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Budd Hopkins is a noted alien
"researcher" who is one of the first people to give the alien abduction
phenomenon a scrutinous look. Unfortunately, Mr. Hopkins also seems
prone to flights of fancy.
I have the dubious honor
of graduating from the same high school as Mr. Hopkins, a small private
school in northern West Virginia (which was a military school when Budd
graduated). This is where the similarity ends.
In an interview for the
sometimes pseudoscientific PBS show, Nova, Budd related the Travis Walton
story, which has also been depicted in the movie Fire in the Sky.
In terms of...a couple of excellent cases -- one case that's
really stood the time, the test of time, is the Travis Walton case where you have six people who saw the UFO at close
range. They saw the blue beam of light hit Walton himself. This is up in the woods near Snowflake, Arizona. Walton had
disappeared then for five days.
The men were absolutely terrified by what they had seen.
They all underwent lie detector tests -- which they passed -- on the story of the existence of the UFO, and so forth.
Walton returned with some physical problems -- marks, dehydrated, a lot of issues, psychological problems of
varying sorts, the natural sort of ...of a severe trauma. He was later given a lie detector test -- which he passed -- on
his description. Remembered consciously, without much hypnosis at all, of being inside the craft and so forth. It's a
powerful case because you have physical witnesses -- I mean witnesses of the UFO, to its presence.
This is not the true story
of Travis Walton.
What many reporters of the
case fail to mention is that Walton (a young man at the time), his older
brother and his mother were all UFO fanatics, hardly the innocent vicitims
of a random alien encounter. With this in mind, one must doubt their
story, just as one would be skeptical of a fundamentalist Christian's claim
to have encountered an angel. For the true story of Travis
Walton (from the first reporter on the scene), go to Selling
of the Travis Walton Story (ed. note: this link is
temporarily down. We'll keep looking for it, and put it up here).
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