When the bright light first flashed through the kitchen window, Becky had returned into the living room in response to her mother’s commands. (See Figure 2 shown on page 32.) Looking down the hallway into the kitchen, she noticed a dark silhouetted shape bobbing in front of the light source shining through the kitchen window. Then, everything went black. At that same moment, Becky, her grandfather, and all family members except Betty found themselves unable to move, unaware of anything else.
In the pages that follow, I will let the witnesses tell their story themselves.
Jules: (investigator) What’s happening, Betty?
Betty: There’s some…the lights are back on now and, ah, there are beings standing there and they’re talking with me, but not with their mouths. They’ve got big heads!
Joseph: (investigator) How did they get there, Betty?
Betty: They came through the door.
Joseph: Did you open the door for them?
Betty: No.
Joseph: Did they open the door?
Betty: No.
Figure 2: The ground floor of the Andreasson house at the time of the encounter
The four entities that had passed by the window entered the house by going through the kitchen door—not through the frame, but through the kitchen door itself. They passed through its solid wood as if it were nonexistent.
Betty: They came in like follow-the-leader.… They are starting to come through the door now…right through the wood, one right after the other. It’s amazing! Coming through! And I stood back a little. Was it real? And they are coming, one after another.… Now they are all inside.
It was difficult for us to visualize what Betty was describing. Thus, after each session, Dr. Edelstein induced a posthypnotic suggestion within her that she would remember the details of what she described while under hypnosis. Her ability to draw was fully utilized, and she supplied us with detailed pencil sketches, many of which are reproduced in this book. (See Figure 3.)
Betty: I was wondering. How did they ever do that? How did they get in here like that?
Betty balked, as her mind frantically tried to grasp some logical explanation for what was happening. Then her strong Christian beliefs abruptly surfaced to provide a desperately sought rationale.
Figure 3: Betty’s rendition of how the entities appeared through the closed kitchen door. They “moved in a jerky motion, leaving a vapory image behind.” Drawn April 10, 1977.
Betty: I’m thinking they must be angels, because Jesus was able to walk through doors and walls and walk on water. Must be angels.… And Scriptures keep coming into my mind where it says, “Entertain the stranger, for it may be angels unaware.”
Although Betty is far from being fanatic in her beliefs, her pronounced fundamentalist Christian orientation undoubtedly colored her perception and interpretation of some of the events that befell her.
The four entities hardly resembled conventional depictions of angels. They were identical, except for the leader, who appeared taller. The creatures had gray skins, and large, outsized pear-shaped heads. Their faces were mongoloid in appearance.
Betty: And the taller one…his eye seems to…his left eye seems to quickly go up into a slit. [See Figure 4 shown on page 34.]
Large, wraparound catlike eyes stood in stark contrast to less prominent facial features: holes for noses and ears, and fixed, scarlike mouths. They wore shiny dark blue, form-fitting uniforms. Each left sleeve was adorned with an emblem that resembled a bird with outstretched wings. (See Figure 5.) Their three-digited hands were gloved (See Figure 6), and they wore high shoes or boots.
Figure 4: The leader, as he appeared in the kitchen (May 18).
Figure 5: An Entity in profile.
Figure 6: April 9.
Betty stood transfixed. But an extraordinary calm settled over her. An aura of friendliness emanated from the alien intruders, and she was no longer frightened. The leader, who stood about four feet tall, identified himself as “Quazgaa.”1
Harold: (hypnotist) Did they know your name?
Betty: Yes, he called me Betty. It seemed like an oral sound but it…it—ah, I think it was a transformation of thought but it seemed like an oral sound.
During the initial establishment of what seems to have been mental telepathy, Betty misconceived a mental impression generated by Quazgaa. The leader stretched out his hand, and she asked, “Do you want something to eat?” They merely nodded.
Betty: And so I went and got some food from the refrigerator and a pan from the stove, and I started to cook some meat.
The entities stared impassively at Betty momentarily, and then she received another mental impression.
Betty: And I turned, because they said something to me. And they said, “We cannot eat food unless it is burned.” And so I started to burn the meat—and they stepped back, astonished over the smoke that was coming up!
The beings corrected Betty as clearer images formed in her mind:
Betty: And they said, “But that’s not our kind of food. Our food is tried by fire, knowledge tried by fire. Do you have any food like that?”
Betty’s religious beliefs influenced her reply: “Yes, I think I have some like that…it’s in there.”
The events that followed in rapid succession are utterly alien to the logical model of reality that we have been taught since early childhood. Like a computer that is automatically programmed to reject extraneous data, the human mind rejects such claims with the comfortable labels of hoax, dream, or hallucination.
Betty: They followed me into the living room, and I looked and I saw all my family as if time had stopped for them. And I wondered what happened. But I glanced down and picked up the Bible that was on the end table. I turned and I passed it to the leader. The leader passed me a little thin blue book in exchange. [See Figure 7 on page 36.]
The entity who called himself Quazgaa took the Bible from her and held it in his hand. Betty’s mind rebelled at what occurred next, because what she saw happen seemed impossible.
Figure 7: April 9.
Betty: The leader put the book [the Bible] in his hand…[sigh] And he waved his hand over it, and other Bibles appeared, thicker than the original. Then he passed it to those beside him and they took the books and each one was spontaneous. They somehow flipped it, page by page, and looked down. Each page was pure white, luminous white. And then they stopped—and I started to look in the little blue book.
When Betty’s oldest daughter, Becky, relived the episode under hypnosis, she recalled regaining consciousness at this very point. After blacking out, the next thing she remembered was seeing her mother conversing with the entities in the corner of the living room.
Jules: Where are you? In the hallway?
Betty: I’m in the living room still…I’m over near the TV, and I’m just looking over to the left.
Jules: What do you see?
Becky: Some…I don’t even know what it is! There’s something there, and it looks so scary. But Mom’s okay.
It was very unsettling watching and hearing Becky during the hypnotic session. Now, years after the event, a mature 22-year-old adult reclined in the hypnotist’s chair. But the voice coming from her mouth was that of an 11-year-old child!
Joseph: Is this “something” one thing or many things?
Becky: It’s…it looks like it’s a clay man. He looks like a—a clay man… talking to my mom. Some kind of man-creature. And behind him, right behind him toward the right, there’s one, a little one—and there are two after him that are just exactly like triplets.
Joseph: How do you know they’re men?
Becky: I don’t know. They just seem like men to me. They’re men. They’re really babies, but to me, I guess, they would be more man than woman. They look like clay. They look like they’re smooth, watered-on clay.
Jules: Did they touch you?
Becky: No, they didn’t touch me.
Jules: Did they take you outside?
Becky: No, they didn’t take me outside or anything. They didn’t even—I was standing right there watching them, and they knew I was standing right there watching them, and they knew that my other brothers…my brothers and my—wait a minute. My one, two, three brothers were sitting there, and Grammie—she’s over there…Oh! Where’s Grampy?
Jules: He was with Grammie, right? You can’t find Grampy?
Becky: No, I can’t see Grampy there.
Jules: Is Grampy in the kitchen?
Becky: No, he’s not. No one’s in the kitchen. Grampy went out to look with Mom—he’s looking out the window.
Little Becky was visibly upset. When she awoke briefly from suspended animation, her grandfather had seemingly disappeared. In reality, he had gone to look at the flashing lights—first out the kitchen window and then out the pantry window. At the time Becky was looking for him, he was standing in suspended animation in the pantry, out of her sight.
Joseph: Did your mother give anything to the beings?
Becky: I don’t know. My mom was standing there with her hand on something, and that clay form had his hand on the other part, like a book…the clay hand is holding it on the right-hand side, and Mom is standing on the…
Joseph: Where did the book come from?
Becky: The book? I don’t know. She must have had it—I don’t know.
Becky had not seen the aliens enter the room with her mother. She had not witnessed the amazing duplication of the Bible, nor did she see them give her mother the blue book. When Becky regained consciousness, the first thing she noticed was her mother looking at the blue book with Quazgaa.
Becky: I woke up and they were in the room…Mom was talking to them, and there was a book already in his hand.
Jules: Is the TV off?
Becky: Yes, the TV—no, the TV is…it’s different. No picture, no sound—very, very dim like you turn down the color—like you turned it down so it’s very gray and low.
Throughout the sessions, when Betty or Becky became anxious during certain segments of their experience, Dr. Edelstein reassured them. He sensed their particular needs instinctively at the right time and in a correct manner. The confidence and the precision with which he controlled the situation were most impressive.
Harold: Becky, you are upset about something, aren’t you?
Becky: Yes!
Harold: What are you upset about?
Becky: Those things. They’re scary.
Harold: They’re scary? But you told us that once before you felt a very, very close relationship to them—that you like them.
Becky: Yes. They are very kind, and they don’t mean any harm, but they are scary to look at…they look scary.
Harold: They look scary? Okay, I want you to realize that you went through all of this—without any harm befalling you. Is that right?
Harold: Therefore, you have nothing to fear. Just relax…just relax.
Becky was asked to describe the beings in detail.
Becky: They were wearing…it looked like pants and a tucked-in type of shirt, but it was tight-fitted. Something like a—what it reminded me of was something like a scuba diving outfit that would be close to a person’s skin.
Joseph: Where did the bottom of the legs of the skin suit…where did they end?
Becky: They ended near the shoe.
Joseph: Could you see the bottom of it? Did it continue right around the foot?
Becky: Yes, the bottom of it. The bottom of the first one had—like his pants went down like a skin suit, and then there was a cut where it was. It stopped with one lighter shade and it went into a darker shade…like a shoe or a boot would be.
Fred: (investigator) Could you describe their eyes?
Becky: They looked like marbles.… It had big eyes.
Jules: What about the eye slit? Did you see that move at all?
Becky: No, I didn’t see anything—like him closing his eyes or opening them.
Fred: Did they have ears?
Becky: I can’t see it.
Fred: Did they have hair on their heads?
Becky: No, I didn’t see any hair. His head looked like a pear, an upside-down pear.
Fred: Did he have nostrils?
Becky: I didn’t even see a nose, so I don’t know.
Fred: A mouth?
Becky: Sideways he didn’t have a mouth. When he turned, he did. It was like a wrinkle in the clay—not a line, but like a line. And I can’t see any nose. I see—there’s a lot of shadow around. The only thing I can see really good was the big…eyes. Like marbles. They looked scary.
Harold: Sleep for a moment. Just relax, relax, relax. Deeper and deeper.
Jules: Are you afraid?
Becky: Yeah, I’m afraid because he scares me by the way he looks, but I can’t do anything—can’t move. I’m not afraid of him, because there’s a feeling that he’s not going to hurt me. He scares me just by the way he looks.
Becky watched her mother and the little men as they looked at the small blue book.
Becky: That book. It was bright, and Mom was thanking them for something, and so it must have been the blue book.…
Instinctively, the taller entity became aware that Becky was awake.
Betty: The head, the tallest one looked right around across where the kids were and Gram was, right over to me, and then he stopped when he saw me standing there. And then he went from me, right back around, and started talking or looking at Mom. And then, all I can see is nothing but darkness—then nothing.
At that point, Becky lapsed back into unconsciousness. Let us return to Betty’s vantage point, as she examines the little blue book with the alien visitors:
Betty: …I started to look in the little blue book. And the first three pages were snow white, luminous white. And I saw this silver gray top thing with, like coils—and there was sort of a wheel, and inside were four things. I can’t make out what these things are…and so I’ve come to the close of that book—closed it.
When Betty closed the book, the eyes of the entities focused on hers.
Betty: And their eyes are so funny. One minute they are light, and now they’ve got a black ball in it. And they move straight, especially that left eye and…
Betty had sought desperately to break through the strange tranquilizing effect that somehow shielded her mind from the reality of what was happening. She succeeded momentarily, and reported the following exchange:
“What are you doing here?” Betty asked.
“We have come to help,” the entities replied. “Will you help us?”
“How can I help?”
“Would you follow us?” the entities asked.
“Are you of God?” she demanded. “You keep saying you have come to help the world. Why?”
“Because the world is trying to destroy itself,” they answered her. “How can I help the world?” she sighed.
“Would you follow us?”
“If you are of God,” Betty sighed again. “If you are here to help and are of God, I would follow, but do not deceive me.”
“Would you follow us?” they repeated.
Betty’s power to resist lessened as the entities stared hypnotically into her eyes. Their slow, repetitive invitation, “Would you follow us?” echoed within the deepest recesses of her mind. But again, her own powerful instincts surfaced: “What about my children? My parents?”
“They are all right,” Quazgaa answered. “Would you follow us?”
Jules: What was the rest of your family doing?
Betty: They promised me they wouldn’t hurt them—that they would be all right. They said, “See, they’re just resting there.” There was no fear on their faces. It was as if they were unaware.… They said, “They are all right. Would you follow us?” He keeps on repeating that—“Would you follow us?”
“Oh, Lord,” Betty said softly, “show me what I’m supposed to do.”
“We will not harm you.” The entities repeated, “Would you follow us?”