June 23 was a Thursday. Our next hypnotic regression session was scheduled for that evening. The summer sun still shone as investigators and witnesses filed into the offices of the New England Institute of Hypnosis. We were totally unprepared for what was about to take place. Betty was about to undergo the most painful and emotional segment of her total experience. Her suffering and ecstasy would be contagious. What we were about to witness would become etched indelibly on our minds, and in some hearts.
Betty lay back in the familiar chair. In a few minutes, she was in a deep trance. I sat at her feet, clipboard in hand, as Harold gave instructions to Betty.
Harold: Betty, I want you to take yourself back to just before we ended the session. Are you there? I want you to continue from that point on. Please do!
Betty: Just before we entered, or where we left off?
Harold: Do you need a little refreshing? To the incidents leading up to where we left off?
Betty: Where we left off? Where I was before that bird?
Harold: Okay, fine.…
Betty began describing where she had left off at the last session. She started in the role of an observer, but quickly became an actual participant.
Betty: I’m standing before that large bird. It’s very warm.… And that bird looks like an eagle to me. And it’s living! It has a white head and there is light in back of it—real white light. Very, very big. And it has brown features.… And it’s very, very hot here.… [Heavy breathing] The bird is just standing there, and it looks like it is holding back the light somehow. I’m just standing in front of it, and it’s so hot. The bird, the feathers are just fluffed out. The light seems so bright in back of it. It’s beautiful, bright light. [See Figure 33.]
Betty began to perspire and pant.
Betty: Oh, it’s just standing there, and I see gold, gold specks flying around…like little tiny gold specks. Oh-h-h-h-h, it’s hot! [Blows her breath out] The specks just keep on flying around, and that bird just keeps standing there. The light just keeps sending out rays. They keep on getting bigger and bigger. The rays keep on getting bigger and bigger. Oh, the heat is so strong! Oh-h, ow-w-w—makes me weak.
Betty cried out for help and writhed in agony.
Betty: Oh, Lord Jesus, I’m hot. Help me. Oh-h-h-h-h. [Heavy breathing] Oh-h-h-h. [Begins to cry] I’m so hot! Oh, oh, oh, oh-h-h-h!
At that point Betty began to scream in pain.
Betty: Take me out of it! Take me out of it! Take me out of it! Oh, oh, oh! [Quickbreaths] Ah, ah, ah…I can’t feel my hands! Oh, wow, wow, wow! Oh, my hands and my legs. My feet. Oh, oh. Oh, it feels like my hands are just vibrating so much and my feet are just vibrating like—oh, oh.
Suddenly Betty’s body relaxed and she quieted down. It had all happened so fast that no one had time to react. We had become riveted to our seats with surprise.
Betty: Oh, I’m beginning to cool off a little. Ah, ah. Oh, my hands. Oh, my hands hurt.
Her voice took on a puzzled tone at that point.
Betty: There’s a fire in front of me. A little fire, or something burning. I don’t know what it is. It’s just a little thing burning. My hands feel.… They hurt so much! They just keep on vibrating as if they feel like fire or something, as if I—oh, they hurt. [Heavy breathing]
Figure 33: The Great Bird. June 23.
Betty’s voice was filled with wonder. For her, the blinding light had dimmed. The seething temperature had dropped. Slowly she squinted her eyes open. The huge bird was nowhere to be seen. In its stead was a small fire. She watched it gradually dim to a reddish glow and then to a pile of gray ashes flecked with red embers. (See Figure 34 on page 104.)
Betty: That fire is burning down, and there are like coals there. I feel cold now. I feel cold.
Betty began to shiver all over.
Betty: Uh-h-h, oh-h-h, oh-h-h. I feel cold! [Shivers] Oh-h-h-h. [Heavy breathing] There’s some kind of a glowing coal or something there. It was burning. It’s just glowing right now. Oh-h-h. I feel some life returning to my hands. I feel better. That coal is just dying down to a reddish color. Oh-h.… It’s getting gray, gray with red mixed with it.
Betty sounded astonished.
Betty: Now, looks like a worm, a big fat worm. It just looks like a big fat worm—a big fat gray worm just lying there.
The investigators cast incredulous looks at each other, wondering if we had pushed Betty too far. Then, seemingly from somewhere to her right (the entities were to her left), Betty heard what sounded like many voices blended into one booming voice!
Betty: I hear somebody speaking in a loud voice.
Then she hesitated and repeated what she heard.
Figure 34: June 26.
Harold: “You have seen, and you have heard. Do you understand?” They called my name, and repeated it again in a louder voice. I said, “No, I don’t understand what this is all about, why I’m even here.” And they—whatever it was—said that “I have chosen you.”
“For what have you chosen me?” Betty asked the voice.
“I have chosen you to show the world.”
“Are you God?” Betty asked with wonder in her voice. “Are you the Lord God?”
“I shall show you as your time goes by” was the equivocal reply. Looks of puzzlement and concern passed among the investigators.
Harold rose from his chair and headed for an adjoining room, motioning me to follow him. I reluctantly left the room. Harold and I briefly consulted with each other about this weird turn of events. At this juncture, a religious connotation caused great consternation among us. It somehow seemed completely out of place. Meanwhile, in the office, Betty continued to converse with the voice.
Betty: “Are you my Lord Jesus? I would recognize my Lord Jesus.” Oh, it says—“I love you. God is love, and I love you,” they said or whatever it was. I say they but it seemed like one. [Sigh]
“Why was I brought here?” Betty asked again.
“Because I have chosen you.”
“Why won’t you tell me why and what for?”
“The time is not yet. It shall come. That which you have faith in, that which you trust.”
Betty defensively proclaimed her Christian faith: “It is true. I have faith in God, and I have faith in Jesus Christ. Praise God, praise God, praise God. There is nothing that can harm me. There is nothing that can make me fear. I have faith in Jesus Christ!”
“We know, child,” the voice answered. “We know, child, that you do. That is why you have been chosen. I am sending you back now. Fear not.… Be of comfort. Your own fear makes you feel these things. I would never harm you. It is your fear that you draw to your body, that causes you to feel these things. I can release you, but you must release yourself of that fear through my son.”
The words “through my son” suddenly became the catalyst for the most moving religious experience that I have ever witnessed. Betty’s face literally shone with unrestrained joy as tears streamed down her beaming face.
Betty: Oh, praise God, praise God, praise God! [Crying] Thank you, Lord! [Crying, sobbing] I know, I know I am not worthy. Thank you for your Son. [Uncontrollable sobbing] Thank you for your Son.
Mere words—even actual transcriptions—cannot convey what Betty relived before us. To have both seen and heard Betty was a profound, unique experience, and listening to the tape recordings still provokes deep emotions to well up within me.
Betty continued to cry. We watched dumbfounded, perhaps a bit embarrassed. What was going to happen next? This otherworldly experience would leave Betty fearing for her sanity.
Later, the results of a psychiatric examination would set her mind at ease. But what was the stimulus for this bizarre event? Was it a compensatory dream triggered by Betty’s religious beliefs and the effects of hypnosis? Had the aliens produced a physical or visionary object lesson for Betty’s benefit?
Later, after Betty had finally concluded the reliving of her harrowing account, the investigators had many debriefing questions to ask her about this particular experience.
Ray: Would you explain again how you felt when you were standing before that bird?
Betty: When I was before the bird, I felt as if I were in the depths of weakness.
Jules: Was this bird alive?
Betty: The bird was alive. It was living. It was living.
Jules: How could you tell? Did it move?
Betty: You could see it breathing, and it was more living than anything I’ve ever seen living. I mean, we’re living, right? But this was really living. The light in back of it was so living and alive.
Fred: Was there a sun or a moon or anything you could see in the sky?
Betty: Just that bright light that was in back of that huge bird with the fluffed-up feathers, and the rays just kept—reaching out further and further. And then finally there were specks of gold flying all over the place, and I was getting hotter.
Joseph: When you were standing in front of the bird where you said it was hot, was the moisture being drawn from your body, or was it like you were in an oven, or what?
Betty: That was terrible. I don’t know what it was.
Joseph: Were your hands burning, or were you just hot?
Betty: It felt as if—I don’t know what that feeling was. It’s horrible. It felt as though something was permeating right through me. I don’t know what it was. It was sort of the worst thing I’ve ever experienced.
Ray: What happened to the eagle? Did this just disappear and was replaced by fire?
Betty: I don’t know what happened to the eagle because of what I was going through. The—whatever that was that was going through my body—it felt like something was piercing every cell in my body. You know how you can get a lump sum of pain? You know you can feel pain in the whole body? This was like it had pierced every cell or every portion of my body.
Though truly incredible, Betty’s account up to this point had nonetheless roughly paralleled other reported CE-IVs. The bird episode, however, does not fit. Yet for Betty, her bittersweet rendezvous with the bird was just as real as every other facet of her story.
Ray: Do you have the impression that this bird thing was just as real as all the events leading up to it?
Betty: It is more real.
Ray: It wasn’t like going into a dream state and having a dream of symbols, and so forth?
Betty: No, I could believe that the red atmosphere and the green atmosphere could be a dream state, but never the bird and the light and what I experienced. That part! I never want to have to go back to that part!
J. Allen Hynek has said that reports of Close Encounters of the Third Kind (now named Close Encounters of the Fourth Kind) are characterized by a high degree of strangeness. Indeed, this bizarre segment is essential to the unity of the overall narrative. We dare not dismiss it, because it may provide the focal point, the very reason, for the abduction of Betty Andreasson.
Fred: You told us about hearing a loud voice that talked with you.
Joseph: Could you see where the voice came from?
Betty: No, it came from the side.
Fred: Can you describe that location?
Betty: That was off to the right. It seemed off to the right. I couldn’t see anything.
Fred: Were you on this elevated pathway?
Betty: No, I was standing right in front of where that burning fire had taken place.
Fred: You had come down to the ground?
Betty: There was a—uh, like a foundation. Just enough foundation for that path. That’s when it went onto the ground. Yes, the sea was off to the side, and there was mist, and then it had that narrow land and it did finally go onto some kind of surface and was going up.
Jules: What color was the sea?
Betty: It seemed very dark, but it was green—very, very dark. It was choppy. After it had cleared, it looked smooth, sort of smooth glass.
Ray: You could see the shoreline?
Betty: No, it went off into mist.
Joseph: But it was clear? A loud, clear voice to you?
Betty: Yes, it was a loud, clear voice.
Ray: It told you, “You’ve seen this. Do you understand?” You said, “No.” Do you understand what this was all about?
Betty: I understand now that I went through an initiation of some kind.
Joseph: Do you know why you were crying?
Betty: It was from love.
Jules: The tears. They seemed like elation—happy tears.
Betty: It was that. I really believe it was God that spoke to me. I feel funny about saying it because—I mean, God has made all things, and is even present in everything. And yet, here I was standing and He spoke to me. And I know it was through His Son, you know, that, uh—and I just felt the love of Jesus.
Virginia: (sitting in on the session) Do you identify the radiation, the voice, with God?
Betty: I don’t feel as if that bird was God. I feel as if the light in back of the bird was the radiation of God. I could not see God. All I did was hear the voice, and that was it. I could not see any form, and I don’t think I even wanted to look upon the form, if there was such a form.
Ray: The impression I got is that right up until that time, you still had doubts regarding that this was really God. Right up to that time, you still had doubts why this was happening to you, and you wanted an answer. When he referred to his Son, it seemed that all of a sudden you realized what this was all about, and that’s when you started to have this experience. It was almost like a dam burst, you know. You had been holding all this back, and all of a sudden you realized somehow or other that this was of God, and that is when you started to have this ecstatic experience.
Betty: I believe it is of God. But I still feel, who’s going to believe me? I mean, I trust all of you and everything, but there is doubt in my mind that even you really believe me about an experience such as that, because it is unbelievable.
Could Betty’s encounter with the huge bird best be described as an intense religious experience? One is tempted to propose that the stimulus for the event was Betty’s strong religious background. This is quite possible, of course, and already we have some basis for such a suggestion.
Earlier we saw that Betty’s Christian beliefs provided a desperately needed rationale when the alien beings passed through a closed door into her kitchen. “I’m thinking they must be angels,” Betty had said, “and scriptures keep coming into my mind.” Again, when the entities asked Betty for “knowledge tried by fire,” she showed them a Bible. When Quazgaa somehow produced four little books with blank, luminous pages, Betty automatically assumed that he had reproduced her Bible.
Throughout the abduction experience, Betty prayed within the context of her Christian faith, the very warp and woof of her life. Therefore, is it not possible that Betty’s subliminal mind sought for theological meaning to an otherwise meaningless, terrifying, and painful experience? The very concepts of UFOs and extraterrestrial life had no place within the confines of fundamentalist Christianity. Perhaps, heightened by the effects of hypnosis, Betty’s subconscious mind accommodated and reinterpreted the troubling elements of her UFO encounter. The result? A vivid, relived compensatory dream.
This hypothesis might seem quite logical and appropriate at first thought, but it has a serious flaw. The experience, whether dream or reality, did not concern itself with some readily discernible aspect or symbol of modern Christianity. Quite the contrary.
Ray: As far as you’re concerned, there was no symbolic message or meaning behind these—things?
Betty: Well, my sister and I were talking.… She had thought that she had seen that symbol someplace before, with the wings down. Some kind of Inca thing, Indian.
Ray: The symbol for the United States is a bald eagle.
Betty: But this had its wings down like this and my sister said, “That looks like a symbol that the Incas used, or Indians in times past.”
Ray: On their uniforms they had what looked like a bird.
Betty: That’s right! [See Figure 5 on page 34.]
Ray: Was it the same type of thing?
Betty: Yes, it was. It was the same type of thing. That’s right!
Ray: We have various symbols. We have the American flag flying everywhere.… I was thinking that maybe this symbol represented something for them. They thought that you would understand this, and then they seemed to explain it to you in a sense. They seemed to give you some kind of a message afterward—I was wondering if that was directly related to what you saw.
Betty: Well, another thing—as I said, my sister Shirley looked up about the Phoenix bird.…
Indeed, upon investigation, we found that Betty seems to have witnessed the death and rebirth of the legendary Phoenix. Collier Encyclopedia describes a bird almost identical to what Betty reported:
Phoenix, a legendary bird that builds its own funeral pyre and is reborn from its own ashes. Sacred in ancient Egypt, the Phoenix, which was always male and had a beautiful red and gold plumage, was fabled to live for 500 years or longer. At the end of that time, it built a nest from twigs of spice trees, to which it set fire. Both the bird and its nest were consumed in the flames. Out of the ashes, a worm emerged, from which the new Phoenix grew.1 [emphasis added]
It is interesting to note that the legendary Phoenix made its nest from “twigs of spice trees.”
Ray: Did you feel any air or smell anything at all during this whole thing? Did you smell anything?
Betty: I might have smelled something when that was burning.
Ray: What was burning? The eagle?
Betty: When that thing was burning. Sort of like a sweet incense smell when those ashes were burning—or whatever that thing was that was burning.
Smoldering spice-twig ashes would probably give off a smell like incense! Interestingly enough, Collier Encyclopedia adds that “The Phoenix figures prominently in early Christian art and literature as a symbol of immortality and the resurrection.”2 [emphasis added]
Her confrontation with a mythical monster was unsettling, to say the least. Was there a relationship between the phoenix and the insignia of a bird on the aliens’ uniforms? Exactly who or what was the voice? These and many other questions would occupy our minds for months during our lengthy analysis and evaluation of the Andreasson Affair. However, Betty’s experience did not end with the bird. There was much more to come.
