 * Originally By: Gary S. Trujillo
 * Originally To: All
 * Originally Re: Re: Hypnotically implanted memory
 * Original Area: ParaNet(sm) Abduction Echo


Here's more information about the magazine article concerning a University
of California at Berkeley professor who has done research on the matter of
using hypnosis to recover "memories" that I reported reading recently.

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I've located the magazine, but I don't have time now to type in the article.
It's in the April, 1994 issue of _California Monthly_ (ISSN 0008-1302), pub-
lished six times a year by the California Alumni Association (Alumni House,
Berkeley, CA 94720).  The article is entitled "A Conversation with Richard
Ofshe," and was written by Virginia Matzek.

Here's an excerpt from the article:

  Q: You were involved in the Paul Ingram case in Washington, in which
  a man confessed to horrible crimes--in this case, raping his children
  and leading a baby-killing satanic cult--because he believed he must
  have repressed the memories.

  A: When I arrived in Washington, I had not read any of the documents
  on the case.  All I'd been told [by the police] was that this was a real
  satanic abuse case, with witnesses and somebody confessing.

  Q: You were skeptical?

  A: There are people out there promoting the international satanic cult
  conspiracy--usually fundamentalist Christians, people who believe in
  the literal presence of Satan--who say that satanic cults are accounting
  for 50,000 missing babies a year.  The FBI has reviewed these allegations
  and concluded that there's no evidence for that whatsoever.  Not a shred.
  This is fantasy and zealotry on the part of the people promiting it.

  Q: How do the people who believe in the existence of satanic cults respond
  to the lack of evidence?

  A: By making the conspiracy bigger.  The reason that hundreds of police
  investigations have never turned up any evidence is because the police
  are in on it.  And then the governor's office is in on it.  And then the
  federal government is in on it.  And then it's an international conspiracy.

  Q: But this time, the police told you the Ingram case was real.  What
  happened when you investigated?

  A: Something very peculiar was going on.  None of the victims or perpe-
  trators could remember anything that anyone else could confirm.  When I
  started talking to Paul Ingram, taking a history of what happened, he
  would say things like, "I can only remember this scene," and "I get this
  image."  It was as though you had taken the movie "Gone With the Wind"
  and randomly removed an inch of film here and an inch of film there.
  That was all he had--these snippets.

  This is not human memory.  You cannot be the leader of a satanic cult
  that has been active for 17 years, get involved in an interrogation, admit
  to it, and then not remember what happened two weeks ago.  The more he
  talked about the description of how his memory worked, the more I knew
  that he was either lying or had been deluded.

  So I decided to run an experiment.  I invented something.  I told him
  one of his sons and one of his daughters had been made to have sex
  together because he wanted to watch.  I gave him just those bare bones.

  He closed his eyes, put his head down on his hands, and sat there for
  a minute or two.  And then he told me he was starting to get some images.
  [Eventually], he gave me a three-page written confession: a full narrative
  of the event, including dialogue, who said what to whom, which room it was
  in, each sexual act they did, the motivation of why he did this, what he
  was thinking, and what he told them.  [Later], I confirmed with the children
  that it hadn't happened--which makes sense, given that I had made it up.

Regarding Prof. Richard Ofshe's book, it will be published this coming fall,
under the title _Making Monsters_.

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