BUILDING A FORTEAN LIBRARY
NO 60. WHAT A NIGHT IT WAS! IT REALLY WAS SUCH A NIGHT!
Encounter at Indian Head THE HIEROPHANT’S APPRENTICE
The New England leaves were just beginning to turn red and gold in the early autumn of 2000 when nine disparate characters arrived for a long weekend together at the Indian Head resort in New Hampshire (see FT225:39). They were gathering to discuss, in secret, the seminal, alleged abduction by aliens of Betty and Barney Hill that had occurred nearby in September 1961 (see FT110:28-31, 195:24, 262:48- 50, 276:30, 296:72-73, 299:24, 302:69, 384:44-47). They wined and dined Betty that night, and the following day went with her to what she and Barney had decided was the aliens’ landing site. Then they presented their papers, in the company of Joe Firmage, who funded the venture, and the discussions began. And seven years later, when – amazingly – still no one had let the secret out, those papers were published...
Edited by ufologists Karl Pflock and Peter Brookesmith, Encounters at Indian Head dissects, from nine different angles, the Hills’ experience all those years before. The main text consists of seven chapters each based on a paper delivered at the symposium, along with additional chapters written by Walter N Webb (the original investigator of the case) and Martin S Kottmeyer, who although invited, were unable to attend in person. Pflock and Brookesmith did attend – indeed they organised the event – and contributed to it.
In a preface, the editors summarise the origins and development of the symposium and reflect upon what they felt it had achieved. They also reveal their preferred epistemological approach to the Hills’ case and ufology generally: “From whatever angle (and with whatever predisposition) one comes at the case, it probably will not be resolved in favour of any one approach without our knowing a great deal more than we do about the Hills … Some of us have long argued that knowledge – deep and broad – of the protagonist(s) in the great majority of UFO reports, and in any abduction account, is fundamental to making a fair evaluation.” This approach is evident throughout the book; contributors avoid the banalities born of simplistic literalism, and they insist on a psychological and cultural dimension in their analyses of the Hills’ account.
A section containing handy maps, diagrams and photographs taken during the symposium follows. This introduces the Hills’ case, which is then elaborated in the opening chapter by Dennis Stacy.
Stacy presents a readable account of the Hills’ abduction and its years-long aftermath. He draws upon several sources, including John G Fuller’s 1966 book,
The Interrupted Journey, and treats them critically. From them, Stacy constructs a skilful commentary that provides readers with both an outline of the case and an appreciation of some of the perplexing difficulties it involves. It essentially falls into three parts: first, sighting a light in the sky, which seemed to follow them down Route 3 to Indian Head, where it apparently landed and at one point crossed the highway, allowing Barney to discern various figures on board through his binoculars. Alarmed, the Hills drove on, certain that the UFO was still tracking them. On a minor road that Barney took in error, figures standing in front of a craft blocked their way, and they were taken aboard and separated. After medical examinations et cetera, they were allowed to go on their way, apparently in a trance; a series of beeping noises brought them round, and they continued home, arriving two hours later than they had estimated. Incidentally, none of those at the symposium had a ready explanation for the initial close encounter, although others believe they have resolved it since.
In the next chapter, Marcello Truzzi, who chaired the symposium, examines studies of anomalous phenomena from a socialscientific perspective. He employs the hermeneutic convention of setting the case in a lightly sketched historical context. Truzzi then conducts a scholarly analysis of some key aspects of the case and concludes that the Hills’ account of their abduction does not hold up well under a critical gaze.
If Truzzi’s analysis has a flaw, it lies in his critical strategy. Early in the chapter, he sets out six “pertinent background issues” that he feels are necessary to explore in order to bring the Hills’ case “into bolder relief”. He uses these as analytic bases to dissect the story, each occupying a section in the chapter. However, Truzzi does not declare why he chose these particular issues and not others as a framework for his discussion (which is odd, almost blasphemous, for an academic). Consequently, the underlying logic of his exposition remains unclear, although the exposition itself is logical enough.
Truzzi’s erudition is impressive. He applies conceptual analysis at the highest levels of abstraction to the Hills’ story without becoming obscure. Indeed, his evaluation of the case indicates the value of a conceptual psychosocial approach to alien abduction accounts.
In Chapter Three, Thomas “Ed” Bullard employs an empirical approach to evaluate the Hills’ story. He gives a brief history of alien abduction accounts and then looks at their similarities and differences. He presents numerical tables to demonstrate how they show distinct patterns of detail. Bullard then concludes that these patterns do not prove that alien abductions are physical events – they are, besides, based on very small samples – although between the lines one can detect a hankering for such a proof. Rather, he says, “some consistent
experiential phenomenon underpins them” – in other words, there is at least a degree of objective reality to them. He suggests that the psychosocial dimension to alien encounter narratives is linked to a mythmaking propensity in human beings. This is something of a retreat from his original proposition in The Measure of a Mystery (1987), that the consistency of the accounts, such as it is, itself is a sure indication of their veridicality.
In the following chapter, Hilary Evans broadens the field of analysis to consider dreams – in particular the series of dreams Betty had after the abduction, on which her testimony under hypnosis seems to be based – and a variety of encounters with sundry otherworldly beings, notably visions of the Blessed Virgin Mary. His conclusion enlarges that given by Bullard. Extraordinary encounters, including the Hills’, suggest that “there exists in every one of us a faculty for mythmaking – that is, combining material derived from the individual’s cultural framework with other material with personal content, to create an authorised yet made-to-measure myth.”
In Chapter Five, Peter Brookesmith explores the purpose of myth and its utility for understanding ufology generally. He proceeds with penetrating analytic confidence and refers to the Eden myth to make the perceptive point that it is a “metaphor for human development”. Brookesmith might have developed this illustration and used it to analyse the Hills’ case. A large body of literature suggests the Eden myth also signifies the birth of consciousness from the unconscious. In myth (as in dreams) the unconscious is not only symbolised as a primordial garden, but also as a place of encounters with that which is totally alien: states of enchantment, the Bogeyman, the Land of Faerie and its changelings. All this would have been grist to Brookesmith’s mill. But he had other things to consider in what is already one of the longest chapters in the book: in particular demonstrating how easy it is to show that there most likely was no ‘missing time’ in the Hills’ journey from Montreal to Portsmouth.
Brookesmith succeeds brilliantly in his quest. Drawing on seminal sources from several disciplines, he conducts a skilful postmortem of the Hills’ story. Despite his analytic discernment (and perhaps, because of it), his conclusions are restrained. When the tangled nature of the Hills’ story, with its elements of distinctiveness, fabulation, omissions, contradictions, cultural borrowings, professional errors and media hype are considered, the only conclusion the rational observer can make is that a waterand fire-proof conclusion is out of reach. Only conjecture can obtain. Nevertheless, as he says, theirs is a myth that will not die.
Robert Sheaffer continues with a sceptical, forensic analysis of the case in Chapter Six. He does so by carefully applying reason – and a well-stropped Occam’s Razor – to examine details of accounts and reportage from several sources, and concludes firmly that the Hills’ encounter had psychological and not natural origins.
In Chapter Seven, Karl Pflock offers an opposing perspective. While he believes the Hills’ account can only be the subject of conjecture, he also demonstrates with sharp conviction that there are elements of it that cannot be so easily dismissed; for instance he finds no difficulty in defending the ‘missing time’ element in the Hills’ journey, and his preferred conclusion is that the Hills really were abducted that night. He also readily admits that he cannot prove this proposition. Pflock’s contribution is welcome. His analysis is plausible, and his commentary complements the general tenor of the book without undermining it. (This is perhaps the place to mention that Pflock was not alone among the gathering in his belief that the Hills were indeed abducted: also present was composer, critic and ufological ‘believer’ Greg Sandow, who contributed much to the discussions, but not to the book.
The Indian Head participants: (l-r) Marcello Truzzi, Peter Brookesmith, Greg Sandow, Dennis Stacy, Karl Pflock, Thomas Bullard, Robert Sheaffer, Hilary Evans.
In due course he wrote a long piece on the meeting for International UFO Reporter.)
Chapter Eight by Walter N Webb and the Appendix by Martin S Kottmeyer offer concluding remarks about the case by focusing on different aspects of it. Webb reflects upon the interviews he made with the Hills some 40 years earlier and subsequent private correspondence with Betty. His commentary resembles the contents of the earlier chapters in the book in that it plays with inconsistencies, specific possibilities and the findings of professional investigators. He concludes that the Hills’ case, and UFO phenomena generally, should be taken seriously by the scientific community as they point to “a totally unique phenomenon indicative of intelligent activity”.
Kottmeyer’s Appendix takes an opposing view and promotes a psychosocial account of the Hill’s case. His commentary proceeds nimbly but then becomes rather prickly when he seeks redress for critical comments about his work made elsewhere by Jerome Clark, Greg Sandow, and others. He sees this defence (which is undoubtedly justified) as central to maintaining and developing his thesis, but its disputatious emphasis is a tad deadening.
Both Webb and Kottmeyer leave the reader in no doubt that the Hill case remains a tangled, inconsistent, but beguiling mystery. Indeed, this is the general message of the book. It addresses a fascinating and, at the same time, disturbing account of alien abduction to assess its veracity.
In the process, it throws light on similar accounts of abduction and associated ufolore. It is also extremely readable and provides both newcomers and old hands at ufology with an honest, intelligent and insightful foray into realms beyond our imagining, from commentators who do not by any means always agree on everything. Readers without a thesis to defend will be left with a firm indication that there are more things in Heaven and Earth than are dreamt of in our philosophy, to resurrect the old Shakespearean chestnut. That in itself merits high commendation, even apart from the careful integrity of the book. Taken as a whole it is the best account of the Hill case yet written, and deserves a place on every fortean’s bookshelf.
Karl T Pflock & Peter Brookesmith (editors), Encounters at Indian Head, Anomalist Books 2007.
“SOME STORIES HAVE TO BE WRITTEN BECAUSE NO ONE WOULD BELIEVE THE ABSURDITY OF IT ALL.” Shannon L Alder