• I don’t know if these people are some sort of demons, or if they really don’t exist. My daughter said she had sensors put in her body when she was small. I don’t know . . . We keep our doors locked and bolted and it really scares me. I don’t have the money to send her to a good doctor, and she can’t work on account of all this . . . My daughter is hearing a voice on a tape. These go out at night and take kids and sexually abuse them. If you don’t do as they say, someone in your family will be hurt. Who in their right mind would harm little children? They know everything that is said in the house . . . Somebody said long, long ago somebody put a curse on our family. If somebody did, how do you get the curse off? I know all this sounds strange and bizarre, but believe me it’s scary.
• How many human females who had the misfortune of being raped had the foresight to take from their attacker an ID card, a picture of the rapist, or anything else which could be used as evidence as to an alleged rape?
• I for one will be sleeping with my Polaroid from now on, in hopes that the next time I’m abducted I can provide the proof needed . . . Why should it be up to the abductees to prove what’s happening?
• I am living proof of Carl Sagan’s claim of the possibility that alien abductions occur in the minds of people suffering from sleep paralysis. They truly believe it’s real.
• In AD 2001 Starships from the 33 planets of the Interplanetary Confederation will land on earth carrying 33,000 Brothers! They are extraterrestrial teachers and scientists who will help to expand our understanding of interplanetary life, as our own earth planet will become the 33rd member of the Confederation!
• This is a grotesquely challenging arena … I studied UFOs for over 20 years. Finally I became quite disenchanted by the cult and the cult fringe groups.
• I am a 47-year-old grandmother who has been the victim of this phenomena since early childhood. I do not – nor have I ever -accepted it at face value. I do not – nor have I ever – claimed to understand what it is … I would gladly accept a diagnosis of schizophrenia, or some other understood pathology, in exchange for this unknown . . . The lack of physical evidence is, I fully agree, most frustrating for both victims and researchers. Unfortunately, the retrieval of such evidence is made extremely difficult by the manner in which the victims are abducted. Often I am removed either in my nightgown (which is later removed) or already naked. This condition makes it quite impossible to hide a camera … I have awakened with deep gashes, puncture wounds, scooped out tissue, eye damage, bleeding from the nose and ears, burns, and finger marks and bruises which persist for days after the event. I have had all of these examined by qualified physicians but none have been satisfactorily explained. I am not into self-mutilation; these are not stigmata . . . Please be aware that the majority of abduct-ees claim to have had no interest in UFOs previously (I am one), have no history of childhood abuses (I am one), have no desire for publicity or notoriety (I am one), and, in fact, have gone to great lengths to avoid acknowledging any involvement whatsoever, assuming he or she is experiencing a nervous breakdown or other psychological disorder (I am one). Agreed, there are many self-proclaimed abductees (and contactees) who seek out publicity for monetary gain or to satisfy a need for attention. I would be the last to deny these people exist. What I do deny is that ALL abductees are imagining or falsifying these events to satisfy their own personal agendas.
• UFOs don’t exist. I think that requires an external energy source, and this doesn’t exist … I have spoken with Jesus.
• The commentary on the Parade magazine is very destructive, and it enjoys scaring society, I beg you to think more openly because our intelligent beings from outer spaces do exist and they are our creators … I too was an abductee. To be honest, these dear beings have done me more good than bad. They have saved my life . . . The trouble with Earth beings is that they want proof, proof, and proof!
• In the Bible it talks about terrestrial and celestial bodies. This is not to say that God is out for sexual abuse on people or that we’re crazy.
• I have been strongly telepathic for twenty-seven years now. I do not receive – I transmit . . . Waves are coming from outer space somewhere – beaming through my head and transmitting thoughts, words, and images into the heads of anybody within range . . . Images will pop into my head that I did not put there, and vanish just as suddenly. Dreams are not dreams anymore -they are more like Hollywood productions . . . They are smart critters and they won’t give up … Maybe all these little guys want to do is communicate … If I finally go psychotic from all this pressure – or have another heart attack – there goes your last sure evidence that there is life in space.
• I think I have found a plausible terrestrial scientific explanation for numerous UFO reports. [The writer then discusses ball lightning.] If you like my stuff, could you help me get it published?
• Sagan refuses to take seriously the witnesses’ reports of anything that twentieth-century science can’t explain.
• Now readers will feel free to treat abductees … as if they are victims of nothing more than an illusion. Abductees suffer the same sort of trauma a rape victim endures, and to have their experiences rejected by those closest to them is a second victimization that leaves them without any support system. Encounters with aliens is hard enough to cope with; victims need support, not rationalizations.
• My friend Frankie wants me to bring back an ashtray or a matchbook, but I think these visitors are probably much too intelligent to smoke.
• My own feeling is that the alien abduction phenomena is little more than a dreamlike sequence vicariously retrieved from memory storage. There are no more little green men or flying saucers than there are images of those things already stored in our brains.
• When alleged scientists conspire to censor and intimidate those who endeavor to offer new insightful hypotheses on conventional theories . . . they no longer should be considered scientists, but merely the insecure, self-serving impostors that they apparently are … In the same token, must we all still suppose that J. Edgar Hoover was a fine FBI director, rather than the homosexual tool of organized crime he was?
• Your conclusion that large numbers of people in this country, perhaps as many as five million, are all victims of an identical mass hallucination is asinine.
• Thanks to the Supreme Court . . . America is now wide open for the Eastern pagan religions, under the aegis of Satan and his demons, so now we have four-foot gray beings kidnapping Earthlings and performing all sorts of experiments on them, and are being propagated by those who are educated beyond their intelligence and should know better . . . Your question [‘Are We Being Visited?’] is no problem for those who know the word of God, and are born-again Christians, and are looking for our Redeemer from Heaven, to rapture us out of this world of sin, sickness, war, AIDS, crime, abortion, homosexuality, New-Age-New-World-Order indoctrination, media brainwashing, perversion and subversion in government, education, business, finance, society, religion, etc. Those who reject the Creator God of the Bible are bound to fall for the kind of fairy tales which your article tries to propagate as being truth.
• If there is no reason to take the matter of alien visitation seriously, why is it the most highly classified subject in the US government?
• Perhaps some vastly older alien race, from a relatively metal-deficient star system, is seeking to prolong its existence by taking over a younger, better world and blending with its inhabitants.
• If I were a betting man, I would give you odds that your mailbox will overflow with stories such as I just related. I suspect that the psychic [psyche] brings forth these demons and angels, lights and circles as a part of our development. They are part of our nature.
• Science has become the ‘magic that works’. The UFOlogists are heretics to be excommunicated or burned at the stake.
• [Several readers wrote to say that aliens were demons sent by Satan, who is able to cloud our minds. One proposes that the insidious Satanic purpose is to make us worried about an alien invasion, so that when Jesus and his angels appear over Jerusalem we will be frightened rather than glad.] I do hope you will not dismiss me as another religious crackpot. I am quite normal and well-known in my own little community.