Breaking Bones in Utah

Elaine Douglass, MS

It wasn’t an important case. And it wasn’t recent. Just some nocturnal lights seen by three people in Utah in 1979. But when I looked into this old, insignificant sighting it turned into a large and disturbing story of abduction of members of a family, their friend, and extreme physical injury to two of these people.

As I say, an insignificant sighting. Some 27 years ago, Jeff, the reporting witness, was a college student. One night he and a buddy ran into a young woman who insisted she could take them to a place they would see UFOs. She did, and they did. For an hour the three watched lights zipping around the night sky. The fellows were impressed, and the female said, “I told you so!” In 2006, Jeff reported the sighting to MUFON. “What made you report it now?” I asked. “Oh,” Jeff said nonchalantly, “I just ran across your website.”

Most of the “sightings” I investigate here in Utah turn into abduction cases. I find this out by asking, “Has anything else ever happened to you that you cannot explain?” Some wit- nesses already know they are abductees; some don’t. As for Jeff, he didn’t know that as he began to unravel the extensive history of things that couldn’t be explained, it would present to this investigator as one of the most disturbing abduction histories I have looked at. As for the other people involved in this history—Jeff’s family, their friend—some have looked at the truth, some are unable to. Jeff Begins His Story The first unusual memory Jeff told me of was when he was 14 and camped out in the backyard with a school friend named Jerry. In the middle of the night, Jeff sat bolt upright in his sleeping bag, with an acute sense something was wrong. Soon Jeff and his friend discovered Jeff’s brother Paul, 16, one of twins, walking down the driveway toward his car. Paul was fully dressed, including shoes.

Summoning himself, Jeff ordered his brother, “Get back in the house!” It wasn’t easy to get Paul back in the house, Jeff recalled, and the next day Jeff had a revealing conversation with the other twin, Larry. “So that’s where all the gas has been going!” Larry said. Paul and Larry shared a car. Often, when Larry went to use it, it was out of gas, and Paul couldn’t explain why. The consensus was Paul had been sleepwalking, and “sleepdriving,” as well. Paul Describes His “Sleepdriving” In addition, Paul told Jeff there was “a guy waiting for me” in the car. He was good looking and well dressed, Paul said, and was in the habit of telling Paul to drive through red lights. Years later Paul remembered that this “guy” had once materialized in the passenger seat beside him and Paul almost hit a VW while driving through a red light.

The next unusual event Jeff reported was a peak experience the summer of 1975 at Lake Powell, Utah. “I was in a motor boat with three guys,” Jeff recalls. “It was a beautiful day,” and as the boat headed back to shore a “vision of peace” descended on Jeff. For some 20 minutes Jeff felt he’d “gone back thousands of years,” to a time when Native Americans “left nature alone.”

An Intense Romantic Attraction

Later that summer, Jeff recalls one of his male friends—who had been with him in the motorboat—manifested an intense romantic attraction for him. Jeff rejected the advances, and neither of the young men bore ill will as a result. Jeff recalls his friend was extraordinarily handsome, having an almost perfect physical beauty. Years later the two met again, and the friend helped Jeff out of a difficult circumstance.

Another unusual event was a single episode of sexual abuse when Jeff was only eight years old. The perpetrator was a neighborhood teenage boy. Jeff says the episode was unfortunate but left him with no lasting trauma—and his tone of voice and choice of words describing the incident suggested to me this is so. Jeff said the only reason he brought up the event was to contrast it to purported episodes of childhood sexual abuse recalled in adult life by his brothers. Specifically, Jeff’s twin brothers believe they too may have been molested as children, but they only dimly recall the purported events. By contrast, Jeff emphasizes, he clearly recalls what happened to him at age eight.

All this was described in answer to my question, “Is there anything else you cannot explain?” In his final recollection Jeff, age six, woke in the night afraid. On the way to his parents’ room Jeff passed through the dining room where, he says, “I saw a silhouette, a moving shadow.”

Twins Paul and Larry Speak Out

So many unusual events had happened to Jeff’s twin brothers that I asked to speak to them, and I got a call from Paul. “My twin brother Larry and I live in different states,” Paul said, “and Larry is a high executive in a large firm. Twelve years ago, he called me and said ‘I’m having a struggle,’ and it turned out I was too!”

It seems Larry would “break into a sweat” whenever he gave a business presentation and people formed “a circle of chairs” around him. It was more than simple stage fright. As for Paul, he was having “flashbacks.” The brothers theorized “there were instances of child abuse in our backgrounds that we’d suppressed. We both entered therapy and weren’t allowed to speak to each other about this. Our wives participated and said our stories were similar. My brother Larry got so bad off he quit his job for six months,” Paul said.

Paul’s Hypnosis Therapy

Paul’s therapist was a psychiatrist. “For months we simply talked about my life. Then he suggested hypnosis. I looked up and it was 45 minutes later. ‘When are we going to start the hypnosis?’ I asked. He said, ‘We already did it.’ My wife took notes. This went on for three to four years. I have not read my wife’s notes. I also went to group therapy, but there were too many people there who saw themselves as victims. I do not want to be in a ‘victim’ mentality!” Paul said.

“My wife says the things I talked about are weird and somewhat ritualistic. I didn’t actually use the words ‘devil worshippers,’ but there were definitely a number of people involved in my memories. My wife tells me I said when we were in the circle someone would say to my parents, ‘Isn’t that right, Laura and Pete?’ (Paul’s parents’ names) In one case I talked about two little girls who were naked and I was too. I talked about taking pictures and flashbulbs and lights.”

“In high school I started to wonder, ‘What’s going on?’ One time I called my mother and said, ‘I’m in Park City (two hours away) and I don’t know how I got here! Tell Larry I’ll bring the car home in time for his date.’ She said, ‘It’s 3 in the morning! How can you say that about Larry’s date? It’s way too late!’”

“I tried to, and did, forget all this until my late 40s. Then I started having flashbacks. Flashbacks, anxiety attacks, just like my twin brother—I get them when I’m in a group. We remembered a guy in our neighborhood who was a war photographer. Maybe it was him taking pictures…but I never accused anybody.”

Paul Remembers Weird Shapes and Atom Bombs in the Sky

Paul didn’t remember the sleepwalking incident when Jeff ordered him back in the house. He did describe running the red light and almost hitting a VW with the “guy” beside him. Another time was when Paul and Larry were present at a backyard sleep-out. They saw a “weird shape in the sky” which “lit up the whole backyard,” Paul said. “Next morning Larry didn’t remember a thing about it.” And once, when Paul was in junior high, and the family was camping at Yellowstone, Paul “ran back to the family and said, ‘Did you see the atomic bomb go off?’”

Paul stayed in therapy four years, underwent many hypnosis sessions, and never remembered what he said under hypnosis. Why, I asked him, did you continue to pay for hypnosis when you could not remember? “After the hypnosis,” Paul told me, “I would feel relieved, cleansed, less anxiety. I started to feel I was not crazy.”

“My brother is functioning well today,” Paul said, “and I am active too and doing well—though I still get anxiety attacks about once a month. I don’t like elevators, and I have another compulsive disorder: when I wake up in the morning I have to count to 64. This started when I was in high school, and I remember being in the army and getting reprimanded for it. They’d sound the bell in the morning and we were supposed to get up immediately and stand at attention. I could not get out of bed until I’d counted to 64, no matter how many times they reprimanded me for it.

“My wife tells me I said under hypnosis that I’m counting to 64 because I see 64 legs and feet and I know I can’t get out of there until they pass. From my perspective, from where ever I am watching this, all I can see are the legs and feet.”

Paul said his therapist was “very professional. He said I was suffering from post traumatic stress and compulsive disorder. He said, ‘We don’t know if you are remembering anything real, but it is real to you.’ During the time I was in therapy, there was a lot in the news about satanic ritual child abuse, and we considered things like that. But actually there are not many proven cases like that at all. When I was a Chaplain in a men’s prison, I talked to child abusers and there had not been any satanic element to what they did.”

A Serious Mystery Injury

Paul said Star Wars “totally frightened” him, and then he dropped a bombshell. When he was 24, he had to have an operation on both of his arms. “My hands went numb. The doctors told me my elbows had been extremely seriously injured. They used the word ‘pulverized’. They said it would have required an ‘extreme blunt force’ to create the kind of injuries to my bones that they found.”

I didn’t even have to ask. I knew Paul had absolutely no idea how these injuries had occurred. There have been other cases of injuries to abductees. I have heard of women with extensive scarring on their reproductive organs. I know abductees are prone to high fevers in childhood. I read about a woman who broke her ankle when she was released from a craft. JAR editor Sue Swiatek has a case in which an abductee’s lungs were very seriously damaged. He remembers a being saying, “We’re sorry. We made a mistake.” And investigator Derrel Sims says he has a case in which two children drowned in a swimming pool. And now there’s Paul—with “pulverized” elbows. How in the world could that have happened? I wondered.

In the meantime, Jeff dropped his own bombshell. He told me his sister, Joan, has a friend who woke up one morning practically beaten to death. Another mystery injury...When I talked to Joan she told me all about it. Because I had no reason to think I would not talk to Joan again, I took no notes. But I did not talk to Joan again. She sent a message that Jeremiah, her friend, “does not want to know or remember what happened to him.”

It’s a simple story, really. I’ll reconstruct it from memory and from what Jeff said. The main thing missing will be a precise description of Jeremiah’s extensive injuries. It seems Jeremiah stays in a wilderness cabin and one morning he awoke with injuries he had no memory of receiving and no idea who inflicted the injuries.

According to Joan, Jeremiah awoke that morning with broken bones in his leg, arms, ribs and severe injuries to his skull. There was no telephone in the cabin and Jeremiah’s car was parked half a mile away. It was winter with snow on the ground. I shudder to think how desperate this poor man must have been. Somehow, he managed to get to his car and eventually to Joan, who took him to a hospital emergency room. When the extent of the injuries was discovered, the police were called. Joan was suspected of inflicting the injuries, but these charges were dropped. It required months before Jeremiah recovered, and he still, according to Joan, is not fully recovered. This event happened about five or six years ago, possibly in 2001.

At some point Joan said she consulted “spirit guides” to find out what happened to Jeremiah, and was told he had fallen out of his loft bed in the cabin. Joan does not believe that.

Jeff remembers there were no tracks in the snow around the cabin; no broken doors or windows or any sign of forced entry; Jeremiah is a painter and one or two paintings in the cabin were damaged; Jeremiah’s brothers investigated the scene at the cabin and could find no explanation; when Jeremiah made it to Joan’s place after the event, Joan, according to Jeff, “could barely recognize him,” so severely was he injured.

A Podiatrist with a Broken Back

I wish that was all, but it isn’t. Last summer, a MUFON Utah member and I went together to the Denver MUFON conference. I casually showed her a draft of this article. “Oh!” she said, and told me the story of her podiatrist. Recently her podiatrist had occasion to obtain x-rays of his upper body. On looking at the x-rays, the podiatrist’s own doctor said, “When did you break your back? With such a bad break in your back, you must have extensive symptoms.”

“Huh?” responded the podiatrist, according to the MUFON member who told me this story. “Huh? I never broke my back!” The MUFON member has made two attempts to persuade the podiatrist to speak with me. He refuses.

This information leaves me dumbstruck. And there’s more. But first, I review the characters in my mind. There’s Jeff, the parents Laura and Pete, the twin brothers Paul and Larry, the sister Joan, her friend Jeremiah, and Jeff’s handsome friend at Lake Powell. The twins were abducted, I know that. What about the rest? In particular, Jeff. Is Jeff an abductee?

A Nest of Abductees?

My feeling is I am looking at a “nest” of abductees. By that I mean a group of associated persons, some, in this example, related by blood, some not, who are abductees and whose relationships with each other are being orchestrated behind the scenes. These individuals are together or are brought together and influenced to behave in certain ways and play certain roles with respect to each other. In a fluid manner, they pass in and out of each other’s lives, as all humans do, but these humans are being watched, tested, stimulated, and used, over a long period of time. I say this even though there is a lot I don’t know about these people, and even though I’m seeing only part of the picture.

I think a lot about Jeff during this investigation, and I do not find clear evidence he has been abducted. Unlike the others in this case, I had unfettered access to Jeff on the telephone. He seemed completely candid and I explored his background to some depth. Jeff recalled no missing time, had no flashbacks or other psychological symptoms, his medical history held no clues, nor did I find areas of past experience he was trying to avoid.

Furthermore, just because Jeff’s brothers are abductees, and just because Jeff’s parents apparently were, and just because Jeff saw a “silhouette” in the dining room when he was six, and just because he woke up bolt upright in time to stop Paul from “sleepdriving”—does not mean Jeff is an abductee. If the silhouette was an alien manifestation, Jeff’s brothers might have been the target. And Jeff might have awakened bolt upright in the backyard because he has a strong sixth sense.

Yet, my attention keeps snagging on the recurring theme of homosexuality in Jeff’s life. He was not susceptible to it. It was external to him, interjected. I wonder—those “people” Paul remembers sitting in the circle with his parents—did they create these homosexual episodes to test Jeff’s psychological makeup?

Psychological Testing by Aliens

Psychological testing is standard operating procedure for the alien. In my own town is an abductee who relates he was told point blank by the aliens they were running a long term psychological test on him. “They told me,” my friend says, “that a number of individuals were being experimented on because of their personality type—that they (the aliens) understood these people well and had worked with them long enough—they would look at what you wanted most, assist you in getting close to what you wanted until it got close and then they would rip it from your grasp and study your reaction.” [italics in original].

For my friend, the content of the test was soon made manifest. He found himself in the “presence” of his ex-wife, who said, “I’m coming back to you.” More than anything, my friend wants his ex-wife to come back. “You’ve got to understand,” he told me, “they can create anything they want you to see.” I told him I understood that.

Next, my friend reports, he woke in the middle of the night and found his ex-wife in bed beside him. “I smelled her!” he says, “I heard her breathing. I touched her!” Then she dematerialized. At this, my friend rose from his bed shrieking in rage, and threw objects around the room. And that, presumably, is the test result the aliens were looking for.

Nothing so blatant went on with Jeff. But I wonder. I note that each time Jeff had a brush with homosexuality, his reaction was atypical. He was molested as a child, but he bears no psychological scars. In his late teens a friend manifested an intense romantic interest. Jeff rejected the advance without psychological conflict, and without loss of admiration for his gay friend. And it is curious Jeff’s gay friend was so handsome, beyond the normal it sounds to me. As for the peak experience Jeff had at Lake Powell, peak experiences are normal and not necessarily an abduction marker. Yet investigators know that when there is a definite abduction event (Jeff’s brothers), then all unusual events occurring to family members of the abductee bear close scrutiny. If someone was testing Jeff’s susceptibility, then the peak experience might have been induced, and intended to soften Jeff up for seduction by his exceedingly handsome friend who was, incidentally, on the boat.

Finally, there is Jeff’s UFO sighting. Again, he is the passive recipient of experience. A complete stranger shows up and essentially drags Jeff to a place where he is shown the reality of UFOs. Thereafter for the rest of his life, Jeff knows UFOs are real.

If there is psychological testing, manipulation, and orchestration of this family, has a particular role been assigned to Jeff? Whether “assigned” or not, Jeff has a particular role in his family, at present anyway, and that role is “door opener.” Although Larry did not speak to this investigator, and Jeremiah didn’t, Paul did, Joan did. It seems inescapable this contact with the UFO investigator has caused renewed introspection in these individuals and dialogue among them—further focusing their attention on one particular explanation for their predicament, UFO abduction, as opposed to, say, satanic abuse. All this has happened because 27 years after a UFO sighting, Jeff decided to report it to MUFON. Did some agency outside Jeff’s awareness stimulate this step?

The “Prompting” to Awareness

The stimulation and awakening of abductees to conscious awareness of the abduction experience is well-known to this investigator. I call it “prompting.” Indeed, the prompting of abductees through UFO sightings dominates my investigations in Utah at this time. Just today I received a call from a witness who said he, his son and his daughter saw the same-appearing UFO pass 25 feet over their homes in the last six weeks. The witness’s wife did not see the UFO, but she became hysterical during the night of his sighting. “Of course,” this witness told me cheerfully, “that isn’t the first time I’ve seen a UFO. When I was 10, my mother and I saw one and there was missing time…” A nest. Prompting.

What about the onset of flashbacks and other symptoms in Larry and Paul some years ago? Was that prompting? Some will say the onset of symptoms represents simply the spilling over of dammed up psychological experience too toxic for the individual to contain. My operating hypothesis is that the memory fragments are purposely released into conscious awareness by the abductors in order to determine how well they will be tolerated by the abductee.

In the case of Paul, the memory fragments which entered his awareness were not well-tolerated. Talking with Paul was heartbreaking; seeing his immense struggle to retain his functionality, to not be “crazy,” to keep earning a living and keep being a husband and father—and above all, in his eyes—to not be a “victim.” I was on edge during our one hour conversation, keenly aware of what I saw as Paul’s fragility, his desperate struggle to find an explanation, any normal explanation for what he remembers and for his compulsions and anxieties.

But as much as he wanted to find a normal explanation—child molestation—he never lost his rationality or his moral sense. “I never accused anybody,” he said. As a volunteer Mormon Chaplain in a men’s prison, he was looking for answers, but among the child molesters he counseled “there wasn’t any satanic element.” Nor did he weave any complex tale built on Biblical characters. He might have found an escape there, because Paul is a religious man, but he hasn’t chosen any of the escapes a weaker person might. Paul is a heroic and a courageous man who is carrying a terrible burden, a truth so unlikely that, as a rational man, he cannot bring himself to consider—that his life has been deeply penetrated by extraterrestrial intelligences. Did I tell Paul anything? Well, kind of. He said he wanted me to tell him what I thought, but I knew he didn’t, or else he would have read his wife’s notes of the hypnosis sessions. I recommended a good book on UFOs by a Mormon elder who is also a scientist.

Homosexual Susceptibility Testing?

I’m still wondering if they tested Jeff for susceptibility to homosexuality. The aliens are deeply interested in human sexuality, apparently including homosexuality. According to an investigator on Long Island, a group of men there was picked up and told to have anal intercourse with one of the men in the group. “He wants you to,” they were told.

I heard this story years ago, and have kept it tucked away in my mind awaiting additional data. Recently, I got some. A colleague related to me a series of phone calls she received from a man who recalled being abducted at age 25. Prior to that abduction, he was heterosexual. After it, he was a homosexual.

The man said that during the abduction the aliens changed his sexual orientation and that a female, whom he did not know, was abducted on the same occasion and her sexual orientation was also changed. The man, probably in his 40s now, said that years after the abduction he actually met the woman (he remembered her, and she him), found she lived not far from where he lives, and they discussed the whole matter.

Deeply grateful to receive this information, I told my colleague it was a “benchmark.” It marks how deep and thorough is the skill the aliens have obtained in their quest to control human beings. And it certainly makes the notion Jeff was tested for susceptibility to homosexuality more plausible, doesn’t it?

Conscious Awareness Can Begin a Period of Turmoil

Joan asked me, “If Jeremiah remembers the night he was injured, will it help?” I hesitated. I hesitated because I know that for abductees the onset of conscious awareness inaugurates a period of turmoil lasting about two years before resolution is achieved, if it ever is. Things get worse before they get better. But then, I don’t care all that much for the “better” most abductees achieve. Most come to believe the alien is here to help. That is the view I believe the alien wants the abductee to hold, and so the process often leaves me feeling as though, in my role as investigator, I have assisted the alien in achieving his goal.

When I think of what happened to Jeremiah I feel real fear. What possible purpose could it serve to beat Jeremiah so severely that even now, years later, he has not recovered? Dark thoughts enter my mind. Intimidation? Or, I think suddenly, could this be another test? “What will Jeremiah’s mental state be if we beat him within an inch of his life? How will he feel and react? Let’s try it and find out.”

Internet Postings Tell Tales

In my UFO research, the beating of Jeremiah was something new. I had heard nothing like it, and it was nothing I anticipated. I find I anticipate much of what the alien will do, but this was new. Then I ran across something like it on the internet. An individual posted the following account on a UFO abduction website:

Last night was one of those aggressively active nights where there was no doubt it would be a night of battle, starting with the heat, even though it was cold in the room. Round one, I woke up drenched in my sweat, but it wasn’t that which awakened me. It was the choking, not being able to catch my breath, as though an invisible hand were pressing on my throat. Then the “slam”’ into the solar plexus, like somebody punching you there over and over and over, one blow after another. Then the battle carried to the dream/vision state, where I faced a shape shifter. This leopard being was all of a sudden stalking me. Suddenly, I had a shovel in my hand as it came toward me, but as it advanced it started to change. The eyes were quite human and its muscles started to transform into those of a human. Then it rose on its two hind legs trying to lunge forward but the shovel kept it at bay.

This witness believes he was under psychic attack by persons associated with the U.S. government, and he reports his efforts to ward off the attack with positive energy and love. Early in the experience, he reports hearing a voice say, “You will win this war with love,” and he believes this was the voice of an alien observing the situation telling him how to defeat the psychic attack by the U.S. government.

The attacks continue, he reports. “Many times,” while driving, or sitting at his computer, or in his sleep, he feels “a lance of bad energy being thrust into my heart/chest area…”

This communication drew forth a sympathetic response from an internet correspondent, who reported a violent experience of his own:

Sunday morning I woke up feeling like I had done two rounds with Muhammad Ali (in his good days). I was sore and felt like I had been multiple-punched in the stomach, sides, ribs and kidneys. I could barely walk upright to the kitchen.

I noticed the front door was unlocked (though I had locked it), the porch light was off (it was ON at bedtime), and the burglar alarm was turned off (set at bedtime to ON). Someone had gotten in, roughed me up, and left without my waking up. As to whether I fought back… I had no bruised knuckles and the defensive objects I keep near my bed went undisturbed [I must have been] gassed, drugged, and/or psychotronically deactivated.

Blame the Government?

These two individuals believe corrupt persons in the U.S. government have mastered the technology of mind control, and these persons perpetrate psychic attacks upon abductees who are in close communication with aliens and trying to learn from the aliens how to achieve higher levels of consciousness. They believe the U.S. government’s purpose in mounting the attacks is to appear to be the alien and so discredit aliens in the eyes of the abductee.

The alien has not been discredited, however, as far as these two internet individuals are concerned. For them, the result of the attacks has been to intensify their resentment of the U.S. government and cause them to reach out ever more fervently to the alien in an attempt to obtain help.

That’s interesting, isn’t it?

What strikes me is the susceptibility of the reported events (the attacks) to an alternative explanation, namely, that it is the alien who plays all roles in these reported dramas. It is he who perpetrates the attacks, and it is he who plays the role of the spiritually-elevated, non-intervening observer, because, after all, if we subject these events to the test of “Who benefits?” we cannot deny it is the alien who benefits. His yield is an abductee who loves and trusts him and who hates human authority.

Conscious Awareness vs. No Context

There is a difference between the two internet individuals who were attacked, and the podiatrist, and Jeremiah, and Paul. The internet individuals are consciously aware of their involvement with extraterrestrials—they are past the crisis of realization—while Jeremiah, Paul, and presumably, the podiatrist, are not. So if we imagine that the attacks on the internet individuals were staged as part of an effort to mold the loyalties of these individuals, we see it was possible to do that because these two people know about aliens, they know about the government cover-up—in other words, they have a context in which the attacks take place and which supports an interpretation.

But for Jeremiah, there is no context. The attack is out of the blue and he, ostensibly, has “no idea…,” at least according to Joan. A difference between Jeremiah versus Paul and the podiatrist, is that Jeremiah experienced the attack, while Paul and the podiatrist not only have “no idea” who or why, they didn’t even know that an attack occurred, if indeed it was an attack, in the case of Paul and the podiatrist. Maybe they fell down the stairs in an alien aircraft. But Jeremiah didn’t, and he didn’t fall out of his loft bed either. The fact remains that since Jeremiah doesn’t have a context, if somebody was trying to teach him a lesson, he didn’t learn it. Nor did I. I can’t apply the “Who benefits?” test to this dreadful incident, since there’s little to support a hypothesis except possibly to suggest the whole thing was a botched affair and whoever did it had to withdraw.

Soon, I hope, hypnotherapists will apply themselves to some of these “broken bones” witnesses, and I hope they make sure they get past the screen memories.