A.D. After Disclosure

Budd Hopkins Remembered

 

I first met Budd Hopkins in 2002, at the MUFON International Symposium, which was held that year in my town of Rochester, New York. I was quite new to the UFO lecture circuit at the time, and remember the anticipation I felt upon our introduction. To me, he was a legend, a man who had blazed a trail and penetrated deep into the most challenging and disturbing topic ufology had yet encountered: the alien abduction phenomenon. Although abductions had been studied to some degree prior to his research, they had been considered peripheral to the UFO topic. True, by the 1970s, some students of ufology were acknowledging that a few people might have been abducted by the occupants of these unknown craft. Still, it was thought to be a matter of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Certainly not something that would happen to someone more than once.

It's easy for people to forget that, more than anyone else in history, Budd Hopkins changed that perception. His research – painstakingly conducted through interviewing and regressing hundreds, and eventually thousands, of people with UFO sightings and apparent ET encounters – pointed to a different conclusion. Alien abductions, he argued, were not on the fringe of the UFO phenomenon, but lay at the very core. Moreover, people were being taken not at random, but for specific reasons, over and over again. And so were their children. Something was going on, and it demanded our full attention.

Naturally, researchers (to say nothing of the mainstream media) fought this idea. Some considered it just too crazy for serious consideration. Others tried to attack Budd's credentials: after all, he wasn't a licensed psychologist, so why should anyone take his attempts at hypnotic regression seriously? Wasn't he simply leading poor, gullible people into believing something that wasn't true?

Of the latter criticism, most of those critics were either unaware of or just ignored the fact that, during the early years leading to his first book, Missing Time, Budd did not lead the hypnotic regression sessions; that person was Dr. Aphrodite Clamar, a licensed medical professional who trained Budd in the practice of hypnotic regression. But in fact Budd Hopkins was an outstanding and careful hypnotherapist, something openly acknowledged by many medical professionals, including the late Dr. John Mack, whom Budd helped to train.

During that first meeting with him in 2002, Budd was very gracious and supportive of my work. On many occasions over the years, I was fortunate to spend time with him. He was always a man for whom I held the highest respect: an extraordinarily intelligent and thoughtful person who cared deeply about all the important philosophical issues facing humanity. He was, of course, an accomplished artist, but for me the power of Budd lay in the combination of his intellectual courage and his exceptional ability to communicate through the written word. For Budd Hopkins was one of the finest writers ever to enter the field of ufology. He surely wasn't just another researcher. Budd had a gift to reach the minds and hearts of others.

He was able to do this because he had grasped a subject with profound implications for the human race. And he wrote about it with sensitivity, insight, and humility – the last of which is all too rare in any era, certainly our own today.

Ultimately, it was Budd's humanity that enabled him to affect us as he did. Although Destiny tapped him to open up new vistas of understanding for the rest of us, he always placed the well-being of those who came to him above all else. Those people were often fearful, sometimes traumatized, and occasionally even broken by experiences they could neither explain nor escape. Budd protected them. He helped them come to terms with something that medical professionals were generally not willing to do – an abject failure that future generations will surely condemn. It was this humanity of Budd Hopkins that made him so special. After all, what is the value of investigating the intentions of the Visitors (as he often called them) if we cannot care for each other? Without that, where lies humanity itself?

Like others whose lives were touched by him, I will miss Budd Hopkins. He inspired me like few others could. But I am glad he lived a long and productive life, and grateful for the privilege of having known him. He was someone of whom it can truly be said: he made a difference for the better.

Budd Hopkins dared to engage an issue few if any licensed psychiatrists, psychologists and counselors would touch.

He helped people who had nowhere else to turn to understand what was happening to them. He did this at considerable personal sacrifice. Even now the truth embargo prevents licensed practitioners from addressing the contact reality.  

Very few people know the challenges he faced in the early days of his work.  

Budd Hopkins is a pioneering legend. He did not live to see the issue resolved, but his legacy, like John Mack's, will only grow over time.  {Stephen Bassett}

It is with true sadness that we have received the expected news of the passing of a long, dear friend, Budd Hopkins. Having personally known Budd for thirty years, I had the grand experience of frequently sharing his confidence during the early stages of his devoted research.

As foreseen, if ufology didn't have a Budd Hopkins, it would have had to create one. He was the perfect man for this uncharted sea.

I observed time and time again his personal heartache over his inability at times to bring total comfort and resolution to the hundreds of hurting individuals who sought his console and outreached hand. We, as well as these, have lost a fearless, tireless champion who will be remembered not only for his original art sculptures, and best-selling books, but mainly the countless souls who trusted him to make things right again....in a world, which to them, had become unrecognizable.

It was the weight of such pain that he took onto himself an unrelenting effort to release the bonds of so many tormented by their experiences that took its toll.

Now, he is eternally released from the earthly bonds of intolerance and close-mindedness which earnestly worked to break his spirit - never to succeed. Our deepest sympathy to Leslie, and all of his family. A giant and friend now sleeps and we are all the better for having known him. {Donald Schmitt}

Budd Hopkins did more to get people involved in abduction research and to take the subject seriously than anybody else.

He made it okay to consider the subject and has brought a number of people out of the closet. Hopefully more professionals in the field of psychology and psychiatry will pick up the torch.

I knew Budd Hopkins for more than 30 years and enjoyed his hospitality in New York. He was a man of uncommon artistic talent and also of courage.

There are many modern artists, but I know of nobody else who has devoted so much time and effort to helping abductees and those interested in studying the abduction phenomenon. He clearly cared about people as well as about seeking the truth and didn't let the nasty noisy negativists stand in the way of his search for truth.

He packed a lot of living in to his 80 years. May he find richly deserved peace on the other side.  {Stanton Friedman}

I only knew Budd Hopkins through his work, his reputation and his friends and -- based on that -- he must have been one hell of a good guy.

I read Missing Time in 1981 and, it is fair to say, that I never looked at the world in quite the same way again. I recall vividly the effect of these final words in the book: "For me, the conclusion is inescapable: They are already here. Though I do not want to believe this, and feel decidedly unnerved by it, I believe it is true; extraterrestrials have been observing us in our innocence for many years, and we have no idea of their intentions."

When Intruders came out in 1987 it rocked my world view all over again. Another mind-blowing example, more common threads, more disturbing context.

Budd Hopkins always struck me as a man who had the courage to publicly struggle to interpret the facts that were being set before him. He didn't always like them, it would have been easier to look the other way, but he couldn't and, because of that grit and determination, neither could we. That was a gift.

We recognize his leadership and courage in the important work he did. Sadly, we will have to get the job of Disclosure done without him.  {Bryce Zabel}

I was aware that Budd's battle with cancer was close to an end and that he was very weak and frail. But his death, though anticipated, came as a great loss not only to me personally but to all of us who knew him.  

I thought of him as a friend, a colleague, and a mentor. He contributed a vast amount of knowledge to our understanding of alien abduction as he selflessly assisted hundreds of abductees. 

I last saw Budd in person in 2009, when he invited me to present my research to members of his Intruders Foundation. I stayed at his apartment and had the opportunity to communicate with him on a deeper personal level than ever before. As an abduction researcher and hypnotherapist, I was curious about his methodology. When I asked him to teach me his technique, he generously he led me through a hypnotic regression to a personal traumatic event that I experienced in 1988. This gave me the opportunity to learn from him and to experience the empathy and understanding that he imparted to others. I became fully aware on that day that he was truly a wonderful person in his own right.

I consider it an honor and a privilege to have known Budd. May God rest his soul. {Kathy Marden}

The pioneers who are in the midst of a hostile culture have written a guide to this tough frontier, mostly on their own dime, from a blank sheet of paper. They sacrificed their reputations and the comfort of a "normal" career and life. Budd Hopkins is such an explorer.

Did Budd make mistakes? Of course. When one creates a new expertise and learns to navigate a new tough terrain, one is learning, and learning implies errors.

What have the critics learned? Most have learned nothing. They have flunked the alien IQ test - the physicality and reality of the Taken, and the evidence that minds and bodies have been tampered with. ETs are here now and they are "genome farming" us. This is a human rights issue.

There will be a UFO Hall of Courage on some future, post disclosure awakened day. Budd will be prominent there and many unknown names will be listed alongside his.  {Vince White}

Budd Hopkins was one of the first people to take claims of abduction by non-human beings seriously, try to help the people experiencing that, and try to figure out what was going on.

I have no experience with abduction, but I do have friends that have been clients of Budd Hopkins and feel that he helped them greatly.

They are the ones who would know and are the true testimony of Hopkins' work.  {Lesley Gunter}

Budd provided a clarity of thought regarding abduction reports which ultimately led to his discovery of a unifying characteristic of such reports. That characteristic was used as the title of his first book, Time (1981).

Before his first book, abduction cases were categorized as spurious, questionable or not-really-believed or "we don't know what to do with these reports."

Missing Time provided the unifying paradigm shift that resulted in a more serious treatment of such reports. The conclusion in that book and the information and conclusions in his later books spurred further work, including university-level studies, into psychological aspects of these reports. Numerous others were involved in researching abduction stories from some 20 years before Missing Time (e.g., the Hill case) to many years after, but it was Missing Time that "put it all together" for the first time (at least for this investigator).

Much of the university-level work done since Missing Time has been directed toward determining whether the root of the abduction mystery lies strictly in the human psyche or if there is at least partially, if not mostly, a "hard, physical reality" (real abductions by real non-human creatures who travel in in real, "solid" craft).

Budd's work and that the numerous other pre- and post-Missing Time abduction researchers have convinced me it is the latter. I think Budd would agree.  {Bruce Maccabee}

For more detail on the life of Budd Hopkins, please visit this page at Open Minds.

Exopolitics: Report from Leeds 2011

Any naiveté, ignorance, or ambition in this article is entirely the fault and responsibility of the Cover-Up. The void that has been left by 60+ years of denial, ridicule, disinformation and containment, is being coloured in from the groundswell up, and I outright deny any and all culpability for the artistic licence I may take in my thought-processes.

‘Who appointed you God?’ asked John Loengard of the head of Majestic 12. ‘Ike. [Eisenhower]’ came the reply, in the Dark Skies pilot. All too likely. Perhaps. At least, it seems only too logical, despite no one telling Col. John B. Alexander about it.

Right now, the UFO community at large is having somewhat of a crisis of confidence, and at the Exopolitics Leeds Conference which I attended at the beginning of August, I think I bore witness to that. The organisers, including Anthony Beckett, received standing ovations at the end of the weekend for their efforts, and they well deserved them, certainly, three years into this convention, if but for nothing else than getting so many divergent authors and activists together under one roof. And this is where contention, division, and even outright hostility enters in. Fear and Loathing on the Disclosure campaign trail. Though don’t get me wrong, there was much that was good, but - to butcher Dante - I must also tell of the bad.

At Leeds this August, I was speaking to Natasha Acimovic, who along with David Griffin head up Exopolitics UK, and I would say are fairly close to the cutting edge of ufology. A sort of modern day Jim and Coral Lorenzen. We talked about how exopolitics gives the opportunity for diversity of opinion, of research, of figures on the scene, now and in the future. Cataloguing lights in the sky, while important, was the old days, now we are engaged across the spectrum, from the political to the personal. Certainly, the field of ufology has always been shifting. I mean, if WW2 veteran Donald Keyhoe, who founded NICAP were around today he’d probably slit his wrists or have a heart-attack. But we live in a very different world than the 1960’s. Wildly different, and getting more radical, more novel with every passing day.

Jack Witek, is a sometimes actor, full time dilettante in ufology, and generally reasonable chap. He Needs to Know, and feels you do to. He lives by the sea in Plymouth, England, with his insufferable alien-hybrid cat, Adramelech, or Adra for short. You can catch him in one of the city’s many fine drinking establishments sipping German beer with his head buried in the latest UFO book, trying to look inconspicuous yet mysterious. 

The ancient Chinese, in their wisdom, cursed us in triplicate

1. May you live in interesting times. 
2. May you come to the attention of those in authority (sometimes rendered May the government be aware of you).
3. May you find what you are looking for.

Exopolitcs is logical result on the first, which leads inexorably to the second, which brings with it the danger of the third. Despite the media (in deference to Nick Pope, yes, that is a generalisation) brushing it aside, putting it down, hushing it up, hurrying it along and laughing it into the Middle Ages and its parade of bumpkin superstitions and prejudices, there is a core of sightings, of encounters, of government projects, of a 60 year paper trail, leading us ever further to the startling conclusion that we are not at the top of the food chain.

As for the second, I think Richard Dolan, and others, have amply demonstrated, this lead to a select few at the top the human pyramid to take it upon themselves to be custodians of this reality. This has led to a collective blind spot that cannot engage with this paradigm, and so here we are trying to rehabilitate the situation. God help us.

Now, thirdly. While I understand it isn’t necessarily sexy and might not make you friends to agree with Mr Pope on certain issues, I think he makes a very valid point, as he did to Sun newspaper reporters covering the conference this year, about marrying ourselves to certain political causes, like 9/11, however worthy those causes may or not be. We have to pick our battles, and we run the risk of over-reach, and of the hubris of thinking we have the answers to this mystery when in fact we do not. Not to a satisfactory degree, anyway. We have leads, we have data, we have models, we have evidence. We can prove - not as much as some of us would like.

However, on a side note, after reading Witness to Roswell by Schmitt and Carey, the former of which Bryce Zabel is writing a film script about called Majic Men, well, if the evidence and witnesses amassed in that volume were to be presented in a fair court of law, I think they’d have a hard time denying that something very important happened that night in 1947.

But that was the past! This is the present! Focus on the real life and death issues today! Ok, I’ll do my best. To reference Sherlock Holmes, nonetheless, there is the Scarlet Thread that runs through all of this, the reality of the UAPs/UFOs in and of themselves, and the behind-closed-doors reality of political and military interest, conspiracy or not.