Three New England Abduction Stories and One New Reality. Interrupted Journey by John G. Fuller; Captured! by Stanton T. Friedman and Kathleen Marden; Encounter at Buff Ledge by Walter Webb; The Allagash Abductions by Raymond E. Fowler

Abstract

Three stories that change what we know about the universe begin with the 1961 New Hampshire experiences of Barney and Betty Hill, first told in The Interrupted Journey by John G. Fuller in 1966. In 2007 that story was retold with new information and insights in Captured! by Stanton Friedman and Kathleen Marden.1 A second story about a 1968 Lake Champlain experience was described in Encounter at Buff Ledge, written by Walter Webb in 1994. A third story, from Maine in 1976, was told in The Allagash Abductions by Raymond E. Fowler and published in 1993. The three stories span an interval of fifteen years.

I have not read all of the many books about alien abductions, so I cannot comment on the accuracy of the ones I have not read. But these four, among several others not reviewed here, report facts. The Pocket Oxford Dictionary defines fact as thing that is known to be true or to exist; truth, reality, thing assumed as basis for argument. These four books report narratives that were spoken or written by the people who experienced the events. The reported narratives are what I call facts. They are the "thing assumed as basis for argument."

There is a difference between calling a narrative a fact and explaining  that narrative. The science of psychology recognizes that not all personal narratives respect external reality. A narrative as fact can be generated by a psychological reality, by an external reality, or by both. Do eight witness narratives-two from New Hampshire in 1961 (Barney and Betty Hill), two from Lake Champlain in 1968 (Michael Lapp and Janet Cornell), and four from Eagle Lake, Maine, in 1976 (Jim Weiner, Jack Weiner, Charlie Foltz, and Chuck Rak)-represent psychological reality, external reality, or a mix of both? If they represent only psychological reality, then they might be interesting to the narrator, to clinicians, and perhaps to novelists. If they even partly represent external reality, then they should be interesting to all of us, because they suggest that our external reality includes extraterrestrial vehicles with ET crews who catch and release humans to study them. How well do the eight narratives represent external reality? First consider the Barney and Betty Hill story.