The Uninvited

Alien Abduction Phenomena

All around the world, quite independently, thousands of people claim that they have been abducted by aliens. At first sight these claims seem ludicrous, but when one takes a closer look, it soon becomes clear that they are sup­ported by some very convincing evidence. Clearly some­thing strange is going on. But what, exactly?
I spent three years of my life in a job where my duties included investigating UFO sightings for the Ministry of Defence. Between 1991 and 1994  my duties at the Min­istry involved me in a search for the truth about one of the most powerful and enduring mysteries of modem times. My first book, Open Skies, Closed Minds,  told the story of my three-year voyage of discovery, and detailed some of what television devotees might like to think of as "the real X-Files." I had come into the job as a skeptic, but  emerged believing that a small percentage of UFO sightings did in­volve extraterrestrial craft. My conversion was not  a blind leap of faith, but   was  based upon numerous instances where my rigorous official investigations had failed to un­cover any conventional explanation for what was seen. These cases included visual sightings backed up  by radar evidence, and UFO reports from civil and military pilots. In 1980 there wasacase where radiation readings ten times normal were recorded on  the  spot where a metallic craft landed near two military bases (the famous Rendle­sham Forest case). In 1990 the  Belgian Air Force scram­beld F-16 fighters to try and intercept a UFO that had been picked up on radar by various NATO and Belgian installa­tions, but  the UFO easily evaded the jets. In 1993 a craft flew directly over two Royal Air Force bases in England, firing a  beam of light  at  the  surrounding  countryside. There were plenty of cases where the  intruding tech­nology seemed to be considerably more advanced than the defending technology.
Fascinating and disturbing though some of these UFO incidents were, it was always the  reports of abductions that gave me  the greatest concern. The UFO mystery paled into insignificance when compared to the  abduction phe­ nomenon. Although there will be  much talk about extra­terrestrials, I should make it clear that this book is not about UFOs. Although, of course, UFOs will be featured, the  central issue here is encounters between humans and other, non-human intelligences. Using an analogy to illus­trate the point, if the Queen  called at your house, you would probably not be that interested in the car in which she arrived. You would want to know why she was visiting you! In the same way, for those like me who believe that some UFOs are extraterrestrial in origin, the UFOs be­come, simply, a means of transportation. As the respected ufologist Stanton Friedman has said:"Never mind the saucers; what about the occupants?" For me, caryring out my job at the Ministry, the whole issue of alien abductions raised serious defense and na­tional security issues. If the accounts were to be believed, then not only were UFOs penetrating our sophisticated air defense network with impunity, but the occupants of the craft were sometimes carrying out intrusive and frightening procedures on unwilling human subjects. When I first encountered references to alien abduc­tions, I was skeptical. Similarly, when I was actually intro­duced to people who claimed that they had been abducted, I found myself looking for other, more conventional ex­planations. Were they simply lying, or were they fantasy­ prone personalities, who might construct an abduction story for psychological reasons? Might there be mental health explanations, with some sort of psychopathology lying at the root of these people's claims? Could it be that certain stimuli had combined to create mass hysteria on a frightening scale? All these options needed to be explored, and would in themselves have been worthy of serious study. But the most frightening theory of all was that the claims were true, and the events were occurring as de­scribed. If they were true-if just one case was true-the implications for the human race would be  profound and disturbing.
It is clear that, despite the unwelcome intrusion of
various cranks, most of the so-called abductees who have come forward to talk about their experiences are sincere and well-intentioned. For this reason, although I believe that many such experiences do have conventional expla­nations, I shall not  be  inserting the word "alleged" before every mention of an encounter. Whatever the cause, these experiences are real, in the sense that they are perceived as such by the majority of those involved. The key issue, of course, is whether or  not  any of these encounters take place in the  physical universe, as opposed to the  psycho­logical one.