The Watchers I; The Secret Design Behind UFO Abduction

408 Pages·1990·11.33 MB·English

by  Raymond E. Fowler

Books by Raymo nd E . Fowler
UFOs: Interplanetary Visitors
The Andreasson Affair
Casebook of a UFO Investigator
The Melchizedek Connection [A Novel]
The Andreasson Affair, Phase Two
-i
T h e
WATCHERS
The Secret Design Behind UFO Abduction
R a y m o n d E . F o w l e r
FOREWORD BY WHITLEY STRIEBER
(AUTHOR OF communion)
BANTAM BOOKS
NEW YORK • TORONTO • LONDON • SYDNEY • AUCKLAND
THE WATCHERS
A Bantam Book I July 1990
All rights reserved.
Copyright © 1990 by Raymond E. Fowler and Betty Ann Luca.
Foreword copyright © 1990 by Wilson & Neff, Inc.
Book design by Robin Hessel-Hoffmann
No part of tins book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means,
electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by am information storage
and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
For information address Bantam Books
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Fowler, Raymond E, 1933-
The watchers the secret design behind UFO abduction / Raymond E.
Fowler ; foreword by Whitley Strieber.
p cm.
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 0-553-05782-0
1. Unidentified flying objects—Sightings and encounters.
2. Luca, Betty’ A. (Betty Andreasson), 1937- I. Title.
TL789.3.F683 1990
001 9'42—dc20 90-140
CIP
Published simultaneously in the United States and Canada
Bantam Books are published by Bantam Books, a division of Bantam Doubleday Dell
Publishing Group, Inc. Its trademark, consisting of the words "Bantam Books" and the
portrayal of a rooster, is Registerde in US. Patent and Trademark Office and in other
countries Marta Registrada Bantam Books, 666 Fifth Avenue, New York, New York
10103
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES Of AMERICA
DH 0 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
D e d i c a t i o n
With love I dedicate this book to my husband, Bob Luca. I can trust
in his constant support no matter how strange, how bizarre, the
recovered reality of my UFO experiences appear to be. Bob is
always there for me.
Thank you, honey, for being you.
Betty Luca
Contents
Foreword ix
Acknowledgments xiv
Introduction xv
Prologue xvii
Chapter One Recapitulation 1
Chapter Two The Face 16
Chapter Three Alien Housecall 35
Chapter Four Secret Rendezvous 57
Chapter Five Scientific Miracles 69
Chapter Six Visit to the Nursery 86
Chapter Seven Return from Oz 110
Chapter Eight Portents of Tragedy 126
Chapter Nine UFOs and OBEs 141
Chapter Ten The Watchers 192
Anatomy of a Phenomenon 221
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve Branded 240
Chapter Thirteen The Family Closet 272
Rekindled Memories 286
Chapter Fourteen
Forbidden Fruit 300
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen The Message 327
Final Comments 351
Epilogue
Chronological Summary of
Appendix A
Known Encounters 358
n» The Watchers
Appendix B The Latent Encounter Experience 364
Appendix C A Letter to Betty 371
Selected Bibliography 375
Index 379
Photographs 217
Foreword
BY WHITLEY STRIEBER
This is certainly one of the most remarkable books ever written
about the enigmatic experience that has been variously described as
alien abduction or, more simply, the visitor experience.
Raymond Fowler has been a UFO investigator for twenty-five
years. He is the recipient of the 1986 award for Outstanding Work
in the UFO Field from the Mutual UFO Network. He has been
working with Betty Andreasson Luca, the subject of this book, for
eleven years.
During this time Ray has maintained the highest standards of
research and reporting. Unlike too many UFO investigators, who
systematically distort the reports of witnesses to fit an easily
believed but only partially accurate model of the experience, Ray
has had the courage to recount Betty's testimony without any
censorship. He has not edited her narrative on behalf of false
credibility.
The result is a book that accurately reflects the actual strange­
ness of this amazing phenomenon. As such, it will undoubtedly
draw criticism from investigators eager to sell the public and the
scientific community on the notion that more or less understand­
able aliens are here doing things that we can to a degree compre­
hend.
In The Watchers Ray Fowler offers a truly innovative and
ix
The Watchers
.V
startling theory about the possible hidden purpose of the visitors. It
is one that I sense is in the direction of the truth. Certainly it is
supported not only by Betty’s testimony but also by the reports of
other witnesses and—more importantly—by the overall structure of
what has so far been ascertained from those reports.
It is far more compelling, far stranger, and much more subtle
than the popular scenario of alien abduction that is becoming a sort
of orthodoxy among UFO investigators. But it also fits more of the
probable facts than that or any other scenario. If one grants that the
visitors are real and in the end a part of the physical universe, then
Ray Fowler may have come very close to discovering what they are
doing.
From the beginning Ray has allowed Betty to lead him. Instead
of rejecting the stranger aspects of her experience and hypno-
tizing—in effect, brainwashing—her into believing that she has
been a victim of the typical abduction scenario, he has listened to her
with an open mind.
And so we have the delicious and astonishing mystery that is
The Watchers, probably the most accurately described case of
apparent alien encounter that has ever been published. Instead of
damaging the case for the presence of a nonhuman intelligence
among us, it paradoxically strengthens it.
If aliens are actually here, we can expect them to be extremely
strange—quite literally stranger than anything we can possibly
imagine. Betty’s testimony certainly suggests this.
It would be easy to dismiss her narrative as the product of a
wildly overheated imagination. But there are enormous problems
with this facile response.
First, Betty’s initial experience began in the evening when she
and everybody else in her family were wide awake. Her father was
the first to sec the beings who arrived at the Andreasson home. He
watched them walk past the kitchen window and enter the house—
by passing right through a closed door as if it was made of air! Thus
the high-level strangeness began not with Betty but with one of the
other witnesses.
During an early hypnosis session Betty repeated some words in
an unknown! language. She was apparently hearing them inside her
head as she spoke, almost as if she was listening to a radio. For some
years these words went untranslated until researcher Leonard
Keane discovered that they were Gaelic. Why “aliens” would be
speaking Gaelic simply added another mystery to the tangle. It is
appropriate that this fantastic discovery also emerged from Betty
Fo reword xi
Andreasson’s testimony. The translation itself argues in favor of an
origin outside of Betty’s mind. "Children of the northern peoples,
you wander in impenetrable darkness. Your mother mourns.” Even
if she knew Gaelic, which she does not, or had picked it up as a
result of the mysterious psychological process known as xenoglossy,
surely the translation of her words would have been somehow
comprehensible, a hidden message, a trenchant prediction, a
warning—something that was somehow relevant to Betty’s own
concerns and life experience.
Instead the message is full of unknown implications and
suggestions that subtly support the testimony of other witnesses.
My own experience, as I have mentioned in both Communion and
Transformation, seems to involve an immensely powerful female
figure. Certainly it is full of symbolic imagery that relates to ancient
feminine dieties and feminine mythology. And here, hidden in
Betty’s recollections is another mysterious reference to a powerful
female presence: “your mother mourns.”
All of these things lead to an obvious conclusion: nobody—
least of all mentally rigid UFO investigators—has as vet understood
the origin of the visitors.
Beyond the presence of witnesses in the initial phases of her
experience and the almost inexplicable nature of some of Betty's
testimony there is a second issue, which is the matter of imagination
itself. As a professional writer, I am very familiar with the workings
of the human imagination. If Betty has imagined what she has
reported she has more than a strong imagination, she has an
imagination of historic importance—certainly one of the strongest
imaginations that has ever emerged from the human species.
I would argue that much of her strangest testimony simply
cannot have been imagined because it does not come in any way
from the background of human experience. Instead, her observa­
tions appear to be rich memories of another world, a world so
fundamentally different from our own that it bears almost no
relationship to it at all. And yet there is deep sense to it. It has, if
you will, semantic coherence.
But whose semantics? Certainly not ours. This approaches the
third reason that I feel that Betty's experience is quite genuine.
There is within it a hidden undertone of relationship to the
experiences reported by other people who have confronted the
visitors. It is not possible that these correspondences emerge out of
imagination—not unless we have a group imagination—and even
then it would be difficult to explain why subtle details would be
XU The Watchers
consistent from experience to experience and gross descriptions
would vary so much.
In the larger sense peoples reports are almost infinitely varied.
But practically all of them share subtle features, many of which have
received only minimal publicity. A common report that has been
widely publicized is that at least some of the visitors look like
human neonates (fetuses) but with large, black eyes. Ray offers a
reason for this that is at once remarkably strange and remarkably
plausible.
People also report being physically levitated and often moving
through walls or closed windows, but not in an out-of-body state.
They report lapses of time and what seem to be other-worldly
journeys. A little known fact is that they are often given white
garments to wear and see other people in similar dress. Why a
subtle detail like this would emerge from many different minds if it
does not reflect a consistence based on real experience is very hard
to know . Betty wore such a garment, as did I.
Another odd and hitherto unpublished fact is that people who
have the visitor experience very often observe unmarked helicopters
over their homes in the months and years afterward. Indeed, this
bizarre outcome is surprisingly consistent. A fair number of these
witnesses have photographed the helicopters, and they can usually
be identified as unmarked versions of common types.
I once saw—in the presence of two other witnesses—two such
helicopters flying low over a populated area with their rotors
meshed together like eggbeaters! This was also observed from
another part of the same town by another independent witness,
who has had the visitor experience as well. Betty is among those
who have photographed the helicopters that have buzzed her
house.
People are frequently given disturbing information that appears
to suggest catastrophe on a global scale. They also view events of a
highly symbolized or mythological nature. Betty's testimony is the
most richly symbolic that has ever been reported.
This combination of physical event and psychological content
makes it seem as if the visitor experience is something that is
external to the body and yet somehow internal to the mind at the
same time!
It could be that this apparent paradox will be resolved when we
better understand the human mind. It could also be that it is an
intentional subterfuge, designed by somebody who is trying to keep
what is essentially a public act secret.