Exclusive videos from George Knapp on alien abductions below...
Below is a synopsis and trailer from The Fourth Kind, a new film coming to theaters November 6, which claims to document alien abduction using
never-before-seen archival footage:
(click to open player in new window)
Structured unlike any film before it, The Fourth Kind is a provocative thriller set in modern-day Nome, Alaska, where—mysteriously since the
1960s—a disproportionate number of the population has been reported missing every year. Despite multiple FBI investigations of the region, the
truth has never been discovered.
Here in this remote region, psychologist Dr. Abigail Tyler (Milla Jovovich) began videotaping sessions with traumatized patients and unwittingly
discovered some of the most disturbing evidence of alien abduction ever documented.
Using never-before-seen archival footage that is integrated into the film, The Fourth Kind exposes the terrified revelations of multiple witnesses.
Their accounts of being visited by alien figures all share disturbingly identical details, the validity of which is investigated throughout the
film.
Below is the exclusive article and three-part original video series from George Knapp on the phenomena of extraterrestrial abductions.
Even in the world of UFO research, which is not always known for healthy skepticism and rigorous standards of evidence, the basic premise of the alien
abduction scenario is way out in left field. From day one, nuts-and-bolts flying saucer investigators didn't want to believe these tales anymore
than mainstream scientists did. They were more comfortable with studying lights in the sky, and they yearned for acceptance from Big Science. Fanciful
accounts about space aliens at the foot of the bed were, you know, an embarrassment, an inconvenient diversion from the real work at hand.
On its face, the scenario seems flat out ridiculous, too preposterous to even consider. Are we expected to believe that some sort of alien beings are
systematically entering the homes of otherwise normal people, floating them out of their bedrooms (sometimes through walls), beaming them aboard
spaceships, subjecting them to invasive exams, performing often painful medical procedures that are focused on the human reproductive system,
occasionally sharing with their subjects visions of the future or warnings of impending doom, then returning the abductees to their beds without
anyone noticing their absence? Does it make sense that these mysterious intruders can manipulate the minds of their targets, generate deceptive
imagery, and selectively repress their memories of the encounters? Should we waste our time on the sensational claims about abductions occurring in
the same families over many generations, as if part of some ongoing genetic or reproductive experiment? Who in their right mind can swallow such wild
accounts? Where is the hard evidence? And isn't it far more likely that the people making these claims are either lying, hallucinating, dreaming, or
suffering from some sort of mental delusions?
It is hardly surprising that few scientific professionals , even those who might be open to the possibility that Earth has been visited by beings from
somewhere else, would want any part of this story. It isn't the sort of pursuit that might bolster a resume or provide a boost to an academic who is
seeking tenure.
In 1972, pioneer UFO researcher Dr. J. Allen Hynek, who had served as the principal science advisor to the Air Force's much maligned Project Bluebook
investigation, wrote a scathing rebuke of the Air Force position on UFOs. Hynek had been instrumental in the promulgation of the Air Force whitewash,
but the more he learned about UFO cases, the less he believed his own flimsy explanations. In his landmark book, The UFO Experience, Hynek established
a classification system for UFO reports. Close Encounters of the First Kind (or CE 1--lights or objects seen by witnesses at varying distances), Close
Encounters of the Second Kind (CE 2-- lights or objects which interact with the physical environment ), and Close Encounters of the Third Kind (CE
3--cases in which eyewitnesses see of beings or occupants associated with the UFO). According to his colleagues, Hynek was somewhat uncomfortable
with the CE III category. He stopped short of referring to the UFO occupants as "aliens", using the term "animate beings" instead. Hynek
recognized the explosive—and potentially counterproductive—implications of creating a specific category for cases in which witnesses claimed to
see aliens, yet he stuck to his principles. He included CE 3 on his list because he felt "an obligation to report" what the eyewitnesses said they
saw.
Close Encounters of the Fourth Kind is a category created by subsequent researchers, based on compelling cases that surfaced in the years after Hynek
outlined his classification system. Without question, these cases represent the most disturbing aspect of the UFO mystery, even if they are not true
in a literal, demonstrable sense. The temptation is to dismiss them outright. Something so outrageous can't possibly be true, and therefore no
scientific investigation is warranted. That's what we've been told anyway.
That's also the conclusion most mainstream scientists have reached, (those who have even given the subject a second thought, that is) although very
few have taken the time to look at a single case file. An otherwise open-minded scientist can say, in all honesty, that he has read ALL of the
peer-reviewed articles about alien abductions that have ever been published in professional science journals and has seen no evidence that the reports
are credible whatsoever. Such a statement would be true in a technical sense, for the simple reason that editors at professional science journals
would never stoop to publishing an article about alien abduction experiences. The same is true for any article that mentions or analyzes UFO-related
subjects, no matter how rigorous the scholarship. Simply put, it would be risky for a science editor to publish anything related to UFOs. There is no
upside to it. Mainstream scientists are rarely, if ever, exposed to opinions and materials that might challenge their preconceptions about so-called
fringe topics.
That's fine, sort of. Scientists wouldn't believe it anyway, or, if they did, they would not admit to it in any public forum. The same is true for
the general population, I'd say. More importantly, it's also true for most of the alleged abductees. They have a lot of trouble digesting their
experiences. Few of them want it to be true. Nearly all of them would prefer that it simply go away. Without being too cavalier about it, the alien
abduction scenario is pretty wild, even on its most superficial level. If you take it at face value, which is admittedly hard to do, it represents
something far more complicated than lights in the sky or benevolent visitors from somewhere else. It presents a fundamental challenge to our concepts
of reality. Heavy stuff, if you care to think about it.
The most famous UFO abduction case occurred in 1961. It's the Betty and Barney Hill case. Books have been written. A movie was made. People are still
debating the merits of the evidence.
Debunkers and assorted intelligence operatives have done their best over the years to poke holes in the story, resorting to disinformation and smears
at times, but the story told by Betty and Barney has withstood all challenges. (If you are interested in the Hill abduction case, read the book "The
Interrupted Journey" by John Fuller.)
(click to open player in new window)
With mainstream scientists reluctant to investigate scattered reports of abduction incidents similar to the Hill case, the job eventually fell to a
kindly, curious New York artist named Budd Hopkins. Hopkins had no formal scientific or investigative training, but he was intrigued by the
disturbing stories he heard from friends and others. He developed an ever-growing circle of scared people, all of whom told essentially the same
story. He interviewed dozens of people from all walks of life. Hopkins came to rely on hypnosis as a tool for retrieving memories that had been
repressed…..or purposely buried. Hopkins' 1981 book "Missing Time" was the first to lay out the similarity and extent of the abductee's
experience. A second book "Intruders", published in 1987, helped bring the abduction topic into the mainstream of UFO research. At about the same
time, horror novelist Whitely Strieber revealed is own bizarre alien encounters in a smash bestseller "Communion", with its now ubiquitous "gray
alien" on the cover, and from that point on, the alien abduction scenario became ensconced in public lore, if not in the annals of scientific
research.
No one wants this to be true. No one can be comfortable with this scenario, least of all, the abductees themselves, many of whom have been profoundly
affected by their experiences. Yes, it all seems ridiculous on its face, a preposterous notion, but in science, as in journalism and the law, we must
follow the evidence where it leads. Make no mistake, there IS evidence to consider, though few mainstream scientists have the courage to fairly
evaluate that evidence.
Hopkins has compared the public reaction to the abduction scenario to the first, unsettling tales about a Holocaust during World War II. He notes that
even after the film and photos were released documenting the horrors of the concentration camps, a large percentage of the population simply did not
believe it was true. They could not fathom something so terrible, so strange. It's the same with the abduction scenario. People don't want to hear
it, and they certainly don't want to believe it.
"For me, the conclusion is inescapable," Hopkins wrote . "They are already here. Though I do not want to believe this, and feel decidedly unnerved
by it , I believe it is true. Extraterrestrials have been observing us for many years, and we have no idea of their intentions."
Hopkins' work did eventually attract the attention of a handful of courageous scientists and academics. (More on their opinions in a bit.)
The following excerpt is from a three-disc documentary series I produced, UFO's: The Best Evidence. This clip provides a basic overview of what
abductees all around the world have reported, and the difficulties faced by researchers like Hopkins.
(click to open player in new window)
In his second book, Intruders, Budd Hopkins took his hypothesis one step further. He argued that, because of the similarity of content and detail in
UFO abduction reports, they "must be accepted one of two ways. Either they represent some new and heretofore unrecognized and nearly universal
psychological phenomenon—a theory which does not take into account the accompanying physical evidence—or they represent honest attempts to report
real events."
In response to growing public interest in the abduction scenario, a predictable cast of characters from the ranks of UFO debunkers surfaced to make
fun of the whole thing, while tossing out numerous, seemingly more plausible counter-explanations. Abductees were having bad dreams, or
hallucinations, or it was sleep paralysis, or they were playing out repressed traumas from childhood sexual abuse—all of these were offered up by
familiar critics, including Phil Klass and Carl Sagan. Sagan, a renowned astronomer, saw no problem in making pronouncements about the psychiatric
makeup of the abductees, though he had little if any familiarity with the core evidence or the psychological screening that had taken place. As with
the larger UFO picture, the arch-skeptics succeed just by muddying the waters, and they are rarely held to the same standards of proof they demand of
UFO investigators. Whatever sticks to the wall seems good enough.
Hopkins' diligence eventually attracted the attention of a few academic heavyweights, including Dr. David Jacobs, a history professor from Temple
University, and the brilliant Dr. John Mack , professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School (and Pulitzer Prize-winning writer.) After meeting
with Hopkins and launching his own research project with abductees, Dr. Mack wrote in his 1994 book "Abduction, "I have come to see that the
abduction phenomenon has important philosophical, spiritual, and social implications. Above all, more than any other research I have undertaken, this
work had led me to challenge the prevailing worldview or consensus reality which I had grown up believing and had always applied in my
clinical/scientific endeavors."
In 1992, Mack co-hosted a landmark scientific conference at MIT. (His co-chair was Dr. David Pritchard, MIT professor of Physics.) For five days, the
assembled group heard testimony from abductees and abduction researchers. The gathering is superbly chronicled in "Close Encounters of the Fourth
Kind", a book by formerly skeptical writer C.D.B. Bryan.
In this next clip from UFOs: The Best Evidence, Hopkins, Mack, Jacobs, and other researchers respond to the criticisms raised by debunkers. They
allege that any counter theory must account for ALL of the evidence that has been accumulated, and that no rival theory yet proposed comes close.
(click to open player in new window)
For his courage in pursuing the topic of abductions, Dr. Mack came under fire from Harvard Medical School and had to fight to retain his tenure.
Harvard officials worried that his research had brought disrepute to the school, even though Mack had used the same rigorous scientific protocols he
had always employed in his previous research. (Mack held onto his tenure. He died a few years ago in London after being struck by a drunk driver.) The
pugnacious Dr. David Jacobs continues to research the topic but admits it has taken him down some dark alleys. The best-known researchers are not
necessarily convinced that 'the visitors" are merely traveling here from other planets. The ultimate explanation, according to Dr. Jacques Vallee,
is likely to be far more exotic and wondrous.
When combined with other unusual phenomena sometimes associated with UFOs, including bizarre animal mutilations, and unexplained but beautiful crop
formations, the abduction scenario does raise troubling but potentially important questions about who we are and how we fit into the big picture. No
one has any solid answers.
Author Whitely Streiber wrote in "Communion", "this matter is a garden of luminous weed through which only a fool would dash yelling any doctrine
at all, whether it be that of Creationist and debunker or that of the UFO true believer. Even to approach the idea of the visitors, it is necessary to
study a whole history of tall stories, bizarre tales, and---just possibly—truths.
In this final excerpt from The Best Evidence, we hear from some of our deepest thinkers about what it might mean for humanity.
This essay will end with a final quotation from the late John Mack:
"The abduction phenomenon is of considerable clinical and scientific interest. No convincing explanation of the experiences abductees report is
currently evident. We may learn from further research a great deal about the nature of the human psyche and expand our notions of psychological and
physical reality. The phenomenon may deliver to us a kind of fourth blow to our collective egoism, following those of Copernicus, Darwin and Freud.
For we may be led to realize that not only are we not physically at the center of the universe, transcending other life forms and rational masters of
our psyches-we are not even the preeminent or dominant intelligence in the cosmos, in control of our psychological and physical existences. It appears
that we can be "invaded" or taken over, if not literally by other creatures, then by some other form of being or consciousness that seems able to do
with us what it will.
-- George Knapp
[edit on 10-13-2009 by Springer]
[edit on 10-15-2009 by Springer]
[edit on 10-15-2009 by Springer]