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57 when | had stopped at the sign moments before.” Although the location was different, she did not notice a time loss. In 1977, while still living north of the Houston area, Anita had a UFO sighting that was witnessed by one of her friends. “| was outside late one night talking with a friend,” she said, “when | glanced up and saw a large orange globe to the north.” Her friend, who was in his car, took off in pursuit of the object and reported on his return that he had eventually lost sight of it near a state highway. It was also during this period that Anita had two other experiences that are frequently reported by abductees. One of these is the presence of small lighted objects in the home, usually near a wall or the ceiling, that seem to function as some sort of remote probe or monitor. This first event occurred during the middle of the night, when something woke Anita. “Looking around,” she recalled, “I saw a multicolored triangle moving against my bedroom wall.” She could see that the object had a device or design in its center, where pink, orange, and other colors were moving around. Her reaction to this strange sight reflects a maddening yet typical response that abductees report in such situations. Instead of reacting with surprise, curiosity, and even consternation, as would a person whose mind was not being controlled, her response was quite passive. “| thought, A mandala, how pretty,” she said, “then | just went back to sleep.” This is apparently a programmed response that other abductees report, and it has proven usually to precede an encounter. If anything else occurred that night with Anita, however, she had no memory, conscious or dream-like, of further activity. The other experience was much more physical and less directly tied to alien intrusion. It has been reported, however, to occur following abduction events in a number of other people’s situations. Anita developed a rash which seemed to have no mundane cause. It rapidly covered almost her entire body, and the doctor she consulted could not give her an explanation. “It looked like | had snake skin,” she described. “It took six weeks to go away.” The pattern of activity in Anita’s life thus far had shown occasional intrusions and sightings, but in the late 1980s the activity noticeably began to increase. The timing may not be accidental, as many abductees “woke up” to the fact of their encounters in 1986-88. Although at the time Anita wasn’t aware of the implications, this new phase of her involvement may have been marked by a possible missing-fetus episode in 1985. When she began experiencing some suspicious physical symptoms, she consulted her doctor and was very surprised to discover she was pregnant. Having already raised a family of three children, and considering her age, she decided to terminate it. But the results of the operation proved to be as surprising as the unexpected pregnancy itself. “I went to have an abortion,” she said, “after my Ob-Gyn assured me that | was pregnant. He performed the procedure and said that he could not find any fetal tissue at all. He was as puzzled as | was.” Whether this was one of the by-now familiar procedures of aliens implanting a fetus and then returning to retrieve it from the host mother, Anita has not been able to determine. But since that episode and up until the present, there have been a number of experiences in which the aliens are clearly involved. She has seen them in conscious glimpses and