The Man Who
Fell to Earth
Centuries ago, humanity believed that the Earth was at the center of the universe. In fact, fourth-century BC mythos adhered to a flat Earth theory, wherein a central axis (“axis mundi”) was believed to join the Earth with the heavens and other realms. Given this Earth-centered focus, it’s not surprsing that the search for intelligent life beyond our world has long been rooted in skepticism. Skepticism has also long surrounded scientific inquiries into the origin of life, due to the complexity of atoms and elements; or, to put it more simply, it was easy to conclude that the difficulty of getting the ingredients of life just right meant that the creation of life had to have been a fluke.
Wide-ranging attempts at explanations of life and the universe persisted, however. One interesting theory was put forth by Austrian scientist Hans Horbiger in 1913. His “World Ice Theory” was based on the idea that ice is “the basic substance of all cosmic processes,” as historian Christina Wessely explained in her article “Cosmic Ice Theory—Science, Fiction, and the Public, 1894–1945.” Horbiger believed that ice formed everything from planets and moons to the ether. In an effort to validate his work with the academic community, he promoted it in popular culture. The masses took enthusiastically to his fantastical concept, which suggests they found the academic science of the day less than satisfying.
As of late, however, you’ll find more and more reputable scientists who are open to the idea of life existing beyond our planet, even beyond our solar system. With new findings of hundreds of extrasolar planets, distinguished and credible scientists are now arguing that there could be billions of Earth-like planets potentially teeming with life. Even though the recipe may be complex, the possibility that there is other intelligent life in our universe has certainly taken a 180 degree turn from most early philosophies on the subject.
While it’s complex, life is also precious, and Mainers live a hard life (we’re not the only ones by any means). Raising a family in our economic climate, with the stressors bred from that, is tough to endure. Even our extreme weather is a constant reminder of how treasured life really is. Because of all this, we have evolved to live the highest quality of life, despite anyone’s individual circumstance. By this I mean that we adapt well to anything life throws at us. Against this background, there are some tried and true facts that we do live by—one of them being the importance of good weather. There is one season that every man, woman, and child in Maine looks forward to; it’s coveted, it’s short-lived, and we call it summer. Of course, we love our fall and all that comes with it, especially the leaves multichromatically morphing our landscape. And we have learned to make winter as fun as possible, with many outdoor recreation options available.But we hold dear the few short months that we get for summer. Our coasts transform into beautiful oceanside retreats. Tourists from all over flock to our great state to visit the likes of Bar Harbor, Acadia National Park, Wells, Ogunquit, Old Orchard Beach, and a variety of other spots. The season is fleeting, so we make the most of every day given to us.
One such tourist and his wife paid a visit to Maine in the summer of 1989. Their plan was to enjoy a week away from work and the bustling life of Massachusetts. One day during their stay in the Ogunquit area, the couple was walking along a shore path. Suddenly, the man became dizzy and confused, and had to clutch his wife’s hand tightly to keep balance. His name was Ed, and he experienced an otherworldly encounter that changed his life forever.
John E. Mack, MD, a psychiatrist, hypnotist, professor at Harvard Medical School, and writer, conducted a study of two hundred men and women who claimed to have had alien abduction experiences. At the start of his study, he speculated that the majority if not all of the people he would be working with most likely suffered from some sort of mental illness. Once his work began, however, he found no signs of cognitive disabilities and began taking the alien abduction theory seriously. Ed, the tourist mentioned above, was one of Mack’s case studies. In his book Abduction: Human Encounters with Aliens, Mack laid out the entire encounter and Ed’s psychiatric visits with him.
On that shore path, Ed’s anxious feeling eventually subsided, but the couple was concerned about what happened, so Ed sought medical attention. His doctor told him that he had high blood pressure and seemed overly stressed. Ed was working as a technician at a Massachusetts company; he enjoyed the work and thought stress from his job was not related to his malady. Suspecting a misdiagnosis from his doctor, he opted to try meditation and hoped it would alleviate the condition. Not long after this, he found himself remembering frightening images from his teenage years. The images confused him, and he tried to put the pieces together but it was all too strange. He did have a sense that the images were otherworldly in nature, and in 1992 he attended a conference of the Mutual UFO Network in New Hampshire. He talked with some of the attendees, who recommended that he reach out to psychiatrist John E. Mack. On July 23, 1992, Ed met with Mack, which initiated a four-month hypnosis regression period during which they uncovered a most unusual encounter.
The story for Ed started in the summer of 1961, when he was invited on a weeklong vacation with his friend’s family to the coast of Maine. The family had rented a cabin on the beach for a week of fun, relaxation, and one last hoorah before the school year started up again. On one particularly warm evening, the two boys desperately wanted to sleep outside. They figured they could have a bit of fun without the watchful eyes of the parents. The mother was not thrilled at the idea of them sleeping on the beach by themselves, so she agreed that they could sleep in the family’s vehicle with the windows down; the boys were ecstatic. As they settled in for their unsupervised sleepover, they discussed girls from their school, and as is common in early adolescent conversations, they discussed the topic of sex and which girls in their school they found most attractive. They giggled and laughed and thoroughly enjoyed their time in the car. The boys eventually drifted off to sleep, but Ed’s slumber would not last long.
He was startled awake as he felt the car rock back and forth. He raised the back of his seat slightly so he could look out the window, and he heard someone walking around the car but saw nothing. He quickly lowered the seat, frightened that someone was lurking outside of the vehicle. He felt a buzzing sensation at the base of his neck and desperately tried to wake his friend, but the other boy was unresponsive. Ever so slightly, Ed raised his head and looked out the window again, recoiling in horror when he saw two big black eyes staring back at him. The buzzing sensation spread throughout his entire body, and he was slowly lifted from his seat by invisible forces and floated out of the window. Ed looked down and could see tiny figures with bulbous heads. He continued to float up into the air and out over the ocean. He heard the wind rushing by and saw the waves crashing against the rocks below. He was so scared at the thought of falling into the dark, watery abyss that he almost lost consciousness.
Just after he had that thought, a figure appeared before him and he could see that he was now in a room with transparent walls, but still above the ocean. Ed then observed that he was naked and the figure before him was female. He found her “attractively unusual” and felt self-conscious that he was not wearing clothes. The being spoke to him telepathically, saying, “You’re okay. Don’t fight it. Don’t fight it.” His fear diminished slightly and he looked around the odd room, which seemed to have changed again. It was some sort of amphitheater and there were more than a dozen other beings in the room with him; the female being sat across from him. He tried to speak to her but found that he could not talk. He then tried speaking telepathically to her and said, “How do you know me?” She looked at him kindly and thought, “I know what happened to you when you were younger. These things will not happen again.” This confused Ed, but suddenly a bombardment of memories flooded into his head. He could only stare at her, with a newfound knowledge of his previous nightmarish alien abductions. He thought to the being, “Somehow or other you’re doing a great job of convincing me that you’re here for my well-being. I’m not just your laboratory rat, guinea pig.” She assured him again that this time would be different, and that he would be okay. He believed her and his fear subsided completely.
Without warning, Ed suddenly experienced blood rush to his groin area. It felt out of place and almost forced. As he explained to Mack, “she’s filling my mind with all sorts of erotic escapades … She’s just raising, somehow or other, she’s just giving me, giving me a hard-on.” Ed sat there and stared at the being, and again became self-conscious, especially with the other beings in the room. She looked at him as well, which gained his focus back onto her. He then had sexual thoughts about her and felt he could feel her inside of his head. She thought to him, “Yeah, you’d like that, wouldn’t you, but that’s not the way it’s going to be.” She then explained that her species needed human sperm to create “special babies.” She said that this type of harvesting is to help the people of Earth. Again, he believed her and felt easily persuaded to help in what he called “their experiment.” Ed’s penis was then placed into a device that relaxed him. He explained, “It’s a very smooth, hand-like thing. I want to believe it’s her hand.” He then ejaculated into the contraption. He looked at her, surprised at what happened, and she said they were pleased and had “gotten a good sample” from him.
Suddenly, the environment changed again, and he was seated amongst the other beings. The female entity advised that he was now part of their class and to pay attention to the teacher. There was a larger being at the front of the room and all beings listened intently. It spoke of universal law, a sort of code of ethics, and how the human species no longer followed this code. Ed looked at his companion and said, “There’s something very trusting about you, loving, caring, wanting to help. I’ve never been through anything like this in my life.” He continued to listen to the teacher and found that both his companion and the teacher spoke about “instability” on his planet including “eco-spiritual, and emotional instability.” They told him, “Earth is shuddering in anguish, crying, weeping at the stupidity of humans losing contact with the inner soul of their being.” Ed concentrated keenly and wondered what he could specifically do to help the situation. The female entity told him, “You have a chance. You have an inner sensitivity.” Ed denied this, but she insisted. “You have a sensitivity. You pick up things. You can talk to the Earth. The Earth talks to you.” Ed then recalled his fascination with nature; as a boy, he would go into the woods often and felt comfortable there. It felt familiar. The being continued, “You can hear the Earth. You can hear the anguish of the spirits. You can hear the wailing cries of the imbalances. It will save you.” Ed felt caution at this point and asked what she meant by “save you.” She explained to him that the Earth would repel those that did not work in “symbiotic harmony” with it. “The Earth’s skin is going to swat some bugs off,” she added.
Ed was mentally exhausted from all the information that he was given. And even though he listened intently and tried to truly understand, he felt frustrated due to the very nature of the abduction experience. He trusted the female being, but he had been forced into the situation. He calmed a bit and asked if he could write down the information that was given to him, but he was denied and told, “You will remember when you need to know.”
During one of Ed’s hypnosis sessions, he told Mack that he had a strict Catholic upbringing but that the thoughts and feelings the aliens had opened him up to felt frustratingly opposed to what his family valued, though he did agree with the beings. He explained, “She wired me into my emotions … she sort of gains either a clinical judgment of my emotional/mental typography, or gained my agreement.” The doctor took him back to that night once again. With his eyes closed and his body relaxed, Ed was once again with the being.
She explained to him the “laws of the universe” and discussed with him politics, the Earth’s environmental issues, the type of food humans consume, and violence against humanity. Ed felt a great deal of remorse for his past actions and was scared at what his species had become. After this encounter, he was open to change and different ideologies and expressed those ideas with friends and teachers. He felt out of place in the world, and his friends thought he had become strange. In his early adult life, he sought a relationship with someone with a similar outlook, someone he could relate to. He often found himself comparing women to the female entity. Eventually, he did meet someone with whom he shared those themes and after five years they married. Lynn, his wife, said, “I felt like I knew him already.” He shared his encounter with her and she never doubted his story.
At the last hypnosis session, Mack asked Ed what he would do with this newfound knowledge, and he replied, “Too few will listen, but those that will listen and can work with the laws of nature, will survive to teach others on the other side … ” Mack asked if humanity was lost; could it no longer be saved? Ed responded that no one could be saved now, it was too late, but once humans “crossed over,” we would realize what we had done and would make better choices in our new plane of existence. Ed did offer one last thought to the doctor, saying, “Love is the key. Love and compassion for the Earth or the beings on the Earth … ”
Ed and Lynn then decided that they would speak with other alien abduction experiencers and share the knowledge he had been given. Ed said that they would spend the rest of their time on this Earth advocating for the environment and helping humanity the best way that they could. Ed vowed to hold close his discussions with the female entity and to continue to learn from her every day. He no longer felt haunted by the experience, saying, “I don’t find what happened to me traumatic … A great cloud, a shroud has been pulled away from my awareness … ” He then concluded his sessions with Dr. Mack.