Date:   Sun Aug 08 1993  11:02:00
From:   SHEPPARD GORDON
To:     ALL
Subj:   Not Screwballs
UFO                            -------------------------------

UFO STUDIES, STORIES CONVERGE IN BELLEVUE THIS WEEKEND -- IT'S
RESEARCH, NOT `SCREWBALLS,' SPEAKER SAYS
07/15/93
THE SEATTLE TIMES

Did you know:
--  Tens of thousands of Americans have been abducted by UFOs?
--  The U.S. government has captured UFOs and is testing them in Nevada?
--  Extraterrestrials have mutilated up to 20,000 cattle?
--  Physical features on Mars were made by intelligent life?
--  NASA's space-shuttle crew has videotaped alien  spacecraft?

Sound far-fetched? Even flaky?

Theories on all those subjects will be discussed this weekend
in Bellevue at a national research conference on unidentified flying
objects.
It's a gathering not just of believers, but - organizers insist - of
professionals, scholars and scientists.
"We know there are screwballs out there, people who claim all
sorts of crazy things," said John Carpenter, a hypnotherapist from
Springfield, Mo.
Carpenter will discuss his studies of more than 80 people who,
under hypnosis, have recalled details of their abduction by alien
beings. He believes many people may have had such an experience and
don't realize it.
Among his clients was Skye Ambrose, a St. Louis-area massage
therapist who initially knew only that she and a friend saw a bright
light while driving along a Colorado highway and later couldn't
account for a two-hour period of time.
Carpenter separately hypnotized both Ambrose and her friend and
said their accounts of the abduction included 43 identical details,
including the shape of the room in the spacecraft (round), the color
of light inside (rosy) and the features of the alien beings
(pear-shaped heads with dark, slanting eyes).
Ambrose, who also will speak at this weekend's conference, now
says she remembers those details but no longer sees them as
significant.
"I rarely think back on the physical experience. To me that's
the least important part of it," she said. What's important, she
said, is the continuing, mind-to-mind communication she has with
the beings she encountered.
"It's telepathic, and I don't even know how to explain it,"
Ambrose said. She believes the visitors have a spiritual, almost
biblical message: that a time is coming when people will have to
choose between unity and separation, between peace and conflict.
Ambrose, who is writing a book on her experience, realizes many
people react to UFO stories with suspicion or fear, skepticism or
downright disbelief.
"These are the reactions of a negative people," she said. "I
would like to take some part in changing the perception of people on
this planet."
The Saturday-Sunday conference at the Bellevue Hyatt Regency is
sponsored by the Missouri-based Triad Research Conference Foundation.
Carpenter, whose wife, Denise, is one of the conference
coordinators, said hundreds of people from around the western U.S.
are expected to attend the $45-per-person conference.
The area has also drawn the attention of UFO-debunkers. CSICOP,
the New York-based Committee for the Scientific Investigation of
Claims Of the Paranormal, plans to hold a conference in Seattle next
summer.
A likely participant in that conference is Philip Klass, a contributing
editor at Aviation Week & Space Technology magazine, who has challenged
UFO reports for more than two decades and written several books on the
subject.
Klass calls the UFO-abduction phenomenon the result of a "dangerous cult"
in which hypnotists and therapists abuse the power they have over their
patients. He finds it inconceivable that if UFOs have been seen since the
1940s, there is still no irrefutable photographic or videotaped evidence of
them.

"There are enough things in this world we need to worry about,
enough legitimate problems, without adding any contrived ones," he
said.

