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I was born
in Ottumwa, Iowa in 1942. I received my B.S. degree in experimental
psychology at the University of Iowa and a Master's degree in experimental
psychology at Lehigh University. Four years later I went back to
school to obtain a degree in math at Michigan Tech University specifically
to begin a career in computers. I have worked in the computer industry
for the past 21 years. I currently work as a systems analyst. I
live in Schaumburg, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago. I have two sons,
ages 28 and 30, with my late husband, a retired Ph.D. structural
engineer. Our eldest son is a programmer like me and our younger
son is completing his Ph.D. in electrical engineering, following
the path of his father.
I have been
interested in UFOs all of my life. My first consciously remembered
encounter with other-worldly Beings is from the age of two and a
half. It was not until four years ago that I became actively involved
in the UFO movement. A significant event at that time caused me
to want to remember more of my UFO related experiences. This event
propelled me into a course of action that seemed to fulfill an educational
purpose. I joined MUFON as a research specialist in 1992, and I
am on the board of directors of Operation Right To Know. In 1993,
I demonstrated in front of the White House to encourage our government
to end UFO secrecy.
Frequent ongoing
visitations prompted me to form a support group for other people
like me. The name of our group is the Chicago Area Center for Encounter
Support. I have been dedicated to promoting public awareness for
the past four years. In 1994, I organized and funded an outdoor
event at the Kluczynski Federal Building plaza and lectures at the
Field Museum. Our speakers were Robert Dean and Stanton Friedman.
I organized and funded a similar event in 1995, at the Federal Building,
College of DuPage, and the Museum of Science and Industry. Our speakers
in 1995, were John Carpenter, Yvonne Smith, Katharina Wilson, and Edward
Carlos, Ph.D.

The reason I was prompted to write about the Being pictured here
is because I was immediately drawn to the cover of the September/October,
1994, issue of IUR (International UFO Reporter). I was very interested
in Kelly Cahill's description of the black Being as "a hole
in matter." Though Kelly's account of this Being was the first
I remembered seeing in the literature, I believe this entity type
may be more commonly encountered than reports suggest. Motivated
by Kelly's description and sketch, I wrote to a fellow experiencer
to relate my encounter with the dark, shadowy figure. As I was writing,
he called to talk about his own encounter thirty-some years earlier
with the same type of Being. He was reminded of this incident after
being contacted by Kelly. Although we were both fully aware of this
entity type in our lives, we had not yet got around to discussing
it even after exchanging voluminous correspondence about our experiences.
I had never felt a strong desire until now to learn more about this
Being, perhaps because of its vagueness and tendency to slip to
the back of my mind. I wonder how many other experiencers have noticed
a similar lethargy or disinterest in delving into the nature of
enigmatic entities with whom they may have had contact.
I am consciously
aware of only one encounter with this very unusual Being. The experience
occurred one night forty-seven years ago when I was six years old.
I lay frozen in terror as the Being stood and waited patiently beside
my bed. I had experienced this irrational, seemingly conditioned
terror response several times before. The first time was at the
age of two and a half in the presence of an intense white light
outside my bedroom window. I saw this entity as a dark, shadowy
figure, very much an absence of light, but without the red, glowing
eyes described by Kelly. I also felt its presence. Despite my feelings
of terror, I did not think of the Being as sinister. At that age
I did not attempt to find an interpretation for my experience or
fit it into a familiar framework because I had not yet developed
such a system of reference. I simply accepted it as something in
my life. When I was older, I applied a psychological interpretation
to the Being as looking dark and shadowy because its true form must
have been too terrifying for me to behold.
I thought it
unusual for me to make the visual connection with the Being on the
cover of IUR because I generally do not relate well visually. My
vision has been affected by a corneal disorder (keratoconus) resulting
in poor vision in one eye and the loss of the other eye through
numerous corneal transplants, a cataract extraction, and detached
retina surgeries.
Some of my
most significant encounters have occurred at the time of these surgeries
and one, in particular, took place when I was effectively unable
to use my eyes. I was confined to a face-down position after detached
retina surgery. This encounter was prefaced by a sudden stillness
of sound and movement. I then heard several squawks of terror from
our family cockatoo. I felt as if I ran head-long into a wall of
the alien presence as I sprang to the bird's rescue. My initial
response was the old, conditioned terror which caused me to freeze
in my tracks. For the first time, I was consciously aware of being
given a choice and an opportunity to confront my fear and learn
to break through the barrier of conditioning. I made the decision
to go forward and participate with full consciousness in what was
about to transpire.
I stepped into
the hallway with my face down to commune with the Being. Suddenly,
there ensued a barrage of poltergeist activity and considerable
remote viewing. (I have experienced instances of spontaneous remote
viewing in non-encounter situations in the past. In addition, during
a hypnosis session I was aware of the mechanism which allowed me
as a child to see without eyes.) Of interest at this time was the
'switched-off' condition of our dog who looked dead and
displayed a frozen-in-time characteristic. She showed no sign of
molecular vibration and seemed to be suspended in a state even more
still than death.
After my interest
was peaked by Kelly's account, it was inevitable that I would begin
to think more in depth about the nature of the black-hole entity
and the implications of its strange properties. I wondered if this
Being intentionally projected itself as an absence of light as a
means of low-profile camouflage. Instead of a hole as Kelly thought
of it, perhaps the Being was composed of ultra dense matter. An
entity which is sufficiently dense in our environment might trap
light and other forms of energy and have a very low vibrational
frequency. Is it possible that this is the antithesis of what some
experiencers report as incorporeal or light Beings whose frequency
of vibration is very high? I believe we should consider the possibility
that density and vibrational frequency can be manipulated by an
advanced technology to produce such variations.
Learning how
the encounter experience is interpreted in the absence of visual
cues may help us understand the relationship between alien abduction
experiences and religious, near-death, out-of-body, and childhood
sexual or ritualistic abuse experiences, as well as visitations
by Beings described in folklore and mythology. There is a need for
fresh data which enriches and expands our stereotypical view of
the encounter experience. There is also a need to reexamine existing
data from a fresh perspective.
Abduction research
could move forward in significant new directions by looking beyond
our comfortable existing models and exploring alternate paradigms
suggested by some of the following:
Anomalous Experiences Reported
By Abductees:
- Sporadic,
often very specialized memory impairment.
- Spontaneous
episodes of invisibility.
- Passing
through physical obstacles that the experiencer is on a collision
course with.
- Spontaneous
episodes of dissociation producing a gap in consciousness; a unique
sense of non-existence that feels like you have slipped into some
other plane of reality for a time. This should be differentiated
from functioning on 'automatic pilot.'
- Simultaneous
awareness of events or objects in multiple planes of reality;
a variation on the dissociation (above) in which consciousness
remains functional in several dimensions simultaneously.
- Free-fall
for a long distance with no injuries. For example, falling from
a cliff or an airplane and being drawn gently toward the Earth
as though encapsulated in a reduced gravitational field.
- Encountering
two dimensional objects which behave like three dimensional objects.
- Full, unobstructed
view of a luminous, glowing sphere that should be partially hidden
by trees or shrubs. However, the trees or shrubs seem not to exist
between the object and the viewer.
- Materialization
and dematerialization of objects in the environment.
- Feeling
an emotional, spiritual, or psychological 'alien state' either
telepathically, empathetically, or remembered on your own.
- Rearrangement
of objects in the environment to effect a sudden, miraculous rescue
of a person.
- Frequent
occurrence of striking synchronicities.
- Consciously
remembering UFO related material by reliving the incident through
any of the senses or abstract conceptualization, as though it
were happening at the moment.
These seemingly
improbable events are really occurring to normal people who believe
they have had abduction experiences. These and other unusual phenomena
have been discussed in support groups throughout the country and
warrant serious investigation. Research should be open enough to
entertain the possibility that these phenomena are not, in all cases,
attributable to intervention by external agents. Abductees themselves
may be altering their immediate environment at an unconscious level
to produce effects such as alterations in time or a change in vibrational
frequency. The techniques required to effect such change may have
been learned or acquired during the encounter experience.
Some of the
symptomatology such as memory impairment and sporadic invisibility,
may be the result of exposure to elements such as electromagnetic
fields in the alien environment. For example, a hypnotherapist in
Santa Barbara, California, named Donna Higbee described instances
of spontaneous invisibility that were reported by abductees in her
support group and by other researchers across the country. She published
her report in the September, 1994, issue of the "MUFON UFO
Journal." In her report, Donna speculated that this effect
may be the result of passing through a space craft's force field.
In other anomalous experiences the effects seem not to occur randomly,
but arise specifically in response to emergency situations. Some
experiencers seem designed to convey knowledge about the visitors
or knowledge about higher levels of existence to which mankind may
aspire. Some effects demonstrate special properties of alien technology.
Through support
groups we are learning that the traditional, simplistic model of
an alien encounter does not adequately accommodate the immense complexity
and diversity of actual alien visitations. This model also fails
to encourage an understanding of the reality of the Beings with
whom we are so intimately connected. The "good-bad" single
agenda approach to the alien experience does not explain the many
different occurrences of alien encounters. Our new model must encompass
an alternative rational for the clandestine nature of some alien
encounters; interaction at a participatory level with diverse species;
reverse flow encounters in which the visited becomes the visitor
after interdimensional penetration is learned by the abductee; and
out-of-body encounters.
We are being
invited through our encounter experiences to extend our minds and
sensitivities. We must emerge from our self-made cocoons to initiate
contact with other sentient species on an individual level. This
is required in order to partake intellectually, spiritually, and
physically in a much more expansive universe. As we begin to broaden
our understanding of these experiences and other intelligences in
the universe, we may begin to understand ourselves. The first step
in this process is breaking through a very fixed mind-set. I think
some of these alien visitors are trying to show us how to do this.
It could be the key to our survival.
by Mary Kerfoot,
©1994 |