by Charles Lear, author of “The Flying Saucer Investigators.”
In 2010, an article by Jeremy Vaeni headlined “The Incredible Visitations of Emma Woods” appeared in the November issue of UFO Magazine that caused people in the UFO community to take hard look at the methods and conclusions of the two most prominent people in alien abduction research. “Emma Woods” was the pseudonym of a woman who lived in England, and she was one of David Jacobs’s research subjects. She had posted some tapes of her hypnosis sessions with him that contained some details that Jacobs probably would have preferred had not been made public. Woods provided more details in an interview she gave on March 29, 2010, on the Paratopia podcast hosted by Vaeni and Jeff Ritzman, which appear in the UFO Magazine article. The article prompted Budd Hopkins’s wife, Carol Rainey to write an article of her own headlined “The Priests of High Strangeness” published in 2011 in Volume 1, Number 1 of Paratopia magazine detailing some of Hopkins’s methods with his subjects as well.
According to Vaeni, Woods underwent psychotherapy as an adult “for a variety of normal reasons.” She explained on the podcast that she’d had experiences throughout her life that she classified as “anomalous,” including being visited by a tall, cloaked humanoid who gave her a key and told her telepathically that at some point in her life she’d need to use it. According to her, the need never arose. As for anything close to an abduction experience, she said she had also had encounters with small humanoids who had either brown skin or brown clothing.
According to Vaeni, it took Woods “several years” to build up enough trust in her therapist to share these experiences with him. He was open to exploring these with her, having gotten to the point with Emma where her normal life was manageable. It was during this period that she came upon an article about alien abductions and felt that this was an area where she might find some answers. Vaeni describes her applying “her meticulous attention to detail and naturally analytical mind to herself” and becoming an alien abduction researcher with herself as the subject.
In 2002, Woods’s therapist retired and Woods had him give her a written evaluation. He declared her, in Vaeni’s words, “sane and normal.” It’s confirmed during the podcast that the document did, indeed, exist and was posted on Woods’s website (which is no longer active) www.ufoalienabductee.com.
Her therapist offered to help her with her research and did so until 2006. He gave her advice on how to collect and present the data and gave her his opinion on what she gathered. They were careful to only discuss her research, avoided extra socializing, and he gave her no therapy.
According to Emma during the interview, her therapist found a page on Jacobs’s website where Jacobs offered to give therapists advice on dealing with patients who had “these sorts of experiences” and her therapist emailed him.
Vaeni describes Jacobs’s resume: Jacobs had a PhD in history, was an associate history professor at Temple University, and was the director of the International Center for Abduction Research. According to Vaeni, the ICAR website described Jacobs as “one of the foremost UFO abduction researchers worldwide” and offered the reassurance that he was “a strong advocate of strict scientific and ethical research methodology.”
With her therapist’s recommendation, Woods called Jacobs in September 2002 and left him a voicemail message. She asked him to send her therapist a copy of his therapy guidelines and recommend any researchers in England. Jacobs emailed her therapist, gave him his home phone number for Emma to call, wrote that he would be
happy to help, and that he didn’t know any “capable” (Vaeni’s word) therapists in England.
According to Vaeni, Woods and Jacobs developed a dialogue that went into late 2004. He promised her anonymity and she sent him parts of her research. In 2004 she sent him a videotape she’d made of herself sleeping that showed her writing notes on three occasions, which she didn’t remember doing. This seemed to be evidence of a sleep disorder, and Vaeni describes Woods waking up while walking to the front door and that her ex-husband would tease her at night when she did things like that in her sleep. According to Vaeni, Jacobs made no comment about the tape or her possible disorder.
In December 2004, Jacobs offered to conduct hypnosis sessions over the phone. Jacobs had her sign a Temple University Research Consent form and a research agreement. According to Vaeni, the consent form stated that “every effort” would be made to guarantee her anonymity, and the agreement had the stipulation that she would not play any tape recordings of the hypnosis sessions without Jacobs’s consent. There was also a disclaimer: Woods was to understand that Jacobs was not a professional hypnotist or therapist, that Jacobs has told her that, in Vaeni’s words, “serious psychological problems could arise as a result of ‘memory collection,’” and that she released him from all liability.
Vaeni introduces another subject of Jacobs, referred to as “Elizabeth Smith.” He describes her case, which involved an affair (she was married to a man who didn’t like her leaving the house for extended periods of time) with an alien-human hybrid named Jay who lived up the block. She believed it was her job to help him blend in. According to Vaeni, “Jay became an ally of Jacobs during the breakdown of alien-human relationships that coincided with the arrival of another woman: Emma Woods.”
Elizabeth was Jacobs’s webmaster. Woods says during her interview, that in 2005, Jacobs told her that Elizabeth offered to communicate with Woods by email “as a buddy.” Woods said she resisted, not wanting to taint her memories with those of another subject, but Elizabeth and Jacobs pressured her, and she eventually “caved in.” She and Elizabeth started to share the stressful experiences they’d had during their past sessions with Jacobs, and Woods said she came to consider Elizabeth a friend.
According to Vaeni, Elizabeth offered to transcribe the tapes from Woods’s hypnosis sessions and was given tapes of about half of them amounting to over 100 hours. As far as Woods knew, Elizabeth hadn’t transcribed any of them.
Vaeni describes Woods’s memories of her anomalous experiences transforming, while “under the tutelage” of Jacobs, into a narrative involving “definite abductions by hybrid pod people who were infiltrating this planet as part of a subtle takeover.” This is a repeated theme throughout Jacobs’s books. According to Vaeni, Woods wasn’t sure just when she crossed the line between fantasy and reality but believed that Jacobs talking about other subjects’ abduction stories while she was under hypnosis “is the reason her trance testimony produced false memories of malevolent aliens abducting her, raping her, and threatening to kill her.”
A new twist was added when Jacobs told Woods that he was getting instant messages written on Elizabeth’s computer by hybrids communicating through Elizabeth. The gist of the messages was that the hybrids were going to shut him up because he knew too much about them and their plans. According to Vaeni, while Woods was regressed during her eleventh session on October 2, 2005, Jacobs told Woods “They put in [Elizabeth’s] mind… that I would be harmed and that I would be, in fact, killed. That they would just go ahead and kill me in some way, or have me kill myself.”
This resulted in Jacobs using what he called “tactics,” which included lying to Woods in normal conversation and during hypnosis sessions to throw the aliens off the track. An infamous example caught on tape is Jacobs telling a hypnotized Woods that he had come to the conclusion that alien abduction claims were the result of multiple personality disorder and that she suffered from it and should take medication. He can be heard saying “And my professional diagnosis, therefore, is multiple personality disorder. I am studying it. I am writing a book about it. That is my next book. I feel that the whole sort of alien business is all a matter of multiple personality disorder.”
Woods came to the conclusion most people more than likely would have, and that was that Elizabeth was writing the instant messages on her own. Woods described them on tape with Jacobs and during the interview as “hoaxes.” Jacobs took offense at this notion and their difference on this subject led to them parting ways. Woods attempted to work out an agreement over the phone with Jacobs (she let Jacobs know she was taping the conversation) regarding what they would say on their respective websites about stopping their work together. Woods didn’t see how she could avoid giving her opinion that the instant messages were hoaxed, and Jacobs can be heard on tape saying she’d be attacking his credibility, his reputation, and even threatening the welfare of his family if she made her opinion public. Jacobs more than hinted that he would call her sanity into question in response. They failed to come to an agreement, and Woods made not only her opinion of the instant messages public, but also a series of tapes capturing Jacobs in what might be considered less-than-professional moments.
Next Week: UFO Abduction Research Gone Sideways: Part 2