Interview with Karla Turner, Ph.D.
Interview with Karla Turner, Ph.D.
CF: You are widely regarded as one of the leading experts in the
field of UFO and "alien-abduction" research. How did you get started
in your study of these things?
KT: Our family knew nothing about the phenomenon when we started
having UFO sightings and abduction encounters. Being a researcher, I
turned to the UFO literature for an explanation. When I absorbed what
was available, I found no answers that I felt were trustworthy. I
decided that this was a crucial situation for my family (if not
globally), and the only way I could get answers was to do the research
myself. The only way to do the research, in this case, was to go out
into the field and deal with abduction cases.
CF: Was "Into the Fringe" the first result of that? [Karla's first
book]
KT: Actually, "Into the Fringe" was not a result of research to gain
answers. It is more of an account of my family's awakening to, and
coping with, these experiences during the first year and a half, when
they were very intense. It was not until after that that I started to
branch out and work with other people. I worked with Barbara
Bartholic on our case, and began working with her on other cases.
Many times she would come to Texas (where I lived) and we would set up
a four- or five-day work session, during which people in that area who
wanted to work with her would come to my home. She would interview
them and place them under regressive hypnosis there. I began to learn
by acting as her assistant. (If Ph.D.'s were available in this field,
Barbara should certainly have one. Working with her proved to be much
more educational than my academic career.) Then Barbara's caseload
got so heavy that she was no longer able to handle it. It was no
longer enough for me to assist, and I had to being doing preliminary
investigative work myself. And that was how my involvement developed.
CF: We have been finding, in a lot of cases, that experiencers'
parents, sometimes their great-grandparents have had the same types of
encounters that they have. Is that what you found in your family?
KT: Yes, it is definitely "transgenerational" in Elton's family.
[Elton, Dr. Turner's husband, was given the pseudonym "Casey" in 'Into
the Fringe' and 'Taken'. They no longer feel it is necessary to
protect his identity.] Before Elton's grandmother died, in 1990 or
1991, the family knew she was near the end of her time here, so they
asked her to tell some of the old stories, and videotaped her response
for posterity. One of the stories she recounted seems to be a clear
account of an abduction that occurred when she was a child. It took
place between 1905 and 1908 in East Texas. It had a lot of the
earmarks of the classic abduction--screen memories, missing time, a
miraculous return from a place she should not have been and should not
have been able to get out of etc.
There is no doubt that both his mother and father have had sightings,
abduction encounters and other unusual experiences peripherally
associated with the phenomenon. Elton is involved, ant at least one
of his children was involved as a child. I don't know about my real
father because he was killed in Korea when I was four years old, but I
believe that his brother, who is 80 now, may have had experiences. My
son and I have each had experiences.
My brother and sister-in-law and their children have had experiences--
which we did not know about until "Into The Fringe" was about to be
published. They were so upset by those experiences (and by other
things going on in their lives) that they removed themselves from the
family for about ten years. Only when they heard about my experiences
did they et back in contact and say; "Okay, now we can talk." And a
cousin of mine--whom I was closest to, both geographically and
emotionally--has obviously had some kind of experiences. She was been
compelled to write a fictional account of the alien situation. She is
working on it now.
My mother refuses to say anything, because it is just too frightening
to her. She has not yet even finished reading "Into the Fringe".
Each time she reads a page or two, she becomes so upset that she can't
go any further--which tells me that there is probably a reason for her
feelings. I remember that, in 1965, when I was a senior in high
school, a big flap was making national news. It was one of the few
times that I had ever paid attention to the UFO thing. One day,
Mother and I were listening to the TV while doing something in the
kitchen. Walter Cronkite was talking about the UFO flap, and I told
Mother that if a UFO landed in the backyard, I probably would go get
on it. My mother, who is extremely gentle, and who never raised her
voice or hit me, stopped what she was doing, grabbed me by both
shoulders and shook me until I felt as if my teeth would fall out.
All the while, she was saying, forcefully, "You swear to me, you will
not ever, ever, ever get near one! Don't you dare even say that!" It
was the only outburst I have ever known my mother to have in my entire
life. I now know--from research--that extreme responses like that to
this phenomenon are often indicators that a person has had
experiences.
CF: You mentioned the use of hypnosis, which has been the subject of
a lot of controversy. Some of the other researchers have said that
people under hypnosis can come up with scenarios that did not happen,
in order to please the hypnotist. Some have said that the multiple
levels of experience--where one can break through screen memories and
ferret out buried memories that are different--are artifacts of the
process of hypnosis. What are your opinions about these issues?
KT: I think those positions are completely untenable, they grow out
of what I call armchair research. I don't conceive you will find them
being espoused by anyone who has actually had the experiences. If
they have been through them and want to come back and talk about what
happens when they undergo hypnosis, to look at what they consciously
remember, then we can have a dialogue. Right now, they are speaking
without knowledge. They are speaking hypothetically, and their
opinions are based on erroneous understandings of the phenomenon, of
the experiences, and of the control exerted upon abductees during
these experiences. It is easy to philosophize any number of
explanations, but that does not mean that those explanations have any
relationship to what is really going on.
Also, there are bad hypnotists and good hypnotists. A bad hypnotist
probably can foul up a number of things. I know that people who have
gone to hypnotists for smoking or dietary problems have sometimes
suffered more after hypnosis. Obviously, some things can be
mishandled. But my experience with hypnosis and the veracity of what
is recalled has, in several cases, been proven to me to be accurate.
I have been able to investigate these cases. At times erroneous
material does surface, or is created because of the situation, but
that is not typical.
I conclude that hypnosis is, by and large, one of the most excellent
tools we have. Used properly, it may be the only tool we have to get
certain pieces of information (or levels of information) back up to
the conscious state. I have been able to test a number of
hypnotically recalled memories against externally verifiable evidence,
and they have proven to be correct.
CF: You have found, have you not, that sometimes there are multiple
levels, like the layers of an onion? An experiencer undergoes
hypnosis and comes up with a scenario, then, when he is regressed to a
deeper level, he breaks through the first level (you find out that it
was a screen memory), and a different scenario emerges.
KT: Yes, and it seems to me that, in some cases, a bottom level can
be reached.
CF: How many layers are there; how deep can you go; and what's at the
bottom?
KT: We have not done enough research to answer any of those questions
without being an armchair philosopher. Typically (not always) the
first recall deals mostly with conscious information. When the
subject is taken to the next deeper level of the trance state and
asked to focus, often what will be reported is that what was seen was
not the same as the conscious recall. Then a groping process begins.
The subject thinks, "This was inaccurate; I feel that something was
wrong; and when I focus, I see that it was not what I thought it
was." That is a transitional level.
There may be only a couple of levels--as opposed to, say twenty
levels--but there certainly is a cover level, underlain by a more
solid foundation. If the subjects are helped to program their mental
computers to penetrate illusion and to speak only truthful, accurate
statements, to, as Barbara has often said, "clarify vision," then they
will recall radically different scenarios--not expanded versions of
the firsts scenarios, but something quite different from what their
conscious memories had left them with. There are at least two levels,
and possibly three.
CF: People have told us that they can break through screen memory
after screen memory until they get to a scenario involving reptilians,
and that is as far as they can go. Have you found that to be the
case?
KT: In the few cases that I am very familiar with, when the "base
line" was reached, reptilians were involved.
CF: Are the greys always involved in the top level?
KT: Sometimes the first level involves greys, sometimes humans,
sometimes Pleiadians, sometimes strange animals.
CF: Abductees tell stories of seeing beings--angelic Nordics, for
example--and then, when they concentrate and try to focus on their
memories of those beings, they disappear, and behind them are these
"lizard people."
KT: I am not familiar with a number of cases. I have heard other
researchers talk about the same thing. In one case that I recount in
"Into the Fringe," James had mostly conscious recollections and almost
no hypnosis. He remembered being drawn into the proximity of a
beautiful "Pleiadian" woman, who was very alluring and tender, and
almost seductive. She wanted him to come into her embrace. When he
got into the embrace, and thought she was going to kiss him, she
disappeared entirely, and what was left in her place was a purplish-
black, bumpy, almost slimy-looking character with fairly asymmetrical
features.
I have encountered this same type of creature in a couple of other
cases. The entity was very strong. Instead of embracing James, the
creature threw him down on the ground and shoved a two-foot-long tube
down his throat, into his stomach, and pulled up stomach juices. The
next day, he still had some of the bile taste, the interior of his
throat was sore, and he discovered claw marks around both sides of his
neck, where he had been held down. Whatever the entity was, there was
something claw-like about it (which, of course, matches reptilians).
Maybe, as close as he was to it, he could not perceive the whole
figure. But he could see a bumpy covering, which could equate to the
rough, scaly exterior sometimes reported to be reptilian. It is
described as bumpy, ridged, bony, strong, clawed.
CF: Apparently these beings have the ability to project different
images.
KT: Some people say that they transform--that they mutate or change
their own real forms. I don't accept that as accurate. I don't
believe they really look like a blond, and they do something to trick
you and then they suddenly look like a reptilian. I think that what
they alter is human perception. They certainly can project false
images--just as Ted's [Ted Rice's] grandmother was shown her dead
husband, so that she would consent to have a sexual encounter. Ted's
grandfather had been dead for six years. And in the middle of having
the encounter with what she thought was her restored husband, the
image disappeared--I suppose because the aliens wanted to get the
"emotional juice" from her--and she saw a "reptoid" on top of her.
CF: We also have heard stories about military people being present
during abduction, and when people focus on them, they change. Budd
Hopkins tells a story about a person who saw a military policeman. He
wondered why on Earth the MP was there, and tried to focus very
carefully on him. When he did so, the MP changed, before his eyes,
into an officer of high rank, and then into a Nazi officer,. How do
you explain that? Is it the same type of thing?
KT: I call it altered state technology, or AST. Right now, AST is a
catchall phrase for the processes and mechanisms that we have clear
evidence to show are in use with abductees, and account for a great
percentage of the reported data. It involves, specifically, control
of the reticular activating--or brain-stem--system, which is the
processor for virtually everything the brain does. People believe the
medulla or the cerebrum are the most important, but those are much
less important in the overall processing of incoming information than
the brain stem, which does the controlling. If one can control brain-
stem function, one can give the person being controlled any number of
scenarios and events that seem real to the senses. He can also take
control of the motor skills and movements on every level of
consciousness (from full consciousness to fully comatose). This
accounts for why we are put in altered states, I assume.
There is a technological necessity to these encounters. The aliens
cannot allow us to be involved with them in our normal state of mind
because we would be under our own control, and that is not what they
desire. There is also a control over memory retention, and even a
control over what we pay attention to. Implants into that area can
control everything we perceive and everything that we think happens.
I believe that the first use of the technology is to put us into the
altered state--regardless of what the ensuing events are going to be.
No one I know has been in a normal. conscious state of being during an
encounter.
CF: Is this being done by aliens, by humans, or by both?
KT: I am certain that some aliens are involved. Very good evidence
is available that indicates that humans are aware (and this may be
quite awhile back) of the alien ability to do this, and I understand
that is the primary reason that our military is "studying" abductees.
They have been working to catch up, technologically, with the altered-
state-technology capability. I expect they have been at it for a long
time--but I do not accept they have been at is since the very
beginning of the alien situation. I'm positive they came across this
information during their surveillance, and then it became a primary
target of research and development. "We must have this capability,
too." We know for certain that they implant technology. Military
lists, articles and catalogs show that we can do implants now. We
have known about that for about thirty years.
CF: Some writers have theorized that the reason our brain stem works
the way it does--and the reason we can be hypnotized--is because we
were designed that way. They suggest that we were designed so that we
could be controlled. What is your opinion of that?
KT: It's a theory. Where is their proof? Do they have any kind of
reliable evidence? Those people who hold that theory would, I assume,
also theorize that they are a product of alien genetic manipulation,
which may or may not be the case. I think there is some evidence for
it, but how extensive that alteration or manipulation may have been, I
don't know. What we need to do is go back and look at ape and monkey
brain structure and see if the same situation exists in their
physiology as it does in ours before I would be convinced that aliens
"designed" our brain that way. I envision they have had to adapt
brain design to their own function.
CF: What are your best guesses as to who they are, where they are
from and why they are here? Why are they doing the things they are
doing?
KT: My best guess as to who they are and where they are from is
nothing more than a guess. My best guess would be that they are from
here--that they are terrestrial originating creatures. The earth has
a long, long history. There has been plenty of time for an
intelligent insectoid species to have evolved. There has been plenty
of time for an intelligent reptilian species to have evolved, well
before mammalian species were even proliferating. Given that their
"grazing ground" is Earth--and we don't have any evidence that they
are grazing on Mars or some planet in Orion or orbiting Tau Ceti, but
we know they are grazing here--it seems to me that that is one
indication that they are from here.
CF: Could this explain why so many abductees report seeing hundreds
of fetuses in glass containers?
KT: Well, it was an explanation that Pat found palatable. She was a
very religious person. When dealing with Pat, the aliens always use
religious imagery. That is not so in many other cases where the same
things are going on. Lisa was shown a copy of her body, too (also
reported in 'Taken') , but nothing was mention about working for god
or the resurrection. She was told, "If you don't cooperate, we'll
replace you with this and nobody will know the difference." When Ted
was a teenage, he and a number of other teenagers were abducted
together and shown copies of their bodies. In this instance, too, the
clones were used as threats.
CF: Also in 'Masquerade of Angels', you mention that the animal
mutilations have a connection?
KT: Right. Ted recalled a process whereby his original body was
killed. They first gave him a glowing, green, fiery substance to
drink. It made him extremely nauseated. He vomited it immediately,
and then they cut off his head. When his soul energy--or whatever you
want to call it--came up out of his body, it remained attached to the
body at this lumpy, glowing, green liquid area. It appeared to be
unable to get free of that. They sucked it into a little black box,
which was set on a counter while the aliens readied his new cloned
body.
Part of the process for the physical production of the material that
his clone was made from involved vats of cow media. It was used to
produce a blobby flesh stuff reminiscent of a cow's vaginal area.
This material was extruded from a vat, taken to a sink area, where it
was cleaned, then placed in a tray. The tray was put into a device
that looked somewhat like a locker. After what seemed a rather short
time span, it was rolled back out, and the blob had turned into the
inert body of an eight-year-old kid. It had been copied, hair for
hair. They drained the juices from the old body and disposed of it.
Then they put probes into the shoulders, neck and feet of the new body
to activate it.
Once it began to breathe, the soul energy could be put into it. His
soul energy, which had been stored in the little black box ever since
they killed his first body, was introduced into the new body, and
because the body was breathing, it was trapped there. Ted came out of
this wondering if the soul does not actually adhere to the human body
until breath is drawn at birth--wondering if the fetus, in the womb
before it has drawn a breath, cannot have its soul energy. By the
way, other abductees have conscious memories of seeing both the blob
of flesh being washed and the locker-like apparatus.
CF: I believe it was in 'The Watchers' that Raymond Fowler pointed
out that, when fetuses are taken from abductees to make these greys,
they are not allowed to breathe. They are immediately put into a
liquid medium, so they cannot draw a breath. Could that be to keep a
soul from entering the body?
KT: I think it is something to think about. I don't believe the
grays have souls, but are more like "Frankensteins" or "zombies" or
whatever term you want to use for the "living dead." When I have been
with them, I have had an overwhelming feeling that they are not alive--
that they are dead.
CF: What would be the purpose of cloning human beings?
KT: You have be there. The stories we have been given are
contradictory. I would only be guessing, and I really hate to guess
without better evidence. Not only have abductees reported seeing
their own cloned bodies, but Ted has reported--and so have some
others--seeing rooms containing twenty identical bodies that he could
not identify. It was as if they were generic bodies. In fact, Ted
truly freaked out when he saw the cover of one of the major
newsmagazines, which showed a composite picture of a woman that was
supposed to represent what the human species would look like if we
meld the races. He told me to go buy that magazine, because the woman
on the cover is almost identical to the body that he saw twenty copies
of in a facility in the mountains in Idaho. They were males, but they
were twenty beautiful, perfect specimens, all just alike.
CF: The implications, of course (if they can clone a body and
transfer a soul to it), is that one need never go through the ordinary
death process.
KT: Oh, Ted had definitely gone through an ordinary death process
when they cloned him.
CF: But, I mean, one could continue on as the same person
indefinitely.
KT: Yes. Now you are getting to why may be the crux of the
"harvest." That may be that they not only need emotional energy, but
also at least one faction (and I would be tempted, if I were to guess,
that they would be reptoids) actually uses the physical bodies. They
are trying hard to get us detached from our bodies by telling us that
they are "only containers." Why? Because they eat our bodies. If a
cow knew you were going to eat it, you would want to tell that cow,
"Your body is not important. It doesn't matter. It is your soul that
counts. Don't get attached to your body, because we're going to eat
it anyway. Don't think to highly of it."
It may be that there is some faction that uses the physical body for
its own purposes--eats it or manufactures with it or does something
with it. I think it may be used for their nutrition. Now, if that is
the case, why don't they just grow tons of cloned bodies? They
wouldn't have to kill anyone. They could take a couple of cells from
Leah's hair and grow twenty of thirty of her, and just eat those
bodies.
Well, apparently--and I am reiterating Ted's thinking, because we are
all doing hypothesis work here--there is a difference between flat
soda and fizzy soda. Evidently, a body that has had soul energy in
it--one that absorbs certain kinds of emotional energy--is more
nutritious than a "flat" body that has not been through life
processes. Let's say that, at eight or nine years old, you have lived
some already, and you have some emotional storage going on already.
If they kill your nutritionally yummy body for their use and put your
soul material into a cloned body that has not had life experience,
then they can let you go through several more years in that body and
build up emotional energy in it. Then it will be ready for them to
eat, and they can continue the process again, many times.
This way, they can use the same soul material to produce any number of
tasty bodies. Understand that this is all in metaphorical terms. I
am not necessarily speaking strictly literally. But it is as if that
is what is transpiring--that growing the body is not as nutritious,
just as artificial vitamins are not as nutritious as natural vitamins.
CF: It appears that a widespread, systematic program of social
engineering is going on. Experiencers appear to be moved around as if
they were chess pieces. Abductees seem to be split up from their
mates and joined together with other abductees, possibly for some
reason, by some outside force. Is this part of the same process, or
is it something different?
KT: Yes, I have encountered it. Very much so. Much more than I
would like. And not only the example you gave about "remating," but
we also see people whose programming leads them to different jobs and
to different geographical areas. They are being compelled to certain,
normally rural area--sometimes grouping with other abductees who are
going through this process, but often, just off on their own. They
have a sense that they must prepare for survival of some sort.
Abductees are put through other kinds of programming and compulsions.
The only commonalty that I can see in all of them, so far, is that
they all cause great upheaval and produce great amounts of emotional
energy.
CF: And maybe tastier bodies?
KT: And maybe tastier bodies. But certainly immediate energy
production.
CF: We have heard many predictions of imminent cataclysmic events
happening to the earth. A lot of experiencers have been coming up
with this type of information. Everybody seems to be getting ready
for it; everybody seems to have this level of anticipation rising, as
if something very big is going to happen very soon. Lost of people
are storing up food and water because of it. What do you know about
that?
KT: Well, I know it is not the first time in our recent history that
people have been through this. There have been apocalyptic movements
and visions and responses throughout our history, none of which have
come to pass; which is one thing to keep in mind. It may be more
widespread currently, but we are not aware of our real history. The
last two thousand years alone is highly edited, selective and
incomplete. So we don't know how many movements have come before.
But, based on what we do know, I suspect that have been a number of
them.
Currently, aliens are telling abductees that the apocalyptic even is
imminent, or are implying such, or are showing people scenarios of
it. That may be true. Or it may simply be a deceptive part of the
social-engineering program you mentioned. The aliens give different
abductees different scenarios to account for this, ranging from
deliberate and accidental nuclear destruction, to comet or asteroid
impacts, to earthquakes, to the melting of the ice caps, to an axis
shift, to political chaos and strife. These are all given as reasons
for abductees to feel that there is an apocalyptic thing coming.
CF: And for them to get away from the cities?
KT: Yes. Maybe the truth is that all of these things are going to
occur, but perhaps they choose the scenario that they think is most
likely to motivate each person. For you, it might be ecological; for
me it might be social. It appears they push our buttons very
cleverly. Also, it could be totally false that any of these are
inevitable events. It could be something that is being manipulated
and orchestrated to feel and seem very real, so that the entire
population will become convinced that a cataclysm of some kind is
imminent, and that there is no way out of it.
Then, if an alien presence were to make itself known very publicly,
and if the aliens were to say "We can take care of this for you," the
population would cry out, "Do it! Even at a cost, do it!" We are
being so programmed to think that destruction is coming that our
survival instinct will make us say, "Yes, we will let you be in charge
if you can stop this." I consider it is a very real possibility that
the cataclysm is a figment. Aliens have been giving people these
scenarios since the early forties, and people have been preparing for
it--on a smaller scale than now, perhaps--since then.
CF: You have mentioned something about dead relatives.
KT: Everything we talk about when we discuss the purpose behind the
cloning is conjecture based on the tiniest of evidence. Ted Rice has
more conscious recollection than almost anyone I know about being
cloned, about the cloning process, and about some of explanation from
alien to alien about that process. One of the things he surmised is
that, if a force of fairly limited means (but more advanced than us)
wished to control a population like ours, one of the ways that might
be most effective for many people, regardless of their religious or
political backgrounds, would be if the aliens could bring back to them
their dead loved ones.
On any level you contemplate about that, it would be a gratifying
situation--and for most people, would "prove" that these entities have
a "divine warrant." It would convince them that the entities are from
God, or acting under the auspices of God. I assume, as Ted pointed
out, it would bring a lot of people to their knees in a very
subservient, adoring, respectful manner. If a child who had died
could be returned to her mother, would she not feel eternally grateful
to the being who brought it back to her? It doesn't mean it is really
he child. But with cloning, it could be. Or it could be a very good
imitation that would do the job just as well. Now that's all just
speculation about what might be behind the cloning process.
CF: What about using that cloning process to replace political
leaders.
KT: That is a possibility. Personally, I believe one could control
political leaders more easily with implants. Now, if they wanted to
use one of their own souls, perhaps to inhabit the body of a
politicians and work full-time through it, that could be done.
Perhaps they could simply take the soul out and stick another soul
in. They have the ability to retrieve what we call the soul, to store
it in a container, and to put it back into another body. They can put
it in any body they wish. So that is a feasible hypothesis.
CF: Most of what you have said about these aliens is pretty negative,
for our point of view. Do you know of anything positive about the
aliens?
KT: Not about the abducting ones. I do accept there are intelligent
forces that can contact and inform us--perhaps to help us help
ourselves. Obviously, I don't presume aliens on the "good side" are
coming down here, standing in front of our bedrooms at night and
telling the bad aliens, "No, no, you can't come in here."
I believe it is the humans' job to deal with this, successfully or
not. I do not think there is a guaranteed outcome--that we are going
to win, or that we are not. But it may be that there are beings of a
benevolent enough nature, who are kindred enough, or who have some
ongoing interest in our survival, that they could be nudging us along
and providing some help--perhaps some protection. perhaps a lot of
information--to help us help ourselves.
CF: Have you found evidence of that?
KT: In my own experiences, yes. I have had contact that was not
abduction. I have received information through these contacts. There
have been interventions in the lives of abductees with whom I have
dealt, which seem to have involved positive or saving influences
separate from the abducting source. On the other hand, there are
abducting aliens that can give a person a wonderful experience on one
trip, then turn around and cause excruciating pain or terror on the
next trip. This may be a result of their attempts to program; it may
be that the first experience is a screen; or it may be a part of an
ongoing brainwashing technique that utilizes reward and threat. But I
do think that there is a group that is helpful. I just don't call
them "alien" and I don't believe they abduct people. They may
influence and contact people in other ways.
CF: Is there anything else that you would like to tell our readers.
KT: Yes. I would say that, to accept a spiritual explanation for the
abduction process and the abducting entities is foolhardy and
potentially dangerous to our souls. I think we want to believe in the
best. We want to believe we are being helped. Certainly, when you
are in the hands of entities who can control every single aspect of
your body and mind at the time of contact, you desperately need for
them to be benevolent. But the aliens are masters of propaganda--at
projecting the appearance of being benevolent. But it would be
foolish to believe that at face value without a thorough probing of
what may underlie these positive recollections that people report.
Hypnosis is a good tool to use to do that probing. I would also
suggest comparing the results with the words. If you are having no
trauma, no new health problems, no personal difficulties and no post
traumatic stress symptoms, then whatever you are dealing with may have
some benevolence to it. If, however, you are saying, "I feel so
lucky; they told me I'm special and I have an important job to do,"
yet you have new health problems and PTSD symptoms, you should listen
to your symptoms over the words of the aliens before you decide what
is really going on.
From Contact Forum, May/June 1995
Karla Turner passed away on Jan. 9, 1996.