Some Thoughts on Budd Hopkins

By Peter Robbins 
 

It was February of 1975 when my sister Helen first talked to me about her very conscious memories of a childhood UFO abduction experience. The circumstance which triggered it was my decision to ask her what she remembered about the UFO sighting we had had together as children. Her insistent account shocked me more than anything we had ever discussed and I wanted desperately not to believe it. However, given the fact that we had always been very close and quite devoted to each other, I knew as well as I could know that she was telling me the truth as best she remembered it.

Overnight my life took an extremely abrupt turn. I went from actively pursuing my dream of being a professional painter and almost complete immersion in the New York City art world, to someone obsessed with trying to reconcile what had happened to their sister and learning all I could about the phenomena behind it. In the mid seventies the serious study of UFO related abductions was still some years away, and with the rarest exceptions, completely absent from the world of talk shows, documentaries or the news. Perhaps it was the fact that as artists we already saw ourselves as outsiders of a sort, but neither of us chose to hide our growing interest in the subject. Helen was willing to talk about her all too conscious childhood memories with friends and family in a frank and open manner, and I began to read UFO books one after another as their disc shapes increasingly came to dominate my paintings, drawings and small sculptures. I even made two new friends, then a third who shared my growing interest.

In 1976 the weekly newspaper The Village Voice published a surprisingly serious and well written article about a UFO incident which had occurred a year earlier, just across the river in New Jersey. There was no way I could have known, but it was Budd's first article on the subject. I was surprised to learn that it had been written by a fellow painter, and with uncharacteristic impulsivity I cold called him once I'd completed the article. The upshot of this was an invitation to come by for coffee which I did a few days later. This was how I met Budd Hopkins.

I knew that The School of Visual Arts (where I was a painting instructor) was always on the lookout for interesting speakers and in 1977 Budd and I were invited to give our first ever UFO talks together for their student body on the stage of the SVA auditorium.

We remained in regular contact as we developed our respective research and investigations over the next five years, a time which saw the research community continue to focus its collective attention on the UFOs themselves, this while Budd quietly began his study of the intelligences themselves, and of their abduction related interactions with human beings. Missing Time was the result of this study and was published in 1981. It established Budd as the leading figure in this fledgling area of investigation and public reaction to this book changed his life forever. Readers who knew, remembered or suspected that they had had experiences similar to those described in Missing Time began to call and write - for advice, for an appointment, or because they knew that here was someone who would actually listen to their accounts and fears without automatically dismissing them as delusional or worse. Most difficult of all, they would call and write to tell him what they feared was happening to their children as well as to themselves. Budd met with as many of these people as possible, even to the extent that his personal time became less and less his own.

I began working for Budd in the early 1980s. My assignments changed from visit to visit depending on what needed attention and included straightening up in the studio, fielding calls, taking messages and running errands, filing and logging in recorded interviews as well as the endless audiocassettes he continues to employ in recording every hypnotic regression he has conducted. My responsibilities expanded to ultimately include fact checking, proof reading, investigation, reading and responding to letters, meeting and interviewing possible abductees, attending most support group meetings and witnessing hypnotic regressions.

I've begun this tract in the manner I have because I think that the reader is entitled to know about this part of my background prior to hearing anything I may have to say about the recent multipronged allegations leveled against Budd by his former wife Carol Rainey. Some may feel my experience has given me a particularly unique insight into Budd's work, professional ethics, and the man himself. Others may hold that, given my open respect and admiration for him, I am subject to a bias in his favor, or worse, that I might be more concerned with my own place and standing in this matter and as such seek to make the facts conform to a kinder or more idealized characterization then is necessarily true. To such people I can only say that over the thirty plus years I've been involved in this field as an investigator, researcher, writer, public speaker and author, I have prided myself on working without an agenda from case to case and have always put the truth of what I've been able to uncover or establish before anything else. I have never lied in my work and writing or knowingly misrepresented the work of anyone else and have no intention of beginning to do so now, for Budd Hopkins or for anyone else.

The comments which Carol has leveled against Budd call into serious question his character, objectivity, motives, and methodology as well as the validity of the UFO abduction phenomenon itself. She has also chosen to use this opportunity to attack the credibility and motivations of Linda Cortile, an abductee who was the subject of one of Budd's most significant investigations.

Undermining Abduction Studies

In all of the years I've known Carol I have never once heard her express the opinion that the abduction phenomenon itself might be specious or that a healthy percentage of the alleged abductees themselves were faking their experiences or memories. However, one of the bombs she drops in her piece is that she now feels that abduction studies and accounts are "afloat with hoaxes." To the best of my knowledge nothing is actually further from the truth and this has been reflected in the work of every serious abduction researcher and published study I have read or am aware of. In fact the incidence of hoaxing is all but nonexistent. Of course such things have occurred, as have errors among sincerely motivated investigators including Budd, Dr. David Jacobs, and the late Dr. John Mack – who by the way administered standard psychological testing to alleged abductees and found that the incidence of pathology or duplicity among them was absolutely identical to the results shown in similar tests administered to the public at large. Suggesting that the field is rift with hoaxers is simply not true.

Methodology, Ethics and Motivations

Carol suggests that in the Brooklyn Bridge abduction case (alternatively known as The Linda Case), Budd and Linda cooked up her lifelong history of abductions as a way to make a fast (or maybe not so fast) buck via a movie deal to be based on selling the option to Witnessed: The True Story of the Brooklyn Bridge UFO Abductions. This would be laughable to me if it wasn't so infuriating. I happened to have been in the office on the day Linda first visited Budd to discuss her fragmented but conscious memories of her abductions, this in late December 1989, and assisted Budd throughout the long investigation which followed – Witnessed was published in 1996.

For me, Linda was and remains as authentic as they come and never once have I felt that guile was her motivator.

Almost every author of a book which has the potential to be made into a film would like to see this outcome, myself very much included, and at a certain point in the development of Witnessed Budd and Linda sat down and drew up an agreement which would govern her sharing in the profits of such a venture, should it ever come to pass. That was it. To suggest that this somehow be interpreted as the basis of a concocted abduction history is just not true and I am surprised that Carol resorts to such an underhanded suggestion.

And relative to being motivated by money, the reader should be aware that out of the more than seven hundred individuals who have undergone hypnotic regression with Budd - many of whom have been regressed on numerous occasions - he has never once asked any of them for any sort of payment whatsoever. This includes the hundreds of additional people who Budd has given uncounted hours of his time to, in his office, at conferences, or while visiting them in their homes. Hopkins addresses his own methodology and ethics better than I could ever do in his newly published article, Deconstructing the Debunkers: A Response which everyone concerned with this debate should certainly read.

Undermining Linda Cortile and the Brooklyn Bridge UFO Incident

During the years Budd was actually working with Linda I saw Carol befriend her, film her on a number of occasions and certainly support her allegations of abduction. But in her article, Carol goes out of her way to undermine Linda's credibility and character, in effect suggesting that she masterminded an incredibly complex hoax which would have had to involve no fewer than twenty individuals (and her young son), all of whom freely gave their accounts (and often drawings) at no financial or other kind of benefit to themselves concerning what remains the best documented multiply witnessed UFO abduction in history. Carol looks down on Linda's boring life as a high school educated mother and wife in comparison to her own active life as a documentary filmmaker and leaves us to believe that Linda was colluding with Hopkins or a victim of his malicious intentions.

Linda told me recently that a few months ago, Carol sent her a registered letter asking if she might continue to film Linda for the documentary she is now at work on, which, according to her website, serves the purpose of discrediting Budd and most likely the Linda case as well. Linda, of course, did not know at the time that Carol now thinks she's a hoaxer, and Carol certainly didn't state that in her letter. Had Linda agreed, I can only wonder how this footage might have been employed along with that she has already shot when she and Budd were together.

As stated, I've known Linda Cortile (her last name is a pseudonym) since 1989 and continue to think of her as a dear and close friend. Yes, Linda is a mother and has been married to her husband Steve since she was just out of high school. They have raised two sons together, both of whom have grown into fine and decent men and given her two grandchildren who she cares for regularly. Linda is also a woman of extraordinary character who has faced adversity throughout her life, not just as an abductee, or as a caring parent when an accident left one of her children near death after his car was hit by a semi, but as a survivor of the World Trade Center catastrophe. Four of her and Steve's relatives who worked in the complex were not as fortunate and their loss was as devastating as we can imagine.

Following a period of extraordinary and understandable depression, she somehow found it in herself to volunteer for the arduous job of being one of a handful of specially trained Red Cross workers whose assignment was to accompany family members from around the world who lost loved ones in the cataclysm, down into the pit that had been the site of the towers and to stay with them throughout their mourning and personal ordeals, then to escorting them out and into the hands of the wonderful professional support team which the Red Cross had in place at the time. There is nothing about Linda or her life that is banal or mundane, and she is as fully engaged in living it as anyone I have ever met is in living theirs. The values she lives her life by are ones I certainly respect, and which Carol might benefit from considering. But please do not take my word for the veracity of the Brooklyn Bridge abductions investigation. You can find a used copy of Witnessed on line for a few dollars or may have a friend who can loan it to you. It's also in the collections of some libraries. I only ask that you read it and decide where the truth lies for yourself.

Budd Hopkins Use of Hypnotic Regression: Ethical of Manipulative?

I was asked to witness a number of hypnotic regressions during the years I worked for Budd, either by him or the subject or by both of them, but always with the subject's full approval. I cannot say how many times I was called upon to do this, but can safely say I did so between ten and twenty times. As a beginning practitioner, Budd worked under the watchful eye of the respected hypnotherapist Aprhrodite Clamar for seven long years, then under the guidance of other professional hypnotherapists as well. His patience, sensitivity and concern for his subjects is extraordinary and it was not unusual for him to take up to half an hour to make sure that the subject was as relaxed as possible before asking them a first question. Transcripts of some of these sessions are included in his books and are very worth reading. Additionally, the complete transcript (including both questions and answers) of the long and memorable session he conducted with Larry Warren, my co-author of Left At East Gate is included in that book and is exemplary of the manner in which Hopkins conducts this aspect of his work.

The Women's Issue

In his defense of Budd and critique of Carol's article, the highly regarded author Jerome Clark takes Carol's actions to task as those of a disgruntled ex-wife. Carol responded that such a criticism was an example of standard knee jerk misogynist comments often leveled against women in yet one more male dominated field, an argument I categorically respect, except that in this case I agree with Jerry. Male ufologists have been as guilty of this offence as men in any field, and should rightly be taken to task for it when they do. Ufology is the richer for the contributions made by an outstanding cadre of intelligent, articulate and courageous women and a shining example is the Women In Ufology Web site. I only hope that more are welcomed into the field in the future. I placed Carol herself in this category based on her collaboration with Budd in their book, Sight Unseen. I only wish that she had continued to hold herself to the level of investigation and research she manifested there rather than that exhibited in her current writing. Yes, women are regularly maligned in the manner she suggests, but from where I sit she has not made a credible argument for this being the case here.

Helen

My late sister Helen was, among many other things, an abductee who struggled with her anger over what had been done to her by the intelligences behind the abduction phenomenon, and was also someone who benefitted tremendously from her regressive hypnosis with Budd, as well as from the many support group meetings she attended, some of which Budd has specifically established just for women. Helen did not make a lifestyle out of it however and at a certain point struck out on her own to continue following her dream of being a singer songwriter and a truly gifted and electrifying performer. Budd's tastes in music run from the big bands to great jazz to the classical and I still have to smile at the level of support he offered her when he would be a part of the audience at CBGBs for one of her earsplitting punk rock shows. I know that he despises this genre of music, but loved my sister and wanted to support her in her pursuits. My family and I will always be in his debt for the unique assistance which helped Helen to live the incredibly full life she did, rather than being at effect of what might or might not happen to her in her bedroom in the middle of some dark, unannounced night. I note this here to again establish that I am far from fully objective in my critique of Carol's article, but also to wonder out loud that in a subject "afloat with hoaxes," if Carol also feels that Helen lied about her experiences (to what end I do not know) along with Linda Cortile and apparently so many others. 

Let me close by saying that I have disliked every minute it has taken to think through and write down these remarks. I take no pleasure in criticizing someone I once considered a friend.

I have no doubt that if humanity is not extinguished by some natural or manmade cataclysm, there will come a time in the future when students studying the history of the late Twentieth and early Twenty First Centuries will learn about that tiny but dedicated group of individuals, like Hopkins, Jacobs and Mack, who put the trajectory of their otherwise normal, comfortable lives aside and sacrificed a great deal to study and learn about the presence which has invaded the day to day lives or uncounted numbers of people who live with the reality of UFO abduction, and then did their utmost to teach the rest of us about the seriousness and implications of that reality. How extraordinary to appreciate the gravity of this historic moment, to understand that those who rise to such historic imperatives have routinely been trashed by their detractors throughout human history, and that their names and their work will live on long after those of their critics have been forgotten.

Thank you Budd - for your friendship, for the things I've learned working with you all of these years, for helping to keep me laughing when I did not think it was possible, but most of all for your pioneering efforts which have helped the rest of us see and grasp the nature of what truly confronts us. -- Peter Robbins, February 2011