JENNY

(Note: While it is true that this is not science fiction, it is also true that it could be called a horror story. The difference here is that it is based on real events and covers an investigation into areas that are now prominent in the world of the Paranormal and is seen in many movies. I do not believe that “Jenny” was lying, but that she truly believed what she was saying during the sessions. You’ll have to decide for yourself if her story fits into your version of reality. There is much more to this and can be found in the book Conversions. Click on the cover of that book to the right which will take you to Amazon. Frankly, I don’t understand why this book hasn’t done better… it is a damn fascinating tale that is something of a history lesson with the added benefit of being true.)

I call her Jenny for no other reason than I decided that she didn’t need to be plagued by self-styled researchers, skeptics, debunkers and the producers of radio and television talk shows. She is a kind, almost fragile woman of thirty-two, who came from a broken home but who has been happily married for seven years. She has one child and hopes to have another. She is thin, blond, and shy. She warms to people slowly but only because she is so shy. I have not known her to lie, at least on purpose, and I know that she isn’t a student of history, literature or the paranormal. She reads the newspaper daily but rarely reads books, watches the local news almost religiously but stays away from the national news because she believes it to be too sensational and that most of it has nothing to do with her life or her family. She doesn’t watch the cable channels that often delve into the paranormal, but she has seen some things. She is a quiet, good person which is at odds with who, under hypnosis, she claimed to be.

I also point out that her trouble began in a series of nightmares so vivid that they brought her wide awake several nights a week, so frightened that she couldn’t go back to sleep of hours. She was losing sleep but had no idea what was in the nightmares that was so terrifying. Upon awakening she had virtually no memory of what the dream had been, only that it filled her with horror and fear and often left her shaking.

Almost every other night she would get up and wander from room to room in the dark. She could see out the windows, onto a street that was filled with a yellowish glow from the lights. She would sit in the dark and work at not really remembering what she had dreamt and once she calmed herself sufficiently, she would go back to bed. Most of the time she couldn’t get back to sleep immediately.

Someone told her that rather than fight the dream and try to forget it, maybe she should confront it. Maybe she should not only try to remember it, but she should write down what she remembered each night and that might tell her how to conquer her fear of those dreams.

There is a certain element of psychology in that. A standard technique in defeating phobias is to confront them. If a person is afraid of snakes, then the technique is to slowly introduce them to snakes, maybe first with photographs, then with video tape and finally with a living snake in a glass cage across the room. Eventually the person is able to approach the cage and might even hold the snake in his or her hand. This flooding technique is often very successful.

So, if Jenny wrote down the dreams, even the small fragments that she could remember, she might be able to confront her fear and then maybe defeat it. She put a pad and pencil in her bathroom. She would retreat there to write down her impressions as soon as she awakened so that she didn’t have to turn on the bedroom light and wake her husband.

The first imagines made no real sense to her. There would be a bright light and people seeming to stand in the light or just beyond it. Maybe they would gesture at her, as if asking her to join them. Sometimes there was a high-pitched whine and other times there was a rushing like wind through the trees. A few times there was just a total darkness around her and a fear that her husband was paralyzed, or had just died, or was about to die.

She did tell a few close friends about these dreams but none seemed to have any idea about how to help her. They didn’t recognize the symptoms as manifested in the dreams. They were as puzzled as she was. Then, one night, watching a television documentary about alien abduction, she heard another woman talk of lights in the bedroom, and of strange, shadowy creatures standing just outside the circle of light, beckoning her to join them. And she heard of spouses who lay next to the victim without the slightest idea of what was happening.

This, she thought, was what she had been experiencing. There were differences, of course, but it was close enough and it explained so much. Alien creatures were invading her bedroom, and “switching off” her husband in the parlance of the abduction phenomenon so that he would be unaware of the situation around him. She could be taken from her bed and then, later, returned, with neither knowing what happened. Her only memories were fragments that she thought of as horrible dreams. Maybe those fragments were something else. Maybe she was beginning to understand what had been happening to her for so many months.

Now Jenny made the mistake that so many others have made. She believed that she had identified the problem and began research into it. The Internet provided the clues with search engines that could find nearly anything she wanted. She began the quest and found herself immersed in the UFO sub-culture known as alien abduction. She began to read all that she could find on the subject, search for documentaries that would tell her more aliens, and she tried to locate a UFO researcher who would be interested in her case.

At that point the nature of her nightmares began to subtly change. Now she realized that the figures just outside the lights were not human, but were certainly humanoid. They were short, slender, grey creatures with teardrop-shaped heads, huge dark eyes, and thin, spindly arms. They wanted her to accompany them to their ship for some kind of experimentation or examination. She never remembered any of that, but she also learned that such amnesia surrounding the specifics of the abduction wasn’t all that uncommon. The aliens didn’t want their human victims to remember what they had experienced and they attempted to “wipe” out the memories. Sometimes the only clues were these horrifying nightmares.

Frustrated by her lack of progress, or her understanding of how to stop the abductions, Jenny began to look for someone to help her. Someone versed in both alien abduction and hypnosis, which she had learned on the Internet was about the only way she could remember everything. She wanted to explore her... dreams... and she wanted someone who could answer her questions about them. She was searching for the man or woman in all the horror movies, ostracized by society because of their strange beliefs, but who had all the answers when they were needed. What she wanted was a Dr. van Helsing.

What she got, instead, was me.

I am always reticent to offer assistance to those who believe they have been abducted. I do not want to validate their fantasies because I believe that most of those claiming abduction have not been abducted by aliens or anything else. They are lead into those beliefs by friends, family, the Internet, books, movies and television. They see others, with similar experiences, and it makes it seem so real to them. This sort of belief can overwhelm a person, suck the life out of them, and create family discordance that can wreck the strongest marriages.

And, I realize that too often the people who come to me aren’t really interested in exploring their strange experiences and nightmares, but want me to tell them that it is all true. They don’t want to believe that somehow these memories don’t exist and there are other causes for their problems. They are looking for psychological counseling, or therapy, and I don’t want to do that. It creates more problems than it solves, at least for me.

If the person is insistent, then I suggest one of those who specializes in abduction research. There are dozens of them, all with support groups, many with newsletters, and a few with book contracts. All, client and researcher, are interested in proving that alien creatures are invading our bedrooms for all sorts of suspected and alleged reasons. I believe that the person will be happier, relatively, in such a support group.

Which is not to say that I haven’t engaged in abduction research. Back in 1976, I was the first to report that the aliens had invaded a house and taken the residents out. Prior to that, victims reported abductions had taken place on deserted stretches of road, usually when the person was alone and usually late at night. In most cases the victim or victims could be considered a “target of opportunity”.

The Pat Roach abduction, which was first described in Saga’s UFO Report in 1976 deviated from what was then the classic abduction in a number of ways. It has since been written about in various books and was even featured on an installment of the old In Search Of... television program. And, it is a case that I believe has been solved. Pat Roach suffered from an episode sleep paralysis. Poor hypnotic regression and a will to believe were responsible for changing this little understood psychological phenomenon into a case of alien abduction, at least in this specific case.

I have investigated other cases as well, searching for some sort of answer. With California documentary producer Russ Estes and clinical psychologist Dr. William Cone, I wrote The Abduction Enigma which outlined our research and our conclusions about alien abduction. We found no solid, independent evidence that alien creatures were abducting humans, but we did find evidence of sloppy research techniques, poor science and an over reliance on hypnotic regression as a way of investigating the cases. We came to believe that most stories of alien abduction had terrestrial explanations for them. We didn’t need to “invent” alien abductors to make some sense of the information and the various reports.

And that too, was a reason that I didn’t want to get involved in another abduction case. I could not, in good conscious, enter into an investigation believing that I knew the answers already. If aliens were not abducting Jenny, but she sincerely believed that, I thought my participation could produce more harm to her and that it could do no real good.

But Jenny was insistent, claiming she wanted answers and not validation. I warned her about my reservations concerning hypnosis, and that it is quite easy to lead a subject while he or she is under the influence of hypnosis. And, I made it clear that she had already contaminated the research with her reading of abduction material and watching abduction shows. She already knew too much for us to believe that she hadn’t formed some opinions about the reality of alien abduction and that she hadn’t been influenced by all that she had read and heard, not to mention what her friends and family were saying to her.

She told me that she understood all that and believed that my natural skepticism would make the investigation more rigorous. If I was convinced, in the end, that she had been abducted, then we all would learn something. If, on the other hand, I found some answers, whatever those answers might be, then maybe that would end her nightmares and she could sleep more soundly. Either way, she was sure that she would be better off than she was at the moment. Given those very specific conditions, I agreed to assist in the investigation.

I was not, and am not, however, a qualified hypnotist, and while I knew that I could learn the technique in a weekend, given the right environment, I just didn’t want to “mess around” with someone’s head. I knew how easily it was to make a mistake that could have severe consequences later. I decided to find someone who was versed in hypnosis and who knew something about psychology. This way we would be much less likely to make a mistake and create more disturbing dreams.

I was able to find a young man, I’ll call Tom, through one of the nearby universities. As an added benefit, he knew something about UFOs and a little about alien abduction. He hadn’t been exposed to a great deal of the literature so that he was coming into this investigation with few preconceived notions. I asked him to avoid learning anything more until we had made some progress in the investigation. I believed that I had enough experience with alien abduction that we would run into nothing that would surprise us. I felt that we were prepared.

And yes, this sounds a little arrogant, but the truth is, I had been investigating UFOs for more than thirty years at that time, and I was among the first to study abductions. True, my study led me away from the idea that aliens were involved, but I did then, and do now, understand the phenomenon.

 

First Meeting

 

We met Jenny on a cold November night with a sky filled with stars, a hint of snow in the air, and no wind at all. It was calm and quiet as only such a night could be. There seemed to be no airplanes in the sky, no cars on the Interstate, and nothing moving. The only signs of life were the bright lights in the windows of the houses along the street and a suggestion of wood smoke in the air. Someone had started a fire.

Jenny met us at the door, dressed in jeans, a light blouse and a gray, torn sweater. She looked apprehensive, her face seemed pale and her eyes overly large. Her voice was strong, however, as she invited us into the house.

Without a word she led us downstairs into a large family room dominated by a fireplace. Over the mantle was a family portrait that in years past would have been in oils but looked like a color enlargement of a photograph with the oil painting texture added by a computer. Her husband looked younger and smaller than she did and the child in the portrait was little more than a baby. He looked like a smaller version of his father.

As I stood there looking at the picture, she asked, “Can I take your coats?”

She took them and disappeared through a door at the far end of the room. When she returned she asked, “Would either of you care for anything to drink?”

She offered Seven-up, Coke, coffee and beer. Given that this was a research trip, both Tom and I opted for something soft and cold even though the night outside was cold.

When she returned, we sat down and Tom asked, “Have you ever undergone hypnosis?”

She shook her head, and looking like the kid who was on his first visit to the dentist said, “Never.”

Tom, sitting in the big soft chair angled toward the couch, leaned forward and said, “It doesn’t hurt. You just go to sleep. Well, not really sleep, but you enter an altered state of consciousness. You might be able to remember events better. You might be able to remember those nightmares better but everything is still in your hands. I can sort of guide you, but I’m not in control here. You are.”

Quietly, she said, “Okay. How do we begin?”

Tom set his Coke down on a small table near his chair and said, “Get comfortable. Lie down if you want with your legs straight out, your arms at your sides so that there is no distraction from these pressure points. When you are comfortable and relaxed, let me know.”

Jenny stretched out on her couch, and then seemed to wiggle slightly as if trying to get more comfortable. She closed her eyes when she was ready. Her breathing deepened as she relaxed without instructions from Tom. Finally, without opening her eyes, she said, “I’m ready.”

Tom pulled his chair around so that he was seated close to her head and began speaking to her quietly. I tried not to listen, knowing that if I concentrated on his words, I might fall into a trance accidentally. Dr. J. Allen Hynek, when working with Dr. James Harder in Pascagoula, Mississippi, had fallen into a trance by listening to Harder as he hypnotized the witnesses there. Two or three years after that event, Harder had told me that as we worked with Pat Roach (and it is a story that Hynek often denied). Given that, I kept my eyes moving, looking at the fire place, at the portrait, at the furnishings and finally at the bookcases that dominated one wall. I wondered if I would find many books about UFOs there.

Later, as the investigation continued, I would take a look at the books. Yes, there were books on UFOs, including one that I had written about UFOs in the 1990s. There was a great deal of fiction, some of it historical fiction, a few romances, and some of the latest nonfiction.

The UFO books bothered me at first, but as the investigation continued, they became less important. Besides, rather than books on abductions, though she did have one by Budd Hopkins and one by David Jacobs, most of her books were about sightings and investigations of other UFO cases.

Now, in that first session, Tom leaned back and then gently took Jenny’s wrist and raised her arm, leaving it suspended in air, almost as if there was an invisible string attaching it to the ceiling. In a normal tone of voice he said, “That’s got it. She’s under.”

I looked at him and he said, “I told her that she was to ignore me for the next few minutes. She was just to remain relaxed and concentrate on her dreams. When she was ready to begin, she should tell me.”

We had already decided how we were going to proceed from this point. Tom would ask the questions and if I had something I wanted clarified or explained, I would either whisper it to him or hand him a written note. That way I wouldn’t inadvertently contaminate or prematurely end the session.

With the preliminaries completed, I took a final, long pull at the Seven-up, turned on the micro cassette and put the recorder on the end table near her. We would have a tape of the events, if we ever needed it (Later, I would think that we should have used video tape, but I wasn’t thinking in a visual sense at the time). And, we would be able to verify those things that might have become confused during the session.

When Jenny finally said, “Ready,” Tom began to ask his questions, quietly, directing her back to her nightmares. He tried to be careful, letting her know what he was after without suggesting to her exactly what she was to say. It was a difficult game because, later, we didn’t want to be accused of leading the witness as so often happens. Under hypnosis it is extremely easy to lead the person to a specific point without saying much to them about it.

 

First Session

 

Finally, after ten minutes of careful prodding, Jenny said, “I see the light. Bright light. Light all around me. Around the bed, coming from the ceiling.”

“You mean the ceiling lights were turned on?”

“No. Just lights from the ceiling but not the ceiling lights. I don’t know why they don’t wake Brian up. He’s still snoring away.”

“Are the lights colored?”

“Just bright. Maybe blue. A slight tinge of blue, but bright. They hurt my eyes. Brian won’t wake up.”

“Is he still snoring?”

“No. He stopped but his eyes are closed. He doesn’t move. He’s quiet.”

“What are you doing?”

“I’m not doing anything. I’m lying on my back looking at the lights. I don’t want to look lower.”

“Why?”

“Something is there. I don’t want to see it but I know it is there.”

“What’s there?”

“Shapes in the lights. Dark shapes. Human shapes. I can’t see anything about them because the lights are so bright in my eyes. They’re not standing in the light. They’re just beyond it. Outside of it. In the dark.”

“Are they people?”

“I don’t know. I can’t tell.” Her voice, which had been strong, though quiet, had changed subtly. There was a quaver in it now that hadn’t been there. She was frightened, but not badly frightened. She was just looking at shapes that might have been people.

“What are they doing?”

I didn’t like that question because it implied that the people were doing something though Jenny hadn’t said anything like that. They were just shapes outside the light. Maybe they weren’t doing anything.

“They want me to come with them.”

“How do you know?”

“They’re waving to me. Beckoning to me. They want me to join them but I don’t want to go. I want Brian to chase them away. I want him to do something.”

“Where is Brian?”

“Right there,” she said, annoyed, as if it was obvious to anyone. “He’s sleeping right there. I don’t understand why he won’t wake up.”

“Is he injured?”

“No. He’s asleep.”

Tom fell silent. Later he told me he wasn’t sure what to ask because he was worried about contamination of the witness. He just sat there, quietly.

Jenny said, “I don’t want to go with them but they are insistent.”

“How do you know?”

“I can tell. They want me to go with them, but I don’t want to leave Brian.”

“Where do they want you to go?”

“With them. Through the light.”

Again Tom fell silent and waited. Finally she said, “I sat up and swung my legs out of bed. I don’t know why I’m doing this. I just want to stay right where I am. If I go with them, I won’t see Brian again... No, that’s not right. I’ll see him but I won’t be with him.”

At the time this made no sense to me. How could she see him and not be with him? I didn’t understand what she was talking about then, but I know now.

Her voice dropped and then rose. She said, “I don’t want to go.” And then she shouted, “You can’t make me.”

She was quiet again and then said, “I’m standing by the bed. I feel an incredible sadness. I feel like my life is over and if I pass through the light, I won’t be able to come home. I won’t be able to return.”

Tom reached out and touched her hand and said, “But this is just a dream. You have nothing to fear from it. All you have to do is wake up.”

“No,” she said. “This isn’t a dream. I know it isn’t a dream. This is real.”

Tom shot a glance at me, almost as if asking permission to make a few comments. We had talked about this and I had wanted our discussion with Jenny kept to a minimum. We just didn’t want to tell her which direction to take or what we wanted from her. We wanted her impressions without commentary, but she was becoming agitated.

Looking back on it now, I’m a little surprised that I didn’t anticipate this. I had been involved in several abduction investigations and I knew that the subjects often become frightened at some point. I just hadn’t anticipated the fear that suddenly enveloped Jenny. She was struggling on the couch, almost as if she was fighting against some unseen, invisible restraint. She was sweating heavily and the color of her face changed from a pale gray to a crimson. Her breathing was heavy, deep, as if she had run a long distance.

Without comment from me, Tom said, “You know you got out of this in good shape. Nothing happened to you. Brian is still here.  You don’t have anything to fear.”

“I do if I go into the light. If I go into the light, I know I won’t come back.”

To me, the place she had to go was into the light. From a psychological point of view, this was the thing that had to be done. Once she entered the light, and we brought her out of the trance, the fear she felt would evaporate. There was something about that light that frightened her and once she knew what it was, the reason to fear it would be gone.

It also struck me that this was just too simple. I had talked to Jenny many times over several weeks, and I knew that her fear was real. I couldn’t believe that we would show up and in the matter of an hour or so, have the answer. Force her into the light and the nightmares should end.

Without prompting, she said, “I don’t what to go, but I have to. They’re making me.”

“How,” asked Tom.

“I don’t know. They just are forcing me forward. I want to scream. I think I am screaming, but Brian doesn’t hear. He just lays there. Why won’t he help me? Brian! Help me.”

Tom said, “Brian is right there. You don’t have to be frightened.”

“No,” she hissed. “He’s not right there. He’s in bed and he won’t help me.”

“Where are you?”

“I’m at the edge of the light and hands are reaching out to me.”

“Edge of the light,” repeated Tom. “I don’t understand what you mean.”

“One of the hands touched me. It’s a human hand. A regular hand.”

Her voice had changed. Suddenly it had fallen back to a normal tone. There was no fear in it. She sounded relaxed. She sounded calm.

“I understand why I must go now,” she said.

“Why?” asked Tom.

“Because I died.”