a classic example of sleep paralysis.
Roach, remember, claimed to have awakened and felt that a prowler had been in, or near the house. She had a vague feeling about it and called the police. Then, thinking about it, and reading about alien abductions, she came to believe that she, herself, had been an abduction victim. The details that emerged under hypnosis probably resulted from constant prodding by Harder, including his leading questions to her.
The details of the abduction provided by her children could easily have come from discussions Roach had with them prior to her writing to UFO Report.
—KEVIN D. RANDLE
References
Randle, Kevin D. “Roach abduction” in Story, Ronald D., ed. The Encyclopedia of UFOs (Doubleday/New English Library, 1980).
Randle, Kevin D. and Estes, Russ. Faces of the Visitors (Fireside/Simon & Schuster, 1997).
Randle, Kevin D., Estes, Russ, and Cone, William P. The Abduction Enigma (Forge, 1999).
Robertson Panel The first scientific advisory panel on UFOs. requested by the White House and sponsored by the United States Central Intelligence Agency, was convened by Dr. H. P. Robertson (a world-renowned physicist then at the California Institute of Technology), on January 14, 1953. The other panel members included Luis W. Alvarez (later Nobel laureate and professor of physics at the University of California at Berkeley), Lloyd Berkner (noted space scientist), Sam A. Goudsmit (nuclear physicist at the Brookhaven National Laboratory), and the writer (then an astronomer and operations analyst at the Johns Hopkins University). It was just after the 1952 UFO scare in Washington, D.C., and Robertson took his responsibility of advising the federal government very seriously. He demanded and got access to all topsecret military data that might bear on UFO sightings, such as tests of new aircraft, rockets, and balloons. As an astronomer, this writer felt that most of the sightings were ludicrous and joked about it in our first meeting. Robertson reprimanded the writer severely, despite the fact that he was an old friend. The panel was briefed by all three military services, and by astronomer J. Allen Hynek, then scientific advisor to the Air Force’s Project Blue Book. The panel was shown most of the good photos and drawings of UFO sightings. and the movie taken by an obviously reliable Navy man, Delbert Newhouse, at Tremonton, Utah. The panel’s explanation of the objects on the film, which was later agreed upon by the investigator for the University of Colorado UFO Project, was seagulls, a half-mile away, rather than fantastic spacecraft ten miles away. Captain E. J. Ruppelt, then head of Project Blue Book, described the Air Force analysis of UFO reports. All day on January 18, 1953, the panel discussed the evidence, and concluded that UFOs presented no direct threat to United States national security. The writer was concerned that, at a time of a “Red threat” (the panelists were worried about a possible Soviet intercontinentaI ballistic missile attack), UFO reports would disrupt military communications. The panel agreed and also recommended that efforts be made to strip UFOs of “the aura of mystery they have unfortunately acquired” and to educate the public to recognize “true indications of hostile intent or action.” The Robertson Panel report was later declassified and (with most names deleted) published as Appendix U in Edward Condon’s Scientific Study of Unidentified Flying Objects, edited by Daniel S. Gillmor, 1969.
In retrospect, this writer sees a few misconceptions in the panel’s discussion and report. The panel underestimated the long duration of public interest in UFOs, which also puzzles sociologists (see Sagan, Carl, and Page, Thomton, eds., UFOs–A Scientific Debate, 1972), and overestimated the astronomers’ photographic coverage of the sky (see Page, “Photographic Sky Coverage for the Detection of UFOs,” in Science, Vol. 160, No. 1258, 1968). Although the panel did not go as far as Condon, it also tended to ignore the 5 percent or 10 percent of UFO reports that are highly reliable and have not as yet been explained.
—THORNTON PAGE
Rogo hypothesis Parapsychologist D. Scott Rogo developed the hypothesis that abduction experiences could be correlated with a personal crisis and emotional trauma in the life of the abductee. His idea was that we should look more closely at the experiencer in terms of personal history and how the “abduction” experience can shed light on one’s life crisis—in symbolic form. The following essay was given to the editor of this encyclopedia for publication by Scott Rogo in 1983, seven years before his untimely death (in 1990).
THE SECRET LANGUAGE OF UFO ABDUCTIONS
Reports about people who have been abducted by UFOs have become frighteningly frequent over the last few years. These reports often read surprisingly alike. The victim or victims will be driving along a deserted road late at night when the UFO makes its first appearance. The individual will then momentarily “black out.” [A phenomenon now referred to in UFOlogy as “missing time.”] Regaining consciousness only a “moment” or so later, he or she will discover that over an hour or two has mysteriously passed from his/her life. The witness might then be asked by an investigator to undergo hypnotic regression, during which one will remember how the car stalled and how alien beings left the UFO and brought the chosen one aboard. Many UFO abductees tell how they were given medical examinations or given some sort of message before being returned to their cars with the command to forget what has happened.
The explanation for such events seems obvious. UFOs appear to be vehicles from another world, and their occupants carry out these abductions with the intent of studying and learning about us. However, as a result of my own research and investigations into several UFO abduction cases, I have come to a radically different conclusion about the nature of these experiences
I first began to seriously question the “extraterrestrial hypothesis” after studying the case of Betty and Barney Hill, which was made famous by author John Fuller in his book The Interrupted Journey (1966). The case is so well known that only a very brief summary needs to be given here.
The date of the incident was September 19, 1961—a time when the civil rights movement was in its infancy. Betty and Barney Hill were an interracial couple from New Hampshire who were driving home from a vacation trip to Canada through the White Mountains of New England, when they first spotted a mysterious light high in the sky. It gradually approached them as they sped along.
Barney eventually stopped the car, got out, and viewed the “craft” through binoculars when it began hovering by the side of the road. When he saw beings inside it, he panicked, ran back to the automobile, and sped away.
The next thing the Hills noticed was that they were driving somewhat further down the road. They could also hear a “beeping” sound fading out as they drove. Later, they calculated that their trip home had taken longer than it should have.
Just ten days following the experience, Betty began having a series of detailed nightmares about a UFO abduction. Barney, too, was feeling some sort of strain—presumably as a result of the UFO experience—as his ulcer began acting up.
These developments led the Hills to Dr. Benjamin Simon, a psychiatrist in Boston who specialized in hypnosis. The Hills assumed they were suffering from a case of amnesia, and on this basis Dr. Simon explored the supposed time-lapse through hypnotic regression. It was during these sessions that the couple gradually “recalled” how their car had been stopped by mysterious figures ah
ead of them in the road as they drove away from the UFO.
They remembered being taken aboard the craft by humanoid beings, who separated them and then performed quasi-medical procedures on them individually. The beings tested Betty for pregnancy by inserting a needle into her navel (a procedure similar to amniocentesis). They took sperm samples from Barney, after placing some sort of cup over his groin. Then the couple was returned to their car with instructions to forget the whole experience.
When I read John Fuller’s book, which includes transcripts of the Hills’ sessions with Dr. Simon, I was left unimpressed. What struck me at the time was how symbolic their experience was, and how it seemed to relate so concisely with conflicts which must have been plaguing the couple at the time.
Barney, a black postal employee, had married a socially prominent white woman (Betty) at a time when racial strife in this country was developing into the most important social issue of the decade. Surely the Hills must have been harboring some deep, and perhaps not even consciously acknowledged, conflicts over their interracial marriage, especially since such unions were rare and socially frowned upon at that time.
These quite normal fears and conflicts are aptly illustrated in their abduction story. Here, Betty and Barney are separated by hostile and mysterious impersonal beings, who check to make sure Betty isn’t pregnant, and then symbolically castrate Barney.
Only then are they released to continue on their way. This scenario encapsulates the Hills’ own awareness of how much of society probably viewed their marriage—a sensitivity they must have had as they lived their day-to-day lives in a traditionally conservative area of the United States. (In a classic experiment, a psychologist instructed several white subjects to administer shocks to black volunteers. He found that the subjects would consistently administer more powerful shocks to the blacks—whom they were led to believe were dating white women—than the control subjects.)
What the Hills’ abduction story seems to represent is a sort of “dream” in which the couples’ own fears and anxieties were translated into a symbolic drama. When I realized the symbolic nature of the Hills’ experience, I rejected the notion that they had undergone a genuine abduction. I felt that their recollections, which were based point-by-point on Betty’s previous dreams, were on Betty’s previous dreams, were merely fantasies in which the Hills expressed their anxieties over the nature of their marriage. The “missing time” they experienced after their encounter may have been a temporary amnesia brought on by the shock of actually seeing a genuine UFO. But it is also interesting to note that the “missing two hours” was not noticed by the Hills, until someone else made the suggestion to them—two weeks after the event.
Over the years, however, I had to change my opinion. Two abduction cases came to light in the 1970s, which placed the UFO abduction syndrome on a firmer evidential footing.
The first was the Pascagoula, Mississippi, abduction of Charles Hickson and Calvin Parker on October 11, 1973. Hickson consciously remembered the abduction and had no need of hypnotic regression. Independent evidence has documented that UFO activity was rife in Mississippi that night as well. The other case was the November 5, 1975, abduction (near Snowflake, Arizona) of Travis Walton, whose encounter was partially witnessed by several of his coworkers. With cases such as these, there can be no denying that UFO abductions are real events and a genuine component of the UFO mystery.
The natural implication of all this might be that the Hill abduction of 1961 was also a genuine occurrence. But why, then, should the scenario of the Hills’ experience—granting that it really happened as reported—be so rich in symbolic allusions to their social, psychological, and sexual concerns?
It was this question that piqued my interest in the deeper meaning of the UFO abduction syndrome and led me to study it in some detail. My current view is that while UFO abductions are genuine events, they are much more complicated than most people suspect. The first (and major) case that helped me formulate my views about the nature of the UFO abduction syndrome was brought to my attention in 1978 by Ann Druffel, a Southern California UFO investigator of some 20 years’ experience.
Ann was still investigating a UFO ab duction which had occurred in the Tujunga Canyons, near Los Angeles, on March 22, 1953. The victims were Sara Shaw and Jan Whitley, two young women who were sharing a one-bedroom cabin in the Canyons at the time. When Sara Shaw first met Ann she couldn’t remember much about her frightening experience. She explained only that she had awakened in the dead of night, when an odd light began to shine into her window. Simultaneously, an odd silence came over the area. Both she and Jan had just gotten out of bed to see what the cause of the light might be, she explained, when they found themselves paralyzed. An “instant” later they realized that over two hours had passed. Sara could remember nothing more.
Sara eventually moved away from Jan, developed a compulsive urge to study medicine, and later experienced a “flash of insight” in which she envisioned a cure for cancer. She did not, however, relate these new developments in her life to her experience of March 1953. She only began to think in terms of a possible UFO encounter some twenty years later, when the subject of UFOs and UFO abductions began receiving a great deal of attention in the media.
Ann Druffel eventually had Sara hypnotically regressed on three occasions: December 5, 1975; February 26, 1976; and (in my presence) on October 22, 1978—which shed new light on the 1953 experience.
A typical abduction scenario unfolded during these sessions. Sara remembered that a group of skinny, black-garbed aliens teleported into her cabin through a closed window. They took hold of Jan and herself and floated them outside to a UFO. Jan fought against them, but Sara was curiously indifferent to what was happening. She found the aliens friendly and thought the experience was “sort of fun,” to use her own words.
The two women were separated and Sara recalled being given a physical examination by the male entities, who undressed her as the female aliens stood back passively. She was then taken to a conference room where she was told about a cure for cancer. Then she and Jan were returned to their home. Unfortunately, Jan could never be successfully hypnotized, because she is extremely resistant to suggestion. So she has never been able to verify Sara’s recollections. However, even today she recalls waking up, seeing the light, and finding herself paralyzed.
The Sara Shaw case gave me the opportunity for which I had been waiting—the chance to make a detailed psychological study of a UFO abductee. I had found that most reports on abduction cases have focused more on the witness’s reported experiences than on the witnesses themselves . I hoped to rectify this situation with my investigation of the Shaw case.
I therefore made a detailed study of Ms. Shaw, which included going over her present concerns and thoughts about her experience, talking to her about her childhood, and also taking a complete sexual history. It was during this process that I discovered that Sara’s abduction experience, far from being an alien kidnapping, seemed to encapsulate and dramatize several conflicts which were plaguing her at the time, As I talked with Sara I learned that she came from a rather disturbed family background.
She had been taught to avoid contact with men by an extremely dominant mother, who had imbued in Sara some rather antiquated views about relations with the opposite sex. This indoctrination had so profoundly affected Sara that the (then) young woman had decided, in an unconscious attempt to please her mother, that she would cut herself off from normal contact with men.
She became roommates with a young woman who made independence a virtue and went “off to the wilds” to live an almost hermit-like existence away from men and society in general. She lived with Jan for two years before realizing that her life was not very fulfilling. After much professional counseling, she lost her distrust of men and eventually entered into two marriages. Unfortunately, neither marriage was successful.
Today, Sara is a single woman engaged in her own career. Sara’s UFO abduction experience ma
kes considerable sense when viewed in the light of her background, since her story contains some rather overt (though symbolic) allusions to the conflicts which eventually led her to seek counseling.
Just take a look at her recollections. She remembered how strange overpowering figures entered into her bedroom, abducted her, and separated her from Jan. Oddly, though, Sara found this adventure fun and realized that her abductors were friendly. The male entities took off her clothes and examined her while the female entities looked on passively.
These events seem to be a series of messages right out of Sara’s own unconscious, which sought to tell her that her lifestyle was unsatisfactory and that she would not find fulfillment until she could break away from Jan and enter into normal social and sexual relationships with men. The whole abduction seems to be a veiled rape fantasy, which left Sara with a curious sense of happiness and satisfaction—as though she had learned something very important from it.
It appears that Sara’s UFO abduction occurred during a time of great conflict in her life. She and Jan moved from the Canyons shortly after the incident, and Sara gradually drew away from Jan and went out on her own. She eventually lost contact with her former roommate, who subsequently developed cancer—during the same time Sara was becoming inexplicably obsessed with medicine and cancer cures!
To put all of this a little more simply, Sara’s UFO abduction experience reads surprisingly like a dream she might have had at that time, in which her own unconscious thoughts and conflicts were presented to her by some element of her own mind. The scenario also showed Sara how she could resolve this conflict, which is also a very common aspect of normal dreaming. Yet, on the other hand, there can be no denying that Sara underwent a genuine UFO experience. Although Jan could not remember any details of the abduction during repeated attempts to regress her, she did recall—with frightening vividness—the events which led to her blackout, including the intense pain she felt around her head when she found herself paralyzed after that mysterious light first appeared through the window.
The Mammoth Encyclopedia of Extraterrestrial Encounters Page 89
