by UFO History Buff & Author, Charles Lear
In last week’s blog, we looked at a case from Maine (we failed to identify the location) involving two young men, David Stephens and Glen Gray, who reported encounters with multiple UFOs, a period of missing time, physical symptoms, possible poltergeist activity, and a visit by a man wearing a dark blue suit (not quite an MiB) who told Stephens, “Better keep your mouth shut if you know what’s good for you.” The account up to this point, as reported by Brent Raynes in the article (page 12 of the pdf) headlined “The Twilight Side of a UFO Encounter” published in the July 1976 Vol. 22, No. 2 Flying Saucer Investigator, all came from conscious recall by Stephens and Gray. Stephens later underwent regressive hypnosis to try to fill in the missing time and details came out that involved possibly being aboard a craft and examined by strange, non-human creatures.
The gap in time in the men’s account was between seeing a UFO emit an extremely bright light while they were driving with their windows rolled up and their doors locked, and then becoming aware that they were stopped by the side of the road with their windows down and their doors unlocked. The person who arranged the hypnosis sessions was Shirley Fickett. It was Fickett who alerted Raynes to the case and her article (page 15) covering the hypnosis sessions, “The Main UFO Encounter: Investigation Under Hypnosis,” (an “E” is penciled in in the copy we used put up by AFU) appears just after Raynes’s article.
While Raynes was able to interview the witnesses on October 28, 1975, the day after their reported encounter, Fickett wrote that she was unable to get out to them until over a week later on November 11th. She says she taped an interview with the men and that “We were all curious about the lost time element when the UFO beam of light hit the car, sliding it sideways and rendering the two unconscious.”
Fickett explains that she had recently met Dr. Herbert Hopkins (his nephew describes him as an allergist) who had studied hypnosis for five years and used it on his patients and had a “background of psychiatric study.” Fickett says she and Hopkins made arrangements for him to work with Stephens (as he was the oldest and “served as spokesman” during interviews) and he agreed to do it for free.
According to Fickett, Gray attended the first session only and then “withdrew” to the point where he refused to discuss the events and soon moved to Oklahoma with his family. She gives the details of eight sessions from December 10, 1975, to March 23, 1976, and the following story comes from those.
Stephens said he was not inside the car when it was, in Fickett’s words, “in the process of skidding sideways after being hit by the light from the UFO,” but watching it (with Gray inside it) through a window in a room up above. The room is described as thirty-five feet in diameter and fifteen feet high, with no furniture, one door, and walls that curved inward as they went up.
Stephens Creature 2A creature is said to have entered that was four and a half feet tall and wearing what “looked like a sheet” (in later sessions Stephens described it as a black gown) and shoes that seemed to be made of paper. It’s described as having white skin; a bald, mushroom shaped head; large, white, slanted, unblinking eyes; a small, round nose; no mouth; and three webbed fingers and a thumb. Stephens said the creature communicated with “brainwaves” and told him not to be afraid and that he wouldn’t be harmed. He said that the creature didn’t identify itself but “He already knew my name.”
According to Stephens, he was brought into what looked like a hospital room with an operating table, machinery, and equipment where there were four other creatures like the first. It’s said they took two needles of blood from the crook of his right arm and then tried to get Stephens to lie down on the table. According to Fickett, Stephens hit one of the creatures in the face and “it just looked at him and showed no signs of retaliation.” Stephens is then described as having “relented” and to have lain down for an examination by a machine that had an extension arm with a device that glided over his body. The creatures are then said to have removed Stephens’s clothes and to have given him “a thorough going over” and to have taken a sample of his hair. According to Fickett, after Stephens was back in the car, it seemed that Gray had no memory of his being absent.
This case took a bizarre turn when Hopkins reported that he had been visited by a man in black. Betty Hill had participated in the investigation of this case according to her niece, Kathleen Marden, who wrote in the 2007 book she co-authored with Stanton Friedman, Captured!, that Hill received a letter from Fickett informing her of Hopkins’s claim and went to visit Hopkins to get the details. Hill wrote a report and it is included in the book.
According to Hill, on September 11, 1976, Hopkins was home alone at 8:00 p.m. when he got a call from a man saying he was the president of a New Jersey UFO research group and wanted to talk about Stephens’s case. Hopkins invited him over, hung up the phone, went to turn on the front light, and came upon the man ringing the bell. He invited him in and the two sat down.
Stephens CreatureHill says the man “verified that the doctor had done the hypnosis, had the tapes of this, letters, and other materials about UFOs.” According to her, the man told Hopkins to take out one of the two coins he correctly knew to be in Hopkins’s pocket, hold it in his hand and watch it. She says he did and saw it (a penny) turn silver, then blue, become hazy, “indistinct,” and then vanish. Hopkins is said to have commented that it was a good trick and to have asked the man to make it reappear, whereas the man is said to have responded, in Hill’s words, “no man on this plane would ever see that coin again.”
According to Hill, the man asked Hopkins if he knew how Barney Hill died, and Hopkins replied that he thought it was from a heart attack. The man reportedly said that Barney’s heart was taken just like the coin because he knew too much. He is said to have told Hopkins to get rid of all his UFO materials and to have told him that the “information” he got about Stephens was “correct.”
Hill says the man then told Hopkins “My energies are getting low and I must leave.” She wrote that he struggled to get off the couch, staggered out the door and down the stairs, “turned the corner and was gone.” She says Hopkins went to the window, “saw a bright, white flash of light beside the corner of the house and the man was not there.”
Hill describes the man as 5’-6” tall, “dressed as a funeral director,” in a black suit and a derby hat. She says he wore grey gloves, was very pale, bald, had no eyelashes or eyebrows, had ears that were lower than “ours,” a thin mouth covered in lipstick, and that his “body structure seemed different.” His voice is described as monotone and he is said to have spoken in precise English without seeming to understand the words and to have “just stopped talking” without lowering his inflection when he ended his sentences.
Hill says she informed Hopkins (to his relief) that Barney died of a stroke. According to her, Hopkins “erased the tapes and then burned them, burned or got rid of all his letters, books, etc., about UFOs.
While this is certainly a sensational MiB account, it seems the good doctor may have made it up. According to his nephew, Howard Hopkins, in his January 2008 posting titled “The Truth About a Man in Black,” on his blogspot.com site, Dark Bits, his uncle was “unfortunately, a fantasy-prone individual.” He describes him as an alcoholic for much of the 70s and 80s and recalls him stumbling up the stairs at 5:00 a.m. and tripping over the “invisible dog” who was actually in bed with him at the time. According to him, his uncle’s story was “inspired by cheap fiction and alcohol,” and “some sad need for attention.”