The Buff Ledge Abduction 1968 Taken from MUFON Symposium Proceedings (1995 ?) ============================================================== Walter N. Webb has been associated with UFO research for more than 40 years following his own sighting in 1951. During this time he has served four national UFO organizations, three of them as an astronomy consultant. Professionally, he served under the late J. Allen Hynek (founder of the Center for UFO Studies) at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory's Optical Satellite Tracking Program in 1957-58. After his duties there, he spent 32 years at Boston's Charles Hayden Planetarium as senior lecturer, assistant director, and operations manager. Walt has been a consultant in astronomy to MUFON for 15 years and a columnist of "The Night Sky" for the 'MUFON UFO Journal'. He was a member of the program committee for the 1981 MUFON UFO Symposium at M.l.T., Cambridge, Mass., a speaker at the 1988 symposium in Lincoln, Nebr.; and a member of the former MUFON Public Information and Public Education Committee. In 1992, he was a member of the Conference Committee for the Abduction Study Conference held at M.I.T., a landmark scientific assembly on UFO abductions (684-page volume of proceedings). Last year, the Center for UFO Studies appointed him as its first Senior Research Associate based upon his many years of investigative work and service to ufology. And as of this year, a coalition of the three major UFO groups in the U.S hired Walt as its chief consultant. He is on call to lead 'quick-strike' case investigations, as well as to investigate other coalition-designated cases and activities. Although it is well known that Walt was the initial investigator of the Barney and Betty Hill incident in 1961, he has researched what he believes is a much better example of a dual-witness UFO abduction experience and has documented this case in his book 'Encounter at Buff Ledge: A UFO Case History' (J. Allen Hynek Center for UFO Studies, 1994). His mailing address is 5 Willow Street, Westwood, MA 02090. ================================================================ ENCOUNTER AT BUFF LEDGE Walter N. Webb @ 1994 by Walter N. Webb and the J. Allen Hynek Center for UFO Studies ABSTRACT The author has conducted an in-depth investigation into a dual-witness UFO abduction experience. This 1968 episode differs from most other multiple-witness cases in that (1) neither individual communicated with the other between the conclusion of the experience and the initiation of the investigation ten years later, and (2) the five-year probe into this incident makes it the most thoroughly investigated and documented of any single UFO abduction episode to date. Additionally, several potential secondary witnesses to the UFO's departure were located. Introduction The key to the UFO mystery may very well lie in the stories of abduction. But these accounts face some serious drawbacks. First of all, most of these cases represent only one person's anecdotical story without substantiation by another witness. Secondly, in nearly all multiple-witness UFO abduction experiences reported to date, family members or friends were involved with subsequent communication between the parties, thereby rendering suspect the hypnotic recovery of shared abduction details. Consciously or unconsciously borrowed details, altered memories, and embellishment of the accounts are examples of possible contamination in these cases. Other problems may arise in multiple-witness episodes. Sometimes only one of the alleged abductees has been hypnotically regressed so that there is no confirmation of the experience. Or perhaps one of the hypnotized members of the group failed to support an abduction. In 1961, I was the initial investigator of the first publiciced missing-time UFO case, Barney and Betty Hill's ''interrupted journey'' (1). Even this celebrated dual UFO abduction involved potential contamination of the testimony between husband and wife. In the years since my involvement with the Hill case, I have probed 14 other CE-III experiences. One of them has resulted in a very detailed and lengthy investigation into a dual-witness abduction experience which, I believe, is unprecedented in at least two important respects: 1. I was able to determine that neither individual saw, spoke with, or corresponded with the other over the ten-year span between the conclusion of their experience and the initiation of my investigation. Despite their separation accompanied by periods of missing time, both observers independently filled in their time lapses with a shared abduction scenario during regressive hypnosis, with astonishing agreement in many major and minor details. 2. My five-year probe into this incident makes it the most thoroughly investigated and documented of any single UFO abduction episode to date. The investigation included the following: a. Separate interviews with both primary witnesses in which all conscious memories of the UFO experience were transcribed prior to hypnosis. b. Three trips to the site in Vermont where measurements, photographs, photographs, maps, drawings, and re-enactment of the sighting were made with one of the primary witnesses. c. A determination of the meteorological conditions and the positions of bright celestial objects for the date, time, and place. d. Twelve hours and more than 80,000 words of taped hypnotic interviews with the two primary witnesses and with a possible secondary witness. e. A quest for additional witnesses and independent sightings in the general area. This involved numerous letters of inquiry, telephone calls, interviews, and searches of 22 private and organizational UFO files around the country (including files and logs in newspaper offices, libraries, the National Archives, and law enforcement agencies). f. Witness evaluation education, family, and job histories, character references; MMPI prifiles; PSE examinations, and a determination of prior UFO knowledge. g. Associated special studies: 18 other abduction cases for comparison; global UFO wave of 1968, other cases bearing characteristics similar to those of the Vermont UFO, research into human perception, memory, hypnosis, near- death experiences, and out-of-body experiences. When it was all over, five years later, my search for supporting data had reached into 23 states and the District of Columbia. I had crisscrossed 3,200 miles of New England roads - distance equivalent to driving from Boston to San Francisco! THE ENCOUNTER; MICHAELS STORY The experience took place on August 7, 1968, at a private summer girl's camp on Lake Champlain north of Burlington, Vermont. Buff Ledge Camp, now closed and abandoned, was located in a grassy clearing surrounded by woodland. A 15-foot-high bluff (the ''Buff Ledge'') fringed with trees overlooked a half-mile-long stretch of isolated beach. From the beach an L-shaped dock jutted out more than 100 feet into the lake. One of the principals in this drama was 'Michael', a 16-year-old from the Burlington area. His duties consisted of ferrying water-skiers between the dock and raft and maintaining the waterfront equipment. The other participant was the water-skiing instructor, 'Janet', a 19-year-old Smith student from southern New Hampshire. (The primary and secondary witnesses in this paper been assigned fictitious names.) Both remembered this day because it happened to be their first opportunity all summer to get together and talk at length. The swim team had gone to Burlington for the end-of-the-season two- day state invitational meet, and the rest of the camp took advantage of the break by conducting overnight trips away from Buff Ledge. Some counselors and campers had remained behind. Michael and Janet spent most of that sunny afternoon relaxing in their swim suits on the end of the dock. Michael's story of what happened next is summarized first since he had more conscious recall of the UFO experience. Just after sunset he said he noticed a bright starlike object in the southwest sky which suddenly swooped down in a long arc, blossoming into a glowing white cigar shape. After coming to a stop, the horizontal object emitted three tiny white ''lights'' from near the right end and below, one at a time. The large UFO then retraced its original path, grew smaller, and vanished in seconds. According to Michael, the trio of satellite objects proceeded to put on an incredible aerial display, executing most of thc maneuvers typical of UFOs - zigzags, spirals, fluttering, falling-leaf descents, and stop-and-go activity. As the formation came closer, the observer said he could see that the objects were domed discs. After perhaps about five minutes, the three objects formed a horizontal triangle and two of them quickly departed in opposite directions, north and south. The remaining object began to advance across the lake toward the observers. Michael's curiosity and awe turned to foreboding. Both witnesses touched each other to be sure that the experience wasn't a dream. The UFO halted for about a minute. Michael said he noted that a band of colored light rotated around the disc's edge, pulsating in synchronization with a complex sound emission of varied tones and pitches. The band changed color across the spectrum, only one hue visible at a time. All at once, according to the witness, the object shot straight up out of sight then reappeared, dropping vertically into the lake ! Instantly, several things allegedly happened. Michael reported that a steady wind buffeted the dock and waves sprang up all over the calm lake surface. After a few minutes, the UFO emerged and the disturbances ceased. The disc-shaped object glided rapidly toward the dock, stopping about 60 feet away and hovering about 15 to 20 feet up. Michael said the device appeared clear, distinct, and solid against the twilight sky. He described it as possibly 40 to 50 feet across - ''as big as a small house'' - and its shape like two curved saucers placed face-to-faCe. The rotating spectral color band resembled a glowing plasma enclosed within a transparent furrowed tube encircling the middle of the object. A bright white glow surrounding the entire UFO had weakened, exposing a transparent dome and two entities behind it. According to Michael, the figures were visible down to their waists and possessed large heads with big oval eyes, two nasal openings, and a small mouth. Their short bodies seemed to be garbed in a skintight grayish or silverish uniform. By now, the frightened youth's companion appeared to be frozen in a trance-like state. He asserted that while one of the entities communicated with him telepathically, the other seemed to be either controlling Janet or mimicking her frozen expression. The being assured Michael that he would not be harmed, that they had come from a distant planet, that their race had made earlier visits to Earth and had returned after the first nuclear explosions (a recurring theme in abduction reports). After several minutes, the UFO suddenly approached to within about ten feet of the dock. And then, after Michael wondered to himself what it would be like to get a closer look at the entities and the interior of the craft, the object moved directly overhead. At this point, in a final effort to confirm that the UFO was a constructed device, the witness said he jumped up to touch the bottom surface. At the top of his jump (no contact made), a brilliant beam of white light came on. Michael grabbed Janet on his way down and fell with her on the dock, covering her protectively with his arm. While under the beam, he said he felt himself losing consciousness. He also recalled impressions of floating up, ''soft lights in a dark place'', and hearing machinelike noises and alien voices. When Michael became fully aware again, the UFO was still hovering overhead. But now it was totally dark out. Michael said he heard car doors slamming and the voices of campers returning from the swim meet. (From the parking lot, the UFO would have been at least partially concealed by the bluff, trees, and a pavilion.) According to Michael, while most of the swimmers moved obliviously toward their cabins, two of the girls, 15-year-old 'Susan' and 'Barbara', ran down to the bluff, apparently attracted by the UFO's glow. He asserted that the two campers cried out. At that moment the UFO turned its beam off, rose slightly, directed the beam across the camp in a rapid-fire sequence of flashes, and then angled upward over the lake, disappearing from sight in a matter of seconds. Michael helped his dazed companion off the dock and up the steps on the bluff. Susan and Barbara assisted Janet to her cabin. (In addition to a memory/time lapse, Michael and and Janet suffered from abnormal fatigue and, in fact, fell asleep in their separate quarters after the encounter.) Others now gathered at the bluff, including the camp's assistant director 'Richard', who had retourned with the swim team. He asked Michael who had been at the waterfront. The witness assumed that Richard must have noted a glow or the flashes emitted by the UFO and was concerned about vandals on the beach. Michael said he assured the assistant director that there were no vandals but refused to tell him what actually had happened. The tired and confused witness then walked to the male staff quarters located on the second floor of the dining hall. He claimed that 20-year-old 'Patrick' greeted him excitedly, implying that he had observed at least part of the close encounter from the window. (Trees would have obscured some of the view.) Patrick suggested calling Plattsburgh Air Force Base on the New York side of Lake Champlain. Michael seemed to recall that when they telephoned, an Air Force spokesman told them that the base had received a number of UFO reports that evening and that military aircraft were not responsible for the sightings. After hanging up, Michael promptly fell asleep. When he awoke about an hour later, the male witness made his only attempt to contact his female counterpart about their bizarre UFO experience. He tried to visit her that same night, but she was still asleep and was reminded that her cabin was off limits to males. The next evening he said he was rebuffed by his own family and his girlfriend when he attempted to tell them what had happened. While Michael had a clear awareness of the close encounter phase interrupted by a time lapse, he recognized in the days following that Janet must have recalled little, and he said he was afraid he might traumatize her further if he tried to talk with her about the experience. In addition, he was alrcady disillusioned by the reaction of disbelief that his story had created among even those close to him. A few weeks later Buff Ledge Camp closed for the season, and the two witnesses went their separate ways. In the years following the sighting, Michael coped with the knowledge of his UFO experience the best he could. He tried to repress it, although he had occasional mental flashbacks of the UFO and its alien occupants. He also had several vivid dreams of being on board the UFO and communicating with the humanoid entities while seated in front of them. Michael's curiosity about the experience led him to read a small number of UFO books (Lorenzen, Jung, Klass). Ten years after those strange events on an August night at buff Ledge Camp, four incidents occurring over the span of one year finally prompted Michael to report his sighting to the Center for UFO Studies (CUFOS): First, the publicity about the movie 'Close Encounters of the Third Kind' attracted his attention. But, he said, he couldn't bring himself to view the film Second, he had another of his UFO contact dreams. Third, he wrote a paper for his university religion class using his own UFO observation as an example of reactions to experiences involving the miraculous and the supernatural. He purposely ommitted many details of the encounter. Finally, in early October 1978, Michael happened to read his brother's copy of the January 1978 'Playboy' article consisting of a discussion and debate among seven personalities in the UFO field [2]. Dr. Hynek's name and his CUFOS address were given in the article. The witness called the Center the next day and spoke with Mrs. Hynek. She recommended me as a New England investigator who had dealt with similar cases before. Thus, Michael telephoned me on Halloween 1978, and the long investigation began. THE INVESTIGATION That same weekend the Vermont witness hitchhiked more than 200 miles to my home in the Boston area, and I grilled him for seven hours. But before I would be willing to commit my time to a full-blown investigation, I needed Janet's confirmation. Michael knew that Janet had been employed for a time at an Ivy League college. Within six months he was able to obtain her current address from the school. She had married and still was working for the college on a regional level in a city in the Southeast. I wrote her at once. A few days later Janet telephoned me. She told me she remembered standing on the camp dock with Michael and seeing a display of eratically moving lights in the sky followed by the close approach of a ''big light.'' Thinking the object was going to hit them, Janet said she and her companion either ''sat down, lay down, or hit the dock.'' After that, her mind drew a complete blank. (Later, I would learn that the day after the UFO episode Janet desperately wanted to talk with Michael but was at a total loss to know what she wanted to talk with him about.) The female participant had at least partially substantiated Michael's story in vague terms. Most importantly, her complete loss of memory had begun when the UFO passed overhead, coinciding with Michael's own loss of awareness. It looked as if I had two good candidates for regressive hypnosis. But first in June of 1979, I traveled to Buff Ledge in order to examine the site of the 1968 encounter, to make the necessary angular measurements, to take photographs, and to have Michael retrace his sighting at the scene. On the first of three trips to the site, I also interviewed four members of the witness' family. Four months later, Janet stopped briefly at Boston's Logan Airport, and I arranged for the two witnesses to meet there in my presence - their first contact in 11 years (and, as it turned out, their only meeting). Ground rules were established for Michael. In order to reduce the chances of contaminating Janet's own memory of the encounter, the male witness was instructed to say very little about his version of the affair and to limit the discussion to questioning Janet about her recollections. Although nothing really new emerged, Janet did agree to undergo hypnosis during her next trip north. Michael's initial hypnosis session already had taken place the previous month. I was fortunate in obtaining the free services of two excellent professional clinical hypnosis, Harold Edelstein and Claire Hayward, both of whom had gained some experience regressing UFO witnesses. (Dr. Edelstein assisted in the Andreasson case.) The male subject underwent five hypnotic interviews totaling five hours between September 1979 and April 1980; the female subject, three sessions totalling six hours between February and December 1980. During these interviews Michael filled in his memory gap with an extraordinary abduction scenario, while Janet separately related a similar capture account which appeared to support much of her partner's story. A brief summary of Michael's abduction account follows first: While bathed in the beam of light on the dock, Michael said he became weak and ''filled with light'' and pressure. He described floating up, a sensation of speed, streams of approaching colored lights, and increasingly loud whine, and a feeling of flying through space. Then the onrushing lights ceased and the whining sound diminished and finally stopped. His next memory was standing beside one of the alien entities on an upper deck inside the UFO. The Earth, Moon, stars, and a huge cigar-shaped craft could be seen through the transparent dome. Screens and consoles ringed the lower level in the center, and a rim of spectral colors which Michael said he saw from the dock could be seen inside, too, slowly rotating around the perimeter of the ship. The UFO's interior appeared dimly illuminated. As the witness looked below him to the lower level, he observed two other humanoids examining Janet, who was lying on a rectangular table on the far side of the floor. Another figure appeared to be monitoring a console situated beneath a large rectangular panel on the wall near the end of the table. The panel was filled with a number of different screens which seemed to be displaying or recording various elements of the exam. Streams of colored lights moved up and down the conical central table support and along the table itself. According to the witness, the entities were about five to five and a half feet tall with large elongated heads, long, thin limbs, three-fingered webbed hands, and dark greenish skintight clothing that made them appear almost naked. The eyes were large and oval with big, round, black, shiny pupils. The nose consisted merely of two holes and the mouth a thin slit. No ears were recalled. The skin color appeared to be greenish-blue. Michael said his nonhuman interpreter expressed amazement that the witness was alert and still asking questions and that it would be difficult for him after the experience was over. Michael felt a great affinity or closeness for this entity. The observer and his alien guide descended steps to the lower deck and approached to within about 15 feet of the table. Michael said he watched the two attendants looking into Janet's eyes with a hand-held light. The skin on her arm and collarbone was scraped with a pencil-like instrument. A blood sample was taken from one arm with a syringe. At one point a triangular machine shaped like an inverted ''big heart'' descended from the ceiling and appeared to ''suck'' fluids from two body orifices through flexible tubes. Then the machine retracted into the ceiling. When Michael expressed concern about the fluid-removal procedure, his guide reassured him and explained that they were ''spawning consciousness'' (the removal of ova for reproductive purposes ?) When it was Michael's turn, he said the guide led him to a second table next to Janet's. About this time he became aware that his ship was approaching the big craft outside. The witness said the table tilted up to receive his body and then returned to a horizontal position. As the two examiners moved toward his table, Michael said he passed out. (He had no recollection of his own exam.) Upon waking up on the table, he noticed that the dome overhead was now dark and covered. Apparently, the small ship that he was in had entered the large one. After Michael got off the table, he said he and his guide floated through an opening in the bottom of the craft into a tube of light. He could now see that he was in a huge hangar-like room and the light beam seemed to pull him and his alien companion across the enormous room to the opposite wall. Michael said he went through the wall, was whisked upward in an elevator-like device, and then entered a long narrow corridor which led to a big domed room. According to the witness, inside this room were a multitude of entities, all alike and similar to the others whom he had seen. He was seated in a chair, and a helmet-like device was placed on his head. Everyone looked up at a bubble-shaped screen beyond Michael's view. Results seemed pleasing to the crowd because they applauded and emitted audible sounds to one another Afterward, the guide took his captive to another room. There the alien touched the witness' hands, and the scene immediately dissolved to a strange landscape. The environment contained trees and grass, fountains, a purple sky, and ordinary but unidentified humans walking about as if in a daze. A crying, frightened Janet appeared next to him. Then he seemed to fall asleep. Suddenly, he was falling through space toward a globe of many TV-like screens, like the facets in a fly's eye. All of the screens possessed the same image - a still picture of Michael and Jane lying on the dock and the UFO hovering above them. Passing through one of the screens, he became conscious on the dock. Janet was lying next to him. As the UFO's light beamed down on the dock, Michael said he received a final telepathic message from his alien interpreter; he was not to worry about the experience - nothing bad had happened to him; they were friends and cared about him; there would be much about the experience that he would not understand; and Janet would remember nothing. A second voice reassured him that Janet was all right. Finally, as the UFO departed, the witness claimed that he heard a farewell: ''Goodbye, Michael.'' JANET'S CONFIRMATION It had been obvious from the beginning that Janet's testimony was absolutely crucial to the credibility of her partner's extraordinary story. And yet, consciously, she remembered only distant moving lights, the approach of a ''big light,'' and ''hitting the dock'" to avoid being struck by the object. As her own hypnosis began, she, of course, had no knowledge of Michael's abduction account as revealed through his hypnotic interviews. During her regressions Janet described the initial light dropping ''like a falling star.'' From it, she said the other lights may have emerged. Following their aerial maneuvers, one object ''went by in front of us'' and disappeared. Her description of the approaching close-encounter object generally agreed with Michael's: It was a glowing white ''flat oval'' encircled by lights and appeared ''larger than a car or house.'' A high-pitched tone could be heard. The object was ''like a spaceship,'' she remarked. The female witness recalled experiencing a trance-like altered state on the dock and admitted an inability to fully perceive or recall events occurring around her. She indicated that the UFO stopped initially in the precise spot specified by her companion. Janet said she observed ''more than one'' alien figure in the object looking back at them. The entities possessed unusual heads and wore one-piece uniforms. Breaking through her amnesia, she now remembered looking up at the circular object hovering overhead, seeing a bright light come on underneath, and lying on the dock. As she struggled with the incredulity of the emerging images, we employed deep- breathing exercises to get her to relax and flow along with the scenes. At some point Janet felt separated from Michael and had become the center of activity. She was now on board the UFO, although like her associate she had no idea how the transfer was accomplished. Janet said she found herself lying on a table in a circular room under a glowing transparent dome. ''People'' were gathered around her. Eventually the young woman was able to recollect accompanying a being ''in charge of'' her to the room. She appeared to be in a semiconscious relaxed state, remarkably calm under such circumstances and constantly aware of this figure's reassuring voice in her mind. In fact, her guide was very important to her - her only source of comfort during the whole abduction ordeal. The entity represented her key to freedom from the inexplicable situation in which she found herself. Once she was on the table, the examiners came in and crowded around her. The guide instructed her to keep her eyes closed and not to move. He explained that some tests would be performed but they wouldn't hurt. The witness remembered taking a peek at her captors at least once. What she glimpsed was so strange and frightening that she shut her eyes immediately, telling herself that it would all go away soon. She commented that her guide was ''scolded'' by the others for allowing this to happen. After several unsuccessful attempts to get Janet to describe the faces, she ultimately did (with great reluctance !). They were remarkably similar to Michael's impressions except that she thought the skin appeared white or unhealthy-looking and all wore smock-like garments. Janet recalled the examiners lifting and dropping her arm and inspecting her long hair. At one point she said she felt a heat source on her body and also sensed small devices of some kind attached to her head and a ''little thing'' on her neck. (Obvious differences exist between the tests that Michael claimed he saw performed on Janet and what Janet herself remembers.) Since the woman's eyes were closed most of the time, she could describe only a few tactile sensations. In addition, Michael probably did not view Janet's complete exam, she already was being examined when he first became aware of his own presence inside the UFO.) The female witness was the first to introduce the instrumented monitoring panel on the wall beyond her table. The device proved to be a key element, providing solid evidence for a shared abduction experience. The wall panel was subsequently corroborated and depicted in greater detail during Michael's third hypnotic interview and finally substantiated fully by Janet in her last session. According to Janet's trance testimony, toward the end of her exam the guide alerted the others that time had run out and they had to bring her back. After the examiners left, Janet said she remembered moving with her guide along a narrow corridor. She stated that not onlyhad she sensed Michael's presence on another table at some point, she also saw him twice inside the UFO - once seated in a small room off the side of the corridor, and later sitting next to her in another room. ''Something happened in that room I can't remember,'' she declared cryptically. Her next memory was waking up on the dock. Michael appeared ''scared'' and ''fascinated'', and she said she couldn't figure out why her coworker seemed so excited over ''a few lights''. (Janet's amnesia of the abduction events was complete.) Under hypnosis, however, the witness said she observed the darkened disc hovering overhead and even hinted at seeing it leave. Susan and Barbara stood on the bluff as she and Michael climbed the steps. Janet said she felt ''drained,'' dazed, and suffering from a feeling of weightlessness or light-headedness. She proceeded to the staff cabin and presumed that she feel asleep. In a point-by-point comparison between the two narratives, the female witness verified 70 percent of her companion's reported close-encounter details outside the UFO and 68 percent of his claimed on-board events. I believe the concurrence in details between the witnesses' versions of the UFO encounter is remarkably high, especially in view of the fact that Michael and Janet had neither seen nor talked with one another until their controlled reunion in Boston 11 years after the UFO encounter. Both accounts coincided so closely in gross features and in a number of subtler details that I believe the successful recovery of original memory traces (rather than fantasized or altered pseudomemories) is strongly indicated. And, this fact is all the more striking when one considers that Janet had virtually no exposure to or belief in UFOs (she was a complete skeptic) prior to hypnosis. THE SECONDARY WITNESS A persistent search for other witnesses to portions of the encounter ultimately yielded pay dirt. During the investigation I contacted 11 former counselors and seven ex-campers from the summer of 1968 at Buff Ledge. Through these sources I eventually located both Susan and Barbara, the two young swimmers who, according to Michael, watched the UFO's final departure as they stood on the bluff. Both women indipendently retained vague memories of seeing an unidentified, silent, dark, circular object with lights along its curved edge race away from the waterfront. (Susan's memory of this fleeting event was explored under hypnosis.) Their dim remembrances of a UFO leaving the area but not arriving, could be explained if they suddenly had come upon the unknown object as Michael alleged and witnessed its hasty departure. While Barbara recollected Susan being present, neither woman unfortunately could positively recall Michael or Janet at the scene nor link the incident with their return from the swim meet. I sought the help of the Buff Ledge assistant director, not only because he was a possible eyewitness to the UFO's light emissions and final departure, but also because of his general knowledge of the camp and the personalities involved in the UFO drama. After he retused to respond to any of my letters, Janet herself interceded and telephoned Richard, once a good friend of hers at camp. The assistant director told Janet that a suit was pending surrounding the tragic accidental death of a camper in 1979, and he was advised not to answer any questions which might create unnecessary sensationalism for the camp. Even so, he stated that he could recollect nothing regarding a UFO incident in 1968. In view of his desire to protect himself and the camp, it was difficult to know if his denial represented an honest statement of fact or a coverup. When I contacted Patrick, he unfortunately failed to support Michael's claim that he had watched part of the close encounter from the male staff quarters. Patrick could only state that Michael had reported a UFO sighting to him that summer, the details of which escaped him, and that afterward Patrick and others were at the beach and happened to view a number of strange lights maneuvering in the sky across the lake. He recalled seeing nothing at close range. The lights moved away and disappeared. About a half hour later he said he spotted several jet aircraft from Plattsburgh Air Force Base flying rapidly across the lake. When Michael was confronted with these revelations, he contended that his friend's recollections of what really happened were confused. He guessed that Patrick probably was describing Michael's initial sighting of distant lights and somehow mixed up the telephone call to Plattsburg with a supposed visual detection of jets from the base. No jets actually appeared during Michael's own experience. There was another important extenuating factor. Regrettably, Patrick had had a long psychiatric history. Even if he had confirmed Michael's close-encounter story, Patrick's version of the incident and his reliability as an eyewitness would have been open to question. Regarding the claim that Plattsburgh had confirmed receiving UFO calls that evening, I checked this out early in the investigation, forwarding inquiries to the base, to the Modern Military Branch of the National Archives in Washington, and finally to SAC Headquatters in Omaha. As I suspected, all telephone logs at Plattsburgh had been destroyed after one year, and copies of UFO sighting documents kept at SAC Headquarters in 1968 likewise had been destroyed after six months. Later, I personally inspected the official Blue Book/OSI files at the National Archives and found no related sighting reports for the date and place in question. During my quest for witnesses, I uncovered a possible new observer of the enigmatic event that August night in 1968. The playhouse director ''Elaine'' (25 years old at the time) remembered that sometime early in August she had been conducting an evening rehearsal for 'Bye Bye Birdie' when someone came running up to the back door of the playhouse and shouted something about lights in the sky. There was a mad dash out the door as everyone headed toward a clearing on the sky moving away over this interruption, followed at a slow pace behind the others. Although her view was obscured by trees along the bluff, she said she was aware of a silvery glow emanating from a nearby moving source above the trees and to the right over the lake. By the time she had caught up to the campers at the clearing, Elaine could distinguish only a small glow in the sky moving away over the lake and fading from sight. When she asked some of the youngsters what the light was, the playhouse director received varied and confusing answers - none of which she now could recall. Nor could she remember the names of any of those present. If Elaine's and Susan and Barbara's sightings actually did happen the same evening a the primary episode - and this could not be definitely substantiated - it is possible that Elaine and her group may have viewed the UFO's first departure trom the dock (the abduction flight) and Susan and Barbara, the UFO's second and final retreat after returning the abductees. This speculation is aided by each party's differing time estimates for the observations Elaine said it was early dusk - about 8:35 or so - while the latter stated that it was totally dark out - between 9 and 10 o'clock. These UFO experiences occurred during a period of local, regional, and global UFO activity. Indeed, I uncovered two more sightings of unknown objects in July or August involving two other counselors at Buff Ledge, and two instructors at another camp on Lake Champlain 25 miles to the south. AN EVALUATION Michael and Janet were given a thorough evaluation which included MMP| (Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory) tests, PSE (Psychological Stress Evaluator) exams, and background character checks. Each MMPI score was analyzed by a local psychologist and R. Leo Sprinkle (University of Wyoming). Basically, Janet's profile appeared normal and free of sociopathy. Michael's score indicated normalcy except for a possible intellectual rebellion toward traditional ideas and parental/societal rules, echoing his creative life style. The PSE tests were evaluated by a certifled stress analyst, Ernest Reid (the PSE expert in the Andreasson case). While both subjects were shown to have observed a UFO, the c|ose encounter/ abduction scenario proved inconclusive. In Michael's case, the analyst concluded that the subject's test was administered incorrectly by another party. Although Reid later administered Janet's test himself, he left unexplored the abduction segment due to its having been uncovered through hypnosis. The two personalities comprised a study in contrasts. When I last saw Michael six years ago, I characterized him then as bright, idealistic, having psychic and mystical interests, leading a creative and artistic lifestyle, and lacking in strong motivation. His life and interests appeared to have changed drastically following the UFO experience (Some of these changes, however, were undoutedly due to an unhappy home life and to normal teen-to-adult maturation.) Unable to apply himself at college, he dropped out of schools three times, worked at odd jobs across the country, and finally returned to college where in 1978 he succeeded in graduating with a B.A. in religion. When I last contacted him some years ago, he was pursuing a modeling and acting career. Janet, on the other hand, followed a straight and narrow path to her present station in life as a wife and mother. She appeared equally bright, well-adjusted, confident, outgoing, highly motivated, and leading a conventional lifestyle. An excellent student, she graduated from college with honors in 1971 with a B.A. in psychology. After holding several responsible administrative positions at an ivy league college, Janet married a physician in 1978 and now cares for her four children, ages 11, 8, and 5 (twins). Unlike the male witness's continued obsession with the UFO experience, Janet has become preoccupied with family life and prefers to forget the encounter. It was established to my satisfaction that both witnesses were honest, credible individuals who did not perpetrate a hoax (indeed, they had no opportunity for collusion) nor suffer some sort of shared hallucination or delusion. The probability is high, in my judgment, that Michael and Janet experienced a real external event of unknown origin. END NOTES [1] John G. Fuller, 'The Interrupted Journey' (New York: Dial Press, 1966). [2] ''Playboy Panel: UFOs,'' 'Playboy', January 1978, p.67.