Speaker 1: Strangeer Rivals is a production of iHeart Radio and Grin
Speaker 1: and Mild from Aaron Mackey.
Speaker 2: For the best experience, listen with headphones.
Speaker 3: This episode contains discussions of sexual violence. Listener discretion is advised.
Speaker 4: Because you have to.
Speaker 5: Remember, they've had a lot of time and energy invested
Speaker 5: in you, and and and I can't just you.
Speaker 6: Know, be incapacitated that what's the point. There's no point
Speaker 6: in that. It's pointless.
Speaker 4: I mean they want your help. Yeah, if they're ready
Speaker 4: you so to Speaker.
Speaker 6: Of the Year, I mean, and then they can't have
Speaker 6: your help at all.
Speaker 4: As a year rid of me. Well I don't they
Speaker 4: You still have your help, so.
Speaker 5: Certainly you It doesn't make any sense whatsoever. See what
Speaker 5: I mean, as you said before, and as I have said,
Speaker 5: and as everybody says, it does seem like empty.
Speaker 6: Friends, because I mean you're.
Speaker 4: You're really a person of value to them, you know.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 4: But at the same time they do drag you around.
Speaker 6: And sexual assault and all the rest of that kind
Speaker 6: of stuff.
Speaker 4: So there is there is a lot of physical intimidation.
Speaker 6: I think, get you didn't come time.
Speaker 3: I'm Toby Bald and this is strange Arrivals, Episode six,
Speaker 3: The Case of Emma.
Speaker 1: Woods Well, I use a pseudonym Emma Woods, and I
Speaker 1: was a research subject of David Jacobs, who is a
Speaker 1: well known and in induction researcher, and he was an
Speaker 1: associate professor of Temple University at the time that I
Speaker 1: was his research subject. I had many hypno secessions with
Speaker 1: him over about two years, and then I became quite
Speaker 1: concerned about what was happening, and I then ended my
Speaker 1: association with him. And then a few years later I
Speaker 1: made it known in the UFO field quite widely, became
Speaker 1: quite a controversy in the UFO field. And yes, that's
Speaker 1: pretty much how I came to be known in the
Speaker 1: UFO field, through the controversy over what happened when I
Speaker 1: was a research subject of David Jacobs.
Speaker 3: In the last couple of episodes, we've heard the name
Speaker 3: David Jacobs a few times. The next three episodes will
Speaker 3: focus on his work, particularly with Emma Woods. Jacobs, Bud Hopkins,
Speaker 3: and John Mack were the most important self styled alien
Speaker 3: abduction researchers in the eighties and nineties and into the
Speaker 3: early two thousands. The height of public interests in the phenomenon.
Speaker 3: As we have seen previously, Mac's particular theory about the
Speaker 3: abductions was that they were carried out by beings interacting
Speaker 3: with humans to try to save the Earth's future and
Speaker 3: promote a spiritual awakening. Hopkins and Jacobs agreed with Mac
Speaker 3: on the fact that abductions were occurring, but not necessarily
Speaker 3: the nature of the abductors and certainly not their intentions.
Speaker 7: Will never know what doctor Mack would have come to
Speaker 7: have thought at this point in time. I like to
Speaker 7: think that maybe he was a bit credulous. Hoping to
Speaker 7: find something important in an existential way is what may
Speaker 7: have led him off of the less ill in foreign path,
Speaker 7: But I don't know. He died in two thousand and four,
Speaker 7: so we don't know what he would have thought about
Speaker 7: what the genre came to be today. I'm Jack Brewer.
Speaker 7: I write the UFO Trail blog. It's dedicated to posting
Speaker 7: credible info on incredible topics, and I have written two
Speaker 7: self published books. The first was The Graves Have Been
Speaker 7: Framed Exploitation in the UFO Community, and my more recent
Speaker 7: book is Wayward Son's Nightcap.
Speaker 6: In the ic.
Speaker 7: Bud Hopkins maintained until his death in twenty eleven that
Speaker 7: there was a alien nuts and bolts presence that was
Speaker 7: kidnapping human beings, en mass millions of people, that this
Speaker 7: was happening too, and David Jacobs he went in this
Speaker 7: vein as well, and Mac was kind of a space brothers,
Speaker 7: this is a good thing evolution perspective. Bud Hopkins was
Speaker 7: a bit more, I don't know, this doesn't look good.
Speaker 7: People are horrified, and that seemed to grab some attention,
Speaker 7: and then David Jacobs was full on the threat. Literally,
Speaker 7: this is raping and pillaging, sexual molestation. The intent of
Speaker 7: the aliens is to hybridize the human race. The math
Speaker 7: didn't even add up. It was completely mad scientists territory.
Speaker 3: Like Mac and Hopkins, Jacobs relied on hypnotic regression sessions
Speaker 3: with people who had self identified as believing they might
Speaker 3: have had one or more, sometimes many more, alien abduction experiences.
Speaker 3: One of the three were actually trained hypnosis experts.
Speaker 7: I also came to feel that the lack of willingness
Speaker 7: to take any hypnosis training was a means to deflect
Speaker 7: from any potential lawsuits or recourse on behalf of what
Speaker 7: really amounted to research subjects or potential subjects of paperback books.
Speaker 7: They didn't want to be part of any type of
Speaker 7: board certified organization, and that whatever was going on was
Speaker 7: just casually between consenting adults.
Speaker 3: Jacobs and Hopkins both were very concerned that their work
Speaker 3: had the veneer of legitimate science. There is an irony
Speaker 3: here because the one scientist in their group, mac rejected
Speaker 3: Western science as being inadequate to study the phenomenon. Hopkins
Speaker 3: and Jacobs, however, wanted their work to be considered scientifically sound.
Speaker 3: But this had problems which they probably understood because they
Speaker 3: also put themselves forward as counselors to the people who
Speaker 3: they were hypnotizing, providing services that the medical profession, because
Speaker 3: it did not recognize alien abduction.
Speaker 6: Would not.
Speaker 7: Hopkins and Jacob's and those who followed in their footsteps
Speaker 7: really blurred the lines of what the purpose of the
Speaker 7: relationship was. Sometimes they would even refer to the subjects
Speaker 7: of their books as patients or clients, as if it
Speaker 7: was some type of therapeutic relationship. In my opinion, from
Speaker 7: looking closely at this, that served as an advantageous means
Speaker 7: to deflect criticism that if they got called out for
Speaker 7: a lack of scientific objectivity, which they claimed to be
Speaker 7: undertaking scientific study and were presented under the move on
Speaker 7: umbrella often and David Jacobs actually even on his website
Speaker 7: and often would claim to be observing and working under
Speaker 7: scientific principles, which again by definition, simply is not true.
Speaker 7: Blurring the lines of the relationship served as a means
Speaker 7: to deflect criticism, and if they were called out about
Speaker 7: a lack of scientific objectivity, they could claim to just
Speaker 7: be providing emotional support. If it was pointed out they
Speaker 7: had ZILT training and providing emotional support and a professional capacity,
Speaker 7: they could say that they were conducting an investigation about
Speaker 7: the most important story in the history of mankind, that
Speaker 7: they were the only people willing to look get and
Speaker 7: couldn't be ignored.
Speaker 3: Which brings us back to Emma Woods.
Speaker 1: I've had what I see as anomalous experiences. I've had
Speaker 1: them all my life, but I didn't connect them to
Speaker 1: uphology or the air in abduction phenomenon. I just didn't
Speaker 1: know what they were. In my sort of late thirties,
Speaker 1: I read a magazine article listing signs that you're an
Speaker 1: alien abductee type of thing, and I was really surprised
Speaker 1: because a lot of those were things that I had had.
Speaker 1: I was seeing a therapist about life issues, and I
Speaker 1: had talked to him about some of my experiences and
Speaker 1: he took a very neutral view on it. And his
Speaker 1: view was basically that we don't know everything about reality,
Speaker 1: and you know, it's fine to explore it, but just
Speaker 1: keep an open mind. And that's kind of how I
Speaker 1: naturally do things anyway, So that worked really well for me.
Speaker 3: Emma told her therapist about the magazine Art article and
Speaker 3: how it seemed to relate to her life. Her therapist,
Speaker 3: as you might expect, found this to be outside the
Speaker 3: normal scope of his work. He consulted with colleagues, but
Speaker 3: that went nowhere, so he looked for assistants elsewhere. This
Speaker 3: is Jeremy Vanny, who is largely responsible for breaking the
Speaker 3: Emma Wood story along with his co host Jeff Ritzman
Speaker 3: on the podcast Peratopia and in an article in UFO magazine.
Speaker 8: Here's David Jacobs, at the time working for Temple University.
Speaker 8: On his website, claims to be giving speeches in front
Speaker 8: of universities, specifically psych departments. Claims to be able to
Speaker 8: train you to hypnotize and give this pseudotherapy to abductees.
Speaker 8: All of that stuff looks like it's got the stink
Speaker 8: of official approval on it, and so he contacted David
Speaker 8: Jacobs on her behalf.
Speaker 3: Jacobs sent Emma's therapist a packet of information along with
Speaker 3: his contact information, saying that Emma could get in touch
Speaker 3: with him if she wanted. Emma continued working with her therapist,
Speaker 3: who suggested that she write a history of her anomalist
Speaker 3: experiences and start keeping a record of them when they happened.
Speaker 1: So I started doing that and I shared that with him,
Speaker 1: and then he became quite interested in that. He still
Speaker 1: was very much like, we don't know what this is.
Speaker 1: We've got to keep an open mind, but stay neutral,
Speaker 1: because he basically didn't want to accept any explanation without
Speaker 1: solidly knowing what it was. And I was absolutely fine
Speaker 1: with that, because that's how I was also looking at it.
Speaker 3: As she continued with this work, she began to conclude
Speaker 3: that she had experienced cases of alien abduction throughout her life.
Speaker 1: It was quite distressing to kind of realize that, oh
Speaker 1: that actually I might be, you know, one of those people.
Speaker 1: And I had to sort of look at my own
Speaker 1: stigma and get past that in order to sort of
Speaker 1: approach the UFO, and I think that's partly why I
Speaker 1: had a bit of a crisis around it, and I
Speaker 1: had to sort of come to terms with that.
Speaker 3: During this period, she was in contact with David Jacobs,
Speaker 3: though infrequently, and he was not yet doing hypnosis sessions
Speaker 3: with her.
Speaker 1: I was just in communication with David Jacobs for a
Speaker 1: couple of years, just sort of infrequent emails, some phone calls,
Speaker 1: and then he had a lot of interest in the
Speaker 1: record of my experiences that I was making, so I
Speaker 1: sent him a small sample of it and he asked
Speaker 1: me to send him everything that I had. And then
Speaker 1: in two thousand and four, I did a very detailed
Speaker 1: one year record of my experiences and Jacobs helped me
Speaker 1: set that up. And this is before I was having hypnosis.
Speaker 1: He was just sort of talking to me in assisting me,
Speaker 1: and he gave me ideas of things to record, like
Speaker 1: I recorded all my dreams for a year. He suggested
Speaker 1: I take pregnancy tists once a month, and he sent
Speaker 1: lead tests from the US to do that, and I
Speaker 1: just did this one year record and he was very
Speaker 1: interested in that.
Speaker 3: This was two thousand and four, starting in January. By December.
Speaker 3: Jacobs was intrigued enough that he suggested to Emma that
Speaker 3: he start hypnotizing her, and then the real problems began.
Speaker 3: After the break, strange arrivals will return in a moment.
Speaker 3: After the nineteen ninety two Alien Abduction conference at MIT,
Speaker 3: a small roundtable was put together to debrief. The group
Speaker 3: included both Bud Hopkins and David Jacobs. Among the things
Speaker 3: discussed was the tendency of some researchers to his gribe
Speaker 3: intent to the alien abductors. Hopkins introduced the topic.
Speaker 9: One of the aspects of the conference, which suggested a
Speaker 9: bit of a problem to me is there seems to
Speaker 9: be a tendency from time to time to slip into
Speaker 9: discussions of the nature of the alienste whatever they may be,
Speaker 9: as to whether they're helping us, hurting us good guys
Speaker 9: versus versus.
Speaker 6: To get people.
Speaker 9: I think, away from those judgments.
Speaker 10: What happens when it's the experiencers who make that judgment
Speaker 10: and we see that happening.
Speaker 6: I think that I think that one of.
Speaker 9: The problems is that the investigator and or a therapist
Speaker 9: involved can have an undue influence in that area.
Speaker 3: Later in the discussion, Jacobs said.
Speaker 10: This, The danger is having the therapist or the investigator
Speaker 10: have a structure of his or her own that they
Speaker 10: overly on the experience and sort of steer the abductee
Speaker 10: into that structure, and that has a totally different agenda,
Speaker 10: and that can be quite quite dangerous.
Speaker 3: So it is a little surprising that before he begins
Speaker 3: his hypnosis sessions with Emma Woods, he asks her to
Speaker 3: read his books.
Speaker 1: I read his book Secret Life of the Threat, and
Speaker 1: then just before I had the hypnosis, he told me
Speaker 1: to read his books again, so I read them again,
Speaker 1: and then all the way in our communication, he was
Speaker 1: very clear that it was alien and so on, and
Speaker 1: I didn't mind that because I've never minded people having
Speaker 1: their own opinions. I still had an agnostic view of it.
Speaker 3: Even before her first hypnosis session, Emma was versed in
Speaker 3: Jacob's analysis of the alien abduction.
Speaker 1: Phenomenon up until the hypnosis. I still have my own view,
Speaker 1: but I did understand Jacobs's view, and I'd read his books,
Speaker 1: and I knew that's how I seal it.
Speaker 3: For season one of Strange Rivals, I interviewed Carol Rainey,
Speaker 3: who was Bud Hopkins research partner and was married to
Speaker 3: Hopkins for a decade. In our interview, she talked about
Speaker 3: how people who believe they were experiencers were influenced by
Speaker 3: the researcher even before their first hypnosis session. While she's
Speaker 3: talking specifically about Hopkins here, you will see that this
Speaker 3: dynamic applies to Jacob's as well.
Speaker 11: So the new possible abductee would be sent as kit
Speaker 11: of material, and I think it varies sometimes, but it
Speaker 11: was information about the abduction phenomenon. They had also often
Speaker 11: read one, two, or three of his books previously, so
Speaker 11: when people would first call and begin talking to him,
Speaker 11: he could go on easily for an hour with each
Speaker 11: person over the phone, and he would often tell them
Speaker 11: about the new cases that he was working on. And
Speaker 11: the cue that sends to the person on the other
Speaker 11: end of the phone is that if you want the
Speaker 11: attention of his television personality in Bud Hopkins, you might
Speaker 11: do well consciously or unconsciously to have your own memories
Speaker 11: that were similar to the ones he was interested in.
Speaker 11: And that is where the tailoring of tales began, long
Speaker 11: before he even met the people. You don't have to
Speaker 11: lead anybody under hypnosis after that, they already know which
Speaker 11: way to go, and that happened often.
Speaker 3: Emma's hypnosis sessions with Jacob's began in December two thousand
Speaker 3: and four because she lived in New Zealand and he
Speaker 3: taught at Temple, which is in Philadelphia. These sessions were
Speaker 3: conducted over the telephone.
Speaker 1: Hey said that it would be fine to over the phone.
Speaker 1: I had had no idea that you could do hypnosis
Speaker 1: over the phone. And basically I was just in my apartment.
Speaker 1: I was on my bed, relaxed. I had the phone
Speaker 1: next to the bed. I used to lie down on
Speaker 1: the bed because he does a relaxation exercise, which is
Speaker 1: easier to do because your body gets really heavy and
Speaker 1: so on so forth. And then I just had the
Speaker 1: phone and he would just talk to me on the
Speaker 1: phone and he would do the induction. And I discovered
Speaker 1: that I'm very, very hypnotizable, so it was very easy
Speaker 1: for me to go into that state. He had told
Speaker 1: me that it would just be a relaxed state, that
Speaker 1: it was like a relaxation exercise. But when he did it,
Speaker 1: I realized I went far deeper and it was quite
Speaker 1: a different state. And I was aware of that the
Speaker 1: first time that he did it.
Speaker 3: You might think that conducting hypnosis over the phone is unusual,
Speaker 3: and you'd be right. In fact, it is far from
Speaker 3: ethical practice.
Speaker 12: You're taking them me, you're inducting them, and then you're
Speaker 12: bringing them out of it. But to do something like
Speaker 12: that over the telephone is just completely unprofessional. I'm doctor
Speaker 12: Karen Stallsner, and I'm a linguist.
Speaker 13: I'm an author, an academic researcher, and a host of
Speaker 13: the Monster Talk podcast. Some people think with hypnosis that
Speaker 13: it's a kind of a truth serum and that it's
Speaker 13: going to be this window into a person's past, but
Speaker 13: it just doesn't function like that. If the memories aren't there,
Speaker 13: the person is just going to resort to their imagination.
Speaker 13: But certainly doing that kind of thing over the telephone
Speaker 13: is just not standard practice. And the fact that he
Speaker 13: had her undergo hours of this hypnosis as well, you'd
Speaker 13: be very exhausted by the end of that, and I
Speaker 13: just don't think you could possibly get any truth out
Speaker 13: of a situation like that.
Speaker 3: David Jacobs recorded these telephone hypnosis sessions.
Speaker 1: He recorded them and then he would make a copy
Speaker 1: of the tapes, and then he'd nail me the tapes,
Speaker 1: and then later he also gave me digital copies of
Speaker 1: the hypnosis sessions. I was researching my own experiences, and
Speaker 1: I told him that I also wanted copies of the
Speaker 1: hypnosis sessions because I thought that was going to help
Speaker 1: me to understand what was going on with my experiences.
Speaker 3: And it was through listening to these tapes that Emma
Speaker 3: eventually understood the nature of her hypnosis sessions with Jacobs.
Speaker 3: But we're getting ahead of ourselves. Emma generously allowed me
Speaker 3: to use parts of her tape hypnosis sessions in this
Speaker 3: podcast to show what happened. This is how her sessions
Speaker 3: with him. Worked.
Speaker 1: He asked me to send him details of some events
Speaker 1: that he could do hypnosis on, and I would stand
Speaker 1: him details of three or four events, or sometimes a
Speaker 1: dream or something like that, and then he would choose
Speaker 1: which one of those he wanted to work with. We'd
Speaker 1: kind of talk about it together, but he basically made
Speaker 1: the decision, and then he would do the hypnotic induction,
Speaker 1: and then he would start talking about the event, and
Speaker 1: I would start to go back and remember it, and
Speaker 1: this would be a real event or a real dream,
Speaker 1: but then the hypnosis would start to weave the story
Speaker 1: into that real event or dream, and then at the
Speaker 1: end as we came out and he'd ask me again
Speaker 1: about the tail end of the real event. So I
Speaker 1: think that's partly why it felt incredibly real, is it
Speaker 1: was woven into an actual, real event or a real
Speaker 1: dream and it became indistinguishable. So it felt really, really real.
Speaker 3: And this story that he wove into her hypnosis sessions, well,
Speaker 3: it was in keeping with his theories about the methods
Speaker 3: and purpose of alien abductions. This was the subject of
Speaker 3: his nineteen ninety eight book The Threat, The Secret Agenda,
Speaker 3: What the aliens really want and how they plan to
Speaker 3: get it. Here he gives a quick summary of his thoughts,
Speaker 3: read by an actor.
Speaker 2: We now know that the abduction phenomenon as a whole
Speaker 2: is not for the purpose of research. The evidence suggests
Speaker 2: that all the alien procedures serve a reproductive agenda, and
Speaker 2: at the heart of the reproductive agenda is the breeding program,
Speaker 2: in which the aliens collect human sperm and eggs, incubate
Speaker 2: fetuses and human hosts to produce human alien hybrids, and
Speaker 2: cause humans to mentally and physically interact with these hybrids
Speaker 2: for the purposes of their development.
Speaker 3: And why are they doing this well. The book is
Speaker 3: called The Threat. Jacob's vision is a long ways from
Speaker 3: John Max's theories of spiritual awakening.
Speaker 2: All the evidence seems to suggest that the integration into
Speaker 2: human society is the alien's ultimate goal, and all their
Speaker 2: efforts and activities appear to be geared toward complete control
Speaker 2: of humans on Earth.
Speaker 3: This is the story that Jacob's wove into the hypnosis
Speaker 3: sessions with Emma. It is a harrowing story of sexual violence, threats,
Speaker 3: and fear.
Speaker 1: Look at the time, while I was having hypnosis, it
Speaker 1: was very intensive. They were like five or six hours long.
Speaker 1: It was regular, and he was in constant contact with
Speaker 1: me in between, and I lost my ability to think
Speaker 1: critically during that period. But looking back, and once I
Speaker 1: went back and listened to the hypnosis sessions, it was
Speaker 1: very clear that he was deliberately, in my opinion, implanting
Speaker 1: false memories that he wanted that he could then use
Speaker 1: in his book.
Speaker 6: But the characters to sort of know here is that.
Speaker 14: And they were using you for sort of a variety
Speaker 14: of reproductive events. And what they did not want to
Speaker 14: have is a mixing of sperm. You see with the
Speaker 14: hybrid guy, because the hybrid has his sperm and anybody
Speaker 14: else's got his, and so that's the thing to avoid.
Speaker 14: The reason I know this is because I had exactly
Speaker 14: this situation before, and one woman who was married.
Speaker 6: That the guy had had a bad sectomy, sure, and
Speaker 6: she was about to have an affair.
Speaker 4: With some other guy he met, and they did.
Speaker 6: Not like that at all.
Speaker 14: That was they prevented it from happening, and they admonitor
Speaker 14: her and they and I mean, it was a big deal,
Speaker 14: a big deal, and you knew it was for it
Speaker 14: was for that reason.
Speaker 1: He was licked hearing me while I was hypnotized, telling
Speaker 1: me what I was going to remember, telling me what
Speaker 1: other people remembered, explaining what was going on. I was
Speaker 1: all just going into my head while I was under hypnosis,
Speaker 1: and then I was remembering things along those lines. So
Speaker 1: I think he was intensively coaching me to come out
Speaker 1: with a story that he wanted that fit his theories.
Speaker 1: And I think also that he was going to use
Speaker 1: in his book.
Speaker 3: Even for UFO researchers as prominent as David Jacobs and
Speaker 3: Bud Hopkins, it was financially necessary to continue to write
Speaker 3: books because they couldn't simply repackage the same theories again
Speaker 3: and again. This need created a dynamic of ever more
Speaker 3: sensational accounts. Here is Carol Rainey again talking specifically about
Speaker 3: Bud Hopkins, but about a situation that applied to Jacobs
Speaker 3: as well, as she acknowledges.
Speaker 11: At the end, we went to talk to a couple
Speaker 11: of editors at publishing houses. This must have been the
Speaker 11: early two thousands, and what they said categorically, don't come
Speaker 11: back unless you have a brand new, never seen before.
Speaker 3: Idea for a UFO book.
Speaker 11: So the push is always for new, bigger, better, more outlandish.
Speaker 11: And I would say that Dave and Bud definitely delivered
Speaker 11: on that in each of their books, and.
Speaker 3: The book that Jacob's planned to write on his work
Speaker 3: with Emma Woods and others would cause him to steer
Speaker 3: hypnosis sessions to very strange places and ultimately push ethical
Speaker 3: standards beyond the breaking point next time on Strange Arrivals.
Speaker 3: Strange Arrivals is a production of iHeartRadio and Grim and
Speaker 3: Mild Aaron Manky. This episode was written and hosted by
Speaker 3: Toby Ball and produced by rima Il Kayali.
Speaker 2: Jesse Funk, and Noami Griffin, with executive producers Alexander Williams,
Speaker 2: Matt Frederick, and Aaron Manke and supervising producer Josh Thame,
Speaker 2: with voice acting by Dylan Fagan. Learn more about the
Speaker 2: show at grimminmild dot com, slash Strange Arrivals, and find
Speaker 2: more podcasts from iHeartRadio by visiting the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 2: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.