Real-Life X-Files (33 page)

Figure 33.1. Figure-in-the-clouds photograph has had a lengthy history, as “ Jesus,” an “angel” and (as early as 1974) a “ghost.”

A couple flying for their first airplane ride, on their honeymoon, took a whole roll of photos out the window of the plane. They were fascinated by the topside clouds, so much like Cool Whip, or Dairy Queen ice cream! The pilot announced on the intercom that they were flying into turbulence that would last about twenty minutes. Bill and his wife prayed aloud, “Oh Lord, protect us, send the Angels of the Lord to hold this plane upright and keep us safe.” Almost immediately the choppy wind subsided. The second officer got on the intercom and
announced, “It is amazing. The monitor showed turbulence for twenty minutes and it was over in two minutes.” Returning home they found this photo when they picked up their prints at Anderson Pharmacy.

Unfortunately, Ms. Malz had “not kept background material” on her publications, and the alleged honeymooning couple remain unidentified. The date is unknown as well, but the event and picture are referred to in Malz s Angels Watching Over Me, first printed in 1986. The photo is also consistent with verbal descriptions of a “Hugo Christ” picture of 1990. (We have been unable to locate a single copy of this picture, although it was reproduced by the hundreds in the Gastonia, North Carolina, area—over a thousand copies reportedly being circulated by Wal-Mart’s photo lab alone.) It was described as “a robed figure, arms outstretched, floating among sinister dark clouds” and was alleged to have been taken at the peak of Hurricane Hugo (“Experts” 1990). On the other hand, a computer imaging expert said of it at the time: “It’s a picture we’ve seen many, many times before. It was made in a darkroom.” He explained that the image he examined lacked the three-dimensional qualities of a genuine photograph (“Experts” 1990). Moreover, after the picture was shown on the television program A Current Affair, a Montgomery, Alabama, woman stated that twenty years previously, her sister in New Bern, North Carolina, had given her a photo exactly like it. “I knew what they were saying on TV was a lie,” the woman declared (“Jesus in Clouds” 1990). And the Charlotte (North Carolina) Observer ran an article questioning the photo’s authenticity, reporting that “experts said it was a fake and had been circulating throughout the United States for decades” (“Images” 1990).

What is clearly the same figure as the one published in the
Arlington Morning News
appeared as a frontispiece in Peter Haining’s 1974
Ghosts: The Illustrated History
. It is attributed to a Florida man. On the other hand, the same picture illustrates chapter 19 of Hans Holzer’s
Americas Restless Ghosts
, which states that it was “taken in 1971 during a terrible storm in rural Pennsylvania” by a woman named Marjorie Brooks. She is described as a “friend and associate” of an “ordained spiritual minister,” the Reverend Cecilia Hood, who actually sent the photograph to Holzer. Holzer says: “There was a terrible flood and the sky was very dark. Suddenly Miss Brooks observed a figure in white in the sky and took this picture. Was it a way those from the other side wanted to reassure her of
her safety?” (Holzer 1993) Whether or not this reported 1971 date represents the original appearance of the Jesus/Angel/Ghost-in-the-Clouds photograph, it is roughly consistent with the statement of the Mont-gomery woman that she had seen the “Hugo Christ” picture some twenty years before its reputed late-1989 origin. Even so, she said it supposedly originated in North Carolina rather than Pennsylvania.

Obviously this record is incomplete, but it is sufficient to suggest that we have not seen the last of the reappearing picture. Not all newspapers have been as willing as
The Charlotte Observer
to mention the picture s many antecedents—certainly not the
Arlington Morning News
, whose editors we repeatedly contacted but who always asked for more evidence, clearer photos, more time, etc., but who ultimately never felt obliged to join us in an effort to provide a corrective to the initial story by their religion editor.

References

Experts call “Hugo Christ“ photo fake. 1990.
(Charleston) Evening Post
, Charleston, S.C., April 12.

Fields, Valerie. 1997. Woman believes photograph reveals Jesus Christ’s image.
Arlington (Texas) Morning News
, May 10.

Haining, Peter. 1974.
Ghosts: An Illustrated History
. London: Sidgwick and Jackson.

Holzer, Hans. 1993.
Americas Restless Ghosts
. Stamford, Conn.: Longmeadow.

images remind us Christ is coming. 1990.
The Charlotte (North Carolina) Observer
, April 22.

Jesus in clouds. 1990.
The Charlotte (North Carolina) Observer
, April 20.

Chapter 34

Science fiction author Whitley Strieber continues to promote the notion of extraterrestrial visitations. His
Communion
: A True Story (1987) told of his own close encounter—actually, what psychologist Robert A. Baker has diagnosed as “a classic, textbook description of a hypnopompic hallucination” (or “waking dream”) (Baker and Nickell 1992). Now, several money-making books later, Strieber offers
Confirmation: The Hard Evidence of Aliens Among Us
. The evidence is threefold: UFO sightings (yawn), close encounters (
been there, done that
), and—the hard evidence, quite literally—alien implants!

Implants are the latest rage in UFO circles, and Strieber marshals the diagnostic, radiographic, surgical, photographic, and analytic evidence that supposedly indicates—but admittedly does not prove—extraterres-trials are implanting devices in human beings. To put Strieber’s claims into perspective, we should first look at the development of the implant concept.

The notion of induced mind/body control is pervasive, with paranormal entities typically having some means of monitoring mortals as a prelude to control. Examples range from mythological beings—like Cupid, whose magical arrows infected men s hearts with love, and Morpheus, who formed sleepers’ dreams—to superstitious belief in angelic guidance, demonic possession, voodoo hexes, and zombie slaves. Folklore told of abductions to fairyland from which people returned with addled wits or sapped vitality. Popular literature brought such examples as Bram Stokers
Dracula
(1897) and the mesmerizing Svengali in George du Maurier’s
Trilby
(1894). Science fiction helped develop the alien-take-
over concept, with such movies as The Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956). A 1967 Star Trek TV episode, “Errand of Mercy,” featured a “mindsifter,” a device used by the alien Klingons to probe prisoners’ thoughts during interrogations (Okuda and Okuda 1997).

Meanwhile, Kenneth Arnold’s 1947 “flying saucer” report touched off the modern era of UFOs and with it an evolving mythology. By the 1950s, “contactees” were claiming to receive messages from the Space People. Then in 1961 came the first widely publicized abduction case, that of Betty and Barney Hill. (Their psychiatrist concluded the couple had shared their dreams rather than having had an actual experience.) (Klass 1974) With the publicizing of the Hill case—notably by John G. Fuller’s
The Interrupted Journey
in 1966 and NBC television’s prime-time movie “The UFO Incident” in 1975—claims of alien abductions and “medical” examinations began to proliferate. So did another phenomenon, the abduction guru: a self-styled alien researcher and often amateur hypnotist who elicits fantasy abduction tales from suitably imaginative individuals (Baker and Nickell 1992,203).

Reports of alien implants may have begun with the alleged abduction of a Massachusetts woman, Betty Andreasson, which supposedly took place in early 1967. However, the case was not publicized widely until 1979, when Raymond E. Fowler published his book The Andreasson Affair. Andreasson, who seems to have had a predisposition to fantasize, claimed the aliens had removed an apparently implanted device, in the form of a spiked ball, by inserting a needle up her nose. Fowler speculated that the BB-size implant could have been “a monitoring device” (Fowler 1979,191). About this time, the concept of “psychotronic technology”—i.e., mind control by means of physical devices—entered ufology (Sachs 1980, 200, 262).

Andreasson’s abduction report was followed by that of a Canadian woman named Dorothy Wallis. She described a similar implant under hypnosis, which seemed to explain an earlier “compulsion” to meet with the aliens (Klass 1989,122). When we appeared together on
The Shirley Show
(which aired April 15, 1993), I suggested that Mrs. Wallis’s story appeared to imitate Andreasson’s. She countered that her abduction came first, but I observed that she did not come forward until about 1983 and that Andreasson’s much earlier publication gave the latter the stronger claim (Nickell 1995; Wray 1993). In time, David Jacobs, a historian-
turned-abduction-researcher, found the Andreasson/Wallis-type implant to be stereotypical among abductee claimants.

The object is as small as or smaller than a BB, and it is usually smooth, or has small spikes sticking out of it, or has holes in it. The function of this device is unknown: it might be a locator so that the targeted individual can be found and abducted; it might serve as a monitor of hormonal changes; it might facilitate the molecular changes needed for transport and entrance; it might facilitate communication….Some-times nosebleeds occur after this procedure. Both child and adult abductees have seen physicians for nosebleed problems, and have discovered odd holes inside their noses. (Jacobs 1992, 95-96)

Alas, Jacobs relates,”Several abductees have reported that a ball-shaped object either dropped out of their nose or was expelled when they blew their nose. All of these expulsions happened before they knew they had been abducted; in each case they thought they had inexplicably inhaled something and discarded the object or lost it” (96).

Actually, one of these items did survive and was thoroughly investigated by the Center for UFO Studies (CUFOS) in the late 1980s. Possessed by a self-claimed abductee, the “implant” had supposedly been stuck up the man’s nose by his extraterrestrial abductors but was later dislodged when he caught a cold and blew his nose. CUFOS investigator Don Schmitt accompanied UFO historian Jerome Clark, editor of CUFOS’s journal International UFO Reporter, to meet the man in an Illinois restaurant. As Clark relates the incident, after brief exchanges, the man unwrapped the object. “Don and I stared at it incredulously. It was a ball bearing.” Despite the obvious identification, the CUFOS team sought the man’s X-rays, which “showed nothing out of the ordinary,” Clark states. Nevertheless, CUFOS went on to have the alleged implant scientifically examined, whereupon it proved to be “an utterly ordinary terrestrial artifact” (Clark 1992).

In contrast to Jacobs s similar, but generally unavailable, brain/nasal implants are the current devices. The change in the type and location of implants is remarkable. Since 1994, alleged implants have been surgically recovered, but they’ve become remarkably diverse: one looks like a shard of glass, another a “triangular” (or possibly “star-shaped”) piece of metal, still another a carbon fiber, and so on. None was located in the brain or nasal cavity, instead being recovered from such extremities as
toe, hand, shin, external ear, etc.; some were accompanied by scars while others were not (Linderman 1998; Strieber 1998,171-247).

Indeed, so varied are the implants, their sites, and other characteristics that they recall a similar craze of yore. During the witch mania of the fifteenth through seventeenth centuries, inquisitors identified certain “witch’s marks” that could be almost anything. As one writer explains, “Papillomas, hemangiomas, blemishes, warts, welts, and common moles were seized upon as authentic witch’s marks, and these marks invariably determined the destiny of the suspect” (Rachleff 1971).

Several disparate implants are described in the best-selling
Abduction: Human Encounters With Aliens
by Harvard psychiatrist John E. Mack. For example, two small nodules that appeared on an abductees wrist were surgically removed and analyzed in a pathology laboratory. The lab found the tissue unremarkable (Mack 1994, 27-28). Another implant was supposedly placed at the base of an abductee’s skull. Under hypnosis, the man—who believes he has an alternate identity as a humanoid named Orion—described a small, pill-shaped object with protruding wires that, he said, would make it easier for the aliens “to follow me.” Astonishingly, Mack makes no mention of any subsequent attempt to locate and remove the reported implant (Mack 1994,172).

Many of the removals have been performed by “California surgeon” Roger Leir. Actually Dr. Leir is not a physician but a podiatrist (licensed to do minor surgery on feet). His office includes UFO magazines for patients to read and displays “bug-eyed alien dolls” (Chan 2001). Leir was accompanied by an unidentified general surgeon (who did not want to be associated with UFO abduction claims). The latter performed all of the above-the-ankle surgeries. A critic of implant claims, Dr. Virgil Priscu, a department head in an Israeli teaching hospital, observes that a foreign object can enter the body unnoticed, as during a fall, or while running barefoot in sand or grass—even as a splinter from a larger impacting object (Priscu 1998). Such foreign objects may become surrounded by a membrane, like several of the “implants” removed by Dr. Leir and others (Lindemann 1998); depending on the material, they may also degrade over time, leaving only a small bit of “reaction” tissue in place of the foreign object—“No mystery, no ’implants,’” says Dr. Priscu. He challenged Dr. Leir’s associate, a hypnotherapist named Derrel Sims, to provide specimens, or at least color slides of them, for analysis at a forensic medical institute but reported he received no cooperation. Dr.
Priscu also noted the lack of the scientific peer-review process in the case of implant claims. Although he is himself an admitted UFO believer, he states, “I also firmly believe that meticulous research by competent persons is the way to the truth” (Priscu 1998).