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By Gary P. Posner
David M. Jacobs,
a history professor at Temple University
who wrote his 1973 Ph.D. thesis (published in book form two
years later) on The UFO Controversy in America, has recently
presented Simon and Schuster with a sure-fire best seller
entitled Secret Life: Firsthand Accounts of UFO Abductions.
(Late addition: Surprisingly, the book sold poorly.)
Jacobs thus becomes the most "credentialed" of those
purporting that U.S. citizens are being teleported by the
thousands (often through their closed bedroom windows) onto
UFOs, where gray telepathic entities proceed to humiliatingly
probe them (particularly about the genitals) and remove sperm or
eggs for some unknown purpose (cross-breeding has been alleged).
Fortunately, the horrible "truth" may be recalled later during
hypnotic regression sessions with Jacobs or one of his cohorts.
1987 had been heralded in by the publication of two books on
this theme -- Communion by Whitley Strieber
and Intruders by
Budd Hopkins.
Hopkins, a New York artist turned UFO
abductionist/hypnotherapist, had in 1981 written Missing Time
(so named because noting on one's watch that it is later than
one thought may constitute evidence of a UFO abduction). The
hundreds of new case reports generated by that book and by his
subsequent media appearances resulted in Intruders, published
by no less than Random House.
Strieber, a writer of horror novels (e.g., The Wolfen, The
Hunger and Black Magic), claimed in his "non-fiction"
Communion (which also was made into a movie) that he has been
abducted on multiple occasions by "the visitors" and examined
in the manner described above. His follow-up effort,
Transformation, did not sell nearly as well, and he pulled the
plug on his Communion Newsletter with the Spring 1991 issue in
which he offered this insight: "Hypnotism by UFO experts and the
psychologists who support them does not open the door to the
truth [but] to fantasies based on the modern folklore of the
alien and the flying saucer -- and it opens the door to fear. . . .
Ironically, if aliens are here, we are not going to find them
in the sky [but] in our own minds."
Leading UFO skeptic Philip Klass
of Aviation Week & Space Technology magazine
had been pilloried by the UFO community for reaching the same
conclusion in his 1989 book, UFO Abductions: A Dangerous Game. In
it, Klass dubs Hopkins "the 'Typhoid Mary' of this tragic
malaise" in which, as a result of the abductionists' "games,"
"some victims
As regards historian David Jacobs, Klass began an August 22,
1980, letter to him this way:
Jacobs and I go back some 14 years to when I attended a talk
on UFOs by him at Loyola College in Baltimore, where I then
lived. Within moments of commencing his presentation, I raised
my hand to offer a correction. After my so doing a second time a
few moments later, I asked if future such comments should be
held until the end. A game trouper, Jacobs invited me to raise
my hand at will, and I must have done so a dozen times during
the course of his talk (I was apparently the only well-versed
attendee, and the only one with questions/comments). The error I
remember most vividly related to the famous 1971 Delphos, Kansas,
"UFO landing trace" case, in which a ring of white substance
purported to be UFO propulsion residue (but later determined to
be natural organic matter) was allegedly left behind on the
soil, which had been muddied by recent rains. In Jacobs'
telling of the tale, the white ring became "the
only area of the yard where the snow didn't melt."*
O.K. You may think I'm being a little picky. But what
distinguishes Jacobs' research from that of the other
"abductionists" are his academic credentials in the field of
historical truth. Jacobs may be a fine college history teacher,
but what he taught me that day 14 years ago only serves to
reinforce my skepticism of the historical reality of "UFO
Abductions."
==========
* January 2007 Clarification: It would seem that
Dr. Jacobs was partially correct, and I regret not having been aware
of this until informed today by a reader. According to
this write-up,
although the white ring was indeed determined to be natural organic matter,
snow (coincidentally white as well) purportedly was noted to melt
more slowly immediately above the
organic matter than from the ground adjacent to it.
Read my article on the Gulf Breeze UFOs
Read my interview with Philip Klass
Return to "Skeptically Speaking" Index
Return to Tampa Bay Skeptics Home Page
Recalling the number of errors in
your book "The UFO Controversy in America" involving my
UFOlogical activities, which occurred because you never thought
to write, call, or contact me in the course of your "research,"
errors that I earlier brought to your attention, I would have
expected that any future effort on your part to discuss my
activities in the field would have attempted to achieve greater
accuracy. My expectations . . . were not realized when I read your
contribution to the new Warner Books paperback "Proceedings of
the First International UFO Congress." May I cite a few
examples
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