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Abductions - Baylor professor studies unusual claims

Last Updated: Thursday, July 20, 2006 1:09

The following article was published in “The Dallas Morning News”, 25th August 2004

BY JEFFREY WEISS

DALLAS - (KRT) - Christopher Bader was one of those kids who loved tales of the improbable. He grew up to become his own improbable tale:

He's a sociology professor at the conservative and Baptist Baylor University, a Presbyterian who has a particular interest in people who say they are UFO abductees or victims of religion-linked ritual abuse. His study of the two groups was published in a recent issue of the Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion.

"My students ask me all the time: `Do you believe in UFOs? Do you believe in ritual abuse? Do you believe in Bigfoot?'" He said. "My answer is that I just don't care whether they're real or not."

Studying the sociology of religion is nothing like delving into theology, he said.

"We're not studying God. We're studying what people who believe in God and live on earth do," he said.

"God" and "religion" are defined broadly by sociologists of religion. Belief in UFO abductions and in ritual abuse both include a large dose of faith.

The scientific mainstream has not accepted any claims of alien abductions. And many who claim to have survived ritual abuse say they discovered the abuse through the recovery of long-repressed memories. The length of time between the alleged event and the recovery of the memory often makes it hard to investigate the claims.

So are there UFOs grabbing people? Are there Satanic cults abusing people? In many cases, people believe without the kinds of evidence that would convince outsiders - it's a matter of faith. And that means people who belong to support groups for UFO abductees or for survivors of ritual abuse can be studied as members of "new religious movements."

The only connection between the UFO folks and the ritual abuse folks is that the two groups gained attention in the 1980s, as Dr. Bader was starting his academic career.

Sociologists such as Bader study small groups like these because they believe this is a way to understand how successful faiths develop. After all, the largest religions all started with a few people considered unusual by their neighbors.

"It really is no crazier than anything else," he said of the outside-the-mainstream stuff he studies. "I appreciate it as a belief, and a sincerely held belief."

Not that he expects belief in UFO abductions to morph into a major faith anytime soon. "Not in my lifetime," he said.

Most of his work involves less controversial belief systems - why churches and denominations succeed or fail in drawing members. But when Baylor hired him a couple of years ago, he told his new bosses that part of his studies could seem a bit, well, odd for a Baptist school.

"But when I talk about Satanism in class, I'm not recruiting," he said.

His paper, published in the peer-reviewed journal, is the fruit of years of tentative contacts with support groups for people who say they've been snatched by aliens or ritually abused. Members of these groups are suspicious of outsiders. Much of his paper details how he gained their trust - and eventually, some information about them.

Eventually, he was able to get 55 of the UFO folks and 51 ritual-abuse survivors to anonymously fill out forms about their ages, education and other demographic information.

That information fills a hole in the study of these groups, he said. Most academic attention has focused on the beliefs or on psychological effects on the believers. Bader's goal was to identify the kinds of people who subscribe to these beliefs.

What he came up with has its limits, he admits. The sample size is small, and there's no way to know for sure if they represent the average UFO abductee or ritual-abuse survivor. But the results are in line with research done on other small, new religious movements, he said.

Many academics who study such movements tend to consider members of these particular groups as rubes, he said. "They assume that these are some country bumpkins who believe that the UFOs are plucking them off their tractors. That's not what people who are interested in new ideas are like."

It turns out that the folk who filled out Bader's forms are a lot like most Americans who seek out unusual faith experiences: They're generally female, white, affluent and well-educated when compared with the general population.

Of the 51 UFO abductees, 32 were women, 48 said they were white and six identified as Native American (three chose both categories), 34 attended some college, and 29 were white-collar workers. Most said they found some positive aspects to their experience.

Of the 48 ritual-abuse survivors, all were white women, 44 had attended college, and of the 21 then employed, 18 were white-collar workers. This was an unhappy population, and most reported they had dozens of multiple personalities.

What they have in common, Bader said, is that they mostly follow the pattern found in other new religious movements.

"The theory tells us that it doesn't matter about the personality of the `god' involved," he said. "The point is that a certain demographic is interested in things outside the mainstream."

Bader's own interest in such things started when he was very young.

"I read `The Amityville Horror' when I was in the fourth grade and I couldn't sleep for a week," he said. "When I was a kid, I used to try to find Bigfoot in the woods or worry that UFOs would come to my room and get me."

He'll admit to never losing his fascination with the mystery associated with tales of the supernatural.

"If we ever caught Bigfoot and put him in a cage," he said, "I'd be really depressed."

Night Sky Holds Terrifying Memories For Alien Abductees

The following article was published in The Edmonton Journal, Alberta, on 17^th October, 2004

The two men didn't want their names used for fear of ridicule, but they had a story to tell. It haunts their dreams and has forever changed the way they look into the night sky, said the men, who came, as did about two dozen others, to the first conference of the Alberta UFO Study Group on Saturday afternoon.

Around 2 a.m. on April 29, 1997, the two men were driving between Valleyview and Grande Prairie when a bright red light approached them from above, one of the men recalled.

The wind around them picked up, they fell unconscious, and awoke in a space ship, he said.

             "I remember I was fighting them and I kicked one between the legs, but they didn't have no testicles," one of the men said. He said he looked at his friend, who had some sort of golden apparatus in his mouth. "Then they probed me," he said, with tears beginning to well in his eyes.

             "I remember it as clear as yesterday."

He said he blacked out and when he regained consciousness he was back in his car, speeding down the same highway in the wrong direction. It took them more than six hours to make a 45-minute trip.

Physically, the former bull rider said he felt as sore as if he'd competed in a rodeo the night before.

             "I was quiet for two or three weeks, then I started to remember it," he said. "I still have dreams."

The men came to the rented room at University of Alberta Conference Centre, as others did, with an intense or personal interest in unexplained phenomena. They gathered to share experiences, philosophies, conspiracy theories, even skepticism, at the day-long event organized by Jim Moroney, a health and safety inspector with his own life-changing story to tell. The executive director of the Alberta Municipal Health and Safety Association says he was driving from Edmonton to Ontario several years ago when he stopped his car near Winnipeg. Moroney discounts theories that he might have temporarily fallen asleep on his feet. He maintains he was completely awake and standing next to his car to get some fresh air when a UFO appeared - a big bright object that hovered above him for six or seven seconds before disappearing.

             "It was probably about 20 feet above me," he said. “I still get shaky talking about it, but the air underneath it was dead."

He's uncomfortable recounting the story in public.

           "It would be silly to say that I wouldn't be nervous some people would be prejudiced against me because of my ideas on these phenomena," he said.

But like others at the conference, he believes there needs to be serious study into unexplained stories shared by so many people around the globe.

            "We have to invite skepticism into this because it is only through challenging this through scientific means and really being honest about these challenges, that we'll filter out a body of evidence that is irrefutable one way or the other."

Former pilot Ken Burgess, who investigates UFO sightings for the group, isn't about to speculate about the strange object he saw above a plane he was flying. He's angered by tales of little green men, because they damage serious inquiry into the subject. But he knows he saw what he saw.

He has talked to people who have reported all kinds of objects in Alberta's skies. Some sightings have been as recent as last month - giant flying black triangles above St. Albert.

           "I just take the information and try to track it down," he said. "Did they pick it up on radar or did anyone else see it?"

The conference also heard from Fern Belzil, one of the world's top authorities in cattle mutilation. In the past eight years, the 80-year-old rancher from St. Paul has investigated more than 100 cases, the last ones just a few weeks ago.
Since the mad-cow crisis, farmers have generally kept quiet when their cattle or other animals are found with lips, tongues, udders, genitals, noses, eyes and rectums removed with surgical precision.

Showing slide after slide of mutilations, he insists he can instantly see differences between unexplainable injuries and those caused by predators or maggots.

Belzil is not certain what is happening to the animals.

            "A lot of arrows point towards aliens," he said. "But we have no proof."

Abductee faces polygraph test on UK T.V.

James Basil is subjected to an extensive polygraph examination.

James Bassil's artistic rendition of the alien by whom he claims to be "observed".

Professor Chris French gives his opinion of James' experiences.

On 29th November, 2004, James Basil agreed to be subjected to a Polygraph Test (lie detector) on the popular television show “Richard and Judy” (Channel 4 Television, U.K.). James was interviewed by Richard and Judy and Professor Chris French was present in his role of “paranormal sceptic”. The polygraph test was conducted before the show because of the length of time it took to complete, it was claimed to be a detailed test.

At the commencement of the interview James Basil, now 25, described how he had experienced being abducted on thirteen occasions by aliens since a very young child. He added that he had been interviewed by a psychiatrist who agreed with his mother that he had a wild imagination.

The expert who had conducted the polygraph test earlier then declared that James had been totally honest during the extensive examination and that James believed his abduction experiences to be true experiences.

Professor Chris French declared that he never doubted James’ honesty but what he regarded as alien abduction experiences were a modern manifestation of fairies or little people stories of past times.

AUDIO FILE

James Basil describes his first abduction experience.

UPDATE!!

James Basil wrote to the WHY? files recently and updated us with the following:

RICHARD & JUDY INTERVIEW - “ONLY HALF THE STORY”

By Jamie Bazil

Dear All,

You may have seen me on the Richard & Judy show, 29^th November 2004. I have been undergoing alien abduction type, and other paranormal experiences, since as far back as I can remember. It is also something that runs in the family, though I seem to be the strangest out of all of us! I am certainly the only one in my family, and one of the few in this country, who is willing to speak openly about these most controversial of experiences. I consider myself to be an ordinary person undergoing extraordinary experiences. I consider myself to be a human being who has had frustrating, terrifying, life-changing experiences, and who has done his best to deal with these as much as possible.

I first spoke to other people about my experiences - at school - when I was only 12 years old. This was because it was so frequent and common within my family that I thought it might be normal experience for my friends too! This idea was further reinforced by the experience of an uncle’s girlfriend at the same spot where I, and someone else in my family, have memories of visitation by strange entities. Furthermore, when I would badger my mother with the question, “How come our family report so many unusual experiences?” she would reply, “I expect other people have just as many experiences as us, they just don’t talk about it.” I now know, of course, that yes many don’t talk - but these experiences are not as “common” as my mother made out! For example, experts reckon that only 1 in 10 have seen a UFO, and only 10% of those report their experiences due to fear of ridicule, but in my family about 70% have seen a UFO! Some of them have seen UFOs more than once and/or had other paranormal experiences. Clearly, my mother’s theory was a perceptual bias - only having her family’s experience to go by and assuming it applied to everyone “but they just don’t talk about it.” The same idea, passed on to me, landed me in much trouble, but of course she is not to blame. I think I would’ve ended up “coming out” of the closet regarding my experiences, in the end, anyway.

I first appeared on television, crying my eyes out, when I was only 16 on Music Television (MTV). I had been through hell and back. Tests for epilepsy, anti-psychotic medication which gave me fits, and endless bullying not just by kids at school - but by just about everyone I was meant to be able to trust. (Despite the psychiatric “treatments”, I was later told at the age of 21 when I went back fearing I was “schizophrenic” after reading one of their reports that I WASN’T mad at all, that if I was it would be getting worse, and that they were “unequipped to deal with these kinds of experiences.” They couldn’t find anything wrong with me and advised that I “go and meet other people like you.” Needless to say, I still felt completely insane!) At the age of 12, I’d had enough and on two occasions I tried to hang myself. Once in front of other children, the second time on my own “To escape the human and alien bullies.” The only thing that stopped me was not wanting “Death due to madness” written on my death certificate plus leaving my poor mother behind wondering what the hell she had done wrong. Another thing that stopped me was that Well...I had this amazing rush, adrenalin fight-or-flight (whatever you call it) which left me with a more positive vision...that one day, somehow, I would find people with these experiences just like me, people who could accept me for who I am and not bully me because of the un-asked for unknown I’ve been subjected to.

I appeared on TV again, I suppose, due to the naive belief that (even though a child) I could make a difference by sharing my story, rather than thinking “What difference can a little boy make?” You see, it’s like the state of our planet. If we all go around thinking “Why bother putting my rubbish in the bin - it won’t make a difference because no-one else does, what difference can I make?” then we’d ALL be throwing our rubbish on the floor! Anyway once I’d appeared on TV not just most people knew about me - but EVERYONE did - and they of course didn’t take me very seriously. I changed my mind about what I did, and tried to hide and forget again - to try and be less “public” about my experience. However, they were still showing the programme two years later, and up to FIVE years later I still had people coming up to me on the street asking questions or calling names etc. What struck me, though, was that some of these were probably knee high to a grasshopper when the MTV programme was shown, I mean little eight year olds, who only knew about it because they’d been told by their older brothers, sisters, or parents. This reminds me of the bullying when I was 12 at school. In my last year my parents moved me to another school because the bullying hadn’t stopped. I thought at the new school, and so did everyone else, that I could “Turn over a new leaf.” But you know what happened? I had stones thrown at me and children shouting “UFO” and “spaceman.”

In short I realised there was nowhere to hide, bar change my name and move to another country. There is a saying “Tell two or more people and the whole world knows.” Well that’s what happened to me, and now there’s nothing I can do about it, so I have embraced my mission in life - to proclaim my truth and hopefully educate people to how this experience affects us abductees, whether adult or child. Since the Richard & Judy show, I am pleased to report that people are at last opening up to me. We all can have a laugh about it, but no longer am I bullied by people. People have actually said things like, “Wow, I really thought you were making it up, but now it’s clear your telling the truth.” Sad, you know, that people would rather trust a lie-detector than look me in the eyes and see - feel - for themselves that I am honest. If I wasn’t, why have I been talking about these things since an infant? I was talking about this way before the X-Files thank you very much!

* * *

Regarding the story I shared on Richard & Judy, there are a few things I must say about that day. Maybe it has something to do with my healing abilities, meditation etc., but I never get headaches and virtually never catch the flu. I hadn’t had the flu since 2000, but I think due to being in London which I hate, and because I started to worry about the consequences of what I was doing (i.e. would people take the mickey out of me more or less?), I came down with a sore-throat and flu like symptoms the night before. After about three hours of non-stop chatting for the radio, my throat was as sore as a ...well, very sore indeed. By the time I got to Richard & Judy, I was finding it almost impossible to speak.

Sceptic Dr. Chris French naturally did his generalised piece about “various psychological factors” that may be involved after I spoke, and, because by then I was feeling so drained, I wasn’t my usual chatty and argumentative self! Indeed, there was more to my first experience at the age of 7 than they let on. Not only did I have the two scars which my mum noticed next day, to which I replied, “I told you mummy, the little blue men came again,” but what WASN’T mentioned was that there was also a set of footprints where the being last stood. The usual arguments sceptics, including French, have put forward. These focus on the following points:

1). Memory Infallibility Argument.

Memory is not reliable after all those years. “Is what you report today what really happened back then?”

2). The scars were caused by conventional means. Dr. French suggested off-camera that maybe I had “lashed out in your sleep.”

3). The Rorsharsch Effect Argument. Maybe the footprints really weren’t footprints, but a random pattern that only looked like footprints after the suggestion had been made by myself regarding the alien visitation.

I now respond to these sceptical theories with my own brand of scepticism:

1). Though memory is indeed infallible and may become less accurate over time, it doesn’t mean all memories (or all of a memory) are/is inaccurate. In the case of alien abduction experiences, which may be traumatic or memorable because of their novel nature, they may be more memorable than ordinary everyday events. From my original memory, I told my mother and a friend about the experience and showed them the scars and footprints. I only recalled this experience in full when I was twelve in 1992. I thought it was my imagination, of course, but after asking both my mother and the friend a non-suggestive and non-leading question, “Do you remember anything unusual from when I was younger?” They both replied in the affirmative and confirmed my story, saying they recalled my talking of the little blue man and seeing the footprints and scars.

2). The idea that the scars were caused by conventional means such as “lashing out in your sleep” is inconsistent with the fact that the marks were white, i.e. healed, rather than cuts accidentally created in the middle of the night that were still in the process of healing and therefore turning into scars! Another theory proposed by sceptics, true or not it makes no difference in this case, is the idea that we all can find a scar somewhere we have forgotten about and then, if we have a weird experience, “blame it on aliens.” However, the scar on my leg was/is substantial, about four inches in length and quite wide in diameter, hardly the kind of injury or scar a mother would not notice on her child. Note that at the time my mother still dressed me. Also, a scar of about an inch was discovered on my stomach. How likely is it that two such substantial injuries would go unnoticed until the point of healing?

3). In the case of the Rorsharsch effect argument, fair enough, but I didn’t “go looking” for footprints that day. I had been drawn to look on the top of the box, when I got it down from the wardrobe, because it was reeking of a smell akin to ammonia - which, it turns out, came from the footprints themselves. The Rorsharsch argument doesn’t seem to hold up when one considers that three separate people could agree that there were what, for the life of me, looked like three-toed footprints about 2.5 inches in diameter. Another theory proposed by Dr. French was that a rat could have climbed the wardrobe and created them. This might even explain the alien in my room? I checked up this theory, and fair enough, yes rats can climb walls and wardrobes. But, and it’s a big but, no rat leaves footprints about 2.5 inches in diameter. Also, in the case of animal footprints, they usually leave a trail of them behind - rather than just one set as if whatever it was stood there and then disappeared. That the footprints were actually far bigger than any rat’s footprints is further suggested by my friend’s testimony that he originally joked that I had created them using “one of those foot shaped rubbers.” The rubbers in question would’ve approximated the size of the prints closer than any rat prints.

The Richard & Judy show telephoned my mother regarding what she remembered of the event, but that was another thing they never had time to mention. By the way, if you are reading or know of the friend in question, please Phillip get in contact with me again - your testimony regarding what happened to me all those years ago is of the utmost of importance.

Thank you for listening to my true but unlikely sounding story.

Contact Details & Further Information

Jamie Bazil

Email: free_concern@yahoo.co.uk

FREE Foundation for the Research of Extraordinary Experience: http://groups.msn.com/fretsa4witnesses

Indigo Starkids UK: http://groups.msn.com/indigosuk

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