The UFO-PSI Connection In My Own Life
© Kathleen Marden
There is considerable evidence that the Earth is being visited by other worldly beings. Hundreds of credible reports, by people all over the world, speak of non-human entities in association with hovering or landed spacecraft. Their testimony on any other subject would be accepted without question. Yet, it is not considered respectable to speak honestly about non-human entities in association with UFOs. To do so publicly will draw ridicule. Skeptics will question one’s judgment, mental health, perceptual ability, and motive.
I am one of many researchers that has witnessed an unearthly craft in close proximity, collected physical trace evidence, and investigated claims of ET contact by credible individuals. My journey into unbiased research on the UFOs and alien abduction has taken me to a couple of uncomfortable places.
“Psi phenomena” is the scientific term for the high strangeness events that are often associated with UFOs and ET contact experiences. My family's initial observation of psi phenomena occurred after a scientific research team convinced my aunt Betty Hill, to participate in psychophysics experiments. The goal was to vector in a craft to land on my grandparent’s farm, across the street from my childhood home. Night after night Betty attempted to communicate with the ETs, via verbal and telepathic messages. Finally, my family and the neighborhood began to observe UFOs. Some of the sightings were of distant lights; others were less than 500 feet away from the witnesses; and there were two landings of which I am aware. One early evening in the mid-1960’s, I was on my front porch setting up my telescope for an evening astronomy lesson, when I observed a disk-shaped object, with a row of windows, suspended in the air over my grandparent’s barn. You can imagine my excitement! It was my first close encounter with a UFO. I jumped excitedly into the air and yelled for my mother, who promptly ordered me into the house.
In February 1966, Rosie, a close friend of mine was walking home in the early evening. She lived only a half mile or so from my childhood home, and it was safe to walk after dark in those days. When she arrived home, we received a frantic phone call stating that she’d observed a strange craft that approached so closely she had felt a “strong force” and a kind of pulling sensation that frightened her. She contacted my aunt Betty, because she was beginning to become fearful of walking home alone, although she had routinely done this without a problem.
A week later, Betty, Rosie, my grandmother, mother, brother and I observed a UFO with a large, bright red light above the tree tops that appeared to be heading in the direction of Country Pond, a lake close to my childhood home. We drove to the lake shore watching for the lighted craft and parked at what was then a public beach. We descended the sandy banking and walked onto the ice in an attempt to locate the strange object we'd observed moments before. Our eyes were drawn to an object moving in our direction. It swayed back and forth in a pendulum motion and rose into the air at approximately 2000 feet in the distance. Then it descended and stopped above a treetop no more than 500-1000 feet away from our vantage point. We all observed its disk-shape through binoculars and my mother, brother and I saw lighted windows. It traveled slowly following the shoreline and flying just above the tree tops to a peninsula approximately a quarter of a mile in the distance. We lost sight of it as it moved toward the Boston and Maine railroad tracks a short distance away, and appeared to descend into a low lying area.
We returned to the car and drove toward the end of the peninsula, which leads to a bridge that connects to an island. Betty flashed the headlights in sequence to the sounds she and Barney heard striking the trunk of their car immediately prior to their close encounter and abduction in 1961, hoping to bring the craft closer.
We drove to the island and finally spotted what we thought was the UFO, so we turned around and headed toward it, stopping near a bridge that connects the island to the mainland. Everyone except my mother watched a lighted object in the distance that seemed to rise into the air and descend vertically in a wobbling motion. We lost sight of it and wondered if it had left the area, but soon we heard my mother cry out. She had spotted two UFOs hovering very close to the lake’s surface. One of the disks had projected a cone-shaped beam that moved slowly toward her, which accounts for her fearful utterance. This development caused us to become so unnerved that our immediate impulse was to get out of there as quickly as possible. We quickly took our seats inside the car and fled in the direction of the public beach.
Our courage had returned by the time we reached the public beach, so we decided to stop to attempt one last observation. Back on the ice, our attention was drawn to a train about a quarter mile in the distance. What we thought was the second UFO rose up and departed in the train’s direction. We thought we’d lost sight of the first object, but Betty spotted it as we drove home from a night of UFO hunting. She said that it was pacing the car, but I wasn't able to see it from my vantage point.
Two months later, a commercial pilot on his way home from work, in the middle of the night, sighted a lighted craft over the woods across the street from my childhood home. My grandmother said that she had been awakened by a loud noise that shook the house. Next she heard measured knocks on her front door. At that moment, she remembered that she had jokingly told Betty that if she could vector a craft to land on the family farm, its occupants should knock on the door and she’d serve them coffee. But now she was paralyzed with fear. Finally the knocks stopped and she awakened my grandfather. He realized that the explosive sound probably had a prosaic explanation, so he went to the basement and checked their furnace. It was fine.
The following morning, my two brothers and I found physical trace evidence in a clearing beside the woods. A circular area of vegetation had wilted and there were three triangle-shaped depressions inside a circular 15 to 18 foot area. The tops of three nearby birch trees had been sheared off about 10 feet above the ground. Others had been scraped and were bent over. There was what appeared to be soot residue inside the circle.
Soon thereafter, my family became aware of paranormal activity in our home. I grew up in a normal, stable family and this had never occurred in the past. But suddenly family members reported seeing items fly off shelves, doors open and close on their own, and light orbs darting through the air. I was incredulous when I heard these stories and refused to believe what my eyes had observed when a knickknack flew off a shelf near me.
After my freshman year in college, in 1968, my boyfriend and I had planned an early morning fishing trip, with my family, on our ocean faring boat. He spent the night in my brother’s bedroom, as he was away serving in the Army. In the middle of the night, we were awakened by his yelling. He said that he had been struck by several coat hangers that had been hurled across the room and landed on top of him. He left and refused to reenter the house that night. The experience nearly ended our relationship. Months later, my brother was home on leave from the Army, when he was awakened by the rattling of coat hangers and items moving in his room. It was a strange experience indeed, and very perplexing. We were certain that it was not a figment of our collective imaginations, but the social stigma attached to this type of experience prevented us from investigating it further. Finally, a couple of years later, a paranormal researcher spoke with my mother and used the term "poltergeist" activity.
My next observation of psi activity occurred in 1983. I observed a glowing light orb in my childhood home. By then I had all but forgotten about the strange experiences in my parent’s home. My children, ages 3 and 5, and I were staying with my mother, when I was awoken during the night by a noise coming from what had formerly been my brother’s bedroom. I arose to investigate the source of the ruckus and was met by a truly shocking sight. My young son was raising cane, chasing a baseball size luminous orb around the room, attempting to bat it with his hand. It seemed to be intelligently controlled and moved whenever he neared it. Needless to say, I was astonished! I promptly scooped him up into my arms and hightailed it out of there. Initially, I was incredulous and suppressed what I had observed. Yet I was fully awake and knew that it was not my imagination, plasma, reflecting lights, or a trick of my eyes. Talk about cognitive dissonance!
2012 was an interesting year for me. I’d made the decision to move from the collection of anecdotal ET contact reports, to an attempt to quantify some of the data pertaining to commonalities among experiencers that believe they’ve interacted with extraterrestrial life forms. Denise Stoner assisted me with this yearlong research project. Fifty experiencers and a twenty five person control group participated. (See our book, The Alien Abduction Files, for additional information.)Denise has a long history of ET contact and paranormal activity in her life, so she suggested a question pertaining to paranormal events. We asked, “Have you witnessed paranormal activity in your home?” Forty three of the fifty experiencer group participants (88%) answered in the affirmative. We asked them to elaborate upon their observations and discovered that most reported light orbs that dart or float through the air. Many reported poltergeist activity such as household items flying through the air, pictures flying off walls, lights turning off and on, windows opening and closing, doors opening and closing and toilets flushing on their own.
Personally, I found this information a bit spooky and began to wonder if the activity in my childhood home was related to ET contact. My mother had been informed by an investigator that a young female spirit was the source of the paranormal activity. Yet, we had not been aware of anything out of the ordinary in our lives, until Betty’s psychophysics experiments attempted to vector in intelligently controlled unconventional craft. There was observational and physical trace evidence that she may have succeeded. My inquiring mind wondered why a craft would land in my grandparent’s yard. When I asked Betty this question, she told me not to be concerned. They had probably landed because they wanted to take a break, she said. I couldn’t imagine that they were out sightseeing and decided to make a pit stop. I began to wonder if there was a purpose attached to the 1966 landing. Had Betty’s attempts to vector them to my grandparent’s farm been interpreted as an invitation to meet the family?
I’ll probably never be able to answer these questions. Hypnosis certainly won’t lead to the answers. I know far too much about the ET contact phenomenon to undergo a naive hypnosis session. If anyone else told me this, I would be skeptical. Currently, there is too much speculation by attention seekers, wannabes, and credulous people who promote their subjective experiences in the media. Some have permitted investigators to examine their evidence and discovered non-events and delusional thinking. Yet, despite negative findings, some "experiencers" continue to loudly promote their so called ET contact experiences. Some have promoted themselves by using my name, in an attempt to elevate their status. This is an example of their deception or their delusional thinking. I am not a supporter of their alleged abduction experiences. I have endorsed only two cases of alien abduction: The Betty and Barney Hill event and the Travis Walton event. A few additional cases are compelling, but I have not collected the level of evidence necessary to state, unequivocally that they are real. My background in science cautions me to apply Occam’s razor to each separate event and to do my research and investigations thoroughly. If I cannot fund medical tests, psychological evaluations, scientific laboratories, and polygraph exams, I cannot conclude that an experience was real. The absence of funding is an unfortunate state of affairs, but it is a reality that we all must live with.