Speaker 1: Strange Arrivals is a production of iHeart Radio and Grim
Speaker 1: and Mild from Aaron Mackey. For the best experience, listen
Speaker 1: with headphones. In the West, we have very limited number
Speaker 1: of words for different states of consciousness. In Eastern thinking
Speaker 1: and religion, there maybe fifty eighty hundred words for different
Speaker 1: possible states. This phenomenon forces us to think about subtleties,
Speaker 1: and you know, we don't like to think about subtleties.
Speaker 1: High percentage of people will remember until they've had a
Speaker 1: chance to explore their abductions as dreams. Now, when they
Speaker 1: call a dream, is it a dream that recollects an abduction?
Speaker 1: Is it an abduction they're calling a dream? There's all
Speaker 1: kinds of ways that word dream is. There's just an
Speaker 1: experience that happens at night. You call it a dream
Speaker 1: because that's the way you were raised to think. If
Speaker 1: you take an abduction experiencer through the night of an experience,
Speaker 1: there is that moment of truth when they realize they
Speaker 1: weren't really asleep when this happened. As a sort of
Speaker 1: like you went to bed, and it's very important to go,
Speaker 1: you know, reconstruct the events of the night, like, Okay,
Speaker 1: what time do you go to bed. You're watching television,
Speaker 1: and you went to bed, and then what happened? And
Speaker 1: and then this light came in now, but you didn't
Speaker 1: say you fell asleep. And that's a moment of truth.
Speaker 1: And at that moment, a shift in consciousness occurs. It's
Speaker 1: not as if they're just like an ordinary waking consciousness.
Speaker 1: One of the people that Bud and I have worked
Speaker 1: with in New York describes it's as if the aliens
Speaker 1: come through a screen. They break through like a scrim
Speaker 1: which is a screen in the theater. It's as if
Speaker 1: they shatter one reality and come into this reality versus
Speaker 1: not asleep, but they're in another state of consciousness. But
Speaker 1: they're fully present in that state of consciousness. But it's
Speaker 1: a different state of consciousness. So it's a true experience,
Speaker 1: but in another state of consciousness, and we don't have
Speaker 1: language for that. I'm Toby Ball and this is Strange Arrivals,
Speaker 1: Episode five, Unseen Realms of the Infinite. On June thirteenth,
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety two, a conference convened on the campus of
Speaker 1: the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Massachusetts, titled the
Speaker 1: Abduction Study Conference. It brought together researchers, experiencers, and a
Speaker 1: loane skeptic in an attempt to make sense of the
Speaker 1: apparent alien abduction phenomenon. It's a little hard to picture
Speaker 1: this now because alien abductions have largely faded from public consciousness,
Speaker 1: but these were prominent people in their respective fields who
Speaker 1: were looking at what they felt was the very likely
Speaker 1: reality that people, perhaps millions of people, had been abducted
Speaker 1: by aliens. What were the consequences, what should be done?
Speaker 1: The conference was organized by John Mack, who was at Harvard,
Speaker 1: and David Pritchard, a prominent physicist at MIT who had
Speaker 1: become intrigued by the subject. Pritchard had looked at the
Speaker 1: ufology landscape in nineteen ninety two and realized that there
Speaker 1: was quite a bit of research that had been done,
Speaker 1: but almost none of it had been published. An academic conference,
Speaker 1: he thought, was the proper way for these researchers to
Speaker 1: present their findings and then have discussions about them. It
Speaker 1: was an attempt at a serious academic look at the phenomenon,
Speaker 1: but while it was held on the MIT campus, MIT
Speaker 1: did not actually sponsor the conference. Not surprisingly, the subject
Speaker 1: was considered controversial. John mac, biographer Ralph Blumenthal. Now MT
Speaker 1: didn't sponsor this conference, but they gave it a venue
Speaker 1: because this professor Dave Pritchard was very eminent and he
Speaker 1: wanted a place to hold a conference. So it attracted
Speaker 1: atomic scientists, psychologists, psychiatrists, religious scholars, a broad cross section
Speaker 1: of academia and people who were really interested in getting
Speaker 1: it at this mystery, which it was. So four five
Speaker 1: days in June of nineteen and ninety two they discussed
Speaker 1: all this. The one professed skeptic was Robert Schaeffer, who
Speaker 1: had worked with legendary UFO researcher Philip Klass and was
Speaker 1: himself a leading skeptical voice in ufology. Here he is
Speaker 1: talking about the conference. They were very serious about this.
Speaker 1: Big conferences like this don't happen all that often. Especially
Speaker 1: this is not a conference that was open to the public.
Speaker 1: It's only people who were invited to attend, and actually
Speaker 1: they invited They wanted to make a show of having
Speaker 1: skeptics there, to show that they were, you know, open,
Speaker 1: that they were not afraid of septics, because some upologists,
Speaker 1: you know, they'll actually run in in the hole if
Speaker 1: somebody's going to critically examine their claims as Blumenthal mentions.
Speaker 1: The conference attracted experts in a number of subjects for
Speaker 1: an interdisciplinary effort at making sense of the reports that
Speaker 1: were being obtained by UFO abduction researchers like John Mack,
Speaker 1: Bud Hopkins, and David Jacobs. The conference featured about one
Speaker 1: hundred presentations. Several people had more than one presentation as
Speaker 1: the conference organizers tried to create a coherent, comprehensive picture
Speaker 1: of what they believed was happening. In many ways, the
Speaker 1: conference was at venue for mac and Hopkins and other uipologists.
Speaker 1: They had been at the forefront of identifying what they
Speaker 1: saw as an abduction crisis, and this was their opportunity
Speaker 1: to present their findings to a scientific audience. For their response,
Speaker 1: this included giving presentations on their research methods and on
Speaker 1: specific cases they felt were especially compelling, say so that
Speaker 1: they had one big new case and a whole bunch
Speaker 1: of other ones. If they thought was so well documented
Speaker 1: and everything, this was going to be like their revelation
Speaker 1: to the world. Look at this great stuff, this great
Speaker 1: proof that we have. Okay, we could drop this upon
Speaker 1: the world, we could reveal this, and so that's what
Speaker 1: they were trying to do, and of course it didn't
Speaker 1: turn out the way that they were hoping. This big
Speaker 1: case was the so called brooklyn Bridge case that involved
Speaker 1: the alleged abduction of a woman identified as Linda Cortill.
Speaker 1: We looked at this incident in episode ten of the
Speaker 1: first season of Strange Arrivals. As time passed, the story
Speaker 1: grew until it became too convoluted and incredible for all
Speaker 1: but the most committed abduction adherents. In the end, it
Speaker 1: was a blow to the credibility of the field, but
Speaker 1: that came after this conference. The conference was also a
Speaker 1: chance for the u Phoe researchers to present their methods
Speaker 1: and results to a scientific audience. The expectation was that
Speaker 1: the scientists would affirm that their methods were valid, but
Speaker 1: again the reality was a little different. He had all
Speaker 1: kinds of psychology, were all kinds of psychologists and physinicists
Speaker 1: and everybody in this conference here, and as they were talking,
Speaker 1: like Bud Opkins and so I talking about these surveys
Speaker 1: that they were doing and such and a whole bunch
Speaker 1: of psychologists, and the audience back saw, right, could you
Speaker 1: didn't you quantify these the survey that Schaefer is talking
Speaker 1: about is known as the Roper pole. The Roper pole
Speaker 1: is famous in UFO circles. It sought to determine to
Speaker 1: some degree the number of people in the US who
Speaker 1: had been abducted by UFOs. The idea for it came
Speaker 1: from a man named Robert Bigelow, the owner of the
Speaker 1: discount motel chain, Budget Suites of America, founder of Bigelow Aerospace,
Speaker 1: and a leading figure in funding UFO studies. He provided
Speaker 1: the funds to conduct the survey. The survey was conducted
Speaker 1: face to face rather than by phone. It asked respondents
Speaker 1: a series of questions which the designers Hopkins Jacobs and
Speaker 1: a sociologist named Rob Westrom thought would identify people who
Speaker 1: had likely been abducted, even in cases where the respondent
Speaker 1: didn't remember the experience. And the results that two percent
Speaker 1: of the population, or three point seven million Americans, were,
Speaker 1: in Bud Hopkins words, highly likely to be UFO abductees.
Speaker 1: They felt that this number was a conservative estimate. Like
Speaker 1: so much of ufology, the Roper poll seems to mimic
Speaker 1: science without actually adhering to scientific rigor, and the scientists
Speaker 1: at the conference noticed often the most interesting parts of
Speaker 1: conference proceedings are the questions and comments that follow presents.
Speaker 1: This conference was no different. After a presentation on the
Speaker 1: Roper Pole, sociologist Robert Hall expressed his reservations about the pole.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, but all due respect to Bud Hopkins and
Speaker 1: Dave Jacobs, who have done a lot of things very
Speaker 1: valuable in this field, I have to say that I
Speaker 1: think this survey was the worst waste of research money
Speaker 1: I've ever seen, in a terrible, terrible lost opportunity. I
Speaker 1: think with proper advanced planning, it could have been a
Speaker 1: very valuable survey, but it does not provide any scientific
Speaker 1: evidence about the prevalence of these events. After another presentation,
Speaker 1: the poll was again the subject of stern questioning. David
Speaker 1: Jacobs protested that he didn't believe that he and others
Speaker 1: were making any outlandish claims as a result of the poll.
Speaker 1: Hypnotherapist Joe Nyman replied, reasonably, I think I don't agree
Speaker 1: with that, Dave, I think you are making an outlandish claim.
Speaker 1: Its specifically stated that these are the number of abductees
Speaker 1: and two and a half percent of the population are abductees.
Speaker 1: They screwed it up completely and Bud Hopkins said, from
Speaker 1: you know, the speaker's platform. He said, well, I'm glad
Speaker 1: you guys are here. I'm glad you guys are telling
Speaker 1: me this because you're the experts that we brought you here,
Speaker 1: so I ducally give us feedback. I don't understand these things.
Speaker 1: I'm just an artist. I don't understand about psychological tasting.
Speaker 1: It's there, ken, he says, it were. It was not
Speaker 1: nearly as solid as they thought it was, as it
Speaker 1: was immediately apparent from having you know, a number of
Speaker 1: these psychologists of the audience who were not themselves actually
Speaker 1: into ufology, but who are into psychological past daying down
Speaker 1: comparisons are various things. Despite these issues, not everyone saw
Speaker 1: the conference as a failure. In fact, people point the
Speaker 1: conference is making a compelling case for the abduction phenomenon.
Speaker 1: Even today again Ralph Blumenthal talking about the conference proceedings.
Speaker 1: They made a record of their discussions. It came out
Speaker 1: in a thick book two years later. It was embargoed
Speaker 1: at the time, but it remains a very authoritative account
Speaker 1: of the best research of all these scholars. And you
Speaker 1: know what I like to say is that the so
Speaker 1: called skeptics and debunkers who pooh pooh this whole notion
Speaker 1: of alien encounters and dismiss it as ridiculous need to
Speaker 1: do the research, because the research consists of looking at
Speaker 1: volumes like this Alien Discussions account of the MIT Conference
Speaker 1: to really understand that the strength of the evidence. It's
Speaker 1: circumstantial evidence, to be sure, but these accounts that are
Speaker 1: very vivid and coherent and consistent, and you can really
Speaker 1: challenge these accounts till you know what they really are.
Speaker 1: So a lot of the skeptics are lazy, they haven't
Speaker 1: done the work, and they just say this is ridiculous. Well,
Speaker 1: of course it's ridiculous. It makes no sense in our world.
Speaker 1: And yet these accounts are so vivid and so consistent
Speaker 1: and so credible when you look at the people from
Speaker 1: all walks of life are coming out with its, including children,
Speaker 1: not only the aerial school children, but children as young
Speaker 1: as two years old or John mac interviewed who told
Speaker 1: stories of being taken from their cribs and flown into
Speaker 1: the sky by alien beings. And these kids, you know,
Speaker 1: haven't read books, and they haven't seen movies. This is
Speaker 1: just stories that they've told their parents and told John
Speaker 1: mack so That was the importance of the MIT conference
Speaker 1: and the research he did. It gave credibility to this
Speaker 1: phenomenon that once you really go into it, it stands up.
Speaker 1: It's very difficult to challenge. What I find really interesting
Speaker 1: about John Mack is here was an obviously very smart,
Speaker 1: very accomplished guy. He studied alien abducts, worked with experiencers,
Speaker 1: and came to believe unequivocally that people were being abducted
Speaker 1: in mass numbers. But this was based on the testimony
Speaker 1: of the experiencers. There was no real physical evidence, certainly
Speaker 1: not of the kind you'd expect with the sheer number
Speaker 1: of cases. So how do you resolve this contradiction? After
Speaker 1: the break, strange arrivals will return in a moment. It
Speaker 1: seems to me that the tension that lies at the
Speaker 1: heart of ufology and the alien abduction phenomenon is this.
Speaker 1: There are thousands and thousands of UFO encounters and far
Speaker 1: fewer but still numerous tales of an abduction, but to
Speaker 1: this day there is no single piece of the kind
Speaker 1: of evidence one would expect an abundance based on the
Speaker 1: sheer number of cases. Someone who thinks seriously about UFOs
Speaker 1: has to confront the question of why this evidence does
Speaker 1: not exist. John Mack wrestled with this question and arrived
Speaker 1: at an answer that is both strange and not surprising
Speaker 1: because it reaches back to his preexisting beliefs. We saw
Speaker 1: how his devotion to environmentalist and peace movements was reflected
Speaker 1: in the messages the aerial students said they received. In
Speaker 1: explaining how the phenomenon leaves no physical traces, he looked
Speaker 1: to his beliefs about spirituality and realities not accounted for
Speaker 1: in Western science. This is John Mack being interviewed informally
Speaker 1: on camera by philosopher Terrence McKenna at the nineteen ninety
Speaker 1: two International Transpersonal Conference in Prague. He mentions the term
Speaker 1: anima mundi, which refers to the concept that there is
Speaker 1: a connection between all living things in the world, much
Speaker 1: like a soul in an individual. The world of both
Speaker 1: spirit with form and spirit without form, or the anima mundi,
Speaker 1: whatever your language for it, the Great Spirit, the Holy Spirit,
Speaker 1: whatever it is, it we have lost contact with it.
Speaker 1: It signals us we don't listen. There are various ways
Speaker 1: that certain people have revelations and experiences. Occasionally, the more
Speaker 1: advanced spiritual people among us are reconnecting with the spirit.
Speaker 1: But for most of us, the only language that we
Speaker 1: know now is the language of the material world. So
Speaker 1: it's as if the Divinity say, Okay, if that's all
Speaker 1: you understand, I'll give it to you in the material world.
Speaker 1: I'll give you physical manipulations. I'll give you reproductive connection.
Speaker 1: I'll give you cuts, scars, scoop marks. I'll give you
Speaker 1: a burned earth where the UFOs land. And I'll give
Speaker 1: you an experience which is consistent among various people, which
Speaker 1: empirically everybody agrees that photographs of UFOs. It's showing up
Speaker 1: in the physical world. It may not be of the
Speaker 1: physical world as we know it, but it communicates in
Speaker 1: the physical world. What is Max saying here, He believes
Speaker 1: that the phenomenon is essentially a non material or spiritual one.
Speaker 1: But we have for the most part lost our ability
Speaker 1: to access that world. So it appears to people in
Speaker 1: strange physical ways to let itself be known. So through
Speaker 1: this experience in the body. Because that's the importing point here.
Speaker 1: This experience is not just information and an intellectual sense.
Speaker 1: They experience these abductions in the body and as several
Speaker 1: abductees have said to me, we only know the body
Speaker 1: now as embodied creatures. If you want to reach us,
Speaker 1: you have to reach us through the body, because that's
Speaker 1: the only language we understand it. So that tells us
Speaker 1: that the creatures are real in this on a sense.
Speaker 1: As we have seen earlier, Mac had taken part in
Speaker 1: attempts to access a spiritual realm through meditation, taking LSD,
Speaker 1: and most importantly, through holotropic breathing, a controlled breathing technique
Speaker 1: intended to cause non normal states. In nineteen ninety four,
Speaker 1: science writer Jill Nemark interviewed Mac for an article in
Speaker 1: Psychology Today. In it, they discussed Mac's experience with this
Speaker 1: technique the first time he tried it. Macna only quote
Speaker 1: reexperienced his mother's death when he was eight months old.
Speaker 1: He also felt quote my father's grief at the time.
Speaker 1: I got more out of one session that I had
Speaker 1: in all my years of analysis. Later in the session,
Speaker 1: he said, I became a Russian father in the sixteenth century,
Speaker 1: a man whose four year old son was decapitated by
Speaker 1: Mongol hordes. Mac found analogs to his conception of the
Speaker 1: phenomenon existing in both the material and spiritual realms. He
Speaker 1: saw the stories of shamans as describing experiences similar to
Speaker 1: those of abductees. In his book Abduction, he quotes the
Speaker 1: great Romanian sociologist Murcia Aliada. During his initiation, the shaman
Speaker 1: learns how to penetrate into other dimensions of reality and
Speaker 1: maintain himself there. His trials, whatever the nature of them,
Speaker 1: endow him with the sensitivity that can perceive and integrate
Speaker 1: these new experiences. Through the strangely sharp and senses of
Speaker 1: the shaman, the sacred manifests itself. He would bring the
Speaker 1: shaman concept to his work with experiencers, making those connections concrete,
Speaker 1: even if the meaning wasn't always clear to the subject.
Speaker 1: This is abduction experiencer Elizabeth Anglin, who worked with Mac.
Speaker 1: He listened a lot, and he took a lot of notes,
Speaker 1: and then when he wanted to get his opinion, he
Speaker 1: would say some blah blah blah, Well, you know, I
Speaker 1: think it might be a shamonic thing. Mac would also
Speaker 1: talk about the phenomenon in terms of what he considered
Speaker 1: the false choice between the real and the not real.
Speaker 1: He wrote, we've got make belief phenomena and we've got reality.
Speaker 1: I think we need a category of phenomena for which
Speaker 1: we have no category. Ralph Blumenthal, Well, he said that
Speaker 1: this phenomenon has a way of penetrating our reality, and
Speaker 1: when it penetrates, it penetrates with a great deal of vividness.
Speaker 1: There's nothing subtle about it. These people who reported these
Speaker 1: encounters say this was more real to me than reality.
Speaker 1: This was not a dream. John Macrone a book on nightmares.
Speaker 1: He studied dreams and nightmares, and these people said, look,
Speaker 1: I know the difference between a nightmare and reality. This
Speaker 1: was not a nightmare. So the best he could come
Speaker 1: up with was that this was some kind of a
Speaker 1: reality that was penetrating our reality. It was absolutely real,
Speaker 1: but not our everyday reality. It was happening in some
Speaker 1: other dimension, on some other way that he could not explain.
Speaker 1: But it was absolutely real to the people who encountered it.
Speaker 1: The phenomenon is real, but not from our reality. What
Speaker 1: does this mean to me? It sounds a little like stubbornness. Sure,
Speaker 1: I can't prove it's real, but that's because you're only
Speaker 1: willing to consider our reality. But what reason do we
Speaker 1: have to believe that there is another reality? We seem
Speaker 1: to be far adrift of science. Just how far adrift
Speaker 1: is clear when this reasoning is applied to topics outside
Speaker 1: the abduction phenomenon. This passage from Jill Nemark's Psychology Today
Speaker 1: article begins with a quote from Mac. He says, quote,
Speaker 1: I know this sounds like hedging, but we don't know
Speaker 1: in what reality this occurs. False and true memory don't apply.
Speaker 1: This is powerfully real, But in what reality? I asked
Speaker 1: him where he felt he belonged in the raging controversy
Speaker 1: over memory and abuse. Does he think memories of satanic
Speaker 1: abuse might be happening in an alternate reality? He postulated
Speaker 1: that indeed they might, saying, perhaps those memories are experientially true,
Speaker 1: but they didn't factually happen in this reality. What does
Speaker 1: this mean in the fourth dimension or perhaps the sixth dimension?
Speaker 1: So again, this article was written in nineteen ninety four,
Speaker 1: before the so called Satanic panic had been comprehensive debunked.
Speaker 1: He says about a controversy that is raging within psychology,
Speaker 1: his field of expertise, that is possible that memories of
Speaker 1: abuse are true but from a different reality. What does
Speaker 1: that mean? What do you do with this idea? People
Speaker 1: were on trial at the time on charges of abuse
Speaker 1: stemming from these quote unquote recovered memories. The more I
Speaker 1: read John Mack, the more I got the sense that
Speaker 1: he was approaching the topic backwards. He wasn't gathering this
Speaker 1: testimonial evidence and trying to determine whether it described a
Speaker 1: phenomenon that was actually physically happening and not just a
Speaker 1: psychological perception. He assumed that the stories were things that
Speaker 1: had actually happened, and he was trying to figure out
Speaker 1: how to explain them. And it leads to reasoning like
Speaker 1: this example from Max nineteen ninety four book Passport to
Speaker 1: the Cosmos, where the following is suggested as necessary to
Speaker 1: understanding what is going on. An awareness of unseen realities
Speaker 1: of the Infidel in which the laws of space, time,
Speaker 1: reality as we know them seem not to apply. This
Speaker 1: can create a dilemma or a mind that would stay
Speaker 1: in the duality of internal external, for the phenomenon appears
Speaker 1: to be both or now one than the other. In fact,
Speaker 1: mac even puts forward the idea that whatever is behind
Speaker 1: the phenomenon is actually intentionally creating a situation where there
Speaker 1: is enough evidence to convince believers, but not enough to
Speaker 1: win over skeptics. It is as if the agent or
Speaker 1: intelligence at work here we're parodying, mocking, tricking, and deceiving
Speaker 1: the investigators, providing just enough physical evidence to win over
Speaker 1: those who are prepared to believe in the phenomenon, but
Speaker 1: not enough to convince the skeptic. In this apparently frustrating situation,
Speaker 1: there may lie a deeper truth and possibility. He goes
Speaker 1: on to say that the phenomenon might be inviting us
Speaker 1: to change our way of looking at things, to expand
Speaker 1: our consciousness, to do, in other words, what John Mack
Speaker 1: wants us to do. John Mack died tragically when he
Speaker 1: was hit by a car in London on September twenty seventh,
Speaker 1: two thousand and four. He was seventy four years old.
Speaker 1: His final years were marked by two controversies, which I
Speaker 1: won't go into depth about, but which should be mentioned.
Speaker 1: The first was a critical article in the April twenty fifth,
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety four edition of Time magazine. It featured the
Speaker 1: revelation that one of Mac's subjects, a woman named Donna Bassett,
Speaker 1: was a debunker. Earlier, she had reported to Mac in
Speaker 1: a session that, among other things, she had been on
Speaker 1: a spacecraft with both John F. Kennedy and Nikita Kruschoff,
Speaker 1: and that she comforted the crying Cruischoff again. Ralph Blumenthal, Yeah,
Speaker 1: this was a very sad episode, as she wanted to
Speaker 1: destroy him. She thought he was a cult leader and
Speaker 1: she'd made the whole thing up. Well, it turns out
Speaker 1: that she probably did have real alien encounter experiences because
Speaker 1: she told them to other people before encountering John Mack.
Speaker 1: She had a very strange background herself, and for whatever reason,
Speaker 1: she was determined to bring John Mack down. And Time
Speaker 1: magazine picked this up and made a big issue of it,
Speaker 1: and it hurt John mac tremendously. It was damaging to him,
Speaker 1: no doubt, but it did not undermine all the other
Speaker 1: cases he had dealt with, and it was just a
Speaker 1: very very sad episode. There was more to the article
Speaker 1: than Bassett's allegations at general skepticism about his work. One
Speaker 1: passage reads, psychologists and ethicists do not question max sanity
Speaker 1: so much as his motives and methodology. They charge that
Speaker 1: he is misusing the techniques of hypnosis, trying to shape
Speaker 1: the memories of his subjects to suit his vision of
Speaker 1: an intergalactic future. And very possibly endangering the emotional health
Speaker 1: of his patients in the process. Quote. If this were
Speaker 1: just an example of some zany new outer limit of
Speaker 1: how foolish psychology and psychiatry can be in that wrong hands,
Speaker 1: we'd look at it, roll our eyes and walk away,
Speaker 1: says University of California, Berkeley professor Richard O'she. Quote, but
Speaker 1: the use of his techniques in counseling is substantially harming
Speaker 1: lots of people. End quote. The second controversy was that
Speaker 1: Harvard launched an unprecedented secret committee to look into Max's research.
Speaker 1: Harvard was very uncomfortable with his research and eventually conveying
Speaker 1: a secret committee and inquisition. I call it because that's
Speaker 1: a word that they used at one to see if
Speaker 1: he was doing anything wrong inappropriate. And they kept asking
Speaker 1: him what is his proof, and he kept saying, well,
Speaker 1: I really don't have proof apart from the stories that
Speaker 1: all these people have told. The Harvard committee echoed the
Speaker 1: concerns of Richard o'she about Max's treatment of his subjects.
Speaker 1: Max Lawyer wrote a letter during the inquiry that was
Speaker 1: made public and quoted in an article in the student
Speaker 1: newspaper The Harvard Crimson. The letter asserted that a draft
Speaker 1: of the committee reports stated, quote to communicate in any
Speaker 1: way whatsoever to a person who has reported a close
Speaker 1: encounter with an extraterrestrial life form that this experience might
Speaker 1: well have been real is professionally irresponsible on the part
Speaker 1: of any academic scientific professional person. With this letter, the
Speaker 1: committee's work became public and was viewed in some quarters
Speaker 1: as a threat to free inquiry. In the end, the
Speaker 1: committee quote reaffirmed doctor Mac's academic freedom to study what
Speaker 1: he wishes and to state his opinions without impediment end quote.
Speaker 1: It concluded, quote doctor mac remains a member and good
Speaker 1: standing of the Harvard Faculty of Medicine. I want to
Speaker 1: come back to the Abduction conference because there was something
Speaker 1: that emerged from the conference that I think is important
Speaker 1: to remember about John Mack. Western Michigan University professor Michael
Speaker 1: Swords wrote a review of the conference proceedings in a
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety seven issue of the Journal of Scientific Exploration.
Speaker 1: He wrote, the conference at MIT split the public unity
Speaker 1: of American researchers into at least two major schools of
Speaker 1: opinion deeply disagree to this day. Both continue to believe
Speaker 1: that the phenomenon is extraterrestrially based. Hopkins, Jacobs, and others
Speaker 1: were present to elaborate what some have come to refer
Speaker 1: to as the Dark Marauders view of abductions, but conference
Speaker 1: co organizer and world known Harvard psychologist John Mack presented
Speaker 1: an entirely different spin. These experiences are extraterrestrially caused, but
Speaker 1: are positively transformational for the human spirit. What sticks with
Speaker 1: me about Mac was his essential optimism. He saw the
Speaker 1: abduction phenomenon as being a force for what he considered
Speaker 1: to be good in the world, and I think this
Speaker 1: optimism carried over to the way he interacted with his subjects.
Speaker 1: I agree with Richard o'shee and the draft of the
Speaker 1: Harvard Committee report that telling your patients that they have
Speaker 1: had real alien encounters is hugely problematic. But Mac, in
Speaker 1: contrast with Bud Hopkins, and as we will see, David Jacobs,
Speaker 1: tried to bolster his subjects again Elizabeth Anglin and Mac.
Speaker 1: He wouldn't poo poo you and say, oh, you poor
Speaker 1: little victim. He'd be like, you've been working full time,
Speaker 1: you've been going to school full time, and you survived that,
Speaker 1: and you survived that like twice a week for the
Speaker 1: past how many months? So you know what you are.
Speaker 1: You're a survivor. That's what you are. You're not a victim,
Speaker 1: You're a survivor. And Hopkins would really sort of and
Speaker 1: my sense of its time went on was he was
Speaker 1: really getting off on the victimization of it and saying, oh,
Speaker 1: these poor victims, these poor victims, these poor victims. But
Speaker 1: also at the same time you sort of controlling the
Speaker 1: narrative more than I felt mac ever did, and Jacobs
Speaker 1: was worse, much worse next time on Strange Arrivals. Strange
Speaker 1: Arrivals is a production of iHeartRadio and Grimm and Mild
Speaker 1: from Aaron Manky. This episode was written and hosted by
Speaker 1: Toby Ball and produced by Rima L. Kayali Jesse Funk,
Speaker 1: and Naami Griffin, with executive producers Alexander Williams, Matt Frederick,
Speaker 1: and Aaron Mankey, and supervising producer Josh Thaine. Learn more
Speaker 1: about the show at Grimm and Miild dot com, slash
Speaker 1: Strange Arrivals, and find more podcasts from iHeartRadio by visiting
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Speaker 1: your favorite shows,