by Charles Lear
As mentioned last week, in part three of this four-part series, investigators from the Aerial Phenomena Research Organization, the Mutual UFO Network, and the Center for UFO Studies travelled to Liberty, Kentucky, to interview three women there who’d reported an unusual UFO encounter. According to the women, Louise Smith, Mona Stafford, and Elaine Thomas, they suffered physical effects after the encounter including one-inch-by-three-inch rectangular burn-like marks on the backs of their necks, a burning sensation on certain areas of skin when in contact with water, and red irritated eyes. They also seemed to have lost around 80 minutes. This was on January 6, 1976, so it was an early abduction case before the narrative of a “typical” abduction by beings that came to be known as “greys” became prominent.
Jim and Coral Lorenzen of APRO were told about the case by APRO Field Investigator Bill Terry. He told them that abduction might have been involved, and they arranged for APRO Psychiatric Consultant Dr. Leo Sprinkle to travel to liberty and interview the women at APRO’s expense. He was a specialist in hypnotic regression and APRO was hoping that the women would agree to undergo the procedure.
Unfortunately, MUFON and CUFOS investigators had gotten to Liberty on February 29, 1976, the day before Terry, and when he returned with Sprinkle on March 5, the MUFON and CUFOS investigators felt that because they were there first, Terry and APRO should step aside. However, since Sprinkle was there, they wanted to make use of his skills in hypnotism for their own investigations while still excluding APRO. As APRO had paid his expenses, the Lorenzens didn’t take kindly to the idea. An agreement was made where Sprinkle would conduct hypnotic regression sessions with the women and all reports on the case would be published only after a “mutual agreement.”
The details of the first hypnosis session are in the report, written by MUFON Investigator Leonard Stringfield, published in the January 1977 MUFON UFO Journal. According to Stringfield, only Stafford agreed to be hypnotized. The investigators met at the home of Stafford’s parents, and Sprinkle “put his subject at ease, then into a deep hypnotic state.” Stafford then “agonizingly” recalled the encounter. She was unable, however, to fill in any details of what might have happened during the missing time.
Sprinkle was unable to return until late July 1976 due to lack of funds. Funds were procured through a deal made with Bob Pratt, a respected UFO investigator who manned the UFO desk at the National Enquirer. It was also arranged that polygraphist James C. Young would be present to conduct polygraph exams. On Friday, July 23, the women, Pratt, Sprinkle, Stringfield, and Young all met at the Brown Motel in Liberty for the polygraph exams and the hypnosis sessions.
As mentioned in last week’s blog, there was some sloppiness in the investigation. One instance is Stringfield misidentifying the month they met as June throughout his report. The women’s signed documents agreeing to undergo polygraph exams (included in the CUFOS file provided by David Marler) are dated July 23.
Young, a Liberty Police detective and president of Professional Polygraph Consulants Inc., administered the exams after being briefed on the case. He wrote up a report and sent it to Pratt. In the report, kept in the CUFOS file, he noted what he considered to be truthful responses to specific questions about the case.
According to Young’s report, Smith answered yes when asked if there was “a period of time” she couldn’t account for, if a UFO hovered over her car, and if she’d lost “physical control” over the car. Stafford answered yes when asked about the UFO and if she’d felt a burning sensation in her eyes, and she answered no when asked if she’d conspired to create a hoax. Thomas answered yes when asked about the UFO, if she saw it “send a beam of light toward the car,” if there was “a period of time” she couldn’t account for, and she answered no to the question of conspiring to create a hoax.
Young’s opinion was that all three women believed they were telling the truth as they understood it, but he was unable to determine how much influence the interviews by the investigators prior to the exams might have had on the women’s beliefs.
After the exams, Smith underwent regression during the time remaining, and all three women underwent regression the next day for a total of two sessions each.
Pratt summed up what each woman experienced in a report to the National Enquirer. He wrote that they all experienced fear and distress while under hypnosis. According to him, Thomas recalled lying on her back in a “long, narrow incubator-type chamber” with a window and four-foot-tall creatures looking in from the other side. She recalled feeling pain when a blunt instrument was pressed into her upper-left chest and that there was something around her throat that tightened and choked her every time she tried to talk.
Stafford recalled lying on a bed in a white operating room. Her right arm was immobilized and there were three or four humanoids in white masks and surgical clothing sitting around the bed having a discussion. She described feeling like her eyes were being pulled out of her head and having her stomach blown up. Her feet seemed to swell and were then bent backwards.
Smith recalled having something pulled over her face to put her to sleep. She felt she was being prevented from seeing the creatures who were with her, and she asked permission to see them. She was then able to see them and was so frightened that she quickly closed her eyes.
In Sprinkle’s report, he points out the differences in the women’s recollections. All seemed to have been subjected to different types of examinations in different types of rooms, and Stafford had the impression that her room was inside of a volcano, crater, or mountainside.
In Pratt’s report, he notes that there was “apparently” a flap in the area at the time of the women’s reported encounter. He reports that he came up with the names of 57 witnesses and interviewed 16 of them. One man, Joe Bishop, reported seeing a light so bright “you couldn’t look at it through binoculars” on the night of January 6. The women remembered being at Bishop’s farm entrance before suddenly finding themselves eight miles away.
The investigators found character witnesses, and some of their testimonies, as given to Pratt, are included in the CUFOS file. George Anderson, minister at the Baptist church where Smith was a member and played piano during services, called her a good “clean-living woman” with a fine character. Danville, Kentucky, Police Lt. Garland Richard, who was part of a gospel group Smith sang with, confirmed that she was an honest reputable person.
Amos Owens, a preacher at Stafford’s church, not only vouched for her character, but said that he and his grandson saw a UFO at “about the time” the women had, but at a different location.
Thomas’s husband reported that after being “distressed” by her encounter, it took “a long time getting back to her old self” though it was “not to the point she was…” He explained, “she’s not easy to make mad like she used to be.” He said that in the nearly 30 years he’d been with her, she’d never lied to him, and he believed her story.
After the polygraph exams and hypnosis sessions, Smith told Sprinkle in a phone conversation on Monday that the physical effects she, Stafford, and Thomas had experienced the night of their encounter had returned. According to her, all three of them had the same marks on their necks, and she and Stafford both broke out in rashes.
In the October 1976 APRO Bulletin there are more details about what the women experienced after the investigators left. Stafford had trouble sleeping and would go to her parent’s house or a friend’s and curl up on the floor. She repeatedly told people that she “would not live to see another birthday.” She did see another birthday, but, according to an article about one of the MUFON investigators, Jerry Black, Thomas died of “unknown causes” in 1978.
Smith had an urge to revisit the site of their encounter, and when she got there, she heard a voice say, “feel of your hands.” She did and realized that the three rings she always wore weren’t there. Then, on September 26, she walked out of her trailer home and saw one of them, an onyx and diamond ring, lying on the stoop. She promptly threw it in the creek running nearby.
As intriguing as this case may be, it is not very well known. That it followed on the heels of the highly publicized (and still discussed) Travis Walton case is probably a major factor. The Lorenzens might have said that it was because a less-than-careful investigation made it vulnerable to debunkers, which was a concern expressed in the Bulletin article. Even so, almost four pages were devoted to the case in the Bulletin and eleven pages in the MUFON UFO Journal, probably for the same reason that this writer felt compelled to devote a four-part series of blogs to it.
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