Page Content (OCR)
45 As did Beth, Casey had a daytime missing-time episode initiated after contact with unknown “children.” Beth has never explored this memory hypnotically, but when Casey used regressive hypnosis to delve into the missing time, he retrieved memories of an onboard abduction involving a nasal implant. This was not the only similarity between Beth’s experiences and Casey's. A divorced mother with grown children, Beth had first contacted us, in fact, because another of her encounter memories, involving apparently military personnel, contained very striking and disturbing parallels to an incident described in INTO THE FRINGE. A mutual acquaintance helped arrange a phone conversation for us, and we got acquainted. Beth was born in 1942 in Puerto Rico and has lived there most of her life, although her heritage also includes ancestors from Spain and Vermont. Beth was a teacher before starting her family, but in recent years she had vision problems which have kept her from working. Currently, she divides her time between Puerto Rico and Florida. Beth and | discussed her memories of the military encounter at length. But | was also interested to hear about other her other experiences, especially since she lived in Puerto Rico. A great deal of UFO and alien activity has been reported in the past several years, much of it in the area where Beth lived but all over the island as well. In fact, of all the U. S. territory, there may well have been more recent UFO activity in Puerto Rico than anywhere else. To judge from Beth’s account, it has probably been going on for quite a while. In addition to the early missing-time event, she has conscious memories of many other strange experiences from childhood, well back into the 1950s. Her first UFO sighting, for example, occurred only a year or two after the hide-and-seek episode. Beth was walking to the store in the late afternoon, when she looked up and saw a “huge ball of fire” tearing downward through the sky. It disappeared behind a nearby mountain, and Beth assumed that she’d just witnessed a plane crash, although she heard no sound. She screamed and ran back across the road into the house where excitedly she told her father what she had seen. Since he worked for the U. S. Navy at that time, her father told her he would inquire around the military base and find out what exactly had happened. But a few days later, when Beth brought up the subject again, her father told her that she must never tell anyone about what she had seen or even mention it again. No explanation was given, only a warning, and that made Beth believe some sort of mystery must have been involved. She was used to mysterious things, even at that young age. “Even before that,” she said, “as far back as | can remember, | was aware - and so was my family - that strange things were happening to me, most of them at night. It made me afraid to go to sleep, afraid that someone was going to come for me.” Unexplained noises often broke the silence of the night. Once, for example, Beth was startled awake by a “buzz or whooshing sound” in the room where she was sleeping alone. Frightened, she ran into her sister’s room. “They're looking for me,” was all she remembered saying, because at that moment her sister suddenly fell into a deep sleep and Beth’s body became paralyzed. Then she, too, lost consciousness. Another anomalous event took place when she ten years old. Beth had been outside for a while and had stopped to eat a piece of fruit. She consciously remembered standing still, taking a bite, and then looking down at a large, bleeding gash in her leg. “| didn’t know what to think,” Beth said. “How could my leg be cut and bleeding? | had not even moved from that spot.”