SUBJECT: THOUSANDS HAVE CLOSE ENCOUNTERS                     FILE: UFO3223






10-23-89 - ASPEN, Colorado.

Author Bud Hopkins says thousands of people have close
encounters with aliens each year, but are either unwilling or unable to
discuss them. Hopkins was one of 150 participants in a "Close Encounters of
the Fourth Kind" weekend conference which included leading researchers, a
former NASA Astronaut and seven people who claim to have been abducted by
aliens. "Skepticism's fine. Ridicule isn't, said Hopkins, author of the book
"Intruders." "We have to raid the public's level of consciousness," he said.
"If these stories were just fantasies, you would expect a lot of variation,"
sid Ed Bullard, another author and UFO reseracher. "But there's a profound
coherency, an order in what they say." Aspen already may have had its
consciousnes raised. Reports coming in over the weekend included one from a
police officer, of strange lights flickering over the mountain tops. Travis
Walton, who says he was abducted from a lumber camp in Arizona and
transported to an alien spacecraft "for five days, six hours" in 1975,
decided to make a rare public appearance at the meeting. "I want people to
understand, to accept, said Walton, 36, who talked of a rare "multiple
witness" case now famous in UFO reserach. Walton said he'd stopped his truck
to investigate a strange light that he and his six co-workers saw. Walter
approached the light and was "hit by a nasty beam" and whisked up to the
craft, he said. "When I came to, I was aboard, I was lying on my back and
they had some sort of object across my chest. My coat and shirt were pushed
up," he said. Medical tampering with human victims is a common thread in
close-encounter tales. "I believe genetic experiementing's at the heart of
the whole thing," Hopkins said of the abduction phenomenon. Hopkins said he
sees the alien presence as manipulative, not helpful, a point which touches
on a current hot topic in the UFO research community.

      
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