By Michael Lindemann
[Part One of Two: March 1, 1998]
The modern era of UFO encounters, dating roughly from the end of World War II, contained from its inception an implicit argument over the character and motives of "the visitors." The earliest military studies of UFOs, undertaken in secret, were driven in part by a genuine fear of hostile invasion from space. That fear exploded into popular culture in the early fifties, epitomized by such films as "War of the Worlds" and "Invasion of the Body Snatchers." At the same time, while the first generation of serious civilian ufologists fixated on distant objects in the sky, an odd assortment of so-called contactees began attracting hordes of followers, some merely curious but many entranced and adoring, to hear their stories of benevolent, godlike beings from other worlds.
The gross dichotomy between hostile invaders and benevolent space brothers might have been expected to fade as decades of research advanced our understanding of UFO phenomena. But exactly the opposite has happened instead. Today, the argument over the character and motives of the visitors is more starkly drawn than ever.
It must of course be acknowledged that another, more fundamental argument overlays the first -- that is, the argument concerning whether or not UFO phenomena and alleged "alien visitation" represent anything otherworldly at all. But for purposes of this special report, that argument will be set aside. Here we will assume that "the visitors" are real, in order to examine the deeply divided opinions about who "they" are and what they may be doing on our planet.
Among the current generation of serious researchers, Temple University history professor David M. Jacobs, Ph.D., stands out both as a scholar of the phenomena and as a proponent of the darkest scenario of alien invasion. Jacobs' concept of the invasion bears no resemblance to the popular six-gun mythology of "Independence Day," where grotesquely tentacled aliens stand in for Saddam Hussein and heroic American flyboys kick them back to the stone age. The "real" invasion -- and for Jacobs it is absolutely real -- is more terrifying than that, because it is utterly surreptitious yet unstoppable. We are doomed as a species, Jacobs believes, and we didn't even see it coming.
"The aliens have fooled us," he writes in his disturbing new book, "The Threat: What the Aliens Really Want, and How They Plan to Get It" (Simon & Schuster, 1998). "They lulled us into an attitude of disbelief, and hence complacency, at the very beginning of our awareness of their presence. Thus, we were unable to understand the dimensions of the threat they pose and act to intervene. Now it may be too late. My own complacency is gone, replaced by a sense of profound apprehension and even dread.... Now I fear for the future of my own children."
Jacobs is hardly alone in his forebodings. Budd Hopkins, arguably the most influential abduction researcher on earth, shares Jacobs' view that alien intruders are quietly engineering a huge population of hybrid beings, mixing human and alien genetic material toward the end goal of supplanting present-day humanity with an "improved" race answerable to the aliens' designs for planet earth.
As Jacobs sees it, "It is now possible to discern at least four specific programs that the aliens have put into effect to achieve their goal:
"1) The Abduction Program: The aliens initially selected human victims around the world and instituted procedures to take these humans and their progeny from their environments without detection.
"2) The Breeding Program: The aliens collect human sperm and eggs, genetically alter the fertilized embryo, incubate fetuses in human hosts, and make humans mentally and physically interact with the offspring for proper hybrid development.
"3) The Hybridization Program: The aliens refine the hybrids by continual alteration and breeding with humans over the generations to become more human while retaining crucial alien characteristics. Perhaps humans are also altered over time and acquire alien characteristics.
"4) The Integration Program: The aliens prepare the abductees for future events. Eventually, the hybrids or the aliens themselves integrate into human society and assume control."
Jacobs believes we are well into the end-game in this grand and malevolent strategy. While unsure of the exact timing of the takeover, he reports:
"Many abductees feel that 'something is going to happen' soon and that the aliens have their goal within sight.... The indications are that this could mean from within the next five years to within the next two generations."
And lest one harbor any hope for fair treatment under the new regime, Jacobs spells out the likely fate of the majority non-abductee population of earthlings. Among abductees he has personally worked with, Jacobs says, some are told "that nonabductees will be kept as a small breeding population in case the hybridization program has unforeseen problems. [Others are] led to believe that nonabductees are expendable. The evidence seems to suggest that the future will be played out primarily with aliens, hybrids and abductees. The nonabductees will have an inferior role, if any at all. The new order will be insectlike aliens in control, followed by other aliens, hybrids, abductees, and finally, nonabductees."
By "insectlike aliens," Jacobs refers to tall greys with mantis-like features, as have been often described in abduction literature. In "The Threat," Jacobs refers to other types of aliens as well, including smaller greys, grey-type beings with differing skin tones, "Nordics" and "reptilians." He suspects that the often-reported Nordic or distinctly human-looking aliens are actually hybrids created by the tall greys. He admits some uncertainty regarding reptilians and other exotic, less-frequently reported types. But he leaves no doubt that the insectlike tall greys are in charge of the changes underway on earth.
Though Jacobs' research is meticulous and passionately reported, his conclusions are disputed by many other voices in the UFO community.
Jim Marrs, author of "Alien Agenda," concedes that human evolution may have been manipulated by aliens more than once, but he doesn't believe in a malevolent invasion.
"I take a more positive attitude," he told CNI News in a recent interview. "If there were alien races out there who wanted to come and somehow enslave this world, particularly in an overt fashion, I think they would have done it long before now. The historical record shows that this alien presence has been here since before the recorded history of mankind. Surely they wouldn't have waited until we've got the capability of going off planet, laser weaponry and so forth. I don't see any reason to get overly fearful at this point."
Special effects artist Steve Neill, a life-long abductee whose graphic depictions of grey aliens and abduction scenarios have been featured in numerous television shows, says he can understand Jacobs' point of view but thinks something more gradual and positive may be taking place. Speaking with CNI News, Neill admitted that he's experienced big "mood swings" about his encounters, from deep fear and anger on one hand to a kind of giddy euphoria on the other. Now, he says, he's found a middle position that he's happy with. In his view, the visitors are certainly manipulating the human race -- but they are simply part of the grand pattern of nature.
"The swings I've been through kind of encapsulate what this is all about -- going from one extreme to the next, and then arriving at the middle," he says. "That's something that everything in the universe tries to do, reach a balance no matter what. In the end, I don't really view this as good or bad. I view it as part of what I'm part of, this amazing mechanism of the universe that makes nature function as it does. Every creature is caught up in some aspect of it, no matter where you go."
Asked about Jacobs' view that aliens might be engineering the end of humanity as we know it, Neill suggested that our current situation may be comparable to an earlier period of human genetic advancement.
"In a way, Jacobs is right," Neill said. "Consider that Neanderthals no longer exist. That was an extinction. But I'm not in the position to decide if it's something that should be viewed as evil -- one species developing or being engineered into another. I think Cro Magnon was an improvement on the Neanderthal. And I'm starting to believe that what we're looking for as 'hybrid' human beings has already existed for a very long time. There are numbers of hybrids in our society today, in fact more than we can possibly imagine. The people who are having these experiences themselves, I feel, may be sorts of hybrids who have been genetically engineered and altered, going back generation after generation in their families. I am starting to see children in this world who are so incredibly brilliant, and have this light on like no other children I've seen. I've met some of these kids. If it's what I think it is, it's brilliant, because it will be slipped in so smoothly, and these kids are so powerful, that they are bound to change the world."
Not everyone, of course, can be sanguine about a situation in which everything we now regard as human is being gradually manipulated into something else -- even if that something else is "better" on some cosmic scale of value.
Other researchers and experiencers hold views greatly different from Jacobs, Hopkins and even Neill. For these people -- Jacobs refers to them as "Positives" -- visitors to earth are unambiguously benevolent and have our physical well-being and spiritual advancement foremost in mind.
Notable among this group are CSETI's Dr. Steven Greer, leading proponent of human-initiated close encounters or CE-5s; psychologist Richard Boylan, author of "Close Extraterrestrial Encounters: Positive Experiences with Mysterious Visitors"; and Lyssa Royal, author of "Visitors From Within" and "Preparing for Contact," whose writings are primarily the product of channeling. Such articulators of the "Positive" outlook generally agree that extraterrestrial intelligence is widespread, diverse, highly organized (in the sense of a Galactic Federation or similar cosmic government) and benevolently active on the earth for the express purpose of assisting humanity through a time of turmoil and transformation. For the most part, though not unanimously, they argue that the fearful and negative views of abduction put forward by David Jacobs and his allies are products of human misunderstanding, not alien misbehavior. Even the term "abduction" is generally dismissed by them as wholly unfair and misleading.
Less well known than Greer or Boylan, but equally representative of this "Positive" position, is Nancy Malacaria, a New England resident who, with her husband Jack, claims to have had numerous communications with ET representatives of a highly organized, earth-based enterprise known simply as The Project.
Nancy and Jack are the parents of five children, run a successful rug-cleaning business out of their home, and by all outward appearances are normal, solid citizens of Norwood, Massachusetts. But on May 12, 1990, their lives suddenly changed when Jack had an unexpected experience in the garage of their home. It was the middle of his work day, and he was busy washing a rug. As Nancy described it in a recent interview with CNI News:
"He kept seeing a bright flash of light. It looked like a mirror reflection of the sun flashing in through the window. He kept looking up, thinking that somebody was stepping up to the door. Then there was another bright flash of light, and this time it stayed lit up. There was a doorway of light, standing up like a hologram in the middle of the floor -- like you're in a dark room, and you have a closet light on and you open the closet door and all you can see is the light, not the frame. It opened, and there was a figure standing in the doorway, a silhouette. It looked sort of like a man. Of course, my husband was very afraid. It was between him and the only way out of the garage. In his mind he heard a man's voice saying to him, 'This image is scaring you, so I'm going to make it disappear, but I'm still going to talk to you.' Then the doorway closed up again, just the way it opened.
"As soon as it shut, my husband left the garage. He was very afraid. It was the only logical thing to do. So he came into the house -- I wasn't home -- and he thought about what happened. His mind was reeling. In about 20 minutes, he went back outside again, because he had left all his equipment on and he had to finish his work. He peeked in the garage. Everything looked normal. He realized that all the equipment was still on. He didn't know what to think -- he wasn't calm enough to think about it. You know, when you're very upset, you don't think, you just sort of absorb. So he finished working.
"And while he was working, this voice kept talking to him. It was telepathy. The voice told him, basically, that there are 30 other worlds visiting earth that are concerned for the ecological state of our planet, and that they were not going to let man destroy our planet. This was the very first message. It really is not the whole purpose of their being here, but that was a very straightforward introduction."
From that unlikely beginning, Nancy told CNI News, she and her husband found themselves engaged in a "furious" series of telepathic, and sometimes physical, contacts with a wide assortment of beings.
"There were about 100 point blank encounters in the first 18 months, and then about 100 more in the next two years," Nancy says. "We've met many different people... aliens of different races. We've learned a lot about their abilities. We learned why aliens visit us, why they don't let people see them, how it is that people assume they're abducted."
In time, Nancy says, she and her husband were told of no less than 170 different alien groups currently represented on earth. Most of these groups, though not all, are formally associated with a highly organized, earth-based enterprise known as The Project.
"There's one Project for earth. There are other projects, but they're for other worlds," Nancy says. "The Project is the organization of all the visiting life for that planet. That occurs when the beings on that planet reach a point in their evolution where they can start to understand other life."
Among the many alien groups that Nancy claims to have met are several that answer to the description and behavior of the so-called greys. She offers a novel variation on the widely-held idea that the greys are principally responsible for human abductions, and that they behave as if indifferent to human rights.
"The greys are working with genetics, and they are creating races. Their methods are not as advanced as some of the other aliens that visit us. Not all of our visiting life is working with genetics, but two particular [grey] races that I know about are. As their technology improves, so will their methods. In the meantime, their methods prevent them from being able to join the Project. But some of the Project beings are working with them to help them improve communications and improve their methods, and they will eventually join the Project."
Needless to say, one might wonder how Nancy Malacaria can speak so matter-of-factly about such outlandish things and expect to be taken seriously. Yet, Steve Neill speaks with similar self-assurance about aliens he has met; and although David Jacobs inserts an occasional self-deprecating admission that his ideas sound absurd, he is just as committed to his dark views as Nancy is to her own. For purposes of this special report, CNI News neither endorses nor rejects any such claims, but simply points out that they all exist as parts of a rich and fractious cultural conversation regarding alien visitation and what it might portend for the human future.
Nancy Malacaria -- much like Steven Greer, Richard Boylan and Lyssa Royal, among others -- believes that "the biggest reason there is so much human negativity about our visiting life is human nature. It's the way we think and assume. Where there's very little understanding, we automatically assume the worst.
"There's really no sensitive way to say this, but [ufology] attracts people who really don't understand what they're saying, and don't understand the reputation they're giving our visiting life," she declares. "That's one of the biggest reasons why the aliens don't let people see them, because everybody would just believe everything they've ever heard, and none of it is accurate."
If Nancy Malacaria can be believed, "The Project" is intended to assist humankind through its present time of planetary turmoil and bring earth to a point of readiness to join a wider galactic community. It is a view widely shared by the "Positives," and diametrically opposed to the apocalyptic visions of David Jacobs, Budd Hopkins and their sympathizers.
"As much as I want to be optimistic, I find little to fuel hope for the future," writes David Jacobs. "In a way, I wish I could be like the Positives, existing in a naive but happy dreamland, awaiting the coming of the Benevolent Ones who will engulf us all in love and protection... [but] I must go where the evidence leads me. I have come to view the alien abduction phenomenon and its purpose as an asteroid hurtling toward the Earth -- discovered too late for intervention. We can track its progress and yet be utterly incapable of preventing the collision."
If alien visitors are really here, do they portend the beginning of the end, or the beginning of something much grander than humans have ever known before? Or are both these views too extreme, too dogmatic and too implausible? What about the great in-between, reported by many experiencers, where diverse visitors display behavior and motives spanning the entire moral spectrum? And what about the possibility that the visitors -- some of them, at least -- are not extraterrestrials at all, but something even stranger?
This special report continues in the next edition of CNI News.
[Visit Steve Neill's web site at http://www.anw.com/dreamlandfx
Visit Nancy Malacaria's web site at http://members.aol.com/earthsistr/2.index.html]
Original file name: CNI - Abduction/Contact
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