Date:   Sun Mar 20 1994  16:58:00
From:   Sheppard Gordon
Subj:   DARK WHITE - review
UFO                            -------------------------------

`Dark White: Aliens, abductions, and the UFO obsession' - Jim Schnabel: Hamish
Hamilton, 16.99 pounds
03/15/94 THE INDEPENDENT

   IN THE small hours of 30 November 1989, Javier Perez de Cuellar, then
secretary- general of the United Nations, was being chauffeured through the
Lower East Side of New York when he was abducted by aliens and taken to their
spaceship. By now pyjama-clad, he was subjected to an intimate physical
examination before being returned to the folk whence he came. This bizarre
rumour has filtered up from fruitcakeland to the semi-serious press. As a
result, poor old Perez de Cuellar is harassed by fax, by phone and by
persistent reporters.

   The case of the missing secretary-general - the most sensational of the
hundreds of alien abduction tales sweeping the United States - provides the
centrepiece for Jim Schnabel's remarkably detached, almost academic study of
the evolution of the flying saucer myth. He is right to look in detail at the
emergence of the Perez de Cuellar legend because, except for the superstar
element, it is typical.

   The tale centres on "Linda", a middle-aged woman who lives with her family
in the Lower East Side. She was convinced that in her youth she had been
abducted by aliens. She had also been plagued by ghosts and poltergeists.

   Linda started attending a support group for abductees led by Budd Hopkins,
one of several influential characters who make a good living out of the rapidly
growing flying saucer cult. One day Linda told Hopkins that she had just been
through yet another abduction. He "regressed" her hypnotically - a standard
practise among ufologists - and, bingo, she recalled the event in detail,
including sexual interference.

   There the matter would have rested but for a mysterious letter to Hopkins
from two alleged police officers who claimed to have seen Linda and little grey
persons float out of her window and into the spacecraft. In later
communications, the two claimed they were members of the secretary-general's
bodyguard.

   Subsequently, according to Linda, these men (who, unsurprisingly, have never
been traced) abducted her on several occasions and they, too, attempted to
molest her. Then, under further hypnosis, she "remembered" that she had been
abducted by the spacemen yet again - and these latest ordeals had taken place
in the company of the then secretary-general of the UN. Next, one of her
friends, another of Hopkins's patients, revealed that she also had been
abducted, along with Linda, Linda's son . . . and Perez de Cuellar.

   Abduction tales such as Linda's are, according to Schnabel, increasingly
common in the United States. There is usually an element of sexual harassment,
the abductions are repeated and often the details reflect novels, movies or
earlier accounts of abductions. (In Linda's case, Nighteyes, a sci-fi novel
with a similar theme, had been published shortly before her crucial seizure.)

   As well as pseudo-sex, pseudo-science is often involved. There is, further,
a wimpish, pseudo-religious element to a number of the tales collected by
Schnabel. Many aliens command us to make love, not war, to look after the
planet and, above all, be not afraid.

   In recent years, Schnabel points out, hypnotism and other dubious forms of
regression analysis have been used in the US to "rescue" lost memories of
sexual abuse in childhood. Tales which Freud would have treated as oblique and
symbolic expressions of deep drives, fantasies and neurotic symptoms are taken
as literally true. It has, according to Schnabel, become usual for ufologists
to employ similar hypnotic techniques and to give similar credence to the tales
that emerge.

   What is astonishing is that there is a vast audience out there that is only
too ready to believe such nonsense. Schnabel's next book could focus on the
believers, rather than the "abductees" and the self-appointed high priests of
what seems set to become America's next batty cult. Move over, L Ron Hubbard,
here comes Perez de Cuellar.

 Little grey persons from fruitcakeland.

