'Intruders', Abductors, Space Babies?
Copied from: The St. Louis Post-Dispatch ARCHIVES UFOlogist-author persists in the face of ridicule BUDD HOPKINS was here to talk about the ''intruders'' - whatever it is that abducted and impregnated the woman he calls Kathie Davis. They used her for mysterious breeding purposes, he is convinced, and subjected her to this perhaps as many as nine times.
Hopkins believes there are offspring of this bizarre ovarian retrieval procedure. Davis even saw her ''daughter'' and another infant, and they promised her she would see her half-human children again sometime. They even let her name the children, which, for lack of a better term, we shall call space babies.
It gets stranger.
In another case, a man from Wisconsin whom Hopkins calls Ed Duvall (not his real name) recalled a ''missing time'' experience in the early 1960s. In this and similar cases, the men like Duvall have dreams of being ''raped'' by female aliens. Some merely had their sperm removed by means of a vacuum device. It was all quite clinical.
Duvall, described by Hopkins as handsome and in his 50s, a roving mechanic at a mine, underwent hypnotic regression, at Hopkins' direction, in January 1986. Eventually he disclosed the ''profoundly disturbing'' thing that had been bothering him, the ''rape,'' which took place when he was lifted out of his pickup truck, rising into a blinding light. A door opened, and they let him in.
His description of the two aliens he first encountered was similar, if not identical, to those in other cases: smallish, shaped like people, round heads, ''some kind of belt around their middle.''
But the ''profoundly disturbing'' thing occurred with another type of creature, which Hopkins hypothesizes as a possible human/alien half-breed. It was a ''female of the species, but she wasn't exactly like them. She was taller. She was built more like a human being. Her head was larger than a normal woman's would be,'' and she had no hair, and was quite voluptuous.
Hopkins has written two books on the subject of human abductions by ''gray'' or ''marshmallow''-complexioned creatures, who come here aboard unidentified flying objects. One of his ''abductees'' is a ''prominent St. Louis woman,'' although typically Hopkins refused to identify her to protect her privacy.
His first UFO book was ''Missing Time,'' published in 1981 by Richard Marek Publishers. Late last year, ''Intruders, the Incredible Visitations at Copley Woods,'' was released. ''Intruders'' was published by Random House in hard-cover, and by Ballantine Books in paperback. The books are all the rage in UFO circles.
Hopkins is a graduate of Oberlin College in Ohio, and his paintings and sculpture can be found in numerous collections, including the Whitney Museum of American Art and the Guggenheim. He has residences in New York and Cape Cod, and is married and has a daughter.
While UFO believers rave about Hopkins' research methodology and dispassion - he says he began as a serious skeptic - organizations such as the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal pooh-pooh his work.
In the fall issue of a periodical, the Skeptical Inquirer, there were debunking book reviews and articles on alien abductions by committee member Philip J. Klass, a Washington aerospace editor who finds no merit at all in Hopkins' work. Hopkins doesn't think much of Klass, either.
''In coming years, when psychotherapists encounter patients who describe nightmares involving curious 'sexual-medical procedures' performed by strange-looking creatures and these patients express fears that they are victims of an extraterrestrial genetic experiment, it would be fitting if
their malaise were referred to as 'Hopkins Syndrome,' in honor of the author of 'Intruders,' '' Klass wrote.
''While Budd Hopkins, a New York City artist turned UFOlogist and author, did not invent 'UFO abductions,' with his latest book he has become the 'Typhoid Mary' of this affliction and, in my opinion, one of its indirect victims.
''If you have ever experienced an hour or two of 'missing time' when you looked at your watch and discovered it was much later than you expected (as happened to me while writing this review), and if you h ave ever had a nightmare - even during childhood - that involved odd-looking creatures, then, based on the criteria Hopkins uses, you almost certainly have been abducted by extraterrestrials (UFOnauts).''
Hopkins calls Klass - and others involved with Skeptical Inquirer - ''the professional thought police.'' Reporters who belittle his efforts are given the same appellation.
''The only thing I have problems with is ridicule,'' he said on his promotional stopover in St. Louis. ''Because if these people have been through these experiences, it's like laughing at an incest victim, and it ain't funny.''
His critics have done no investigation work on their own, Hopkins said, including psychological examinations of his abductees. Last summer, chief debunker Klass was at the same Washington conference as Hopkins and his principal abductee, Kathie Davis, ''and another large group of abductees, yet he refused to interview any of those people, even for five minutes.
''Any reporter would say, 'Look, let's just talk, have a cup of coffee,' '' Hopkins said. ''This guy refused to meet with any of them, and he was almost bumping into them every five minutes. And then he wrote a book and said they were liars and hoaxes and made the whole thing up.''
Klass, the skeptic, sees potentially tragic consequences in all this for the people who have been attracted to Hopkins' books and investigations.
''When a series of psychological tests was run on nine of Hopkins' 'UFO abduction victims,' all of them show 'a degree of identity disturbance . . . and generally suffered a lack of self-esteem, according to the psychologist who administered the tests,'' Klass said. ''Hopkins' avid interest in their stories must have given a needed boost to their self-esteem. Additionally, all exhibited 'generally mild paranoia phenomena.' Hopkins believes these traits are the result of their UFO encounters.
''If Hopkins were the only victim of his overwhelming desire to believe in an extraterrestrial genetic experiment, he would have only himself to blame. But he reports that his earlier book, 'Missing Time,' evoked 'hundreds of letters' from persons who suspected that they too might be 'abduction victims' - and his new book is likely to reach a much larger audience.''
The drawings of them that appear in Hopkins' books, inspired by those who believe they have been abducted - ''all sketches courtesy Jim Lorenzen and the National Enquirer,'' said one credit line - tend to represent the style of Steven Spielberg. Most are variations of the special-effects extraterrestrials in ''Close Encounters of the Third Kind'' - big-headed, long-armed, spindly, with large, wide-set dark eyes.
His books have what Hopkins purports to be photographic evidence of the scars left behind by genetic experiments, scooplike marks, dating back to presumed childhood abductions. In almost every case, Hopkins outlines abduction scenarios beginning at a young age and occurring periodically into adulthood. The ''UFOnauts,'' as Klass calls them, even seem to be tuned into their victims, picking up their fears and thoughts.
Another sequence of photographs shows a patch of Kathie Davis' lawn, somewhere in Indianapolis, in pictures taken six weeks, seven months and a year after the June 30, 1983, UFO landing. One photo shows how the melting snow clears first over the affected area, Hopkins said. Soil samples show that the dirt from this area appears to have been baked, and in its dehydrated state will not hold moisture.
On the following pages, there are other alien drawings based on the hypnotic testimony of abductees, one by a woman called Rosemary, a New York artist ''abducted'' in 1972 from the rooftop of an apartment ''within the New York City limits'' who did her own drawing.
''Note the wrinkled or mottled skin on the lower face, an unusual feature but one that has been reported in a few other cases,'' Hopkins observed.
Kathie Davis lives in a nice suburban neighborhood of Indianapolis, which Hopkins has disguised as Copley Woods. That name and her identity have been fictionalized to protect the woman and her family from unprincipaled skeptics and the curious, those who would go out of their way to look at the victims of a tragedy, or someone snatched by the occupants of unidentified flying objects.
In one of her last ''shocking'' disclosures, she told Hopkins that she saw her ''space'' daughter and other offspring in dreamlike situations - more of her ''experiences'' recalled through hypnosis.
Hopkins calls it the ''missing baby syndrome,'' and he believes it is all part of the aliens' genetic and reproductive experiments, which they conducted on Davis and all the others. In part, his account goes like this: ''Everything about Kathie Davis' long history of UFO experiences implies an
intense interest in her by a specific group of UFO occupants.''
Time and again, Hopkins said, these occupants involved themselves in Davis' life and the lives of members of her family. They showed her a little girl when she was abducted in October 1983, th e product of what Hopkins is convinced is the result of their first sexual experiment with the Indianapolis woman.
''The central event in her dream occurred when she was shown a tiny baby in the presence of the same little girl - now older and taller - that she had seen before. But the most staggering detail of all was this: She was told that these children - presumably her own - were but two of nine. The
implication was that since 1978, nine of her ova had been taken,
successfully fertilized and brought to term.
''And in a strangely personal, human note, she was told that she would be allowed to name the children.''
At this point, Hopkins said, any reader is entitled to a Felix Frankfurter reaction, a reference to the remarks of disbelief made by the former associate justice when he was first told about Nazi atrocities against Jews; about the impossibility of believing anything so incomprehensible and horrible.
Philip Klass has certainly remained unmoved. He wonders, given the apparent superiority of these beings, why they would select for their breeding experiments an Indiana woman with a long history of ailments - high blood pressure, an irregular heart beat, hepatitis, the removal of her gall bladder, the collapse of a lung, back problems, insomnia and paralyzing
anxiety.
''My own suspicions are that Hopkins' own gullibility made him an easy victim for a lonely Midwest divorcee who enjoys the excitement of spinning tall tales to an eager listener, especially an artist from New York,'' Klass said.
Hopkins, of course, is angered by such remarks. ''He said Kathie Davis made it all up because she was leading such a drab life. He knows about her life. He absolutely has never met her; he's avoided her. And then from the comfort of his living room, he pronounced her a cold-blooded liar.
''See, I'm not opposed to (skeptics) exposing some kind of New-Age channeler who's ripping off a Southern California widow; you know they're in that psychic business making a fortune. There aren't two people in UFO research who ever made as much as $15,000 from this, and I'm one of them.''
Insisting that he once was skeptical, Hopkins said that his real ''road to Damascus'' experience came on Cape Cod in 1964 while with his former wife and a friend. It was a daytime sighting of a UFO.
''And I really had no interest in the subject until that sighting. I thought the Air Force had announced some sort of explanation or another.''
The UFO came at them at eye level, and here he gestured with his hands, indicating that it was lens-shaped at one point. (He fiddles with hands a lot - the curse of a sculputor, he said.)
The UFO was a dull, pewter color, circular, with no details. ''At one point a cloud blew over it; it was like a ship in a cloud. It was going very slowly, and no one's saying UFO. And I said it has to be some kind of very big, flat balloon, much thinner and wider.
''Whoosh, it crossed directly into the wind. And then I think someone said, 'My God, it's one of those UFOs.' ''
In his battle against disbelievers, Hopkins enjoys citing a recent Gallup Poll on the subject of UFOs. ''The majority (49 percent) are on my side,'' he said. ''The most
interesting thing were the demographics.''
Those who believed in the existence of UFOs tended to be males between 30 and 49 who lived on either coast. Most of them were college educated. Of the 30 percent who thought UFOs were imaginary (the remaining 21 percent were undecided), most were males over 50, without college education, who lived in the South.
Hopkins see much in this. ''In other words,'' he said, ''you take your average redneck and a UFO is going to be, somehow, an interrupter of all his beliefs. An earlier poll showed that 25 percent of Americans didn't believe that men walked on the moon. I'll bet that 25 percent would fit into the 30 percent; it's a similar kind of issue.
''Skepticism is not the problem,'' Hopkins said. ''People say, 'I want you to persuade me on this,' and that's not my job. I'm here to present the material. I have had people say, 'Well, you should have done this, you should have done that, in the investigation.'
''I'm doing all this out of pocket, as a side issue, at the same time trying to be a husband and father, a painter and sculptor, all at once. I won't defend my generalship in this; I'm not George Washington. I'm trying to be Paul Revere.''
Two Organizations For UFO Sightings
For those who believe they have either sighted a UFO or have had an abduction experience similar to those discussed in Budd Hopkins' books, here are addresses to forward the information.
For sightings: MUFON (Mutual UFO Network), 103 Oldtowne Road, Sequin, Texas 78155; CUFOS (Center for UFO Studies), 1955 John's Drive, Glenview, Ill. 60025.
To contact Hopkins, write to him in care of Ballantine Books, 201 East 50th Street, New York, N.Y. 10022.
Originally published on Sunday, February 14, 1988.
by John M. McGuire
Of the Post-Dispatch Staff