AudioBlog: When UFO Abduction Research Went Mainstream

by Charles Lear, author of “The Flying Saucer
Investigators.”In 1981, a new narrative became firmly established
as part of the UFO mystery with the publication of Budd Hopkins’s
book Missing Time. A large part of the book consists of
transcriptions of recordings made during hypnosis sessions where
the subjects described being taken aboard craft by 3-4 feet tall
creatures that performed medical procedures on them. The
descriptions of the creatures were similar to descriptions of
beings that would become known as “the greys,” which are the now
iconic creatures with large black eyes that became commonly
reported after Whitley Strieber’s 1987
book Communion. The eyes of the creatures reported in
Hopkins’s book vary. The book came out in July of 1981 and Hopkins,
along with Dr. Aphrodite Clamar, a psychotherapist hired to conduct
some of the hypnosis sessions, gave interviews to the press. From
this point on, the UFO Abduction phenomenon began to receive
serious consideration from the mainstream press with Hopkins as the
leading authority for the rest of the decade. Read more