by Charles Lear, author of “The Flying Saucer Investigators.”
By the end of the 1970s, after the 1973 Pascagoula incident and the 1975 Travis Walton case, abduction claims were not only an accepted aspect of the UFO mystery by many investigators, they were considered worthy of attention by the news media, and there are many lengthy newspaper articles detailing reports throughout that decade. The narrative hadn’t yet been taken over by the now-common reports of being taken aboard a craft by creatures 3 to 4 feet tall with big, slanted, black eyes and being subjected to invasive medical procedures that seemed to have something to do with reproduction. The creatures and the natures of the encounters reported throughout the 70s were varied, but by the decade’s end, elements had emerged that would become common in the decades to come. What would also become common in such cases would be the use of regressive hypnosis, which was thought to be an effective means to recover lost memories. However, this technique has since came under criticism, particularly in its use to provide evidence in legal cases, as can be seen in the article titled “Hypnosis, Memory and Amnesia” which was published in the November 29, 1997 (pp. 1727-1732) Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society London B: Biological Sciences.
In order to get an overview of the newspaper coverage of abduction reports throughout the 1970s, we went through all of the issues of the UFO Newsclipping Service from that time, which are available at Archives for the Unexplained. In the January 1980 issue, there are three articles covering three reports, all of them from November 1979. After that, other than a report (page 8 of pdf) in the September 14, 1980 London, England, Sunday Mirror about a family abduction, there is nothing throughout 1980.
In the November 6, 1979, Fresno, California, Daily Collegian, there is an article by Lori Granger headlined “UFO Captive Tells Her Story in an Informal Talk.” Granger reports that on November 26, 1972, Judy Kendall and her two sisters left Bodega Bay, California, at 5:30 p.m. They were headed for their parents’ house in Woodward, California, where they expected to arrive at 8:30 p.m. They instead arrived at 12:30 a.m. with four hours they couldn’t account for.
Five years later, on the anniversary of the event, Judy Kendall underwent hypnosis. According to Granger, “Kendall learned the truth from her own subconscious mind.” What she recalled was that “she and her sisters had been abducted by a UFO and examined by aliens for four hours.” According to her, she and her sisters were taken from her car as they approached a bridge 10 miles west of Woodland. Four hours later, they were returned to the car and they continued over the bridge,
According to Granger, Kendall’s hypnosis session was arranged by J. Allen Hynek, who was, at the time, the director of the Center for UFO Studies. A friend of Kendall’s had “advised” her to call Hynek.
Kendall’s recollections were similar to reports that would become common except for her descriptions of the creatures. She said she was taken aboard a craft, and strapped down to a table in a large, hexagonal room. As for the creatures, she described a “very pretty,” black-haired woman who comforted her and told her not to worry, a group of creatures with pale, white skin wearing skin-tight gray suits and what looked like oxygen masks, and a creature that was between 6 and 7 feet tall that she called “the witch doctor.” She described the witch doctor as having a “bulbous-type head” with slits instead of ears, gelatinous eyes with elongated pupils, and transparent, white skin with red veins showing through.
Kendall said that the witch doctor told her “It will be O.K.” and sounded as if it was speaking through a megaphone, though she got the feeling that the creatures were speaking to her telepathically. She said that some sort of fluid was taken from her side.
The next article involving an abduction appeared in the November 14, 1979, Fort Jones, California, Pioneer Press. It was written by Hazel Davis, and is headlined “Helen White appears on ‘Real People.’” According to Davis, on November 7, 1979, White appeared on an episode of “Real People” on KTVL-TV. She was one of three people claiming to have had an abduction experience, who were interviewed during a three-day Mutual UFO Network convention that ran from July 6th to July 8th.
White claimed she was abducted from a car along with two men. All three were residents of Happy Camp, California. The next memory they had was of “waking up in the ship in the sky.” According to White, the creatures, described only as “beings,” spoke English and promised not to hurt them. The next thing White describes is being back in the car and that she and the two men were singing the hymn, “There is Power in the Blood.”
White described two later encounters: one where she was taken aboard a craft and examined, and another where she escaped by driving away in a truck. She also reported being visited by a creature in her bedroom. Helen and her husband Clem are described as being “regular subscribers to the MUFON UFO Journal.”
The last article has a description of creatures that is very similar to that of the grays, along with a depiction of one of them. The article is by Edward C. Fennell and headlined “Charleston Resident Claims They’ve Paid Him a Visit” in the November 18, 1979, Charleston, South Carolina, News and Courier. It tells the story of North Charleston resident William Herrmann, who reported being taken aboard a craft on March 18, 1979. He described his captors this way: “Their skin was the color of a marshmallow. Their eyes were long and dark with a brown iris. Their heads looked like overgrown human fetuses with no ears or hair. I heard a voice telling me to have no fear…”
According to Fennell, Herrmann had “undergone psychological stress evaluation, polygraph tests, and interrogation under hypnosis.” There’s no report of Herrmann being medically examined by aliens, but there is a report that Herrmann ended up with a memento of his encounter. Herrmann claimed that on April 21, 1979, a metal ingot materialized in his bedroom “in a globe of blue-green light.” Impressed into it was the word “MAN” in capital letters and what was later determined to be a chart of the Zeta Reticulum star group by Aerial Phenomena Research Organization Investigator Wendelle C. Stevens.
According to Fennell, APRO tested the metal ingot and sent photos Herrmann had taken to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena. There is no mention of any results or conclusions.
As this case involved APRO, one would think there would be something about it in the APRO Bulletin. There isn’t. There is, however, an open letter from APRO Director Jim Lorenzen in the August 1979 issue complaining about the use of his name by Stevens in his book UFO Contact From the Pleiades inferring that he endorsed the claims contained therein. The book contains photos taken by Billy Meier who claimed they showed spaceships from the Pleiades. Lorenzen wrote in his letter that his “inclination” was that the case was a hoax and he offers evidence to support that.
Stevens wrote a book with Herrmann about Herrmann’s case titled UFO… Contact From Reticulum that was published in 1981. There is a video documentary about the case titled UFO Abduction. It’s a low-quality production by Arcturus Films and has Herrmann describing multiple sightings of UFOs and pictures he’d taken of them. Stevens is featured as the main investigator along with Jun-Ichi Yaoi from Nippon Television. The documentary starts off as an investigation into Herrmann’s sightings and pictures. It ends with him being hypnotically regressed and describing his abduction and captors. Jim and Coral Lorenzen are listed in the credits as investigators.
Herrmann’s case generated a great deal of interest and there has been much written about it by researchers such as John Schuessler and Richard Hall. His depiction shows up in Budd Hopkin’s groundbreaking 1981 book Missing Time. All of the creatures depicted in that book are similar to each other and close to what gray aliens are said to look like, but the depiction of a creature described by Betty Andeasson is the only one with the now-classic slanted almond-shaped eyes, though they are drawn with irises.
Throughout the 80’s there are reports of all sorts of creatures, especially around the time of the 1982 movie E.T. Some of the reported creatures resemble grays, but it seems that the classic gray alien hadn’t become cemented in the UFO mythos until Whitley Strieber’s 1987 book, Communion.