Joseph Burkes MD 2025
In this blog I discuss what are called “abductions” from the perspective of a contact activist who in the past facilitated many Human Initiated Contact Events (HICE), aka Close Encounters of the Fifth Kind (CE-5).
If you are one of the 170 million plus people that have Amazon Prime, I urge you to check out Director Darcy Weir’s documentary 2018 “Being Taken.” It is about what are popularly known as “Close Encounters of the Fourth Kind”, (aka alien abductions.) I am uncertain of the availability of this Amazon Prime video outside of North America. This is an incredibly complicated topic for any film maker to take on and the first third of the video struggles to make sense out of it. The expanded 2021 “Being Taken “Director’s Cut” is apparently no longer available for streaming.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/video/detail/0R06SCSAB5V49YK3CFAX5MS7H8/ref=atv_dp_cnc_0_2
What makes this documentary so fascinating are the interviews with many prominent people from the UFO research community including Steve Bassett, Kathleen Marden, and the late great Stanton Friedman. This video also has audio recordings of Betty and her husband Barney Hill being interviewed under hypnosis and they convey the tremendous emotional power of their contact experience which occurred over sixty years ago.
As a former contact team leader facilitating HICE (Human Initiated Contact Events) aka CE-5, I am pleased to note that the consensus of expert opinion offered in “Being Taken” is a positive one when it comes to human non-human interactions.
Additional Comments:
On another social media page the request was made for us to find a “silver bullet” putting to rest the stereotype of evil ETs “abducting humans.” My reply is as follows:
I imagine you want definitive proof of non-hostility. “Proof” as one parapsychologist has said, only applies to logic and liquor. The evidence that psi is real is governed by the preponderance of evidence. Same goes for the proposition that the High Strangeness contact events called “abductions” are positive. The term “alien abduction” should probably be replaced by Close Encounter of the Fourth Kind (CE-4). It is unfortunate that a significant segment of the UFO subculture has defined such interactions with a term designating a physical criminal act. Ironically, when contactees describe non-harmful or even spiritually enlightening encounter you have some ufologists labelling these events “positive abductions.”
Further complicating matters is that in my judgment most “abductions” are mainly psi interactions with some very interesting physical manifestations, like scoop marks or people going missing and suddenly showing up in places that have been thoroughly searched.
I have introduced the Virtual Experience Model that describes how UAP intelligences from a physicalist perspective are producing technologically mediated “illusions” as a mechanism of contact. In a Virtual Experience of the Second Kind”(VE-2), I postulate that psi technology is employed to produce a robust form of virtual reality. Another way of viewing VE-2s is that they are technologically induced out-of-body experiences (OBEs). When I suggest that these mechanisms are operational in certain CE-4s, some experiencers and alien abduction theorists balk. They complain that by designating some “alien abductions” psi events then the implication is that they are not “real.” Furthermore, they assert that I am suggesting these High Strangeness events are “all in their heads” of the experiencers. I am not.
What I am proposing is that the virtuoso psychic powers of the so-called aliens are so monumental that they can create mental landscapes (a la the fictional theme of “The Matrix” movie) that are experienced and recalled as if they were exclusively physical occurrences. I imagine that this proposed mechanism of contact for some people is even more frightening than the notion that evil marauding aliens are hovering over our homes and physically “abducting” people.
For contact activists hoping to dispel some of the negativity around this topic I suggest that “preponderance of evidence approach” be employed. However, to demonstrate that most contact experiencers view their interactions as favorable will require a critical review of the literature. This would involve:
1. A thorough discussion of the FREE Experiencer Survey which showed
a. most contact experiencers felt favorably about their interactions,
b. As the number of interactions increased for experiencers, the percentage that considered their encounters as being negative decreased. This was likely the result of people overcoming their initial shock about the strangeness of their encounters.
2. A discussion explaining how many hypnotherapists of “the doom and gloom” school, (Hopkins/ Jacobs et al) used leading questions to facilitate the creation of false memories often characterized as horrific abuse and that
3.Hollywood has poisoned the mass consciousness successfully given Hollywood’s continuous production of evil alien movies.
When it comes to people who consider themselves “abductees,” those that are suffering as the result of their encounters, they should receive counseling from qualified mental health professionals that have been academically trained in peer review programs. They should not be exposed to investigator/hypnotists whose aim is not necessarily therapeutic but rather investigative. These researchers, as well intentioned as they might be, have created false memories of abuse in subjects whose conscious recollections of their contacts are often fragmented.
Thus, contact activists don’t have a “silver bullet putting to rest the stereotype of evil ETs ‘abducting humans.’” Nevertheless, by encouraging a fair and informed discussion of this controversial topic, in the long run, we can hopefully turn things around. In the short run however, the subject will continue being highly problematic.
Links to other blogs on Close Encounters of the Fourth Kind and related topics:
Memory Wars 1
Memory Wars Part 2
Memory Wars Part 3
Virtual Experience of the Third Kind: “Virtual Memory”
Contact Underground 