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From: Greg Sandow <GSANDOW@prodigy.net>
Date: Mon, 30 Dec 1996 11:13:31 -0500
Fwd Date: Mon, 30 Dec 1996 12:40:13 -0500
Subject: 'Alien' Writing

Since I've written a lot here about samples of alleged alien writing
I've seen, I thought it might be helpful to summarize, both because of
the potential value this writing has on evidence, and because of its
effect on me.

I first heard about the writing from two experiencers who work with Budd
Hopkins. They told me their stories independently. They know each other
-- I've seen them both at Budd's support groups -- but they're not
friends.

Both told me essentially the same thing, with one difference. One said
she'd been doodling the writing since childhood, and thought it might
have something to do with the abductions she felt she'd experienced. The
other thought he'd remembered the writing under hypnosis.

(Parenthetically, I don't think there's any problem with alleged writing
that surfaces after hypnosis. There;s at least one paper in the
psychological literature documenting the use of hypnosis in police
investigations. Evidence has been uncovered through hypnosis,
corroborated, and used to get convictions. Obviously, the corroboration
is key. In the case of supposed alien writing, there's no way to get
direct corroboration, unless the aliens land, and we grab the little
strip of notes the Martian ambassador uses when gives a speech...that's
a detail from Mars Attacks, by the way; very funny movie. Anyhow, what
we're doing here is comparing one sample of alleged alien writing to
another. That some emerge under hypnosis seems irrelevant to me,
especially once you read the full range of research studies on the
subject.)

Returning now to the narrative, both these experiencers drew the
supposed writing for Budd. Both told me that he didn't say anything.
Instead, he left the room and returned with a scrapbook in which he'd
collected very similar samples. Both experiencers said they were
devastated by the shock of seeing these.

Budd confirmed these accounts for me, and, with great reluctance, showed
me his book of samples. There were more than a dozen, mounted under
plastic, each in a different handwriting. They were extraordinarily
similar...but my testimony to that similarity doesn't count as evidence.
In fact, Budd's whole procedure here is unfortunate.

In my opinion, what he should have done would be something like this.
Ideally, his sessions with experiencers would be moderated by neutral
outsiders, who could confirm that the experiencers mentioned and drew
the writing with no prompting from Budd. Budd would leave the room while
the experiencers drew the supposedly remembered samples, which would
immediately be sealed, and given to the outside observers. Budd would
never see them.

When a reasonable number of samples -- a dozen? 25? social scientists
would have an idea of what the proper number might be -- had been
collected, they'd be studied in a formal research project. This is when
the sealed envelopes would be opened. Independent judges would compare
pairs of samples, assigning a numerical ranking of similarity. (It
should be kept simple, and might range from  zero -- no perceived
similarity -- to five, which would mean very great similiarity.) This is
a standard procedure in social science research. It's also been used in
parapsychology, I believe, to evaluate results of experiments in remote
viewing. The evaluations of the separate judges would be averaged,
giving an overall score.

This, or something like it, is the procedure that ought to be followed.
But now I want to say something more subjective, about my own reaction
to the book of supposed writing samples. The similarity among them was
so very great that -- speaking only for myself, now -- I didn't feel a
need for objective outside study before I formed my opinion.

Imagine looking at pages of books printed in French, Italian, English,
Spanish, Portugeuse, and Rumanian. There would be differences,
obviously. But you'd notice that all six pages were written by and large
in the same roman alphabet. You wouldn't feel you needed an independent
study to tell you that.

And in fact the supposed writing I saw was even more similar than that.
I've promised Budd not to describe it. But I can say this much: It's not
nearly as complex as any written alphabet we know. Nor is it anything
like Chinese or Japanese characters. It might be compared to Morse Code,
though it's a level or two more complicated than that.

But suppose it was morse code. Here's what I would have seen, as I
turned the pages of Budd's scrapbook. Page one...nothing but dots and
dashes. Page two...nothing but dots and dashes. Page three...nothing but
dots and dashes. And so on, up to the end. There's no way that's not
going to have an effect on me, or, I imagine, on most other open-minded
people who might see it.

I'll say again that my testimony has little value as evidence. The
"writing" should be published and formally evaluated. Nor can I prove
that any or all of the samples weren't faked, and that Budd and the two
experiencers haven't been lying to me.

Speaking only for myself, though, I have to say that this experience
pushed my view of the abduction evidence quite a bit further out. That
is, I only see two general possibilites. One is that the writing has
been faked. The other is that something really extraordinary is going
on. Maybe it's some kind of telepathic confabulation, evidently
unconscious. Or else -- and I must say this strikes me as the more
parsimonious explanation -- the experiencers really did see the writing,
which in turn suggests that their abductions might be real.

Greg Sandow