ERIC PEARL, THE HEALER

Why Me?

If I were sitting on a cloud scouring the planet for just the right person upon whom I could bestow one of the rarest and most sought-after gifts in the Universe, I don’t know whether I would have reached through the etherium, pointed my finger through the vast multitudes of people – the shepherds, the shopkeepers, the righteous and the self-righteous – and said “Him! That’s the one. Give it to him.”
Now maybe it didn’t happen quite that way, but that’s the way it feels. Except when it doesn’t. I mean, except when someone else comes up with an entirely different and convincingly plausible explanation. “Oh, no,” some well-meaning person may exclaim, incredulous at my obvious lack of understanding of how the Universe works, “you’ve clearly done this before in your past lives.” Now what I want to know is this: how is it that they’re so privy to my past lives when I’m still trying to figure this one out?
I mean, let’s be real. I’d spent twelve years building one of the, if not the largest chiropractic practices in Los Angeles. I had three homes, a Mercedes, two dogs and two cats. All would have seemed perfect if I hadn’t mishandled my money and my alcohol sufficiently as to bring my six-year relationship to an end, an event that left me virtually unable to put one foot in front of the other for three days. Prozac helped that. It helped that a lot.
Six months later I’m visiting Venice Beach, California with my assistant, who insists that I get my cards read by a reader on the beach. “I don’t want to get my cards read by some reader on the beach,” I responded with absolute conviction. If a reader were all that wonderful, people would come to her; she wouldn’t be dragging a card table, tablecloth, chairs and accouterments to an overcrowded beach sidewalk where she could proceed to flag down unsuspecting tourists to foist her version of their futures upon them, expecting them to pay for the privilege.
“I met her at a party and told her we’d be here. I’d be very embarrassed if we didn’t get a reading, ” she responded on a dime, adding that the woman has both $20 and $10 dollar readings. One look into my assistant’s eyes told me that further protest would prove useless. “Fine,” I grumbled, reaching for a ten-dollar bill, knowing that was fully half the money we had left to spend on lunch. I marched dutifully over to the woman, sat down in her folding chair, gave her ten dollars and thought about how hungry I was already.
In exchange for my money, I received a very nice yet unremarkable present-time reading and enjoyed being called “Bubelah” by this endearing Jewish gypsy. Almost as an afterthought she said to me, “There’s very special work that I do through the use of axiatonal lines. It reconnects your body’s meridian lines to the grid lines on the planet that connect us to the stars and other planets.” She told me that she was able to do this work and that, as a healer, it was something that I needed. She also told me I could read about it in a book called The Book of Knowledge: The Keys of Enoch. It sounded quite interesting so I asked the question: “How much?” She said, “Three hundred thirty three dollars.” I said, “No, thank you.”
This is the kind of stuff you’re warned about on evening news shows. I can hear the news blurb now, “Jewish gypsy on Venice Beach takes $333 from unsuspecting chiropractor.” My picture with the word “Sucker” under it flashes across the screen. ” … convinces doctor to pay her an additional $150 a month for life to burn candles for his protection.” I feel humiliated for even having considered it. So, my assistant and I left and creatively went about constructing a ten-dollar lunch for two.
You’d think this would have been the end of it, but the mind works in mysterious ways. I couldn’t get the thought out of my head. I found myself taking the last few minutes of a lunch break to go to the Bodhi Tree Bookstore attempting to quickly read through Chapter 3.1.7. of The Book of Knowledge: The Keys of Enoch. This chapter discusses these axiatonal lines. The biggest lesson that day was that if ever a book were created that could not be quickly read through, this was that book. But I had read enough. This was going to haunt me until I gave in. I cracked open my cookie jar.
The work is done in two days, two days apart. Day one, I gave her my money, lay there on her table and listened to my mind jabber, ‘This is the dumbest thing I’ve ever done. I can’t believe I gave $333 to a perfect stranger so she could draw lines on my body with her fingertips.’ As I lie there thinking of all the good uses this money could’ve been put toward, a sudden surge of insight came over me as I heard myself think, ‘Well, you’ve already gave her the money. You may as well cut the negative chatter and be open to receiving whatever there is to receive.’ So I lay there quietly, ready and open. I experienced nothing. Absolutely nothing. I, however, seemed to be the only person in the room who knew that. But I paid for both sessions, and therefore I was coming back on Sunday for part two. The strangest thing happened that night, however. About an hour after I’d gone to sleep, the lamp next to my bed – a lamp that I’d had for ten years – turned itself on, and I woke up to the very real sensation that there were people in my home. I searched the house with my Doberman, a carving knife and a can of pepper spray but found no one. I went back to bed with the most uncanny feeling that I was not alone, that I was being watched.
To the eye, day two started out pretty much the same as day one. However, it soon became apparent that it was to be anything but. My legs didn’t want to stay still. They had that “crazy leg” feeling that strikes every once in a blue moon in the middle of the night. Soon that sensation took over the rest of my body, interspersed with almost unbearable chills. It was all I could do to lie still on the table. Much as I wanted to jump up and down and shake the sensation out of every cell in my body, I didn’t dare move. Why? Because I paid my $333 and I was going to get my money’s worth out of this. That’s why. Soon it was over. It was an oppressively hot August day and we were in a non-air-conditioned apartment.  I was chilled near frozen, my teeth chattering as this woman rushed to wrap me in a blanket where I remained for five minutes until my body temperature returned to normal.
I was now different. I don’t understand what happened, nor could I possibly attempt to explain it, yet I was no longer the person I was four days before. I drifted into my car, which somehow knew the way home.
I don’t remember the rest of that day. I couldn’t tell you for certain if the rest of the day even took place. All I do know is that the following morning found me at work. And the odyssey begins.
It had been my practice to have my patients lie on the table with their eyes closed for 30 to 60 seconds following their adjustments to relax, and to allow their adjustments to set. On this particular Monday, seven of my patients, some who had been with me for almost twelve years, and one who was seeing me for a first visit, chose this day to ask me if I had been walking around the table as they lay there. Some asked if anyone else had come into the room because it felt as if several people were standing or walking around the table. Three said it felt as if people were running around the table, and two sheepishly confided that it seemed as if people were flying around the table.
I’d been a chiropractor for about twelve years and no one had ever expressed anything like this before. Now seven people had said this to me on the same day. Something was up. Interspersed between my patients, I was fielding other observations from my employees: “You look so different! Your voice sounds so different! What happened to you over the weekend?” I certainly wasn’t going to tell them. “Oh, nothing," I replied, wondering myself what exactly had taken place over the weekend.
My patients were reporting that they could feel where my hands were before I touched them. They could feel my hands when they were inches to feet away from their bodies. It became a game to see how accurately they could locate my hands. Yet it became more than a game as people started receiving healings. At first the healings seemed minor: aches, pains and the like. As patients would come in ostensibly for chiropractic, I would adjust them, then tell them to close their eyes and lie there until I told them to open them again. While their eyes were closed, I would pass my hands over the patients for a moment or two. When they got up and the pain was gone, they asked me what I had done. “Nothing. And don’t tell anyone,” became my standard reply. This directive was about as effective as Nancy Reagan’s “Just Say No” approach to drugs.
Soon people were coming in from all over for these healings and I had no idea what was going on. Sure, I checked in regularly with the woman who had reconnected me via the axiatonal lines. “It must have come from something that was already in you. Maybe it had to do with your mother’s near death experience at the time of your birth,” she said, adding “I don’t know of anyone who ever responded like this. It’s fascinating.” Fascinating. Apparently, fascinating meant that I was on my own.

A quest arises.

November finds me in the office of a world-renowned psychic.

Out of breath, lost, and 30 minutes late (as usual), I rush in, plop down on his chair and pretend not to notice “the glare”. You know, that look mastered by the anally retentive, terminally prompt; the one that causes you to flash back on every lecture you’ve ever received about being on time and to simultaneously question your value as a human being based upon the perceived enormity of this single, yet questionable, flaw. I was certain that on his days off he was petitioning Congress to bring back the use of the word tardy in the public school system. This reading was shot, I was sure.
He spread his cards in a very businesslike fashion, carefully not showing a hint of warmth or compassion on his face. He looked at the cards, then looked me straight in the eyes with a slightly quizzical expression or a scowl and asked, “What is it that you do?” Now, I don’t know about you, but at $100 an hour, I was thinking, ‘You’re the psychic. You tell me.’ I refrained from verbalizing my thoughts. “I’m a chiropractor,” I said matter-of-factly, being careful not to give out too much information that might color my reading. (I didn’t even tell him my last name when I scheduled the appointment.) “Oh, no. It’s much more than that,” he said. “Something comes out through your hands and people receive healings. You will be on television,” he continued, “and people will be coming from all over the country to see you.” This was the last thing that I had expected to hear from this man. Then he told me I would be writing books. “Let me tell you something,” I shot back with a knowing smile, “if there’s one thing I’m sure of, it’s that I won’t be writing any books.”
Books and I never got along. By this point in my life I had maybe read two books, and one of them I was still coloring. But life was to bring more changes. Psychics, healers, and channelers found me. From all over the country they would come, telling me that they were told in their meditations to work on me – and refusing any monetary compensation in return. My love affair with alcohol cooled down to a casual friendship: one and a half glasses of wine with dinner, occasionally. No one was more surprised than I.
The strangest was yet to come: My addiction to television came to an abrupt halt. It was replaced by, dare I say it, books. I couldn’t read enough: Eastern philosophy, life after death, channeled information, and even UFO experiences. I looked at, listened to and read everything, everywhere.
At night, I would lie down to go to sleep, and my legs would vibrate. My hands felt as if they were constantly “on”. The bones of my skull would also vibrate and my ears would buzz. Later on, tones would come to me, and on rare occasion what sounded like voices in choir.
That’s it. I’ve lost my sanity. I was certain now. Everyone knows that when you lose your sanity, you start hearing voices. Mine were singing. In choir yet. I couldn’t have had a little light humming, a faint vocalist or even a small chorale group. No, I get a whole choir.
And what about my patients? They were seeing colors: beautiful, exquisite blues, greens, purples, golds and white. And although they were able to recognize these colors, they told me that they had never seen these particular manifestations before. Their beauty is beyond that which we know. I am told by my patients who are in television and film that not only do these colors not exist as we know color here on earth, but even using all their sources and technologies that we have today, it would not be possible to reproduce them.
And, yes, patients saw angels. Now angels are a popular thing to experience, so in the beginning I didn’t pay that much attention to the angel stories until people began describing the same stories: the same angels, the same messages, the same names. We’re not talking common angel names like Michael or Ariel, neither are we talking Moses or Buddha, although a lot of people do say that they see Jesus. We’re talking names like Parsillia and George. George appears to children and others who might be unnerved by the thought of seeing an angel. You see, George appears first as a small multi-colored parrot. Then, as it is regularly explained to me, suddenly he isn’t a parrot at all, suddenly he just becomes your friend. George has been known to appear to people later during times of stress.
The first person to see George was an 11-year-old girl named Jamie. She and her mother flew in from New Jersey because she had scoliosis of the spine, quite noticeably disfiguring the body of this unusually bright and otherwise very attractive girl. When Jamie came out of her session, she said to her mother and me, “I just saw this tiny little multicolored parrot. And he told me his name was George. And then he wasn’t a parrot at all. He wasn’t even a life-form.” Life form: now there’s a word for an eleven year-old. “Then, he just became my friend.”
Within the next two to three months, several George sightings were reported to me by other patients, none of whom knew of George, because, as with all of the angels, I keep the names and descriptions in confidence so as not to influence other people’s experiences. (Even in this writing I’ve changed the names of George and Parsillia to protect the purely innocent.)
Jamie’s spine was mostly, though not completely, corrected by her third session, after which she returned to New Jersey. I’ve spoken with her several times since. She appears to be doing fine. And, every once in a while, she still hears from George.
Parsillia, on the other hand, comes with specific messages. First, she often lets you know that you will be healed. Following that, she tells you that, if you are healed, you are to go on television and “spread the word”. I guess she would be called our Angel of Public Relations.
The first person to see Parsillia was a woman from Oregon named Michele. Michele had seen me during an NBC interview on one of my earlier talk show appearances. At the time she weighed all of 87 pounds. She had Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and fibromyalgia. She had no appetite and it hurt her just to swallow. She was unable to get up from a chair to make it into the bathroom by herself. To make her pain somewhat bearable, she would have to be carried from her bed and placed under a hot running shower up to four times each night. If she took her children on a one-hour drive to visit her mother, she would have to stay there, in bed, for three days before she was able to make the drive home. She was obviously unable to hold down a full time job. And her six-year-old would have to make dinner for his three year-old brother: peanut butter sandwiches.
Michele, like most of my patients, had never seen an angel or heard voices before. It took her three days before she was able to get the angel’s name. Parsillia told her that she would be healed and that she was to spread the word via television. Approximately one year later, she was a guest along with me on a different talk show. She was all smiles – and quite a few tears. Her weight is now normal, her complexion healthy, she holds down a full time job and exercises regularly. And oh yes, she cooks dinner for her family every evening. No more peanut butter sandwiches.
Another visitor patients see is a man with white hair, a white moustache and a white coat. Other times, he appears in a robe with his head covered.
Debbie, a Southern California mother of three, was the first to see this angel (whose name we don’t know). She was diagnosed in March of 1995 with terminal pancreatic cancer, the same cancer that took the life of actor Michael Landon. She was told she had maybe two months to live. Her experiences included being elevated out of her body, traveling through a tunnel, seeing flecks of turquoise and blue light and ultimately being embraced by white light. Debbie experienced the white haired man in both forms. The first time she encountered him he was wearing his robe and head covering. He touched her wrist sending a surge of energy coursing through her body. He then bowed and walked away, leaving her in the presence of a very bright yet unusually welcoming light. Tears filled her eyes. She next found herself in a tunnel traveling through the galaxy, feeling “stuff” leaving her body through both her feet and her head.
By Debbie’s second or third session, her previously inoperable tumor was 80 percent gone. Approximately eight months later, her doctors felt she was a candidate for surgery to remove the remaining 20 percent. Just prior to her appointed surgery date, she returned for another of our sessions. A day-and-a-half later she went to the hospital in anticipation of her surgery. After some tests, however, she was sent home. No surgery. Apparently, in the day-and-a-half since our session her tumor had vanished completely. Nothing remained but scar tissue.
As an interesting side-note, Debbie came back for another session in November. During her session she felt water droplets landing on the right side of her face. Following that, the man with the white hair and mustache reappeared, this time wearing his long white coat, which was blowing behind him in the wind. Then he simply blew away.
Patients also commonly see a circle of doctors wearing white coats, conferring and guiding the healings. They can be seen talking in the circle, yet they can’t be heard. Another regular is a young Native American girl who places a leather band with shiny, square ornaments on your forehead. Often times a Native American male also comes and stands in the room. (We are not yet sure whether he’s a chief or a shaman.) Another visitor is a very tall, handsome angel, usually described as eight, nine or ten feet tall with huge, densely feathered white wings in scalloped rows. I am told that he stands behind with his arms around my waist, peering over my right shoulder, silently guiding my hands. Many of these angels seem to have their own specific scents: flowers, incense, and herbs – in particular, rosemary.
Then came Jered. Jered was four when his mother first brought him in. With braces on his knees that would no longer hold him up, his eyes simultaneously looked in two different directions yet were able to focus on nothing. Words no longer came from his mouth, and in the void was only the endless flow of saliva. Jered’s light had been reduced to a vacant expression which showed barely a glimmer of the beautiful being that once dwelt within.
Jered had been losing the myelin coating of his brain where nerve impulses travel. He had been suffering approximately fifty grand mal seizures per day. Medication reduced the seizures to approximately 16 a day. As he lay there on the table, motionless and almost without expression, his mother explained that over the past year she had helplessly watched his rapid deterioration. By the time of her first visit, she found herself left not with the child she once knew, but with what she could only describe as an “amoeba”.
During Jered’s first session, whenever my hand would approach the left side of his head, he would sense its presence and reach for it. “Look, he knows where your hand is. He’s reaching. He never does that,” his mother pointed out with hopeful surprise. “That’s where the myelin is missing,” she added. Jered became so active that by the end of that session his mother had to sit by him on the table, lightly holding his hands, placatingly singing children’s songs as only a mother can. Their favorite was “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star”. The day of Jered’s first session, these physically violent seizures stopped. Completely.
Jered’s second session found him grasping at doorknobs and beginning to turn them. His vision improved, he was now able to focus on objects. On his way out of our office, he pointed to a floral arrangement in our reception area: “Flowers,” he said smiling. There wasn’t a dry eye in the room.
That night, Jered was discovered reciting the letters of the alphabet with Vanna White while watching Wheel of Fortune. And before he went to sleep, this formerly speechless cherub looked up towards his mother and said “Mommy sing to me.” Five weeks later, Jered was back at school. On the playground. Catching balls.
Did Jered see an angel? He never said so, but I know that he did. This one drove him one hour to and from his appointments, sat by him on the table, lightly held his hands and lovingly sang to him “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star” as only an angel can.
It turns out that I had to go inside to find most of my answers. My two main concerns were, one, that I couldn’t predict what someone’s response would be and therefore could make promises to no one, and, two, that I would have unpredictable highs and lows in the energies that would last anywhere from three days to three weeks.
I had always been an in-charge type of person who could accomplish whatever I set my mind to. While others took a wait-and-see attitude, I preferred to dominate, manipulate and control situational outcomes. Obstacles that seemed invincible to others were invisible to me, so I would charge ahead and get things done. The most galling expression on earth to someone like me was, “If it’s meant to be, it will be.” Meant to be, schmeant to be. If I want it to happen, I’ll make it happen, and don’t any of you namby-pamby fatalists get in my way. So, imagine my surprise when the realization dawned on me that for these healings to really accelerate, I had to get out of the way and quit directing, to step back and let a higher power guide. Who’s saying this? I thought. It can’t be me.
But it was true. Not only did the energy know where to go and what to do without the slightest instruction from me; the more I got my attention out of the picture the more powerful the response. Some of the greatest healings occurred when I was thinking about my grocery list. The audacity!
Receive, don’t send.
Who said that? I asked, searching the inner recesses of my head as if I could really see something in there. You’ve got the wrong person here for that kind of advice. My ego was still recovering from “get out of the way and let a higher power guide.” How am I going to get these healings through to these people if I don’t send them?
Receive, don’t send.
I heard you the first time. Now answer my question, I mentally retorted.
Silence.
(Silence can really irk me sometimes.)
I went in to see the next patient. Hoping that I wasn’t doing her a disservice and grateful that she couldn’t read the hesitation and uncertainty of concept in my mind, I began, palms open, at her feet. I received from the patient through my hands. I received from the heavens through the top of my head. It was loving, it was humbling, and it was confusing. It felt awkward. And then I saw the patient begin to respond. And it felt right.
At that point I truly embraced the concept that I had been espousing, yet not fully understanding all along: I am not the healer, only God is the healer, and for some reason, whether I’m a catalyst or a vessel, an amplifier or intensifier, pick your own word, I’m invited into the room.
The session was over. The patient had seen the same spectacular colors and heard the same exquisite tones that the other patients see and hear. She too had seen two of the angels frequently described to me as being present during the healing process. Her problem, a mixture of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, fibromyalgia, and colitis, was to be gone after this session. Although not immediately life threatening, it had been ruling her life for the past eight years. She got up from the table and said, “Thank you!”
I replied, “Don’t thank me. I didn’t do it.” She said, “Well of course you did,” not understanding. “It wouldn’t have happened if you didn’t hold your hands over me.”
I thought, maybe that person sitting up there on that cloud didn’t make such a mistake after all. Maybe I was selected for this gift because I don’t wear robes and turbans, because I don’t hang tapestries and burn incense, because I don’t walk around barefoot eating bowls of dirt with chopsticks. Maybe it’s because I’m accessible and speak in relatively plain terms. Or maybe it’s because of my ability to come up with silly little ways of explaining things that I’m only beginning to grasp myself.
“It’s like this,” I explained, searching for an easily comprehensible analogy for a young girl whose concept of spiritual synchronicity was that Melrose Place was both the name of the street where my LA office had been located and that of her favorite TV show. “It’s as if you’ve just had a wonderful chocolate malted…and you’re thanking the straw.”
She laughed.
I think we both got it.
       

THE HEADS

The following article is my favorite UFO story. It ran in UFO Report about 15 years ago. I don't have the exact date of the magazine because the pages have been torn out. I know you will find it as intriguing as I do...

THE ALIEN OF BLOUNT ISLAND - The most unique and conclusive alien encounter in UFO history - by B. Ann Slate (Deceased)

Last October, 600 disappointed people had to be turned away from the already packed Florida Junior College auditorium in Jacksonville. They all wanted to hear nuclear physicist Stanton Friedman deliver his lecture, "Flying Saucers ARE Real."

Norman r. Chastain, a resident of Jacksonville, had arrived early in order to get a seat. The reason for his promptness was more than a normal interest and curiosity about UFOs. Norman Chastain had kept a secret inside him for over a year about an amazing experience which he would not reveal until he found the proper scientific authority to investigate it with, as he put it, "sincerity."

Later that evening at his home, Chastain began drafting a letter to Stanton Friedman at the UFO Research Institute in California. It began, "I am just an ordinary railroad electrician with 35 years of service..." The contents of that letter and the subsequent scientific research now being conducted as a result may make Norman Chastain's encounter the most unique and conclusive in UFO history.

While an electrician by profession, Chastain is an outdoorsman by hobby, so on a Friday evening in late January 1972, the 60 year old man drove with his cabin boat and trailer toward Blount Island which lies inland from the Atlantic Ocean near the mouth of the St. Johns River which is east of Jacksonville.

The island is essentially an industrial complex with municipal docks, a generating plant, and towering power lines. It was soon to figure prominently in the news as the Audubon Society fought in the courts to prevent a platform-mounted floating nuclear power plant from being constructed on the island.

But for Norman Chastain, Blount island meant calm water and a likely spot to catch large red bass. He anchored the Sea Camper 50 feet from shore. It was high slack tide. Across the island, the deserted passenger liner, the Constitution rested at storage anchor.

The mild winter's night was so quiet, Chastain could hear a "tiny frog croaking across the river." He began fishing and the hours passed quickly. It was near 3 a.m. when he first noticed the orange and blue lights flashing over the Ft. Caroline National Monument.

"Must be Mosquito Control," Chastain thought to himself but he soon changed his mind. The lights remained stationary, hovering about 300 feet over the monument and changing colors frequently. "Could it be a police helicopter?" he wondered. No, there wasn't a sound. Suddenly, the lights moved directly toward him, stopping 150 feet over his boat. The domed, circular shape was clear now and the electrician knew he was looking at a craft that was not from this planet. Approximately 75 feet across, eight feet thick, with a dome estimated at five feet high, the strange object had brilliant lights around its circumference.

"When I saw it was a UFO and the first one I've ever seen in my life, naturally I was kind of startled," Chastain said. "I didn't know what to do and I didn't know what it might do!"

After the initial shock wore off, Chastain reasoned that the craft might have mistaken his boat's running lights for another alien object. The Sea Camper has some unusual lighting features which Chastain built himself, blinking red and green markerl lights, a flashing white light on the bow and several reflectors. The two-burner Coleman lantern, mounted on top of the cabin, was also burning.

For five minutes, the craft hovered noiselessly overhead until Chastain snapped off the main light switch and turned out the lantern. Almost instantly, the UFO lights went out and he watched the dark outline of the object move slowly back toward the bluff from where it had come.

Chastain believed his strange encounter was over and that he had seen the last of the alien spaceship. Now he had other things to worry about because in the excitement of the sighting, the tide had shifted and pushed his boat aground. He made his way onto the dark island to hunt for a piece of driftwood to pry his boat off the shore and back into deeper water. He carried a strong spotlight with him and played the light over the ground to avoid stepping in any holes. Some distance from the boat, he located a 10 foot plank and began making his way back to the Sea Camper.

"I stopped about 75 feet from my boat to rest a minute as that wet piece of timber was heavy," Chastain said. "I raised my spotlight to see if my boat was still in the muck and there in the edges of the bushes was the strangest looking creature one could ever imagine!"

Standing in the waist-high growth was an alien being, clothed in a tight fitting suit that the witness compared to old fashioned men's winter underwear, "except it was a dark silver gray and it shined slightly." The being was about five to five and a half feet tall, had small arms, a large head with pointed ears, and a slightly angular chin. On the top of its head was a glowing disc. The creature's mouth was slightly open and framed in the bright glow from Chastain's spotlight, the oversized, protruding eyes resembled glass reflecting light. As the witness understated, "It didn't look human at all!"

For several frozen moments, alien and earthman gazed at each other. Then suddenly, the being raised his left hand which held a flat device about three inches across. There was a brilliant white flash which Chastain said almost blinded him. Then the numbness started, a slow paralysis that began in his neck and moved throughout his body.

"I staggered around so dizzy I couldn't stand up, so I laid down in the tall grass. My arms and legs became numb and tingled, just like when your leg goes to sleep. I was tempted to scream for help, hoping someone might be on the island and would come to my rescue, but then I decided it might be better just to lie still. The devil-looking thing might've come up to where I was and finished me off in an instant."

After the brilliant ray from the alien's weapon flashed in his face, an overpowering stench seemed to cling to Chastain's hair and clothes; a sickening, unfamiliar odor which he said "didn't compare to a skunk!" Whether this foul smell was part of the beam or one of its after effects, Chastain couldn't be sure.

Now lying paralyzed in the grass, the terrified witness said, "For the first hour I was sure I would die, but I prayed and prayed. The numbness began going away. About daybreak, I was able to get up on my hands and knees and crawl farther away from the boat. By noon of the next day, my strength returned and I could walk again. It was a warm day, I could see my boat 50 feet out in the water with the door open and no one inside."

The offensive odor still covered him. Chastain swam out to his boat, put on swimming trunks and dried his clothes, but the stench still remained. He washed his hair with a disinfectant, threw the clothes in a roadside ditch on the way home and felt almost normal except for having a peculiar light feeling, almost as if he was floating on air.

This condition didn't escape his wife's notice. "You don't look right, Norman," she said as soon as he walked on the house. "What's the matter?" Since Mrs. Chastain had been under a doctor's care, he didn't want to upset her with the details of his frightening experience. "So I told her a little lie, that the water had been rough and I got seasick," the witness said. "What's more I didn't tell anyone else for fear of being ridiculed, or have somebody accuse me of being some kind of nut!"

Norman Chastain couldn't have known that his experience with the humanoid from another world was far from over. The following day he went to his physician for a checkup, just in case the alien ray might have dome some permanent damage, or by chance the paralysis might have been caused by a stroke or heart attack. His doctor gave him a clean bill of health.

The electrician returned to the island in the daytime to search for some clue or evidence of his bizarre encounter but there wasn't a trace. He smelled around the grass and bushes where he had fallen but the noxious odor was gone. The piece of timber was still on the ground where he had dropped it. He went back to work at the railroad as though nothing out of the ordinary had happened.

But his nights weren't ordinary, for Chastain began to experience vivid dreams of another planet with strange-looking beings, remarkably huge flowers, and assembly lines which put out saucer-shaped craft. He kept these dreams, as well as the incident on Blount Island to himself.
Not being well informed about UFOs, Chastain wasn't aware of the many strange objects sighted over power lines, generating plants, and atomic installations. Nor had he ever researched the many cases concerning humanoids so he couldn't have known the alien he saw was not unique in appearance or actions. Silver-gray, tight-fitting uniforms, prominent glowing eyes, pointed ears, mysterious rays which blind or paralyze, all these are familiar features in documented sightings reported by responsible eyewitnesses to UFO investigators all over the world.

The classic case of the Hopkinsville, Kentucky creature bears several similar characteristics to that of the Blount Island episode. Considered one of the finest of all occupant sightings in the US, this incident took place in 1955 and is listed in official Air Force files as "Unidentified." Jacques Vallee's presentation of the case in Anatomy of a Phenomenon points out several significant facts omitted in other versions. He especially calls to the attention of interested biologists that a particular reaction on the part of the Hopkinsville creature might be worthy of further investigation.

In brief, the Kentucky alien was described as about four feet tall with huge eyes, large pointed ears, arms that hung almost to the ground, and large hands with long nails or claws. The being's clothing was called "nickel plated." Just before the alien approached the Sutton family household of eight adults and three children, one of the teenager's said he'd seen a flying object land behind the farmhouse. The family assumed he'd seen a shooting star -- that is until an hour later when a "little man" walked toward the house with both arms raised over its head.
If this gesture meant no hostility was intended, that fact was lost on the frightened people. One of the men grabbed his shotgun and fired through the screen door but the blast seemed to have no effect. The creature did a somersault and disappeared into the darkness. (The sound of the shot hitting was compared to that of shooting into a tin bucket.) The being's curiosity (or surveillance mission?) continued for interminable hours, as the creatures appeared on the roof and peeked through windows. (There is some question as to the precise number of beings as one of the witnesses remarked during an Air Force interrogation, "I only know what I saw. I saw two of the men or maybe the same one twice.")

The terrified family, during a lull in the "battle" abandoned the house, piled into their cars and drove into town to get law enforcement help. Police and state troopers moved into the area. As one of the officers drove toward the farmhouse to join the search, he reported seeing several strange "meteors" that came from the direction of the Sutton farm. As he and his wife looked out of the car, they saw two of them passing overhead with a loud "swishing" noise. However, the result of the investigation proved fruitless. The craft had disappeared from the gully and there were no indications around the house of what had taken place.

Of biological significance, as author Vallee points out, is that, "The eyes of the entities were large and apparently very sensitive. It was noticed that they always approached the house from the darkest corner. There was no pupil in the eye, no eyelid; when the witnesses turned on the lights outside the house, it seemed to prevent the creatures from coming towards the doors.
Thus, as Norman Chastain stood on Blount Island, frozen with the shock of seeing a silver-suited alien outlined in the beam of his powerful spotlight, can we assume that this creature felt pain or discomfort from the light and so retaliated by blasting the witness with his own form of light ray? This extraterrestrial, as with the Sutton case, had similar large glowing eyes that apparently had no pupils or eyelids.

So if by chance the Blount Island alien was in reality a robot on a surveillance mission, whose job was to take scientific readings (soil analysis, etc.) at the site of a future nuclear power plant, Norman Chastain may have inadvertently interfered and had to be stopped! There's no end to speculating on alien motivation and behavior, yet similar details from well-researched cases must be examined if we're to eventually draw any clear-cut patterns in the data.

However, the real evidence of the Blount Island sighting would uniquely present itself three days after the incident and right in the witness's own backyard.

It was now just a few days into February 1972 and Norman Chastain was asleep when a loud clap of thunder woke him up. "It was lightning and raining and then that same overpowering, distinctive stench that thing shot me with was pouring into my bedroom window. I jumped up to close the window, got my gun, and stayed awake the rest of the night listening and smelling that sickening odor. I wondered if that creature had some way of knowing where I went when I left the island."

Chastain got up several times during the stormy night to peer nervously out the window. His wife was sleeping in a separate bedroom on the opposite side of the house. Finally the storm ended and it was morning. Chastain heard his wife moving about and the cat meowing to be let out. He dressed rapidly and with gun in hand, cautiously opened the back door from where the stench was pouring in.

For a moment, he thought he'd lost his mind. Growing in the grass directly behind the Sea Camper was a cluster of flesh-colored "heads." It was like a scene out of an all-too-real horror movie but the "plants" all resembled the facial distortions of the alien on the Island and were producing the same terrible odor! With mouths gaping, large eye sockets shining with a white substance like glazed eyes, three of the five inch tall "heads" appeared fully developed while two of the smaller ones were, according to Chastain, like "new born babes with their eyes closed." The witness shuddered, looked skyward and on the ground for a spacecraft or other growths but there was nothing else unusual to be seen.

He had to have someone else witness the strange growth so he rushed to some of his neighbor's homes. The men had already gone to work. In a state of near frenzy, Chastain returned home, grabbed a shovel and dug up two of the bigger heads and the two smaller ones, and tossed them behind the nearby utility shed. Then he called to his wife, asking her to join him in the backyard.
Her first shocked response was, "Lord that looks like something from another world!" Chastain desperately wanted to tell his wife everything that had happened the night he went fishing alone on Blount Island, but he held back concerned about her delicate health. Already she was showing signs of becoming ill from smelling the noxious odor of the remaining growth.

"Go inside and call the police! Tell them something strange is growing in our backyard," Chastain said to his wife. "And have them say I'm drunk or crazy when I tell them what it looks like; a pink devil with big eyes and pointed ears and a round mouth that's stinking up the neighborhood?" was her response.

Chastain had to agree with her but he desperately wanted other witnesses. Grabbing a shovel, he dug up the last freak growth, jumped in his car and headed for the Jacksonville Journal newspaper offices. He carefully placed the "head" on the front floorboard of his car.
"I had to drive with my head out the window because the stench was overpowering me," he said. "I was getting dizzy, the same helpless feeling I experienced on the Island, and I was scared the numbness might start to set in before I reached the newspaper office."
In route, Chastain narrowly avoided hitting another car. He jammed on his brakes and the growth slammed against the steep portion of the floorboard. Now another nightmare began. The "head" started oozing a red substance after the impact -- a secretion which Chastain describes as similar to blood.

He tried to regain his composure at the newspaper offices as he described the weird plant in his car to the news editor. Chastain made no reference to the craft or alien on Blount Island.
The news editor eyed Chastain suspiciously. "Is this on the level or have you been drinking?"
"I'm not a drinking man," Chastain answered, "but this thing in my car has got me woozy from the odor it's putting out!" Together with several other reporters, Chastain and the editor returned to the car. Someone in the group remarked upon closer examination of the growth, "Look into its mouth! It's even got little teeth!"

The "head" was not familiar to any of the Journal staff. Nor could the monstrosity be identified by Chastain's coworkers at the Seaboard Coast Line Railroad Company roundhouse, his next stop for additional witnesses after leaving the newspaper offices. Foreman John Ellis exlcaimed, "Good Lord, is that thing putting out all the stink in here?"

Clyde Schramm, pipe fitter said, "Look at the red stuff coming out f the back of its head!"
By the following day, all the "heads" had shriveled into pink sponge-like balls which Chastain buried in the spot where they initially grew to see what would happen, but none of the Demon Plants reappeared.

As of this writing, soil samples taken from different depths in Chastain's backyard and on Blount Island are being subjected to various tests in several laboratories. The backyard soil, under preliminary microscopic examination, possesses substantial fungi hyphae (root filaments) and it is hoped that the spores remaining in the samples will germinate in a humidity chamber set to duplicate the conditions that prevailed on the night they grew.

What exactly are these spores? Are we talking about extraterrestrial ones seeded in terrestrial soil? While this cannot be ruled out thus far, another tentative hypothesis may be possible. One clue to the freak "heads" is indicated by the terrible stench they gave off.

Louis C. C. Krieger in The Mushroom handbook says of the variety of fungi called stinkhorns that they have"... the insupportable effluvium of Limburger cheese raised to the nth degree." Because of the stench, these mushrooms attract flies and thus the spores are disseminated by the insects which carry them on their bodies and in their excreta. The flies also deposit their eggs on these fungi and the maggots then have a ready supply of food as they mature, eating their way through the flesh of the mushroom. The resulting holes in the stinkhorn will produce various designs and a few varieties in the stinkhorn family will ooze a blood-like red substance when cut or split open.

Does that eliminate any connection between the alien on the island and the peculiar growths in Chastain's backyard? Did the witness merely fall into a patch of stinkhorns on the island and transport spores on his shoes or body back to his home where they would magically pop out of the ground several nights later due to the extreme rain and weather conditions?

The specialists working on this case could not agree. The probability that maggots would eat a precise face in one stinkhorn might be called coincidental but the odds are astronomical that all five of the fungi would be eaten in precisely the same manner to produce identical shapes. That the mushroom would bear such a close resemblance to the creature on the island is also rather remote. It is also significant that the "heads' grew near the location where Chastain drained the water from the Sea Camper - water that may have been irradiated from the UFO which hovered over the boat.

Prof. Leslie Paleg of Adelaide University of Australia recently announced the remarkable method of using laser beams on plant life to influence plant behavior on growth. "Only bursts are needed because laser light is highly concentrated and intense," the distinguished agricultural scientist said. "We have been able to show that a one-second burst of light from a laser a quarter mile away will affect the growth of a morning glory vine."
And in that area of research lies the key, not just to the Chastain mystery but the many UFO close encounters and landings which have affected the soil and produced the huge circular rings of mutated plant life nearby.

Laser, microwave, and other light energies used in biological research is still a relatively new science. But if the fungi can be made to germinate in the Florida soil samples, we can work backward to determine what kind of light beam -- or energy -- produced the mutation, yielding still more definitive data on the technological secrets of flying saucers and their occupants.

HAPPY THANKSGIVING

HAPPY THANKSGIVING

 

ANOTHER KIND OF HARVEST: THE REMARKABLE VEGETABLES OF JOSE' CARMEN GARCIA

Jose Carmen Garcia Martinez is a 49-year-old farmer, one of hundreds who eke out a meager livelihood by tilling the granite-like soil of the state of Guanajuato, Mexico, some 260 miles northwest of Mexico City.

Like his neighbors, Garcia hitches a pair of mules to his plow each autumn and prepares seedbed furrows on his three-acre plot. Then he plants seeds he has purchased at the community store.

This store (it should be noted) also supplies seeds to Garcia's neighbors - identical seeds. All have been shipped from Texas in burlap bags. No seeds planted by Garcia differ from seeds sown by the other farmers of Guanajuato.

The products which grow from Jose's seeds are quite another matter. Each spring after the harvest, Garcia again hooks up his mules and heads for the local marketplace, where he instantly becomes the focal point of excitement that has begun to spread through Mexico and promises to reach around the world.

A crowd draws around as Garcia starts to unload his wagon. Onions weighing eight pounds each, and more, draw gasps of admiration from the onlookers. There are huge cabbages 60 pounds each with some even larger, and collard greens five feet long bearing leaves more than two feet wide. These king-sized super vegetables quickly find their way into the wagons of shoppers, who rush to buy out Jose's vegetables as fast as he can unload them.

Thirty-two years have passed since Garcia first astounded the people of Guanajuato by marketing his gargantuan produce. Despite their bulk, his vegetables are as tender and tasty as any of conventional size. Many of Jose's customers assert they not only go farther, but taste better than any others.

Other farmers ask how it can be that Jose Carmen Garcia buys seeds where they buy theirs, plants them and harvest his crops exactly as they do in soil no different than theirs, yet grows vegetables of magnificent proportions, the likes of which are found nowhere else on earth.

I asked those questions of Garcia myself when I met him for the first time in April 1976. I also saw his giant vegetables and tasted them - and was greatly taken by their flavor and tenderness. What Garcia told me, he has told other people. The story has subsequently been published in Mexican newspapers and magazines.

Garcia told me that in 1947, when he was seventeen years old, he was plowing one fall afternoon when he met a stranger, although everyone, quite literally, knew everyone else in Garcia's farm community. However, the trespasser was invited by Jose to eat and drink.

Warmed by homemade sweetbreads and coffee, the stranger soon unfolded a story which stirred Garcia's youthful imagination and was to have a major impact on his life.

Jose sat spellbound as his mysterious guest told how he had been captured by a band of strange beings and held for a number of days in a long, spacious tunnel beneath one of the many inactive volcanoes surrounding the area.

His captors were described as humanoids - tall and fair-skinned, and who spoke in weird, unintelligible sounds. Most seemed occupied at harvesting giant vegetables. As they worked, they appeared to be studying an odd formula consisting of hieroglyphic symbols.

Young Garcia's guest said he had memorized this mysterious formula and would share it with Jose out of gratitude for such fine hospitality. Working quickly, he sketched the symbols on paper.

"Concentrate on these writings," he told the youth, "and in time you will understand their meaning. It is a magic formula, and by using it, you will feed the world."

Evening came, and as mysteriously as he had appeared out of nowhere, the stranger disappeared in the gathering darkness.

Jose followed the instructions he had been given. Day and night he thought of nothing but the symbols. After three sleepless nights, he knew it was time to plant his seeds. Three months later, he harvested his first crop of out sized onions, cabbages and greens. The legend of Jose Carmen Garcia had begun and his fame has spread each year by word of mouth.

Now, communicating through a friend named Oscar Arredondo, Garcia says he wants the world to have his secret, even if his government won't help.

Arredondo, a photographer, has compiled an impressive record of Garcia's accomplishments in the form of pictures. He says there really isn't anything surprising about the story of the mysterious stranger and his message to Jose. The state of Guanajuato is host to numerous visitors from outer space, he adds, and people report UFO sightings almost every day.

And there are other interesting facts, Arrendondo asserts, including:
o Nicolas Infante, a farmer, heard the sound of rushing water when he reached the 40-foot level while digging a well. Infante says the well expels strong bursts of air, and absorbs air at night. He believes he inadvertently hit a tunnel linking two of seven inactive volcanoes which may house inhabitants from other worlds.
o Maria Carmen de Guisma swears she was the captive of extra-terrestrial beings in a space ship for three months.
o Dr. Manuel Garcia Rivera, a local physician, says he cared for the woman caretaker of a hacienda near one of the craters. She told Rivera she left her bed at 3 a.m. and saw a bright object on the ground. Four beings, all glowing, disembarked and gathered samples of the earth. She described the four as being of medium height.

These and other incidents have been reported in a local newspaper and in a national magazine, but to date have not generated the interest they appear to warrant.

"Why isn't the world interested?" asks Arredondo. "If this happened anywhere other than Mexico, world scientists and agricultural experts would gather here."

To prove the validity of Garcia's revelation, a challenge was issued. On a warm March day in 1978, two crops were harvested on a farm far from Guanajuato's volcanoes in Tampico. The site had been selected by government agricultural specialists, who inspected all seeds with great care and supervised the planting three months prior to the harvest.

Two farmers had sown identical 20-acre plots. One was a local man, the other Jose Carmen Garcia, and every step of the growing process, from plowing until final harvest, was under the watchful scrutiny of government agents.

The seeds planted by both men were identical. No fertilizer was used. On the final day - the day of harvest - government scales were trucked to the farm. It was sundown before results could be tallied, but the outcome was never in doubt.

Crops grown by the farmer enlisted by the Federal Department of Agriculture averaged 30 tons per acre. Jose's output totaled 105 tons and 690 kilos per acre.

Garcia's onions, including stalks, stood six feet tall. His cabbages spread their leaves over a seven foot circumference. His collard greens boasted five-foot stalks, exactly like the greens he had grown in Guanajuato for more than 30 years.

The officials climbed into their trucks and disappeared into the fading sunlight. Only Raul Moreno, a balding government employee who had believed in Jose from the beginning, remained.

"We would normally keep these huge vegetables for research," he said to Garcia, "or sell them for the government. But since we took you from your farm, you may sell them yourself and keep the money."

The next day, the poor families of Tamaulipas added very large vegetables to their meager diets - given to them free of charge by Jose Carmen Garcia, the uneducated farmer from Guanajuato.

A disappointed but not embittered man, Garcia still wonders why, having passed the test, the government has refused to acknowledge what he has done.

The officials of the agriculture department had promised a visit by President Jose Lopez Portillo and official recognition, perhaps a news conference where the President would bestow a medal on Jose, or possibly fly him to Mexico City to proclaim his formula to the world.

If the President himself couldn't make it, the officials said, at least there would be a visit by the Minister of Agriculture.

However, there has been no visit by the President or his Minister of Agriculture, no news conference, nothing.

Asked why he thought no official took him seriously, Jose scratched his head for a moment. Finally he replied: "They took it personally."

Garcia has no wish to keep the secret of this annual phenomenon to himself. He believes vegetables like his could end hunger everywhere in the world if grown in other countries. For three decades, he has attempted to enlist the interest and support of Mexican governmental agencies, but has encountered only disinterest or disbelief. Official have not been able to deny the existence of Jose's out sided cabbages, onions and greens, but they consider his story of how they are grown as far-fetched and - in a manner of speaking - out of this world.

By Bill Robinson for San Diego Home and Garden - date unknown

ANOTHER CASE FROM HUMANOID CONTACTS

Thanks to Albert Rosales

Location. Anza Borrego State Park, California
Date: September 15 2007 Time: 0300am

Jeremy and his girlfriend had decided to go on an overnight backpacking adventure. Their destination was Mt. Laguna (unincorporated area of San Diego) however a forest fire in Julian closed off Route 78 therefore they took an alternative route and stumbled upon the Anza Borrego Desert State Park. They arrived at the park at 1700.

He had never hiked, or backpacked at the park, therefore Jeremy went to the visitor center got the information he needed and set out on his journey to Culp Valley Campground. Culp Valley campground is approximately 3500 feet in elevation. He pulled into the campground loaded their packs and set off. They only backpacked about 1 mile out due to night settling. They set up a tent about 20 feet north of the trail.

At around 0300am the night moon had sunk behind the mountains surrounding the desert, it was pitch black and Jeremy's girlfriend was sleeping. Unable to sleep Jeremy just stared at the starry sky. Suddenly he heard a man's voice, he looked into the direction it was coming from and saw a green light being waved back and forth. He immediately thought it was a park ranger. The light was about 50 yards east from his tent. He could tell that whoever it was using the green light to guide somebody on the trail. The green light was coming closer and closer to the tent, probably not directly to the tent, but on the trail about 20 feet away.

The tent was set up on a small slope looking downward on the trail. The green light disappeared and Jeremy panicked. Suddenly out of nowhere a massive amount of light lit up the trail 20 feet from where he was. He was terrified. Nobody was talking at this point and he didn't hear footsteps just saw a massive amount of white light.

The light was getting closer to the trail next to his tent. He immediately ducked down and laid low in his tent scared. He then peeked out of the tent and saw 12 to 15 humanoid figures that looked like people, but some were extremely tall and the rest were really very short with large bald heads. The tall figures appeared to be wearing white cloak-like outfits and the short figures appeared to be naked.

Terrified and his heart pounding Jeremy watched the beings walk very gracefully and slowly, turning their heads from left to right with each footstep. They were all holding metal rod like implements which emitted a powerful white light. They seemed to ignore the tent and walked "peacefully" by the tent. The witness remained laying down and quiet as the beings "walked" by the tent. The light eventually faded as the beings continued down the trail and disappeared. Terrified he woke his girlfriend 10 minutes later because he didn't want the beings to hear them talking.

He told the Ranger the next day about what had happened and the Ranger wrote it down in a report, suspecting it was some type of religious cult.(!)

HC addendum
Source: Jeremy P.

ADVERSELY AFFECTED THE ORDNANCE:
AN INTERVIEW WITH PETER ROBBINS, COAUTHOR OF LEFT AT EAST GATE
by Jim Martin

(Reprinted with the permission of Jim Martin. This interview was recorded at Crater Lake, Oregon, August 1997 and originally appeared in Flatland: A Review of Repressed and Secret Evidence, issue # 15, February 1998)

I won't divulge the details of what Larry Warren, as a young Air Force Security Police officer at Bentwaters USAFB in England, saw that night in December, 1980.  Lots has been written about the incident, anyway. Most of the previous accounts are badly confused. As unbelievable as Larry Warren's story may sound, however movie-like, however dream-like, something happened, we know, since one of the commanders on duty at the base filed a report about the incident, which was subsequently released to the public by a Freedom of Information Act request. And yes, an audio tape recording of the scene was made public as well. Warren reports that video cameras were on site, but as yet, none of these have been released.

Larry Warren's story is replete with all the elements of zaniness: underground bases, Air Force officials in communication with aliens, men in black with dark sedans carrying New York plates (in England), lights in the sky, pagans in the woods, you name it. Besides all the bells-and-whistles, one government official admitted that the spacecraft witnessed by Larry Warren, and by scores of military officials, had somehow penetrated hardened nuclear missile bunkers and "adversely affected the ordinance." Don't you love militarese? "...Adversely affected the ordinance..."

Col. Corso's offering notwithstanding, Larry Warren and Peter Robbins' contribution, Left at Eastgate, remains the most important UFO book to appear in 1997. Unlike Corso's memoir of back-engineering the relics of Roswell, this book is fully documented.

The essence of this book is the process of investigation carried out by Warren's coauthor, Peter Robbins, as he tried to verify and analyze the evidence. I have respected Peter's work on UFOs for years, ever since I read his articles on "Wilhelm Reich and UFOs" when he gathered the published sightings, mostly multiple-witness or military incidents, those that the government affirmed as unexplained ever since the fifties. In those articles, Robbins showed that what Reich reported about UFOs was very similar to what everybody else was seeing, and reporting to the Air Force. Some of us feel that the Air Force had and has an interest in Reich's ideas about UFOs, energy and weather. It's not surprising, then, that Robbins found several people who attested to the use of Reich cloudbusters at Bentwaters AFB.

Left at Eastgate reveals the National Security Agency (NSA) as the main governmental entity behind the UFO cover-up, or, if you prefer, disinformation/collective fantasy/fairy tale. Peter Robbins soon found himself under the NSA's open scrutiny and covert harassment when he got deeper into the research. He also found himself a up-close and personal witness to strange doings at Bentwaters, and finally was forced to struggle with the fact that he was no longer an "objective observer." One of the most memorable passages of the book is the transcript of an audio tape of Larry and Peter, on a return visit to the site many years later, as they see and describe what appear to be UFOs buzzing around near Bentwaters. Peter just falls apart: the composed and objective UFO researcher gets his chance at direct observation and the experience leaves him speechless and gibbering.

Another big part of the book is the discussion of what happens to UFO witnesses who come forward and make public what they've seen, at great personal cost in terms of friends, job, and family. It's a stinging indictment of the ufological community and the "official" UFO interest groups, and you'll be wondering why anybody would bother to come forward at all.

Ten years in the making, Left at East Gate,   an all-too-rare document in the lore of the alien visitation, has already gone through its first printing run.


Interview With Peter Robbins, coauthor of Left at East Gate
Conducted at Greensprings, August 10th, 1997

Q: Why do you consider the Bentwaters case more significant than the Roswell Case? What are the comparisons and what makes this a more clear case of alien contact?

A: Well, for starters, although I'm as convinced as most people are, that Roswell was a real event, there was indeed a crash of an unknown craft and that it was covered up, but as we sit here right now, Jim, it's fifty years since it happened. The principals involved are all deceased. All the witnesses are gone. The anecdotal material is compelling, but not definitive. The paper trail is not just cold, it's vaporized. The interference that's been run has been totally effective. And in a funny way, much like a bullfighter just moving the energy right past himself, the establishment has managed to so deeply acculturate "Roswell" as to negate its power and impact. It's part of American culture right now.

The Bentwaters/Woodbridge incident happened just over sixteen years ago. All the principals are still alive. There is a paper trail, a fair amount of which we were able to follow up and research for the book. There are multiple witnesses that have come forward with full or partial accounts. There are two new ones who have come forward since the book has come out, and four new civilians witnesses that I've spoken with in England since then as well.  It is supported by physical evidence of several types that we've discussed. Ultimately the book is developed as the kind of case that you could bring to court. One of the greatest things that could come out of it is that it might serve as a springboard to re-convene a serious Congressional investigation; we haven't had one in decades. The book gives information about the case that could lead to subpoenas.

We're closer to the mark, there's less anecdotal and more real evidence than in the Roswell case. It's just waiting to happen.

Q: In the sense that this was much more of an international event than Roswell, how do you think the Bentwaters case affects US-British diplomatic relations?

A: In terms of the nuclear treaty violation, the children do not inherit the sins of the parents. This was a Carter-era incident, and it doesn't have anything to do with the current administration. Where there's a potential problem, it's with the National Security Agency. As we know, they are the most secret intelligence agency this nation has ever chartered. The actual charter is classified. Their mandate, their reason for being is classified. What their employees do is classified. The NSA's "black budget" is classified.

The way things stand now, with the break-up of the Cold War and the loss of the Soviet threat, a good deal of the NSA's perceived mandate has evaporated. That leaves them with a problem. They are still in England, sitting on several billion dollars worth of sophisticated listening posts, sharing certain facilities with British Telecom, and monitoring every bit of communication they'd like. There is no Congressional oversight, no British oversight. The President of the United States only knows what he is cleared to know about the NSA.

Q: Which wouldn't be much, right now...

A: Not much at all.... Sadly, this is emblematic of the fact that, our democracy - this amazing, flawed, wonderful 220-year-old experiment - is floundering. There is no question that secrecy has become the state religion of both countries. I am an optimist, but I don't know if it can be reversed. We the People are not in the equation.

Q: You document your experience of being surveyed and harassed by the NSA in your book. How did you move past that to continue the work.  There's a lot of paranoia associated with this type of research; some people even get paranoid just buying a book about it. What resources did you draw upon, what changes did you go through, to push forward?

A: Boy, that's a good question. The changes gone through were manifest. I understood, as it started to hit me how deeply involved I had gotten myself, that I had free choice here. I could walk away from the project, and in fact, I did for quite a number of months in 1988. But a combination of things fused my resolve and made me to some degree just as headstrong as my coauthor, Larry Warren, who had a much more personal reason for being that way. One was, I mean, it's going to sound so corny, but I grew up to understand certain things about this country, and I love this country, and I hate certain aspects of what happens here and how it functions. Number one, I was irate when I realized that young American airmen had been, basically, mind-fucked, to keep them quiet. Number two, being a quarter-British by a quirk of fate, I do feel some real connection to that country, and there was a very real possibility of a nuclear tragedy over there, because of this incident. At the very least, we lied, we had a major amount of nuclear ordinance there in violation of our treaty with Her Majesty's Government, struck me as profoundly wrong. As readers will learn in the book, Larry had been approached several times by the NSA, and at the last time, we were already starting to work on the book, and he was informed that a fairly routine background check had been done on me, and they had no feeling one way or another, whether he should work with me. I was horrified, frightened and enraged that they had done this to me. It just all kind of melted down and I realized that my teeth were severely on this stick.

If there was an ultimate catalyst, it was seeing for myself with Larry, a multiple UFO incident, on location, on our first trip to England, about five miles from the original site at Bentwaters. I lost my objectivity at that point. My hope to write an objective non-fiction book just had the rug pulled out from under it. I was now going to have to deal with myself in the book as a character in the story. And it was about as comfortable to have to write about my own feelings and experiences as it was to pull my own teeth out with pliers. I was much more comfortable at the NY Public Library pulling out archival material.

I found a way to make it exciting again for myself, and realized that if I walked away from it, I don't know if I'd ever be able to take on another serious project without self-doubt. I don't advise this as a career track. It was reckless, it was imprudent economically, and it was isolating. I am a very social person and I'm lucky enough to have a lot of people in my life that I care about, and they really care about me. I isolated from a lot of them over the years. Some of them, irreconcilably, but most of them, thank God, not.

Q: There was a sense of anger against the forces that were working against the completion of this book...

A: It's a very compelling force to get the job done. It really is. You realize that the myth that a lot of us were taught, that society and culture and history is changed by mass movements - certainly that has truth to it, but individuals in their own ways do impact on great social change and perception shifts. What Larry and I accomplished in this book was beyond the wildest imaginings of either of us. The results are what we begin to see now as this book begins to move out American and English readers.

Q: One of the most interesting parts of the book was what happened to Larry Warren when he initially came forward with his story, and how he was treated by the UFO "experts" -not the debunkers, but the buffs. What happens to a person who comes forth with a story like that.

A: Folks don't get into UFO research because they earn a degree from a university in UFOs. There one of two reasons they become involved: either it intellectually captivates them, which is as good a reason as any, or because they have had a sighting or experience, or somebody close to them has. It's had a real impact on their lives. There are no rules or bylaws to investigate UFOs. Those of us in the field approach it in two different ways. Some join organizations, subscribe to newsletters, and work out of an organizational structure. Others of us do it independently. There's no such thing as total independence, of course. As the acknowledgments in our book attest, there is a long list of individuals who helped me as a researcher and helped us as we moved forward, and without whom this book would not be what it is. But it was not done in tandem with any organizational assistance.

I have a very solid code of ethics that governs my behavior as a person and my behavior as a researcher. I'm proud to say that in a decade's worth of investigation on this one case, I did not betray a single confidence or break a single agreement with one outstanding exception which is discussed at some length in the conclusion of the book. It has to do with character. If you approach this in a skeevy or squirrely way and you put the case first, above people, the fact is that you may get more information, you may produce a more compelling article or book, but somebody will suffer for it and it won't be you. Unfortunately there's a tendency among many researchers who think of people who come forward, and have the courage to say "this happened to me, I'm willing to talk to you about it, here's my story" - these people are a bit disposable.

There's sort of a double ethic here. Some researchers will run a facade of serious interest in witness, but on the other hand they categorize people,  like, "here's another abductee, this one saw a deltoid over his house - how many have you got?" "Oh, yeah I got one of those too." They don't put the people first.

I put people first. The book could have been stronger, if I had been maybe a little bit less ethical. Boy, there were several episodes that came to me that I honestly I would have been willing to commit a felony if I could have gotten these people to allow me to publish what they said.  One of them in particular absolutely took the top of my head off with an amazing aspect of this phenomenon at Bentwaters.

Now, when Larry got involved in this, we were in another time when MUFON, for example, and I can't say that it was a party-line, but the prevalent feeling, underscored by their administration, was that yes, UFOs are real, they come and they go, they're machines under intelligent control, but let us not really get into what is really going on inside of them. The beings who are piloting these machines, that's far out. Any organization can rigidify. I like Walt Andrews as a person, he seems like a nice man. As far as I know he's never said anything against me, and sent me a note or two of encouragement when I started. But I wonder why Larry Warren was cut off at the MUFON conference of 1987. You just can't censor someone because of their style, or their attitude, or that they're not a comfortable person to be around. That's what I sensed happening. MUFON has never addressed this case in the last ten years. They have not reviewed our book. I would rather have an honest, unflattering review than be ignored. It's not that way with the affiliate organizations. I was graciously received by many local groups and told to continue fighting the good fight. It hurt Larry and it made me angry to be treated this way. It makes no sense, because supposedly we're all in this for the same reason.

Organizations, if they're going to serve their members, need to be flexible and adjust as things move forward. As we know, organizations - and I'm not just aiming this at MUFON, for the record - are as capable of pathology and neurosis as individuals. If we lived in a perfect world, where an organization, be it a political party, a corporation, a study group or what have you, could self-perceive that it was going off its original principles and dreams, it should dissolve or reorganize. Unfortunately it hasn't worked like that. It's human nature.

Really, we have been ignored by UFO groups and publications in the United States, and it's a shame because it's an important book. Part of the reason is that we have had the audacity to co-write a book where the first time, a fully-authentic military witness who is articulate and intelligent, who knows how to write has written a very moving and solid account of what happened to him - and had the nerve to add extraneous material that's not strictly UFO stuff. It's the old Jack Webb line, "Just the facts, Ma'am." There are the facts, but it's also who this person was when the incident happened. We get to meet him growing up, have some idea of who he was as a kid, how he matured as a teenager, and we follow along after and see how this impacted on relationships. If anything, Jack Webb is me. I'm the neutral voice of information and I weave my way throughout his account. It's not until half-way through the book that you meet me as a character, so there are three voices in the book. It goes against all the rules of a so-called "UFO book." The fact is, we didn't write it for people who are UFO buffs. We hope everyone that's interested in UFO studies, researchers or folks who just want to learn more about it, gets our book and reads it. But we wrote it for your mother, my uncle, for the janitor, for the junior high school student, for the retired person. We wrote our book for people. Unfortunately, that has made it an "outsider" book in the field of UFO studies.

Q: Do you ever get the sense that people who are heavily invested in the UFO scene are somehow defending themselves against something, defending themselves against, I don't know what, maybe a touch with the cosmic? Or defending themselves against the reality of UFOs?

A: In specific areas of study, individuals use intellect as a defense either against feeling or against something that is undisclosed. First of all, if we get to the bottom of this mystery, and there is "an answer" it means Ufology is out of business. So there's a real problem with pursuing problems fully through to closure. Second, if you actually leave yourself open to what the hell this really represents, and your not a terribly armored person, you're in for a real emotional roller coaster. If what we're dealing with is real as I maintain it is, as millions of people do from either an intellectual point of view or an experiential one ..... number one, we're bugs. Tiny specks in the great cosmos of things. It makes you feel, especially if there's a little insecurity in you, it's enough to sweep you off the map. However, if you are in contact with the fact that we're all part of this extraordinary sweep of life, of creation, and I'm not mystifying here, just talking points of physics, it's terribly exciting and it's anxiety-provoking too. Dealing with your own anxiety without dumping it on someone else is crucial to this work, to do it properly.

Q: You work with Budd Hopkins, and it's my understanding that people like John Mack and Budd Hopkins are using some type of "orgone therapy" as far as I can tell, or something related to Reich's therapeutic technique. They elicit a kind of catharsis to work through repressed memories. Do you think there is a relationship the way Budd in particular handles abductees?

A: I can only speak about Budd Hopkins, since I only met John Mack a couple of times. No, I don't think there is any connection. Budd is not a therapist, and he's the first one to say so. His methodology is such that he's got a great intellect, he cares about people, he's tremendously curious and he's a remarkably ethical and straightforward regressive hypnotist who knows how to walk that line - and this is an area where I have heard him so irrationally and inappropriately criticized and I stake my reputation on what I'm about to say here as far as my perception of his work - what he does is explore in terms of interview a person who feels they may have had an abduction experience as we call it. If the person wants to pursue it on a deeper level - and many of these people come to him with complete memories of what happened and a majority have partial memories - I cannot imagine a method that is more above-board, un-mystical, with questions that do not lead the individual than Budd's. This is something I have seen violated over and over again among pseudo-therapists, irresponsible practitioners who have an agenda.

If there is something therapeutic in following through and exploring what may be a very frightening episode in your life, in an atmosphere where you feel safe and you are respected, there is a therapeutic by-product, but that is up to the individual taking more responsibility for their life, coming through the fear, realizing that no matter what has happened or what may happen again, it's not going to get in the way of them living their life, and moving forward. That for me is transformational, and inspiring. Again, the therapeutic result is a by-product. I would expect somebody at Dr. Mack's level of the game, a psychiatrist, to practice therapy as such, but Budd is a natural. He cares and he really does a lot of good for a lot of people. He doesn't take any money for it.

Q: I still have questions about this whole area of hypnotic regression and alien abductions, not so much skepticism but I'm curious about the idea of "repressed memory". When somebody has a traumatic experience there is a tendency to forget it. I believe that you had a similar experience when you were growing up.

A: I had a sighting when I was fourteen years old at a time when there was no peer acceptance of this at all. It was 1961, for goodness sakes. All I knew was if I talked about this I would be laughed out of my junior high school. All I wanted when I was fourteen was some cool clothes and to get my hands on a girl. My ticket was going to be cancelled if I said I saw flying saucers over the neighbor's house. Can it be that simple? Yes, sometimes it can.