Introduction

     The modern era of UFO encounters, dating roughly from the end of
     World War II contained from its inception an implicit argument over
     the character and motives of  "the visitors." The earliest military
     studies of UFOs, undertaken in secret, were driven in part by a
     genuine fear of hostile invasion from space. That fear exploded into
     popular culture in the early fifties, epitomized by such films as "War
     of the Worlds" and "Invasion of the Body Snatchers." At the same
     time, while the first generation of serious civilian ufologists fixated
     on distant objects in the sky, an odd assortment of so-called
     contactees began attracting hordes of followers, some merely
     curious but many entranced and adoring, to hear their stories of
     benevolent, godlike beings from other worlds.

      The gross dichotomy between hostile invaders and benevolent
     space brothers might have been expected to fade as decades of
     research advanced our understanding of UFO phenomena. But
     exactly the opposite has happened instead. Today, the argument
     over the character and motives of "the visitors" is more starkly
     drawn than ever.

      It must of course be acknowledged at the outset that a more
     fundamental question overlays the questions of visitor character
     and motives -- and that is the question concerning whether or not
     UFO phenomena and alleged "alien visitation" represent anything
     otherworldly at all. But for purposes of this special report, that
     question will be set aside. Here we will assume that "the visitors"
     are real, in order to examine the deeply divided opinions about
     who "they" are and what they may be doing on our planet.
 
 

     Part One: The Beginning of the End?

     Among the current generation of serious researchers, Temple
     University history professor David M. Jacobs, Ph.D., stands out
     both as a scholar of the phenomena and as a proponent of the
     darkest scenario of alien invasion. Jacobs' concept of the invasion
     bears no resemblance to the popular six-gun mythology of films
     like "Independence Day," where grotesquely tentacled aliens
     stand in for Saddam Hussein and heroic American flyboys kick
     them back to the stone age. The "real" invasion -- and for Jacobs it
     is absolutely real -- is more terrifying than that, because it is
     utterly surreptitious yet unstoppable. We are doomed as a species,
     Jacobs believes, and we didn't even see it coming.

      "The aliens have fooled us," he writes in his disturbing new book,
     "The Threat: What the Aliens Really Want, and How They Plan to
     Get It" (Simon & Schuster, 1998). "They lulled us into an attitude
     of disbelief, and hence complacency, at the very beginning of our
     awareness of their presence. Thus, we were unable to understand
     the dimensions of the threat they pose and act to intervene. Now it
     may be too late. My own complacency is gone, replaced by a sense
     of profound apprehension and even dread.... Now I fear for the
     future of my own children."

      Jacobs is hardly alone in his forebodings. Budd Hopkins, arguably
     the most influential abduction researcher on earth, shares Jacobs'
     view that alien intruders are quietly engineering a huge
     population of hybrid beings, mixing human and alien genetic
     material toward the end goal of supplanting present-day humanity
     with an "improved" race answerable to the aliens' designs for
     planet earth.

      As Jacobs sees it, "It is now possible to discern at least four
     specific programs that the aliens have put into effect to achieve
     their goal:

      "1) The Abduction Program: The aliens initially selected human
     victims around the world and instituted procedures to take these
     humans and their progeny from their environments without
     detection.

      "2) The Breeding Program: The aliens collect human sperm and
     eggs, genetically alter the fertilized embryo, incubate fetuses in
     human hosts, and make humans mentally and physically interact
     with the offspring for proper hybrid development.

      "3) The Hybridization Program: The aliens refine the hybrids by
     continual alteration and breeding with humans over the
     generations to become more human while retaining crucial alien
     characteristics. Perhaps humans are also altered over time and
     acquire alien characteristics.

      "4) The Integration Program: The aliens prepare the abductees
     for future events. Eventually, the hybrids or the aliens themselves
     integrate into human society and assume control."

      Jacobs believes we are well into the end-game in this grand and
     malevolent strategy. While unsure of the exact timing of the
     takeover, he reports:

      "Many abductees feel that 'something is going to happen' soon
     and that the aliens have their goal within sight.... The indications
     are that this could mean from within the next five years to within
     the next two generations."

      And, lest one harbor any hope for fair treatment under the new
     regime, Jacobs spells out the likely fate of the majority
     non-abductee population of earthlings. Among abductees he has
     personally worked with, Jacobs says, some are told "that
     nonabductees will be kept as a small breeding population in case
     the hybridization program has unforeseen problems. [Others are]
     led to believe that nonabductees are expendable. The evidence
     seems to suggest that the future will be played out primarily with
     aliens, hybrids and abductees. The nonabductees will have an
     inferior role, if any at all. The new order will be insectlike aliens
     in control, followed by other aliens, hybrids, abductees, and
     finally, nonabductees."

      By "insectlike aliens," Jacobs refers to tall "greys" with
     mantis-like features, as have been often described in abduction
     literature. In "The Threat," Jacobs refers to other types of aliens
     as well, including smaller greys, grey-type beings with differing
     skin tones, "Nordics" and "reptilians." He suspects that the
     often-reported Nordic or distinctly human-looking aliens are
     actually hybrids created by the tall greys. He admits some
     uncertainty regarding reptilians and other exotic, less-frequently
     reported types. But he leaves no doubt that the insectlike tall greys
     are in charge of the changes underway on earth.

      Though Jacobs' research is meticulous and passionately reported,
     his conclusions are disputed by many other voices in the UFO
     community.

      Jim Marrs, author of the recent book "Alien Agenda," concedes
     that human evolution may have been manipulated by aliens more
     than once, but he doesn't believe in a malevolent invasion.

      "I take a more positive attitude," he told CNI News in a recent
     interview. "If there were alien races out there who wanted to come
     and somehow enslave this world, particularly in an overt fashion, I
     think they would have done it long before now. The historical
     record shows that this alien presence has been here since before
     the recorded history of mankind. Surely they wouldn't have waited
     until we've got the capability of going off planet, laser weaponry
     and so forth. I don't see any reason to get overly fearful at this
     point."

      Hollywood special effects artist Steve Neill, a life-long abductee
     whose graphic depictions of grey aliens and abduction scenarios
     have been featured in numerous television shows, says he can
     understand Jacobs' point of view but thinks something more
     gradual and positive may be taking place. Speaking with CNI
     News, Neill admitted that he's experienced big "mood swings"
     about his encounters, from deep fear and anger on one hand to a
     kind of giddy euphoria on the other. Now, he says, he's found a
     middle position that he's happy with. In his view, the visitors are
     certainly manipulating the human race -- but they are simply part
     of the grand pattern of nature.

      "The swings I've been through kind of encapsulate what this is all
     about -- going from one extreme to the next, and then arriving at
     the middle," he says. "That's something that everything in the
     universe tries to do, reach a balance no matter what. In the end, I
     don't really view this as good or bad. I view it as part of what I'm
     part of, this amazing mechanism of the universe that makes nature
     function as it does. Every creature is caught up in some aspect of
     it, no matter where you go."

      Asked about Jacobs' view that aliens might be engineering the end
     of humanity as we know it, Neill suggested that our current
     situation may be comparable to an earlier period of human genetic
     advancement.

      "In a way, Jacobs is right," Neill said. "Consider that
     Neanderthals no longer exist. That was an extinction. But I'm not
     in the position to decide if it's something that should be viewed as
     evil -- one species developing or being engineered into another. I
     think Cro Magnon was an improvement on the Neanderthal. And
     I'm starting to believe that what we're looking for as 'hybrid'
     human beings has already existed for a very long time. There are
     numbers of hybrids in our society today, in fact more than we can
     possibly imagine. The people who are having these experiences
     themselves, I feel, may be sorts of hybrids who have been
     genetically engineered and altered, going back generation after
     generation in their families. I am starting to see children in this
     world who are so incredibly brilliant, and have this light [inside]
     like no other children I've seen. I've met some of these kids. If it's
     what I think it is, it's brilliant, because it will be slipped in so
     smoothly, and these kids are so powerful, that they are bound to
     change the world."

      Not everyone, of course, can be sanguine about a situation in
     which everything we now regard as human is being gradually
     manipulated into something else -- even if that something else is
     "better" on some cosmic scale of value.

      Other researchers and experiencers hold views greatly different
     from Jacobs, Hopkins and even Neill. For these people -- Jacobs
     refers to them as "Positives" -- visitors to earth are unambiguously
     benevolent and have our physical well-being and spiritual
     advancement foremost in mind.

      Notable among this group is Dr. Steven Greer, founder of CSETI
     (Center for the Study of Extraterrestrial Intelligence ) and a
     leading proponent of human-initiated close encounters or CE-5s.
     Also noted for such views are psychologist Richard Boylan, author
     of "Close Extraterrestrial Encounters: Positive Experiences with
     Mysterious Visitors"; and Lyssa Royal, author of "Visitors From
     Within" and "Preparing for Contact," whose writings are
     primarily the product of channeling. Such articulators of the
     "Positive" outlook generally agree that extraterrestrial
     intelligence is widespread, diverse, highly organized (in the sense
     of a Galactic Federation or similar cosmic government) and
     benevolently active on the earth for the express purpose of
     assisting humanity through a time of turmoil and transformation.
     For the most part, though not unanimously, they argue that the
     fearful and negative views of abduction put forward by David
     Jacobs and his allies are products of human misunderstanding, not
     alien misbehavior. Even the term "abduction" is generally
     dismissed by them as wholly unfair and misleading.

      Less well known than Greer or Boylan, but equally representative
     of this "Positive" position, is Nancy Malacaria, a New England
     resident who, with her husband Jack, claims to have had numerous
     communications with ET representatives of a highly organized,
     earth-based enterprise known simply as The Project.

      Nancy and Jack are the parents of five children, run a successful
     rug-cleaning business out of their home, and by all outward
     appearances are normal, solid citizens of Norwood, Massachusetts.
     But on May 12, 1990, their lives suddenly changed when Jack had
     an unexpected experience in the garage of their home. It was the
     middle of his work day, and he was busy washing a rug. Nancy
     described what happened in a recent interview with CNI News:

      "Jack kept seeing a bright flash of light. It looked like a mirror
     reflection of the sun flashing in through the window. He kept
     looking up, thinking that somebody was stepping up to the door.
     Then there was another bright flash of l>
 

     Transfer interrupted!

     There was a doorway of light, standing up like a hologram in the
     middle of the floor -- like you're in a dark room, and you have a
     closet light on and you open the closet door and all you can see is
     the light, not the frame. It opened, and there was a figure standing
     in the doorway, a silhouette. It looked sort of like a man. Of
     course, my husband was very afraid. It was between him and the
     only way out of the garage. In his mind he heard a man's voice
     saying to him, 'This image is scaring you, so I'm going to make it
     disappear, but I'm still going to talk to you.' Then the doorway
     closed up again, just the way it opened.

      "As soon as it shut, my husband left the garage. He was very
     afraid. It was the only logical thing to do. So he came into the
     house -- I wasn't home -- and he thought about what happened. His
     mind was reeling. In about 20 minutes, he went back outside again,
     because he had left all his equipment on and he had to finish his
     work. He peeked in the garage. Everything looked normal. He
     realized that all the equipment was still on. He didn't know what
     to think -- he wasn't calm enough to think about it. So he finished
     working.

      "And while he was working, this voice kept talking to him. It was
     telepathy. The voice told him, basically, that there are 30 other
     worlds visiting earth that are concerned for the ecological state of
     our planet, and that they were not going to let man destroy our
     planet. This was the very first message. It really is not the whole
     purpose of their being here, but that was a very straightforward
     introduction."

      From that unlikely beginning, Nancy told CNI News, she and her
     husband found themselves engaged in a "furious" series of
     telepathic, and sometimes physical, contacts with a wide
     assortment of beings.

      "There were about 100 point blank encounters in the first 18
     months, and then about 100 more in the next two years," Nancy
     says. "We've met many different people... aliens of different races.
     We've learned a lot about their abilities. We've learned why aliens
     visit us, why they don't let people see them, how it is that people
     assume they've been abducted."

      In time, Nancy says, she and her husband were told of no less than
     170 different alien groups currently represented on earth. Most of
     these groups, though not all, are formally associated with a highly
     organized, earth-based enterprise known as The Project.

      "There's one Project for earth. There are other projects, but
     they're for other worlds," Nancy says. "The Project is the
     organization of all the visiting life for that planet. That occurs
     when the beings on that planet reach a point in their evolution
     where they can start to understand other life."

      Among the many alien groups that Nancy claims to have met are
     several that answer to the description and behavior of the so-called
     greys. She offers a novel variation on the widely-held idea that the
     greys are principally responsible for human abductions, and that
     they behave as if indifferent to human rights.

      "The greys are working with genetics, and they are creating
     races. Their methods are not as advanced as some of the other
     aliens that visit us. Not all of our visiting life is working with
     genetics, but two particular [grey] races that I know about are. As
     their technology improves, so will their methods. In the meantime,
     their methods prevent them from being able to join the Project.
     But some of the Project beings are working with them to help them
     improve communications and improve their methods, and they will
     eventually join the Project."

      Needless to say, one might wonder how Nancy Malacaria can
     speak so matter-of-factly about such outlandish things and expect
     to be taken seriously. Yet, Steve Neill speaks with similar
     self-assurance about aliens he has met; and although David Jacobs
     inserts an occasional self-deprecating admission that his ideas
     sound absurd, he is just as committed to his dark views as Nancy is
     to her own.

      Nancy Malacaria -- much like Steven Greer, Richard Boylan and
     Lyssa Royal, among others -- believes that "the biggest reason
     there is so much human negativity about our visiting life is human
     nature. It's the way we think and assume. Where there's very little
     understanding, we automatically assume the worst.

      "There's really no sensitive way to say this, but [ufology] attracts
     people who really don't understand what they're saying, and don't
     understand the reputation they're giving our visiting life," she
     declares. "That's one of the biggest reasons why the aliens don't let
     people see them, because everybody would just believe everything
     they've ever heard, and none of it is accurate."

      If Nancy Malacaria can be believed, "The Project" is intended to
     assist humankind through its present time of planetary turmoil
     and bring earth to a point of readiness to join a wider galactic
     community. It is a view widely shared by the "Positives," and
     diametrically opposed to the apocalyptic visions of David Jacobs,
     Budd Hopkins and their sympathizers.

      "As much as I want to be optimistic, I find little to fuel hope for
     the future," writes David Jacobs. "In a way, I wish I could be like
     the Positives, existing in a naive but happy dreamland, awaiting
     the coming of the Benevolent Ones who will engulf us all in love
     and protection... [but] I must go where the evidence leads me. I
     have come to view the alien abduction phenomenon and its
     purpose as an asteroid hurtling toward the Earth -- discovered too
     late for intervention. We can track its progress and yet be utterly
     incapable of preventing the collision."

      If alien visitors are really here, do they portend the beginning of
     the end, or the beginning of something much grander than humans
     have ever known before? Or are both these views too extreme, too
     dogmatic and too implausible? What about the great in-between,
     reported by many experiencers, where diverse visitors display
     behavior and motives spanning the entire moral spectrum? And
     what about the possibility that the visitors -- some of them, at least
     -- are not extraterrestrials at all, but something even stranger?
 
 

     Part Two: Stranger Than Fiction

     Phillip H. Krapf worked for 30 years in the newspaper business as
     a reporter, photographer and editor. He spent 25 years as a copy
     editor for the Los Angeles Times metro division, sharing in a
     Pulitzer Prize the Times won for its coverage of the 1992 Los
     Angeles riots. Krapf took early retirement in 1993 and was
     enjoying an eminently ordinary and leisurely life in Ventura,
     California until the evening of June 10, 1997. That night, he says,
     he got abducted by aliens.

      Krapf tells his remarkable story in a new book from Hay House
     called "The Contact Has Begun." In the book, Krapf says he was
     teleported right out of his bedroom by a blue beam and taken
     aboard a huge mothership that orbits in the vicinity of the moon.

      The ship is piloted by beings he calls Verdants. They originate on
     a planet in another galaxy. Their spacecraft are so advanced that
     they can travel anywhere in the universe. They are by no means
     the only extraterrestrials out there -- there are thousands of other
     intelligent races, they say -- but the Verdants are currently the
     most numerous.

      Krapf says he remained conscious throughout three full days on
     board the Verdant ship, except for normal periods of sleep. In this
     respect, he says, he was treated very differently from scores of
     other humans he saw the very moment he arrived. These people
     were laid out on row upon row of tables in a huge
     gymnasium-sized room, all unconscious and attended to by one or
     more Verdants. Krapf says it was explained to him that the
     Verdants had been engaged for many years in the process that has
     come to be called abduction. These people on the tables -- ordinary
     abductees -- were being inspected medically. None of them were
     ever harmed. Most of them would remember nothing. Moreover,
     Krapf was told, the time for this kind of abduction is at an end.
     Very soon, it will stop completely.

     Abduction was never about procreation or the making of hybrids,
     the Verdants told Krapf. It was simply about studying the human
     species in every possible way. Now the Verdants know everything
     there is to know about humans -- vastly more than humans know
     about themselves -- so there's no more need for study.

      Instead, it is now time to prepare the human race for admission
     into the Intergalactic Federation of Sovereign Planets. Krapf was
     told he was abducted wide awake because the Verdants wanted to
     give him a detailed briefing and a modest assignment in the overall
     program of preparation. His book, "The Contact Has Begun," is
     the fulfillment of his assignment, he says.

      According to Krapf, the Verdants don't have huge black eyes like
     the better-known "Greys," though in general build and stature
     they sound fairly similar. But the Verdants talk out loud (Greys
     are generally described as employing telepathy); they eat and
     enjoy food in human fashion (Greys are usually said to lack a
     human-type digestive system); and they engage in sex for pleasure
     and bear children like humans (Greys are said to have lost the
     ability to procreate).

      In an interview with CNI News on March 3, 1998, Krapf insisted
     that his story is completely true to the best of his understanding.
     No one, he says, could be more surprised than himself. He
     professes to have had no prior knowledge of, nor interest in, the
     abduction phenomenon. He says he had been indifferent to UFO
     stories his whole life and had happily accepted the prevailing
     wisdom at the Los Angeles Times that people who see UFOs are
     either insane or lying. Moreover, he had always been a religious
     agnostic, tending toward atheism. Suddenly, in June 1997, all that
     changed.

      With no prior exposure to abduction claims other than the little
     he haphazardly saw on late night TV, Phillip Krapf apparently
     does not know how his story compares with tales told by other
     abductees and contactees. He claims to have been so impressed by
     the qualities of the Verdants -- including patience, kindness, vast
     knowledge and spiritual wisdom, as well as superlative technical
     achievements -- that it never occurred to him to doubt the literal
     truth of everything he experienced and was told. Some of that was
     quite startling.

     Of all the things Krapf learned during his three day adventure,
     however, nothing could compare with the revelation that the
     human soul is real, human life is eternal and God exists. Krapf, the
     agnostic/atheist, says the assurances given him by the Verdants on
     these realities left him utterly dumfounded. But he says he believes
     them completely.

     To any person familiar with other renderings of the
     abduction/contact experience, one of the most peculiar features of
     Phillip Krapf's account is its absolute physicality. Everything
     about the Verdants, their ship and their mission seems material
     and three-dimensional. So physical is their universe of experience
     that even heaven is described as a physical location. They have
     been there, the Verdants tell Krapf. Why, you can plot it on a
     chart.

     Temple University historian David Jacobs, in his recent book
     "The Threat," paints a picture of contact with aliens that is
     horrifyingly bleak compared with Krapf's cheerful tale. But
     Jacobs' aliens are also described as physical creatures. They are
     apparently bonafide extraterrestrials from other planets in our
     galaxy, he says. His reports from over 100 abduction subjects
     include a wide diversity of strange details, but these can be
     attributed, he says, either to very advanced technology
     (indistinguishable from magic, in Arthur C. Clarke's terms) or to
     manipulation of the abductee's mind.

     Jacobs' aliens do practice telepathy, though. By whatever means,
     they do walk though walls. They are considerably stranger, by
     human standards, than Krapf's Verdants.

     Jacques Vallee is the most influential UFO researcher in America
     to insist that the idea of merely physical ETs from other planets is
     patently absurd. He has suggested instead that UFOs and their
     occupants might be inter-dimensional entities. He has also
     observed that UFOs seem to function in the role of a "control
     system," having a profound but always inscrutable and subliminal
     influence upon the development of human consciousness and
     culture throughout history.

     Despite this theoretical control function, however, Vallee regards
     the idea that aliens in UFOs repeatedly abduct thousands or
     millions of people to do medical procedures as simply hilarious.
     Needless to say, Vallee was criticized for this heresy by leading
     abduction researchers, especially Budd Hopkins -- so much so, in
     fact, that Vallee finally withdrew from ufology altogether, after
     darkly warning that UFO research seems doomed to perpetual
     irrelevance by its inherent silliness and lack of intellectual rigor.

     Vallee did not, however, deny that abductions take place. He
     recognizes that they really do, although perhaps less often than
     popularly believed. It is the mechanism of abduction that other
     researchers have wrong, Vallee says. Real abduction is
     perpetrated by humans, not aliens. It is probably part of some
     terrible and desperate political agenda, employing a grotesque
     caricature of real UFO contact to instill a useful brand of fear in
     average, dull-witted humans.

     Meanwhile, Vallee says, the real aliens are far stranger than we
     can even imagine -- not ETs at all, but interdimensional chimeras,
     forever unknowable and out of reach.

     UFO investigator Bob Pratt feels quite comfortable with Vallee's
     thesis, and Vallee rewarded Pratt's good judgment by writing a
     glowing foreword to Pratt's 1996 book, "UFO Danger Zone:
     Terror and Death in Brazil" (Horus House Press). "This is field
     research as it should be done," Vallee said, "and we can only
     deplore the fact that [Pratt's] work has not been repeated in other
     parts of the world."

     But if Pratt's UFOs are interdimensional, as he says in the end,
     they certainly have a startling way of intruding into the physical
     plane on earth. For Pratt's book, as its title implies, is a positively
     numbing litany of horrors, meticulously researched by himself and
     a host of Brazilian colleagues over a period of some fifteen years.
     Pratt's subjects are mostly poor rural Brazilians -- fishermen,
     farmers, subsistance laborers. These are people who watch little or
     no TV; many cannot read. But these people tell stories of intruders
     who rain down terror from the sky.

     Pratt tells of people being paralyzed and lifted off the ground by
     beams of light; of having their health instantly destroyed by a
     chance encounter in the woods or along a rural road; of being
     stalked, repeatedly assaulted and sometimes killed by UFOs.
     There are dozens of cases, many with multiple witnesses. None
     have a happy ending, and none make any discernible sense. Why
     are these people brutally attacked, and by whom? There is no
     answer. But the terror and the broken bodies say there is truth in
     the accounts.

     Dr. Stephen Greer, founding director of CSETI, has theorized like
     Vallee that abduction cases, if they really occur, are perpetrated
     by humans intent on giving aliens a bad name. At the same time,
     Greer speaks of genuine extraterrestrials -- people from other
     planets -- who are coming here to make contact with right-minded
     humans. It's part of a grand process of global transformation,
     Greer says. Extraterrestrials stand ready to assist human society
     in rising to a higher spiritual level conducive to wider and more
     open contact with other intelligent races.

     In that belief, Greer is hardly alone. Phillip Krapf agrees
     completely. So, in effect, does Nancy Malacaria, who says that
     some 170 different extraterrestrial races are currently assisting
     humanity through a time of turmoil and transformation -- even if
     that assistance sometimes looks like abduction.

     A more subtle, complex -- but ultimately positive -- outlook is
     expressed by one of America's most famous abductees, Betty
     Andreasson-Luca, whose life has been meticulously chronicled by
     researcher and author Raymond Fowler for over twenty years.

     When Fowler first wrote about Betty's case in the mid-1970s in
     "The Andreasson Affair," he described a classic alien abduction
     scenario in terms that have since been repeated countless times by
     other researchers. But in the intervening years, Fowler's own
     views have evolved enormously, along with Betty's.

     In the fifth and final volume of his Andreasson study, "The
     Andreasson Legacy" (Marlowe, 1997), Fowler emphasizes
     repeatedly that abduction is a "paraphysical phenomenon." Its
     UFO component is physical in that it leaves ground traces, shows
     up on film, disrupts electrical systems. Its contact component is
     physical in the sense that abductees are (sometimes) physically
     missing during an abduction event, and often come back with body
     scars such as scoop marks related to physical procedures. Fowler
     surmises that some abductees probably have physical alien
     implants.

     But abduction is simultaneously paranormal or metaphysical in
     the sense that it can occur as an out of body experience and often
     includes psychical elements such as telepathy, teleportation and
     time distortion. It is very definitely concerned with human
     reproduction and the creation of hybrid creatures; but it is just as
     definitely concerned with the human soul and the ultimately
     spiritual nature of humanity and reality. It is the furthest thing
     from absurd or disorderly. It is undeniably and definitely
     purposeful.

     And there is teaching involved, Fowler insists. Abductees are
     given urgent messages about the perilous state of our world and
     the changes ahead for humanity.

     David Jacobs has heard all that from his abductees, too. He agrees
     that they are given powerful images and messages about the
     environmental crisis on earth, or the peril of nuclear war, or
     terrible changes to come. But Jacobs thinks the aliens don't really
     care about any of that. They are not interested in preserving the
     earth for humanity's sake. They're intent on taking over.

     Katharina Wilson, another lifelong abductee who has written
     eloquently of her own experiences in "The Alien Jigsaw" (Puzzle
     Publishing, 1993), has heard it all too, first-hand.

     In a recent interview with hypnotherapist Deborah Lindemann,
     Katharina Wilson said that she, like Jacobs, thinks the aliens can
     induce powerful images in the human mind for purposes of
     deception or manipulation.

      "My experiences and visions I'm shown with aliens, even the ones
     that appear very human-like, seem to involve a level of
     manipulation. The aliens are interested in how we react to the
     information in the vision, or they use the vision for distraction or
     screen memory purposes."

      Wilson has had her share of alien sexual procedures and similar
     horrors. She doesn't trust alien motives at all.

     But Wilson also makes an important distinction between alien
     abductors and other entities that she calls "super-conscious
     beings." These beings have shown her powerful images too, but the
     experience seemed entirely different.

     "I just remembered everything consciously the next morning. It
     was just so unbelievably intense," she told Deborah Lindemann.
     "What they were showing me was that thoughts are things and
     that what you think and believe, you will create. They took me
     through my neighborhood and showed me, using visual imagery. I
     saw them come down out of the sky on this golden rope; it was like
     a little swing. There were four of them. They were the most
     beautiful feminine little angels. They were... super intelligences. A
     piece of the golden rope touched me, and just touching that strand
     of rope was like I was sitting in the lap of God. It was the most
     unbelievable positive experience, just to touch it. But they wanted
     to get on with what they had come to teach me and show me."

     Though Wilson uses the term "angel," she's not sure if that's
     appropriate. "I'm cautious about how I categorize these
     experiences, because I have a responsibility as a reporter of this
     phenomenon. If these SCBs (super conscious beings) really are just
     another form of aliens, I don't want to mislead people," she says.

     Asked by Deborah Lindemann how the experience of SCBs differs
     from her alien encounters, Wilson said, "They don't experiment on
     me or treat me like a lab animal. I don't get the feeling they are
     manipulating me. I realize they show me visions of the future and I
     know the aliens do this too. But I sense a caring and a deep love
     and concern that is totally different than my experiences with the
     aliens. I realize that the aliens can look into your eyes and make
     you feel a whole array of wonderful things. But these SCB's don't
     look into my eyes or force their will on me like the other beings
     do."

     Given the incredible -- one might even say absurd -- diversity of
     reported human experiences with our alleged visitors, is it possible
     to say who or what we are dealing with? Perhaps the closest we
     can get to the truth is an idea that confounds and infuriates
     literalists everywhere: the visitors are finally and forever in the
     eye of the beholder. They are real, but their perceived character is
     dependent upon the conscious level of our perception.

     Dr. John Mack, Harvard University psychiatrist, is one
     researcher who seems to have arrived at this conclusion. Perhaps
     for this reason, he is regarded with suspicion or disdain by those
     who insist upon a hard-edged, literal interpretation of the visitor
     experience.

     Mack responded to an inquiry from CNI News by sending a
     summary of his viewpoint, distilled from the scores of abduction
     cases he has personally investigated.

     Mack agrees with David Jacobs that "the human/alien sexual and
     reproductive process, which the abductees with whom I work
     report in excruciating detail, appears to result in the creation of a
     hybrid race that will some day come 'down' to earth. For
     experiencers, this hybrid 'project' is altogether real and does not
     appear to me to be the product of delusion or other mental
     aberration."

     That said, however, Mack points out problems with the "literalist,
     entirely material, interpretation" of alien encounter. "Most
     obvious is the absence of solid evidence of actual pregnancy,
     genetic changes or the physical existence of the hybrids
     themselves.

     "But that is only the beginning," he says. "Some abductees
     perceive this process as occurring in another realm or dimension
     with different space/time qualities and possessing what they often
     describe as a higher vibrational frequency. Sometimes they
     themselves notice that they are in a different state of consciousness,
     as if between sleeping and waking, and that the images and events
     around them seem 'fuzzy.'

     "One may argue that it is a matter of research, of collecting more
     or better evidence to document the physical reality of all this, and
     that the main obstacle is that the aliens are so deceptive, subtle or
     furtive. But it may not be simply a matter of physical evidence,"
     Mack says. "The fundamental difficulty may be more one of
     philosophy, consciousness and method. The matter may be more
     mysterious than we appreciate, requiring different ways of
     knowing or thinking about it.

      "For instance, the hybrid project might be thought of as a
     reflection not so much of biological procreation or colonization
     [as] of an evolution of consciousness. But in order to consider this,
     we would need to put aside or overcome the radical split between
     mind or spirit and matter, or between the visible and invisible
     worlds, that have dominated both Judeo-Christian tradition and
     Western science. If we could allow the possibility of an
     interpenetration of consciousness and matter, or even that physical
     images or the physical world itself could be a manifestation of
     consciousness or spirit, then the apparent and sometimes real
     physicality of the alien-human sexual and reproductive process
     could be seen as the expression in concrete, physical form of what
     may be a cosmic energy or intelligence, responding to a problem --
     in this case, the evident threat to earth's life forms that is the result
     of human blindness and destructiveness.

     "This is not to say that the aliens or hybrids are not entirely real.
     Rather, I would argue that the process might be occurring largely
     in another realm, one with a different vibrational frequency, a
     kind of in-between domain -- neither pure formless spirit nor
     dense matter -- which, under certain circumstances, can penetrate
     our world, and be perceived with such vividness as to bring intense
     experiential conviction and even subtle physical manifestations for
     abductees.

     "If we think of the phenomenon this way, and not simply in terms
     of whether it is good or bad for the human species, we may see it as
     less threatening. We might then learn from it about our evolving
     relationship to the earth, to the unseen intelligence or intelligences
     of our cosmos, and, ultimately, about our own evolving
     psychological and spiritual existence and identity," Mack
     concludes.

     Without doubt, for some experiencers and researchers, the
     subtleties of Mack's view are beside the point, because to them it
     already seems clear that the earth is being invaded by alien forces
     who can bring an end to human life. Yet, others insist that the
     visitors bring benevolent warnings, offers of spiritual counsel, even
     invitations to membership in a cosmic Federation. Meanwhile, for
     some, the visitor experience is as physical as driving in a car; while
     for others, the experience resides in a realm of dreams and
     shadows, speaking less to the body than to the soul, less to time
     than to eternity.

     Can "an answer" be distilled from all these diverse and passionate
     impressions? Very likely not -- at least, not yet. Says John Mack:
     "At the very least, we should admit that we do not ultimately know
     what [alien encounter] means or whence it comes, and that we are
     only beginning to penetrate its depths."

      [ Dr. David Jacobs can be emailed at
     DJACOBS@VM.Temple.edu. Katharina Wilson's web site is
     http://www.alienjigsaw.com. Phillip Krapf's email is
     phoward@ecom.net. Nancy Malacaria's web site is
     http://members.aol.com/earthsistr/2.index.html. The CNI News
     website is http://www.cninews.com. Deborah Lindemann can be
     emailed at CNIDebra@aol.com; Michael Lindemann can be
     emailed at CNINews1@aol.com. Dr. John E. Mack's next book on
     further research into the alien abduction phenomenon will be
     published by Crown Publishing in Spring 1999. ]