I learned to live with stress, guilt, and the knowledge that my husband and children and even my mother-in-law were also paying a price for my unbreakable resolution to learn everything I could about the aliens who were interfering in the lives of earthlings. Actually, I don’t have any choice. I have to continue this work. Bob is okay with that, very understanding, he allows me to do whatever I feel I must. He will not accept the idea that there is any connection to our family accidents and my UFO investigations.
My Mother is simply horrified by the whole idea and she totally rejects the reality of my experiences and of my life work. She still lives in Tulsa but I usually don’t share stories of my investigative work with her. Too crazy, she thinks. And in a way I agree with her. Nobody in their right mind would ever get into UFO-alien research if they could help it. It’s far too dangerous. I was born to do this work.
Years before, while we were still working together, the “accidents” or happenings and the warning which once came to me telepathically before a terrifying incident, caused me to discuss these problem with Jacques. In fact, I had never had such warnings before I began my work with Jacques Vallee. When I told him about the warnings he lay my problems, my “warnings,” at the feet of coincidence and tried to laugh the whole thing off. Sometimes I persuaded myself that I was being silly and I laughed with him.
But things escalated and my laughter died.
During the time that I first formed a working partnership with Jacques Vallee I had a warning. Three days before I first left for Arkansas I was working in my kitchen trying to get things in order before I departed. A telepathic message sounded inside my head. The message was, “If you go on this trip, one of your children will pay.” I was galvanized but determined. I continued to prepare to leave.
The next day, again during house cleaning, I heard, “One of your children will pay the price if you leave on this trip.”
On the third day the message was, “Are you really going to sacrifice one of your children for this trip?” I heard what was said but I couldn’t really believe the words. I consulted Bob and he told me I was imagining things. After I thought it over I agreed that I had indeed been imagining things and I picked up my stuff and left for Arkansas.
On the day I was to return from Arkansas I called home but no one answered. I called my mother-in-law.
“They’re all at the hospital,” she told me.
“What…”
“Branden lifted the hood on his car and unscrewed the cap. He’d eaten supper and had hung around for awhile but apparently the car’s radiator hadn’t yet cooled.” She took a deep breath as if to prepare herself to tell me the worst. “The boiling antifreeze and water spewed out and covered his face, head and shoulders.” She took another breath. “He’s horribly burned, Barbara dear.”
I drove through the snow like a mad woman to get back to Tulsa where I drove straight to the hospital. I got off the elevator and was faced with the glass burn unit wall. As I stood there a man wearing no shirt walked by, his head. neck and shoulders bandaged completely. I watched him walk away toward his bed. I recognized the walk. It was my boy. He had to spend three weeks in the burn unit at the hospital. The whole thing, including the treatment, which required someone to pull burned skin away from his face with tweezers, was a nightmarish horror.
I almost collapsed when I realized who I was watching. I blamed myself. Suddenly the warnings came back to me. This wasn’t me creating a drama, this was real. This was my child. I tormented myself and spent every day at the hospital. He was in room #169, which for me, only verified the fact that the intelligence which had punished me had left a signature on Branden’s hospital door.
It is truly horrible to know that there is an invisible system in control of all of us, a system which can perpetuate that sort of thing on a family. They can threaten, then they can carry out the threat. They have access to the technology to do whatever they wish to do. Our alien masters have the technology and the sophistication to manipulate and orchestrate anything at all. I believe quite sincerely that Branden’s accident was alien in origin... his car had actually cooled, I’m sure… until they caused it to boil up again.
There is one good thing that can be told about this incident. After they released my son from the hospital he had beautiful new skin, the kind of skin women pay for when they get chemical peels. His face was covered with smooth childlike skin with no blemishes. His hair, his eyebrows, his lashes, all came back looking better than ever before. That part of his experience was a miracle. He’d always been a good looking teenager but after he recovered from the burns he was a truly beautiful young man.
Once after looking at mutilated cow after mutilated cow in an Arkansas visit, I found that my daughter Mandy had had her turn with sadness because of her Mother’s obsession. She was driving down the narrow street in front of the Southroads Mall. Suddenly a young man on a motorcycle darted out in front of her and into her car. He was thrown up and landed on the hood of Mandy’s Toyota. They were never able to determine exactly what had happened but during the accident, the young man’s rectum was cored out exactly as were the rectums of all the cows I’d looked at in Arkansas. He did recover but he will never have children, they say. Mandy was cleared of any wrongdoing. Just to be sure I got the message, the number on the police report of the incident was, of course, “69.”
This is what happened a few months later, just before Jacques and I took another trip to investigate somewhere in Kansas:
Mandy had taken her first apartment with a girlfriend, in the University of Tulsa area. Mandy had fallen asleep on the couch in their second story apartment. Her friend had gone out of town for the weekend.
She awakened to see a man standing over the couch staring down at her. He told her he had entered through the kitchen door, he also told her that he was going to rape her. She jumped off the couch, tripped, he held her down and stabbed the backs of her thighs. She fought like a wild woman, pulling herself up, grabbing for the man’s knife and kicking out at him. He beat her face black and blue but she never gave up. In fact she screamed so loudly and fought so valiantly that a neighbor heard, called the police, then came running. The would-be rapist left before the police arrived.
Many young women who have endured such terror suffer from posttraumatic stress. Mandy has never had such symptoms, which we think is a miracle. The counselor who talked with her several times said that fighting back was the best way to avoid the sadness, depression and agony which descends upon most rape victims. The police were, at that time, investigating a rash of break-ins by a particular man whom the newspapers were calling “The TU Rapist.” It seems college girls living in apartments were his special target and the police were sure that Mandy’s attacker was the one they’d named the TU rapist. The officer who investigated the case and spoke to us was wearing shield #69.
About 12 weeks before my last meeting with Jacques, I again felt as though my family was somehow in danger. I told Jacques I had a “feeling” that something was going to happen. He was intrigued by what I had to say but ultimately he maintained his usual skeptical demeanor. He shrugged off my concern. I was to go to New York with him, he needed me on this special investigative trip, he said. I was so impressed that he had been named a national treasure in France, that a man of such note would want to work with me, I felt I could not allow myself to be turned aside from my goal... our goal, to learn as a team, more about the strange UFO happenings that were being reported all across the country and in Europe.
Just two weeks before we left for our New York trip, one of the most frightening occurrences which had ever happened to our family, involved one of my daughters.
At about 11:30 at night, seventeen year old Katha was driving a friend home. The were in Katha’s Toyota when they crossed a railway crossing where shrubs had grown to cover the warning sign. There was no whistle, there were no lights on the engine, and the locomotive hit Katha’s car broadside. We later learned it had been an unschedule
d run for the train. The engineer had been drinking and he threw out his bottle after he’d rammed into the side of my daughter’s car. He had just been taking a “joy ride.” Luckily, neither she nor her friend were killed but Katha was seriously injured. Her friend had a few bruises and scratches.
The engine’s number ended with the numbers, “69.”
We took both of the girls to Hillcrest Hospital in Tulsa. They looked at Katha and took no X-rays even though she had an indentation on her temple which was the size of half an egg.
Three days later an unknown lawyer appeared at our door and told us to take Katha to a doctor. We did and the doctor found that the girl’s cheekbones were broken, her nose broken and the bones around her eyes, were broken. A bone in her neck was also broken. I took photographs of each of the injuries and instead of putting the film into my bag I held it in my lap, ready to deliver to the film kiosk. When I stepped out of the car the film fell out, unrolled itself and lay exposed across the pavement. Later when I spoke to Jacques about the accident he still insisted there was, “No connection.”
# # #
During the years when we had the gallery, then when I’d gone to work for Bill Blair, then all during the years of the investigations in partnership with Jacques Vallee, my husband Bob was also following a dream of his own.
I bought into his dream psychically but also helped him physically and spiritually. He is an artist so he continued to pursue his art. He also always wanted to live on the ocean with our family. I fell in with his plans because I too loved the idea. Taking the children to live in a boat built by their parents was an idea that really thrilled me. We began the work with a hammer, a keg of nails, a handsaw and a dream.
We began work on a huge building, eighty feet long by twenty-five feet high, shingled sides, back and roof. We’re both good with our hands and the work was exciting for both of us. I worked on the project when I was not on a job or in the investigative mode with Jacques. Bob worked on the project whenever he wasn’t working on an art commission.
He had the idea of building a boat, no, a yacht really, made of concrete. He’d learned that the U.S. had built ships of concrete during World War II. We could do that, he thought, and I agreed. We would build a concrete ship large enough to hold our family and ourselves as well as twenty other people. Tulsa has access to the sea through Tulsa’s Port of Catoosa. Boats, ships and barges come up to Tulsa via the Port of Catoosa locks and moved back down to the ocean, everyday. We would build the vessel, lowboy it to the port of Catoosa and launch it from there, we explained to our puzzled friends and family. A huge dream, an impossible dream really, for two people who had no money, no experience with boats, and very little help.
We never hesitated for a moment.
As soon as the huge shelter was finished, we began building the actual boat keel. Soon the boat rose from nothing to a huge vessel. We paid for the dream with whatever we had in our pockets at the moment, then waited until we had a few more cents to purchase whatever else we needed. People in the neighborhood called our project, “The Ark.”
It took us thirteen years and about $350,000, not even counting the thousands of hours of physical labor Bob and I and a few friends and family, poured into the ship, but we eventually built in beautiful staterooms paneled with gorgeous hardwoods, built in the fixtures we would need and made it as luxurious and comfortable as we could. We could see, almost taste, our life as it would soon be, out on the water in our concrete dream.
The day I left Jacques Vallee at LaGuardia Airport in New York, I didn’t know that this was the last time I would ever see him. We stood together outside in front of the terminal. He was one of the few men that I had to look up to because he was so tall. As always he was dressed perfectly. He had, in our years together, always been sweet, kind and loving to me, no matter where we were or what our situation, even when I’d done something outrageous such as spray cream on his impeccable clothing. I got on my plane for Tulsa, not knowing what I would find when I landed in Oklahoma.
What I found was complete chaos.
When I drove up into the yard, the whole back pasture was alight. Fire trucks were everywhere. I walked into the house and the telephone was ringing. I picked up the instrument and it was Jacques.
“They’ve burned our car, our big building and our boat, Jacques. The firemen are here right now. I ignored their warnings and now see what I’ve done.”
He said something that surprised me when he told me that he now believed that these accidents were happening because of our partnership. “It is no longer safe for us to work together.” he said.
I hung up to go at once to see if I could help but the damage was done. Our yacht and the protective building which had covered it were completely destroyed. Of course, we had no insurance.
A friend confided in me later that Jacques had told him he was really upset that our partnership could be the reason for such a serious accident. One of the things he said to me was, “Perhaps when this UFO business reaches a different level, we can again work together.” Sometimes I’ve suspected that Jacques was himself an alien in human form. He was almost too superior in behavior, appearance and intellect to be human.
We learned that a young man of the community had been indulging in alcohol and crank at a party which my girls were attending. They refused to dance with him or to talk to him because of his condition. He drove straight to our house and set the Toyota, which was in the street, on fire. He then raced to the back and poured gasoline over the ship and torched it. Four teenaged boys who had been standing at the far end of our field observing a UFO ship were also watching the activity as well as the ship, they reported later. The all saw a UFO vessel hovering over the fire for the better part of the two hours it took to consume the boat and its wooden shelter, as if the aliens were also monitoring the destruction. Nothing with 69 on it here, folks, just an alien ship hovering overhead to give me my message.
Bob had not even known the boat was on fire at first. He’d just awakened when he saw the flames in the car. He went out to try to put out the fire in the car and it was too late by the time his son Kevin and Kevin’s friend, John, had noticed the flames in the high windows of the sheltering building. Bob then realized that the building in the back pasture was also on fire. The fire department could save nothing. The local news media spread the story of our loss across the papers and onto the local and national TV and radio programs. There was something about a concrete boat burning that struck a chord with the reporters. Our loss was a great story for them. The boy was a minor so he was turned loose. Nothing ever happened to him for all that destruction.
We gave up all our ocean dreams that night.
When Jacques called the next day I refused to even consider another trip of investigation. Our searches had, over the years, cost the Bartholic family a great deal but I was finally, and at long last, convinced that I had to put an end to my working partnership with the French investigator. There was no way I could jeopardize my loved ones any further.
I’ve learned in the years since that it is really important to the aliens to try to get people hooked on methamphetimine or crank. I believe the crazed young man had been manipulated to set those two fires.
And I also believe that all the accidents which happened to my family finally caused me to decide to stay home.
My real work began at about that time.
Chapter 13
CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF A DIFFERENT KIND
A year passed. One day I was painting our house. I had my wireless telephone up on the ladder with me. It rang. I answered. Jacques Vallee spoke. My heart pounded erratically at the sound of his voice.
“Oh, hello,” I said, willing myself to calm down.
“I’ve just recently been attending a meeting in Paris. Dr. J. Allan Hynek was there and he thought it would be good for us, for you and me, Barbara, to reestablish our link and work together again. What do you think?”
“Well,” I said, “I’m not really s
ure. Perhaps not enough time has passed, Jacques.”
“Could we start again within the next two weeks?”
“Let me think about it.”
We hung up and I finished the painting. Later I came down and ran to put my equipment into the garage. Something invisible, a barrier of some kind, sent me flying to crash backward into an old, heavy-duty metal wheelbarrow. I was bruised terribly and I cracked two of my ribs.
I understood. They had told me I should not even think of resuming work with Jacques. Once I’d made up my mind to that, the severe pain left me. I knew I couldn’t afford to speak to him, much less work with him again.
Within the next week, while I was taking a bath and had submerged to wash my hair, he called again. One of my family answered and after peeking into the room to check on me, told him I was not available. I felt that I had had the impulse to submerge myself to wash my hair simply as protection. I’d never washed my hair in that manner before. Some force didn’t want us working together.
I never talked to him again.
I did write him a letter telling about my fall in the garage only minutes after his call. In the letter I told him it still appeared to be too dangerous to resume work with him. I also wrote several pages telling him of my gratitude that I had had the opportunity to work with him, that he had made me a more knowledgeable person, and other things of that sort, then I put the letter into an envelope and put the envelope into my bag to mail before lunchtime.
Barbara: The Story of a UFO Investigator Page 10
