WEBVTT - The Secretary General 0:00:02.279 --> 0:00:05.600 Strange Arrivals is a production of I Heart Radio and 0:00:05.680 --> 0:00:12.320 Grim and Mild from Aaron Manky that was to be 0:00:12.360 --> 0:00:15.680 on the television program in Boston and last summer and 0:00:15.840 --> 0:00:18.880 with another woman who was an abductee, and we got 0:00:18.880 --> 0:00:20.599 to the station. It was one of those morning talk 0:00:20.640 --> 0:00:24.040 shows where you're usually sandwiched in between a somebody's written 0:00:24.040 --> 0:00:27.480 a cookbook and somebody with writing about divorces, and then 0:00:27.480 --> 0:00:32.760 there's you with UFOs again. But any rate, I never 0:00:32.800 --> 0:00:34.440 know who I'm gonna be on with it. I walked 0:00:34.440 --> 0:00:36.559 in and somebody came over to me, one of the producers, 0:00:36.560 --> 0:00:38.280 and said Dr Carl Sagan is going to be on 0:00:38.320 --> 0:00:41.800 the program, and my heart sank. I felt I'd been ambushed, 0:00:42.479 --> 0:00:46.680 and so I was quickly thinking what am I going 0:00:46.720 --> 0:00:49.880 to do because I can't say anything against an authority 0:00:50.000 --> 0:00:52.680 quote unquote like Carl Sagan, because I know who's going 0:00:52.720 --> 0:00:57.080 to be believed. And at some point I saw a 0:00:57.160 --> 0:00:59.840 man sitting over in the corner a couple of people 0:00:59.840 --> 0:01:04.959 who looked rather thin and frail, and I forgotten what 0:01:05.040 --> 0:01:07.360 Carl Sagan look like, and I said, well, that's not Sagan, 0:01:07.480 --> 0:01:10.520 and then in a moment, the man got up and 0:01:10.560 --> 0:01:14.760 came over to me, and it was Carl Sagan. He's 0:01:14.760 --> 0:01:17.440 been ill and he really doesn't look well. And he said, 0:01:18.080 --> 0:01:20.319 he said, you're about Hopkins, aren't you. And I practically 0:01:20.360 --> 0:01:23.160 went through the floor because I thought I was the enemy. 0:01:23.560 --> 0:01:26.000 So he came over and we started talking and he said, 0:01:26.880 --> 0:01:30.039 he said, I read your book, which again astonished me. 0:01:30.760 --> 0:01:33.280 He said, Bud, you really have to have better evidence. 0:01:34.480 --> 0:01:36.319 And he said, you know, uh, in the fruit the 0:01:36.319 --> 0:01:41.600 slogan um extraordinary claims demand extraordinary evidence. And I said, 0:01:41.600 --> 0:01:45.039 what we should be saying here is that an extraordinary 0:01:45.040 --> 0:01:52.000 phenomenon demands an extraordinary investigation. It is not. And use 0:01:52.080 --> 0:01:56.639 that line because that's the point we have an extraor. 0:01:56.800 --> 0:02:00.000 It isn't that an extraordinary phenomenal demands extraordinary evidence? Is 0:02:00.040 --> 0:02:02.520 if okay, busters all that's going on, come over here 0:02:02.520 --> 0:02:04.520 and give us a piece of the captain's log book 0:02:04.520 --> 0:02:06.600 and then we'll accept it. I said, Carl, if we 0:02:06.680 --> 0:02:09.880 had those pieces of things, we wouldn't need an investigation, 0:02:09.919 --> 0:02:13.399 would we? I said, we would have the answer. I said, 0:02:13.440 --> 0:02:16.120 it's it's in the absence of more information that we 0:02:16.160 --> 0:02:18.520 have to continue looking into it. And I said, you know, Carl, 0:02:18.680 --> 0:02:21.200 I don't defend my general ship. I said, I'm not 0:02:21.240 --> 0:02:23.840 trying to be uh, George Washington. I said, but I 0:02:23.880 --> 0:02:26.640 am trying to be Paul Revere. And I said, Paul 0:02:26.639 --> 0:02:29.840 Revere was an artist, and uh, he just went around 0:02:29.840 --> 0:02:32.240 trying to get people to pay attention to this. And 0:02:32.280 --> 0:02:34.360 I said, you guys should be doing it, not me. 0:02:36.720 --> 0:02:41.160 In the nineteen eighties and nineties, Bud Hopkins, John mac 0:02:41.560 --> 0:02:45.400 and David Jacobs pioneered a major change in the study 0:02:45.440 --> 0:02:51.960 of alien abductions. UFO researcher Robert Schaefer refers to them 0:02:52.000 --> 0:02:56.440 as the Troyka. They claimed their research showed that aliens 0:02:56.440 --> 0:03:00.680 were able to snatch people at any time, for anywhere, 0:03:01.440 --> 0:03:04.440 and there was nothing we could do about it. The 0:03:04.560 --> 0:03:10.720 question this raised was what were the aliens trying to accomplish. 0:03:11.120 --> 0:03:26.640 I'm Toby Ball, this is Strange Arrivals, episode ten, the 0:03:26.720 --> 0:03:32.760 Secretary General. Now, essentially, my take on this whole thing 0:03:33.040 --> 0:03:36.960 is not that they are evil, malevolent here to deliberately 0:03:37.040 --> 0:03:39.960 hurt us. I haven't a single case where I could 0:03:40.000 --> 0:03:43.560 say it looks as if they're just sort of demons, 0:03:43.600 --> 0:03:46.200 like a motorcycle gang, to do the worst they possibly 0:03:46.240 --> 0:03:49.280 can do. There seems to be an objectivity about what 0:03:49.320 --> 0:03:55.080 they're doing. This is Hopkins speculating about the alien's intentions. 0:03:56.880 --> 0:03:59.960 They're not our space brothers either, and they're not quote 0:04:00.040 --> 0:04:02.720 unquote visitors. This is not what we're dealing with. We're 0:04:02.760 --> 0:04:06.800 dealing with something we do not understand. Let's call them 0:04:06.840 --> 0:04:08.720 uf O occupants, so let's call them what we want to. 0:04:08.840 --> 0:04:11.480 But let's not try to make them overly friendly, because 0:04:11.520 --> 0:04:15.680 they're not, and let's not try to make them overly malicious. Essentially, 0:04:15.720 --> 0:04:18.840 their attitude is one of a kind of condescension, and 0:04:18.880 --> 0:04:23.880 they're trying to keep people comfortable, and they're not very deeply, deeply, 0:04:23.960 --> 0:04:28.440 deeply interested, but they have certain needs. We know that 0:04:29.360 --> 0:04:35.000 they seem to need genetic material that they're taking sperm over. 0:04:36.400 --> 0:04:40.240 We know they're doing these reproductive experiments in attempt at 0:04:40.279 --> 0:04:43.480 hybridization and so forth. Too many cases have come to light, 0:04:43.839 --> 0:04:48.680 too many similar descriptions for this to be eliminated as possibility. 0:04:48.720 --> 0:04:54.240 It is very central. Since the very first abduction stories, 0:04:54.680 --> 0:04:58.320 alien interest in human reproduction has been a common theme. 0:04:59.000 --> 0:05:02.000 Think back to the need plunged into Betty Hill's abdomen 0:05:02.640 --> 0:05:06.919 or the wild sexual encounter between Antonio Villis Bois and 0:05:07.000 --> 0:05:10.239 the beautiful red haired alien who screamed like an animal 0:05:10.480 --> 0:05:14.719 as they coupled. But Hopkins, mac and Jacobs took the 0:05:14.800 --> 0:05:18.960 next step. Why were the aliens interested in human reproduction 0:05:20.000 --> 0:05:24.720 because they wanted to breed human alien hybrids? And why 0:05:24.760 --> 0:05:29.599 would they want to do that. David Jacobs wrote a 0:05:29.600 --> 0:05:35.080 book called The Threat, expanding on the hybrid theory UFO 0:05:35.160 --> 0:05:40.720 researcher Robert Schaefer. Basically, you know we are screwed is 0:05:40.760 --> 0:05:44.920 a message that Jakins gives. There is this superior intelligence 0:05:45.600 --> 0:05:50.000 that is moving, you know, at will in our skies invisibly, 0:05:50.360 --> 0:05:54.159 and is abducting us and sometimes doing terrible things to us, 0:05:54.320 --> 0:05:57.440 and we have absolutely no way of fight back, and 0:05:57.520 --> 0:06:00.760 we have absolutely no idea what their agenda is. The 0:06:00.760 --> 0:06:05.400 degree of paranoia in that book, it's amazing. This is 0:06:05.480 --> 0:06:10.760 David Jacobs from lecture. He begins by talking about what 0:06:10.880 --> 0:06:16.279 abductees reports seeing aboard alien crafts. Every time a person 0:06:16.400 --> 0:06:20.120 walks down the hallway, when they look at the various 0:06:20.200 --> 0:06:23.680 rooms that they're walking by on their way to the 0:06:23.760 --> 0:06:26.240 room that they're going into, what do they see in 0:06:26.279 --> 0:06:31.479 those rooms? Tables for these on them? I mean, we 0:06:31.520 --> 0:06:36.440 are looking at a program that is still in every 0:06:36.480 --> 0:06:41.359 conceivable way for the idea of of doctu evil for 0:06:41.400 --> 0:06:45.240 that purpose. Well, the interesting thing is because that when 0:06:45.279 --> 0:06:47.200 they have docte evil, they have got loads of people. 0:06:47.480 --> 0:06:49.080 Should they have got him one at a time into 0:06:49.120 --> 0:06:51.960 the small room, all of eceptom of table. But we 0:06:52.080 --> 0:06:56.240 see them as well with twenty people, fifty people, a 0:06:56.400 --> 0:07:00.279 hundred people, five hundred tables in a room them with 0:07:00.400 --> 0:07:03.640 people from them in an assembly line fashion. Yeah, and 0:07:03.680 --> 0:07:06.160 then do let's get them out, get our end? Do it? 0:07:06.320 --> 0:07:09.960 Get him out? Over and over again, And we think 0:07:10.200 --> 0:07:14.120 we are seeing this twenty four hours a day, seven 0:07:14.200 --> 0:07:16.680 days a week. We get away the month after month, 0:07:16.760 --> 0:07:22.160 year after year, decade after decade, around the world, and 0:07:22.320 --> 0:07:27.160 here Jacob's vision diverges from Hopkins and becomes very bleak. 0:07:28.640 --> 0:07:31.680 So I think that this is ultimately a program of 0:07:31.800 --> 0:07:36.840 integration into the society. The fact is, I think that 0:07:37.040 --> 0:07:39.480 the answer to the Harem paradox is answered by the 0:07:39.560 --> 0:07:43.080 UFO phenomenon. Where are they? They aren't here, And the 0:07:43.200 --> 0:07:47.240 answer to the other problem of hagonomyham counter colonizes as well. 0:07:47.920 --> 0:07:51.320 They probably are a colonized. This does appear to be 0:07:51.440 --> 0:07:57.600 integration or colonization program. John mac the third member of 0:07:57.600 --> 0:08:02.120 the troika, also acknowledged that creating hybrids was an integral 0:08:02.160 --> 0:08:05.920 part of the abduction phenomenon, but he had a much 0:08:05.960 --> 0:08:11.760 more optimistic, spiritual take on these encounters. Mac was somewhat 0:08:11.800 --> 0:08:14.560 new aging to help there here, to help us evolve, 0:08:14.800 --> 0:08:19.960 or something like that. Carol Rainey, a documentary filmmaker and 0:08:20.000 --> 0:08:23.560 the ex wife of Bud Hopkins, also noted the difference 0:08:23.640 --> 0:08:28.760 in Max's theory. He was definitely more interested in an 0:08:28.800 --> 0:08:35.400 extraterrestrial outreach program and something that would be a welcoming 0:08:35.679 --> 0:08:40.960 program for any beings who might approach the Earth. In 0:08:41.040 --> 0:08:46.600 his book Abduction Human Encounters with Aliens, Mac describes eight 0:08:46.640 --> 0:08:51.480 types of experiences that humans have with aliens. Each type 0:08:51.480 --> 0:08:55.360 appears to be related to human growth or transformation. He 0:08:55.480 --> 0:08:59.960 then writes, the result of all these experiences for abductive 0:09:00.040 --> 0:09:03.600 ease is the discovery of a new and altered sense 0:09:03.760 --> 0:09:07.000 of their place in the cosmic design, one that is 0:09:07.000 --> 0:09:11.360 more modest, respectful, and harmonious in relation to the Earth 0:09:11.520 --> 0:09:15.680 and its living systems. Emotions of awe, respect for the 0:09:15.720 --> 0:09:19.120 mystery of nature, and a heightened sense of the sacredness 0:09:19.160 --> 0:09:24.120 of the natural world are experienced along with deep sadness 0:09:24.160 --> 0:09:29.760 about the apparent hopelessness of Earth's environmental crisis. So you 0:09:29.840 --> 0:09:33.440 have Jacobs and Max staking out opposing ideas about the 0:09:33.480 --> 0:09:37.920 alien's intentions, with Howkins somewhere in the middle. But the 0:09:37.960 --> 0:09:40.400 one thing they do all agree on is that the 0:09:40.480 --> 0:09:46.000 alien program of producing hybrids is real. Author Terry matheson 0:09:47.120 --> 0:09:51.480 the whole notion of harvesting and creating an alien hybrid 0:09:51.840 --> 0:09:57.080 offspring is scientifically preposterous. I mean, I've taught the scientists 0:09:57.120 --> 0:09:59.559 and they just laugh, and they say that David Jacobs 0:09:59.559 --> 0:10:03.520 is a history orient Bud Hopkins was an abstract expressionist artist. 0:10:04.160 --> 0:10:08.280 They're not medical people. They're not scientists. No scientists would 0:10:08.320 --> 0:10:11.520 believe anything like this was even possible, and even if 0:10:11.559 --> 0:10:15.679 it were, as Whitley Streamer even pointed out in one 0:10:15.760 --> 0:10:19.120 of his books, he said, we humans could do a 0:10:19.200 --> 0:10:21.760 much better job in a much shorter period of time. 0:10:22.480 --> 0:10:25.280 We could grab a few people at random and study 0:10:25.360 --> 0:10:27.880 them and find out exactly how their systems worked and 0:10:27.920 --> 0:10:31.160 how they reproduced, and find out virtually all was to 0:10:31.280 --> 0:10:34.800 know about us physically in a fraction of the time. 0:10:35.000 --> 0:10:36.880 But these aliens are spending live an out of for 0:10:36.960 --> 0:10:41.040 over what fifty years? How did we get to this 0:10:41.120 --> 0:10:44.360 moment where a guy like David Jacobs is claiming that 0:10:44.440 --> 0:10:48.000 incredible numbers of people are being abducted and we are 0:10:48.040 --> 0:10:52.920 being colonized as we speak, by human alien hybrids. What 0:10:53.000 --> 0:10:58.520 are the incentives to create these bombastic claims? I mean, 0:10:58.559 --> 0:11:04.120 the thing is, there's almost no money in working the 0:11:04.280 --> 0:11:10.640 UFO research field unless you're doing regular gigs. Like standard 0:11:11.120 --> 0:11:13.920 Stan Freedman, who was a friend of mine. He knew 0:11:13.960 --> 0:11:16.760 how to market himself and he got gigs all over 0:11:16.800 --> 0:11:20.760 the world. Actually he kept a modest income coming in. 0:11:21.320 --> 0:11:24.560 Bud didn't do that. The way he worked was to 0:11:24.640 --> 0:11:31.520 have a really strong concept in Missing Time, and then 0:11:31.559 --> 0:11:35.520 he was only interested in cases after that that broke 0:11:35.640 --> 0:11:42.120 new ground. Missing Time was his first book published in 0:11:42.120 --> 0:11:44.680 In it, he presented the idea that there was a 0:11:44.760 --> 0:11:49.840 consistency among alien abduction claims, they granted them legitimacy and 0:11:49.880 --> 0:11:56.160 provided a basic common narrative. Six years later he published Intruders. 0:11:57.640 --> 0:12:01.840 The case in Intruders of all sorts of new ground 0:12:01.920 --> 0:12:06.680 in terms of him claiming to have discovered patterns. I 0:12:06.760 --> 0:12:10.480 guess in that case it would be the breeding pattern 0:12:11.000 --> 0:12:14.720 of abductees who would feel their eggs had been taken 0:12:14.920 --> 0:12:18.800 or the sperm had been harvested, and years later they'll 0:12:18.840 --> 0:12:22.920 be taken aboard a craft and they will see what 0:12:23.000 --> 0:12:27.400 they believe are their children, half alien a half human. 0:12:28.400 --> 0:12:31.280 You know, it began to get so weird to me 0:12:32.320 --> 0:12:36.400 that I would push back even more on how that 0:12:36.600 --> 0:12:41.360 knowledge came to be. Carol and Budd contemplated writing a 0:12:41.400 --> 0:12:44.960 book together. It would be based on her science background 0:12:45.280 --> 0:12:48.880 and research into how cutting edge technologies might illuminate the 0:12:49.000 --> 0:12:53.640 UFO phenomenon. We went to talk to a couple of 0:12:53.880 --> 0:12:56.920 editors at publishing houses. This must have been the early 0:12:56.960 --> 0:12:59.800 two thousand's. They said, don't come back unless you have 0:12:59.800 --> 0:13:03.760 a brand new, never seen before idea for a U 0:13:03.880 --> 0:13:08.840 a phone book. So the push is always for new, bigger, better, 0:13:09.080 --> 0:13:13.920 more outlandish. And I would say that Dave and Bud 0:13:14.000 --> 0:13:19.120 definitely delivered on that in each of their books. This 0:13:19.280 --> 0:13:23.360 same logic applied to the lecture circuit and UFO conferences 0:13:23.400 --> 0:13:27.240 where Hopkins would present cases. People don't want to come 0:13:27.280 --> 0:13:29.199 there and you know, pay to hear the same thing 0:13:29.280 --> 0:13:34.920 they've heard before. He was wanting cases that would further 0:13:35.320 --> 0:13:39.760 develop the narrative, or, as he might say, cases that 0:13:39.800 --> 0:13:44.680 would illuminate it further. This search for new cases that 0:13:44.720 --> 0:13:48.360 would advance the field led Hopkins to a woman whose 0:13:48.360 --> 0:13:52.000 story he would promote as the most complex ever investigated. 0:13:52.920 --> 0:14:05.400 After the break, strange arrivals will return in a moment. 0:14:21.000 --> 0:14:26.400 The search for new, bigger, more outlandish cases reached its 0:14:26.440 --> 0:14:30.040 apex when Bud Hopkins was contacted by a woman he 0:14:30.120 --> 0:14:35.240 identified by the pseudonym Linda Cortill. She had come across 0:14:35.280 --> 0:14:39.760 Hopkins book intruders in a bookstore, and it resurfaced hidden 0:14:39.840 --> 0:14:44.760 memories that she herself had been abducted from her Manhattan apartment. 0:14:45.800 --> 0:14:49.800 The case was unveiled at the Landmark Abduction Study Conference 0:14:50.040 --> 0:14:55.120 held at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. This was organized 0:14:55.120 --> 0:15:01.680 by Detroita. These guys still eve that they finally had 0:15:01.720 --> 0:15:03.640 all their ducks in a row and had lined up 0:15:03.680 --> 0:15:07.240 all their proof, and they had very basically, they invited 0:15:07.240 --> 0:15:10.760 the world in the invited journalists, They invited the different 0:15:10.800 --> 0:15:14.280 organizations that even invited the skeptics. And this was where 0:15:14.320 --> 0:15:19.040 they first announced or debuted, if you will, that big case, 0:15:19.160 --> 0:15:23.640 the case in all cases, which was the levitated Linda 0:15:23.720 --> 0:15:27.880 Case Linda, he was saying, Linda Courtill. She's a woman 0:15:27.920 --> 0:15:32.800 who lived in Manhattan near the Brooklyn Bridge, and supposedly 0:15:32.840 --> 0:15:38.480 the aliens abducted her outer window. From Carol Rainey's documentary 0:15:38.520 --> 0:15:43.720 and Progress, here's Bud Hopkins on the Brooklyn Bridge describing 0:15:43.720 --> 0:15:49.720 what happened. I'm standing at exactly the spot where this 0:15:49.920 --> 0:15:54.680 very strange event was seen on at three am really 0:15:54.720 --> 0:15:58.640 on November thirty nine. Woman is driving from Brooklyn to 0:15:58.720 --> 0:16:00.960 New York right down here in the outer lanes, with 0:16:01.080 --> 0:16:04.600 car engine died. The lights were now and she looked 0:16:04.600 --> 0:16:08.120 over to this building. One of the distance was a 0:16:08.160 --> 0:16:12.320 little pointed roof, and at that point she saw a 0:16:12.400 --> 0:16:14.800 burst of light as a UFO hovering only a few 0:16:14.840 --> 0:16:18.160 feet above it turned out all of its lights. Two 0:16:18.200 --> 0:16:21.320 small figures blow her and one above her. The light 0:16:21.440 --> 0:16:25.480 was intense. The woman was terrified and thought they must 0:16:25.520 --> 0:16:27.640 be making a movie. This is a film of some sort, 0:16:28.440 --> 0:16:32.160 and they the figures floated up into the UFO, and 0:16:32.240 --> 0:16:35.840 then the UFO changed its lights, zoomed out across the 0:16:35.960 --> 0:16:39.480 river and across the bridge. It disappeared, and the woman's 0:16:39.720 --> 0:16:42.880 car lights and engines started back up again, but this 0:16:43.000 --> 0:16:47.880 is the way it started for her that night. This 0:16:48.080 --> 0:16:51.480 is just the beginning. You can easily do an entire 0:16:51.600 --> 0:16:54.520 series on this story, so I'll try to lay out 0:16:54.560 --> 0:16:58.320 the basics. There's plenty on the internet if you want 0:16:58.320 --> 0:17:02.360 a more complete picture. I'm not going to evaluate the claims. 0:17:02.720 --> 0:17:04.800 I just want to give a sense of how wild 0:17:04.840 --> 0:17:10.080 this story gets. The early morning event was apparently witnessed 0:17:10.119 --> 0:17:13.480 by about two dozen people whose cars had stalled on 0:17:13.520 --> 0:17:17.600 the Brooklyn Bridge. Among them were two men named Richard 0:17:17.760 --> 0:17:22.160 and Dan. Their last names have never been revealed. They 0:17:22.160 --> 0:17:25.280 were officers in the New York City Police Department or 0:17:25.320 --> 0:17:29.480 possibly the Secret Service or even the CIA. It's not 0:17:29.720 --> 0:17:34.200 entirely clear. Regardless, there was a third person in the car, 0:17:34.960 --> 0:17:39.879 an important diplomat. They were escorting him down to a 0:17:40.000 --> 0:17:44.359 heliport in Lower Manhattan that night, and their car was 0:17:44.480 --> 0:17:50.760 stalled by the UFOs power train. A person whose name 0:17:50.880 --> 0:17:54.639 but didn't use was Perez the quay Are, the Secretary 0:17:54.720 --> 0:17:57.840 of the United Nations at the time. This was the 0:17:57.880 --> 0:18:03.600 story's biggest bombshell. Linda Cortillas abduction was actually witnessed by 0:18:03.720 --> 0:18:08.399 Javier Perez de Quare, a Peruvian diplomat who was the 0:18:08.440 --> 0:18:16.560 Secretary General of the United Nations. From later, Richard would 0:18:16.560 --> 0:18:20.679 tell Hopkins that he and Quare were also both actually abducted. 0:18:22.160 --> 0:18:28.040 Are not surprisingly disputes this. In a note fact to 0:18:28.119 --> 0:18:31.800 the PBS program Nova, which was doing an episode on 0:18:31.840 --> 0:18:37.639 hopkins abduction investigations, he wrote, I cannot but strongly deny 0:18:37.720 --> 0:18:40.520 the claim that I have had an abduction experience at 0:18:40.560 --> 0:18:44.879 any time. On several occasions, when questioned about the matter, 0:18:45.320 --> 0:18:49.679 I reiterated that these allegations were completely false, and I 0:18:49.720 --> 0:18:52.760 hope that this statement will definitely put an end to 0:18:52.920 --> 0:18:58.960 these unfounded rumors. Things got still stranger from there. Richard 0:18:59.000 --> 0:19:03.360 and Dan became cessed with Linda. Twice they kidnapped her 0:19:03.359 --> 0:19:07.000 off the streets of New York. The second time, Dan 0:19:07.080 --> 0:19:10.160 tried to drown her in the Atlantic Ocean and might 0:19:10.200 --> 0:19:14.520 have succeeded if Richard hadn't stopped him. Richard, you see, 0:19:14.920 --> 0:19:18.600 was in love with her. There's plenty more in this vein. 0:19:19.480 --> 0:19:23.520 Quare gave Cortill's son an antique diving helmet as a gift. 0:19:24.440 --> 0:19:27.639 Linda found out that her red blood cells, or some 0:19:27.760 --> 0:19:31.920 of them at least, were immortal. It's worth noting that 0:19:32.000 --> 0:19:36.040 Hopkins never met Richard or Dan, communicating with them only 0:19:36.119 --> 0:19:40.280 by phone or letter. But despite the sensational nature of 0:19:40.320 --> 0:19:45.280 this story, Hopkins apparently held back even stranger material that 0:19:45.359 --> 0:19:50.600 he thought might undermine Linda's credibility. There was so much 0:19:50.880 --> 0:19:56.360 cherry picking that Bud did. Let's say Linda meeting with 0:19:56.440 --> 0:20:00.680 the Pope and the Pope knew all about her story 0:20:00.960 --> 0:20:06.240 and abducted her in a in one of the popemobiles 0:20:06.320 --> 0:20:09.520 or a black car to take her down to wherever 0:20:09.560 --> 0:20:12.840 he was staying when he came to visit in yes 0:20:12.960 --> 0:20:17.480 the early nineties, but did not include that story because 0:20:17.520 --> 0:20:20.960 it was pretty over the top that Linda Cortilla was 0:20:21.000 --> 0:20:25.000 invited by the Pope to come be the ambassador to 0:20:25.480 --> 0:20:28.679 extraterrestrials and that she would have to live at the 0:20:28.760 --> 0:20:34.480 Vatican and leave New York City. Blah blah blah. It's 0:20:34.520 --> 0:20:38.040 hard to imagine that Hopkins didn't harbor doubts about at 0:20:38.080 --> 0:20:41.719 least parts of this story. The fact that he withheld 0:20:41.760 --> 0:20:47.000 potentially embarrassing information seems to confirm this. It's the kind 0:20:47.040 --> 0:20:50.440 of incredible story that requires strong evidence if you want 0:20:50.440 --> 0:20:54.440 people to take it seriously. So why invest so much 0:20:54.520 --> 0:20:59.200 in Linda Cortilla. He wanted so badly to prove what 0:20:59.320 --> 0:21:03.560 he believed to be happening. He wanted to prove that 0:21:03.640 --> 0:21:09.800 it was actually happening, and that he had evidence. This 0:21:09.920 --> 0:21:15.480 general credulous nous lead to more high profile embarrassments. A 0:21:15.520 --> 0:21:19.160 two thousand and one Time magazine article on John Mac 0:21:19.880 --> 0:21:23.320 featured the story of Donna Bassett, a Boston based writer. 0:21:24.600 --> 0:21:28.760 She made up a multi generational history of UFO interactions, 0:21:29.440 --> 0:21:33.080 sent it to Mac, and was brought in for hypnotic regression. 0:21:34.400 --> 0:21:37.720 She said that she faked a trance, that Mac asked 0:21:37.720 --> 0:21:42.280 her leading questions that she answered to his satisfaction. From 0:21:42.320 --> 0:21:47.560 the Time magazine article, among other recollections, she told of 0:21:47.600 --> 0:21:51.199 an encounter with John F. Kennedy and Nikita Khrushchoff on 0:21:51.280 --> 0:21:55.080 board a spaceship during the Cuban missile crisis. Bassett said 0:21:55.119 --> 0:21:58.280 Kruschof was crying and that I sat in his lap 0:21:58.320 --> 0:22:00.439 and I put my arms around his net and I 0:22:00.520 --> 0:22:04.200 told him it would be okay. Hearing her tale, Mac 0:22:04.280 --> 0:22:06.920 became so excited that he leaned on the bed too 0:22:06.920 --> 0:22:12.440 heavily and it collapsed. Hopkins, too fell prey to hoaxer's 0:22:13.560 --> 0:22:17.000 A man named Jim Mortarello claimed to have been admitted 0:22:17.040 --> 0:22:20.639 to an emergency room with injuries from a harrowing abduction. 0:22:21.880 --> 0:22:24.639 He also convinced Hopkins that a group of doctors and 0:22:24.800 --> 0:22:27.639 Upstate New York, We're going to conduct a study of 0:22:27.680 --> 0:22:32.840 patients under their care who showed physical signs of abduction experiences. 0:22:33.880 --> 0:22:38.280 This was not true, nor were any of his other claims, 0:22:38.320 --> 0:22:40.639 including that he had been the marketing director for the 0:22:40.760 --> 0:22:46.320 Japanese electronics company had Tachi. In the end, his lives 0:22:46.359 --> 0:22:49.439 became too much for the board of advisors that in 0:22:49.560 --> 0:22:55.359 theory oversaw Hopkins research for advisors resigned and those that 0:22:55.440 --> 0:22:59.840 remained forced Hopkins to post a letter acknowledging Mortarello's deception 0:23:02.880 --> 0:23:08.320 of the Linda Cortilla case. Schaefer says, just obvious, made 0:23:08.400 --> 0:23:11.639 up stories. It really had backfired on them in a 0:23:11.680 --> 0:23:16.159 big way. This story just grew so huge and so preposterous, 0:23:16.160 --> 0:23:18.520 and they basically had left the store on this thing. 0:23:19.040 --> 0:23:21.840 From that point on, it was pretty hard for anyone 0:23:21.880 --> 0:23:26.240 to take the Troy get too terribly seriously. The hoaxes 0:23:26.280 --> 0:23:31.639 that followed cemented this judgment. Carol believes that hopkins refusal 0:23:31.760 --> 0:23:34.720 to allow oversight from the board of advisors was a 0:23:34.720 --> 0:23:39.720 critical component of his eventual loss of credibility. It's just 0:23:39.880 --> 0:23:44.359 that but had a very strong tool he might have used, 0:23:44.400 --> 0:23:50.119 which was the Intruders Foundation Advisory Board, and they could 0:23:50.200 --> 0:23:54.240 have prevented him from going so far into the weeds 0:23:54.840 --> 0:23:58.919 with the Linda Cortilla case, with the Jim more Laro case. 0:23:59.520 --> 0:24:05.679 That more of advisors was amazing group of very diverse people, 0:24:06.160 --> 0:24:11.959 but smart people. A medical writer and engineer, someone in marketing, 0:24:12.240 --> 0:24:17.440 a musician and astronomer. They were strong, smart people who 0:24:17.440 --> 0:24:21.239 had hoped that Bud was going to share what he 0:24:21.640 --> 0:24:26.560 learned about how to research this phenomenon. So there were 0:24:26.600 --> 0:24:29.800 people with a broad enough background that if he had 0:24:29.840 --> 0:24:34.120 allowed them to guide his research, it would have been 0:24:34.640 --> 0:24:38.520 so much better for everybody. But he would not permit 0:24:38.680 --> 0:24:43.560 any oversight of his cases, and of course Dave Jacobs 0:24:43.560 --> 0:24:47.920 didn't either. Each of those two men worked entirely on 0:24:47.960 --> 0:24:52.640 their own. Occasionally they would have someone come sit in 0:24:52.680 --> 0:24:56.159 on a session or two, but that wasn't necessarily the 0:24:56.240 --> 0:24:59.920 standard way they did things when that person was there watching. 0:25:00.760 --> 0:25:04.800 It's just a missed opportunity and a sadness because after 0:25:05.280 --> 0:25:09.600 a few other hoaxes, came down the pike. The advisory 0:25:09.640 --> 0:25:13.520 committee just said, we can't support you going around and 0:25:13.800 --> 0:25:18.000 speaking at conferences about cases that we believe are not valid, 0:25:18.320 --> 0:25:21.600 that we believe our hoaxes, and we would like to 0:25:21.640 --> 0:25:26.640 have one or two of our advisory board members work 0:25:26.760 --> 0:25:31.200 with you on cases. Bud was only willing to give 0:25:31.280 --> 0:25:34.280 them access to the tapes, but he would take a 0:25:34.320 --> 0:25:38.919 trip to the museum while they listened to it. In 0:25:40.119 --> 0:25:44.480 Hopkins died from cancer. John mac was struck and killed 0:25:44.480 --> 0:25:47.480 by a drunk driver in two thousand and four while 0:25:47.480 --> 0:25:51.760 he was in London to give a lecture. David Jacobs 0:25:51.760 --> 0:25:56.600 is still alive and apparently continuing abduction research. He did 0:25:56.600 --> 0:26:01.040 not respond to my requests for an interview. I asked 0:26:01.040 --> 0:26:05.080 Carol what Hopkins believed the aliens wanted from us. I 0:26:05.160 --> 0:26:08.320 found her answer very poignant, and it made me think 0:26:08.320 --> 0:26:12.040 of how Betty Andreas inframed her abduction narrative to reflect 0:26:12.080 --> 0:26:16.200 her personal beliefs. The beings who were coming to us 0:26:16.560 --> 0:26:23.080 either needed our resources, which were Bud certainly believed were 0:26:23.080 --> 0:26:29.920 our humanist resources, our ability to be empathetic, our ability 0:26:30.000 --> 0:26:33.000 to love our children and to love other people in 0:26:33.040 --> 0:26:36.439 our lives, and to take care of them. Bud was 0:26:36.440 --> 0:26:40.320 a humanist, abub all things. He really was, and that's 0:26:40.359 --> 0:26:45.160 the quality I loved in him. I think about Hopkins 0:26:45.720 --> 0:26:49.600 an artist, looking at the way that technology was changing 0:26:49.640 --> 0:26:54.359 our world, making it into a colder, more dispassionate place, 0:26:55.680 --> 0:26:59.679 seemingly eroding the prominence of art and empathy and our 0:26:59.760 --> 0:27:04.359 humanistic culture. It's not hard to envision his concept of 0:27:04.400 --> 0:27:08.040 the abduction phenomenon as a kind of metaphor for the 0:27:08.160 --> 0:27:12.520 fear that this new reality might have provoked in him. 0:27:12.560 --> 0:27:14.960 I don't believe that humans are being abducted by the 0:27:15.040 --> 0:27:19.080 thousands and used to create hybrids, but I do find 0:27:19.080 --> 0:27:22.760 this fear of the way our culture is changing very reasonable. 0:27:25.240 --> 0:27:28.359 With the Troika now largely out of the picture, what 0:27:28.520 --> 0:27:32.200 is the state of abduction research today? What does science 0:27:32.240 --> 0:27:35.439 tell us about the difference between the psychology of people 0:27:35.520 --> 0:27:39.960 prone to belief and people prone to skepticism? How should 0:27:40.000 --> 0:27:45.760 we evaluate extraordinary claims next time on the season finale 0:27:46.040 --> 0:27:53.760 of Strange Arrivals. Strange Arrivals is a production of I 0:27:53.880 --> 0:27:57.400 Heart Radio and Grim and Mild from Aaron Manky. This 0:27:57.440 --> 0:28:00.439 episode was written and hosted by Toby Bowl and produced 0:28:00.440 --> 0:28:04.840 by Miranda Hawkins and Josh Thane, with executive producers Alex Williams, 0:28:04.920 --> 0:28:08.560 Matt Frederick and Aaron Manky. Betty Hill was portrayed by 0:28:08.640 --> 0:28:14.560 Gina Rickike. Barney Hill was portrayed by Jason Williams. Special 0:28:14.600 --> 0:28:17.440 thanks to the Miln's Special Collections and Archives at the 0:28:17.520 --> 0:28:21.560 University of New Hampshire, John Horrigan, w y C h 0:28:22.560 --> 0:28:26.160 A M in Norwich, Connecticut, John White, and David O'Leary, 0:28:26.520 --> 0:28:30.680 the executive producer of the History Channel's dramatic series Project 0:28:30.680 --> 0:28:33.560 blue Book. Learn more about the show over at Grimm 0:28:33.560 --> 0:28:37.119 and Mile dot com. For more podcasts from iHeart Radio, 0:28:37.200 --> 0:28:40.800 visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you 0:28:40.880 --> 0:28:42.240 listen to your favorite shows.