There has been some discussion recently regarding the Alien Abduction phenomenon and the work of researchers such as Dr. David Jacobs and Budd Hopkins. I was fortunate enough to see the original broadcast of this program and it made a lasting impact, especially what I witnessed at the end of the broadcast when the two women, Dorothy and Betty, were reunited for the first time in RL after having recalled meeting each other on board a UFO. This was also, I believe, the highest rated episode 'Man Alive" ever produced.
The ET Hypothesis
The following is a transcript of the 12/29/87 rebroadcast of an episode from the long running television series called Man Alive. The episode is entitled 'The E.T. Hypothesis'.
The program's format involves location filming, which in this case includes a short interview and hypnosis session with a middle aged woman abductee, along with a roundtable discussion about the abduction phenomenon and its many implications. The participants include notably Budd Hopkins, recognized UFO authority along with other interested parties. As Roy Bonisteel is the host of the program, he acts both as a narrator, and as a direct participant.
Therefore, when he is acting in either capacity I shall indicate it by placing an (N) or (P) behind his name in order to clarify things. Other clarifying points not expressed in the dialogue, will be indicated by myself through the use of these type brackets . The half-hour program Man Alive is broadcast coast-to-coast in Canada on the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. (CBC), which also produces it. -The program was videotaped and transcribed by ParaNet member Tom Mickus.
Man Alive: The E.T. Hypothesis
Roy Bonisteel (N): Looking up at a star filled sky, how often do we wonder about other life in the universe? From what we know today it seem virtually certain that we're not alone. It follows that contact with an extraterrestrial civilization could happen, and at any moment. Most of us would agree that this would be a significant milestone in human history. But do we have any idea at all about how it will affect us? Popular culture often reflects a naive, comfortable vision of extraterrestrials. They either look and sound like us ala Mork & Mindy, or are pets A.L.F.. Sometimes the image is threatening, a nightmare of unearthly evil War of the Worlds, but the good guys always win in moments we see extraterrestrials as saviors, crucified by our fears The Day the Earth Stood Still. But what would the reality be like? What could happen to our culture, our religions, our view of the world, our very sense of ourselves.
People have always looked to the skies and seen strange things, but it wasn't until 1947 that an idea captured the public imagination. That some of these strange objects may in fact be somebody else's spacecraft. It's an idea that provoked a highly polarized debate. But believers were often questionable types, they claimed to bring us messages of love from our space brothers. But the disbelievers were equally zealous in their pronouncements, and often just as hard to believe. Though the evidence has accumulated, thousands of un-explained sightings, pictures that have held up under analysis, it still is circumstantial. The subject still provokes passionate opinions, people who report UFO's are ridiculed in the Press. Scientists make unscientific pronouncements. The beliefs about them, both pro and con, are sometimes expressed with a fervor that can only be described as fanatical. It seems that a lot more is at stake in the UFO controversy than just the evidence. David Jacobs: The UFO phenomenon is strange in the extreme, and even to go ahead and discuss some of the things that I will in fact discuss, suggests....calls into question the quality of my judgments.
Bonisteel(N): David Jacobs is a professor of history at Temple University in Philadelphia.
Jacobs: ...academics, and other scientists must be EXTREMELY careful because there is a tremendous amount of ridicule attached to this subject. Starting in the 1970's, we began to receive large numbers of abduction reports. The abduction reports are I think extremely important. They are basically reports that people claim would have us believe that they were... grabbed so to speak by occupants, they were given a physical examination of some sort, and then released. Now normally these kind of cases in the old days were simply dismissed, put in the CP file, CrackPot. These people would be labeled loonies, and there are loonies out there, there are people who lie out there, everybody is aware of that, and this is probably just another manifestation of that. However, there are so many of them now, and they are so consistent, and the witnesses are so credible that UFO researchers are forced to confront them. They are forced to deal with them. Once we have begun to study abduction reports, it is almost as if a door opened.
Scene Changes
Budd Hopkins: I have worked with 124 people to date who I feel have either had... definitely seem to have had this kind of abduction experience, the experience which most interests me. Of those people, 66 have remembered a full account.
Bonisteel(N): Budd Hopkins is a New York artist who has been researching UFO's since a daylight sighting he had had in the '60's. He's well known in New Yorkart circles, his work is collected by both the Whitney and Guggenheim museums.But Hopkins is also the leading researcher into the UFO abduction phenomenon.
Hopkins: The people who have experienced these abductions include three people who hold PhD degrees, I have housewives, farmers, two police officers, I have two army officers, I have just about everyone you could imagine who has been involved in abductions.
Bonisteel(N): We felt that regardless of whether or not the abduction phenomenon is real, it could give us a fascinating window through which we could explore the idea of extraterrestrial contact. Four people from varied backgrounds came to my farm for two days to hear Budd Hopkins talk about his research. Professor Allan Tuff, a futurist at the Ontario Institute for Studies In Education (O.I.S.I.E), University of Toronto. Clarence Dickinson, astronomer and author. John Musgrave, educational consultant from Edmonton, with an interest in folklore and UFO's. And Dr. Michael Kaufman, a general practitioner who uses hypnosis in his practice for treatment of trauma.
Hopkins: I'm looking at all these cases and obviously you have three alternatives essentially. The person is making it all up, is lying to you, its a hoax. The second, and obviously much more rewarding area to look for is that there is some sort of psychological explanation of some sort, of any sort. The third alternative, is of course the only third alternative, is that they are describing what really happened to them, as best as they remember it.
Bonisteel(N): Its Hopkins contention that they are describing what really happened to them. He began to show us some thought provoking slides.
Hopkins: This mark on the ground is a photograph taken in Indianapolis, in a case that is very central to a whole cluster of events that I'm working on now. In the morning after this event happened, this is what turned up on the ground large circular patch of scorched earth. The soil is absolutely cooked, its almost like rock. It will not hold water, water runs straight through it, and this is the entire area. Now this is the leg of that woman foreground slides show small pock marks, we'll call her name Cathy. Those little scars, those little scoop- marks are associated with two events that happened to her. One, when she was about six, and one when she was about thirteen. And under hypnosis she has remembered a UFO experience where a small tool took a little core sample. This is her mother's leg similar marks on the slide. Her mother had a missing time experience which was very distressing for her when she was a little girl, and at the end of it she had this little mark. This is another woman who was a close friend, who had an abduction experience, a missing time experience, and she remembered a great deal of it consciously. This is of course a very common type of figure as we now know shows classic picture of alien, four feet tall, big head and eyes.... from so many of these reports. This predates Close Encounters incidentally the movie.
Bonisteel(N): After lunch, Budd Hopkins began to present his latest findings publicly for the very first time. Up to this point, only a handful of people have been aware of the things that we now heard. Hopkins was understandably nervous.
Hopkins: A new aspect of the whole phenomenon which I have stumbled into has to do with this idea of some genetic experimentation. And we have always known that there have been, suggestions at least, of ova being taken form women and sperm from men.
Bonisteel(N): In the last ten months, he Hopkins had run into seven cases that followed the very same pattern. From an early age a woman would be abducted again and again. In one of these abductions, ova would be taken. Later in another abduction, something would be inserted into her vagina. In the following weeks she would miss a period. Pregnancy tests were done, they'd come back positive, often unexpectedly. In one case the girl was a thirteen year old virgin. Then a few months later the pregnancy would mysteriously vanish. But the most bizarre events were still to come.
Hopkins: The big dramatic, unbelievable part of this is that she was abducted about five years after this experience of having been pregnant then suddenly not pregnant, with no sign of a miscarriage. She is abducted five years later and is shown a little girl. I know this sounds totally outrageous but the description is that of a little girl who is quite small, who is very white, who had very large eyes with normal pupils. She had very white patchy hair which did not cover the whole scalp. She the mother could see the scalp through it. This girl was being shown to her by another alien.
Bonisteel(N): The reactions to all this varied. Shock was about the best word to describe Terence Dickenson.
Terence Dickenson: Totally bowled over. And in fact this is almost the worst possible scenario.
Bonisteel(N): For Dr. Michael Kaufman, the whole notion of genetic experimentation was jumping the gun somewhat.
Michael Kaufman:... when in my mind I'm still questioning the original assumption. Is this really an extraterrestrial thing and....Hopkins interrupts
Hopkins: I'm sure sympathetically. The weight of this has to do with the patterns so you have to over and over again run into another after another after another after another..., before you begin to..., before I began to feel, God these things are going on.
Bonisteel(N): Dorothy, a housewife who lives with her husband and three sons in suburban Toronto. She has partial memories of two abductions. One at age eight, the other at fifteen. But she also has had repeating dreams, about a strange malformed baby. Dorothy is one of over three hundred people around the world who have reported abduction experiences, but she is among the few who have agreed to talk publicly.
Dorothy: Each person has to deal with it in their own way. I think that I have, in my own way, and have come to the point where I can discuss it openly and tell others about it.
Bonisteel(N): Dorothy has agreed to try hypnosis to recall the gaps in her memory. This amnesia, is common to most, but not all abduction experiences. The hypnosis was done by Dr. Michael Kaufman with Bud Hopkins present The rest of us watched on close circuit TV. How valid is hypnosis in aiding memory recall? It's not a true or false test of fact, it's just not that reliable. But it is a legitimate clinical tool for uncovering hidden traumas.
Dorothy: Going under hypnosis-starting to breathe heavily and show physical discomfort.
Dr. Kaufman: You're with friends and you're safe, just tell us what's happening, use that very cool intelligence, you can tell us what is happening.
Dorothy: There is a very long probe of some kind...
Dr. Kaufman: Tell us what happened, it was a long time ago and you're safe now.
Dorothy: He put it in the stomach...the needle...it hurts! He says they're taking ova eggs or something...my ova will match up with the woman on the outside of the craft.
Bonisteel(N): Dorothy went on to describe what happened to her at length in fascinating detail. But then something happened that would prove to be very significant. She was shown an object.
Dorothy: Its some kind of book...I can't read anything, its funny little marks...
Bonisteel(N): After she came out of the trance Dorothy sketched what the writing looked like. Later Budd showed us a slide of writings sketched independently by five other abductees. We can't show it to you because he wants to keep it unpublished as a means of verifying later cases. But, we were all agreed that the resemblance with Dorothy's sketch was astonishing! Perhaps the resemblance can be explained, maybe all these people saw this writing in the same movie, but if so , nobody's been able to find it. After dinner we did another session with Dorothy, first on her repeating baby dream.
Dorothy: Hypnotized He's got a little wee chin...no nose...no ears...the eyes, black. Hairless too, no hair...
Hopkins: Is he a nice pink newborn baby?
Dorothy: No, he's not. Very white, very sickly looking.
Hopkins: In the dream is he your baby, somebody else's baby, or what?
Dorothy: He's my baby.
Hopkins: Tell us what you feel.
Dorothy: Sad, cause I know he's going to die.
Hopkins: Do you think you know what happens to this little baby, finally for sure, or is it just a feeling?
Dorothy: I fee...I feel I've held him.
Bonisteel(N): Hypnosis over. The depth of Dorothy's emotions, and the overall consistency with Budd's other cases made compelling evidence, but there were some reservations.
Bonisteel: John, are these people actually being abducted?
John Musgrave: No, I'm not willing to go that far. I'm willing to accept the fact that what we have here is something that is very important we should be paying attention to, and that it's something very significant in their lives. And perhaps if we really understood it it would be significant in our lives as well. But I'm not willing to accept necessarily that it's what we think it is at face value.
Bonisteel(N): John Musgrave had his own abduction experience at age thirteen, only he believes it was a dream.
Bonisteel(P): Many people we've talked to who have been abducted, tell about later anxieties and traumas and such things in their lives. Has any of this happened to you John?
Musgrave: Certainly after the experience, and after the dreams, Yah it was a difficult thing for some years to cope with. I must admit, that many years afterwards when I first read the book Interrupted Journey by Fuller, recounting the events of Betty and Barney Hill and their abduction experience, I had trouble sleeping for quite a few days afterwards, cause the thought then I must say , was the first time the thought came to me that hey maybe it was something a little more than a dream.
Dorothy: I'm at my sister's cottage now, and look out the window and I saw five craft coming towards it.
Bonisteel(N): Dorothy had a second dream which provided the strangest episodes yet. In the dream she was taken to a shed where there was another woman abductee. A few days after the dream, Dorothy was contacted by a woman, an abductee, who had gotten Dorothy's phone number through a UFO research group. When she told Dorothy her name, Dorothy immediately recognized it as that of the woman she saw in the shed.
What happens next, is that Dorothy described the shed over the phone to this lady whom she had never met (except in her dream). As it turns out, Dorothy mentions that a pile of rocks was situated on the shed floor, which turns out to be the shed located on the other woman's property. As it turns out, the two woman were both in the shed with an alien who was sitting on a bench giving them instruction . Neither this, the alien, nor the craft are discussed in any detail. However, Budd arranges a dinner party and invites this other woman (Betty), unbeknownst to either of them that they will both be present. Surprisingly enough, after Betty arrives late at the party, Dorothy says that she has a funny feeling after staring momentarily at Betty. Several seconds later, Dorothy successfully identifies Betty correctly, even though Betty displays no recollection of the encounter. Budd admits that this was less than scientific since the women did speak with each other over the phone, but had not seen each other in real life.
Bonisteel(N): We all agreed it was a fascinating evening, later we sat around and discussed the implications of what we had seen.
Bonisteel(P): Now you've dealt with this referring to Musgrave, and you've dealt with this Bud, but Michael, Dr. Kaufman you must share some of my amazement of what we've seen here, and heard here?
Dr. Kaufman: Yes I do, I must say that perhaps last week if someone like Dorothy, or Betty came over to my office I would be quite uncomfortable hearing their story. I probably would be at quite a loss as to how to help. But after having shared this experience I feel strong, that people who have been deeply affected by a trauma, again whether it was an actual trauma or psychological one, it doesn't matter. The fact is they're affected by something major. Its the magnitude of the implications of her experience that I find overwhelming.
Bonisteel(P): Why? What difference does it make to us as individuals, as human beings on Earth?
Dr. Kaufman: It would confirm the notion that we are not alone. That's something I think that everybody is fascinated about. Everybody speculates about when they look at the stars. I know I've had.
Hopkins: I think we all in a way, secretly know that there is going to be contact someday, bound to be. And none of us are truly prepared for it. None of us I think are really prepared for the idea that it is a truly ALIEN situation that might occur. Meaning that we would not necessarily understand their goals, their aims, their methods, or we might exaggerate the extent to which we would be able to understand them, and they would be able to understand us. And I believe that there is a VAST gap between their understanding as we find in these reports, and our understanding.
Bonisteel(P): Do we have a real fear here that as we talk about extraterrestrial life, contact, certainly abduction, that this becomes a real threat to our whole belief system? How we see ourselves, how we see the world? Is this our great fear?
Hopkins: Absolutely it is. Its enormously powerful, its a terrible fear. I can't imagine greater dislocations, greater chaos, greater fear. I don't like to see this or don't like to imagine that, but it certainly is there as a potential reaction to this.
Musgrave: Or presumably its a give and take, always there's more give on one side and take on the other. It doesn't inevitably have to be a negative thing.
Bonisteel(P): But we don't change that easily, we can't cope with it that easily.
Musgrave: Some individuals do, and some don't. And I suspect that some cultures do and some don't. Of course if you look historically at cultures such as the Chinese and others, that presumably for whatever reason were able
to adapt the various hordes if you will which came down from the north.
Bonisteel(P): A lot of this didn't happen at once John Musgrave. Its something that we drifted into. This contact is going to happen, like BANG! One of these days its just going to happen like that. Can we stand that kind of shock to our belief systems?
Musgrave: Well I guess we'll find out, won't we. My bet is yes we will survive, but that doesn't mean that we will. But obviously it is going to be a very disruptive thing for many individuals.
Bonisteel(P): Does it bother you Allan the futurist?
Allan Tuff: Not at all. Millions and millions of people already believe that there are advanced beings. They've seen the movies, they've read the science fiction, they watch Star Trek and other television programs. They already believe that there are advanced extraterrestrials who are superior to us. And if that's confirmed someday, its not going to make a huge difference to most people.
Hopkins: If an extraterrestrial, as some people believe, is someone slightly in excess of Leonard Nimoy and his ears, then we are still dealing with an anthropomorphic, comfortable image. And I'm afraid that's what people console themselves with, and that's NOT what we are getting in these cases.
Tuff: It seems to me that people at most are just going to add one more danger to their list. Its just one more thing. Its not going to affect people at a fundamental level.
Dr. Kaufman: Maybe we can get an answer to this from the people who have had these experiences. I just recently met Dorothy. If she really did have her experiences, then she's reacted with trauma and fear. If she didn't have that experience in fact, then she is projecting a tremendous fear about such an experience. And in that way, may she not represent the way other people would feel?
Hopkins: Exactly! An elderly man who I knew who was quite.. conventionally religious, Roman Catholic background, told me about an encounter he once had. He said to me, that he was elderly, and getting on in years, and that if there's a God, and he believes there is, that I hope He will accept me since I've tried to do the best I can. And if I am accepted in Heaven, Lord I have aquestion to ask you..... Who were those little guys I saw in the park that night, and are You their God or what? And that situation that occurred in his life so distressed him, because it ripped the fabric of all of his belief systems, all of his natural givens. He was simply left, not in doubt or in rejection of something, but in total confusion. I think that this issue abductions is as confusing as that, for all of us.
Roy Bonisteel(N): Whatever the explanation for the abduction phenomenon, it does seem to say that contact, if it comes, would not be an easy thing for the human race of the late twentieth century. Our institutions, our belief systems, our inate sense of our own superiority, will all get a profound shaking up. Looking at the state of the world, maybe a profound shaking up is not such a terrible idea.
THE E.T. HYPOTHESIS
End
What was not mentioned in the show is what Dorothy and Betty say they were shown during their encounter
"Well, there's another thing too. Several abductees have reported, and we have investigated several cases...very plausible cases, where they've been shown the future of the planet...on board a UFO, by some sort of screen where they show films of the future on this planet. And you see devastation...everyone dying, and so on...from geological problems [ie. earthquakes, flooding, etc.]. I heard this from several abductees, credible people. The two ladies who were on the 'Man Alive' show. Dorothy and Betty...and Betty's one of our members by the way. So I questioned that, I said, 'You mean all the volcanoes on the earth, and all of them are going to erupt simultaneously, and all the earthquake faults...minor and major...are going to give way at the same time, and the North Pole...all the ice will melt very quickly, and all the coastlines will be flooded, and so on...' They said they saw all kinds of devastation...millions of people dying, they saw this."
An amazing program and two very brave ladies.
~C
