Filename: Fallon.Art Type : Article Author : D'Arcy Fallon - Gazette Telegraph Newspaper Date : 08/02/92 Desc : Article on Wyoming UFO Conference Note : Transcribed by Sandy Barbre ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: August 2, 1992 Paper: Gazette Telegraph By: D'Arcy Fallon ----------------------------------------------------------------------- There is a half a page picture of Maxine standing out in an open field with storm clouds in the sky. The picture is unique in its own way because Maxine is in her 60's and the way the picture is taken it almost makes her look extraterrestrial. Story as follows: ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Title: TOUCHED FROM BEYOND Caption under picture: On this Earth but not of it, Maxine Parker of Colorado Springs says she's been abducted by aliens, who placed a small implant behind her right ear. LARAMIE, Wy -- If there's a flight scheduled to another planet, Ann Eller wants to be on it. Psychologically, her bags are packed, her ticket is punched. "I'll just go, " says Eller, a 55 year old grandmother and former nurse from Phoenix who attended a recent national conference on unidentified flying objects at the University of Wyoming at Laramie. "I won't worry about my deodorant." On a stormy day, she walks through the sagebrush on a ranch 20 miles north of Laramie. She closes her eyes for a moment, then gazes at the gray clouds boiling up behind the hills, trying to discern if "they" are near. Eller shares a solidarity with the many people who say they've been contacted or abducted by aliens. One of every 50 American adults - about 3.7 million people - say they might have had an abduction experience with an unidentified flying object. The experiences many of these people reported have attracted the attention of mental health professionals, who say the reports are widespread enough, and different enough from those associated with mental illnesses, to deserve serious analysis. The experiences, which are strikingly similar, are not mental aberrations, according to a recent Boston Globe interview with Dr. John Mack, a psychiatrist from Harvard Medical School who has talked in detail with 60 people who reported abduction experiences. Some people reporting abduction seem traumatized by the experience, haunted by periods of "missing time" or angry that they become accidental tourists, taken against their will. Others seem galvanized. For them, life after abduction has more meaning. "I think I was programmed to do something in this life," says Eller, a trim woman with salt and pepper hair and a crisp, indefatigable manner. "There is some kind of ... mission." She's not sure what the mission is, but she says it started on this ranch, which she visited while attending a UFO conference at the university seven years ago. She says she was walking through a pasture when she was filled with a brilliant energy that tap danced through her brain, ran down her body like "a steel rod" and shot into the ground. Later that day, a group of aliens, "channeled" through a friend, appeared to her. They were a rich assortment of ever changing cosmic characters, including a mischievous female with a feathered ornament in her hair and "the Ancient ones" big eyed, wrinkled creatures who filled her with awe. "It was very powerful energy, very intensely loving," Eller says. "You're just wrapped in it." In the distance, lightning embroiders the sky. Eller looks up. No sign of spacecraft. More than anything else, she says, her experience with aliens has left her with a palpable longing to be with them and understand their ways. To those who don't share her belief in aliens and UFOS, Ann Eller's story sounds like tabloid material or worse, the ravings of a space cadet. But Eller and dozens of others at the conference appear to be down to earth people. They have nothing to gain from talking about their experiences, no fame, no money, no power. In fact, many seek anonymity because they're afraid of ridicule. But during the conferences' several closed sessions, many apparently feel secure enough to tell their stories. Talking seems cathartic for them. "To relive is to relieve," says Dr. Leo Sprinkle, who founded the Rocky Mountain Conference on UFO Investigation in 1980, when he was a professor in the University of Wyoming's counseling psychology department and director of its counseling service. (Sprinkle is now a psychologist in private practice in Laramie.) The talk is that of a subculture with its own code words: "alien hybrids," the alien/human offsprings; "implants," tiny BB-shaped monitoring devices inserted during alien abductions and physical examination of humans; "greys," short, pallid aliens with oversized heads and scrawny limbs who are seen by some as "bad guys"; "Nordics," benevolent, Aryan looking aliens who dispense pearls of wisdom; and "men in black," earthly or alien government agents. Taking turns at the podium, they tell of being whisked from their beds in the middle of the night and taken to a UFO, where they were disrobed and examined. One woman tells about being used as a "breeder" for alien "hybrids" (the fetuses were taken from her uterus and raised in a spacecraft incubators), and a teen age boy says he frequently sees UFOs outside his home in Evergreen. TALKING TO JESUS IN AN AIRPLANE Cynthia Baldwin of Reno, Nv a slight, blonde woman with a hesitant smile, gets up and walks slowly to the podium. She says that one night in 1985, after hearing that a Japan Air Lines jumbo jet had plowed into the side of Mount Ogura, she went to bed, deeply disturbed by the news. Later that night, she says, she experienced and "out of body trip". "When I woke up I was with people at the crash site," Baldwin says. "There were many other spiritual helpers. Some people had not died yet, but were in pain. It's like we were ... cradling their spirits as they left their bodies. They were held and cared for as they came away." The audience is spellbound as Baldwin pauses. Several people bow their heads, weeping. "The point I want to make is that our compassion gives us power to help others. We shouldn't be surprised that we can do other things with it, like be in another place at another time. Sometimes people who have had UFO experiences puzzle over the novelty of their experiences, not really thinking how they can be useful." During the same closed session, a woman from Tennessee tells how her mother, a deeply religious, psychic woman used to go out in her yard every day and "talk to Jesus in an airplane." Relatives thought her mother was crazy, nd had her hospitalized and given shock therapy. The treatment broke her mother's spirit, putting an end to her public communing with God. Years late, when she began to have her own UFO and psychic experiences she grieved because her mother had been misunderstood and stigmatized. "Mom, a lot of people are talking to Jesus in an airplane now," she says. While most who talk from the podium seem grounded a few don't. One man strides to the podium on the balls of his feed and says he needs to sing a song. If he doesn't he says, aliens will blow up his car. The group respectfully listens to him sing Simon and Garfunkel's "The Sounds of Silence." Later, at a meeting for relatives and close friends of those reporting experiences with aliens and UFOs, patience is strained when artist Deloris Bedrosky of Pierce City, Mo., interrupts, for the third time, the discussion and begins talking about her UFO experiences. "I'm an astral traveler. I went to Mars," she says, her arm stabbing the air. "They've tried to show me formulas. What do I know? I'm an artist. Anybody getting chills on this stuff? Well, I am." A woman sitting a few seats away from her shakes her head and murmurs, "She needs to turn her receiver down." BELIEVERS, GOVERNMENT OFFICIALS DISAGREE Many of the 150 people at the conference fall into the "government conspiracy" camp, believing that the government is covering up information about aliens and UFOs. Some say that secret military technology is being tested in the skies, and others say the government is in collusion with the aliens. The Air Force tells another story. "There was never any conclusive evidence about UFOs, that any of these (reported sightings) were alien spacecraft or any threat to national security," says Capt. George Sillia, a spokesman for the Air Force Press Desk. In 1969, the Air Force discontinued Project Blue Book, it's 22 year old UFO investigation, after concluding, among other things, that none of the sightings categorized as "unidentified" represented technological developments or principles beyond the range of then current scientific knowledge. The Air Force said most of the 12,618 reported sightings it investigated turned out to be natural events or hoaxes. Ufologists point out, however, that 701 of the reported sightings remain unexplained. The most famous reported sighting was of nine discs on June 24, 1947, near Yakima, Wash., by civilian pilot Kenneth Arnold of Boise, Idaho. As a result of Arnold's report, the term "flying saucer" was born, a rash of public hysteria broke out, and the Air Force began it's Project Blue Book. The most famous reported abduction was of a New England couple, Barney and Betty Hill in 1961. The Hills say they were abducted on a drive through New Hampshire's White Mountains. During hypnotic regression sessions several months later, BArney said he'd been paralyzed, taken aboard the spacecraft, and given a physical examination during which a circular instrument was placed over his groin. Betty said samples of her skin, hair and fingernails were taken, and that a long probe was inserted into her navel. The Hills' story was made into a 1975 television film, "The UFO Incident," starring James EArl Jones and Estelle Parsons. A BOARDING PARTY IN THE DESERT Eager for their own close encounters, some at the conference make expeditions into the countryside surrounding Laramie. They hope to "vector" in any friendly spacecraft. Not everybody is ready to get on board. Tom Needham is doing his laundry in a dorm basement. A pilot from Salt Lake City, Utah, Needham has come to the conference because he's curious about UFOs. But while he thinks it's possible that UFOs exist, he also thinks it's possible that much of what's going on at the conference is group hypnosis. "There are some people I think are loony," Needham says. "They're desperate to have a UFO experience and they want the attention. The people I've talked to might benefit from some counseling." CREDIBLE PEOPLE TELLING INCREDIBLE STORIES Any abduction can be terrifying and disorienting, says Dr. June Parnell, a hypnotherapist and president of the Rocky Mountain Institute on UFO Investigations. It also can transform and revitalize the abductee's life, she says. "Once a person has struggled through the panic of the situation... there seems to be a push or a shove to get on with what's important in life to do," Parnell says. "It's almost like a mission or a task. Everybody mission is different." Leo Sprinkle's mission is to provide a forum for "credible people telling incredible stories." "If they think they've had a weird experience, then the guy or gal next to them may even have a weirder experience.", says Sprinkle, a tall, bespectacled man with a kindly manner. Sprinkle says he saw his first UFO in 1949, when he was a sophomore at the University of Colorado at Boulder. He says he and a friend were crossing campus one day, and saw a silent elliptical object that flashed in the sky, then disappeared behind some trees. "In 1949 only kooks saw flying saucers," Sprinkle says. "It became a source of embarrassment to me, even fear. I didn't want to think about it, much less talk about it." Seven years later, as Sprinkle and his wife drove to Boulder, they saw a reddish-glow about the Flatiron Mountains, and a silent object moving back and forth in a dipping motion below the mountains. This time, Sprinkle wasn't willing to pretend he hadn't seen a UFO. He began reading books on UFOs, and when he came to the University of Wyoming in the early 60s as an assistant professor, he became a scientific consultant to the National Investigators Committee on Aerial Phenomena (NICAP) and the Aerial Phenomena Research Organization (APRO). From 1964 to 1985, Sprinkle administered standardized psychological tests to hundreds of people who said they had seen, been contacted by, or abducted by UFOs. Most tested normal, Sprinkle says. REPEATED REPORTS OF ALIEN-INSERTED IMPLANTS Maxine Parkers says she has been "tagged" by the aliens, who first abducted her when she was 5 and have never lost track of her. They abducted her repeatedly while she was living in Escondido, Calif., and later, in Florence, Oregon. "Apparently, I'm an experiment," says Parker, 50ish. She says she moved to Colorado Springs at the aliens instructions. "The7y mark you with the tag. It's a little computer chip. Usually its in the head." Parker says her chip is behind her right ear. Talking about her first abduction, Parker says she woke up one morning and noticed that her navel was bleeding. She told her mother, who said she must have scratched it in her sleep. Parker says she knows she didn't scratch herself. Pressed to describe the abductions in detail, Parker gets upset. She closes her eyes and tries to find the words to explain the feeling of violation as a 3 foot tall gray alien with dark slanted eyes implanted a chip behind her right ear. "I was screaming," says Parker, the lighted cigarette in her hand trembling. "It hurt." Later, she says, a taller alien arrived to reassure her and relieve her pain, and she knew she was going to be alright. She also knew she didn't belong on Earth, but with the aliens, who she says have "abandoned" her. "They've left me," she says, and there's real sorrow in her voice. "I don't belong here. I want to go home." ----------------------------------------------------------------------- ADDED extra from same paper, same date: "Extraordinary" evidence not yet found By David L. Chandler - Boston Globe What would it take to prove, or at least to produce good evidence, that such an extraordinary occurrence as being abducted by alien beings really did take place? As astronomer Carl Sagan has often pointed out, "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence." So far, despite widespread interest in UFOs and in alien abductions, no such hard evidence has yet been forthcoming. "I regard the best physical evidence" yet produced in support of the claims of alien abduction "as being totally inconclusive," Said David Pritchard, the MIT physicist who organized aa recent conference on the subject. Pritchard has studied one of the few pieces or purported physical evidence for the phenomenon; a tiny implant that UFO abductee Richard Price of Latham, N.Y> says was placed in his abdomen by aliens and later worked its way out. He says the object provides "absolutely no proof of anything, but I wasn't able to explain it in some obvious way." Tiny implants are a common feature of alien abduction stories so they ought to provide a good way of testing the claims. Some investigators have obtained Magnetic Resonance Imaging scans of people who say they were given implants and some of the scans do show unexplained spots that could be implants. But such spots also show up on a significant number of their MRI images in general. Some investigators suggest that while individual MRI scans don't mean much a large number of similar images might be more convincing, especially if spots seen in them correspond to where the abductees say their implants were placed.