David M. Jacobs - Secret Life: Firsthand Accounts of UFO Abductions

Abductees desperately want the abduction experience to stop. They have tried by pleading with the aliens, threatening them, and being willfully uncooperative. They have moved to another house, to another city, to another state, trying to get away from them. They sleep with a knife or a gun. They stay up all nightfearfully waiting, hoping that they can defend themselves. But the abductions continue.

Even biology has no effect. Physiological changes in a womans reproductive cycle do not prevent abductions. Women who have had tubal ligations and hysterectomies and who have had their ovaries removed continue to be the victims of abductions, although they are spared the typical gynecological procedures. We have not had enough experience with men who have a low sperm count or who have had vasectomies to know whether these conditions forestall abductions.

Little headway has been made in preventing abductions, although we have had some success with the use of a video camera. The camera makes it impossible for the aliens to maintain secrecy during an abduction, and in some cases it is able to effectively forestall the experience. For example, Melissa Bucknell began to have abduction experiences almost on a daily basis. We decided to use a video camera to try to catch the aliens in the act. We set up a camera and a VCR on a dresser top pointed at her bed. Melissa had been abducted the night before we set up the equipment. But after we installed it, days went by with no activity. We viewed all the tapes and she was sleeping at all times. Then one day she reported that she thought something might have happened to her that morning. She had gone to sleep very late the night before and had slept until noon. The tape had run out at 6:00 A.M. Investigation revealed that the abduction took place sometime between 6:00 and 12:00. I thought this was a near miss and the taping continued. Weeks later she had another abduction episode. This time she had slept on the living room couch to get away from the noise of her neighbors arguing upstairsonce again it was impossible for the camera to record the abduction.

A few months later Karen Morgan agreed to use a video camera and a similar pattern began to emerge. As long as the camera was trained on her, no abductions took place. But when Karen was away from the camera her problems began. When she went out of town to visit friends or relatives, she would be abducted. When she went to Michigan for a wedding and to Virginia to spend a night on a friends yacht and to New York to visit relatives, she had abduction experiences. When she forgot to set up the camera or VCR for the night, there was a good possibility that she would be abducted.

More abductees wanted to use the camera, and, as we gained experience with it, we began to notice that the video equipment would sometimes mysteriously malfunction or be turned offand an abduction would follow. Unusual power outages that affected only the immediate surroundings (sometimes not even other rooms) would cause the VCR to go off and an abduction would take place. After one abduction Karen noticed that the camera wires had been pulled from the back of her VCR. Another time she noticed in the morning after an abduction that the video camera was off when she had specifically remembered turning it on and seeing the red light indicating that it was in the record mode.

The problem that the camera was generating for the abduction was overcome in other ways as well. For example, an abductee felt the urge at 5:30 A.M. (her camera put a time stamp on the tape) to get out of bed, walk over to the VCR, and turn it offall of which was duly recorded on tape. She later remembered seeing Small Beings who were standing just outside of camera range directing her to do it. In another case, a young woman abductee felt very nervous one night and had the irresistible urge to get out of bed (and out of the cameras field of view) and sleep in her parents room. As soon as she was away from the camera, she was abducted. One woman had the urge to go to bed three hours before she normally did. An abduction took place before the VCR was programmed to go on.

Six people have used a video camera and all have had similar experiences. The video camera does not stop abductions from happening; it only forestalls them. Nevertheless, the video camera is the only mechanism known that brings relief to the abductee at night. It helps to alleviate feelings of helplessness and gives the abductee a sense of fighting back and a slight measure of control over her life. It is a form of intervention that forces the Beings to contend with a detection devicesomething that they do not want to do.

A video camera has its drawbacks, however. It quickly becomes a crutch, and abductees feel that they cannot sleep without it. If they go on a trip and do not have the video camera with them, they can become beset by fears that an abduction will occur. Furthermore, sleeping for long periods of time under a video camera is something that no one looks forward to.

There are other methods of intervention that can be employed during the abduction itself. These appear to be able to affect the course of the procedure, and to switch control of the situation, if only for a moment, to the abductee. For example, several abductees have planned in advance to ask the aliens a question. It does not matter what the question is; the act of asking is most important. During the actual episode, the question is often extremely difficult to remember because of the changes in the abductees consciousness, but some abductees have managed to do it. The aliens answers have been vague and singularly lacking in information, but the important thing is that they seem to be caught off guard. This has given the abductee a sense of control, no matter how small. For a few minutes the abductee calls the shots and might even slightly change the course of the abduction.

During one abduction Karen Morgan was able to ask her question as the Taller Being was beginning Mindscan. As usual, the situation is more revealing for the way in which the alien dealt with the question than for the information imparted to Karen.

And then I ask it the question, How long have you been doing this? And it says, That knowledge isnt given to you. And I say, Jesus Christ, will you answer a question for the love of God? How long have you been doing this, and stop with those stupid answers. Im so pissed off at it. And it sort of just smiles and doesnt answer. And I say, Have you been doing this forever? I dont think it understands forever. And then I ask what its doing. What are you doing? It wants me to give it my mind, and then it will show me what its doing. I say, No dice, I dont care that much. No thanks, Im not that interested. It says, Why are you afraid? Why are you worried? Dont be afraid. All the same bullshit that it always wants to give you.(Karen Morgan, 38, 1987)

Ken Rogers had intended to ask a predetermined question in several abductions but found it was too difficult to remember. Based on the idea that the aliens appear to be attracted to anything unusual on a persons body, he decided to put dots on his chest with a washable marker. He hoped that the aliens would be drawn to the marks on his chest, and that their interest would in turn prompt his memory, and he would ask the question. The question he was to ask was similar to Karens: How long are you going to continue to do this? Nothing happened for a period of weeks. Then he was abducted. As predicted, the aliens immediately focused their attention on the dots. After the examination, they sat him up on the edge of the table and, while the Small Beings watched, the Taller Being pointed to the dots and asked him what the marks were. Instead of asking the question, however, Ken became a little bit frightened and simply stated, They are dots. The aliens tapped his chest and looked a little more. When he was leaving, several more Taller Beings approached and he had to lift up his shirt while they carefully surveyed the dots.