The Troika

were where what was that? They were a very home party Cowey, They were rare, they were odd, they were strange. At the same time the people who were having the experiences seemed to be having We couldn't really tell whether there was any thing over What was it about Farney and Betty Hill, you know that caused and abductions? Who happened to them? Well, the way we looked at it now days was there was only one reason they were in the wrong place at the wrong him. I went

else one of the reasons could they're possibly be? And time only that. But Barney and Betty he said things that let us two things. And the experiments model, as to say, and they had skins Treby tame the body there then made a sass amount of here. They asked Party why his steeds came out? Asked Betty why Party seeking out of hers, didn't they They put a merely into Betty's Mabel and said they were doing pregnancy test. Well, all of this was the model for more experiments audience.

This was a phasic situation where you have a model, there's one. Yeah. The publication of John Fuller's A Journey Interrupted began a decades long series of ever more incredible old tales of alien abduction. Using the Hill story as a foundation, Each successive abduction account had to be more extraordinary than the last. Public interest in alien abduction reached its height in the nine nineties, partly because of the hit TV show The X Files, which had an ongoing

abduction subplot. Another reason was the success of three men who pushed the alien abduction narrative to its limit in a number of best selling books I'm Toby Ball and This Is Strange Arrivals Episode nine, The Troika. In the twenty years following the Hill experience, there was a clear understanding of the type of situation in which a person could be abducted. They would be driving in lonely isolated places at night, a UFO would appear and the abduction

would follow. But this conception changed and the study of abductions became something entirely different. UFO researcher Robert Schaeffer, starting with Bud Hopkins in the eighties, you didn't have to go anywhere to be abducted by aliens. Aliens would come right into your bedroom and grab you, drag you up to the saucer, and then bring you back whenever they

were done with you. You didn't have to drive out somewhere late at night and see a lightning us at You're just sitting there, minding your own business, and then all of a sudden, the aliens come the Once you've accept that this could happen, you've opened the door to

every kind of fantasy and imagination possible. Bud Hopkins was a well known abstract expressionist artist who became a leading researcher into the alien abduction phenomen man On he published his first book on the subject, Missing Time, a documented study of UFO abductions. Hopkins made the conceptual leap that abductions could happen any time, in anywhere. An associate professor of history at Temple University named David Jacobs seized upon this idea and began his own research. We heard him

giving a lecture at the opening of this episode. David Jacobs got into the UFO business quite a bit earlier. He wrote The History of UFO Belief in the United States back in the seventies. He state at this, and then he too picked up the idea from Hopkins and whoever else that these types of bedroom abductions were taking place. After his nine book, The UFO Controversy in America, Jacobs

didn't publish again for seventeen years. His next book, The Threat, Revealing the Secret Alien Agenda, was specifically about abductions and featured a foreword by the third major figure in this era of abduction research, one who brought with him impeccable academic credentials. Done back was a whole was very important guy, and he was not just a PhD. It was a professor of psychiatry at the Harvard Medical School. Mac was very, very talented, very prominent guy. But somehow he got bit

by this book too and decided it was real. So these three guys pop against Jacobs and Mac sometimes referred to them, those Ditroitka. The Troika was a type of temporary government that occurred four times in the history of the Soviet Union, where three leaders sat atop the government without any of them able to exert power alone. These guys thought that they were very scientific, and I guess it's of credentials and stuff like that. They kind of work.

In Hopkins published Intruders, which laid out the case that humans were being abducted and used by aliens for genetic research. In he met a Boston based documentary filmmaker named Carol Rainey in they were married. I'm Carol Rainey and I was married for ten years to Bud Hopkins, abstract expressionist painter and UFO researcher, and I came from a background uh spending twenty years making films for epidemiologists in the

Boston area. I don't come from a science background originally, but in all of those years of working for epidemiologists and later in New York City with the major metal institutions like New York Presbyterian, I learned a lot about how scientists think about phenomena in the natural world and how they go about gaining real knowledge in the real world from working with scientists, Carol found a very different world surrounding Hopkins, who was doing UFO research but was

by training an artist. I married an artist, as did his second wife, I'm sure, but by the time I met him, he had pretty much given up on being part of the art world in Manhattan, and almost his entire life was really taken up with being this leader in a movement called alien abduction. It was a very overwhelming lifestyle. It was UFOs seven. Carol moved from boss In down to New York In where Hopkins was the center of gravity for a group of people who identified

themselves as abductees. So I got my own camera and started shooting yet one more documentary, but this one would be no strings attached, no federal funding, no state funding, no city funding. Funded out of my back pocket. That gave me a great deal of freedom. If Betty Hill had talked to Bud Hopkins, she would have found that the aliens that he believed were kidnapping and experimenting on people were far different from the leader with whom she

carried on a pleasant and occasionally funny conversation. They didn't resemble Quasga and jew hop either, Bud's work expanded the original narrative, and he didn't stay relatively close to the pattern for the Hill case Betty and Barney Hill. But what his writing added to it was that nobody was safe anywhere, that aliens could enter your bedroom at night,

coming straight through the walls, coming through the windows. I mean, his view of alien beings in the world was that they were godlike, really ordinary physics did not prohibit them from doing whatever they wanted to do to take advantage of people's helplessness. And the abductees were used in Budd's thoughts in the same way that Lee observed, you know, wolves in the wild, and we experimented on them to some degree from afar. And that's what he felt the

aliens were doing to us. They might put tracking devices in us, what's called old an implant these days. You know, many of his people came up with those implants, partly to add credence to Bud's narrative, and because that was the story that was becoming increasingly popular in mainstream media during the nineteen eighties and nineties. Figure out what that little thing of race sums his nose as yet, No, and I'm not losing any sleep over it good. I

bond was very believable. You know, one of the more intelligent people I've ever met, But with this caveat, not at all given to science or interest in science. He knew almost nothing about psychology or psychiatry or recovered memories. He didn't know except to mouth in a bit. He didn't know anything about scientific protocols, were the scientific method and how you use that to make sure that the information you believe you're gaining in the world, that that

information is valid. As I became more and more part of the U of a world, I became less and less convinced that many of the people doing research, we're doing it with enough valid understanding of science and manipulation of testimony and leading witnesses. How did this gap in knowledge play out in their research? After the break, strange arrivals will return in a moment. Carol Rainey expresses concern that Bud Hopkins and David Jacob's lack knowledge that should

have informed their work with hypnotically recovered memories. This is especially concerning because we know that hypnosis subjects have an increased vulnerability to suggestion. In Hopkins cases, the way in which quote unquote, memories were created and manipulated. Is easy to identify. Hopkins could be acting in good faith, but his subjects testimony was tainted. First of all, Peter Robbins would be there as his assistant and would read for

the letters. Is how things came in originally, and Peter would read through them and he'd write abductee on the front, or he'd write probable abductee on the front, and then that person would be mailed a kit of information about the abduction phenomena and then told in the kit to avoid reading the literature in the field, so the new possible abductive would be sent as kit of material. And I think it varied sometimes, but it was information about,

you know, the abduction phenomena. And also the people who were calling Bud knew enough about the field to call a top researcher in the field. They had also often read one, two or three of his books previously, and they had watched movies, they watched documentaries. He had been in I mean, he was appearing on the Phil Donahue's show, on the Oprah Winfrey Show, on Canadian talk shows. He was all over. So by the time they show up at hopkins house for a hypnosis session. They've already been

exposed to his work on alien abductions. When people would first call and begin talking to him, he could go on easily for an hour with each person over the phone, and he would often tell them about the new cases that he was working on. The queue that sends to the person on the other end of the phone is that if you want the attention of his television personality, you might do well consciously or unconsciously to have your own memories that were similar to the ones he was

interested in. And that is where the tailoring of tales began, long before he even met the people. These people would come to Bud in Carol's house to undergo regression hypnosis. Bud would sometimes talk to the visitor, telling him or her about some of his cases or things that he was interested in, and then Bud would put them under hypnosis. You don't have to lead anybody under hypnosis after that, they already know which way to go. And that happened often,

and it's that pre hypnosis session. All those sessions, those contacts is what people on the outside never knew about. Here's Bud Hopkins conducting a hypnosis session with an alleged abductee. This is from a recording of a conference where he presented this tape as part of a lecture. Very see what's you can seeing? What you're feeling? Long time ago? Me table, father or something. It's around, it's around the world. Them standing beside me. Mh, I'm here talking to me.

I don't I hear them. They're telling me, I'm all right, m you can't do it? Fine? They yeah, I want something. Mm hmmm. I don't know what you want. I've seen you before. Okay, all right, all right, just tell me very cool. What's happening, Kathy? You can do it? Finds a long time ago. We're just remembering this. You what's happening? It's this has happened to me before. Okay. H The table is to moving my legs. That's right, that's right. It's just the same. What's happened to your lig as

you mentioned there arre youre apart. It's like having guyan man. It's okay, it's the same. I've had this before. Ye I'm Cathy. I'm going to touch your shoulders me. I's going to feel very calm, and when I count to three, you feel the warmth in my hand one, two, three, and now my hands, and you should live very safe, much better, much better. Jacobs also prepped his subjects, and

his methods were often less subtle. Here he is giving a lecture talking about the consistency of stories he's heard during hypnotic regressions, but also letting slip a clue as to why these stories might be so similar. They may not know if they may be. It's not aware of it at all, But we pretty much know. We know the sequence of advances may happen the wround world. It

almost doesn't matter. In other words, we know when they say, hey DC, we know the coming and they're not gonna like the you know, and I have to prepare them. And this uh about seven city of many compressions US and we see a certain routine here. Obviously this is a strange statement to be coming from a person supposedly

engaged in research. Again, he could have the best of intentions, but as we have seen in earlier episodes, hypnosis subject is particularly vulnerable to suggestion, and of course the way they lead to witnesses is just pathetic. I think Jacobs wanted the worst. People have pointed this out from going over these transcripts and saying, you know, basically he's telling her what to what he wants to hear. He's you know, he's telegraphing. It rouses there and she just tells him

what he wants to hear. In Carol Rainey wrote a lengthy article titled Priests of High Strangeness to expose what she felt like, we're unsigh scientific and unethical practices among Hopkins, Jacobs, and mac When I wrote the article, many of the old time UFO research was contacted me privately to thank me for putting that out there. He Stan was one of them, and they said, we knew there was something off in this research that but and Jacobs were putting out,

but we didn't know what it was. We only knew what he told us about how he researched cases. When she refers to stand, she's talking about Stanton Friedman, who we heard from earlier in this series, mainly about Marjorie Fish and the Star Map. I didn't bring up Hopkins in our interview, but when he was talking about the qualifications of Dr. Benjamin Simon as a hypnotist, Friedman used Hopkins as an example of someone who did not meet

the same standard. We're not talking about some amateur and look. I like Bud Hopkins, so I knew him. I've been in his home. Great guy, But Budd was an artist, not a professional psychiatrist or psychologist or justst with training and dealing with traumatic experiences, you get a fine job. I'm not not conuted, but on any comparison of skills brought to the problem, there's no question Dr Simon rules the roost. The other method that Hopkins used with the

supposed abductees with support group meetings. Hopkins would host meetings with a number of abductees and conduct a kind of group therapy session revolving around their abduction experiences, but other issues from their past as well. And what I began to understand from attending those meetings is that if you were knew to the field, you could pick up everything you needed to know about being a standard abductee just by going to those support meetings and by talking with

other abductees. They would lay out certain patterns and other people would second that and they would say, oh, that happened to me too, and Bud would guide the discussions. I did call him on this in terms of support group meanings. I said, why don't you use an a a kind of model where there is no leader, where the witnesses, the abductees themselves could guide the discussion instead

of you leading it. And my objection to his leading the discussion was that he would tell people about brand new cases and things he was most interested in pursuing. Carol describes the participant as bright, sensitive, and artistically driven, while there were occasionally more eccentric people on the margins. She says of the main group that she did not

think they were crazy, not once. They were people to whom something was happening, and that fascinated me, as still should fascinate researchers if it's you know, psychosmatic, if the narrative is being developed entirely inside individuals. And then they meet in some sort of a place like a support group, and they began to share things they've picked up from television series which were everywhere, or from movies, from reading

buds books. They came with a hell of a lot of knowledge about what other people were saying about their experiences. They were not blank slates. They came in knowing the material. And when you're working with that psychologically, research shows there's a great deal of spread of terms and means and thoughts and patterns between the researcher himself and the people who have come to him for help, and between each other.

They would pass ideas back and forth. So to me, it was fairly easy to see how without really careful, careful protocols, and without being peer reviewed, such a researcher intentionally or totally unintentionally could be creating the story of what had happened to all of these people. University of California, Irvine professor Elizabeth Loftis. We heard from her earlier in

the series. One of my friend colleagues once said, this group therapy it's a little like poker, where you say, I'm going to match your memory and raise you one with my even more lurid and bizarre and upsetting memory. And that's a way in which this group therapy situation helps to create an environment where people are trying to come up with ever more interesting and exotic and dramatic

stories because that's what will get attention. And in this case, what would get Hopkins attention would be stories that would indicate abduction. What Bud called evidence would be people sending him snapshots of mark on their body, whether it was a scar or bruise or whatever. Here's Hopkins from the same lecture as before, or this time showing images of these physical marks. Now very quickly some of the scars. These are very characteristic. And this is the scoop mark

rather than the straight line cut. This is what we have on the front of Cathy Davis leg I'll show you might need a tiny bit of focus on this. Now this uh looks as if the tiny little scoop element came in there and took took away flesh. We don't know what this is for, except that obviously would give you a good chance of knowing a lot about that individual's makeup if you had the question the mark is.

It's hard to say, and from memory, I would say it's probably about three eighths of an inch law Carol and John mac realized that as much as they wanted to discover physical evidence of these abductions, these photos fell short of that mark. John knew that those would not be taken well as evidence. You know, it's not something you gather first person. There's no guard on the chain

of custody, none of that. We often talk about the echo chamber in the context of politics, where if everyone you here expresses the same opinions, you begin to uncritically accept them. But it happens outside politics as well, and something like this occurred in the small, intense abduction community, where the incredible might barely provoke a raised eyebrow. At some point. I remember thinking when I was shooting with Bud.

We were on Cape Cod and a man I didn't know had called in and was talking to him, And I walked through the room and I heard Bud say, did they come through the wall this time? Too? And when I thought about it a few minutes later, I thought, I didn't even break a sweat. I didn't even jump when he said that. I just up did That's how it happens. And when that happens to you, you know

you need to put your guard up even more. This effect could be especially strong on the people at the center of the work, Hopkins and Jacobs, whose observations and theories were mutually confirming that Jacobs would rent a house on the Keep, a few houses down from our house in wealth Lee, and over dinner one night, Dave Jacobs said to Bud, Bud, you and I are the only two people on the planet who really know what's going

on with the alias. I kind of did a double take, and I said, the only two people on the planet, Isn't it kind of a dangerous way to think about something that you don't really know for sure? These dangers became realized as Hopkins, Jacobs, and Max rees Church led to theories of escalating strangeness. They seem to need genetic material that they're taking sperm over, and we think we are seeing this twenty four hours a day next to

seven days a week. But we see them as well with twenty people, fifty people, hundreds of people, five hundred tables in a room with people on them, you assembly line fashion. We know they're doing these reproductive experiments in attempt at hybridization and so forth. Then Hopkins found the perfect case that ultimately proved the step too far next time on Strange Arrivals. Strange Arrivals is a production of I Heart Radio and Grim and Mild from Aaron Manky.

This episode was written and hosted by Toby Bowl and produced by Miranda Hawkins and Josh Thane, with executive producers Alex Williams, Matt Frederick and Aaron Manky. Betty Hill was portrayed by Gina Rickike Barney Hill was portrayed by Jason Williams.

Special thanks to the Miln's Special Collections and Archives at the University of New Hampshire, John Horrigan, w y C h A M. In Norwich, Connecticut, John White, and David O'Leary, the executive producer of the History Channel's dramatic series Project blue Book. Learn more about the show over at Grimm and mile dot com. For more podcasts from iHeart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.