|
|
Over the past eighteen years I've worked intensively with many hundreds of people who have described to me their bizarre experiences with the occupants of UFOs. I've received letters and phone calls from thousands more, and have interviewed abductees in places as far from my native New York as Rio de Janeiro and Brisbane, Australia. During these years of travel and research I've sensed, in those reporting such encounters, an enormous degree of pain and confusion and terror. For the most part, the nature of my work cannot be characterized as happy, though it is always deeply rewarding to provide support and understanding and some degree of healing for a suffering fellow human being. But one of the distinct advantages I've found in doing this kind of work is my vivid awareness of the extraordinary bravery, intelligence and strength possessed by so very many abductees. Despite their harrowing, lifelong UFO experiences, most retain their optimism, their resilience, and even their sense of humor. Simply said, over these long years I've met many beautiful souls. If the aliens are, as I suspect, attempting to bolster their apparently anemic emotional and spiritual resources by studying those qualities in the men and women they abduct, they're doing at least something right. Katharina Wilson, embodying as she does a powerful morality, a natural wisdom and a deeply human spirituality, provides an ideal example for her student captors. If the aliens can learn from any of us, what they can learn from Katharina is of the highest importance. Anyone lucky enough to know her or to read her book will know exactly what I mean. I first met Katharina in April, 1988, as she describes in her Chapter Four, "The Awakening." My first impression was of a very lovely, shy and gentle young woman who radiated feelings of vulnerability and warmth. As we talked it became evident to me that she had been deeply hurt by something in her life-perhaps by several somethings-and that the process of healing would be anything but instantaneous. But I also realized that she had an enormous advantage in that Erik, her husband-to-be, was completely supportive of her desire to explore her experiences, no matter where they led. A steady support-system at home is one of an abductee's most important assets, and Erik's love for her has obviously been deeply sustaining. The proof of the huge distance Katharina has traveled between then and now can be easily demonstrated. The strong, forthright woman she has become, the clear-hearted writer who faces the world and fearlessly tells her complex, painful story, is light years away from the shy young woman I met nearly six years ago. At some point during that first meeting she nervously handed me two sheets of paper; on one she had listed what she labeled her "Good" qualities and situations, and on the other, her "Bad." Knowing that the UFO abduction experience tends to engender a low self-esteem, I was not surprised that such a bright and beautiful young woman would present such a sad self-evaluation. Her words form a near-perfect picture of the typical abductee personality. First, printed in a neat and careful hand, Katharina listed her "negative" qualities:
Revealing as this "negative" list may be, Katharina's list of "Good" features also demonstrates problems of self esteem in her insistent modesty and in her tendency to ascribe her own good features to others. Her shorter and not entirely "positive" list goes as follows:
This was Katharina in the Spring of 1988, at the very beginning of a long, complex, unsettling voyage of exploration. The history of that voyage and what led up to it is the subject of this courageous book. But before leaving this illuminating list of personal strengths and weaknesses, I would like to mention one theme which seems to be of particular importance: the author's concern for the welfare of animals. In fact, she devotes a great deal of attention to this subject in The Alien Jigsaw, and is currently caring for many cats and a dog at her Portland home. Over the years, I have found that many abductees seem to feel an unusually strong sense of identification with animals, and with their own pets-dogs and cats-in particular. One woman told me that she never left the house without first hiring a baby-sitter for her two dogs, a Beagle and a terrier of some kind. When I asked why she felt this highly unusual need, she answered that she was always afraid something dreadful would happen to her dogs if they were left alone in the house. "I was terrified that someone would break in and carry them off." For abductees, the issue seems to be primarily one of projection; having been taken oneself, one fears the pets will be taken too. As Katharina wrote in her list, she is afraid to leave the house "for fear something terrible will happen to my cats." Another abductee told me that the sight of his dog being inoculated on the veterinarian's metal table brought back the image of himself lying helpless on just such a cold surface inside a UFO; the sudden memory brought him to the edge of tears. It might be said that only someone who has experienced complete physical subjugation at the hands of a "stronger species" can fully imagine and identify with the powerlessness of a dog or cat at the hands of a human being. Ironically, abductees may therefore be the most caring pet owners of all in our traditionally pet-loving land. Many of the memories, dreams, abduction experiences and speculative ideas which Katharina presents in The Alien Jigsaw will be familiar to those acquainted with the UFO abduction literature, but some will be quite unfamiliar. One such experience is the subject of Chapter Three, titled "The Loss." It has to do with her sudden inability to perform musically after having devoted eight years to the study of wind instruments. She describes what she sees as the direct, unexpected and unwanted result of a UFO experience in this way: "Something had happened to me. The bright yellow light did something to me. It seemed as though a part of my life had ended, but I could not bring myself to believe it or accept it...I started practicing in my room instead of the music school because I didn't want anyone to hear how bad I sounded...The abrupt change of direction with my music career had repercussions that extended into what I believed I could and could not accomplish in my life...[it made] my confidence dwindle. I cannot imagine that these Beings understand the pain they cause in people's lives." Katharina goes on to relate that after she had told me about her sudden loss of musical skill, I told her of a very similar case in which a young woman with a promising career in popular music suddenly lost her ability to sing after a UFO encounter. These kinds of experiences are not known to the general public and we can be thankful that they are apparently rare; in fact, I'm quite sure that such abduction sequelae are being discussed in print here for the first time in The Alien Jigsaw. I'm aware of only a handful of such cases, incidents which suggest a long-term alien control over the lives and careers of certain people, the purpose of which is unknown. The reason I've never presented this type of report is simple: The problems abduction experiencers routinely face are difficult at best, so I've felt no need to add to their burden of fear by suggesting still other-rarer-patterns of disturbing alien activity. And yet, because Katharina has fully and openly described her musical loss in The Alien Jigsaw, some readers may find both relief and answers to old and deeply personal mysteries. Truth, no matter how unsettling, always contains the seeds of its own resolution. Many things Katharina recounts in The Alien Jigsaw are controversial and readers will not necessarily agree about the meaning of all that she presents. But virtually all abductees and UFO researchers will recognize in her account the complex textures and emotions of the abduction experience, rendered with clarity and truth. There are open questions and unsettled feelings, however, which will always be endemic to this kind of many-leveled encounter: What is literally real and happening in our hard-edged world? What is a dream? What is a mixed experience, a blend of dream-like metaphor and hard-surfaced reality? What is basically an alien-staged or alien-imposed image, a false picture designed to elicit emotion through imitation of the literal, the actual? When do Katharina's own hopes and fears color her memories and subtly alter their content? Is there a government agency playing mind-games with hapless abductees for some nefarious purpose? Are the aliens actually involved with a government agency, or are they merely simulating such a connection to further some study or experiment? Each of us will have to decide these things individually as we read this fascinating and deeply honest book. But what we can easily agree upon is the warmth and sincerity of its author and the authenticity of her feelings. That Katharina has suffered at the hands of the aliens, no one can doubt. That she has grown spiritually and emotionally in the years since she first began to explore her experiences is also self-evident. Is that growth, as some would say, a gift to her from the aliens, as if she were an empty vessel into which they have poured wisdom and strength? Perhaps, but I incline far more fervently to the idea that her growth is the result of her own reactions to the troubling UFO experiences she's known since childhood. Her resourcefulness has been able to flourish partly because of the support she's received from her loving husband, from her family, friends and many in the UFO research community, a fact she generously acknowledges in these pages. The Alien Jigsaw is written with unadorned simplicity. The author's calm and modest voice is one that we immediately and intuitively accept as authoritative. We are fortunate, too, in that Katharina is able to create drawings which clearly and dramatically illustrate her UFO abductions. Though her experiences with non-human intelligences are vividly presented in words and pictures, for me the most personally rewarding aspect of her book has to do with its remarkable author. I cannot help but remember this frightened young woman I met in the spring of 1988, and marvel at the heroine she has become. Budd Hopkins, New York, December 1993. |
