The Uninvited: An Exposé of the Alien Abduction Phenomenon
by Nick Pope
Dell pb, 1999,
Appendices, Bibliography, Index
A Review by
Gene Stewart
An oldie but a goodie. The first half of this book is as clear-headed, concise, and rational as anything you’ll read on this topic. He defines his terms, discusses specific cases in detail, and keeps it all grounded in context of a broader set of questions.
From 1991 to 1994, Nick Pope was in charge of the Britain’s Ministry of Defense’s investigations into UFO sightings, encounters, and retrievals. This book was first published in 1997, a follow-up to his first book, Open Skies, Closed Minds, which is now difficult to find.
Mr. Pope knows his material well and has files to back him up, along with many interviews, surveys of locales, and other investigative data turned up in the years since his stint as MoD’s X-Files chief. He is convinced something is going on but does not automatically buy into the ETH, or Extra-Terrestrial Hypothesis, which opts for off-Earth, outer space origins for these uninvited beings.
Beings and craft they are, Pope concludes; the evidence is overwhelming, despite what literally crazy skeptibunkers continue to howl. Sightings involving people on the ground, pilots in the air, airplane-mounted radar and cameras, other cameras on the ground, and ground radar demonstrate that, no, it was not Venus mistaken by drunks, nor a weather balloon turning right angles at 3000 mph. It was something solid, real, and unknown.
We cannot even begin to approximate such performance envelopes with our most advanced craft, not even the experimental type. For one thing, physics denies us. For another, materiel; our craft would shatter, warp, or otherwise fly apart if we even tried such maneuvers.
Pope states the primary goal of this book is to offer a solid overview of the abduction phenomenon for those unacquainted with it. He also includes other cases which he has investigated subsequent to leaving MoD. It’s two compelling books in one.
In the process of defining his terms, Pope discusses why he chooses to use ‘abduction’ rather than the more trendy ‘visitor’ terminology. He is unconvinced they are benign, essentially, and views the kidnaping of minds and bodies by Other beings an intrusion. They are intruders into our world, as judged by our experiences of them. He suspects many who view these Others as benign or even beneficial may be suffering a kind of otherworldly Stockholm Syndrome.
The alien abduction phenomenon is wide-ranging and varied, with many surprising aspects, such as the possibility of a breeding program between these Others and us Humans. Multi-generational abduction experiences are common, it seems, and it has been claimed that it’s not abduction because these Others got our permission to perform their experiments long ago, either in each person’s childhood or, more sinisterly, from a national governmental agency speaking on our behalf without our knowledge or consent.
Another oddity: Human beings, often in uniform, are reported aboard the craft we call flying saucers, which come in so many shapes and sizes as to boggle the mind. Some conclude this proves military involvement, if not proving the Pentagon is behind it all. This, as mentioned, is so unlikely as to be inconceivable. We just don’t have the right stuff.
As to military involvement, Pope’s investigations, official and subsequent, reveal our troops to be baffled, often alarmed, and officially bound to keep quiet about the fact that they are impotent against these UFO things. Our skies are not ours to control, nor are airbases where nuclear weapons are stored, nor are missile bases, nor rocket launches, nor bio-chemical munition stores.
What percentage of an alien abduction is psychological,what part is physical, if any? Have external observers seen people being, say, levitated in beams of light that fall short of the ground or eased through walls and windows? Amazingly, yes.
Part Two of the book discusses other cases Pope has pursued on his own. Fascinating aspects, such as boosted psychic or ESP abilities resulting from alien abduction, or implants, thought to monitor location and possibly vital health signs, or the likelihood that these Other beings have been with us all along.
It is the thesis that the Other beings are what were once called the Faerie Folk, or the Wee Folk, or the Gentry, or pixies, brownies, sprites, dryads, naiads, gnomes, trolls, and so on in our varied global folklore. Are they, Pope asks, from right here, right now, all along? Is interdimensionality involved?
Much of the observation of both UFOs and the Other beings, ranging by the way from the Grays of Whitley Strieber’s Communion cover to the Nordics, the Insectile, and of course the notorious Reptoids from Zeta-Reticuli, indicate other dimensions, not vast interstellar distances, are linked to the amazing things they seem able to do.
From Neolithic cave paintings to Renaissance portraits and beyond, images of both UFOs and the standard types of Other beings resonate through all cultures. In myth, stories of both sky people and ground people proliferate across the continents. Some of the myths outright specifically claim space beings came to Earth and gave us civilization.
Is this a warped ancestral memory of a comet or asteroid impact that changed us from hunter-gatherer groups, our stable social model for hundreds of thousands of years, to agricultural, urban-centric “civilized” groups, the city-states and eventual nations we know today? Is it metaphor? Or are such claims blunt fact, fact so wild we now choose to see it as myth.
Ancient Egyptian folklore and myth is, all by itself, perfectly up-to-date space alien crazy, and it’s among the oldest. The Nephilim and Anunnaki of Sitchin come to mind, as do the feathered serpent “gods” in Mayan imagery, or flying dragons in Chinese myth, and so on. Even the Oracle of Delphi was a huge serpent, catered to by the famous vestal virgins.
Were all these things simply interpretations of Other beings, perhaps space aliens of different races?
This is a compelling book full of provocative cases handled concisely in detail, with much to consider. It is meant to start a reader into a complex, sometimes swampy field of inquiry but it is also a straight-forward account by a clear-thinking, ordinary man who began as a full-on skeptic and who, by dint of seeing so much evidence, now understands that there are Other beings we do not understand.
Unless some of us do and aren’t saying, which is another fascinating possibility he touches upon. Grab a copy and read it, it’s worthwhile.
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