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mysteries |
Emissaries of God |
Other Information |
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| After Betty Andreasson, a devout Christian
from Massachusetts, US, was allegedly abducted by aliens, she claimed
that the encounter had divine origins.
On the night of 25th January 1967, Betty Andreasson from Ashburnham, Massachusetts, was in a state of some anxiety. Her husband was in hospital, seriously ill after a car accident, and Andreasson, a devout Christian, was praying hard for his recovery. Then, at around 7pm, it appeared as though someone might have heard her prayers. The family home was plunged into darkness, and a diffuse pink light shone through the kitchen window. Andreasson's father looked outside and saw small creatures in the yard, 'just like Halloween freaks'. One of them turned to meet his gaze, and he 'felt kind of queer' and blacked out. The lights came back on and Andreasson saw her family - her seven children as well as her parents - motionless, as if in a trance. She, too, was rooted in terror as four beings, wreathed in haze, entered the house through the locked back door. They were, she said, around 1.2 metres tall, with bulbous heads and almond-shaped eyes, and they were dressed in skin-tight blue uniforms. When the family 'awoke' from their torpor, they realized that around three hours and 40 minutes had passed. Only Betty and her father had any recollection - albeit a dim one - of anything that had happened. It was not until 10 years later, when Andreasson reached 40, that, during a session of hypnotic regression, the full story of her encounter and, it emerged, abduction, came out. Getting Heard. Early in 1976, however, Andreasson had remembered enough to contact the sensationalist National Enquirer, when the magazine offered $1,000,000 for definitive proof of extraterrestrial life and up to $10,000 for the best UFO story sent in. The Enquirer did not follow up her story, but when her account of what was one of the first abductions on record was finally published, sceptics pointed to the Enquirer's reward as a sufficient motive for fabricating it. Unshaken by the Enquirer's rebuff, Andreasson later responded to a newspaper article in which Dr. J. Allen Hynek, the scientist who formed the Centre for UFO Studies, appealed for contactees. The volume of response to the nationwide appeal was such that it was many months before she was interviewed by investigator Jules Vailancourt. As there was a corroborating witness - Betty's father - Vailancourt decided to extend the investigation and called in a hypnotic regression expert, Henry J. Edelson. Andreasson's astonishing story unfolded over 14 sessions with Edelson between April and July 1977. According to Andreasson's account, once the aliens had entered her home and the rest of her family were apparently in a trance, the tallest alien, which called itself 'Quazgaa', asked her to accompany them. Andreasson was told that they had come to help the human race, which was in danger of destroying itself, before being floated outside to her backyard, where an odd-looking, oval craft with a raised central console awaited. Once inside the craft, the aliens began their examination. They noted that some of Andreasson's body parts were missing; an observation which, Andreasson presumed, referred to a hysterectomy she had undergone. According to Andreasson, she was then examined by a machine that seemed to be a cross between a camera and an eye, and a needle was inserted into her navel. At this point, she became acutely distressed, and Quazgaa apparently laid its hand upon her head to relieve her pain. Nasal Implants. A long, thin device was then used to remove a tiny spiked ball from her nostril. Later, after it emerged in hypnosis sessions that Betty had, in fact, been abducted on several previous occasions, this was taken to be some kind of implant. After the examination, Andreasson claimed that she was taken into a 'cylindrical room' where there were eight seats resembling armchairs. She was put in one of these seats and tubes were inserted into her mouth and nostrils. A translucent canopy was lowered and fitted to the seat, closely encapsulating her, and the capsule was then flooded with a grey liquid. Andreasson said that she felt a spoonful of thick, sweet liquid injected into her mouth. It seemed to have a tranquillizing effect on her. She felt a series of pleasant vibrations and then a temporary heaviness as if the vessel was accelerating. Another World. When she emerged from the capsule after a short while, her clothes were dripping wet. Two hooded humanoids took control of her, and all three floated along a black track through a series of dark interconnecting tunnels. In the light given off by her companion's suits, Andreasson claimed that she could see that they were headed for a collision with a mirrored wall. In terror, she braced herself for the crash. There was, however, no crash. When she opened her eyes she found the air around her to be 'vibrating red', as though she were bathed in infra-red radiation. She passed a number of strange-looking buildings with openings for windows, across which, she recalled, clambered thin, apelike creatures with suckers instead of fingers and two large eyes atop stalks rather than heads. Their eyes swiveled to stare at the passing trio. Soon after this, the track passed through a circular membrane and on into a place that Andreasson described as beautiful and green like Earth. From the track she could see distant cities with mighty domes, and overhead elevated walkways or bridges criss-crossing the sky. then, claimed Andreasson, a large object came into view directly ahead. It was silhouetted against a bright light and, as they approached it, she realized that it was a statue of an eagle standing about 4.5 metres tall. She did not have a chance to make a closer inspection, though, because, as the trio stood before it, it burst into flames. In an even more bizarre twist to the tale, according to Andreasson, new life sprang from the ashes: it was, though, no fledgling phoenix but a thick. grey worm that communicated telepathically with her, saying, 'You have seen and you have heard. Do you understand?' Andreasson replied that she was completely confused and could make no sense of what she had been shown. Again the voice spoke in her head: 'I have chosen you... I have chosen you to show the world.' Divine Message? In keeping with her religious convictions, Andreasson interpreted the voice as that of God. The main substance of the worm's dialogue was, she said, that mankind was following a very dangerous course, that love was the answer and that we needed to acquire knowledge through the spirit. As they parted Quazgaa apparently told Andreasson that others had such secrets locked in their minds. The Christian teaching that Andreasson used to filter her understanding of these events has caused some Ufologists to disregard her story. They point to the apparent hallucinatory nature of her experience as evidence that it was the product of an overactive imagination. The fact that Andreasson had been praying so hard for her her husbands recovery that night has also led some to suspect that she had somehow induced a trance-like state in herself. However, this fails to explain the accounts of other witnesses, such as Andreasson's father and daughter. Other researchers discount extraterrestrial abductions altogether. Some theorize that common elements in the accounts, including sexual interference and mind-scanning, may reflect the submissive condition of being on the hypnotist's couch. Indeed, hypnotic regression as a technique has come under great criticism recently, with many subjects admitting they have fallen victim to False Memory Syndrome, where false recollections are unwittingly 'implanted' by the hypnotist. |
Sources: The X Factor |