By Nicholas Redfern November 02, 2009
4 True Stories of Alien Abduction
© Mania/ Robert Trate
The plot of Universal Pictures’ The Fourth Kind a thriller set in modern-day Alaska, in theaters November 6—is an intriguing one. A disproportionate number of the population of Nome, Alaska has been reported missing every year. Despite multiple FBI investigations of the region, the truth has never been discovered. In this remote region, people began reporting bizarre nightmares that are disrupting their sleep. During videotaped sessions with some of the traumatized patients, psychologist Dr. Abigail Tyler (Milla Jovovich) unwittingly discovers some of the most disturbing evidence of alien abduction ever documented.
The story behind the making of the film is equally intriguing. In October 2004, The Fourth Kind director Olatunde Osunsanmi met a psychologist living in the Carolinas who had relocated there from a remote town along the Bering Sea. While in Alaska, she had conducted a sleep disorder study where her patients, under hypnosis, exhibited behaviors that suggested encounters with non humans.
Using never-before-seen archival footage integrated into the film, Osunsanmi exposes the terrified revelations of multiple witnesses. Their accounts of being visited by aliens share disturbingly identical details, the validity of which is investigated throughout the film. The film leaves it to the viewer to decide: Are extra-terrestrials from far-off planets really abducting human beings? Certainly, there is no shortage of similar reports suggesting this is the case.
4. Missing Time
Although the term "flying saucer" was coined way back in the summer of 1947, it was not until the early 1960s that the alien abduction controversy began to attract public and media attention. And it was largely thanks to a married couple from New Hampshire: Betty and Barney Hill.
On the night of September 19, 1961, the Hills were driving home from a vacation in Canada when they were subjected to a terrifying experience. Until their arrival home, there was little to indicate that anything untoward had happened during the journey. It later transpired, however, that approximately two hours of time could not be accounted for.
After some months of emotional distress, the couple sought assistance from Benjamin Simon, a Boston-based psychiatrist and neurologist. Subjected to time-regression hypnosis, both Betty and Barney recalled what had taken place during that missing two hours.
Astonishingly, they provided very close accounts of encounters with human-like alien beings that took the pair on-board a spacecraft and exposed them to a wide variety of physical examinations and medical tests.
Controversial? You bet. But, the experience of the Hills is far from isolated. Literally hundreds of people around the world have reported similar experiences. And they show no signs of stopping any time soon.
3. Abduction in Texas
Tammy Stone claims that at the age of 24, she underwent an alien abduction experience in early March 1973 near Waco, Texas. The story began when Stone had completed her late-night shift as a waitress in a diner situated approximately 30 miles outside of Waco. It was at around 2 AM of the day at issue, and she was driving toward the city and back to her small apartment.
On a lonely stretch of road, and after having driven for no more than about 15 minutes, Stone began to "feel strange; like I had been drugged or was in a dream." She adds: "My ears hurt and everything I could hear, like the car’s engine, all sounded muffled."
More alarming, however, was the fact that Stone began to feel distinctly light-headed and dizzy—which quickly turned into a violent form of vertigo, accompanied by acute nausea. Despite feeling seriously ill, Stone finally made it back to the safety of her home. Just like Betty and Barney Hill, however, there was a significant period of lost time: three hours of her life were completely gone.
Over a period of several subsequent nights, however, Stone experienced a series of vivid and disturbing dreams that appeared to fill in at least some of the missing pieces of the jigsaw.
"In the dream, I would always see these two small figures coming to my car, and my engine and lights going off," she says.
As the beings got ever closer, Stone could see that both were around five feet in height, possessed "thin faces and cheeks," and were attired in light-blue, one-piece "uniforms," and tight-fitting caps.
Stone could only sit in the car–with a heady mixture of awe and fear—as one of the figures opened the driver’s-side door. The two entities then "dragged" her out of the vehicle and proceeded to carry her by her ankles and wrists to the craft. Stone’s next memory was of being stripped of her clothing and laid out on a cold hard table with five or six "similar people or things" standing around her.
Alarmingly, Stone recalled that some sort of cold, metallic device was placed into her right nostril and removed after a few minutes. As this distressing activity was occurring, says Stone, "a small machine hovered over me like a big eye, and made a humming noise that made me feel very sick."
Her next recollection was of being dressed, then carried back to the car and placed into the passenger seat. The bizarre encounter was over and the aliens were gone.
2. Alien Communion
Beyond any shadow of doubt, the alien abduction controversy reached stratospheric levels in February 1987, when Communion, a book by horror-author Whitley Strieber, was published and soared to number one on The New York Times' best-seller list. Hardback sales hit 300,000, and paperback figures reached more than two million.
Strieber, whose credits include the books Wolfen and The Coming Global Superstorm—the latter being the inspiration for the 2004 movie The Day After Tomorrow, which starred Dennis Quaid—had undergone a strange and traumatic experience on December 26, 1985, when he was abducted during the night from his cabin in upstate New York.
Referring to his abductors as the "Visitors," Strieber described in Communion a series of encounters with small, thin beings with large bald heads and hypnotic black eyes. In other words, they weren't locals. Once again, medical examinations were at the forefront of the experiences…as were the concerns of the Visitors regarding ecological destruction and the future of planet Earth and the human race. Further alien abduction-themed books followed from Strieber, including Transformation and The Secret School. Today, via his website unknowncountry.com, Strieber continues to be a major figure in the alien abduction field.
1. E.T. Infiltration
So, what is it that lies at the heart of the alien abduction mystery? In his book The Threat, David M. Jacobs., Ph.D., offers a few ideas based on his own deep investigation of the subject. His conclusions make for disturbing reading.
Says Jacobs: "All the evidence seems to suggest that integration into human society is the aliens' ultimate goal. And all their efforts and activities appear to be geared toward complete control of the humans on Earth. Indeed, the abductees are already living with the burden of alien visitation and manipulation.”
He adds: "The aliens have suggested that the time is not far off when their programs will end and they will have achieved their goal."
"Time is short," an alien abductee interviewed by Jacobs was ominously told.
Whatever the truth that ultimately lies at the heart of the alien abduction mystery, it seems likely that the release of The Fourth Kind is destined to reignite the debate about UFOs, extraterrestrial life, and its possible interactions with us, the human race.
