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From: Mark Cashman <mcashman@ix.netcom.com>
Date: Fri, 14 May 1999 13:44:19 -0400
Fwd Date: Sat, 15 May 1999 01:34:07 -0400
Subject: Re: First 'Grey' Report?


>Date: Thu, 13 May 1999 22:45:47 +0100
>To: UFO UpDates - Toronto <updates@globalserve.net>
>From: John Rimmer <magonia@magonia.demon.co.uk>
>Subject: Re: First 'Grey' Report?

John expresses difficulties with John Velez' desire to
restrict focus to abductions where the witness reports
full consciousness during all portions of the abduction
event. He rightly raises the Puddy event as problematic
for many abduction cases, but I believe is unfair to
John Velez, who is simply trying to reduce the potential for
noise level in the study of abductions as real events.

There are a number of ways to explain the Puddy case,
and to the best of my knowledge none of them have
been explored (in the experimental, scientific sense).

One is to explain it as a physical / mental
disorder such as temporal lobe epilepsy - which would
lead to a negative conclusion in regard to her entire set
of reported experiences.

There are some obvious relationships between medical
symptoms which seem common between abductees /
high strangeness witnesses and epilepsy patients (or,
one should say, persons with traumatic brain injury). An
excellent survey of these symptoms can be found at

http://www.ellenwhite.org/headinjury.htm

They include:

"the following complaints: headaches, vertigo and dizziness,
nervousness, irritability, impaired memory, inability to
concentrate, excessive fatigue, difficulty with sleep... Other
attributes include a sense of ill health and a reduction
in the capacity to earn a livelihood."

These symptoms, which are present in various high-strangeness
witnesses (usually after the event), can still be suggestive in
two ways -

1) They are the cause of the report.

2) They are the result of the events described (i.e. "paralysis"
by ray, etc. causes temporary or permanent brain malfunction
or damage)

With regard to (1), we read:

"In 1888 Hughlings Jackson reported fifty cases of epilepsy that
manifested an aura or dreamy state, including some rather
extreme examples of automatism. These happened to a physician
who was a patient of Jackson's. in one of his experiences he was
traveling on a commuter train and was to get off at the fourth
station. He remembered passing the second station, but the next
thing he knew he was standing on the door steps of his house,
fumbling for his door key. he had left the train at the correct
station, turned in his ticket at the gate, walked half a mile,
and crossed streets to his house - none of which he recalled. It
had been an automatic behavior for which he was amnesic. (64)
Interestingly, another of Jackson's patients referred to his
seizure experiences as "visions." Sleepwalkers may open doors
and climb stairs safely but not remember their actions; it is an
automatism."

This, of course, might be the classic "missing time" experience.
It can also explain the absence of the abductee in some missing
time events, since automatism would allow them to leave and
return.

One might suggest that it would be interesting to hypnotize
persons known to have TLE who have had some exposure to
abduction information, to see, as in a previous but flawed
experiment, the degree to which abduction accounts are produced
and the similarity of those to the patterns described by Bullard
and alluded to by Jacobs.

Catelepsy and automatism is also interesting in regard to (2),
since one of the persistent mysteries of CE-III reports have
been the reports where the witness is paralysed by a ray and yet
does not fall. The suggestion is that this ray causes an
interference with brain function that is in some way similar to
epilepsy. The reason this is attractive is that we would prefer
(for reasons of simplicity) not to have to attribute to the
occupants any special knowledge of human brain structure.

It is much more likely that a variety of creatures in different
evolutions will use electrically mediated nervous systems than
that such creatures will have similar brain structures, so a
weapon which would cause the effect described without such
knowledge is inherently more plausible than that which does
require it (i.e. for non-humans to have a weapon which paralyses
because of the nature of the human brain as an electrical system
rather than one which must operate on a specific brain center by
design, seems more probable, since the second would require a
complex of experiments by the non-humans on human brains prior
to the development of such a weapon - nevertheless, of course,
we cannot a priori rule out that such experiments have
occurred.)

On the pro-abduction-reality side of a relationship between TLE
and abductions is:

"In 1933 Penfield discovered that when he electrically
stimulated certain groups of nerve cells in the temporal lobe,
the patient would "relive" - as in a moving picture or a
"flashback" - what had been experienced in one way or another
earlier in life. In other words, the temporal lobe system
records all the experiences that a particular person has had;
and even if it is beyond the direct recall of the individual
(forgotten), it is still recorded and can be brought back to
consciousness by artificial electrical stimulation or by an
electrical discharge in the brain during an epileptic seizure."

In other words, if a witness had a TLE effect as a result of an
event in a real abduction experience, or exposure to some weapon
used by the occupants, it is possible for a later seizure to
"replay" the actual events at a later date. Again, something
similar to this has been reported occasionally in the UFO
literature.

Another pattern of interest which should be looked for in the
abduction data is:

"Lennox has pointed out that seizures lasting several hours
might occur once or twice a year; and that the more frequent the
seizures are, the more likely that they will be of short
duration. (79) Partial complex seizures usually last from only a
few seconds to several minutes, but may also last hours and,
rarely, days."

In other words, if abductions are related to TLE, then those
reporting most frequent abductions will show the shortest amount
of missing time for each (on average). Again, this is a study
which has not been done.

Interestingly, "There are numerous causes for epilepsy,
including hereditary predisposition, birth injury, postnatal
head injury, meningitis and other infections, tumor, metabolic
abnormality, vascular disease, and intoxication. The most common
type of epilepsy is temporal lobe epilepsy, and the most common
cause for this is head injury."

Certainly, studies of Puddy and other abductees for such
factors could be rewarding in either implicating or discounting
TLE, but to the best of my knowledge such studies have
not been done.

Finally, the cautions about TLE interpretations of abductions
as raised by Robert J. Durrant

http://www.ipacific.net.au/~pavig/temporallobeepilepsy_456.shtml

must be kept in mind:

"Several other optional interpretations are possible, and I will
summarize them here with the understanding that in future
articles they will be expanded. First, that most if not all
persons who have close encounters with UFO's suffer, among a
variety of other physiological effects, disruption of the
electrical functions of the brain, including the temporal lobe
area. because of the peculiarities of the temporal lobe,
"flashbacks" can occur throughout life after the initial
triggering event. It is unlikely that monitoring of the
electrical pulses of the brain would reveal the irregularities
associated with clinical diagnosis of temporal lobe epilepsy.
Second, it may be that external means of controlling or
communicating with the temporal lobe regions is the means by
which the aliens deal with abductees. In addition to the
positive communications or signals, the process may well include
generation of "noise" both during the communication and, per the
remarks above, long after the communications."

It should also be noted:

http://www.mhsource.com/edu/psytimes/p950927.html

"Altogether Penfield (Mullan and Penfield 1959) divided the
illusions of interpretation into four groups:

1) Auditory illusions accompanied by the perception that sounds
were louder or clearer, fainter or more distinct, nearer or
farther away;

2) Visual illusions where things seemed clearer or blurred,
nearer or farther away, larger or smaller; fatter or thinner;

3) Illusions of recognition where present experience seemed
familiar, strange, altered or unreal; and

4) Illusions of emotion consisting of feelings of fear,
loneliness, sorrow or disgust.

None of these groups of symptoms are unique to epilepsy.
Migraine sufferers regularly experience illusions of sound,
sight, taste and smell."

And none of them bear much resemblance to UFO or abduction
phenomena, either.

---

Another possible cause for the Puddy event is PTSD, which, in
studies among veterans, has been shown to cause the reliving of
real events at other times, with complete realism, stiumulated
by some perception similar to that from the event. PTSD has not
been very much studied among high strangeness witnesses, yet it
is reasonable to expect that it would be present if these were
real events.

---

There is no question in my mind that there are several
fairly distinct categories of "contact" related cases,
as already expressed in my classification system of
"contact" reports. There is also a fairly smooth
continuum between those categories. The major discontinuity
arises in the consistency of the entities reported under
hypnosis, and the near absence of such entities in the
much more varigated CE-III reports, and in the apparent
avoidance of entry to the witness homes in CE-IIIs and
the entry of such entities into homes in abductions,
espcially those I class as "burglar" cases.

There are, of course, multiple witness abductions,
though as with conventional UFO cases,
the viewpoint of the additional witnesses varies. If one is
interested in cases which might have become abductions
as well as those which are claimed to be abductions, then
we definitely have cases where occupants are seen to
at least attempt to carry off a human being.

Of course, we have the Walton case and the Andreasson case
to name two very famous cases. In the Walton case, the
witnesses did not in any way participate in the abduction
and thus the case may be considered multiple independent
witness. The Allagash abduction is a multiple abduction, and,
of course, so is the Hill case.

What is almost more interesting is an event like the Copley
Woods case, where there were external witnesses to
unusual circumstances (sound, EM effects, and light
displays) at the time of the event, a physical trace which
persisted for years was found after the event, and
medical effects on eyes and skin - all demonstrating
a consistency with "conventional" UFO phenomena.

Now, John asks whether we have cases where external
witnesses saw someone being carried off into a "nuts and
bolts" object by beings. I would answer - yes, though in
those cases, to the best of my knowledge, the abduction
was typically not successful.

In this connection, of course, one immediately thinks of the
Paz case from Venezuela, though this abduction attempt
was foiled. A "nuts and bolts" taking is the da Silva
case, where the father disappeared during a confrontation
with two objects and this was witnessed by his son.

Another interesting case in this regard is the
1969 Brown case from Awanui, New Zealand, where a
witness observed two unusual men with an unconscious
woman, and physical traces were found the next day.

---

Ultimately, it is not surprising that John Velez is convinced
of the reality of what he has perceived and that he is
concerned by the dismissal which seems to exist
whenever these events are considered. As I believe I
have shown above, even medical explanations can be
viewed in two ways, and the studies which would determine
if they are causal or caused in regard to the events reported
have not been done. Thus we would do well to tread
carefully and work with the strongest abduction data to
determine if those cases can be explained as _caused_
by non-objective factors. If so, then the more obviously
non-physical cases are even more likely to be so
explained.

---

I hope that none of this will be taken as disrespect to those
who have had or reported these experiences. Determining
the nature of the abduction experience is important, if
for no other reason than to end or alleviate the suffering
of those with these experiences. Sadly, as careful as many
of the researchers in this field have tried to be, however,
there is a tremendous amount of contamination and there
are many problematic accounts. We must be very very
careful to avoid attributing specific objective reality to
some of these events, and we must be especially wary
of doing damage to concepts of objective physical reality
in attempting to bring these events within the sphere of
understanding. If, indeed, these events present new
insights into the nature of reality, those insights will have
to wait until the serious, objective, and fact-based
research required has been undertaken.

------
Mark Cashman, creator of The Temporal Doorway at
http://www.temporaldoorway.com
- Original digital art, writing, music and more -
------