Alien Confidential Multimedia/Alien Confidential Multimedia (Disk 4 of 9).adf/ABDUCTION/089

Text File | 1995-04-23 | 14KB | 266 lines

Appeared in: OMNI Magazine
Date: February, 1995
Article: Anatomy of an Abduction
Written by: A.J.S. Rayl

The following is part of OMNI's Project Open Book.  An effort to point
out the ordinary, and also, to search for the extraordinary concerning
UFO phenomenon.

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[BEGIN article]

                        ANATOMY OF AN ABDUCTION

Investigated by A.J.S. Rayl

PRIMARY WITNESS: Leah A. Haley

VITAL STATISTICS: Accountant, mother of two, from Columbus, Mississippi

SUMMARY:
     By 1990 Leah Haley had begun recalling unsettling dreams of visits
aboard spacecraft with aliens; the images were at once so "strange" and
so "real" she sought professional help.  Her therapist, Springfield,
Missouri, social worker John Carpenter, known for his work with UFO
abductees, says Haley's case is special.  "The details were amazingly
specific and corroborated unpublished details from the best case data we
have so far." What's more, he points out, Haley's story had a spin: Her
"recollections" apparently involved the United States military, which
she claimed harassed her so she wouldn't go public with her tale.

     After undergoing hypnosis, Haley has come to believe her abduction
dreams were real.  She eventually went public in 1993 with a
self-published book, `Lost Was the Key,' after legally changing her name
to Leah A. Haley "to protect my family and children."

Inventory of Claims
     `Memories from the Deep.' In 1960 Haley, then nine years old, and
her brother, then seven, saw what they thought was a spacecraft landing
in the woods near their home in Gardendale, Alabama.  "I saw three
objects, two of which quickly darted away," she explains.  "The third
was silver, completely spherical in shape, and it sat still for a long
time in the sky."

     Decades later, in July 1990, Haley visited with her mother and
brother in Alabama, and during a conversation about extraterrestrials
sparked by a newspaper article, Haley recounted a "strange, very real
dream.  I was in a spaceship, in a round room, lying on a platform with
small chalky white creatures with big black eyes doing some kind of
medical things to me," she recalls.

     After the dreams increased, she contacted John Carpenter in hopes
of finding some mental illness or disorder to explain what was going on.
Instead, during 15 sessions of hypnotic regression, she recalled
countless specific abductions starting at age 3. She even conjured an
undersea alien facility, complete with alien craft and a captive
soldier, held against his will.

     `Military Intervention.' During hypnosis and in flashbacks, Haley
also recalled her abduction by military personnel.  For instance, she
told of an alien craft that she believes crashed near a beach while she
was aboard, after which military personnel escorted her away.  Comments
Carpenter, "That episode unraveled as vividly as any I've heard."

     Since September 1990, Haley claims, she has been "followed by
military types in navy blue or white cars," and occasionally by black
unmarked helicopters.  She also claims she has been monitored via her
telephone and in person, because, she now speculated, "I was on that
alien craft when it crashed and the military wanted to glean information
and make me shut up."

     In April 1991, Haley charges, military harassment made its most
insidious appearance at the Columbus Air Force Base in the form of Major
(then Captain) Tracy Poole, whose wife was in Haley's accounting class.
Haley says Poole extended "an unusually persistent invitation" to view
space shuttle Endeavour during its stopover at the base.  Armed guards
surrounding the shuttle and signs posted around the spacecraft warning
that "Deadly force is authorized," Haley notes, explain why she
considered the invitation "a possible setup to interrogate or kill me."

     `Technology Gone Awry.' Haley also reports loosened locks and
window screens, disturbances in the phone line, and the spontaneous
disarming of her security system, not to mention strange sounds
throughout her house, leading her to believe someone or something was
inside.

     `Weird Body Marks.' Haley has found "more than one hundred strange
marks" on different parts of her body, including injection marks, scoop
marks, and red, circular vaccination-like marks, apparently made with
three separate prongs.  She also reports other physical anomalies, such
as "Morse Code-type beeps" in her ears, intense back spasms, voices and
imagery, and frequent soreness in her ovaries.  On numerous occasions,
she says, "I have felt dazed, unable to concentrate or focus."

     `Sane Psychometric Profile.' Haley visited Florence, Alabama,
psychiatrist Thomas G. Shafer three times in 1992.  Shafer, who has no
connection to the UFO field, concluded that there was "no evidence of
organic psychoses such as schizophrenia, organic brain syndrome, or
bipolar illness." In a letter to her and released to `Omni,' he wrote:
"It is my opinion that you suffered some sort of extremely traumatic
experience in the woods that day long ago as a child.  Your descriptions
of being naked, lying powerless, having your body explored suggest very
strongly to me that the actual experience was a sexual molestation.  It
is my professional opinion," he concluded, "that you suffer from delayed
Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) due to childhood experiences,
complicated by a paranoid state caused by the hypnosis sessions, and
I've recommended you undergo treatment by a licensed M.D.  or Ph.D.
certified in hypnotherapy to help you resolve these issues."

     In the fall of 1992, Haley also completed a Fantasy Prone Test
given to numerous abductees by the Center for UFO Studies (CUFOS).
According to Carpenter: "It revealed that she was less likely than the
normal person to be fantasy prone.  She fell in the frank,
down-to-earth, conservative range."

The Investigation
    `Memory Lane.' Like most abductees, Haley has recalled her alien
encounters primarily through hypnotic regression.  "Haley deliberately
did not read anything and did not want to be an abductee or involved in
any of this," says her hypnotist, John Carpenter, who has to date
regressed 90 other abductees.  "under hypnosis, she had the classic
response to all this; it brought tears."

     Haley's brother, who is a law enforcement officer with the state of
Alabama and, as such, requested anonymity, was present at the first two
hypnosis sessions.  "Carpenter did not ask leading questions; rather he
tried to lead her away from anything having to do with aliens," he says.
After the sessions, he says, "she was in disbelief, denial, shock, but
there was no doubt in my mind that she was deeply affected by what she
was remembering."

     All this, say critics, does not prove Haley's recollection to be
real.  Robert A. Baker, psychology professor emeritus at the University
of Kentucky, who has studied psychological anomalies, says, "These
`encounters' are really hypnagogic images, essentially waking
hallucinations or dreams, and nothing more." Adds Baker, researchers
like Carpenter may be putting aliens in people's heads.

     "Baker has not looked at my work or my methods," responds
Carpenter.  "My trademark is deliberately suggesting logical responses
to the point of misleading these abductees.  These abductees come from
all walks of life and economic status, and yet they all tell the same
story about the same little guys.  It doesn't make sense that these are
all falsely created from the individual imaginations."

     But Ronald K. Siegel, associate research professor of psychiatry
and biobehavioral sciences at UCLA and author of `Whispers: The Voices
of Paranoia' (Crown), does not agree.  "Those details don't point to
anything more than a common mental experience, not unlike parasitosis,
the belief you're being infested by parasites," Siegel says.  "Medical
history documents that people who suffer from parasitosis reported the
same parasites and drew the same drawings, with the same details.  Given
an infinite variety of stimulations, the brain responds in a finite
number of ways."

     "Theoretically, Haley could be experiencing an altered state of
consciousness - caused by anything from a food allergy to a physical
problem in the brain - and having these fantastic experiences in which
she has seemingly real feelings and images associated with being
abducted by aliens, and which can even include physical manifestations,"
adds psychologist Keith Harary, research director of the Institute for
Advanced Psychology in San Francisco.

     `Military Coup?' Acting as tour guide, Haley drove OMNI around the
Columbus Air Force Base looking for a one-story building where she
believes she was taken and interrogated.  No building, however, seemed
familiar.  Haley also gave OMNI the name of a disgruntled civilian
employee at Columbus she said might know about the UFOs.  When OMNI
tracked this man down, however, he said, "I just don't have the kind of
security clearance to know about these things."

     As for Major Poole, he has confirmed that he did give his wife, a
student in Haley's accounting class, a space shuttle Endeavour pass to
give to Haley and did invite her to view the shuttle on its stopover at
the base.  "But it wasn't a personal invitation," he says.  "We have
standard roped-off areas, where the public can stand and take pictures,
and that's what I invited her to do.  On the night in question, I did go
to the classroom, but it was to wave to my wife."

     `Official Denial.' Have UFOs ever been tracked over Columbus Air
Force Base?  According to Sergeant Debbie O'Leary, Columbus AFB Public
Affairs: "No, there have been no UFOs tracked here, and we have not
interrogated here any people who claim to have had an alien encounter."

     Tammy McBride at the POW/MIA office at the Pentagon, meanwhile,
conducted a search for one Larry Mitchell, a name that appeared on a
soldier's uniform in the underground alien facility Haley described

under hypnosis.  McBride found three Larrys and one Lawrence all with
the last name of Mitchell.  All four were killed in action in Vietnam.
All bodies have been recovered.

     `Vehicular Interference.' Tony Scarborough, physics professor at
Delta State University in Cleveland, Mississippi, and state director for
the Mutual UFO Network (MUFON), confirmed that "a graphite-black
helicopter came over a building where Haley was speaking and scared the
students to death" in the summer of 1991.  "A year later, a similar
helicopter came over my house, then flew at about 500 feet, traveling
parallel to me on my way to meet her at Delta State University," he
adds, "but the connection between these helicopters and Leah Haley is,
of course, speculative."

     As for Air Force cars following her, Poole says, "We have cars
running up and down Highway 45 all the time."

     `Homebodies.' John Beard, who heads up Golden Triangle Security
Alliance in Columbus, the company that installed Haley's home security
system, confirmed that Haley has experienced an inordinate amount of
trouble.  "This particular system had an inherent engineering and design
flaw, which the manufacturer has admitted.  Consequently, we no longer
sell it, and we have had to go out and change components on most of the
systems we installed.  There are at least 20 other customers who have
had the same problems."

     Haley's former housekeeper, Eunice Eggleston, however, insists
there were strange things happening inside the house.  "One day I was
upstairs cleaning, and I heard chords clearly on the piano.  I was sure
the house was all locked up, and I was the only one there.  In addition,
the answering machine would start without the phone ringing, and the air
vent once dropped on the floor."

     But these events, says psychologist Harary, who has studied the
psychology of coincidence, don't add up to much.  "A string of seemingly
inexplicable events that occur around the same time are not necessarily
related," he says.  "You would have to thoroughly investigate each and
every one.  Sure, there could have been someone physically in the house;
unfortunately, no one was seen, and it's almost impossible to get the
bottom of what was happening after the fact."

     `Body Scoops.' The plethora of unusual marks on Haley's body would
seem to be significant physical evidence; however, everyone agrees that
without a thorough examination of her environment and sleep patterns,
they mean little in the end.

     "Strange marks appearing overnight is just not that unusual, and
without observing Haley close up during the times these things occur,
you cannot draw any kind of valid conclusion about what's going on,"
says Harary.  "We would have to rule out all conventional explanations,
including, for example, the possibility that she could be doing these
things to herself in an altered, or even an ordinary, state of
consciousness."

     `Get Out the Ink Blots.' While Shafer stands by his evaluation of
Haley, psychologist Siegel insists Haley may test out as sane because
"there's an internal reality that everyone shares." Abduction imagery is
a manifestation of the limbic system, not outright insanity, Siegel
says.  "Haley is truly an abductee, but the aliens are not out there -
they're in her own brain.  The scary thing is, we all have the same
details in our nervous system; anybody can become an abductee."

Conclusion:
Despite the fact that some UFO researchers have called the Haley case
one of the most intriguing and apparently best-documented abductions
ever, without more data it's impossible to know what Haley has
experienced, and why.  There is no hard evidence and no conclusive
circumstantial evidence that proves abduction by extraterrestrial
biological entities.  Given the caveat that this investigation remains
incomplete, there is also no conclusive evidence that Haley has been
monitored or harassed by military operatives.

[END article]

From: [e-mail] (Dale Anderson)