"My Dad Was A Famous Alien Abductee. I Thought He Was A Joke—Now I'm Not So Sure"

[Paul_Exeter]

A rather sad and thought-provoking read:

"My father saw UFOs. Not one, once, like a dinner guest might claim after a few glasses of wine, but many times. Numerous UFOs all at once, up close, lingering in the western Wyoming sky like a nightmare that refused to dissipate come sunrise. In 1981, on NBC’s prime-time TV show “That’s Incredible,” my father’s story gained national attention as he related, under hypnosis, the specifics of his abduction claims and the demands aliens had made upon his life."

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/alien-abduction-ufo-wyoming-father_n_6495ddc9e4b02f808ab5a8dc

 

[charliebrown]

As I mentioned in the Las Vegas alien thread, now that family is now getting harassed.

I seems almost all UFO stories that make it to the media shows only bad finds the person telling the event.

Nothing good comes from talking about UFOs.

 

[BS3]

That is indeed a sad and thought-provoking article; well-written, too. The account of the reporter who visited McGuire's ranch is also worth a read.

https://www.uncharted101.com/a-strange-unearthly-ranch/

Here's an interesting perspective from a local some years back - it seems McGuire (described as a "quirky articulate rancher of unusual talents") actually ran for governor at one point:

https://wyofile.com/john-barleycorn-aka-pat-mcguire/

One thing I wonder about with this phenomenon is why these 'visions' so often seem to deliberately mislead the witness.

And lastly, another, longer reminiscence of Pat:

http://thechurchofufology.blogspot.com/2011/07/pat-mcguire-my-friend.html

I found the point about his irrigation equipment being sabotaged interesting; maybe someone had it in for him?

 

[BS3]

One thing that seems clear from these older articles is that McGuire was really very much what we would call a "contactee", rather than an "abductee" in the contemporary sense. Even the being that appeared to him (calling himself 'Michael': McGuire's experiences were replete with Catholic imagery, including the aliens' fundamental message being that the US should legislate against abortion) looked far more like the entities of an earlier era (man-high, wearing a uniform including a 'symbolic' belt insignia - a Star of David, in this case).

In a way it's interesting that the most recent articles about him have somewhat reframed his experiences in terms of contemporary 'greys'.

 

[catseye]

Lost me as soon as 'hypnosis' was mentioned.

 

[BS3]

The psychologist mentioned in McGuire's case, Leo Sprinkle, was also the person who conducted the hypnosis on Herb Schirmer, the police officer whose UFO / contact experience was one of the Condon Committee cases. Schirmer did see a UFO one night in December 1967 but under hypnosis recalled entities and other details.

Sprinkle, who died only last year, was obviously knowledgeable and sincere but I note that he had become a 'believer' himself after a UFO sighting in the 1950s. Kevin Randle wrote a brief commemoration here:

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2021/11/leo-sprinkle-has-died.html

The quote from Phil Klass posted by Robert Sheaffer in the comments gives an interesting observation on how the personality of the hypnotist might influence the experiences that emerge under hypnosis: Sprinkle was a warm, kindly man (as you might expect from a professor of counselling psychology) and those he worked with tended to report kindly, benevolent aliens.

 

[catseye]

I distrust hypnosis.

Anything that doesn't stay in the conscious mind and available to recall without recourse to other methods should be regarded with deep suspicion in my view. It's too liable to influence by the subconscious.

 

[Robin]

I distrust hypnosis.

Anything that doesn't stay in the conscious mind and available to recall without recourse to other methods should be regarded with deep suspicion in my view. It's too liable to influence by the subconscious.

I agree, so much of UFO lore has been based on 'memories' obtained through hypnosis. The mind seems only too willing to fill in the gaps in memory when prompted - but can we trust what it tells us? No, I don't think so either!

You only have to look at dreams to see how good the mind is at inventing events and making them seem real.

 

[Mythopoeika]

I agree, so much of UFO lore has been based on 'memories' obtained through hypnosis.

I do wonder how much of that 'resurrected memory' is real, and how much is spurious.
I've read books on hypnotism over the years, and I'm still not 100% convinced that all memories can be accurately brought back.

 

[BS3]

There's an interesting parallel with Sprinkle himself, here.

As I mentioned he saw a UFO in the late 40s, which as he described it turned him from a "scoffer" to a "sceptic", and then had a further sighting in 1956 that pushed him towards belief:

Driving home from Denver in 1956 with his wife in the passenger seat, Leo Sprinkle gazed into the horizon and caught sight of a tiny light in the distance.
At first he thought it was a star or a planet, but then it moved closer. Closer and closer until he could tell it was "as big as a university building." It moved around completely silently in a stop-start motion, then disappeared over the Rocky Mountain foothills.

The next morning, Sprinkle hurried out of bed to pick up a newspaper and find out what the strange thing was.

"No mention of it", he said. "I had a sinking feeling". I thought, "This is something I have to study, and it's going to be a lonely business."

However forty years later Sprinkle had come to believe that he was himself a contactee, recalling a childhood 'memory' of being taken on board a craft and told about the mission he would have in the future - I assume hypnosis was involved in this, too. It's odd that he didn't remember this somewhat dreamlike experience earlier.

And Sprinkle was a professor of psychology, so should have been aware of at least some of the pitfalls of regression.

 

[catseye]

And Sprinkle was a professor of psychology, so should have been aware of at least some of the pitfalls of regression.

And the inability of young children to tell dreams from things that actually happened.

 

[eburacum]

And Sprinkle was a professor of psychology, so should have been aware of at least some of the pitfalls of regression.

However, he does not seem to have been aware of this. Instead he caused quite a lot of unnecessary suffering, by reinforcing people's delusions. Not particularly unusual for professors of psychology, unfortunately.

 

[BS3]

What happens is that they tend to internalise the experiencers' mindset: as Sprinkle himself phrased it, "it's going to be a lonely business." This is the usual pattern of the contactee as much as the ufologist: the individual to whom 'special' information has been revealed, who is then ostracized and ridiculed as a result (Sprinkle later claimed that he was compelled to retire).

 

[catseye]

Which would make you wonder about any alien species who are imparting 'special information'. Instead of contacting one person, who is likely either to dismiss the experience or be ignored - why not contact a whole crowd, simultaneously? Numbers of people all saying the same thing are much harder to ignore than one...