The Andreasson Affair (24 page)

“I don't know if you can believe everything, but I believe wholeheartedly that in many instances, she believes what she's telling you. The facial
expressions and breathing can be changed,” Harold explained, “but a person has to really
believe
in what they are telling you in order for them to change. Play that tape back. Now at certain points, when I said to you, ‘Get a picture,' her face was twisted up on the side. It didn't even look like Betty. Am I right?”

“Yes,” Joseph Santangelo admitted. “She looked like she was in agony.”

“Now, these things are very important. Another thing that leads me to believe that a good share of this may be true is that she comes up with different things at different times. As she goes over it, it is just as though she were having a recollection of something.”

In sum, Harold concluded that at times, Betty and Becky appeared to be reliving an experience that was very real to them, and he advised us to make sample videotapes at some of the sessions. He believed that a good portion of the experience reflected actual reality, but he confessed he could not deduce how much was real or imagined. This deduction, he stressed, could only be made by comparing the Andreasson Affair with other reports for similarities. Such a comparison would be an intricate part of the last procedure employed in our investigation: analyzing all collected data pertaining to the case.

At the beginning of our investigation, all we knew was that Betty's alleged experience had occurred early some time in 1967—and interestingly enough, 1967 was a vintage year for UFOs!

The longest sustained UFO sighting wave in recorded history had begun in the spring of 1964. At the time, I was chairman of the Massachusetts Investigating Subcommittee for NICAP (National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena). For the year 1966 alone, our subcommittee had logged a record number of 43 local reports evaluated in the unidentified category. In fact, UFO researchers all over the country shared a common frustration: There were too many high-quality reports and not enough trained investigators to document them. By January 1, 1967, local reports dropped off to a few per month, and it appeared that the long-lived UFO wave was diminishing. Then, without warning, UFO activity again increased dramatically.

On January 15, 1967, a bright red oval object ringed with a white halo circled a home in Boxford, Massachusetts, at 3:00 a.m.

Three days later, shortly before midnight, a bright flash lit up the skies over the sleeping village of Williamstown, Massachusetts, just as an electrical power failure crippled the area. Four persons approaching the darkened town sighted a domed glowing object hovering just off the highway. As they passed by, the object rose into the air and buzzed their car.

Two nights later at Methuen, Massachusetts, three persons—Kim, Janice, and Ellen—were on their way to pick up a friend for a local basketball game. The lonely street was bordered by woods, fields, and very few houses. Reaching the top of a hill, they were shocked to see up ahead a string of about 10 bright glowing red lights that were moving over a field just off the road to their left.

“What's that?” Janice asked.

“It must be a helicopter,” Ellen replied.

Kim laughed. “It must be a UFO or a flying saucer!”

During my interview with the witnesses, Ellen remarked to me that at this point, “all of a sudden, it wasn't funny anymore.” The object stopped moving, and they were closing on it rapidly. Kim slowed the car. Simultaneously, the object seemed to swing around, as if it were “spinning on its axis,” and revealed lights of a different color and configuration.

At that point Kim pulled the car over. Janice said, “Let's go look at the helicopter.” She and Kim wanted to get out of the car, but Ellen didn't. All of a sudden, the car stalled and the lights went off. Then
nobody
wanted to get out of the car! “Truthfully,” Ellen told me, “I was too scared to carefully observe the object.”

Kim told me that, during this juncture in the sighting, she had opened her side window in order to get a better look at the object: “The lights and our radio all went off at the same time. After this, I tried to start the car twice while the object remained stationary. Thinking that the lights and radio would be drawing too much power from the battery, I shut the light switch and the radio off. Then I tried to start the car again. It did not start.”

In the meantime, the house-sized object hovered a mere 300 feet away. Kim told me that “it was like the color and texture of Erector Set material,” and formed an inverted bowl shape around the lights. Ellen cowered in the back seat. (Curiously, the generator panel amp dimly pulsated off and on until the craft began to move away slowly.) Abruptly, it picked up speed and streaked away along its original flight path—where it was seen by another car full of people. The whole incident had lasted only a few minutes.

The strange sightings continued. On February 16 two policemen in Amherst, Massachusetts, responded to a UFO sighting reported to the station. Dumbfounded, they watched a glowing object like a bright white light bulb hovering in the night sky. A weird swishing sound emanated from it. Amazed, they watched it eject a small red object before accelerating out of sight over the horizon.

On February 17, at about 7:00 p.m., a salesman for Flying Tiger airlines was driving along Route 93 near the junction of Route 495 in Andover, Massachusetts. Cars slowed down and warily passed under a huge lighted object hovering directly over the road. Frightened, he, too, passed under the silent craft, which was larger than the width of the entire superhighway! In the early morning hours on that same date, shortly after 1:00, several people residing in Dorchester, Massachusetts, were awakened by an extraordinary whirring sound. Glancing out windows, they sighted an object that looked like a cymbal with a dome on top, with purplish lights around its perimeter. It hovered at treetop level over an elderly peoples' project before moving way and out of sight.

On February 26, in Marlboro, Massachusetts, a husband and wife were awakened at 2:00 a.m. by a strange sound. When they got out of bed to investigate, they sighted a white glowing egg-shaped object swinging like a pendulum in the sky.

On March 1, at 7:25 p.m., witnesses in Sharon, Massachusetts, were amazed to witness a noiseless white glowing oval object that maneuvered near their home. It left a white glowing fuzzy trail in its wake.

According to the U.S. Weather Service, March 8, 1967, was a clear, cool night. Visibility was 12 miles. In Boston the thermometers read 28
degrees Fahrenheit. A recent snowstorm had left a beautiful blanket of white velvet draped over the fields and trees. A couple I'll call Mr. and Mrs. William Roberts of Leominster, Massachusetts, got a sudden inspiration to go for a late-night scenic drive through the countryside. After driving for an hour and a half, they started home.

At about 1:00 a.m., they entered the town of Leominster, where, as Mrs. Roberts later told investigator Frank Pechulis, “We suddenly came across a very thick fog and had to slow our car to a real low speed for safety reasons.”

“As we passed the cemetery,” Mr. Roberts continued, “I noticed what looked like a large light to my left. I asked my wife if she saw anything, and she said no. I was certain that I had, and decided I would look again.” Mr. Roberts, thinking that the light might be a fire and that the fog was smoke, turned his car around and drove back into the mist. This time, they both saw the light. The bright glow was not from a fire, but from an object glowing in the air directly above the cemetery! At that point, Mr. Roberts lowered his window and excitedly told his wife, “I think we have something here!”

He parked the car broadside to the hovering object, which hung in the air a bare 200 yards away. Bright as an acetylene torch, it was shaped like a flattened egg and emitted a sound like a dynamo.

Against his wife's wishes, William got out of the car. Excitedly, he raised his hand and pointed it at the blazing object. Simultaneously, the automobile lights, radio, and engine ceased functioning. At the same time, Mr. Roberts received an electrical shock. Almost instantaneously, his body became numb and immobilized from head to foot, and his arm was thrust back against the car by some unseen force, hitting the roof so hard that an imprint was made in the ice and snow. “When the car went dead,” Mrs. Roberts interjected, “I was yelling for Bill to get back in the car, but he did not move.”

“I was unable to move,” Mr. Roberts told the investigator. “My wife was in a panic. My mind was not at all affected. I just couldn't move!”

When he did not respond to her screams, she slid across the seat and tugged at his jacket through the open window. He could hear her begging
him to come back inside, but he couldn't move a muscle. He was totally paralyzed from head to foot.

Mr. Roberts recalled, “I was there 30 to 40 seconds before the object moved away. It moved quickly at an ever-increasing speed, not instantly.” Abruptly, their car's lights and radio came back on. The humming object had accelerated upward and out of sight above the dense fog patch. (On the following day, at Andover, Massachusetts, witnesses would sight a strangely lit silent object hovering about one thousand feet above the grounds of a country club.)

Incredible reports by credible people poured in. Later on in the year—on July 27, about 1:00 a.m.—a group of amateur astronomers saw a wingless, cylindrical object maneuvering over the darkened countryside of Newton, New Hampshire. (Two of the witnesses were trained observers and had received training in aircraft identification in the military.) As the object moved back and forth near the field in which they had set up a telescope, it responded exactly to signals flashed to it with a flashlight by one of the three witnesses.

Some UFO reports included the sighting of occupants by the witnesses. Several months prior to the Newton, New Hampshire, sighting, a former U.S. Coast Guard pilot and owner of a small airport in eastern Massachusetts was awakened by a weird humming sound. Thinking that an aircraft might be attempting an emergency landing, he leaped out of bed, flung on robe and slippers, turned on a bright yard light, and hurried outdoors to investigate.

The half-awake—but highly trained—man was totally unprepared for what greeted him. Hovering just 25 feet over a small pond between the house and the airport was a strange, silent aircraft. It was not a helicopter. He later told me it looked like “two shallow metallic saucers, one inverted upon the other, with a transparent canopy situated on its topside.” Elongated vent-like holes spaced evenly around the object's rim emitted a soft orange glow. A softer, greener light bathed the interior of the canopy, revealing two humanoid creatures who stared down at him!

Thinking that it must be an experimental aircraft in trouble, he cautiously walked toward it, yelling and waving his arms. Instantaneously, it
moved smoothly and silently away from him, stopping again over some gasoline pumps and aircraft at the edge of the runway. The curious witness ran around the pond and again headed toward the hovering craft, waving his hands at it as he approached. Abruptly, a swishing and loud whirring sound came from the object, and the orange lights began spinning around its circumference. Slowly and deliberately it tilted back before shooting away at fantastic speed. Simultaneously, the bright yard light dimmed to practically nothing during the object's initial acceleration, but quickly returned to normal as it moved away. All that was left behind was a smell reminiscent of burned matches lingering in the night air.

Others were to have similar experiences. On November 2, 1967, two Native American youths were driving south on Highway 26 near Ririe, Idaho. At about 9:30 p.m., a blinding flash of light erupted in front of their car, then quickly dimmed to reveal an oval object with a central dome. The dome was transparent, and they saw that it contained two small humanoid creatures who stared down at them.

About a month later, on December 8, 1967, in Idaho Falls, Idaho, a young woman stepped outside to look for a friend who was on her way to pick her up. She noticed a patch of light reflected off the snow. Glancing up to see where it was coming from, she was horrified to see a circular object hovering silently in the overcast sky. As she stood awestruck at the sight of it, the object tipped and rotated, revealing a central transparent dome. In the dome she could make out the distinct outline of two humanoid figures gazing down at her. As the object moved away, she panicked and ran into the house. At its closest, she estimated that it was only about 300 feet away and about 100 feet off the ground.

Significantly, a great number of 1967 UFO reports involved sightings in upper central Massachusetts. A number of reports of objects hovering over freshwater ponds came from Phillipston, Royalston, Orange, and Tully, Massachusetts. Several objects were reported to have had a central dome. But the surge of UFO activity that reverberated into 1967 merely bracketed the incredible experience of the Andreasson family. What they had experienced was but a logical extension of all other aspects of the UFO phenomena—that is, a CE-IV: contact!

At that time, all we knew was the year of the sighting: 1967. But later, during the course of the hypnosis/debriefing sessions and other interviews, attempts were made to determine the actual date of the experience from the witnesses' statements. From Betty's overall testimony, we were able to start narrowing down the exact day.

Betty:
It is 1967…the lights went out. My father and mother were staying with me. Husband in the hospital from a car accident. Snow, little bit…it's cool, misty…fog rising from the ground.…

With this information in hand, we checked hospital records, local power company records, and detailed weather records kept by a weather station in Ashburnham. Hospital records show that Betty's husband was transferred from a local hospital to a Veterans Administration (VA) Hospital near Boston on January 23, 1967. He was not released until March 17 of that year.