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37 Anita’s experiences, while not so intense or frequent as Lisa’s, are probably more akin to what most abductees witness and recall. They include a number of details commonly reported in other cases. But in her situation, typical of these others, conscious memories of events have been less frequent and more moderate in scope. Her attitude similarly reflects this moderate quality, possibly because she’s been able to reflect upon her experiences with quiet equanimity. Born in 1947, Anita has spent most of her life in Texas. Her ancestry is French, Scotch, and Native American. A wife, mother, and grandmother, she is attractive and intelligent. For a while, she was a trained volunteer emergency medic, and later she owned and operated her own business. From her home in a large central Texas city, Anita now takes care of her family and also pursues several intellectual interests. In the past several years, for instance, she has been drawn to a study of psychic and alternative methods of healing. Anita has been consciously aware of UFO activity since childhood, and her brothers and sisters have also had recurrent UFO events throughout their lives. So, perhaps, may have some of Anita’s children and grandchildren. Her first conscious encounter with the unknown was at the age of five. “| recall sitting in my front yard one afternoon,” she said, “and sensing someone watching me. | turned around, and back behind me stood a man in a red flight suit. | have no memory of what happened after that.” Like many abductees, what she recalled from childhood was frequently unexplained, but not necessarily related to UFOs. The nature of the events remained ambiguous. Episodes of missing time which have recurred throughout her life began at an early age. She recalled one such episode that happened at the family home, which was in a very rural setting. “| suddenly came out of what | call ‘mind blank’,” Anita explained. “I found myself close to a creek near our house. | did not know how | got there. The strangest thing was that | was coatless and shoeless, and it was miserably cold outside.” While these two events in isolation don’t necessitate a UFO-based explanation, in the context of Anita’s life-long experiences, they prove to be very typical of abduction patterns. And the third consciously remembered event from her childhood did bring UFOs into the picture. “When | was twelve,” Anita reported, “my brother shouted one night for me to come look out the window. | did, and just above tree level, about a quarter of a mile from our house, was a large band of beautiful lights moving from west to east. They appeared to be all on one craft. My brother was around ten at the time. He said it was a UFO. There was no sound, and we had our windows open.” Anita and others in her family have continued to have UFO sightings from time to time. Her older brother, for instance, who is a long-distance truck driver, has reported a number of sightings especially in the southwest part of the country, although elsewhere as well. “He tells of a time he and his wife had stopped on the highway, somewhere up around Nebraska, to get some sleep,” Anita related. ‘They were awakened by a very bright light shining down on them. They got out to see what it was but couldn’t because the light blinded them. They said it didn’t make any noise, and that is what frightened them. They jumped back in the truck and headed for Scott’s Bluff. Whatever it was followed them all the way.” For Anita, the strange experiences continued into her adulthood. In the 1970s, she lived in Houston for a while, and it was there that a number of events occurred. The most traumatic and terrifying was in 1972, when at age twenty-five, Anita had her second encounter with the man in the red suit.