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 ...
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