WEBVTT - The Troika 0:00:02.279 --> 0:00:05.600 Strange Arrivals is a production of I Heart Radio and 0:00:05.680 --> 0:00:14.920 Grim and Mild from Aaron manky Well. Starting about in the 0:00:14.880 --> 0:00:19.600 the ninety one UM actually starting the ninety seven a century, 0:00:19.760 --> 0:00:25.079 we began here about the abduction the auction corona started 0:00:25.079 --> 0:00:29.560 out by slowly We're basic Arney and Betty Hill sixty 0:00:29.760 --> 0:00:33.560 one and then in Tonio b s Rows cases Brazilways 0:00:33.560 --> 0:00:36.000 having the seven weeks and there about that sis Well. 0:00:37.120 --> 0:00:39.720 And the interesting thing about the cases that we resually 0:00:39.760 --> 0:00:41.800 were where what was that? They were a very home 0:00:41.880 --> 0:00:45.480 party Cowey, They were rare, they were odd, they were strange. 0:00:46.120 --> 0:00:47.960 At the same time the people who were having the 0:00:48.080 --> 0:00:53.240 experiences seemed to be having We couldn't really tell whether 0:00:53.280 --> 0:00:55.600 there was any thing over What was it about Farney 0:00:55.680 --> 0:00:59.080 and Betty Hill, you know that caused and abductions? Who 0:00:59.120 --> 0:01:01.080 happened to them? Well, the way we looked at it 0:01:01.240 --> 0:01:04.360 now days was there was only one reason they were 0:01:04.319 --> 0:01:06.160 in the wrong place at the wrong him. I went 0:01:06.240 --> 0:01:09.200 else one of the reasons could they're possibly be? And 0:01:09.360 --> 0:01:14.360 time only that. But Barney and Betty he said things 0:01:14.520 --> 0:01:19.920 that let us two things. And the experiments model, as 0:01:19.959 --> 0:01:23.000 to say, and they had skins Treby tame the body 0:01:23.160 --> 0:01:26.240 there then made a sass amount of here. They asked 0:01:26.600 --> 0:01:29.720 Party why his steeds came out? Asked Betty why Party 0:01:29.800 --> 0:01:33.240 seeking out of hers, didn't they They put a merely 0:01:33.319 --> 0:01:38.520 into Betty's Mabel and said they were doing pregnancy test. Well, 0:01:38.600 --> 0:01:44.240 all of this was the model for more experiments audience. 0:01:45.240 --> 0:01:48.520 This was a phasic situation where you have a model, 0:01:48.800 --> 0:01:55.440 there's one. Yeah. The publication of John Fuller's A Journey 0:01:55.480 --> 0:02:00.000 Interrupted began a decades long series of ever more incredible 0:02:00.000 --> 0:02:04.640 old tales of alien abduction. Using the Hill story as 0:02:04.680 --> 0:02:09.240 a foundation, Each successive abduction account had to be more 0:02:09.360 --> 0:02:14.640 extraordinary than the last. Public interest in alien abduction reached 0:02:14.680 --> 0:02:18.200 its height in the nine nineties, partly because of the 0:02:18.320 --> 0:02:22.280 hit TV show The X Files, which had an ongoing 0:02:22.400 --> 0:02:27.840 abduction subplot. Another reason was the success of three men 0:02:28.040 --> 0:02:31.600 who pushed the alien abduction narrative to its limit in 0:02:31.720 --> 0:02:37.720 a number of best selling books I'm Toby Ball and 0:02:37.880 --> 0:02:56.560 This Is Strange Arrivals Episode nine, The Troika. In the 0:02:56.680 --> 0:03:00.320 twenty years following the Hill experience, there was a clear 0:03:00.480 --> 0:03:03.360 understanding of the type of situation in which a person 0:03:03.440 --> 0:03:07.519 could be abducted. They would be driving in lonely isolated 0:03:07.600 --> 0:03:11.760 places at night, a UFO would appear and the abduction 0:03:11.840 --> 0:03:16.679 would follow. But this conception changed and the study of 0:03:16.720 --> 0:03:24.440 abductions became something entirely different. UFO researcher Robert Schaeffer, starting 0:03:24.520 --> 0:03:27.639 with Bud Hopkins in the eighties, you didn't have to 0:03:27.800 --> 0:03:30.720 go anywhere to be abducted by aliens. Aliens would come 0:03:30.840 --> 0:03:33.320 right into your bedroom and grab you, drag you up 0:03:33.360 --> 0:03:36.040 to the saucer, and then bring you back whenever they 0:03:36.080 --> 0:03:38.800 were done with you. You didn't have to drive out 0:03:38.880 --> 0:03:40.880 somewhere late at night and see a lightning us at 0:03:40.920 --> 0:03:42.800 You're just sitting there, minding your own business, and then 0:03:42.800 --> 0:03:45.240 all of a sudden, the aliens come the Once you've 0:03:45.360 --> 0:03:48.120 accept that this could happen, you've opened the door to 0:03:48.200 --> 0:03:53.200 every kind of fantasy and imagination possible. Bud Hopkins was 0:03:53.280 --> 0:03:57.440 a well known abstract expressionist artist who became a leading 0:03:57.520 --> 0:04:02.080 researcher into the alien abduction phenomen man On he published 0:04:02.160 --> 0:04:06.240 his first book on the subject, Missing Time, a documented 0:04:06.280 --> 0:04:13.040 study of UFO abductions. Hopkins made the conceptual leap that 0:04:13.160 --> 0:04:18.520 abductions could happen any time, in anywhere. An associate professor 0:04:18.640 --> 0:04:23.240 of history at Temple University named David Jacobs seized upon 0:04:23.360 --> 0:04:27.000 this idea and began his own research. We heard him 0:04:27.080 --> 0:04:32.080 giving a lecture at the opening of this episode. David 0:04:32.160 --> 0:04:34.800 Jacobs got into the UFO business quite a bit earlier. 0:04:34.920 --> 0:04:38.159 He wrote The History of UFO Belief in the United 0:04:38.160 --> 0:04:41.120 States back in the seventies. He state at this, and 0:04:41.160 --> 0:04:44.600 then he too picked up the idea from Hopkins and 0:04:44.680 --> 0:04:48.320 whoever else that these types of bedroom abductions were taking place. 0:04:49.640 --> 0:04:55.839 After his nine book, The UFO Controversy in America, Jacobs 0:04:55.880 --> 0:05:01.480 didn't publish again for seventeen years. His next book, The Threat, 0:05:02.080 --> 0:05:07.560 Revealing the Secret Alien Agenda, was specifically about abductions and 0:05:07.720 --> 0:05:10.560 featured a foreword by the third major figure in this 0:05:10.839 --> 0:05:15.279 era of abduction research, one who brought with him impeccable 0:05:15.400 --> 0:05:21.160 academic credentials. Done back was a whole was very important guy, 0:05:21.279 --> 0:05:23.760 and he was not just a PhD. It was a 0:05:24.320 --> 0:05:28.480 professor of psychiatry at the Harvard Medical School. Mac was very, 0:05:28.720 --> 0:05:32.160 very talented, very prominent guy. But somehow he got bit 0:05:32.240 --> 0:05:35.200 by this book too and decided it was real. So 0:05:35.360 --> 0:05:39.599 these three guys pop against Jacobs and Mac sometimes referred 0:05:39.600 --> 0:05:42.680 to them, those Ditroitka. The Troika was a type of 0:05:42.760 --> 0:05:46.360 temporary government that occurred four times in the history of 0:05:46.440 --> 0:05:50.240 the Soviet Union, where three leaders sat atop the government 0:05:50.680 --> 0:05:55.279 without any of them able to exert power alone. These 0:05:55.320 --> 0:05:59.760 guys thought that they were very scientific, and I guess 0:05:59.800 --> 0:06:03.200 it's of credentials and stuff like that. They kind of work. 0:06:04.240 --> 0:06:10.000 In Hopkins published Intruders, which laid out the case that 0:06:10.240 --> 0:06:14.440 humans were being abducted and used by aliens for genetic research. 0:06:16.120 --> 0:06:21.440 In he met a Boston based documentary filmmaker named Carol 0:06:21.600 --> 0:06:28.880 Rainey in they were married. I'm Carol Rainey and I 0:06:29.040 --> 0:06:33.560 was married for ten years to Bud Hopkins, abstract expressionist 0:06:33.640 --> 0:06:39.479 painter and UFO researcher, and I came from a background 0:06:39.760 --> 0:06:45.560 uh spending twenty years making films for epidemiologists in the 0:06:45.760 --> 0:06:50.479 Boston area. I don't come from a science background originally, 0:06:51.160 --> 0:06:54.720 but in all of those years of working for epidemiologists 0:06:55.360 --> 0:07:00.160 and later in New York City with the major metal 0:07:00.240 --> 0:07:04.200 institutions like New York Presbyterian, I learned a lot about 0:07:04.279 --> 0:07:09.680 how scientists think about phenomena in the natural world and 0:07:10.120 --> 0:07:13.840 how they go about gaining real knowledge in the real 0:07:13.960 --> 0:07:19.080 world from working with scientists, Carol found a very different 0:07:19.120 --> 0:07:23.880 world surrounding Hopkins, who was doing UFO research but was 0:07:24.120 --> 0:07:28.440 by training an artist. I married an artist, as did 0:07:28.800 --> 0:07:32.800 his second wife, I'm sure, but by the time I 0:07:32.960 --> 0:07:36.200 met him, he had pretty much given up on being 0:07:36.320 --> 0:07:40.960 part of the art world in Manhattan, and almost his 0:07:41.240 --> 0:07:46.920 entire life was really taken up with being this leader 0:07:47.680 --> 0:07:51.960 in a movement called alien abduction. It was a very 0:07:52.040 --> 0:07:59.920 overwhelming lifestyle. It was UFOs seven. Carol moved from boss 0:08:00.160 --> 0:08:04.360 In down to New York In where Hopkins was the 0:08:04.520 --> 0:08:07.520 center of gravity for a group of people who identified 0:08:07.600 --> 0:08:13.520 themselves as abductees. So I got my own camera and 0:08:14.080 --> 0:08:18.440 started shooting yet one more documentary, but this one would 0:08:18.480 --> 0:08:22.800 be no strings attached, no federal funding, no state funding, 0:08:22.880 --> 0:08:26.960 no city funding. Funded out of my back pocket. That 0:08:27.640 --> 0:08:31.240 gave me a great deal of freedom. If Betty Hill 0:08:31.400 --> 0:08:35.800 had talked to Bud Hopkins, she would have found that 0:08:35.920 --> 0:08:39.679 the aliens that he believed were kidnapping and experimenting on 0:08:39.840 --> 0:08:43.040 people were far different from the leader with whom she 0:08:43.200 --> 0:08:47.959 carried on a pleasant and occasionally funny conversation. They didn't 0:08:48.000 --> 0:08:53.640 resemble Quasga and jew hop either, Bud's work expanded the 0:08:53.720 --> 0:08:58.360 original narrative, and he didn't stay relatively close to the 0:08:58.480 --> 0:09:04.079 pattern for the Hill case Betty and Barney Hill. But 0:09:04.360 --> 0:09:08.599 what his writing added to it was that nobody was 0:09:08.720 --> 0:09:13.800 safe anywhere, that aliens could enter your bedroom at night, 0:09:14.800 --> 0:09:19.120 coming straight through the walls, coming through the windows. I mean, 0:09:19.760 --> 0:09:23.839 his view of alien beings in the world was that 0:09:24.040 --> 0:09:30.040 they were godlike, really ordinary physics did not prohibit them 0:09:30.720 --> 0:09:34.120 from doing whatever they wanted to do to take advantage 0:09:34.240 --> 0:09:41.560 of people's helplessness. And the abductees were used in Budd's 0:09:41.640 --> 0:09:45.400 thoughts in the same way that Lee observed, you know, 0:09:45.559 --> 0:09:50.439 wolves in the wild, and we experimented on them to 0:09:50.640 --> 0:09:54.439 some degree from afar. And that's what he felt the 0:09:54.559 --> 0:09:58.680 aliens were doing to us. They might put tracking devices 0:09:58.800 --> 0:10:02.520 in us, what's called old an implant these days. You know, 0:10:02.640 --> 0:10:07.400 many of his people came up with those implants, partly 0:10:07.559 --> 0:10:13.319 to add credence to Bud's narrative, and because that was 0:10:13.440 --> 0:10:18.640 the story that was becoming increasingly popular in mainstream media 0:10:18.840 --> 0:10:22.480 during the nineteen eighties and nineties. Figure out what that 0:10:22.559 --> 0:10:25.160 little thing of race sums his nose as yet, No, 0:10:26.200 --> 0:10:28.599 and I'm not losing any sleep over it good. I 0:10:29.840 --> 0:10:32.560 bond was very believable. You know, one of the more 0:10:32.640 --> 0:10:38.319 intelligent people I've ever met, But with this caveat, not 0:10:38.520 --> 0:10:42.400 at all given to science or interest in science. He 0:10:42.520 --> 0:10:49.240 knew almost nothing about psychology or psychiatry or recovered memories. 0:10:50.040 --> 0:10:54.199 He didn't know except to mouth in a bit. He 0:10:54.240 --> 0:10:59.560 didn't know anything about scientific protocols, were the scientific method 0:11:00.240 --> 0:11:04.520 and how you use that to make sure that the 0:11:04.640 --> 0:11:08.480 information you believe you're gaining in the world, that that 0:11:08.720 --> 0:11:13.760 information is valid. As I became more and more part 0:11:13.960 --> 0:11:17.360 of the U of a world, I became less and 0:11:17.480 --> 0:11:22.720 less convinced that many of the people doing research, we're 0:11:22.800 --> 0:11:29.960 doing it with enough valid understanding of science and manipulation 0:11:30.880 --> 0:11:38.199 of testimony and leading witnesses. How did this gap in 0:11:38.320 --> 0:11:46.559 knowledge play out in their research? After the break, strange 0:11:46.640 --> 0:12:05.560 arrivals will return in a moment. Carol Rainey expresses concern 0:12:05.720 --> 0:12:09.800 that Bud Hopkins and David Jacob's lack knowledge that should 0:12:09.840 --> 0:12:14.599 have informed their work with hypnotically recovered memories. This is 0:12:14.800 --> 0:12:18.840 especially concerning because we know that hypnosis subjects have an 0:12:18.920 --> 0:12:24.480 increased vulnerability to suggestion. In Hopkins cases, the way in 0:12:24.559 --> 0:12:28.839 which quote unquote, memories were created and manipulated. Is easy 0:12:28.920 --> 0:12:33.280 to identify. Hopkins could be acting in good faith, but 0:12:33.440 --> 0:12:38.160 his subjects testimony was tainted. First of all, Peter Robbins 0:12:38.240 --> 0:12:42.199 would be there as his assistant and would read for 0:12:42.440 --> 0:12:46.600 the letters. Is how things came in originally, and Peter 0:12:46.760 --> 0:12:50.520 would read through them and he'd write abductee on the front, 0:12:51.040 --> 0:12:54.960 or he'd write probable abductee on the front, and then 0:12:55.320 --> 0:13:00.520 that person would be mailed a kit of information about 0:13:00.640 --> 0:13:04.800 the abduction phenomena and then told in the kit to 0:13:05.640 --> 0:13:10.840 avoid reading the literature in the field, so the new 0:13:11.360 --> 0:13:14.959 possible abductive would be sent as kit of material. And 0:13:15.040 --> 0:13:18.560 I think it varied sometimes, but it was information about, 0:13:18.880 --> 0:13:23.560 you know, the abduction phenomena. And also the people who 0:13:23.679 --> 0:13:27.520 were calling Bud knew enough about the field to call 0:13:27.880 --> 0:13:31.520 a top researcher in the field. They had also often 0:13:31.679 --> 0:13:36.679 read one, two or three of his books previously, and 0:13:37.280 --> 0:13:41.280 they had watched movies, they watched documentaries. He had been 0:13:41.360 --> 0:13:45.280 in I mean, he was appearing on the Phil Donahue's show, 0:13:45.480 --> 0:13:50.480 on the Oprah Winfrey Show, on Canadian talk shows. He 0:13:50.720 --> 0:13:54.200 was all over. So by the time they show up 0:13:54.280 --> 0:13:58.480 at hopkins house for a hypnosis session. They've already been 0:13:58.559 --> 0:14:03.400 exposed to his work on alien abductions. When people would 0:14:03.480 --> 0:14:07.800 first call and begin talking to him, he could go 0:14:08.000 --> 0:14:12.120 on easily for an hour with each person over the phone, 0:14:12.880 --> 0:14:15.920 and he would often tell them about the new cases 0:14:16.040 --> 0:14:19.600 that he was working on. The queue that sends to 0:14:19.720 --> 0:14:22.120 the person on the other end of the phone is 0:14:22.200 --> 0:14:26.240 that if you want the attention of his television personality, 0:14:27.040 --> 0:14:32.640 you might do well consciously or unconsciously to have your 0:14:32.680 --> 0:14:35.240 own memories that were similar to the ones he was 0:14:35.360 --> 0:14:41.040 interested in. And that is where the tailoring of tales began, 0:14:41.840 --> 0:14:46.320 long before he even met the people. These people would 0:14:46.400 --> 0:14:50.520 come to Bud in Carol's house to undergo regression hypnosis. 0:14:51.880 --> 0:14:55.440 Bud would sometimes talk to the visitor, telling him or 0:14:55.560 --> 0:14:58.840 her about some of his cases or things that he 0:14:58.960 --> 0:15:03.240 was interested in, and then Bud would put them under hypnosis. 0:15:04.040 --> 0:15:07.520 You don't have to lead anybody under hypnosis after that, 0:15:08.320 --> 0:15:13.680 they already know which way to go. And that happened often, 0:15:14.680 --> 0:15:19.280 and it's that pre hypnosis session. All those sessions, those 0:15:19.400 --> 0:15:23.840 contacts is what people on the outside never knew about. 0:15:24.960 --> 0:15:30.440 Here's Bud Hopkins conducting a hypnosis session with an alleged abductee. 0:15:31.440 --> 0:15:34.000 This is from a recording of a conference where he 0:15:34.080 --> 0:15:41.280 presented this tape as part of a lecture. Very see 0:15:41.360 --> 0:15:46.160 what's you can seeing? What you're feeling? Long time ago? 0:15:47.840 --> 0:16:00.280 Me table, father or something. It's around, it's around the world. 0:16:00.400 --> 0:16:09.560 Them standing beside me. Mh, I'm here talking to me. 0:16:09.720 --> 0:16:16.800 I don't I hear them. They're telling me, I'm all right, 0:16:18.920 --> 0:16:29.680 m you can't do it? Fine? They yeah, I want something. 0:16:30.440 --> 0:16:40.880 Mm hmmm. I don't know what you want. I've seen 0:16:40.960 --> 0:16:57.400 you before. Okay, all right, all right, just tell me 0:16:57.760 --> 0:17:01.640 very cool. What's happening, Kathy? You can do it? Finds 0:17:01.680 --> 0:17:04.880 a long time ago. We're just remembering this. You what's happening? 0:17:06.480 --> 0:17:24.080 It's this has happened to me before. Okay. H The 0:17:24.280 --> 0:17:38.479 table is to moving my legs. That's right, that's right. 0:17:38.640 --> 0:17:42.760 It's just the same. What's happened to your lig as 0:17:42.800 --> 0:17:51.680 you mentioned there arre youre apart. It's like having guyan man. 0:17:51.840 --> 0:18:00.800 It's okay, it's the same. I've had this before. Ye 0:18:01.480 --> 0:18:05.320 I'm Cathy. I'm going to touch your shoulders me. I's 0:18:05.320 --> 0:18:07.680 going to feel very calm, and when I count to three, 0:18:08.440 --> 0:18:12.080 you feel the warmth in my hand one, two, three, 0:18:12.320 --> 0:18:15.080 and now my hands, and you should live very safe, 0:18:15.640 --> 0:18:22.200 much better, much better. Jacobs also prepped his subjects, and 0:18:22.320 --> 0:18:26.040 his methods were often less subtle. Here he is giving 0:18:26.080 --> 0:18:30.359 a lecture talking about the consistency of stories he's heard 0:18:30.520 --> 0:18:34.920 during hypnotic regressions, but also letting slip a clue as 0:18:34.960 --> 0:18:38.560 to why these stories might be so similar. They may 0:18:38.640 --> 0:18:40.560 not know if they may be. It's not aware of 0:18:40.600 --> 0:18:43.760 it at all, But we pretty much know. We know 0:18:43.960 --> 0:18:46.560 the sequence of advances may happen the wround world. It 0:18:46.680 --> 0:18:48.840 almost doesn't matter. In other words, we know when they say, 0:18:48.880 --> 0:18:52.359 hey DC, we know the coming and they're not gonna 0:18:52.440 --> 0:18:55.960 like the you know, and I have to prepare them. 0:18:56.320 --> 0:19:04.960 And this uh about seven city of many compressions US 0:19:05.720 --> 0:19:12.720 and we see a certain routine here. Obviously this is 0:19:12.800 --> 0:19:16.080 a strange statement to be coming from a person supposedly 0:19:16.200 --> 0:19:21.120 engaged in research. Again, he could have the best of intentions, 0:19:22.040 --> 0:19:25.840 but as we have seen in earlier episodes, hypnosis subject 0:19:26.080 --> 0:19:30.560 is particularly vulnerable to suggestion, and of course the way 0:19:30.560 --> 0:19:33.280 they lead to witnesses is just pathetic. I think Jacobs 0:19:33.480 --> 0:19:36.320 wanted the worst. People have pointed this out from going 0:19:36.480 --> 0:19:39.760 over these transcripts and saying, you know, basically he's telling 0:19:39.880 --> 0:19:43.720 her what to what he wants to hear. He's you know, 0:19:44.680 --> 0:19:48.239 he's telegraphing. It rouses there and she just tells him 0:19:48.280 --> 0:19:53.040 what he wants to hear. In Carol Rainey wrote a 0:19:53.160 --> 0:19:58.480 lengthy article titled Priests of High Strangeness to expose what 0:19:58.640 --> 0:20:04.359 she felt like, we're unsigh scientific and unethical practices among Hopkins, Jacobs, 0:20:04.600 --> 0:20:10.840 and mac When I wrote the article, many of the 0:20:10.920 --> 0:20:16.520 old time UFO research was contacted me privately to thank 0:20:16.680 --> 0:20:20.119 me for putting that out there. He Stan was one 0:20:20.200 --> 0:20:23.640 of them, and they said, we knew there was something 0:20:23.880 --> 0:20:29.200 off in this research that but and Jacobs were putting out, 0:20:29.960 --> 0:20:33.200 but we didn't know what it was. We only knew 0:20:33.280 --> 0:20:38.120 what he told us about how he researched cases. When 0:20:38.200 --> 0:20:42.840 she refers to stand, she's talking about Stanton Friedman, who 0:20:42.920 --> 0:20:46.760 we heard from earlier in this series, mainly about Marjorie 0:20:46.840 --> 0:20:50.840 Fish and the Star Map. I didn't bring up Hopkins 0:20:50.920 --> 0:20:53.800 in our interview, but when he was talking about the 0:20:53.880 --> 0:20:58.960 qualifications of Dr. Benjamin Simon as a hypnotist, Friedman used 0:20:59.000 --> 0:21:02.000 Hopkins as an example of someone who did not meet 0:21:02.080 --> 0:21:06.640 the same standard. We're not talking about some amateur and look. 0:21:06.720 --> 0:21:08.919 I like Bud Hopkins, so I knew him. I've been 0:21:09.000 --> 0:21:12.480 in his home. Great guy, But Budd was an artist, 0:21:13.240 --> 0:21:18.240 not a professional psychiatrist or psychologist or justst with training 0:21:18.320 --> 0:21:21.760 and dealing with traumatic experiences, you get a fine job. 0:21:21.800 --> 0:21:26.160 I'm not not conuted, but on any comparison of skills 0:21:26.240 --> 0:21:29.680 brought to the problem, there's no question Dr Simon rules 0:21:29.720 --> 0:21:33.960 the roost. The other method that Hopkins used with the 0:21:34.080 --> 0:21:40.119 supposed abductees with support group meetings. Hopkins would host meetings 0:21:40.320 --> 0:21:43.520 with a number of abductees and conduct a kind of 0:21:43.640 --> 0:21:48.640 group therapy session revolving around their abduction experiences, but other 0:21:48.720 --> 0:21:53.240 issues from their past as well. And what I began 0:21:53.320 --> 0:21:59.000 to understand from attending those meetings is that if you 0:21:59.080 --> 0:22:03.480 were knew to the field, you could pick up everything 0:22:03.760 --> 0:22:07.800 you needed to know about being a standard abductee just 0:22:08.000 --> 0:22:11.200 by going to those support meetings and by talking with 0:22:11.359 --> 0:22:16.800 other abductees. They would lay out certain patterns and other 0:22:16.880 --> 0:22:19.879 people would second that and they would say, oh, that 0:22:20.000 --> 0:22:24.120 happened to me too, and Bud would guide the discussions. 0:22:25.080 --> 0:22:29.000 I did call him on this in terms of support 0:22:29.080 --> 0:22:32.440 group meanings. I said, why don't you use an a 0:22:32.680 --> 0:22:37.359 a kind of model where there is no leader, where 0:22:37.960 --> 0:22:44.880 the witnesses, the abductees themselves could guide the discussion instead 0:22:44.960 --> 0:22:48.320 of you leading it. And my objection to his leading 0:22:48.760 --> 0:22:52.920 the discussion was that he would tell people about brand 0:22:52.960 --> 0:22:56.800 new cases and things he was most interested in pursuing. 0:22:58.320 --> 0:23:03.840 Carol describes the participant as bright, sensitive, and artistically driven, 0:23:04.760 --> 0:23:08.119 while there were occasionally more eccentric people on the margins. 0:23:09.119 --> 0:23:11.720 She says of the main group that she did not 0:23:11.960 --> 0:23:16.960 think they were crazy, not once. They were people to 0:23:17.119 --> 0:23:22.440 whom something was happening, and that fascinated me, as still 0:23:22.480 --> 0:23:28.520 should fascinate researchers if it's you know, psychosmatic, if the 0:23:28.680 --> 0:23:34.840 narrative is being developed entirely inside individuals. And then they 0:23:34.960 --> 0:23:39.600 meet in some sort of a place like a support group, 0:23:39.920 --> 0:23:43.960 and they began to share things they've picked up from 0:23:44.240 --> 0:23:51.320 television series which were everywhere, or from movies, from reading 0:23:51.440 --> 0:23:54.560 buds books. They came with a hell of a lot 0:23:54.640 --> 0:23:58.680 of knowledge about what other people were saying about their experiences. 0:23:59.520 --> 0:24:04.280 They were not blank slates. They came in knowing the material. 0:24:05.440 --> 0:24:10.800 And when you're working with that psychologically, research shows there's 0:24:10.800 --> 0:24:16.920 a great deal of spread of terms and means and 0:24:17.480 --> 0:24:23.359 thoughts and patterns between the researcher himself and the people 0:24:23.440 --> 0:24:27.360 who have come to him for help, and between each other. 0:24:28.400 --> 0:24:32.840 They would pass ideas back and forth. So to me, 0:24:33.040 --> 0:24:36.960 it was fairly easy to see how without really careful, 0:24:37.160 --> 0:24:43.160 careful protocols, and without being peer reviewed, such a researcher 0:24:43.800 --> 0:24:50.159 intentionally or totally unintentionally could be creating the story of 0:24:50.280 --> 0:24:54.440 what had happened to all of these people. University of California, 0:24:54.520 --> 0:24:59.080 Irvine professor Elizabeth Loftis. We heard from her earlier in 0:24:59.119 --> 0:25:04.080 the series. One of my friend colleagues once said, this 0:25:04.280 --> 0:25:08.480 group therapy it's a little like poker, where you say, 0:25:09.040 --> 0:25:11.400 I'm going to match your memory and raise you one 0:25:11.520 --> 0:25:16.800 with my even more lurid and bizarre and upsetting memory. 0:25:17.440 --> 0:25:21.320 And that's a way in which this group therapy situation 0:25:22.040 --> 0:25:26.080 helps to create an environment where people are trying to 0:25:26.160 --> 0:25:30.959 come up with ever more interesting and exotic and dramatic 0:25:31.880 --> 0:25:38.040 stories because that's what will get attention. And in this case, 0:25:38.560 --> 0:25:41.760 what would get Hopkins attention would be stories that would 0:25:41.800 --> 0:25:48.360 indicate abduction. What Bud called evidence would be people sending 0:25:48.520 --> 0:25:53.960 him snapshots of mark on their body, whether it was 0:25:54.000 --> 0:25:58.760 a scar or bruise or whatever. Here's Hopkins from the 0:25:58.840 --> 0:26:02.639 same lecture as before, or this time showing images of 0:26:02.720 --> 0:26:06.920 these physical marks. Now very quickly some of the scars. 0:26:07.359 --> 0:26:10.000 These are very characteristic. And this is the scoop mark 0:26:10.160 --> 0:26:12.440 rather than the straight line cut. This is what we 0:26:12.560 --> 0:26:14.880 have on the front of Cathy Davis leg I'll show 0:26:14.880 --> 0:26:17.320 you might need a tiny bit of focus on this. 0:26:18.440 --> 0:26:22.640 Now this uh looks as if the tiny little scoop 0:26:22.960 --> 0:26:26.680 element came in there and took took away flesh. We 0:26:26.760 --> 0:26:28.880 don't know what this is for, except that obviously would 0:26:28.880 --> 0:26:30.520 give you a good chance of knowing a lot about 0:26:30.560 --> 0:26:36.840 that individual's makeup if you had the question the mark is. 0:26:37.320 --> 0:26:40.000 It's hard to say, and from memory, I would say 0:26:40.160 --> 0:26:43.800 it's probably about three eighths of an inch law Carol 0:26:43.960 --> 0:26:47.159 and John mac realized that as much as they wanted 0:26:47.240 --> 0:26:51.640 to discover physical evidence of these abductions, these photos fell 0:26:51.760 --> 0:26:56.760 short of that mark. John knew that those would not 0:26:57.000 --> 0:27:01.200 be taken well as evidence. You know, it's not something 0:27:01.280 --> 0:27:05.200 you gather first person. There's no guard on the chain 0:27:05.320 --> 0:27:09.560 of custody, none of that. We often talk about the 0:27:09.680 --> 0:27:13.879 echo chamber in the context of politics, where if everyone 0:27:14.000 --> 0:27:18.320 you here expresses the same opinions, you begin to uncritically 0:27:18.400 --> 0:27:23.320 accept them. But it happens outside politics as well, and 0:27:23.480 --> 0:27:27.520 something like this occurred in the small, intense abduction community, 0:27:28.359 --> 0:27:33.240 where the incredible might barely provoke a raised eyebrow. At 0:27:33.359 --> 0:27:37.600 some point. I remember thinking when I was shooting with Bud. 0:27:37.720 --> 0:27:40.760 We were on Cape Cod and a man I didn't 0:27:40.800 --> 0:27:43.840 know had called in and was talking to him, And 0:27:44.040 --> 0:27:47.680 I walked through the room and I heard Bud say, 0:27:48.200 --> 0:27:51.280 did they come through the wall this time? Too? And 0:27:51.400 --> 0:27:53.720 when I thought about it a few minutes later, I thought, 0:27:54.280 --> 0:27:57.440 I didn't even break a sweat. I didn't even jump 0:27:57.720 --> 0:28:00.800 when he said that. I just up did That's how 0:28:00.880 --> 0:28:05.399 it happens. And when that happens to you, you know 0:28:05.720 --> 0:28:10.800 you need to put your guard up even more. This 0:28:10.960 --> 0:28:13.879 effect could be especially strong on the people at the 0:28:14.000 --> 0:28:18.480 center of the work, Hopkins and Jacobs, whose observations and 0:28:18.640 --> 0:28:23.119 theories were mutually confirming that Jacobs would rent a house 0:28:23.200 --> 0:28:26.680 on the Keep, a few houses down from our house 0:28:27.200 --> 0:28:31.680 in wealth Lee, and over dinner one night, Dave Jacobs 0:28:31.720 --> 0:28:35.080 said to Bud, Bud, you and I are the only 0:28:35.280 --> 0:28:39.480 two people on the planet who really know what's going 0:28:39.600 --> 0:28:43.720 on with the alias. I kind of did a double take, 0:28:43.800 --> 0:28:47.080 and I said, the only two people on the planet, 0:28:47.760 --> 0:28:50.200 Isn't it kind of a dangerous way to think about 0:28:50.400 --> 0:28:55.760 something that you don't really know for sure? These dangers 0:28:55.840 --> 0:29:00.920 became realized as Hopkins, Jacobs, and Max rees Church led 0:29:00.960 --> 0:29:06.600 to theories of escalating strangeness. They seem to need genetic 0:29:06.720 --> 0:29:11.840 material that they're taking sperm over, and we think we 0:29:11.960 --> 0:29:15.360 are seeing this twenty four hours a day next to 0:29:15.480 --> 0:29:18.200 seven days a week. But we see them as well 0:29:18.360 --> 0:29:24.000 with twenty people, fifty people, hundreds of people, five hundred 0:29:24.240 --> 0:29:27.520 tables in a room with people on them, you assembly 0:29:27.640 --> 0:29:32.480 line fashion. We know they're doing these reproductive experiments in 0:29:32.520 --> 0:29:36.600 attempt at hybridization and so forth. Then Hopkins found the 0:29:36.680 --> 0:29:41.840 perfect case that ultimately proved the step too far next 0:29:41.920 --> 0:29:54.120 time on Strange Arrivals. Strange Arrivals is a production of 0:29:54.200 --> 0:29:56.959 I Heart Radio and Grim and Mild from Aaron Manky. 0:29:57.800 --> 0:30:00.480 This episode was written and hosted by Toby Bowl and 0:30:00.560 --> 0:30:04.400 produced by Miranda Hawkins and Josh Thane, with executive producers 0:30:04.480 --> 0:30:08.440 Alex Williams, Matt Frederick and Aaron Manky. Betty Hill was 0:30:08.520 --> 0:30:13.680 portrayed by Gina Rickike Barney Hill was portrayed by Jason Williams. 0:30:14.680 --> 0:30:17.880 Special thanks to the Miln's Special Collections and Archives at 0:30:17.920 --> 0:30:21.800 the University of New Hampshire, John Horrigan, w y C 0:30:22.040 --> 0:30:26.680 h A M. In Norwich, Connecticut, John White, and David O'Leary, 0:30:27.040 --> 0:30:31.160 the executive producer of the History Channel's dramatic series Project 0:30:31.240 --> 0:30:34.080 blue Book. Learn more about the show over at Grimm 0:30:34.120 --> 0:30:37.640 and mile dot com. For more podcasts from iHeart Radio, 0:30:37.760 --> 0:30:41.320 visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you 0:30:41.400 --> 0:30:42.720 listen to your favorite shows.