Alien Encounter
On a hot sticky afternoon in 1987 Jason Andrews is celebrating
his fourth birthday at his family's cottage near Slade Green in Kent when
the heavens opened.
As the thunder crashes all around, there is a single flash of lightning.
Suddenly, a stream of numbers starts pouring out of Jason's mouth:
fantastic numbers, complex mathematical equations, even algebra - all from
a boy who struggles to count to ten. Seconds later the windows and doors begin to shake violently and the
four-year-old announces to his mother, father and elder brother: 'They're
waiting for me. I have to go.' Jason's father, Paul, grabs his son and
stops him from walking out into the downpour, but the boy struggles
violently, and as he does so the house shakes to its very foundations -
until, finally, he seems to wake from a trance and the shaking stops. It is the first sign that Jason Andrews is no ordinary little boy and, in
the eight years that follow, that is dramatically confirmed. It wasn't until 1995, when he was almost 12, that Jason told his
astonished parents exactly what had been happening to him -- aliens had
been abducting him from his bed at night. 'It's always the light that comes first,' he confessed to his mother, Ann.
'Then I see the tall one rise up at the foot of the bed.
'Suddenly there's lots of little ones everywhere. They're fuzzy and
indistinct, and they move very fast. I can't move or speak, but I'm awake
and I can see and hear and feel. I want to scream and run, but the sound
doesn't come out and my body doesn't move. 'I hate them. I hate them,' the boy sobbed. 'I have to go with them. They take me to an operating theatre, like at the hospital. It's all
white and shiny. Sometimes it's a circular room with a metal floor. It's
always cold. They're there. The big one touches me but I don't feel it, like as if
I've had an anesthetic.' Then he added poignantly: 'But you don't
believe me, you just think I'm making it all up.' In fact, Ann did believe
him, and went on to explore the phenomena affecting her son's life in a book,
Abducted. This decent, uncomplicated wife and mother came to the conclusion that
we may not be alone. Now, the rest of the world may be about to agree with
her. After five decades of ridicule, official denials and alleged cover-ups, the
possibility that aliens may have visited Earth is beginning to be taken
seriously - and not just by sci-fi fanatics and UFO freaks. Scientific
researchers are increasingly convinced that thin, grey-skinned beings about 4ft.
tall, with large almond-shaped eyes set in an oval, hairless, head, may not only
have landed on earth, but have also abducted human beings for bizarre
experiments; while all the time there has been an official conspiracy to keep
their visits secret.
But surely all this talk of aliens is far-fetched? As a natural
skeptic,
I've always believed so, but over the past weeks and months of reviewing
the evidence I've come to the conclusion that it does, in fact, warrant
the closest investigation.
There certainly seems to have been an official conspiracy to keep the
facts secret.
In the past few months, for example, firm evidence connected with
Unidentified Flying Objects (UFOs) and extraterrestrial phenomena has
begun to appear for the first time as governments around the world have
released previously secret documents.
And, for the first time, politicians have started to admit that evidence
on the possibility of extraterrestrial life has been concealed.
In October last year, for example, former White House Chief of Staff John
Podesta, who worked for President Clinton, called on the U.S. government
to de-classify 'records that are more than 25 years old' and 'to provide
scientists with data that will assist them in determining the real nature
of this phenomenon'.
Only four years ago, former Prime Minister Baroness Thatcher hinted to
British UFO-researcher Georgina Bruni that there was considerable secret
information on the subject, adding mysteriously, 'You can't tell the
people.'
Bruni was so struck by the remark that she used it as the title for her
2001 book on alien sightings in Suffolk in 1980. Shortly afterwards,
former Tory Secretary of State for Defence Michael Portillo also confided
to her on the subject: 'I know a lot, but I tell a little.'
After a campaign by Bruni and other researchers, the Government last month
released scores of secret files on UFO sightings in this country, all of
which suggest that aliens can no longer be dismissed merely as the product
of fevered imaginations.
Certainly the majority of the public now seem to believe that aliens do
exist. As the editor of the British UFO magazine, Graham Birdsall, pointed
out: 'Sixty years ago, 90 per cent of the population thought the idea was
'absolute rubbish''.
'Now every single opinion poll on the subject shows that millions of
people firmly believe in UFOs.'
Last June, for example, when it was announced that Bonnybridge in Scotland
boasted more UFO sightings than any other place in the world, a Sky News
poll showed 65 per cent of its viewers believed in UFOs.
Five years earlier - in one of the biggest telephone polls ever conducted
on TV - 100,000 viewers phoned ITV to answer the question 'Have aliens
already visited Earth?', and 92 per cent voted 'Yes'.
'There's strong evidence to suggest that Earth has been visited by
extraterrestrial intelligence,' insists Birdsall.
And after my own research I am prepared to admit that it is no longer
possible to dismiss people such as Birdsall as 'cranks'.
Spielberg, whose film Close Encounters Of The Third Kind dramatically
raised the issue of alien encounters for a global audience, is certainly
convinced they've happened. Fascinated by the possibility from childhood,
he's devoted part of his life to discovering the truth and has become an
authority on the subject as a result. But there is a striking difference
between Spielberg's approach in his TV series Taken and the one he took two
decades ago in ET. This time the aliens he is depicting are not trying to
phone home - they're here to subvert, and ultimately control the human race.
And the new TV series, his first since the award-winning Band Of Brothers, is
not only about the arrival of aliens, it's also about 'alien abductions'.
British UFO expert Mike Soper, of Contact International, is as convinced
as Spielberg that alien abductions have happened.
'The telling fact is that there are features common to all the people's
stories,' he maintains. 'They all remember being taken to a craft, and
often talk about being "examined".
'Many talk about something being "implanted" in their bodies and when they
return they often have triangular marks on their bodies and aren't wearing
exactly the same clothes they were before the abduction'.
Ministry of Defence civil servant Nick Pope, 37, agrees.
'Abductions most definitely do occur,' he says. 'And although the phrase
"alien abductions" is a gift to these people who want to deride it, these
are genuine, ordinary people who believe that they have been in
extraordinary situations.'
Pope isn't a man with an anorak and a slightly weird look in his eye. He
is a down-to-earth civil servant who had no interest in aliens at all
until 1991, when the MoD asked him to investigate reports of UFOs, alien
abductions and other strange phenomena.
'The 100 or so people I interviewed about being abducted by aliens weren't
publicity seekers merely after their 15 minutes of fame,' he explains.
'I came to the conclusion that some of these people had to be telling the
truth. And if just one of the abductees' reports is true, the implications
for the human race would be profound and disturbing.'
One person who helped to convince Pope was 37-year-old British-born make-up artist Bridget Grant, whom he met seven years ago. She addressed an audience of 750 people at the British UFO conference in Leeds in 2001, where she talked about her own abduction. She explained that in February 1993, when she was living in Los Angeles, she was driving with a friend in the Brentwood area at 5.50pm one bright, sunny day, when she drew up at a set of traffic lights. 'I suddenly saw this silver tip out of the corner of my eye,' she explained. 'Then I saw that it was a solid silver craft, with a red-orange colour underneath it, about 35-45ft in diameter. It came right above the car and I leaned towards the steering wheel and looked up.' The craft 'flew really, really low' over her head, she said, and away to the west. Her friend Jane, sitting in the passenger seat, saw it, too. Grant was so disturbed by the experience that in September 1998 she went to see the American UFO researcher Budd Hopkins, of the Intruders Foundation in New York, to undergo four sessions of 'regressive hypnosis'. She wanted his help to remember the exact details of what happened on that afternoon in 1993 - because she thought she had forgotten something. It appeared that she had. For when this pale young woman, with shoulder-length dark hair, addressed the Leed's audience she told them she'd not just seen the spacecraft but had been abducted by it, even though she thought she was in her car the entire time.
'There is often a time shift element in the stories of abduction, where
the individual doesn't realise that time has passed,' explaines Nick Pope.
'My hands were gripping the steering wheel,' Grant explained to the
conference. 'But then I felt a pressure, like my body was being sucked. It
felt like all the atoms of my body were going through the steering wheel.
'Then I saw this being. I was fascinated by its appearance - it was
transparent, had white hair and was carrying a baby.'
Hard though it may be for some to believe, and Grant is reluctant to
discuss the events further, there is no doubt that the artists' impression
of the being which she said she saw looks uncannily like many of the other
descriptions of aliens that have surfaced in recent years.
However, as skeptics point out, there have been so many depictions of
'space creatures' with dome heads and large oval eyes that it is hardly
surprising that this has become something of a sterotype.
British UFO researcher Jenny Randles, who has spent more that 20 years investigating UFO and alien phenomena, maintains that in more recent times alien kidnapping has become much more common. 'An ever growing tide of people suspect that they may be alien abductees,' she says. So is it fact or fiction? I'm not certain, but the evidence of witnesses such as Jason Andrews and Bridget Grant is hard to ignore. And it's clear that, as the 21st century begins, opinions are changing. The Government announced recently that it was 'open-minded' about the 'existence or otherwise of extraterrestrial life forms' - a markedly different official position from the one taken half a century ago. Perhaps the politicians are beginning to accept that we are not alone. Steven Spielberg certainly does.