Budd Hopkins - Missing Time

MISSING TIME

A Documented Study of UFO Abductions

by Budd Hopkins

With an Afterword by Aphrodite Clamar, Ph.D.

To April, my loving, patient wife.

Copyright 1981 by Budd Hopkins

Afterword copyright 1981 by Aphrodite Clamar, Ph.D.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the Publisher, excepting brief quotes used in connection with reviews written specifically for inclusion in a magazine or newspaper. For information write to Richard Marek Publishers, Inc., 200 Madison Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10016.

The author gratefully acknowledges permission from Prentice-Hall, Inc., to reproduce drawings from The Andreasson Affair by Raymond E. Fowler, 1979 by Raymond E. Fowler and Betty Andreasson.

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

Hopkins, Budd, date.

Missing time.

Bibliography:p.

Includes index.

1. Unidentified flying objects Sightings and encounters. I. Title.

TL789.3.H66 001.942 80-39516

ISBN 0-399-90102-7

Printed in the United States of America

Second Impression

I want to declare my immense debt to Ted Bloecher, for both his steady, principled example and his invaluable personal support throughout and preceding the birth of this book. The encouragement and stylistic advice I received from writers Paul Brodeur and B.H. Friedman were particularly helpful to me, coming as they did at the very beginning of this undertaking. The precise, critical scientific readings this manuscript received from Anthony Wolff and David Webb steered me around a number of technical sandtraps, and for their efforts I am deeply grateful. Sideo Fromboluti, my friend and fellow painter, provided a spirited, yet carefully neutral overview, and his valuable suggestions have made this a stronger book. Coral and Jim Lorenzen upon whose pioneering work I have depended have kindly allowed me the use of some illustrations, as have Ted Jacobs, Betty Andreasson, and Wayne Laporte. Nancy Munro, who typed most of the manuscript, also transcribed hours of emotionally difficult tape recordings, and I deeply appreciate her patient work. Above all I want to thank April Kingsley, my wife, for having put up with this digression from the painter she married. It was, as she understood, a labor of intellectual necessity, and her nourishing support has been crucial to its making.

Budd Hopkins

December 23,1980

There are three visual sightings made by the astronauts while in orbit which, in the judgment of the writer, have not been adequately explained. These are:

1. Gemini 4 , Astronaut McDivitt. Observation of a cylindrical object with a protuberance.

2. Gemini 4 , Astronaut McDivitt. Observation of a moving bright light at a higher level than the Gemini spacecraft.

3. Gemini 7 , Astronaut Borman saw what he referred to as a bogey flying in formation with the spacecraft.

The training and perspicacity of the astronauts put their reports of sightings in the highest category of credibility Especially puzzling is the first one on the list, the daytime sighting of an object showing details such as arms (antennas?) protruding from an object having a noticeable angular extension.

Final Report of the Scientific

Study of Unidentified Flying

Objects conducted for the U.S.

Air Force, Dr. Edward Condon,

project director.

So far, only one thing is certain: it is not just a rumor: something is seen.

Dr. Carl G. Jung, 1954.

(Emphasis his.)

Since World War II, tens of thousands of reports of unidentified flying objects have been gathered, officially and unofficially, by the United States Air Force and myriad other governmental and civilian investigative organizations around the world. Like Astronaut McDivitts cylinder with antennas, these objects are often described as being mechanically structured, metallic, and very frequently as behaving as if they were under intelligent control. The thousands of similar, enigmatic reports from across the world mean that no matter what realities may lie behind it, the UFO phenomenon exists as an undeniable fact of life.

The question, then, is what we should do about the disturbing mass of material which makes up this ubiquitous phenomenon. There are two polar positions. One group, to which I and a large number of investigators, scientists, and even a few committed sceptics belong, believes that the UFO phenomenon poses a tantalizing and serious problem perhaps a profoundly revolutionary one. If there is nothing but smoke to this mass of mysterious reports, then enormous numbers of people, from farmers to astronauts, must be hallucinating fire which in itself would be an alarming state of affairs. The other group is made up of those who, out of lack of information or mere indifference, simply ignore the phenomenon. The first group looks into the data, the other declines to. Essentially, UFO belief is definable by whether or not one believes that the thousands of ongoing reports constitute a problem worth looking into, regardless of ones prejudices, theories, and assumptions. (And of these there are almost as many as there are investigators.)

It has long been obvious to serious UFO researchers that the majority of UFO reports some say up to ninety percent are mis-identifications of conventional aircraft, stars, and other natural or artificial objects. As an example, I received a phone call a few years ago from an agitated woman who had seen a UFO from her car as she drove on Manhattans East River Drive. It was a bright, hovering light, she told me, much bigger than a star. She lost sight of it when a building blocked her view; then she saw it again, and then finally it was gone. It appeared not to be moving, and it was very close to the horizon. I asked about its location, and she said that it had been in the northeast. Near La Guardia Airport? I inquired. Why, yes, she answered, it would have been just about over La Guardia. As she spoke she realized why I had asked the question. Her UFO was undoubtedly a distant plane coming in with its landing lights on against a twilit sky, just far enough away for her eyes to blend the two bright lights together into one large one. Since the plane was pointed south, towards her car, it seemed to be hovering.

Reports like these are common, and many investigators pay no attention to them at all apart from their obvious explanations. Even without its transparent cause, a report like this offers an unrewarding paucity of information in the best of circumstances. A number of scientists, naive about the complexity of the other UFO reports, assume that this sort of thing an odd light in the night sky is all there is to the phenomenon. Their ritual denigrations (Carl Sagans, for instance) appear to be pro forma , akin to the similar scientific assurances weve heard about the safety of atomic energy and the ongoing flight of Skylab . Sagan wittily remarked that no one has produced even a cocktail napkin from a UFO. Another astronomer countered by asking, for that matter, how many Brazilian aborigines have a piece of a Boeing 747?

But what about the other ten percent, the UFO reports which remain unexplained after investigation? These are the detailed cases, like the 1964 Socorro, New Mexico, sighting which was investigated by officials from the White Sands proving grounds, the FBI, the Air Force, and the local police. In fact, the principal witness was a highly respected Socorro policeman. Officer Lonnie Zamora, on a sunny afternoon in April, was in his patrol car following a speeder when he heard a roar and saw a flame in the sky a half mile or so away. He turned away from his chase to investigate and saw a motionless flame slowly descending. Its noise changed from high frequency to low frequency and then stopped. Zamora drove up a gravel road and saw a shiny oval object in a gully below. It looked at first like a car turned upside down. Thought some kids might have turned it over. Saw two people in white coveralls very close to object. One of these persons seemed to turn and look straight at my car and seemed startled Persons appeared normal in shape but possibly they were small adults or large kids.