Transcription
I certainly have nothing to gain by coming forward and saying I'm an abductee. Uh, in fact, I have more to lose, I think, than I have to gain by it. It's an absolutely real experience in my life, and there is nobody going to be able to make me change my mind. I know what I've seen, and I know what I've felt, and I know what's happened to me.
Looking back, 1976 was the year the world turned upside down for Dan and Joyce Aon. They were just starting out. Their son Danny was three, baby Heather had just turned one. Things were pretty carefree back then, until one crisp fall night. Dan and Joyce had just gone to bed, but insist that they were still fully awake when they shared a terrifying experience.
"I seen this red light above the window, and I thought there was a fire outside, and I'm trying to scream at my wife, and uh, nothing was coming out." Whether it was fear or some other unnatural force that had paralyzed Dan, the strangest part was that Joyce was paralyzed too.
"I was laying on my right side, and I was felt different at my whole. I couldn't feel my body. I was like paralyzed. The only thing that I could move was my eyes. I couldn't speak. I was in my head was screaming for Dan to help me because I thought something was really wrong with me. I was just paralyzed."
Then, as suddenly as it had come, the light and the paralysis were gone. "As soon as the light disappeared, I was able to move again, and I, I opened the curtain, and I looked outside, and I said, 'What the hell was that?'" And what surprised me was Joyce said, "I don't know." And we both just sat straight up in the bed. "And what the hell was that?"
And Heather was in her crib, just standing there, and her eyes were huge. I didn't know what had happened, but we just helped each other and fell asleep. What was odd when that all happened was we went to sleep and never talked about it again. In fact, for most abductees, including Dan and Joyce Aons and the Allagash, for it is usually years before they make any connection at all between the trigger event and the possibility that they may have been abducted.
And like Jim Weir, Dan and Joyce Aens discovered that they were not the only members of their family to be invaded by bizarre nocturnal events. Heather, who was only one on the night of the red light incident, is now 22.
"Ever since I was a little kid, there was a reoccurring nightmare that I had. There was this gigantic monster that I can't really explain because the dream had this dark focus to it, but I remembered looking into this eye and seeing my own reflection." This is a picture of the monster that Heather drew when she was 11 years old, before her family even knew what alien abduction was and before the publication of Communion.
"When Heather first came up to talk about it, we didn't really understand what it was that she was talking about, and therefore, we didn't believe her. I didn't know what was going on, so how could I talk to her? It was just, you know, a little kid imagination running wild."
And ever since the night of the red light incident, the Erans believe that their son Dany has also been giving signs. "I truly believe that something, something happened back in 1976 when I was 3 years old. What for myself, I, I don't know."
"When he was younger, it was, it was really strange. You'd wake up in the morning and just have to just really kind of hunt for him, you know, as to find him, 'cause he'd be off in another room of the house somewhere, in a closet or under a chair or under a table or so. It was, it was very strange. It's like he was hiding from something, but never did know what at that time."
A simple case of synchronized dream certainly does not explain what happened to Dan Aens in 1990, 16 years after the red light incident. One day, he called me at work. "And I had to take him to the hospital. My heart was pounding, I couldn't breathe, you know, I thought I had a heart attack."
An emergency room doctor assured Dan that he wasn't having a heart attack, but what was happening wasn't so clear. "The several physicians that I went to had different ideas as to what was going on. One thought it was panic attacks, uh, stress. One thought it was inner ear infection. He couldn't do anything. He couldn't work. He stayed home. He couldn't leave the house."
"At that time, I realized that, well, maybe there was something, you know, maybe not physically wrong with me, uh, so much as there's something mentally, uh, wrong with me, or something in the back of my mind maybe that's just trying, trying to come out."
What that something was seemed to come out one night while Dan was watching TV. A movie came on that had a scene in it where this little alien peeked around from behind a doorway. Dan was watching the movie version of Communion.
"I, I just burst into tears when I'd seen these piercing eyes staring out behind that door. A very split second in my mind, uh, I, I got more or less a flashback of what had happened back in 1976."
"He was absolutely hysterical, crying, and I, I didn't understand what it was. I didn't understand why he was like this." With no real answers from the mainstream medical community, Dan and Joyce had to wonder if the movie, Dan's illness, and the red light incident were all somehow related.
"The conventional doctors really weren't doing anything for me. It wasn't until about a week after I watched Communion, uh, that I was watching a television program that John Carpenter was on. He became interested in dealing with people claiming abductions and this whole phenomenon dealing with UFOs. When I realized they were starting to utilize psychiatric professionals who had been training in hypnosis, Bud Hopkins and some others began referring, uh, cases to me at the rate of about two per month. Well, that's added up to about 120 over the last nine years."
"The first time I spoke to him on the phone, describing what had happened to me, the panic attacks and and everything, he said, 'There's a lot of other possibilities other than alien abductions,' which was like clear at the back of the list, you know. But, uh, he was willing to talk to me, and, uh, he asked me if I want to go through a hypnosis session, and I agreed to it."
But other possibilities melted away after Dan's first hypnosis session. "He's showing me something all right. Take a good look. Metal. It looks like a, a little spade. It's going to hurt. Is that what you think, or is that what you feel? He put it in me."
"I really didn't want to tell anybody, whatsoever, my own family. I didn't want to tell. I wouldn't even discuss it with with Joyce." But after Dad returned from his second hypnosis session, that all changed.
"It wasn't too long after the second session that Joyce started remembering. The conscious memories just came. I mean, they just came back. There wasn't anything that I could do to stop from coming back. And after I had those, was whenever I went to see John myself."
"I began working with both of them and found that they had shared an experience which was indeed traumatic and indeed bizarre at the same time. As I began to realize that they were sharing this experience, there was no doubt in my mind it had to be a real event causing such emotion and by dealing with it, causing such relief."
After many independent regression sessions, Dad and Joyce have come to the real realization that the red light incident was their first shared abduction experience. Under hypnosis, "I actually seen what had happened to us that night. I was cowering in the corner of the bed, uh, scared to death. There was a little being at the foot of the bed, and there was one, uh, with my wife, and there was one at the crib at the end of the bed with my daughter. There were three of them. And one of them touched my arm, and I sat up on the bed. I watched him take Heather."
"When they were taking her, the, the feeling that I had was so overwhelming as far as the helpless feeling that I had that I, I just couldn't hardly, couldn't hardly stand it. That was the most go, God off feeling because they're in such control of you, you can't do anything. You're roing a kidnapper kidnapped your child, and you can't do anything, and you're standing there."
Five years after Dan and Joyce began their regression sessions, Heather finally agreed to undergo hypnosis as well. "I really wasn't sure if, if hypnosis was real or or anything, uh, but when I was under hypnosis, it just memories and and flashes just were there. I found out that, uh, one of the beings had come and taken me out of my room. I was on board something. This being asked me if, if I wanted to play, and I kept telling him no, that that I didn't want to, and that I wanted to go home."
"What Dan and Joyce remembered, they kept very quiet, very secret. Made very special effort not to share or talk about any such thing with her, with their kids, because they knew that their kids might have had these experiences, and they did not want to contaminate their, their thoughts about it." And in fact, Danny, who was three at the time of the red light incident, did not believe that he was part of his family's abduction experience when a Sting's crew shot this video. But as you will see later, that too has changed.
"If, if I was abducted by aliens, then so be it, you know. I did have something that I could at least grasp on to and say, 'Okay, this is what happened. This is what caused these panic attacks, and I'm just going to have to deal with it the rest of my life.'"
"What Dan can expect from this first encounter is a general exploration into his, uh, experiences, um, helping him to remember more vividly, uh, the aspects which he already knows consciously, plus hopefully triggers some further recollections which may provide answers for his own questions, his own puzzlement."
"Something obviously happened to my parents and my sister, um, and they know. I'm just the only person left that hasn't thought about knowing that. Just been a little scared too, I guess. I may know something that they don't, and I may not know anything at all."
"I'm really nervous about him going into regression because I know how much it bothers him, even whenever Dan and I get into a heavy discussion about, um, these beings because it's too emotional for him. He's a very sensitive person."
Danny was three on the night his parents believed the family was first abducted by alien forces. He has no memory of that night, but ever since then, Danny has had a recurring dream about a strange figure threatening his family. John Carpenter believes that this recurring dream should be explored in Danny's first hypnosis session.
"Just come right on in, okay? And Dan, why don't you have a seat there on the couch? And Danny has asked his mother and his girlfriend to sit in on his hypnosis session."
"Hi Joyce, good to see you again. All right, well, I understand that you've had some interesting experiences or something. The family has giv me a little bit of background on it, but I'd like to hear from you exactly what you think might be a little different in your life that we might need to explore."
"Well, we had talked about some, a reoccurring dream that I had since I was a child." John Carpenter has never met Danny before today, so there is a preliminary interview before the actual hypnosis begins.
"This has been a few years ago. Do you ever have any peculiar marks or bruises or cuts on your body?"
"Yes. One time that I really remember, I can remember waking up one morning and, um, I went to the bathroom and noticed that I had a spoon-shaped mark on my left inner thigh. I told my father about it that morning, um, and he had also had one. About how old were you at that time?"
"This has been a few years ago." After an hour-long interview, Carpenter spends time explaining the hypnosis process, trying to address all of Danny's fears about what might happen once he goes under.
"I don't have any expectation that you should have any kind of bizarre UFO experience. I mean, even if the rest of your family does have those experiences, that does not mean that you do or should or or ought to. It would actually be okay with me, right? But just let you know, you may feel a little pressure here. Mom, Dad, sister, you know, it's like good. Actually, you know, I, I don't feel a lot of pressure. Good. You know, any other questions about hypnosis or anything?"
"Just don't make me cluck like a chicken. Why don't you get yourself comfortable there?" The second phase of the session begins. For the next 30 minutes, he helps Danny descend into a state of total relaxation.
"Questions or anything? Go ahead and close your eyes now. This is not a sleep state. Danny is relaxed but still conscious of everything going on around him. And we can travel back through time." Carpenter begins the regression by taking Danny back to his childhood.
"Way back to when you were about five years old. You can begin to describe what your room was like like when you were five, six years old, somewhere in that time."
"Posters. Posters."
"And the posters are of what?" This regression session will last more than two hours. It is a slow, painstaking process that we've condensed down to the key moments.
"Where exactly are you when that dream begins?"
"Bet. I hear a noise."
"What does it sound like?"
"Like a can dropping."
"And where does that sound seem to come from?"
"The garage."
"Something's in the garage."
"Uh-huh."
"What do you feel at this point?"
"Scared."
"What do you want to do about it?"
"I don't want to look."
"Do I go look?"
"What do you see?"
"Dan, I don't want to look."
"What happens now?"
"Do you recognize where you are?"
"No. Never see anything like it. Uh, it's all stony. There's two of them standing in there."
"Mhm. Real long, long fingers. Big head. Big head. Dark eyes. Dark eyes. Here they come."
"How's that feel?"
"Scary."
"What color hair does he have?"
"You don't have no hair. No hair."
"Well, you should be able to see his ears real well. You don't have any ears."
"No ears."
"So does he have a mouth like a coin slot?"
"Like a coin slot."
"He's got something in his hand. What does it remind you of?"
"Like a stick. Like a stick. Shiny. Shiny stick."
"What did it remind you of?"
"Wand."
"He's making it move in front of him. And does it seem to do anything?"
"This in the back of my head."
"Uh-huh."
"What does it feel like?"
"It hurt. It's hurt."
After more than two hours under hypnosis, John Carpenter slowly begins to bring Danny back to full consciousness.
"We've worked really hard, and I'm going to bring you slowly back. Twenty. Nineteen. Eighteen. Seventeen. Drifting back. Sixteen. Fifteen. Fourteen. Thirteen. Twelve. Eleven. Ten. Halfway. Nine. Eight. Seven. Everything's fine. Six. Five. Remembering everything. Four. Three. Two. And one. And slowly, you can just reorient yourself to the room and just stretch and relax and just become comfortable."
"Dan, I think your mom knows exactly what that feels like. That wasn't a dream, was it?"
"Dan?"
"No."
"How long does it seem like it's been, by the way, that you've been laying there?"
"15 minutes."
"15 minutes? More than two hours. Everyone here could testify it's two hours." At the end of the session, Dany left abruptly and later told the sightings team he was too upset to talk about his experience. It wasn't until three weeks later that he agreed to do a short interview.
"Oh, yeah. This never happened to you. Feel [Applause] fortunate. I don't wish it upon anybody. I don't think anybody [Applause] should. People out there who just watch TV and just think this is entertainment and interesting, and then they think people are just making it up and it's a bunch of hoy. That is something which they will not say if they sat through these sessions and actually felt these people's confusion and trauma and and absolute panic at times over what they're experiencing. They didn't want it. They didn't need it. And yet they find themselves deeply involved in this phenomenon."
"He went to the crib. He went to the crib. Pick up."
"Uh-huh."
"I can't move. You can't move. You don't have any control over what's happening. What do you see happening now?"
"I took her. He took her."
Under separate hypnosis, Dan's wife Joyce recalled the same sequence of events. They both say little beings marched them outside and together the family was floated on a spaceship.
"I never wanted it to happen to my children. I didn't realize until later that it had. But when they took her, I couldn't do anything." Heather, now 22 and married, remembers a series of abductions beginning in childhood when she was forced to play telepathic games with the aliens.
"How do you play the game?"
"If I pick up that one, he'll let me go."
"What are you feeling?"
"I want to go home."
"Mhm."
"What does he tell you about that?"
"If I pick it up, he'll let me go."
The Aaron's family believes alien kidnappers have not only intruded in the lives of their children but are now visiting one of their grandchildren.
"He called them his little buddies that come in his room and play. He said he wanted to watch the ship leave."
"I'm not going to tell him that it's not real because it is real." Skeptics would say that Dan, Joyce, and Heather could have constructed their stories together before hypnosis. But then they'd have to know how to answer the trick questions and the leading suggestions which I provide. Plus, there are many details they wouldn't know about that we would be looking for as markers for truthfulness and reliability with other abduction data.
Researchers also believe abductees are sincere because of another consistently reported feature of abduction accounts: the insertion of alien implants.
"I, uh, turned my head to the right, and this taller being came over, and he kept telling me that it would be okay, that they wouldn't hurt me, and then they took this, uh, very long needle, and they put it up my right nostril. I closed my eyes when I heard it crunch, and then I became very calm."
With the help of hypnosis, Dan's anxiety subsided, and he returned to work. But what once seemed out of this world has now become a part of his life.
"If this is some sort of mental thing that's happening to people, then why aren't they out? Why aren't the scientists or the doctors or whatever trying to find a cure?"