Tag Archives: Alien Abduction

Former U.S. Navy Intelligence Officer Matthew Roberts Offers Mythopoeic True Story With UFO Tangents — But It Is About So Much More Than That

The author tells us that he wrote this book “out of love for mankind.”

What puts weight behind this lofty statement is that MATTHEW ROBERTS felt it necessary to jettison his 16-year career in the U.S. Navy – 10 years of it at sea –with only four years to go before securing a well-earned military retirement pension.

He gave it all up because of what he needs to talk about in this book.

Roberts didn’t have just any Navy job — he was in military intelligence. It’s a sensitive field that not only requires a high IQ but extraordinary emotional stability.

Roberts understood that if he published and promoted a book about his personal interactions with UFOs, aliens (whom he now calls “The Progenitors”) and his intense psychological battle to cope with extraordinary paranormal experiences – well, that would be something the brass of U.S. Naval Intelligence would not tolerate.

All the above is fine and well-intentioned. But does he deliver?

The short answer is yes.

In many ways, this is a remarkable piece of literature. Certainly, it’s a work of depth and integrity. It has the remarkable quality of being both scholarly and heartfelt at the same time.

Furthermore, INITIATED bears a critical message for humanity that is sorely needed at what feels like an inflection point in our planetary history.

I hope this book is read and contemplated by as many people as possible.

That said, it’s unfortunate this volume will probably be categorized as “a UFO book” and therefore likely to be relegated to what Kurt Vonnegut called “the urinal of literature.” (He actually said that about science fiction, but UFO literature is afforded about the same status, if not worse by the snobby literary elites). I would encourage readers to treat this book as a mainstream offering that would be best served if booksellers would place it in their philosophy section.

So, what’s this book about?

My first notion was that if you could take the works of three intellectual giants – famed mythologist JOSEPH CAMPBELL, the Austrian philosopher RUDOLF STEINER and Harvard psychiatrist JOHN MACK – and synthesize them into a new body of work, then you would have an idea about the contents of Initiated.

Then you add in some healthy doses of Swiss psychologist Carl Jung, and you would also have to fold in a huge helping of classical Greek Mythology along with dollops of Whitley Strieber, Travis Walton and Barney and Betty Hill.

I should hasten to add there is an additional sense of timeliness and urgency about what Roberts is writing about. In case you haven’t noticed, the study of UFOs has recently entered a new era.

It began in December of 2017 when the New York Times published a front-page article reporting that Navy fighter pilots attached to the USS Nimitz aircraft carrier encountered inexplicable objects that defied the laws of physics in terms of their flight speed and patterns.

Intriguing video of the objects recorded with fighter jet gun cameras video was released concurrently with the NYT article. Furthermore, the Pentagon said they didn’t know what the objects were but that they “should be taken seriously” in terms of future study. Other videos and stories if similar ilk followed. The Pentagon when as far as to say (albeit in rather tepid fashion) that an extraterrestrial explanation “cannot be ruled out.”

Now here’s an amazing thing:

**Image from video provided by the Department of Defense labeled “Gimbal.” (2015)**

Our author, Matthew Roberts, was on one of those Navy ships when these encounters occurred. The year was 2015. He was serving on the Theodore Roosevelt that was part of a “strike group” fleet of warships. It was the pilots of a group that captured what has come to be called the “Gimbal” and “Go Fast” footage.

Up until this time, UFOs or any sort of paranormal phenomenon were simply not on Roberts’s radar or part of his life. He was a strictly a no-nonsense, by-the-book Naval intelligence officer. The son of an astronomer, he was grounded in rational scientific materialism. He describes his family growing up as “proud and devout atheists.”

However, after the Gimbal encounters, a crack had formed in his cosmic egg. The next three years would entail a personal epistemological and eschatological crisis for Roberts as he confronted strange beings in what is now the well-described abduction scenario –- noting that the latter is widely varied and comes in many permutations.

For Roberts, the seemingly undeniable reality that he was encountering UFO aliens, other bizarre entities along with a series of other happenings had forced him to question his sanity.

And so, INITIATED is the story of how Roberts traveled through his personal dark tunnel and sojourned through the mythological Underworld – only to emerge out the other side a changed man, or more acutely, one of those rare people who can say to be genuinely “Initiated.”

If you want to know what that means, exactly, then I suggest you read the book. Initiation into the cosmic mysteries of the universe is a millennials-old tradition and concept that I think in modern times was most eloquently explained for all of us by Rudolf Steiner – although Roberts’s preferred authority is WILLIAM WALKER ATKINSON, noted author of the Kybalion. (Note: Read the Kybalion FREE HERE).

(Side Note: I’ve always thought of Atkinson as “Rudolf Steiner lite.” Also, Steiner came at the subject of Initiation by staying grounded in Western thought, while Atkinson preferred to bring it forth by drawing heavily upon Eastern religions and philosophy. But that’s a whole other can of worms that I’ll leave aside for some other article).

At any rate, for me, Roberts comes off as a modern-day Theseus who risked his own life to slay the Minotaur so that his fellows could be freed from its terrors. Roberts might also be liked to a modern Prometheus who stole fire from the gods, came back to Earth and bequeathed it upon mankind — but paid a heavy price for his heroism.

If you read the book, I bet you’ll agree that my statement is not overwrought.

SEE ALSO: ADVENTURES IN CONSCIOUSNESS: ET REPTILIAN CONTACT: https://medium.com/p/7ea65b245af3

Ken Korczak is a former newspaper reporter, government information officer, served as an advocate for homeless people as a VISTA Volunteer, and taught journalism at the University of North Dakota for five years. He is the author of BIRD BRAIN GENIUS

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Reclusive UFO Abductee Calvin Parker Breaks Silence With Book On Iconic UFO Abduction Event At Pascagoula, Mississippi, In 1973: An Important Breakthrough For Ufology

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Review by: KEN KORCZAK

I was 14 years old in 1973. My family subscribed to two daily newspapers — the Minneapolis Tribune (now the StarTribune) and a North Dakota-based paper, the Grand Forks Herald. I was already a news junky and read them both every day.

In about mid-October of that year both papers carried a sensational story about two Mississippi men who were abducted by robot-like aliens with crab-like claws and wrinkled, leathery skin. The men were “floated” into an oval-shaped UFO, subjected to an examination and released after about 30 minutes.

The newspaper stories were accompanied by intriguing pen-and-ink drawings of the bizarre alien creatures and also a sketch of a blue-glowing UFO.

Even as a teenager, I was profoundly struck by the fact that such an amazing account was presented in two mainstream newspapers. It gave the story an added jolt of legitimacy to my young mind. Now 45 years later, that feeling remains.

Charles Hickson and Calvin Parker in 1973.

Normally sensational stories like this appeared only in the National Enquirer or FATE or UFO magazines, but the Pascagoula incident was a case that somehow transcended standard divisions of journalism. It’s almost as if the event carried with it an intuitive sense that something real must have happened. The story circled the globe in top-tier newspapers and broadcast media around the world.

One of the many sketches of the “alien robots” that grabbed the two men and floated them into a UFO.

It’s just one of the reasons that the Pascagoula abduction has always remained among the most vexing and iconic UFO incidents of all time. Furthermore, skeptics, including guys like Philip Klass and Joe Nickell, threw everything they could at the story of the two abductees, Charles Hickson and Calvin Parker. But the pushback of the knee-jerk naysayers seemed to ring hollow and fall flat. A sense of strained desperation characterized debunking attempts.

Another fascinating aspect of the case was the difference in the way the two men subsequently dealt with what has happened to them. The older man, Charles Hickson, a Korean War combat veteran, shipyard foreman and solid southern working man, spent the rest of his life talking about it, granting hundreds of media interviews, writing a book and even occasionally hitting the lecture tour.

But young shipyard welder Calvin Parker, just 19 at the time, wanted none of it. He suffered a nervous breakdown a week after the abduction and essentially went into hiding thereafter. The general impression has been that Parker sent himself into a kind of self-imposed witness protection program. This created an aura of mystery about Parker which has ever since bolstered the “high strangeness” mystique and legacy of the Pascagoula UFO abduction event.

So when I heard a few months ago that Calvin Parker had not only resurfaced but was coming out with a book to tell his side of the story — after all these decades! — my anticipation meter redlined! What would he have to say? And better yet, would he reveal new details about one of the greatest UFO cases off all time?

Artists impression of Pascagoula UFO.

Well, after reading Calvin Parker’s PASCAGOULA: THE CLOSEST ENCOUNTER I am not disappointed. Despite some agonizing drawbacks to this book (which I’ll discuss in a bit) — this direct witness/abductee account provides enough additional information to make it one of the most important contributions to ufology in recent years.

I say that because, other than the enduring influence of the Pascagoula event, this case essentially went cold more than 40 years ago. Unlike other famous incidents, such as Roswell or England’s Rendlesham Forest encounters, where new clues and evidence have continued to trickle out over the years, Pascagoula was essentially a “one and done” happening that presented little opportunity for further investigation.

Hickson on site of the event, 1973.

But Calvin Parker’s book has changed that. For one thing, it provides the testimony of several local residents who were in proximity to the area where the abduction event took place. They offer credible, objective accounts of having seen a UFO like the one described by Hickson and Parker in the area in a time frame before and after the event.

But the bombshell of this book for me is the revelation that Calvin Parker underwent 90 minutes of hypnotic regression with none other than the famous ufologist BUDD HOPKINS in 1993, twenty years after the event. Parker never received a copy of the tape Hopkins made of the session. Worse, Hopkins died in 2011. The fate of the Parker regression tape seemed that it was lost.

Dr. David Jacobs

But now thanks to the dogged work of long-time British UFO investigator Philip Mantle, the tape was found and its transcript is presented in full in this book. The way the tape was found is an interesting anecdote in itself — it turns out is was in the possession of another venerable ufologist, Dr. David Jacobs. After Hopkins’ death, Jacobs was entrusted with Hopkins’ documents and materials. He agreed to provide the tape for this book.

Scottish writer David Lindsay

The transcript itself reads like a surrealist masterpiece. It’s almost like something concocted from the mind of DAVID LINDSAY while retaining the flavor of an honest southern man who spent his life working with his hands, living in small towns and leading a simple life.

The hypnotic regression suggested that much more occurred either during the original Pascagoula event itself — but more likely through a series of alien visitations upon Calvin Parker from the time he was six years old and throughout his life. Furthermore, the narrative of the transcript includes unsettling, shifting focuses in time, brutal and violent interactions with alien beings and jarring vignettes featuring random bits of imagery that add mystery and drama.

I’ll say no more and let readers discover the rest for themselves.

British ufologist Philip Mantle

Before I get on with some final business I think it’s important to recognize veteran British UFO researcher PHILIP MANTLE for the role he played in breathing new life into the Pascagoula UFO incident. It was Mr. Mantle who approached Calvin Parker and urged him to write this book. Mantle also published it under his FLYING DISK PRESS stamp.

I should not be be underestimated what a major coup this represents to the world of ufology — and Philip Mantle is the guy who pulled it off. Mantle has been one of the U.K. longest and most irrepressible UFO investigators for decades. It required someone with his connections and skills (such as tracking down the Hopkins tape) to provide Parker with the encouragement, morale boost and platform to break open an exemplar of classic ufology. (NOTE: See my review of Philip Mantle’s novel: ONCE UPON A MISSING TIME).

Now a bit of pain: It truly grieves me to say that the editing of this book is awful, both in terms of the way certain content choices were made in presenting certain blocks of information as well as in respect to run-of-the-mill typos, punctuation errors and spelling.

Charles Hickson published his own version of the Pascagoula abduction event in 1978.

I almost never play “Grammar Police” in my reviews even when it is warranted, but in this case we have a book that could and should take its place as a classic among the shelves of the best UFO literature — but the lack of proper editing mars the overall effort.

I was thrilled that the editors did a superb job in retaining the sound and cadence of Calvin Parker’s deep-southern Mississippi drawl — but to then sprinkle it with British spellings for words like humor (humour) and center (centre) jar on the ear like potholes in an otherwise well-paved road.

Another major problem: In the Hopkins transcript portion, some lines are often miscued as “BUDD” when “CALVIN” is actually speaking and vice-versa — such a snafu is inexcusable for a document of such importance and relevance.

But to end on a positive note, this book includes a lot of excellent photos and illustrations. I was especially delighted to see updated photos of Calvin Parker as he is today.

I was thrilled and gratified to finally read Calvin Parker’s story after all these years. It returned to me that feeling of wonderment I experienced as a 14-year-old so many years ago growing up in a small town in northern Minnesota, where I spent every clear night out in the backyard with my 6-inch Newtonian reflector observing the stars and pondering: “Who might be out there?”

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Please see my reviews of other UFO books by clicking on the following links:

MANAGING MAGIC by Grant Cameron

EXTRATERRESTRIAL ODYSSEY by Rocky Kvande

LOST ON SKINWALKER RANCY by Erick T. Rhetts

THE CIRCLE AND THE SWORD by Nigel Mortimer

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Retired Attorney Terry Lovelace Offers A Spell-Binding True Story Of His Lifetime Of Harrowing Alien Abduction

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Review by: KEN KORCZAK

If this UFO book is not one of the most talked about in recent years, it deserves to be. Despite painfully dodgy editing — it’s written in a compelling, lucid style and delivers hair-raising descriptions of alien abduction phenomena.

Oh yes, and there are intriguing photos and X-rays film sheets of what the author believes are alien implants in his leg.

TERRY LOVELACE comes out of obscurity to plant himself center stage among the likes of other famous abductees, such as Travis Walton, Betty and Barney Hill and the two men who were taken aboard a craft in Pascagoula, Mississippi, in 1973 – Calvin Parker and Charles Hickson.

Lovelace is a veteran of the U.S. Air Force. He used the GI bill for law school after an honorable discharge. In addition to private practice, he served as Assistant Attorney General for American Samoa. He kept his UFO story under wraps throughout his professional life, he says, because revealing this information would have been career suicide for a lawyer – which is certainly true. Now that he is retired, he wants his story known.

On the one hand, his details about a lifetime of frightening, intrusive abductions by aliens breaks no new ground – all the familiar elements of what other experiencers have reported for years are here. It’s almost as if he has taken the standard elements of what has become the “UFO abduction genre” and re-told a story deeply familiar to the UFO community.

On the other hand, Mr. Lovelace’s natural talent as a writer and gifted skill for rolling out a compelling narrative will inject a new vividness and feeling of visceral terror for the reader.

In an unexpected way, this latter aspect may unfortunately cut both ways for the author.

What I mean is, this narrative is so well-rendered it will give rise to a higher degree of skepticism among some. Indeed, a negative review on Amazon has already suggested that Mr. Lovelace simply “read a lot of UFO books” and has borrowed all the standard UFO abduction elements to cobble together a riveting fictional tale – which he is passing off as true.

Terry Lovelace

But one would be equally justified in saying that Lovelace is telling the truth because his experience confirms historically well-documented elements of UFO abduction scenarios as reported by thousands of others.

Well, I call myself an “open-minded skeptic” but that does not mean I am a skeptic when it comes to the reality of the UFO phenomena – something is going on that is real, certainly – the evidence is beyond overwhelming.

I take pains to say that because now I want to discuss a central absurdity in the story of Terry Lovelace – not because this makes his tale untrue – but simply because it is absurd – or perhaps suggests a deeper meaning.

I also at this juncture issue a ! SPOILER ALERT ! – I repeat — ! SPOILER ALERT ! – because I want to describe the element of the primary event of his story which was his 1977 abduction experience at Devil’s Den State Park in northwestern Arkansas.

So, if you have not yet read the book – stop reading now. I urge you to go buy the book, read it and come back hear after you have. If you decide to keep reading now – well, I have issued you a fair and unambiguous ! SPOILER ALERT !

THE ABSURDITY

So here is what I find absurd.

Consider: Mr. Lovelace reports that he has been experiencing abductions since childhood. Strange beings which he first perceived as “monkeys” were coming into his bedroom at night. They tormented him with their menacing presence and frightened him to the limit of his ability to withstand the intrusions.

Seeing the cover of Whitley Strieber’s book in a shopping mall sent Terry Lovelace into an unexpected panic. Many others have reported the same mysterious reaction to this book’s cover image.

The “monkeys” are eventually revealed to be the classic Grey aliens. They take him away, bring him back and wipe his memory – except for dreamy trace memories along with lingering fear and a sense of loathing. Later in life he is abducted repeatedly at the whims of his tormentors. They can get him anywhere. They even snatch him once while he’s out riding his motorcycle.

It’s clear the Mr. Lovelace is never safe no matter where he is – be it at home tucked safely in bed, out riding his motorcycle, or anywhere else. Despite this fact the aliens – for some reason — decide to choreograph a fantastically elaborate abduction event in the summer of 1977.

At the time Mr. Lovelace was a young Air Force sergeant serving at Whiteman Air Force Base near Kansas City. The aliens set things in motion weeks before the actual abduction.

They (apparently) telepathically implant a powerful suggestion into the mind of Lovelace and a fellow Airman, Toby, with whom Lovelace serves on an airbase ambulance crew. The aliens want the two men to drive to a remote area in Devil’s Den Park in Arkansas, a six-hour trek from their home base.

The aliens also engineer painstaking details. For example, Lovelace is an avid photographer. He is eager to take spectacular nature photos at Devil’s Den – but he inexplicably forgets his camera on the kitchen table. The suggestion is that the aliens wanted to be sure they were not photographed. A variety of others unusual camping supply snafus occur, as well.

Devil’s Den State Park in Arkansas is home to the largest sandstone crevice area in the United States.

The two men make it to Devil’s Den – but strangely again — they decide to basically trespass on federal land. That is, they don’t go through the park gate, register, purchase an entrance ticket — rather, they circumvent a chain barrier to take a back-way into the parkland, drive their car along some primitive path to a secluded high-elevation meadow.

I’ll skip over some events now – including a long hike the two men take during which they inexplicably fall asleep – and pick it up when the men are sitting by their campfire at night and gazing at the stars. In the night sky they espy three strange “stars” in a triangular formation – and they are mesmerized by them as they slowly drift closer to their camp location.

(NOTE: Just like in the 1976 Allagash abduction of Jim and Jack Weiner in a remote wilderness area of Maine, Lovelace’s buddy Toby “signals” to the UFO with a flashlight as it approaches).

This gradual advance of the strange three stars takes maybe two or three hours. The “stars” turn out to be lights on the corners of a monstrously gigantic triangle-shaped UFO. It’s bigger than a five-story building. It comes to a stop and hovers about 30 feet above the ground near the tent of our campers.

The men are then abducted inside the giant UFO where they are subjected to the usual medical-testing procedures common to abduction stories. They also see 50 to 60 other human beings waiting around to be “processed” or undergoing intrusive exams. They see a lot of other stuff inside the UFO as well, such as fish tanks with bizarre living creatures floating in pink liquid.

Okay – I’ll stop there, and ask this question:

If the aliens have already been abducting Mr. Lovelace at will for his entire life and from any location – right inside his home and often under the noses of his unsuspecting parents, sisters and later his wife – why then the need to lure him out to a remote corner of the wilderness for a clandestine abduction?

Why also bring a behemoth, five-story UFO for Mr. Lovelace when at all other times in his life they have been able to show up in smaller craft and zip him away with ease?

And get this: Lovelace says the aliens made sure that the two men parked their car near the treeline at the edge of the meadow to ensure there would be enough room to land the giant UFO – even though the object never landed, but hovered 30 feet above the ground. An average car is only about 5-feet high. It wouldn’t have been in the way any more than their tent was in the way.

Now here’s another thing: There were 50 or 60 other abducted human beings aboard the UFO. Does that mean all those people also went through the same elaborate pre-abduction ritual of watching three mysterious “stars” in the sky approach them for three hours while they became gradually passive? If they did this for all 50-60 people, the process would have taken days to get all captives aboard.

But if the three-hour pre-abduction ritual was done exclusively for Lovelace and Toby – then why?

I don’t lay out all this information to show that I’m a skeptic – although typical skeptical louts will pounce on the fundamental absurdities of the Devil’s Den abduction to argue that it’s all too preposterous to be true.

A MUFON photo of an anomalous object — “implant” — removed from the body of an alien abduction experiencer.

I am inclined to suggest something else – that because the intensely elaborate choreography of the abduction was unnecessary – it was all theater. And I’m not saying it was a theater production with Terry Lovelace as director – but it was the aliens who put on the show.

For some reason (I keep saying that!) the aliens wanted Mr. Lovelace and his friend to experience a sort of cosmic passion play, complete with George-Lucas-worthy giant spaceships, hordes of fellow frightened abductees and B-movie sci-fi monsters swimming in pink fish tanks.

One must also consider that wiping the memory of Lovelace (conveniently?) failed in the long run. Sinister special agent creeps from the government drugged him and forced him through an ostentatious hypnosis session in which he coughed up the whole event – the aliens, who so carefully choreographed everything else, failed to anticipate or have a contingency plan for this.

Of course, the government agents tried to make him forget everything as well. Like the aliens, they failed too. So now Lovelace has shared everything in a tell-all book – even though a hybrid human-alien paid him a recent visit and warned him that if he blabbed too much – his own government might kill him.

What are we to make of it?

Paranoid conspiracy theorists will offer that all of Lovelace’s experiences were implanted in his head during the monstrous drug-infused hypnosis session he was subjected to several months after returning from Devil’s Den. They’ll say he may have never been visited by aliens at all – but the government wants him to believe that it did happen — and then tell all of us ordinary citizens in a book so that we might believe it too.

But why?

I bet Lovelace would contend that his X-ray sheets of weird implants in his leg are his ace in the hole. If none of this happened to him, then how do you explain the reality that he harbored strange objects in his leg? As a lawyer, Lovelace understands the value of hard physical evidence when making a case to a jury. But that’s no problem for the skeptics — they’ll just say he faked the X-rays,

As for me, I am going to say that Mr. Lovelace’s story is true — I can be skeptical, yes — but in this case, despite all, I believe Terry Lovelace.

This is not fiction. I don’t think he is trying to pull one over on us. I’ll say no more as to why I conclude this, but leave you with this reminder:

The world of ufology is our culture’s most confounding, bottomless rabbit hole – a labyrinth within a labyrinth — a mystery wrapped inside an enigma tied with a conundrum — a universe where the only certainty is uncertainty.
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NOTE: BELOW ARE JUST A FEW OF THE OTHER UFO BOOKS I REVIEW HERE ON TOP 10 BOOK REVIEWS:

MANAGING MAGIC By Grant Cameron

EXTRATERRESTRIAL ODYSSEY By Roger “Rocky” Kvande

HOW TO TALK TO AN ALIEN By Nancy DuTertre

ALIENS IN THE BACKYARD By Trish and Rob MacGregor

ALIENS IN THE FORREST by Noe Torres and Ruben Uriarte

SEARCHERS by Ron Felber

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