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Chapter 8
The Abduction of Linda Napolitano
(1) Manhattan Transfer by Patrick Huyghe (2) New York, New York: the Linda Napolitano “abduction” by Phil Coppen (3) Funny Business at the Swanton Novers Rectory by Charles Fort
"You would have to have the kind of conspiratorial mentality of Richard Nixon and be able to think sixty-two moves ahead," Williams says. "Quite frankly, Linda doesn't appear to have that kind of mind; she does not have that kind of abstracting capacity." He notes further that her emotive capacity-her anger, crying, and tendency to get carried away-is not consistent with the psychopathic cool mentality of the hoaxer and liar. "My conclusion," he says, "is that from her perspective, she is telling her truth." Gibbs Williams, New York psychoanalytic psychotherapist
The following essays by Patrick Huyghe and Philip Coppens are extremely well-argued pieces of work, being both astute, balanced, and the result of most perceptive and detailed research. These authors see many dimensions involving political and Intelligence elements, combined with the reactions and attitudes of very different people and their multi-faceted points of view. This case shows how complex human beings are, and how paradoxical and enigmatic is the nature of experiences such as this, many of such have occurred elsewhere in other places and at other times. The social context of how easily somewhat B-feature intrigue shades into metaphysical and fantastical elements is well argued and presented.
Perhaps our greatest fear is not B-feature demon Nazis, or murdering psychopaths with drooling fangs. Perhaps we are most fearful when we are confronted with evidence that what we call reality is unstable in itself. We are most haunted by the idea that like Plato’s shadows, reality is always an approximation, and that no single element of our experience quite squares absolutely with another. Often our dread conclusion is that reality oftentimes does not behave itself. Of course reality never will, it is not “designed” for stability or predictable determinism. As we learn from the idea of the Matrix, all perceived experience of the Good, the Beautiful, and the True keeps its options open by conscious and perpetual subversion of its very self. Even the much-vaunted “laws” of physics have to constantly reconstructed within changing cultures. Newton for example constructed a perfectly valid cosmological system with no knowledge of electricity, magnetism, or nuclear “forces.”
Our present cultural explanation system, being Cartesian in theory and practice means that we can hardly bring our experience of building bridges or space ships to the story of the experience of Linda Napolitano. We are dealing with possible intrusion of alien intelligence, and our Cartesian frames will not deal with the absurdities described in the following accounts.
The “matrix” world consists of planes of information rather than being atomic or molecular. It is not the Victorian Station Master’s world of the fact versus fiction world of 19th century mechanisms. We are all watching Television now, whether we like it or not. Even scoundrels such as myself, who have never seen a TV programme in their life, watch TV in their waking and sleeping life, there being no OFF switch conceivable any longer. I know all about the soap operas and their characters, although I would not touch a minute of such complete crapolla with the proverbial barge-pole.
Perhaps the vital thing any particular media technology does in this sense – is not “show” programmes so much as launch a particular state of mind. If when driving a car, we replace our idea of being enclosed by a mere framework of metal with the idea that we are travelling in a framework of information, we switch on the universal lights that have been dimmed for a long time. Moreover, this car-framework is built of information concerning electrics, hydraulics, mechanics and fuel, and is the result of countless dreams stretching over centuries. As such our car is alive with history. We are indeed “travelling” in an information continuum, which is a good working definition of what `we mean by the idea of a matrix. Perhaps we should be thankful that only a few of such ghosts are seen on occasions, for there are hosts struggling to be heard.
As an example of an information matrix, we include Charles Fort’s celebrated account of events at the Swanton Novers Rectory in his book Lo! By analogy, it mirrors from another age all the elements of the “investigation” of Linda Napolitano’s abduction experience. Colin Bennett
Links to Swamp Gas Times are:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1931044279/theanomalist and Amazon UK http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/1931044279/
(1) Manhattan Transfer
Here is Chapter 29 of Swamp Gas Times by Patrick Huyghe. Patrick was once an editor for Omni magazine, and is a Paraview editor and publisher of the Anomalist. He has written several books including the classic The Field Guide to Extraterrestrials, and (with Loren Coleman) The Field Guide to Bigfoot, Yeti, and Other Mystery Primates Worldwide. Here now is Patrick’s account of the abduction of Linda Napolitano.
Every once in a while a magazine will utterly botch a story-or at least their lawyers will, as happened here. Apparently OMNI's attorneys were uncomfortable that this abduction story allegedly involved some high-profile political figures. The Antimatter section of OMNI attracted the most lawsuits, I was told, so perhaps their concern was justified. But despite their efforts to eliminate the sensitive names from the story, they did not completely succeed, and so ended up damaging a major story. In the first paragraph of the story, next to the words "major political figure" they inserted the phrase "who will remain unnamed." Curiously, however, the man's name Javier Perez de Cuellar-does appear later in the story. And the other major political figure who IS named in the story-Mikhail Gorbachev-was only peripherally involved in the events, but they deleted the paragraph that explained his very tenuous tie to the story, no doubt leaving readers totally confused. OMNI was not alone going through ridiculous lengths to avoid naming names. In fact, the primary investigator in this case, Budd Hopkins, later wrote an entire book on the case, WITNESSED, without naming Javier Perez de Cuellar, even though Hopkins considered this the "case of the century" because of the latter's alleged involvement! Hopkins even used a pseudonym for the central witness in the book, even though her real name had long before been revealed. Since she has become a public figure, even a celebrity of sorts, talking at various UFO conferences across the country, everyone now knows that Linda Cortille is actually Linda Napolitano. In an attempt to set things straight, I have edited the original OMNI story in such a way as to reveal these gaffs and correct them at the same time. The words changed or inserted by the editors/lawyers are now in italics within brackets, and the critical paragraph the lawyers cut out now appears in its proper place in italics. I should add that Budd Hopkins was unhappy with my story but for entirely different reasons. He felt that my story was far too skeptical. I disagree; I presented his rejoinder to almost all the critical points. Hopkins was particularly peeved because he had been so revealing with me off-the-record. While I honored his off-the-record requests, I felt that, given the public facts of the case, I could reach no conclusion other than the one presented. To conclude otherwise would have been unfair to the reader. Besides, Hopkins apparently just wanted to save these tidbits for his own book, where anyone now can read about them and pass judgment on their significance. One of these aspects concerns a gift-an old diving helmet-allegedly given to the central witness's son by the major political figure. I do not believe now-I did not believe then that such unproven tangential material substantiates the basic story-or the major political figure's involvement in it. My article for OMNI was titled "The Great High-Rise Abduction" and appeared in the April 1994 issue.
t was cold and clear, about 3:00 a.m., when the car stalled near the South Street seaport in Manhattan. Glimpsing up, the passengers - a major political figure [who will remain unnamed] and two government agents - spied a glowing oval object hovering over a building a couple of blocks away. As the lights on the heavenly vision changed from red-orange to a bright bluish-white, a woman in a nightgown floated out of a twelfth-story window and hovered midair. The awe-struck witnesses watched as the woman, surrounded by several small creatures, ascended effortlessly into the bottom of the craft. The object zipped over the Brooklyn Bridge and finally plunged into the East River. Or so the story goes. "It's an extraordinary case," says Budd Hopkins, a world-class modern artist who has recently become known for his books, Missing Time and Intruders, detailing his 18 years of investigation into claims that thousands of people have been abducted by UFOs. A hip to Hopkins' studio on Manhattan's West Side reveals the profound influence these so-called abductions have had on his art. Scattered around the room are colorful, profile-shaped paintings he calls "guardians" that evoke nothing if not the aliens in question. Indeed, as Hopkins describes his work, his dark, thick eyebrows dance with enthusiasm; these days, it is the bizarre tales of UFOs and the nasty creatures who inhabit them, plucking innocents from their homes in the middle of the night, that consume most of his time. If Hopkins seems excited, he explains, it's because he has found a case that might convince the army of skeptics who have hounded him for years. Unlike the thousands of other abduction cases on record, he explains, this is the first time independent witnesses have come forward claiming to have seen the event take place. Even more significant, one of these witnesses is said, in the vernacular, to be a Very Important Person. "The implication," Hopkins speculates, "is that this was deliberate, a demonstration of alien power and intent." Hopkins has never had trouble drawing dramatic conclusions about UFO abductions, a phenomenon that emerged, it should be noted, without him. The first bizarre story came to public attention in 1966 and involved the now-notorious New England couple, Betty and Barney Hill. Under hypnosis, the Hills recalled being snatched from their car and examined by small creatures aboard a flying saucer. But it would take another decade, a few more headline-grabbing abduction tales, and, finally, the television broadcast of the Hills' own story before tales of alien encounters became embedded in the popular consciousness at large.
The stage was now set for Hopkins to emerge as the leading authority on abductions. It happened in 1981 with the publication of his book Missing Time, in which he suggested that the abduction expe rience was much more widespread than anyone had imagined. For Hopkins, the plight of the abductee became a personal crusade, and before long, he would be lecturing on the subject across the country, appearing on one talk show after another, and finally -writing Intruders, a 1987 best-seller that was turned into a television miniseries in 1992. Clearly, no one has done more than Hopkins to bring this strange phenomenon to public awareness. Even more to the point, no one has had greater success in getting scientists and mental-health professionals to take a serious look at abductions. So it's no surprise that when Hopkins began touting his latest case as the strongest evidence yet for UFOs, their alien occupants, and their systematic abduction of human beings, people listened. But as the pieces of the puzzle were revealed, critics began charging that rather than prove his point, Hopkins had fallen victim to the elaborate fantasy of a bored housewife or a complex hoax. Indeed, said his detractors, so outrageous was the tale and so fragile the evidence for it, it had backfired, destroying his credibility and bringing down his body of work like a house of cards. The story certainly is a humdinger, with more twists and turns than California's Highway 1 and more mystery characters than a Le Carre spy thriller. "It's a crazy, endless saga," says Hopkins, including such elements as secret agents, attempted murder, and two high-level political figures, Mikhail Gorbachev one of them. The central character in this case is Linda. She does not want her last name revealed. She lives in Lower Manhattan, and on the very hot spring day I went to meet her, I came to appreciate why the aliens had decided to grab her through the window. It certainly beats penetrating a locked gate and the scrutiny of a guard, then taking an elevator up 12 stories and winding your way through a corridor to her place. When I knocked on the door, I was greeted by an attractive, fortyish woman with brown, almond-shaped eyes and long, flowing brown hair. We sat down on her couch, and as her air conditioner blasted arctic air and she smoked a dozen cigarettes, I was treated to one mind-boggling tale.
It started early in 1988. Linda had just bought Kitty Kelly's biography of Frank Sinatra and another book, which she took to be a mystery. The other book was Intruders by Budd Hopkins. By the end of the first chapter, she was stumped: Aliens had left mysterious implants in people's brains and noses, and that last little bit bothered her. Thirteen years before, she had found a lump on the side of her nose and had gone to a specialist who said it was built-up cartilage left over from a surgical scar. But she had never had any such surgery, even as a child, she said. Linda then took my finger and put it on her nose: Yes, I could feel a very slight bump on her upper right nostril. But there had to be more than this, I thought. There was.
A year later, Linda finally contacted Hopkins, who decided to explore Linda's past with his favorite tool-hypnosis. "It felt kind of strange," Linda says. I'm just a wife and mother. I'm just Linda. UFOs? Naw."
Hopkins says he learned otherwise. He regressed Linda to age 8, enabling her to recall an episode in which she thought she glimpsed the cartoon character Casper, of Casper the Friendly Ghost fame. But under hypnosis, her memory of Casper turned out to be a large, topshaped object that she'd seen flying above the apartment building across the street from her childhood home in Manhattan. Hopkins came to suspect that she had been abducted by aliens, and by June of 1989 had invited her to join his support group for abductees. "I remember sitting there bug-eyed listening to these people," says Linda. "I felt strange the first time, but after that I felt better."
Then, on November 30, 1989, a very agitated Linda called Hopkins to report she had been abducted again. She had gone to bed quite late, at about ten minutes before 3:00 a.m., because she'd been up doing the laundry. Towels and blue jeans for four take eons to dry in her small dryer, she explained. Her husband, who normally worked nights, was on jury duty that week and so was home and asleep in the bedroom. She showered, got into bed, and lying on her back, clasped her hands and began reciting "Our Father" to herself, a habit she carried over into adulthood from her Roman Catholic upbringing. Then she felt a presence in the room. "I was awake but had my eyes closed," she recalls. "I was afraid. I knew it wasn't my husband; he was snoring away. Then I lay there wondering, Did I lock the door? Is it one of the kids " She called out the names of her two boys and finally reached out for her husband. "Wake up," she said, "there's somebody in the room." He didn't answer, and she began to feel a numbness crawl up from her toes. After months in the support group exploring her past abductions, she recognized what that meant. It's now or never; she thought and opened her eyes. At the foot of the bed, says Linda, stood a small creature with a large head and huge black eyes. "I screamed and yelled," she says, "and then threw my pillow. The creature fell back." After that, she has only fragments of conscious memory-a white fabric going over her eyes; little alien hands pounding up and down her back; suddenly falling back into bed.
It was a quarter to 5:00 in the morning when Linda jumped out of bed, ran into the kids' room, and discovered, she says, that "they weren't breathing." Hysterical, she retrieved a small mirror from the bathroom and placed it under their noses. Suddenly, a mist formed on the mirror, she says, and she heard her husband snoring in the other room. They were all alive. Linda, in shock, sat on the floor in the hallway between the two bedrooms until dawn. Later she called Hopkins.
Under hypnosis, Linda revealed that there had actually been five creatures in the apartment. They had led her from the bedroom through the living room and out a closed window, she declared, where, floating in midair, she saw a bright bluish-white light. She was afraid of falling and embarrassed, thinking her nightgown had gone over her head. She moved up into the craft and then found herself sitting on a table. The creatures around her, she says, were scraping her arms-"like taking skin samples," she speculates, and pounding with an instrument up and down her spine-all typical abduction fare, to say the least. Under hypnosis, Linda revealed that there had actually been five creatures in the apartment. They had led her from the bedroom through the living room and out a closed window, she declared, where, floating in midair, she saw a bright bluish-white light. She was afraid of falling and embarrassed, thinking her nightgown had gone over her head. She moved up into the craft and then found herself sitting on a table. The creatures around her, she says, were scraping her arms-"like taking skin samples," she speculates, and pounding with an instrument up and down her spine-all typical abduction fare, to say the least.
Quite atypical is what allegedly happened 15 months later. In February 1991, Hopkins received a typewritten letter from two people claiming to be police officers. Late in 1989, the letter said, the two had witnessed a "little girl or woman wearing a full white nightgown" floating out of a twelfth-floor apartment window, escorted by three "ugly but small humanlike creatures" into a very large hovering oval that eventually turned reddish orange. The object, the letter added, flew over their heads, over the Brooklyn Bridge, and plunged into the East River. They wondered if the woman was alive, though they wished to remain anonymous to protect their careers. They signed the letter with first names only-Richard and Dan.Hopkins was astonished. "I realized immediately that the woman they had seen was none other than Linda," he said. "The account seemed to corroborate the time, date, and details of her abduction. Here, finally, were independent, seemingly reputable witnesses to an abduction." When Hopkins first called Linda to tell her, she replied, "That can't be possible." Then she wondered if she and Budd were the victims of a cruel joke. But all suspicions vanished one evening a few weeks later, she says, when Richard and Dan showed up at her door. "Police," they announced. Linda looked through the peephole and saw two men in plain clothes flashing a gold badge. "So I let them in," said Linda, "and they looked at me kind of funny. When they introduced themselves as Dan and Richard, my stomach dropped to the floor." Both were tall, well-built, attractive men in their forties, she says. Dan sat on the couch, put his head in his hand, and said, "My God, it's really her." Richard had tears in his eyes and hugged her, expressing relief that she was alive. "Budd had warned me not to discuss the incident with anyone," Linda says now, "so all I could do was tell them to talk to Budd." In the year that followed, Linda claims, she had numerous encounters with the mystery duo-at bus stops, outside her dentist's office, even at church. Hopkins himself never had the pleasure of meeting the pair, though, he says, he did eventually receive three more letters from Dan and four letters and an audiocassette from Richard.
In one letter, says Hopkins, Dan explained his need to remain anonymous: He and Richard were not New York City cops, he said, nor on that fateful November night had they been alone. They were, in fact, government security agents and had been escorting an important political figure, whom they would not name, to a downtown heliport; suddenly their car's engine died and the headlights went out. They had seen Linda's abduction unfold after they pushed the car to safety under the elevated FDR Drive.
Dan and Richard just couldn't stay away. One morning, after Linda had walked her youngest son to the school bus at 7:15, she claims she was approached by Richard, who asked her to take a ride in his car. She refused, but Richard's grip firmed on her shoulder. "You can go quietly or you can go kicking and screaming," Linda claims Richard told her. As he dragged her to the open rear door of his black Mercedes, he tickled her, Linda states. "That's how he got me in the car." "They drove me around for about three hours," says Linda, "asking me all sorts of questions." Did she work for the government? Was she herself an alien? They even demanded she prove herself human by taking off her shoes. Aliens, they would claim in a letter to Hopkins, lacked toes. She called Hopkins as soon as they dropped her off at home. "Hopkins told me to call the police," Linda now explains, "but I refused. Who would have believed me?" The notion of surveillance by Richard and Dan eventually spooked her so much that she quit her secretarial job and simply stayed home. To ease Linda's isolation, Hopkins found a benefactor who paid for Linda's limited use of a bodyguard so she could go out.
Unfortunately, the bodyguard was not around for what Linda says was her second major encounter with Richard and Dan. On October 15, 1991, Linda reports, Dan accosted her on the street and pulled her into a red Jaguar. As they drove along, he sometimes put his hand on her knee-"to distract me," Linda suggests, "from following the route to a three-story beach house which I assume was on Long Island." Inside, Dan started a pot of coffee and gave Linda a present: a night gown, she says, "the kind a woman might wear if she didn't have any children, especially sons."
Dan asked her to put it on so he could photograph her in it as she appeared mid-abduction, floating over New York. She refused but finally agreed to put it on over her clothes. As Dan's behavior became increasingly strange, she decided to flee, running out the door and onto the beach. "Dan caught me and picked me up, shaking me like a toy," she says. There was mud on my face, so he dunked me in the water once, twice, three times. I don't think he was trying to drown me, but he kept me under too long." This behavior, which critics of this strange tale have termed "attempted murder," finally ceased. Instead, Dan pulled off Linda's wet jeans and, she says, pulled her down on his lap in the water, rocking her like a baby. Shortly after, Linda reports, "Richard showed up, apologized for Dan, and drove me home."
Linda went straight to Hopkins. "She left sand all over my house," Hopkins says. "A few weeks later, I received a half dozen photographs of Linda, in the nightgown, running along the beach."
That November, the saga became stranger still. While lunching with Linda, a relative who was also a doctor insisted she go to the hospital to x-ray the lump in her nose. The x-ray Linda now presents shows a profile of her head; clearly visible is a quarter-inch-long cylinder apparently embedded in her nose.
"It was weird," says Hopkins' friend Paul Cooper, professor of neurosurgery at New York University, who has examined the x-ray. "I've never seen anything like it." But even Cooper admits the x-ray could have been faked by taping a little something to the outside of Linda's nose. Moreover, as usually happens in UFO stories, this tantalizing bit of evidence vanished as quickly as it had appeared. Soon after getting the x-ray, Linda told Hopkins she'd awakened with a bloody nose. Under hypnosis, Hopkins says, Linda revealed that the aliens had again whisked her away. Later, with Cooper's help, Hopkins had further x-rays taken, but the implant was nowhere to be seen.
Meanwhile, another alleged witness to Linda's spectacular abduction came forward. That same month, Hopkins received a large manila envelope from a woman living in upstate New York. On the outside, in large letters, appeared the words, Confidential, Re: Brooklyn Bridge.
On the evening of November 29, 1989, the woman-Hopkins calls her "Janet Kimble"-had been in Brooklyn at a retirement party for her boss. When she headed home via the Brooklyn Bridge around 3:00 a.m., she told Hopkins, her car came to a dead stop in the middle of the bridge and her headlights blinked out. The same thing, she states, happened to the cars coming up behind her. Suddenly, she saw what she thought was "a building on fire" about a quarter of a mile away. The light was so bright that she had to shield her eyes, she said. Then she realized what she was seeing: Four "balls" had floated out of an apartment window and, midair, unrolled into three "rickets-stricken" children and a fourth, taller, "normal girl-child" wearing a white gown. "While I watched," she wrote, "I could hear the screams of the people parked in their cars behind me." The "children" were then whisked up into the object, 'whereupon it flew over the Brooklyn Bridge and disappeared when her view was obscured by a walkway.
Hopkins says he telephoned "Janet Kimble" immediately and later had lunch with her. The tale told by this "widow of about sixty who once worked as a telephone operator" corroborates stories told by Richard and Linda, he says, ruling out the possibility of a hoax.
In fact, if Hopkins is to be believed, another witness to the Linda abduction was actually the first. That person, he states, is a UFO abductee as well, a woman in her early thirties who claims to have been abducted from her Manhattan bedroom in the middle of the night. She consciously remembers being outside at some point, moving along the streets involuntarily, and seeing 15 to 20 other women all moving zombie-like toward a UFO on the banks of the East River.
When Hopkins tells me this, I can't help but guffaw. He finds my reaction perfectly understandable. "What can I say?" he says. For Hopkins, who is in the midst of investigating another mass abduction in New York City involving a hundred humans, this woman's story is only "a little more bizarre than most." In any event, says Hopkins, this woman at one point looks down the East River and sees two other UFOs in the sky, one a bright orange object at the southern end of Manhattan, ostensibly the one that abducted Linda. The two cases, if believed and taken in concert, shed an ominous light on the humorous name that some critics have bestowed on the Linda case: "Manhattan Transfer." Were the aliens out that night abducting Manhattanites like Linda in droves?
By December of 1991, the end of Linda's saga was nowhere in sight. She was now struggling with an obviously disturbed and persistent human named Dan, who, according to Richard, had been admitted to a "rest home." At Christmas, she received a card and note from Dan. It was a love letter, actually. He told her be planned to leave the "rest home" soon and asked her to pack her toothbrush-he was coming for her. He wanted to learn her alien ways and her special language. "You'll make a beautiful bride," he teased. Linda, however, was not amused.
Dan apparently tried to get Linda in February of 1992, but she was rescued from this dragon by Richard, whom Linda now regards as a knight in shining armor. Linda says that Richard, upon returning from a "mission" abroad, had gone to visit Dan at the rest home, found him missing, and had come looking for him in New York. When he learned that Dan had prepared a passport for Linda and booked two tickets to England, he immediately sought out Linda and managed to spirit her away just in time.
Linda's last contact with the aliens occurred a few months afterward. On Memorial Day 1992, she, her husband, two sons, and one of their guests all awakened at about 4:30 in the morning with nose bleeds. Hopkins says he has subsequently confirmed, through hypnosis, that the incident was UFO related. "I really don't try to convince anybody," says Linda, having come to the end of her story. "I don't expect anyone to believe this because, to tell you the truth, if the shoe were on the other foot, I believe it either. But it happened. It happened." If it really did, I thought, the independent witnesses would confirm it. The prize witness obviously was the VIP, and the word in the UFO community is that Hopkins thinks it was Javier Perez de Cuellar, sec retary-general of the United Nations from 1982 to 1991. "1 will not deny or confirm that," says Hopkins. "I won't say who he is, but I can say this: All the letters from Richard and Dan refer to the fact that there was a third man in the car. And he's written one letter to me, which was signed, The Third Man. I can't make the things he said public, though clearly he's letting me know between the lines who he is." Actually, rumor has it that this third party may be central to the Linda case. According to anonymous sources close to Hopkins, Richard, Dan, and their passenger were all abducted on that fateful day of November 30, 1989, right along with Linda. Their delayed recall of this event supposedly would explain why it took 15 months for them to write to Hopkins, why they were so interested in Linda, and why they are so reluctant to come forward now.
But all that is certain about Perez de Cuellar is that he was in New York City on the days in question. Did he really witness the Linda abduction? Joe Sills, spokesman for the secretary-general at the United Nations, was nice enough to check with the security people but came up empty-handed. "No one that I spoke to," he says, "was aware of him ever being in that part of town at that hour of the morning. It's just not in the kind of schedule that he kept." What's more, he added, Perez de Cuellar could not have been heading for the heliport since he always went to the airport via limousine. U.N. spokesperson Juan Carlos Brand f.checked with Perez de Cuellar directly. "He says he never witnessed any incident," says Brandt. And adding insult to injury, Hopkins can't even prove that the two government security agents, Richard and Dan, are real. He has never met or spoken to them, and all efforts to identify them have proved fruitless. In March of 1991, for instance, Linda looked through six hours of clips of news programs showing security agents at events in New York City. The clips belong to one of Hopkins' contacts in government law enforcement. Near the end of the six hours, Linda spotted a man whom she identified as "Dan." Despite the fact that the images were taken from a distance, involved crowds and the bustling chaos that accompanies visiting dignitaries, she apparently had no trouble making her identification. Those who have viewed the tapes have seen a man who appears to be taking part in official business, and who is in no way out of place or unusual. Near the end of the six hours, while watching a Peter Jennings broadcast of Gorbachev's visit to New York in December of 1988, Linda believes she spotted the person she knew as "Dan." He first appears in a sequence at the United Nations, where he immediately precedes the entourage of Gorbachev and Perez de Cuellar walking down one of the UN's lengthy corridors. He is tall, has short dark hair, wears a blue suit and blue tie, and like others in the security detail, sports a white rectangular ID card on his lapel. He appears again at the end of a sequence on Governor's Island. Here Dan opens the limousine door for Gorbachev, then as Ronald Reagan shakes hands with the translator, Gorbachev shakes hands with Dan before stepping inside the limousine. Upon seeing this, Linda called Hopkins in a panic, thinking Dan must be KGB. "I said it can't be KGB," says Hopkins, "because Gorbachev would never turn to his own man and shake hands with him. It would be like shaking hands with your own chatieur He has to be assigned to the security detail. He has to be American." In the months that followed, Hopkins and Linda made the rounds with their pictures of "Dan" in hand. They went to United Nations security and the State Department, Secret Service, and Russian dele gation offices in New York. At times, Hopkins and Linda would use a cover story so as not to arouse suspicion: "Sometimes we said we were husband and wife and that this was a friend we had met a couple of years ago in Cape Cod and he had said to look him up here when we came to New York," Hopkins explains. But the ploy didn't work. "I've been all over with these pictures," says Hopkins, "and nobody recognizes him."
Then there is the woman on the bridge, "Janet Kimble." She is real person but apparently, after being ridiculed by her own family, wants no part of Hopkins' story. When Hopkins tried to arrange an interview for me, she told him, "I can't help you anymore with this." The final independent witness is the woman up the East River who claims to have participated in the mass abduction of women that very night. But she's another abductee and not truly impartial in the matter.
With no independent witnesses willing to come forward, the case, not surprisingly, has come under intense criticism. Curiously, two of those most critical of the case initially became involved at Linda's request. By early 1992, Linda was feeling so helpless at the hands of her human kidnappers that she decided to seek additional expert help. At the suggestion of New York journalist and UFO researcher Antonio Huneeus, she contacted Richard Butler, a former law-enforcement and security specialist for the Air Force and a fellow abductee, whom Linda had met at Hopkins' support group. Butler met with Linda on February 1, 1992, and brought with him Joe Stefula, a former special agent for the U.S. Army's Criminal Investigations Command and current head of security for a drug company in New Jersey. During the meeting, Linda asked for safety tips on how to protect herself from the dangerous duo, and Butler and Stefula, in order to give useful advice, asked Linda a few questions of their own. Several months later, after Hopkins made the case public at the 1992 Mutual UFO Network annual meeting in Albuquerque, Stefula, Butler, and a friend of theirs, parapsychologist George Hansen, decided the case needed a thorough investigation and began poking around Linda's neighborhood. They spoke to the security guard and supervisor at Linda's building, went to the offices of the New York Post nearby, and simply interviewed residents to see if they remembered anything amiss. No one did. Afterward, Hansen, already the author of a number of stinging critiques of both psi research and its critics, wrote a lengthy skeptical report. The central issue, say the skeptics, is the lack of large numbers of witnesses to this spectacular event. After all, New York never sleeps; there are people out and about even in the middle of the night.
Why did none of the truck drivers at the loading dock of the New York Post just a short distance from Linda's apartment see this blindingly bright object? Why haven't all those other people whose cars were supposedly stalled on the Brooklyn Bridge come forward?
To such questions, Hopkins has a two-fold reply: "The unwillingness of people to report such fantastic experiences is not new. People do not like to be ridiculed," he says. Then there's the invisibility issue, "which just seems to be part of the phenomenon. Many people who you think should have seen these things just don't," Hopkins explains. But Hopkins can't explain everything. For instance, how could "Janet Kimble" know that the words Brooklyn Bridge written on the outside of her envelope would attract Hopkins' attention unless she knew or was related to one of the people in the Hopkins support group, all of whom had heard about the case? The answer, replies Hopkins, is ridiculously simple: "She saw the abduction from the Brooklyn Bridge and thought that the others who had been stalled on the bridge that night might have contacted me about it."
But Butler says the likelier explanation is that Linda fabricated the whole story after reading Nighteyes, a science-fiction novel by Garfield Reeves-Stevens published in April of 1989, just months before her alleged abduction. The novel charts the abductions of an FBI team staking out a beach house in California while a mother and daughter undergo a series of abductions in and around New York City. It concludes with an apocalyptic finale. Butler claims that Linda was very intrigued when the book was brought up at the Hopkins support group meetings. "I guarantee you that's where she got the basis for her story," he says.
Butler admits the book's storyline is different from Linda's but says there are too many parallels to be coincidence. Both Linda and the novel's Sarah were abducted into a UFO hovering over a high-rise apartment building in New York City. Linda was kidnapped and thrown into a car by Richard and Dan; one of the novel's central characters, Wendy, was kidnapped and thrown into a van by two mystery men. Dan is supposed to be a security and intelligence agent, while one of the book's central characters is an FBI agent. Both Dan and an agent in the novel were hospitalized for emotional trauma. Both Linda and the novel's Wendy were taken to a "safe house" on the beach. The list of such parallels goes on and on. "But similarity does not prove relationship," replies Hopkins. Without an important political figure witnessing the abduction-the very essence of the Linda case, he notes-the comparison with the book is meaningless.
Hopkins is not alone. Walt Andrus, international director of the Mutual UFO Network (MUFON), is "absolutely convinced the case is authentic." And David Jacobs, a history professor at Temple University and another researcher on the abduction scene, says the critics debunking the case have twisted the facts. "Over the past several years, I have been a confidant of Hopkins' and, at times, of Linda's. I can tell you that when Hopkins' report comes out, the inaccuracy of the critics will be apparent and the case will stand or fall on its own merits." For Hansen, of course, those merits are slim. And, he says, the hoaxing he believes occurred is the least of it. "For me," he says, "the worst infraction is the reaction of the leadership of UFOlogy. I think this has given us great insight into the mentality-and the gullibility of Budd Hopkins, Walt Andrus, and David Jacobs, the people who really control much of what people actually read about UFOs." Hansen is particularly upset that, given charges of kidnapping and attempted murder, the leadership did not go to the police. "I recognize there is government cover-up on UFOs," he says, "but covering up a so-called Otempted murder and kidnapping, as these guys apparently say they've done-that's quite something else."
Hoping to right the wrong, Hansen has, in fact, sent a letter to the inspector-general's office, Department of the Treasury, requesting that Linda's claims of kidnapping and attempted murder by federal agents be investigated. In February of 1992, the Secret Service contacted Linda and she and Hopkins went down to their World Trade Center offices to speak to Special Agent Peggy Fleming and her supervisor.
Hopkins and Linda told Fleming the story and explained that they didn't know who Hanson was or why he was involved. Linda also objected to what she perceived as Hansen's insinuation that she was against the government. She was not, she said: "I'm a Bush Republican." When I called the Secret Service about their investigation, I was referred to Special Agent James Kaiser, media representative in the New York field office. After reviewing the file on the case, titled "Special Agent Alleged Misconduct, February 10, 1993," Kaiser told me that Linda "was, in fact, interviewed at our office, and it was determined that her allegations regarding U.S. Secret Service agents having any contact with her whatsoever prior to that day were unfounded and baseless. It never happened. She may have been mistaking us for some other agency or organization. Case closed." The case is also closed as far as Hansen, Stefula, and Butler are concerned. They truly believe that Linda is involved in a hoax. "I think she started out with a small lie," speculates Hansen, "a tall tale that grew in the three years that followed. She's been a typist and temporary secretary, so she has had access to a lot of different typewriters undoubtedly. It would not surprise me if there were someone else hoaxing Hopkins as well." Hopkins flatly rejects the hoax scenario. "An efficient hoax has a minimum of moving parts," he says. "You don't want to go into too many details. This has more moving parts than one could possibly imagine." As for Linda, when asked if she had made up this whole scenario, she replied simply, "No. How could this be a hoax? There are too many people involved. In fact," she added, "I take the suggestion as a compliment. They must think I'm pretty intelligent to pull off such a thing." Some details of the case frankly do make me suspicious. For one, the drawings of the abduction that Hopkins received from Richard and the woman on the bridge not only look like they might have been pre pared by the same person, despite the stylistic and perspective differences, which Hopkins has duly noted, but more importantly, both were done in crayons and used the same colors. What's more, to actually meet Linda and hear her talk is to be transported to a world where reality is inverted, where all we have ever known is flipped on its head. Strain your ears, and you can almost hear the chords from Twilight Zone kick in as the underlying chaos of the universe takes control. Fact is, outrageous as I find Linda's story, Linda herself seems sincere. Her emotions-fright, anxiety, and anger-appear genuine. I'm not alone in these impressions. John Mack, a professor of psychiatry at Harvard University Medical School, whom Hopkins confided in as the story unfolded and who now knows Linda well, insists that "there is nothing unauthentic or devious" about her. Gibbs Williams, a New York psychoanalytic psychotherapist with a quarter century of experience, has tested Linda and also dismisses any notion that Linda might be hoaxing the whole affair. "You would have to have the kind of conspiratorial mentality of Richard Nixon and be able to think sixty-two moves ahead," Williams says. "Quite frankly, Linda doesn't appear to have that kind of mind; she does not have that kind of abstracting capacity." He notes further that her emotive capacity-her anger, crying, and tendency to get carried away-is not consistent with the psychopathic cool mentality of the hoaxer and liar. "My conclusion," he says, "is that from her perspective, she is telling her truth." dog 1
Perhaps Jerome Clark, vice president of the Center for UFO Studies (CUFOS) and editor of the International UFO Reporter, sums up the controversy best: "This is an absolutely extraordinary claim, and the evidence that you need to marshal to support such a claim simply is not there." Hopkins promises it will be when his book appears. Until then, Linda stands alone, ambivalent about her fame. On the one hand, she seems to revel in the notoriety. She attends national UFO meetings obviously dressed to impress. "To tell you the truth, it wouldn't be that bad if I didn't have a family," she admits to me.
Yet she also feels victimized. "There are a lot of Italian Americans and Chinese in my neighborhood, and many of them even laugh at joggers," she says. "Imagine if anyone in the area heard that I was abducted by aliens." "Worst of all," she continues, "those critics took away the safety of my family by taking my real name and publishing it. We are sitting ducks for any crackpot in the UFO community. They know where I live. They know what I look like." She has already taken her name off her intercom system, and she fully expects to move when Hopkins' book on the case comes out. "I don't know what's worse," she says finally, "what Richard and Dan did, what these three stooges from New Jersey did, or what the aliens did." Or what Hopkins has done, I might add. After all, he promised so much and has delivered so little. Poor Linda.
http://www.philipcoppens.com/cortile.html Did the most important UFO abduction ever – proving the physical reality of the aliens – occur in late November 1989? Or was it instead a carefully constructed plot to disinform and discredit?
Philip Coppens
Possibly the most sensational abduction case, the so-called ‘Brooklyn Bridge Abduction’, was slowly built up to be the “best evidence” for the legitimacy of the UFO and UFO abduction phenomenon. It involved the abduction of a woman from her New York apartment in late 1989; the event was witnessed by several people… which seemed to include the then Secretary General of the United Nations Perez de Cuellar. Too good to be true? Of course…
The case centres on an abductee
named Linda Napolitano (aka Linda Cortile), who was one of the
subjects being studied by Budd Hopkins. Hopkins had nurtured the UFO
abduction from his publication in 1981 of Missing Time onwards,
hoping that his report on Napolitano – published in 1996 as
Witnessed – would form the crowning moment of his years of
dedication to – and the validation of – the phenomenon.
The case dramatically changed scope
once Hopkins had received the letter from the two policemen,
“Richard” and “Dan” – in February 1991, 15 months after the
abduction, which launched him on a search to contact the two
officers, who refused to meet him. Budd Hopkins The “policemen” had claimed that they contacted Hopkins as ever since they had witnessed the abduction, they could not get the image out of their head. As to their reasons why they stayed out of reach, Hopkins learned that they were acting as security guards for a famous political figure. The two men, along with the then anonymous political figure, were heading towards the New York heliport when the car had stopped mysteriously on its own. The two bodyguards and the politician then witnessed the abduction. It almost seemed as if the abduction had been staged so that one of the most influential men in the world – the Secretary General of the UN – would see the alien reality himself.
That same year, 1991, the case
seemed to become even more solid when Hopkins received a letter from
a woman (later nicknamed Janet Kimble) saying that while she was
passing over the Brooklyn Bridge at 3 AM on November 30, 1989,
somehow all of the cars’ lights and engines on the bridge failed,
including the streetlights on the bridge. She therefore got out of
her car to see what had happened and saw, along with other drivers,
a woman floating, twelve-stories high, into a hovering UFO above her
apartment building.
Even though Witnessed only appeared
in 1996, Hopkins had gone public with the case much earlier. Seeing
that Richard and Dan only entered the scene in February 1991, when
they sent him a letter, Hopkins first wrote about the incident in
the September and December 1992 issues of the MUFON UFO Journal and
had made a presentation at the July 1992 MUFON symposium, where
Linda had been present and had spoken to the assembled audience. It
was a weighty podium, as three years earlier, Moore had used the
forum to admit his involvement in the Bennewitz affaire and his
status as an agent of disinformation
However, an objective reading of
the evidence reveals many inconsistencies and too-good-to-be-true
coincidences that make it clear that Hopkins had, in fact, been set
up - that the story had been concocted specifically in order for him
to make the right connections and gradually uncover this ‘perfect’
case. The first corner of this lid was lifted when Hopkins learned
that the “policemen” – now “Secret Service agents” were, in reality,
CIA agents.
In the end, even UFO believers
admitted that the involvement of CIA operatives in this case is a
“problem”, lending “credence to the argument that the incident is a
very elaborate hoax. […] The inclusion of these men raises the
possibility of some form of government involvement, perhaps to
undermine a real encounter or to inject damaging disinformation.
Perhaps it is in the best interest of the government to allow, even
engender, the alien myth in American society.” Nevertheless, the
believers often argue that the government does not seem to have a
clear reason for this, and therefore they advise that disinformation
cannot be the right reason.
According to Richard Tomlinson, an
ex MI6 [British Intelligence] operative, “During the run-up to the
1992 Secretary General elections, [MI6] mounted a smear operation
against the Egyptian candidate, Boutros Boutros-Ghali, who was
regarded as dangerously Francophile by the CIA. The CIA are
constitutionally prevented from manipulating the press so they asked
MI6 to help. […] [MI6] planted a series of stories to portray
Boutros-Ghali as unbalanced, claiming that he was a believer in the
existence of UFOs and extra-terrestrial life. The operation was
eventually unsuccessful, however, and Boutros-Ghali was elected.” Here is testimony that the CIA in 1992 was mounting a disinformation campaign directed towards the highest echelons of the UN, in depicting the Secretary General as a UFO believer. The Linda Napolitano abduction fits within this timeframe (1991), including the target (UN Secretary General) and the modus operandi (UFOs); it is a perfect match. Furthermore, the actions of the two agents – spreading disinformation – is allowed within the bailiwick of the CIA, as the press was indeed not manipulated; but the CIA manifesto says nothing about manipulating UFO abduction researchers, does it?
In a perfect world, Witnessed could
have made a real impact and could have convinced many of the reality
of the UFO phenomenon. What it in the end lacked was the name of
Perez de Cuellar featuring in its pages, as that would have resulted
in a yes or no from the by then former Secretary General. But the
name was of course missing for legal reasons – though according to
Hopkins he largely agreed with what he had seen, he did not want to
say so in public. The inclusion of his name must have opened up his
publisher to a major law suit, which was no doubt why his name did
not go in the book. The Secretary General was not discredited and
the hoax had missed its maximum impact.
The question is: who was
responsible? Did Richard and Dan somehow gain access to Linda’s
story and decided to “elaborate” on this? This would qualify this as
straightforward disinformation. Had Linda invented everything? Many
agreed that it would be impossible for her to pull this off, as
specifically Richard and Dan seemed genuine people and true CIA
agents. Could a private citizen employ two CIA agents to help a
woman perpetrate a UFO hoax? It would take an extreme amount of
“guts” for this woman to do so. Furthermore, it seems unlikely that
she would wait more than a year before bringing Richard and Dan on
the scene. However, though Budd Hopkins and Linda Napolitano were manipulated, they were both easy and willing victims. The term self-delusion comes to mind, whereby the biggest carrot ever dangled in front of a UFO researcher and an abductee made them blind to any logical thinking. This became very apparent in early 1993.
One of the first critics of the
case were Joseph J. Stefula, Richard D. Butler and George P. Hansen,
who published their critique in January 1993. They based their
analysis on the public presentations about the incident that
Hopkins
had done by that time. They were furthermore the first to name
Javier Perez de Cuellar as the mystery individual involved.
At the 1992 MUFON convention,
Stefula attended the convention and noted that some of the
statements directly contradicted what Linda had earlier told Stefula
and Butler. They then contacted Hopkins in an attempt to resolve
these matters, but Hopkins declined to meet them, saying that he
didn’t want to discuss the case until his book manuscript was
submitted. Nevertheless, a meeting did occur on October 3, 1992.
As early as the MUFON symposium,
Linda was asked if she had reported the kidnapping to the police.
She said that she had not and went on to say that the kidnapping was
legal because it had to do with national security. As early as the
conversations with Butler in early 1992, Linda had expressed
concerns about her personal safety. A meeting was arranged with
Stefula because of his background in law enforcement. Despite
claiming she was kidnapped twice, nearly drowned and feared further
problems could be in stall for her, she refused to contact the
police, even though apparently Hopkins had given the same advice as
Stefula: make an official complaint.
To quote the three researchers: “If
she was afraid, why didn’t her husband contact authorities? The most
plausible reason is that if a report was filed, and her story proved
false, she could be subject to criminal charges. Linda’s failure
here raises enormous questions of credibility.”
To quote the researchers: “We
inquired if Hopkins had asked the guards of the apartment complex
whether they had seen the UFO. He indicated that he had not done so.
This is quite surprising, considering that the UFO was so bright
that the woman on the bridge had to shield her eyes from it even
though she was more than a quarter mile distant. One would have
thought that Hopkins would have made inquiries of the guards
considering the spectacular nature of the event.” When they asked
about the weather conditions on the night of the abduction, Hopkins
stated he had not checked. Such details convinced the three
researchers that Hopkins’ research of the basic story had been more
than sloppy. In short: all the possible hard evidence had not been
researched by Hopkins, who had merely concentrated on hypnosis
sessions with Napolitano and trying to track down Richard and Dan,
and convince de Cuellar to endorse the project. Jacobs, Andrus and Clark had – apparently as a world exclusive – been told that the “Third Man” was de Cuellar. Butler and Stefula however presented an outside expert who for many years had served in dignitary protective services. He described the extensive preplanning required for moving officials and the massive co-ordination that was involved. Many people and networks would be alerted if there were any problems at all (such as a car stalling, or a delay in passing checkpoints). “His detailed presentation seemed to take Hopkins aback. The consultant listed several specialized terms used by the dignitary protective services and suggested that Hopkins ask Richard and Dan the meaning of those terms as a test of their knowledge, and thus credibility.”
Later in the meeting the question
arose about a financial agreement between Linda and Hopkins. Stefula
noted that Linda had told him that she and Hopkins had an agreement
to split profits from a book. Hopkins denied that there was any such
arrangement, and Linda then claimed that she had deliberately
planted disinformation. It is an intriguing admission, whereby a
person when caught out telling a lie, states that the she
deliberately planted disinformation. Why? Hopkins, it seems judging
from his character, would be the last to ever ask such a question.
A UFO believer, Hopkins instead
spoke the party line, suggesting that anyone who would criticize him
now that he had gone public, “had” to be a member of the
intelligence agency, sent out specifically to discredit the truth.
It is an intriguing allegation, which in essence means that Hopkins
a public warning to anyone who doubted his research credibility,
stating he would be labelled a government agency set out to destroy
the truth from coming out. Indeed, “Big Brother” tactics are not
just practiced by government authorities… UFO researchers have used
them for many decades, with moderate success. True to form, when
Hansen published his research on Linda Napolitano, Hopkins by the
time had already “suggested” that Hansen was a CIA agent. To quote
the accused: “This was not an offhand remark made to a friend in an
informal setting; rather this was asserted to a woman whom he did
not know and who had happened to attend one of his lectures (member
of MUFON in New Jersey who feared future repercussions if her name
was mentioned, personal communication, November 7, 1992).”
Linda was abducted into a UFO
hovering over her high-rise apartment building in New York City.
Sarah was abducted into a UFO hovering over her high-rise apartment
building in New York City. Budd Hopkins is a prominent UFO abduction researcher living in New York City and an author who has written books on the topic. Charles Edward Starr was a prominent UFO abduction researcher living in New York City and an author who had written books on the topic.
Linda and Dan were abducted at the
same time and communicated with each other during their abductions.
Wendy and Derek were abducted at the same time and communicated with
each other during their abductions.
Photographs of Linda were taken on
the beach and sent to Hopkins. In Nighteyes, photographs taken on a
beach played a central role.
We can only wonder whether someone
somewhere used this novel as the script along which to develop some
part of “reality”. The answer has to be yes. What had all the marks of becoming one of the defining UFO cases ever, turned in just another incredible UFO case. That is what it is. It was too ambitious to pull of; Butler, Stefula and Hansen were good researchers, but not exceptional. They tore the entire story apart. Hopkins, Andrus and Clark apparently then tried to dissuade the men from continuing their research, Hopkins even “ordering” them to stop – which, if anything, made the researchers wonder in what type of reality lived, where Hopkins somehow thought he had some form of authority over another individual.
In the end, the situation is one of belief. Did alien beings make a statement by abducting a woman in the centre of New York, at the same time they abducted the Secretary General, only to have the incident erased from the memory, only to be recovered under hypnosis, and relying on the skills of Hopkins – which are not very impressive – to piece them together? Or did someone manipulate Hopkins into making the proper connections, tying a mundane case of one of his abductees into a phenomenal event. This would not merely have been the first witnessed UFO abductions of this type (the Travis Walton case and others are of a different nature, in which an incident occurs and immediately, there are or are not eyewitnesses. In the case of Linda, the testimony was 15 months apart and apparently independently made); it had the Secretary General of the United States as the witness. In the knowledge of the lengths that the CIA went to discredit Boutros-Ghali, knowing Richard and Dan were more than likely CIA agents, is it perhaps more likely they tried to put pressure on de Cuellar? Even though Hopkins apparently tried to make him talk, behind the scenes surely someone could “threaten” de Cuellar that his name would be ousted in major publications unless he did “this” or “that”? Perhaps the entire story was even payback for a decision de Cuellar had previously made, in which he managed to upset certain people… But most likely, he never upset any Grey alien…
(3)
Funny Business at the Swanton Novers Rectory
Aug. 30th, 1919. Swanton Novers Rectory, near Melton Constable, Norfolk, Englander - oil "spurting" from walls and ceilings. It was thought that the house was over an oil well, the liquid percolating and precipitating, but it was not crude oil that was falling: the liquids were paraffin and petrol. Then came showers of water. Oil was falling from one of the appearing-points, at a rate of a quart in ten minutes. Methylated spirits and sandalwood oil were falling. In an account, dated September 2nd, it is said that receptacles had been placed under appearing-points, and that about 50 gallons of oil had been caught. Of thirteen showers, upon September 1st, two were of water. The circumstance that is of most importance in this story is that such quantities of oils and water appeared here that the Rector, the Rev. Hugh Guy, had been driven out, and had moved his furniture to another house. London Times, September 9-"Norfolk Mystery Solved." We are told that Mr. Oswald Williams, the "illusionist," or the stage magician, and his wife, who were investigating, had seen the housemaid, aged 15, enter the house, which for several days had been unoccupied, and throw a glass of water, which they had salted, to a ceiling, then crying that another shower had occurred. They had shut off the water supply, in the house, and had placed around glasses and pails of water, salted so that it could be identified. As Mr. and Mrs. Williams told it, they, in hiding, saw the girl throw the salted water, and rushed out of their hiding place and accused her. Conceivably all for the sake of science, and conceivably with not a thought of publicity-values, Mr. Williams told newspaper reporters of his successful stratagem, and put completeness into his triumph, by telling that the girl had confessed. "She admitted that she had done it, and finally she broke down and made a clean breast of it."
Times, September 12-girl interviewed by a representative of a Norwich newspaper-denied that she had confessed-denied that she had played tricks of any kind-denied that the Williamses had been in hiding-told that she had gone to the house, with Mr, and Mrs. Williams, and that a wet spot had appeared upon a ceiling, and that she had been wrongfully accused of having thrown water. "According to the little girl's statement, she was at no time alone in the kitchen" (London Daily News, September io). "She insists that she was the victim of a trick, and that great pressure was put upon her to admit that she had thrown salted water to the ceiling. `I was told,' she said, `that I would be given one minute to say I had done it, or go to prison. I said that I didn't do it.' "
Having an interest in ways in which data are suppressed, I have picked up some information upon how little girls are "pressed." No details of the "pressure" were published in the London newspapers. Norfolk News, November 8-that, in the Holt Petty Sessions had come up the case of the girl, Mabel Louisa Philippo -spelled Phillips, in the other accounts-complainant against Mrs Oswald Williams, who was charged with having assaulted her. The girl said that Mrs. Williams had time after time struck her in the face, and had called attention to her face, reddened by blows, as evidence of her guilt. Mrs. Philippo testified that, when she arrived at the Rectory, her daughter's first words were that she had been beaten. The Rev. Hugh Guy testified, but he did not testify that he was in the house, at the time. According to details picked up from other accounts, he was not in the house, at the time.
It is said that legal procedure in Great Britain is superior to whatever goes under that name in the United States. I can't accept that legal procedure anywhere is superior to anything. Mr. Guy, who had not been present, testified that he had not seen the girl struck, and I found no record of any objection by the girl's attorney to such testimony. The case was dismissed.
And then a document closed investigation. It was a letter from Mr. Guy, published in the Times, September 13- Mr. Guy wrote that he had tasted the water, upon the ceiling, and had tasted salt in it: so he gave his opinion that the girl had thrown the water. Most likely there is considerable salt, reminders of long successions of hams and bacons, on every kitchen ceiling.
According to Mr. and Mrs. Williams, the girl had confessed. But see Mr. Guy's letter to the Times-that the girl had not confessed.
So, because of Mr. Guy's letter, the Williamses cannot be depended upon. But we're going to find that Mr. Guy cannot be depended upon. To be sure, I am going to end up with something about photographs, but photographs cannot be depended upon. I can't see that out of our own reasoning, we can get anywhere, if there isn't anything phenomenal that can be depended upon. It is my expression that, if we are entering upon an era of a revised view of many formerly despised and ridiculed data, there will be a simultaneous variation of many minds, more favorably to them, and that what is called reasoning in those minds will be only supplementary to a general mental tropism.
The investigation was stopped by Mr. Guy. The inquiry-shearer or the mystery-bobber, was this statement, in his letter-"It would have taken only a small quantity to create the mess." The meaning of this statement is that, whereas gallons, or barrels, of oils, at a cost of hundreds of dollars, could not be attributed to a mischievous girl, "only a small quantity" could be. Flows of frogs-flows of worms-flows of lies-read this: London Daily Express, August 30 - "The Rector, in response to a request from the Daily Express, for the latest news, reported as follows: " 'To the Editor of the Daily Express: " 'Expert engineer arriving Monday. Drippings ascribed to exudations, on August 8, of petrol, methylated spirits, and paraffin. House evacuated; vapor dangerous; every room affected; downpour rather than dripping-Guy.' "
In the Daily Express, September 2, is published Mr. Guy's statement that he had been compelled to move his furniture from the house. According to other accounts, the quantities were great. In the London Daily News were published reports by an architect, a geologist, and a chemist, telling of observations upon profuse flows. In the Norwich newspapers, the accounts are similar. For instance, the foreman of an oil company, having been asked to give an opinion, had visited the house, and had caught in a tub, two gallons of oil, which had dripped, in four hours, from one of the appearing-points. Just how, as a matter of tricks, a girl could have been concerned in these occurrences is not picturable to me. The house was crowded, while the oil-expert, for instance, was investigating. But it does seem that unconsciously she was concerned. The first of the showers occurred in her room.
Ceilings were bored and ripped off, but nothing by which to explain was found. Then another stage magician, Mr. N. Maskelyne, went to Swanton Novers, with the idea of exposing trickery. Possibly this competition made the Williamses hasty. But Mr. Maskelyne could find nothing by which to explain the mystery. According to him (Daily Mail, September 10) "barrels of it" had appeared, during the time of his observations. Just how effective, as an inquiry-stopper, was the story of the girl and the "small quantity," is shown by the way the Society for Psychical Research was influenced by it. See the Journal S. P. R., October, 1919. Mr. Guy's letter to the Times is taken as final. No knowledge of conflicting statements by him is shown. The Society did not investigate. "A small quantity" can be explained, as it should be explained, but "barrels of it" must be forgotten. Case dismissed. If the Rev. Hugh Guy described at one time a "downpour," which had driven out him and his tables, chairs, beds, rugs, all those things that I think of seriously, because I have recently done some moving, myself, and then told of "a small quantity," why have I not an explanation of this contradiction? I wrote to Mr. Guy, asking him to explain, having the letter registered for the sake of a record. I have received no answer. In the London Daily Mail, Sept. 3, 1919, are reproduced two photographs of oil dripping from different ceilings. Large drops of oil are clearly visible.
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