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EMERGING UNDERGROUND | 6

Are people being abducted by aliens or by pop culture?

So which came first, the abduction experience or the pop culture myth?

The widely reported case that launched public awareness of the alien abduction phenomenon was the Betty and Barney Hill incident in 1961.

This was the first account of what we’d now call the classic alien abduction: missing time, being taken up to a ship, a medical examination that includes reproductive procedures, interaction with alien beings, and being returned with a wiped memory.

Betty’s the more well known of the two, because after Barney died she dedicated her life to exploring and understanding the abduction phenomenon. Before the incident the Hills had zero interest in the subject. Their lives revolved around their church, the NAACP and civil rights activism (they were an interracial couple in 1961).

There’s no doubt their account influenced our common perception of the alien abduction. But pop culture can only handle the “Take me to your leader” thumbnail version — flying saucers with little green men beaming us up for an anal probe in the middle of the night.

Popular awareness of what actually goes on in an abduction is light on details. Yet there’s a staggering amount of detail, commonly reported but not publicized. It’s like the cop shows where they hold back a key element of the crime only the culprit would know. The general public hasn’t actually been exposed to these details – yet the accounts still match.

The Hills never sought publicity, and in fact Barney was so embarrassed by the reproductive procedures he withheld some details from the public. Under regression hypnosis in 1964 at a military base, Barney revealed the sperm extraction procedure. Barney died in 1969, and over the next few years Betty revealed more from Barney’s regression transcripts. It really wasn’t until the mid-seventies that the reproductive component of the abduction experience became widely known.

In the 14 years between 1961 and 1975 there are a lot of other experiences that talk about being abducted, many of them including reproductive or invasive medical examinations. Some well known cases are Betty Andreasson (1967), Charles Hickson and Calvin Parker (Pascagoula, 1973), Carl Higdon (1974) and Travis Walton (1975). I’ve also read regression transcripts of other experiencers during that time period, describing the Greys performing reproductive procedures.

By the way, Barney and Betty’s accounts matched very closely, and their separate regression hypnosis transcripts were identical.

With the abundance of information on the web, it’s possible to find some of the finer details. But what about the decades of accounts from the 1950’s to the 90’s, predating the internet? We have to acknowledge the sheer volume of comparative evidence that would’ve been very difficult to collate internationally among strangers without the web.

To say our media put the alien abduction in people’s heads, you’d have to figure out how all those unpublicized details got in their heads too. There’s no proof these witnesses around the world engaged in a conspiracy together to get their stories straight. To me that sounds even more outlandish.

Besides these very similar accounts, there’s a variety of very different experiences. If people are being influenced by the media’s spin on the Betty and Barney Hill incident, how come there’s so much variety in the alien experiences, many of which are not even abductions?

If abductions are the product of exposure to the Hills account, wouldn’t all abduction accounts have to be the effect of that same cause? The theory falls apart if some of them were not exposed to the same pop culture.

It’s a huge leap for most people, to think that aliens are here. But getting our heads around groundbreaking history and mind-blowing science is an evolutionary leap we’re already making, with AI and more. On the other hand, half baked, unresearched solutions that wave away a problem actually require faith.

That’s what pop culture can do. It can make us accept a totally implausible conspiracy, or accept the idea of an unreproducible mind control experiment, so we don’t have to deal with the unknown.

EMERGING UNDERGROUND | 5

Do we really need to be told what to think?

What kind of world would we be living in if there hadn’t been a desperate cover up of the Roswell incident?

I know, it’s a fantasy to think of any outcome untainted by politicos cowering at the whiff of disempowerment. But if the government and the military hadn’t taken that course in the 1950s with the Roswell crash, the nonhuman bodies that were retrieved, and fragments of tech from the wreckage, alongside a wave of UFO sightings – what would’ve been the ripple across the media pond of Planet Earth? What if they had believed in us as much as they expect us to believe in them?

I suppose it’s unrealistic to consider the prospect of the military taking anything but evasive, defensive action when confronted by a potential adversary, after an unexplained incursion into US air space, near a military base. But there is so much more to this story, than the story they don’t want to tell.

What really intrigues me, is how massive the fallout was across popular culture from the media spin, in the infancy of first contact.

The winding thread of ridiculing has become an auto response anchor, and most of us don’t even question why we’re holding onto it. In terms of human cultural evolution, that is terrifying. The media went where its chain was tugged, with little resistance, and we bought it, hook, line and sinker.

There have been very few who stepped up and said “This isn’t good enough. Something is happening. Why aren’t we looking at it?” People like the Emmy award-winning journalist Linda Moulton Howe, nuclear physicist Stanton Friedman and the Pulitzer Prize-winning psychiatrist John Mack. They all put their careers on the line and didn’t stop fighting for answers. But they’re the exception to the rule, and the psychological rule is law – you’re considered a psycho if you break it.

We all experience the primal guardrails of our need to belong. ‘High strangeness’ has the power to estrange, and it’s fair to say, who wants to be pushed out to the edge? I can only say that out here where the sky is wide open, challenging the status quo is a lot easier than fighting the curiosity. This could be a very ordinary conversation we have every right to have.

If the media had never mocked unidentified sightings of ships and aliens, do you think we’d chuckle every time they’re mentioned? We’re still doing it, as we have done for three quarters of a century. The media took its cue from a nail-biting military, completely defenseless before the threat of a shifting public opinion. An opinion that would inevitably conclude we were outclassed by craft that could make a 90 degree turn at 600 miles an hour, that could disappear and reappear, and do the same things underwater.

So the politik was launched, like a rocket fueled by fear alone, with no return flight path planned. From the 1950s to the present day, anyone who ‘believes’ in aliens is still considered a crackpot – despite the mounting evidence: video, radar, satellite images, credible witnesses like pilots, military and police, and mass sightings filmed on multiple phones.

Why are we so scared of nonhuman intelligence, yet obsessed with AI? Could it be because we picture AI as our servant, while a being from an advanced technological society might think of us the same way?

Since when did something we don’t understand require belief? Were the scientists searching for the subatomic ‘God particle’ in the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland ‘believers’ because they were trying to generate something that at the time was beyond our grasp? Did news presenters turn to each other and snigger as they reported it?

Why do we titter at the mention of alien life, like Pavlov’s dog at the cue of a news anchor, who in turn is the puppet of a media outlet, which very likely has to suck up to the administration to broker the next billion-dollar merger?

Why are we so hung up on the impossibility of visitors from somewhere unknown to us? Is that really so bizarre? Why are people frightened of a really foreign foreigner? We’re talking about people who may not look like us, or think like us. Isn’t it time we got over that?

Ontological shock and awe would no doubt shake up our religious and scientific communities (which I explore in The Last Underground). But so far the reaction to proven sightings, like the New York Times pilot videos and multiple UAPs has been “Meh”.

Power institutions won’t let go that easily, and they tend to adapt better than us, because they perceive more is at stake. The reality is, the stakes are the same, because we have every right to know, and to understand, and believe whatever we want. Knowing the hard, scientific, fact-based truth would be a civilization away from the “I want to believe” stigma. I think the knee-jerk smirk at something we can’t, or don’t want to get our heads around, is the real “I want to believe.”

Is it denial or a fight or flight response? Perhaps both. But both are inexcusable after 75 years of opportunities to adapt. At this rate we’re de-evolving into submission, waiting to be told how to think.

Do we really need to be retrained into thinking outside the box we’ve padded so nicely with distractions?

Most of our oceans are unexplored, and we’re still discovering what to us, is new life. Some deep sea creatures defy what we would’ve thought possible to sustain life. Bacteria feed around 300 degree thermal vents, tardigrades thrive in high radiation, and delicate fish live under 8 tons per square inch of pressure, a mile down in the deep dark, using bioluminescence to see by. That’s here, on our little blue-green planet, in the boondocks of the Milky Way.

In a future we dare not dream of, our descendants will look back on us in the same way we do with the science and religion of our past. The Inquisitors of the Renaissance who screamed to the high heavens they perceived as their own, at Galileo for having the chutzpah to claim God’s green Earth revolves around the sun, are looked upon today as primitive minds. We pity them, as we do the great minds of the dark ages who warned with unchallenged authority against sailing off the edge of world. The world of today may not be flat, but our thinking is if we don’t use it. There’s a world of possibility, and it’s not out there, it’s right here, just waiting for us.

EMERGING UNDERGROUND | 4

A Haunted Double Life

What if you spent your night going through something unimaginable, that flies in the face of all you believe, yet you know it wasn’t a dream? You wake up with puncture wounds, triangular scoop marks, or circular bruises with raised white dots that don’t resemble anything you own, or hand shaped bruises with very long fingers, in places you can’t reach on your body. Your Fitbit says you went to an elevation of 30 feet, but you live in a single story home.

Then you put the coffee on, make breakfast for the kids, and go to work. The day feels weird, like it’s reeling around you while you’re not moving, as you try not to think about that other world right there next to this one, coexisting in your memory, your experiences, your life. A sub-world of secrets so strange and inconceivable, even if you wanted to share them with those closest to you, you know you never would.

Welcome to the life of the alien abduction experiencer.

Ontological shock isn’t just for the first time you see an alien, it’s something that resets your mind every time you encounter the normal things in life, that don’t seem quite real enough anymore. Your life becomes a dichotomy, with two sets of inhabitants, two families even – two realities of what you know happened, and what’s supposed to happen.

The Last Underground novel gave birth to a novella, The First Underground. In developing the characters for both these books, I dived into transcripts of abduction experiencers who had undergone regression hypnosis. It unlocked the lives of people who I felt a deep connection to, and informed a deeper understanding of what must surely be alien beings. What I found was much more in-depth than examining potential sightings.

These are people who want to know why their childhood was so troubled, or are referred to hypnotherapy because of behavioral issues resembling a victim of child abuse. What the psychologist then finds, via hypnotherapy, is a wild and weird collection of repressed memories, that involve little gray aliens and medical procedures performed in spaceships. They usually don’t know what to do with them, and the poor experiencer is left even more traumatized than when they started.

They have no psychosis or underlying mental problems, and have not sought publicity or even attention. Their names have been changed to a generic first name in the transcripts. What’s chilling is how closely their experiences resemble each other, all over the world. That will be the subject of another post.

Some recall pieces or entire experiences without hypnosis, but these have become rarer over time. Perhaps because whoever’s behind this is adjusting their methods. Screen memories are placed in the mind of the experiencer, to give them a means of explaining it away. This protects their psyche, and allows the covert activity to continue. Some have been told these screen memories are obtained by accessing their own subconscious, or by using fragments of other people’s memories.

One story broke my heart, and I couldn’t stop thinking about it. A woman recalled being taken up to a ship where invasive examinations were performed. At one point she was shown a hybrid child, who she was told was her daughter. Her hybrid daughter looked part Grey alien and part human. She had huge eyes that were blue or green, I can’t remember, but essentially were human eyes, just very, very large. (By the way, it’s not true that only white people are taken.) The eye sockets were almond shaped, like those of the Greys. She had a larger head at the top with light colored hair, and a very pointed chin. Her features were small and petite, and she was very thin.

The child was presented to her because she was told the Greys have difficulty dealing with hybrid and human emotions, and they abduct the mothers or sometimes the fathers, to let them have a short time with the child. This seems to soothe the stress of the young one, and they return the parent to their home with a screen memory or a wiped memory. Apparently this is very common.

In this case though, the woman remembered part of the abduction. She began to pine for her daughter, worrying that her child was alone without the love she needed. To make matters worse, she would only be summoned to see her daughter every few years. It was an excruciating existence for the mother, and perhaps for the daughter. This went on for about fifteen years, as the child grew into a young woman. They got to know each other and truly cared about each other, but only in these protracted circumstances. Both wanted more time together.

So this poor woman, this completely sane person, who I believe was having very real experiences, became the framework for one of the central characters in my novel – Cass.

The first reaction to any conscious recollection of an abduction or alien sighting, is denial. This even happens with many UFO sightings, particularly the up-close ones. Then over time, an unraveling awareness opens up a chasm between what their mind tells them can’t be real, yet they remember vividly, and the world they accept as reality. This chasm widens as the years go by and the experiences mount up, with varying reactions and coping mechanisms. The so called reality we share becomes less real, less relevant.

From the outset as I read these testimonies – terrifying accounts of horrific procedures, and at other times, mystical revelations like nothing on Earth – my motive was to be true to these people. I didn’t want to abuse them all over again with a Hollywood story that didn’t respect their experiences. It wasn’t difficult to bond with them, and to empathize with the complex dichotomy that had become their very existence.

Fiction that takes these people seriously, and doesn’t treat them like victims or tinfoil hat-wearing eccentrics, is hard to find. It’s time to give them the dignity of being realized as ordinary people going through something extraordinary. They don’t seek fame, yet they don’t want to be invisible. They need storytelling that opens up a reasonable conversation about an unreasonable thing. If they fear retribution, I don’t have to, as a writer of fiction.

So a big part of what drives my writing, is to push the envelope of what’s considered an acceptable perception of reality. Those who dismiss these accounts, are always the ones who don’t look at the evidence, because once you do, the explanations this day to day world comes up with, just don’t work any more. What about the marks on their bodies? What about group abductions? What about missing time? If it’s sleep paralysis, what about experiences that happen during the day?

Experiencers are the pioneers of a new understanding, even if they have no idea why it’s happening to them. If they can go through so much, as representatives of their species, the very least we can do is give them a chance to be understood.

EMERGING UNDERGROUND | 3

Who are the Reptilians of Our Past?

Representations of reptilian creatures are common to many ancient cultures around the world – from Chinese dragons to the gargoyles of Europe. But one particular reptilian caught my attention because it shared so many unique characteristics, and differed in character from the more typical fierce deities.

In museums around the world, ancient statues from Mesopotamia, Europe, Africa, Mexico, South America and Japan, share some mystifying serpentine qualities. Snakelike heads on humanoid bodies, wide shoulders, often with raised circles or round impressions, a fez-like elongated wrap, or braided hair curled in a bun, those “coffee bean” eyes, often a female holding an infant, and many kneel in a reflective pose. A world away from fire breathing dragons and militaristic, armored deities.

The earliest seem to be the pre-Sumerian figurines of Al Ubaid, which is a name for both an era and an archeological site. Academia claims human civilization began in Sumer, 6,000 to 6,500 years ago, but the Ubaid period could have extended even further back, to 7,500 years ago. There is evidence advanced human civilizations began much earlier. At any rate, these figurines predate every other culture on Earth. So the mystery starts there.

The Mesopotamian, European and Mexican statues share several distinct features, besides snake-like heads and large eyes. They have prominent shoulders, often dotted with raised studs or indentations.

Some of the Nomoli figurines of Sierra Leone contain perfectly spherical chromium and steel spheres. Dismissing these as iron meteorite fragments doesn’t explain how they came to be perfect spheres. If the spheres are from molten meteorites, then placing something from outer space inside a representation of a nonhuman being, may be significant.

They at first appear to be grimacing, but they still don’t share the fierce, dragon like threat of most serpentine figures. They could even be smiling. Kneeling reflectively, one or both elbows on knees, they seem to be in some kind of meeting or conversation.

The wooden carvings found in Japan’s oldest wooden temple, Horyu-ji Nara are also in a reflective pose. I find them rather haunting. There’s something so contemplative about their pose. This mystical being staring right back — almost as if it was connecting with the sculptor.

When human history intersects across eras and empires, commonalities are recorded and studied as a valuable through line. Why is that not so with these figurines that share so many striking similarities, created by cultures who didn’t share the same beliefs or creation myths?

Historians would have us believe they’re talismans of local deities or spirits. If that’s the case, then why do they share so many distinct commonalities? We’re taught that these non-seafaring peoples had yet to travel the globe. Perhaps ancient cultures shared global trade relationships thousands of years earlier than we’re supposed to believe. Or could there another explanation?

In academia, coincidences are rare, and usually the smoking gun of an incomplete record. These statures just don’t fit our historical models, even if they’re no more than mythical deities.

Maybe it’s just our collective unconscious. But would it be capable of reproducing anything as detailed as these ancient 3D models?

What if reptilian beings were actually known to these cultures? Were they trying to leave us a record of their encounters?

Could there be an evolutionary thread we don’t know about? There is skeletal evidence – but that’s another story. If reptilians evolved alongside us, where are they now? Some say they went underground.

Or could they be visitors from some place too foreign for us to get our heads around — another dimension, or another planet? That’s a lot to take on, but I find it harder to believe that out of billions of exoplanets in our galaxy alone, we’re the only life form to evolve technologically. Exoplanets, many of them Earth-like, have been detected on an average of 1-2 for each star in the visible sky, by the James Webb Space Telescope.

My theory is these enigmatic figures depict alien (perhaps Anunnaki) visitors who factored significantly in the evolution of human culture, in Mesopotamia at the dawn of our civilization and beyond. There are literally thousands of Sumerian tablets recorded by the very active and serious historians of that sophisticated culture (that invented the hypocritical oath, the 360 degree circle and more). They describe nonhuman scientists who came from the skies, performing hybridization experiments on humans and animals, and even include things like the double helix to describe DNA (which we didn’t know about until 1869). There is a lot more to this story.

If you don’t buy that as a possibility, then these are at the very least a fascinating collection of figures from our past, that shared a common meaning for us, long, long ago. Perhaps at the apex of our technological evolution, when we come to terms with our hidden potential, we will understand the meaning of their mysterious presence.

Photo sources: British Museum, Cleveland Museum of Art, Iraq Museum, University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, among others.

EMERGING UNDERGROUND | 2

Science Faction — A Search for Answers

Fiction is a provocative way to introduce new ideas. But when talking about a new way of looking at where we may have come from and where we could be going, where do you draw the line between what’s fact and what’s fiction?

The fact part is bound to be controversial. That wasn’t my intention, but them’s the breaks.

As it turns out, what I learned challenges the accepted view of history and archaeology, as laid down by academia — grant funded, tax accredited, college fee funded academia. In other words, my books challenge money, institutions and careers.

It gets a bit sticky with some belief systems too, whether it’s human origins as explained by many religions, or the ontological shock of accepting we’re not alone in the Universe.

Then there’s science. I’m 100% pro-science. As Nada, the protagonist of The First Underground says, “Science is your only hope. Beliefs may help you cope, but you won’t have a future without science.” Yet the scientific community has issues with the very idea of alien visitors. Their primary objection: Even if they existed, they can’t possibly travel light years to get here.

To take the position that we know everything about space flight when we routinely crash into the moon and blow up before leaving the atmosphere, is a big stumbling block.

Science should never take the position that it knows everything first, and only looks at data to corroborate that position. It’s the role of science to investigate the unknown, to test theories and reproduce them until they can be called a fact. Then when that fact is challenged, it’s time to start the same process in a new direction. When new information challenges a fact it must be rigorously investigated, not dismissed as pseudoscience because it doesn’t fit what we think we know. There’s also the money. Science has funding too, institutions at stake, and of course careers.

A good example of science refusing to look, is how UAPs (formerly UFOs) make right angled turns at speeds in excess of 600 mph without splattering their occupants all over the cockpit, when Navy radar, aircraft video and pilots confirm this is exactly what they do. Even if these unknown craft are some kind of high tech drone and there are no pilots, how are they not crushed by their own g-force?

As Nada also says, “What you call dark energy comprises roughly 68% of the universe, dark matter about 27%, and regular matter that humans understand, less than 5%. Whichever way you slice it, humans don’t fully understand 95% of the universe.”

That’s not a criticism, it’s an exciting place to be, because we’re at the cusp of so much new understanding.

Things like higher frequencies of existence - commonly called dimensions. This is described the same way by many experiencers, and in a scientific manner – it may be beyond our current understanding, but it’s not an unscientific concept. This could explain how aliens travel across space, how they seem to disappear in mid-flight, and how they communicate across immense distances. We should be listening to eyewitness testimony and investigating these accounts, not sweeping them under the rug of ontological shock. It’s time for us to grow up, and grow up fast, if we want to survive. Just as there are doors of consciousness, there are doors that remain closed to us, because we’re not in control of the flow of information.

After years of cross-referencing what is now 75 books, and interviewing experiencers – I’ve found what I think is a through-line connecting some really huge questions:

• What is humanity’s true origin?

• Has our species already had an advanced prehistory?

• Are we the only intelligent life in the Universe?

• If there are nonhuman visitors here, what are they up to? 

• Are experiencers right, that there’s more than one group abducting us? One that wants to help us, and one that wants to take us, parasitically from within, while we ignore them in disbelief.

• What is humanity’s future if the helpers win?

• Is there a future for us if they don’t?

I would never claim to have all the answers, but I’ll never stop researching and adapting what I think I’ve figured out. That’s the scientific process, and it’s mine as an author, even a fiction author. 

So I jokingly call it science faction, because the science behind the fiction is so provocative.

If I put these ideas in a nonfiction book they’d be labeled conspiracy theories. But if I can introduce them into fiction that entertains, my hope is they could become part of popular culture and feed into a difficult but wonderful conversation we can all have together. I can’t wait.

EMERGING UNDERGROUND | 1

Out of this world… out of mind

Something happened one night that changed my life. This is how The First Underground was born.

I saw a Grey alien standing right in front of me, one night on the Hopi Reservation many years ago. I was there as a volunteer art teacher at a summer camp for the tribe. It was about 4 feet tall, impossibly thin, with a massive almond shaped head, large, black almond shaped eyes, long arms with longer palms than us and long, tubular fingers. Its neck was too thin for it to be a kid playing a prank. It stared at me and I stared back. Then it turned and walked away, behind a large piñon tree, a black mass on the moonlit mesa. It never came out the other side. I ran round to it, but it was gone.

Without realizing it at the time, everything was different. I no longer had the luxury of disbelief. But my mind had other plans.

Like so many people confronted by something beyond their world view, I was in ontological shock and didn’t know it. In the most bizarre leap of faith, I didn’t think about it at all. It was out of this world – and out of mind. When I saw something about aliens on TV I’d think, “Oh yeah I saw one didn’t I? They’re real then.” But then like an automaton, I’d stop thinking about it.

Twenty years later, I had an idea for a book about the impact that global first contact would have on our scientific, religious, political and social institutions. I sunk into my research. One character was an abduction experiencer, and I wanted her perspective to be taken seriously, so I started reading hypnosis regression transcripts – and I was transfixed.

People from all over the world, from all walks of life, with no trace of psychosis, and who stood to lose more than they gained by opening up about this embarrassing enigma… were describing the same things. Exactly the same things. The same procedures, performed by the same beings, in the same order, with the same instruments. They were even told the same things.

They were troubled more by having no-one they could talk to, than by the outlandish nature of the experiences themselves. This is in part due to the concrete nature of what they went through. Waking up from a truth-shattering event is best written off as a dream – until you find scoop marks, puncture wounds, and other physical trace evidence… of something that shouldn’t have happened. Not to you. Not at all.

So my book turned on its head, from being a rather flashy exposé of societal bias and demagoguery, to becoming an exploration of our subconscious search for enlightenment. A journey I didn’t realize I was on, until I saw by my own denial that it was the same one we were all on. In the blissful oneness of being unaware together, we accepted parameters that erased the questions before they could be asked. In fear of our own aloneness we reached for a light we could turn off, rather than a light which could expose everything we feared most. Our fear of being alone, rejected by our peers. The fear of being alone in this vast, daunting Universe. Under the cloak of acceptability, lurked a presence that defied all reasonable explanation, and yet, it isn’t going away is it?

What is this presence? Where does it come from? What does it want? I kept on searching, reading now 75 books on the abduction phenomenon, UFOs, ancient civilizations, forgotten history and forbidden science. A throughline began to emerge, as my tolerance for high strangeness deepened, and the sense of my place in it all took form. We are all in this unraveling together, whether we accept it now, or face it later.

I realized I had not one but two stories to tell. There was the impact that first contact could have on us, on the world. But there was another that had to come first – a leap into the dark: why we needed to know.