From: DevereuxP@aol.com
Date: Sun, 5 Oct 1997 20:17:49 -0400 (EDT)
Fwd Date: Sun, 05 Oct 1997 23:26:17 -0400
Subject: Re: Solved abduction cases?

Hello List,

I've been travelling considerably and on a non-stop schedule since
I returned, so I am owing responses since way back to some members
of the List, for which I apologise and which I'll deal with as
soon as I can. But this one can be answered relatively quickly.

Nick Humphries asked:

>From: nick@emailme.at.address.below (Nick Humphries)
>To: UFO UpDates - Toronto <updates@globalserve.net>
>Subject: Solved Abduction cases?
>Date: Fri, 03 Oct 1997 16:31:02 GMT

>Here's something I've been wondering about for a while now and
>think some of you may be able to help me with:

>   Have any abduction cases been solved - that is, found to have
>another explanation other than ET intervention?

>  And if not, why not?


The answer is yes. Probably many, as other List members have already
indicated -- depending on one's terminology (and how far one wants
to move the goalposts). You'll find a description of the unravelling
of a two-witness abduction case in the forthcoming UFOs and UFOLOGY
book by myself and Brookesmith (out in UK: November 1997, Blandford
Press; out in US: spring 1998, Facts on File). I don't think it
has entered the general UFO literature before. The remarkable
thing about this case, is the amount of time and dedication and
knowledge the investigator had to have to solve it. That may explain
why so many abduction reports remain unchallenged as literal events
(I'm NOT saying that the *experiences* need not be real).

Dennis Stacy wrote:

>Date: Sat, 4 Oct 1997 13:25:31 -0500 (CDT)
>To: UFO UpDates - Toronto <updates@globalserve.net>
>From: Dennis <dstacy@texas.net> [Dennis Stacy]
>Subject: Re: UFO UpDate: Re: Solved Abduction cases?

>There's an Australian abduction case --maybe someone, Chris R.,
>can supply a citation -- in which a woman, I believe, claimed to
>be being abducted while, at the time, she was actually sitting
>in a car seat next to one of the investigators. Seems unlikely
>ET was invovled in that one! <snip>

That was the case involving Maureen Puddy. Again, had not that
case been followed up in a dedicated manner, *and while the reported
series of abductions were taking place*, it probably would remain
an unchallenged literal UFO abduction.

The rest of what Dennis had to say was superb, a real breath of
fresh air from North America on these matters. Again, this sort
of discussion is engaged in some depth in UFOs & UFOLOGY. I do
hope literalist ufologists will read it with open minds - there
is no debunking, but an honest debate and an urging for us to
at least peer outside of the automatic ETH paradigm. There are
multiple other ways of looking at the kind of reports that make
up what we call "ufology".

Chris Rutowski also sent in a reasonably balanced posting on this
issue:

>From: Chris Rutkowski <rutkows@cc.UManitoba.CA>
>Subject: Re: UFO UpDate: Re: Solved Abduction cases?
>To: updates@globalserve.net (UFO UpDates - Toronto)
>Date: Fri, 3 Oct 1997 15:56:57 -0500 (CDT)

>Boy, have *you* opened a can of worms.

>The short answer is, "It depends who you talk to." The long
>answer is yes, with some qualifications.. . <snip>

I remain puzzled, though, how he can even guess that maybe 5 percent
of abuction reports are real, when he himself says he can't distinguish
them from mental phenomena explanations:

<snip>. . .my *guess* is that the percentage of "real" to "not-real"
>abductions is probably of the same order as that of UFOs to IFOs:
>about 5%. The trouble is, I don't see an easy way to separate
>the wheat from the chaff...<snip>

One must I assume, I take it, that Chris simply accepts, with
a kind of intellectual reflex, that there has to be a literal
explanation somewhere for some UFO abductions? I have always suspected
that Chris was a closet ETHer (closet perhaps even to himself),
and this would seem to confirm that view. Unless, of course, Chris
can explain just what he did mean.

And finally, for this posting,  Jerry Clark, someone I have enormous
respect for, chipped in his two-pennyworth on a related topic:

>From: clark@canby.mn.frontiercomm.net [Jerome Clark]
>Date: Wed, 01 Oct 1997 11:32:01 PDT
>To: updates@globalserve.net
>Subject: RE: UFO UpDate: Re: Questions for abductees

He takes the venerable Duke of Mendoza (30 Sep 1997 - "Questions
for Abductees")to task:

>Does anybody, including yourself, know the meaning of the phrase
>"the folklore that calls itself `abduction research'"?  All of
>us, including the undersigned (as you kindly reminded me
>recently), are capable of writing (and thinking) in haste, and
> I daresay you are doing so here.  There is folklore about
>abductions, but the experience of abduction is not "folklore,"
>as you yourself imply when you suggest that "abnormal psychology"
>is the be-all and end-all of the question. You are too intellectually
>sophisticated, I should think, to use "folklore" and "nonsense"
>as if the two were interchangeable, for another thing. Labeling
>"abduction research," whatever else can be said against or for
>it, "folklore" is to mischaracterize the nature of both, or to
>find meanings for these words not immediately apparent to the
>rest of us. All you are saying, I guess, is that you don't like
>people to research abductions and come to conclusions about them
>you don't like. <snip>

The last sentence reveals that Jerry is in his hot-under-the-collar
mode, and we all know, despite his scholarship, intelligence and
erudition, that the ETH paradigm has Jerry firmly caught by the
short and curlies.

Jerry is trying to fabricate friction.  The Duke was clearly referring
to how abduction research, especially in North America, has attracted
its own themes, sub-themes,  beliefs (many simply assumed), protagonists,
etc. All the stuff of folklore. What I read the goodly Duke as saying
is that the activity of abduction research is a study in its own
right.  He didn't say that abduction experiences in and of themselves
were folklore. I also didn't see him say that "abnormal psychology"
was the be-all and end-all. What I did see him do was to carefully
qualify the term with "so-unhelpfully-called".

Once upon a time, Jerry didn't accept the ETH, but now (I would
say under the pressure of the intellectual ufological environment
in which he is immersed in the USA)he does. Once upon a time,
Jerry didn't seem at all impressed by abduction reports. Now,
he seems to be  softening (I'd say for the same reasons). In the
way Jerry now doesn't credit contactee claims of early ufology, I
just hope he and I live long enough for him to be able to look
back and come to the same, if tragically belated, conclusion about
today's "abduction scenario".

I must stress that I think the abduction experience is real in
many cases, and of tremendous importance. But I feel we can learn
more about it by not tunnel-visioning ourselves into just abduction
reports. We are SO ignorant about the realms of the mind, of the
range of conscious experience, that we really do need to explore
"abnormal psychology" and study a wide base of literature and
conduct practical experiments. (That is what I and colleagues
are doing with lucid dreaming right now, and the much slagged-off
Persinger is doing important mind-altering investigations too.)
Numerous researchers in various fields are all supplying important
and highly germane information that needs putting together before
any of us plump for an ET literalist answer. This is not "medicalizing"
the matter, as you suggested elsewhere in your posting, Jerry
-- a crude, knee-jerk attitude if I may say so. And it is far from
being a be-all and end-all -- good lord Jerry, we are all so ignorant
in this whole business of consciousness research! It is the literalist
"explanation" that has become the be-all and end-all of abduction
research, surely? Dennis Stacy has listed some of the inconsistencies
in the whole abduction business. Jerry, take a deep breath: doesn't
it sound more like a mental phenomenon (however remarkable and
important -- all of which I think it to be) than real cosmic ships
taken away people at night? Really and truly? The experients themselves
are being given the literalist framework in which to interpret
their experiences -- that is just part of the shame and the disgrace
of abduction research as it currently stands.

This wheel is still very much in spin. Be careful where you stand.


Paul Devereux