The reliving of the traumatic experience by hypnosis and the occurrence of several family tragedies, coupled with Betty’s impending divorce, had affected the lifestyle of the principal witness. Nonetheless, this had not negated our overall character check, which provided ample evidence that both she and Becky are honest and emotionally stable persons.
Harold Edelstein had no previous experience with UFO investigation. As the series of hypnotic/debriefing sessions progressed, he seemed genuinely impressed. But for the most part, he kept himself in the background and became directly involved only when necessary. He was careful not to let his words and thoughts influence Betty in any way.
It wasn’t until session 12, on July 16, 1977, that Harold made any definitive statement concerning the provocative case. After this session, he took the investigators aside.
“Okay,” Harold said. “I’m going to tell you what I honestly think. I think there is substance here, but it can’t be pushed because you’ll frighten her.”
That wasn’t the question on Fred Youngren’s mind: “What do you think we can believe of what we’re hearing here?”
“I don’t know if you can believe everything, but I believe wholeheartedly that in many instances, she believes what she’s telling you. The facial expressions and breathing can be changed,” Harold explained, “but a person has to really believe in what they are telling you in order for them to change. Play that tape back. Now at certain points, when I said to you, ‘Get a picture,’ her face was twisted up on the side. It didn’t even look like Betty. Am I right?”
“Yes,” Joseph Santangelo admitted. “She looked like she was in agony.”
“Now, these things are very important. Another thing that leads me to believe that a good share of this may be true is that she comes up with different things at different times. As she goes over it, it is just as though she were having a recollection of something.”
In sum, Harold concluded that at times, Betty and Becky appeared to be reliving an experience that was very real to them, and he advised us to make sample videotapes at some of the sessions. He believed that a good portion of the experience reflected actual reality, but he confessed he could not deduce how much was real or imagined. This deduction, he stressed, could only be made by comparing the Andreasson Affair with other reports for similarities. Such a comparison would be an intricate part of the last procedure employed in our investigation: analyzing all collected data pertaining to the case.
At the beginning of our investigation, all we knew was that Betty’s alleged experience had occurred early some time in 1967—and interestingly enough, 1967 was a vintage year for UFOs!
The longest sustained UFO sighting wave in recorded history had begun in the spring of 1964. At the time, I was chairman of the Massachusetts Investigating Subcommittee for NICAP (National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena). For the year 1966 alone, our subcommittee had logged a record number of 43 local reports evaluated in the unidentified category. In fact, UFO researchers all over the country shared a common frustration: There were too many high-quality reports and not enough trained investigators to document them. By January 1, 1967, local reports dropped off to a few per month, and it appeared that the long-lived UFO wave was diminishing. Then, without warning, UFO activity again increased dramatically.
On January 15, 1967, a bright red oval object ringed with a white halo circled a home in Boxford, Massachusetts, at 3:00 a.m.
Three days later, shortly before midnight, a bright flash lit up the skies over the sleeping village of Williamstown, Massachusetts, just as an electrical power failure crippled the area. Four persons approaching the darkened town sighted a domed glowing object hovering just off the highway. As they passed by, the object rose into the air and buzzed their car.
Two nights later at Methuen, Massachusetts, three persons—Kim, Janice, and Ellen—were on their way to pick up a friend for a local basketball game. The lonely street was bordered by woods, fields, and very few houses. Reaching the top of a hill, they were shocked to see up ahead a string of about 10 bright glowing red lights that were moving over a field just off the road to their left.
“What’s that?” Janice asked.
“It must be a helicopter,” Ellen replied.
Kim laughed. “It must be a UFO or a flying saucer!”
During my interview with the witnesses, Ellen remarked to me that at this point, “all of a sudden, it wasn’t funny anymore.” The object stopped moving, and they were closing on it rapidly. Kim slowed the car. Simultaneously, the object seemed to swing around, as if it were “spinning on its axis,” and revealed lights of a different color and configuration.
At that point Kim pulled the car over. Janice said, “Let’s go look at the helicopter.” She and Kim wanted to get out of the car, but Ellen didn’t. All of a sudden, the car stalled and the lights went off. Then nobody wanted to get out of the car! “Truthfully,” Ellen told me, “I was too scared to carefully observe the object.”
Kim told me that, during this juncture in the sighting, she had opened her side window in order to get a better look at the object: “The lights and our radio all went off at the same time. After this, I tried to start the car twice while the object remained stationary. Thinking that the lights and radio would be drawing too much power from the battery, I shut the light switch and the radio off. Then I tried to start the car again. It did not start.”
In the meantime, the house-sized object hovered a mere 300 feet away. Kim told me that “it was like the color and texture of Erector Set material,” and formed an inverted bowl shape around the lights. Ellen cowered in the back seat. (Curiously, the generator panel amp dimly pulsated off and on until the craft began to move away slowly.) Abruptly, it picked up speed and streaked away along its original flight path—where it was seen by another car full of people. The whole incident had lasted only a few minutes.
The strange sightings continued. On February 16 two policemen in Amherst, Massachusetts, responded to a UFO sighting reported to the station. Dumbfounded, they watched a glowing object like a bright white light bulb hovering in the night sky. A weird swishing sound emanated from it. Amazed, they watched it eject a small red object before accelerating out of sight over the horizon.
On February 17, at about 7:00 p.m., a salesman for Flying Tiger airlines was driving along Route 93 near the junction of Route 495 in Andover, Massachusetts. Cars slowed down and warily passed under a huge lighted object hovering directly over the road. Frightened, he, too, passed under the silent craft, which was larger than the width of the entire superhighway! In the early morning hours on that same date, shortly after 1:00, several people residing in Dorchester, Massachusetts, were awakened by an extraordinary whirring sound. Glancing out windows, they sighted an object that looked like a cymbal with a dome on top, with purplish lights around its perimeter. It hovered at treetop level over an elderly peoples’ project before moving way and out of sight.
On February 26, in Marlboro, Massachusetts, a husband and wife were awakened at 2:00 a.m. by a strange sound. When they got out of bed to investigate, they sighted a white glowing egg-shaped object swinging like a pendulum in the sky.
On March 1, at 7:25 p.m., witnesses in Sharon, Massachusetts, were amazed to witness a noiseless white glowing oval object that maneuvered near their home. It left a white glowing fuzzy trail in its wake.
According to the U.S. Weather Service, March 8, 1967, was a clear, cool night. Visibility was 12 miles. In Boston the thermometers read 28 degrees Fahrenheit. A recent snowstorm had left a beautiful blanket of white velvet draped over the fields and trees. A couple I’ll call Mr. and Mrs. William Roberts of Leominster, Massachusetts, got a sudden inspiration to go for a late-night scenic drive through the countryside. After driving for an hour and a half, they started home.
At about 1:00 a.m., they entered the town of Leominster, where, as Mrs. Roberts later told investigator Frank Pechulis, “We suddenly came across a very thick fog and had to slow our car to a real low speed for safety reasons.”
“As we passed the cemetery,” Mr. Roberts continued, “I noticed what looked like a large light to my left. I asked my wife if she saw anything, and she said no. I was certain that I had, and decided I would look again.” Mr. Roberts, thinking that the light might be a fire and that the fog was smoke, turned his car around and drove back into the mist. This time, they both saw the light. The bright glow was not from a fire, but from an object glowing in the air directly above the cemetery! At that point, Mr. Roberts lowered his window and excitedly told his wife, “I think we have something here!”
He parked the car broadside to the hovering object, which hung in the air a bare 200 yards away. Bright as an acetylene torch, it was shaped like a flattened egg and emitted a sound like a dynamo.
Against his wife’s wishes, William got out of the car. Excitedly, he raised his hand and pointed it at the blazing object. Simultaneously, the automobile lights, radio, and engine ceased functioning. At the same time, Mr. Roberts received an electrical shock. Almost instantaneously, his body became numb and immobilized from head to foot, and his arm was thrust back against the car by some unseen force, hitting the roof so hard that an imprint was made in the ice and snow. “When the car went dead,” Mrs. Roberts interjected, “I was yelling for Bill to get back in the car, but he did not move.”
“I was unable to move,” Mr. Roberts told the investigator. “My wife was in a panic. My mind was not at all affected. I just couldn’t move!”
When he did not respond to her screams, she slid across the seat and tugged at his jacket through the open window. He could hear her begging him to come back inside, but he couldn’t move a muscle. He was totally paralyzed from head to foot.
Mr. Roberts recalled, “I was there 30 to 40 seconds before the object moved away. It moved quickly at an ever-increasing speed, not instantly.” Abruptly, their car’s lights and radio came back on. The humming object had accelerated upward and out of sight above the dense fog patch. (On the following day, at Andover, Massachusetts, witnesses would sight a strangely lit silent object hovering about one thousand feet above the grounds of a country club.)
Incredible reports by credible people poured in. Later on in the year—on July 27, about 1:00 a.m.—a group of amateur astronomers saw a wingless, cylindrical object maneuvering over the darkened countryside of Newton, New Hampshire. (Two of the witnesses were trained observers and had received training in aircraft identification in the military.) As the object moved back and forth near the field in which they had set up a telescope, it responded exactly to signals flashed to it with a flashlight by one of the three witnesses.
Some UFO reports included the sighting of occupants by the witnesses. Several months prior to the Newton, New Hampshire, sighting, a former U.S. Coast Guard pilot and owner of a small airport in eastern Massachusetts was awakened by a weird humming sound. Thinking that an aircraft might be attempting an emergency landing, he leaped out of bed, flung on robe and slippers, turned on a bright yard light, and hurried outdoors to investigate.
The half-awake—but highly trained—man was totally unprepared for what greeted him. Hovering just 25 feet over a small pond between the house and the airport was a strange, silent aircraft. It was not a helicopter. He later told me it looked like “two shallow metallic saucers, one inverted upon the other, with a transparent canopy situated on its topside.” Elongated vent-like holes spaced evenly around the object’s rim emitted a soft orange glow. A softer, greener light bathed the interior of the canopy, revealing two humanoid creatures who stared down at him!
Thinking that it must be an experimental aircraft in trouble, he cautiously walked toward it, yelling and waving his arms. Instantaneously, it moved smoothly and silently away from him, stopping again over some gasoline pumps and aircraft at the edge of the runway. The curious witness ran around the pond and again headed toward the hovering craft, waving his hands at it as he approached. Abruptly, a swishing and loud whirring sound came from the object, and the orange lights began spinning around its circumference. Slowly and deliberately it tilted back before shooting away at fantastic speed. Simultaneously, the bright yard light dimmed to practically nothing during the object’s initial acceleration, but quickly returned to normal as it moved away. All that was left behind was a smell reminiscent of burned matches lingering in the night air.
Others were to have similar experiences. On November 2, 1967, two Native American youths were driving south on Highway 26 near Ririe, Idaho. At about 9:30 p.m., a blinding flash of light erupted in front of their car, then quickly dimmed to reveal an oval object with a central dome. The dome was transparent, and they saw that it contained two small humanoid creatures who stared down at them.
About a month later, on December 8, 1967, in Idaho Falls, Idaho, a young woman stepped outside to look for a friend who was on her way to pick her up. She noticed a patch of light reflected off the snow. Glancing up to see where it was coming from, she was horrified to see a circular object hovering silently in the overcast sky. As she stood awestruck at the sight of it, the object tipped and rotated, revealing a central transparent dome. In the dome she could make out the distinct outline of two humanoid figures gazing down at her. As the object moved away, she panicked and ran into the house. At its closest, she estimated that it was only about 300 feet away and about 100 feet off the ground.
Significantly, a great number of 1967 UFO reports involved sightings in upper central Massachusetts. A number of reports of objects hovering over freshwater ponds came from Phillipston, Royalston, Orange, and Tully, Massachusetts. Several objects were reported to have had a central dome. But the surge of UFO activity that reverberated into 1967 merely bracketed the incredible experience of the Andreasson family. What they had experienced was but a logical extension of all other aspects of the UFO phenomena—that is, a CE-IV: contact!
At that time, all we knew was the year of the sighting: 1967. But later, during the course of the hypnosis/debriefing sessions and other interviews, attempts were made to determine the actual date of the experience from the witnesses’ statements. From Betty’s overall testimony, we were able to start narrowing down the exact day.
Betty: It is 1967…the lights went out. My father and mother were staying with me. Husband in the hospital from a car accident. Snow, little bit…it’s cool, misty…fog rising from the ground.…
With this information in hand, we checked hospital records, local power company records, and detailed weather records kept by a weather station in Ashburnham. Hospital records show that Betty’s husband was transferred from a local hospital to a Veterans Administration (VA) Hospital near Boston on January 23, 1967. He was not released until March 17 of that year.
Ashburnham Municipal Light Company records show that a power failure occurred in Betty’s neighborhood on January 25, 1967. It was traced to a defective primary loop cutoff, which was replaced on the following day. (Unfortunately, the time of the failure was not recorded.)
The U.S. Department of Commerce weather station at Ashburnham recorded that a trace of snow was present on the ground between January 23 and 27, 1967. (The ground was covered with snow from January 28 through March 17, 1967. Depths ranged from 2 to 29 inches.) Weather records also revealed that the night of January 25, 1967, was misty.
Betty: Three days later, on a Saturday, Becky mentioned a strange dream. Mother and father went home that Monday.
Saturday would have been three days after a Wednesday. The evidence was strong that the UFO experience had taken place on Wednesday night, January 25, 1967. Much of Becky’s later testimony under hypnosis substantiated this date.
Becky: Father in hospital.… It got real dark. Think I’m 11. Birthday long time ago…cold outside…ground cool and damp.… Traces of snow…grass dead.… Path was muddy.… Bozo on TV.…Saturday was three days after.
Weather records indicated that on January 25 there was a thaw with temperatures rising to 54 degrees Fahrenheit. That would explain why the path was muddy. And a check of TV records confirms Becky’s statement that Bozo the Clown was indeed on television the evening of January 25.
During Becky’s initial recall, it was very disconcerting to us when she described herself and her friend eating apples from the orchard!
Becky: We both climbed up and sat down in the tree talking and eating apples.
Harold: Are the apples hard?
Becky: Yeah, real hard.
Apples seemed hardly in season during January, and we felt that Becky was imagining or mixing up this aspect of the account. Even though she talked like an 11-year-old while regressed by hypnosis, we sometimes treated her as the 22-year-old adult we saw at the present time—and in doing so, perhaps we expected too much of her. In this instance, however, she may have been giving us an accurate description.
On December 24, 1977, I visited a local apple orchard during a thaw. It was a balmy day with a temperature of about 50 degrees Fahrenheit. There were dried-up apples on some of the trees, and piles of both decayed and firm apples under the trees.
I picked one up and took a bite out of it. It tasted all right. Later, on January 28, 1978, I sent field investigator Jules Vaillancourt to the orchard behind the house formerly owned by the Andreasson family. Under the tree, Jules found apples that had frozen and thawed—and they were edible. It looks as if we underestimated Becky.
While under hypnosis, both Betty and Becky were asked what time the incident started. Because Betty had not noticed the time, she could only guess: “I don’t know, but seven o’clock keeps going through my mind.”
Becky, however, could see the clock in the living room when the lights began flashing through the kitchen window: “They got there at twenty-five of seven.”
When Betty was returned to the house and entered the living room with the entities, she had noticed the clock: “It is ten-forty.… It’s dim, but the hands look like ten-forty—in between ten forty-five and ten-forty.”
Inquiries revealed that the Andreasson family had eaten early suppers, between 4:00 and 4:30 p.m., during this period, so that the children might be fed and prepared for bed before Betty left to make her nightly visit to her husband at the local hospital. Betty ceased these visits when her husband was transferred to the VA Hospital near Boston on January 23, 1967, but the habit of early suppers was still maintained on January 25. Using information extracted from the hypnosis sessions, the scenario following on pages 187–188 could be constructed.
Another aspect tending to verify the account of the witnesses was that some portions of the story would be correlated with real-time events. We have just seen that their description of environmental conditions and circumstances corresponded to reality. Of course, the date and time of the incident were derived from this data. Interestingly enough, the present owner of the house in Ashburnham confirmed that because of the lay of the land, a dense, local fog tended to form behind the house. Weather conditions on January 25, 1967, were conducive to the misty conditions Betty described. Indeed, if not for the dense fog on that evening, the landed UFO could have been observed by others from neighboring houses.
In addition, measurements of the backyard demonstrated that an object of the dimensions Betty described could have landed only where she had reported seeing it on the ground. True to her statement, at the reported landing site, it would have needed adjustable landing gear. A check of the interior of the house (granting allowances for known renovations) also corresponded to the descriptions given under hypnosis.
Having established the estimated date and time of the Andreasson Affair, we continued on to complete a detailed analysis of the remaining data. During this study, we encountered startling similarities with other Close Encounter UFO reports, in more than a dozen important categories.
The sudden stillness that enveloped the Andreasson house has been reported in connection with other UFO reports as far back as 1933 (that is, prior to the influx of modern UFO sightings in the 1940s). APRO reported a sighting from the year 1933 that took place between Lehighton and Nazareth, Pennsylvania. A male motorist stopped his car to examine a strange violet glow in a field. Approaching the eerie light source, he found it to be emanating from a round object resting on the ground. While in the vicinity of the object, he neither saw nor heard a living thing and stated that the silence was “deadly.”1
Another report from this period comes from Canadian UFO researcher John Brent Musgrave, who documented a sighting which took place in the summer of 1933 at Nipawin, Saskatchewan. Several persons jumped into a truck and drove to an area where strange lights had been seen to descend. In a field they sighted a large oval-shaped object, supported by legs, with a central dome. About a dozen short figures could be seen moving around the craft. They reported that “all was a strange sort of quiet.”2
We see this same peculiarity manifested in some modern sightings. On November 5, 1974, at about noon, Harry Pinhorn observed a strange gray object hover over the factory at which he worked in Lisarow, Wyoming. He stated that a strange silence that engulfed the area caused him to notice the object: “I looked up at the trees because the birds had all suddenly gone quiet and there it was.”3
At 8:45, on a clear night, January 21, 1977, Robert Melerine was paddling his boat quietly up the Dike Canal in St. Bernard Parish, Louisiana. Abruptly a glowing object moved rapidly toward him and hovered overhead, engulfing him in warm light. He stated that there was a complete silence: “No wind. No frogs croaking or ducks calling. Silence.”4 Three boys at Salisbury North, Australia, had a similar experience shortly after. A low-flying object cast a beam of light at their bicycles on May 27, 1977. Investigator Colin Norris stated that “the stillness that the boys noticed…is consistent with many other reported sightings.”5
At 5:00 a.m. on June 24, 1977, a married couple living in Lubbock, Texas, were awakened by the sudden movement of their dog. Puzzled by the dog’s antics, the wife got up and went to the door. She stated, “When I first woke, I could hear the sound of about a million crickets in all the trees here. But almost immediately, it was just deathly quiet—not a sound.” A glowing object hovered outside over her neighbor’s house.6 Still another case of this sort occurred on October 9, 1977, at 8:30 p.m., in Walcott, Iowa. Holly Prunchak, a security guard at the French-Hecht plant, watched a strange, lighted oval object descend over farm property across the street. The Center for UFO Studies dispatched veteran investigator Ralph DeGraw to conduct an inquiry. DeGraw learned that “all the ambient animal noises (cattle and crickets) went quiet when the object was in view.”7
An identical effect was noticed by witnesses to a sighting that took place a decade earlier in Brookfield, Wisconsin. On August 12, 1967, at 2:30 a.m., a sleepy man and wife glanced out the window to see what their German shepherd was barking about. Shocked, they saw an oval object hovering at ground level over an adjoining pasture. A sharply defined beam of light emanated from the craft and the dog stopped barking. Everything became strangely silent. The usual night sounds of insects and animals ceased abruptly. “There was dead silence outside.”8
Note that the reported silencing effect appears to be connected with certain lights from the UFO, just as it seems to have been in the Andreasson Affair.
Earlier in this chapter, I mentioned the localized power failures sometimes associated with UFO sightings. These included the area surrounding Williamstown, Massachusetts, on January 18, 1967, and the case involving the manager of a small airport in eastern Massachusetts when his yard light dimmed concurrently with a Close Encounter UFO sighting.
Our local team of investigators has investigated a number of these so-called electromagnetic (E-M) effect cases, some of which have been quite spectacular. Walter Webb, assistant director of Boston’s Hayden Planetarium, documented such an event that took place in Dorchester, Massachusetts, on April 24, 1966, at 5:00 a.m. An oval domed object, encircled with red lights, hit and shook an apartment complex. A simultaneous power failure was traced to a burned cable near the object’s flight path.
UFO interference with radio and TV has been a common occurrence over the years. Two cases will suffice to illustrate this effect:
1. November 5, 1957, Ringwood, Illinois. UFO followed car to town. TV sets in town dimmed, finally lost picture and sound during same period of time.
2. November 10, 1957, Hammond, Virginia. Police chased UFO. TV blackout in city.9
In 1971, I managed to secure a number of pages from a thought provoking textbook employed by the United States Air Force academy for a course relating to UFOs. In a section captioned “Alien Visitors,” the following excerpt seems highly pertinent to the discussion at hand:
The most stimulating theory for us is that the UFOs are material objects which are either manned or remote-controlled by beings who are alien to this planet…The most commonly described alien is about three and one-half feet tall, has a round head, arms reaching to or below his knees, and is wearing a silvery space suit or coveralls. They have particularly wide (wrap-around) eyes and mouths with very thin lips.10
This description is also borne out in civilian sources. Concerning height, an analysis of UFO occupant reports prepared for the Center for UFO Studies11 states that 27 such “dwarf” cases were reported in 1973. One such case allegedly involved another family’s CE-IV on October 16, 1973, at Lehi, Utah. Using hypnosis, Dr. James Harder, consultant for the Aerial Phenomena Research Organization (APRO), elicited from one of the witnesses the following description: The beings were slightly over four feet tall, very thin, with large slanted eyes. Their arms were long and their hands gloved and claw-like, with a diminutive thumb. They were wearing what appeared to be glowing clothing with Sam Browne belts!
A number of UFO reports describe floating entities associated with the observed craft. The Ririe, Idaho, case (alluded to earlier) involved two UFO occupants gazing down at the witnesses from the object’s transparent central dome. One of the humanoid creatures left the hovering craft, and “with a floating movement like a bird” descended to the door at the driver’s side of the automobile.12
At Brands Flats, Virginia, on January 19, 1965, the witness reported seeing three small beings float down to him from a hovering object. (This case will be discussed further later, as it bears other similarities to the Andreasson report.)
Air Force Sergeant Charles L. Moody is a member in high standing of the United States Air Force’s Human Reliability Program. Candidates for this program are carefully screened by psychiatrists for emotional disorders during the process of selection for this elite group. I mention this because Moody reported to APRO that he was abducted from his automobile outside of Alamogordo, New Mexico, during the early morning hours of August 13, 1975. He said of his dwarflike captors: It’s going to sound ridiculous and I hope nobody sends me a straitjacket, but these beings did not walk, they glided.
Although Betty did not remark on the glow emitted by the entities’ uniforms until later, when she was inside the dark tunnel, other witnesses have reported the same thing under ordinary nighttime conditions. For example, the aforementioned Lehi, Utah, incident also involved small beings with glowing clothes.
Another case involved a young man on March 28, 1967. At about 2:25 a.m., he was returning home to Munroe Falls, Ohio, from the night shift at the Lamb Electric Company in Kent, Ohio, when he spotted a luminescent UFO hovering off the left side of the road. Shocked, he saw four or five small creatures moving extremely rapidly back and forth across the road. They were like little people with disproportionally large heads and no distinguishable features. They were emitting the same colored glow as the UFO.
Yet another report of this type originated in Goffstown, New Hampshire, on November 4, 1973. While investigating another incident in that area that had occurred a few days previously, UFO field investigator John Oswald and I were checking the police blotter for other reports. We came across a file card that read, in part: “Subject called this H.Q. and reported that there were small silver subjects running about his yard.… Patrolman Wike advised that Mr. Snow had seen something and that this was not a figment of his imagination.”13
What did Mr. Snow see? We investigated and found out.
Shortly after midnight, the Snows were startled by a brushing sound against their house. Their German shepherd, Miko, began whining. Mr. Snow got up to let the dog out and was surprised to see light shining under the bedroom door from the corridor outside. Opening the door, he found the light was coming through the kitchen window from the outside.
Miko was crouched on the floor near the door, emitting a low growl. Her teeth were bared and the hair on her back bristled. Mr. Snow told me that his first thought was that there was a fire burning outside. He walked up to the back door, parted the curtains, and peered out. What he saw so amazed him that he just backed away from the door in utter astonishment. Looking out again, he saw that the diffuse white glow was emanating from two self-luminous, small silver-suited creatures gathering something from the ground at the edge of the nearby woods.
Another recurring characteristic of UFO Close Encounters is the temporary paralysis of witnesses. On June 15, 1964, in Lynn, Massachusetts, an intermittent roaring sound caused the witness to run outside to investigate. A bare 20 feet away from him, a domed oval object was slowly ascending over the driveway. He stopped dead in his tracks. Concurrently, he felt a tingling sensation that began from his feet and ran upward through his body. He wanted to move but found himself completely immobilized until the object left the area.
Just one day before, miles away in Dale, Indiana, Charles Englebrecht was watching TV. At about 8:55 p.m., a brilliant light source passed by the kitchen window. As he got up to investigate, the TV and house lights went out. Going outside, he was astounded to see a glowing object hovering at the edge of the backyard. As he started to approach it, he abruptly became immobilized by what he described as “being shocked by a small electrical charge.”14 The Leominster, Massachusetts, case described earlier in the chapter involved a similar effect upon the witness as he left his automobile and pointed at a nearby hovering object.
One of the most sensational sightings of this type was investigated by NICAP and actually evoked a visit to NICAP headquarters by a CIA agent requesting information on the case. On January 19, 1965, a man then living in Waynesboro, Virginia, was working by himself at the Augusta County Archery Club off Route 250, near Brands Flats. At about 5:40 p.m., he sighted two silvery oval objects approaching in the sky. One quickly descended and landed about 50 feet away from him. From it emerged three humanoid beings dressed in silvery suits. As the entities approached him, he found that he could not move a muscle. After looking him over, the creatures reentered the object through a door that appeared to “mold itself into the ship.” The object then ascended and flew off.15
While returning home from work during the early morning hours of November 2, 1973, Mrs. Lyndia Morel also had a Close Encounter while passing through Goffstown, New Hampshire. A UFO paced her car. It came so close that she could see a figure with slanted eyes staring at her from a transparent section of the craft. As she told investigator John Oswald: “I can remember seeing a pair of eyes staring at me and saying, ‘Don’t be afraid’ [not audibly, but in her head]. I covered my eyes and yanked the wheel. I was petrified.”16
The Sergeant Moody case also contained this peculiarity. He described this mode of communication with the aliens as being almost as if you are thinking something in your own head.
The classic Barney and Betty Hill abduction case of September 19, 1961, near Woodstock, New Hampshire, also involved this type of communication.17 Barney reported that the UFO’s occupants spoke to him by mental telepathy from the hovering object: “He’s just telling me, ‘don’t be afraid.’” Later, when the craft reportedly landed and the entities approached their car, he reported: “the eyes are talking to me… telling me, ‘don’t be afraid.’” Betty also stated that she “knew what they were thinking.”
This phenomenon was also an integral part of the already cited Lehi, Utah, case. One of the witnesses described the small entities as having “thought at me with their heads.”
Interestingly enough, some pertinent remarks about this type of communication were discussed at a Military Electronics Conference on Communication with Extraterrestrial Intelligence held from September 22 to 24, 1965, in Washington, D.C. One of the panel members, Dr. William O. Davis, director of research at Huyck Corporation (Stamford, Connecticut), stated the following concerning this fascinating subject:
How do we communicate? Well, we have talked about the linguistic approach. We have talked about Dr. Lilly’s approach with non-human forms. I think I would like to break the problem down a little more.
There are really three different cases we should worry about. First of all is an encounter with a lower order of intelligence than our own. This would be the case if we should land on a planet and find it occupied with life at the level of bees or cows and presumably nonintelligent, or at least not yet at our level. In this particular case, I think that the best we could hope for would be the type of communication we establish with dogs and horses, a symbiosis or—and this is disputable—a telepathic rapport with them. It would be unlikely that we could establish communication at the verbal level or at the level of symbology.
The second case is where we find people of precisely equal evolution. Now, this is very improbable.… Even 15 years in our history would make a tremendous difference, either backwards or forwards. If you look at the technological trend curves, for example, you find that by the year 2000 everything is asymptotic, and it is extremely likely that technological revolution per se will have played itself out by that time. Other trends indicate that from here on, increasing emphasis is going to be on understanding the mind and how it operates. Some of the work that Dr. Puharich has done is a little controversial, too, such as studying extrasensory perception with people having extreme talents, which indicates that there are relationships between these ESP talents and other natural phenomena, and indicates that as we go on we may be able to learn how to improve our ability to communicate, at least at the symbolic level, by ESP means. Certainly even today we do a great deal, I suspect, of our communication at the emotional level by extrasensory means.
If we were to encounter somebody of equal intelligence, I think we would have a problem. We would undoubtedly fight them. This, to my way of thinking, is the least probable and the most dangerous of the three cases.
The third case is that the most probable encounter is with a higher form of life, or at least a more advanced form, because these beings would be more likely to reach us first than vice versa. If we assume that they understand more about the mind than we do—and let’s say they understand more about ESP or it turns out to be a human-type phenomenon—they should be able to detect us. After all, we know all kinds of fields associated with the physical world, the world of entropy. It is not illogical to assume that life may have as yet undetected fields and radiation associated with it. They wouldn’t have to scour the whole universe for us. They would simply focus their life-detecting device. The nice thing about this hypothetical contact is that communication would be their problem. We wouldn’t have to worry about it. They would come to us. As a matter of fact, I strongly suspect that the first communication is very likely to be telepathic.18
Sergeant Moody also described an elevator in the craft he was taken into, noting that the floor seemed to give way like an elevator. One of the remarkable internal consistencies of this particular case concerned Betty’s detailed drawings of things she had witnessed during the reported experience. The amount of detail in these drawings appeared to have been in direct proportion to the length of observing time Betty was allowed during the alleged abduction.
Investigator Fred Youngren performed a fascinating analysis of Betty’s sketches of the UFO’s interior. Fred has a master’s degree in aerospace engineering and holds a managerial position within the defense industry. He obtained estimated dimensions of various segments of the object from Betty, then combined her drawings and narrative data to produce a feasible floor plan of the UFO.19
There are a number of similarities between the physical examination administered to Betty Andreasson and those allegedly given to other abductees. Sergeant Moody, for example, states that he woke up lying on a metallic table—a solid block sitting on the floor. He looked up and saw one of the small creatures standing beside him. His first impulse was to jump up and hit it, but he found that he was being totally restrained by an unseen force.
Betty Hill also reported being probed by long needles, including one that was inserted into her navel for a pregnancy test. When she screamed out in pain, the leader of the entities came over, put his hands in front of her eyes, and said that it would be all right and that she wouldn’t feel it.
The eyelike lens mentioned by Betty seems to have its counterpart in other cases. On October 11, 1973, Charles Hickson and Calvin Parker reported that two creatures had floated from a hovering craft and grabbed them off a pier at Pascagoula, Mississippi. The creatures floated them into the craft, where Hickson claimed to have been examined by a device that reminded him of a big eye. Betty Hill also described a device that the aliens used to examine her as being like a microscope with a big lens.
The Brazilian newspaper 0 Dia, of April 22, 1976, mentions a Mario Restier, who reported that he had been abducted by three creatures from a disc-shaped object who communicated with him by telepathic means. After being taken aboard the craft, he claims the aliens ordered him to get into a glass box filled with liquid. They explained to him that this was the only method by which the human body could be protected against the effects of their form of travel. Perhaps the immersion chair that Betty was placed in was for this very same purpose. Could it be possible that this strange chair was in reality a liquid-filled high-g acceleration chamber to protect her from the high acceleration involved during the trip to the alien place?
Betty had the distinct impression that while her body was immersed in one of the tanklike seats, the oval craft brought her to an alien place. It is possible that the seat was designed to protect humans from the effects of acceleration and speed beyond our comprehension. Liquid would cushion the pressures by distributing stresses evenly over Betty’s body. (Water is also used in nuclear plants as a shield against radiation—which is also known to exist in earth’s Van Allen belts.) Lastly, the syrup fed to Betty through a tube seems to have been some form of tranquilizer that made her “feel good.”
Looking back on the incident, it would seem that Betty experienced the same weightlessness that our own astronauts did. She seems to have been artificially held down, except when the aliens floated her at will from one position to another. The heavy feeling that she felt while on the UFO may have been an induced localized gravitational force that counteracted the weightlessness—or a byproduct of extreme acceleration. A similar applied force probably kept her upright on the black track transportation system.
Even the small globes carried by the aliens may not be entirely unprecedented in the annals of UFO history. Early in 1967, NICAP received a startling report from a gentleman who refused to give his name and address. Although this case could not be properly investigated, it nonetheless bears a striking similarity to this aspect of the Andreasson Affair.
On the evening of February 5, 1967 (interestingly enough, only 11 days after Betty’s experience), a young man in Hilliard, Ohio, said he heard a “strange noise” and a dog barking. Looking up, he saw a UFO 75 feet long and about 75 feet high come in low over a road shoulder. The object, he said, landed on three legs in a field, and “beings” emerged. They were carrying small circular balls, which they placed on the ground around the sides of the ship. Then the witness stepped on a twig that snapped, which immediately caught the attention of the “beings.” Their leader ran after the observer who, badly frightened, attempted to run. However, the creature caught him by the back of the neck, immediately leaving a burned wound that, according to the witness, was later confirmed by unnamed Air Force officers investigating the incident. He said still another of the creatures approached, and both dragged him back to the saucer. As they got almost to the door of the craft, the humanoids looked at each other as if panic-stricken. They dropped the scared witness, gathered up the balls, and took off in the UFO.20
Thus, there are a number of interesting parallels between the Andreasson Affair and other CE-IV reports on record. There seem to be too many such similarities, cast in a logical structure within her account, to dismiss them all as products of cryptoamnesia, a term that refers to the mind’s ability to record and subconsciously store all sorts of data from daily experience. Information culled from books, magazines, newspapers, radio, TV, recordings, and conversations all contributes to our subconscious memory bank.
This, of course, could include data on other UFO cases. In fact, Betty admitted having read books and articles on UFOs following her 1967 experience, and her initial letter to Dr. Hynek reflected theories and ideas obviously gleaned from a reading of uncritical UFO literature. Yet some of the subtle details she related—though extremely uncommon—do correlate with other unpublished UFO cases we have investigated. (These particular characteristics must remain confidential so as not to compromise our investigations into future cases.)
How could Betty’s subconscious have “remembered” details from cases that have not yet been printed? If we grant that some other reported UFO experiences are grounded in reality, these common and not-so-common characteristics of other UFO reports add support for the authenticity of Betty Andreasson’s report. I personally found it very hard not to accept that the Andreasson family had a bona fide UFO experience.
In retrospect, the Andreasson Affair can be divided into five segments:
Segment 1: The flashing lights and power failure were experienced and consciously remembered by Betty and Becky Andreasson, and Waino and Eva Aho. The younger children did not remember anything.
Segment 2: Alien entities were observed by Betty and Becky Andreasson, and Waino Aho.
Segment 3: Betty alone experienced the UFO episode.
Segment 4: Betty alone experienced a visit to an alien realm.
Segment 5: Betty alone experienced the return to her home.
Because segments 1 and 2 were witnessed by more than one person, they logically receive higher credibility ratings than segments 3 through 5, which essentially involved Betty alone.
The controversial segment 4, during which Betty saw the huge bird, presented the greatest dilemma to the field investigators, the hypnotist, and the psychiatrist. Where was Betty taken? Were the red and green areas part of an underground colony on earth, on the moon, or on one of our neighboring planets? Was the alien colony located within a hollowed-out asteroid, or did Betty visit a vast artificial mother ship? Did Betty leave our solar system entirely, via an acceleration and technology entirely beyond our ken? These and many other questions remain unanswered. And because of its uniqueness within UFO literature and its strong religious overtones, the Phoenix episode was difficult to accept as a physical experience.
Segment 4 seemed just as real to Betty as the other segments, but because of the high degree of strangeness associated with it, one does tend to want to disassociate it from the rest of the report. Regarding the bird and the voice, our attitudes varied: This segment was a nonrelated vision instigated by Betty’s own religious beliefs; this episode was a programmed vision induced by the entities; it could have been a staged, symbolic (yet physical) initiation rite as described by Betty; it was a deliberate deception on the part of the aliens to make human beings believe in a UFO/religion connection. And lastly, perhaps there was a possible link between UFOs and religion. In any case, the Phoenix episode remains a puzzle.
If taken at face value, however, the other segments of the Andreasson Affair are incredible enough, in both their content and their implications. If we accept Betty and Becky’s account as true, then an actual alien craft landed or appeared in the Andreassons’ backyard. The strange craft contained aliens of unknown origin. Their paranormal powers indicate that no one is exempt from a CE-IV.
It is especially unnerving to realize that the glasslike chairs in the half-cylinder room were shaped to the stature of a human body. The tubes connected to Betty’s nostrils and mouth were designed for air-breathing persons. The entire operation seems to have been tailored for human beings!
Indeed, according to Quazgaa, Betty is just one of many persons who have undergone such an experience. And before bringing this comparative analysis to an end, we must turn to one of the most striking similarities discovered during our investigation of the Andreasson Affair. It has to do with the needle and possibly implanted BB-like object in Betty’s nose.
