Subj: 4                     1/3      Conf: (195) UFO
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Date: Wed, 15 Apr 1998 20:08:55 +0000
From: United Kingdom UFO Network 
Organization: United Kingdom UFO Network
Subject: {91} part 3 - United Kingdom UFO Network
To: UFO@MAELSTROM.STJOHNS.EDU
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 U K  /  /  //  ___/ /  /  '                               15th April 1998
     /  /  //  /    /  /  /  N E T W O R K                 part 3 Issue 91
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The United Kingdom UFO Network - a free electronic magazine with
subscribers in over 40 countries.
This issue comes in 4 parts. If any part is missing please mail:
ufo@holodeck.demon.co.uk giving the issue number. The issue will be
reposted to you. Please put the details as below in the subject
section e.g.  Repost {91} part 1, part 2, part 3 or part 4.
________________________
They can produce visions of the Earth blowing up on vast TV screens
and present these images to Jason and his mother simultaneously.
Mostly, such visitations are benign. But once, claims his mother,
Ann, they came to her in the night and painlessly induced a
miscarriage, implanting a voice in her mind that told her: 'It's all
for the best.'
There is much more in the same vein. Their story, told in a
compelling book by a respected and talented British journalist,
author of 13 books and an expert in the field of the paranormal,
could well be a best- seller.
Such accounts have already made fortunes in America, where alien
abductions have become a media sensation and have involved
mainstream scientists. Already, TV and film companies are said to be
interested.
All of this has been highly profitable. The Andrews family have been
mostly broke for years, sometimes living on less than 15 pounds a
week. The only asset they have ever owned is the scrubby little ten-
acre smallholding, near the village of Borough Green, which they
bought nine years ago for 25,000 pounds.
They live in a nearby council house. But every day the family move
up to their much-loved scrap of land and tend to their livestock - a
few ponies and a flock of geese.
Now all that has changed. The money will soon be rolling in. They are
already guaranteed some 60,000 pounds from the book, including money
from The Sun, who serialised it this week. They have their own agent
and the celebrity chat show circuit beckons.
'I'd be a hypocrite if I said the money wasn't nice,' said Ann. 'But
we never wanted to go public, and I never saw it as an opportunity
to make money.
WE THOUGHT long and hard about doing the book, and it was only after
big family discussions that we were persuaded it would help others.
The book's author, Jean Ritchie, is also quick to point out that if
she had never stumbled on the story in a copy of a magazine about
UFOs, the Andrews family would have remained in obscurity.
'I thought it would make a good magazine piece,' she said. 'But when
I met Ann and read her diary I saw that it was far more important
than that. I began as a total sceptic, but now I have an open mind.
'I feel they are telling the truth. I checked everything they told
me, including the medical records. I have the names of all the
doctors who were involved and there is no doubt they were mystified
by what the boy was telling them.
'There is no doubt Jason was suffering from strange injuries and
illnesses at the times when he claims he was abducted. There is
clear evidence of scarring and strange marks on his body. And
throughout it all Jason was consistent.
'One thing I am sure of: Ann and Paul Andrews are not liars out to
make money.'
There are two things to remember with alien abduction stories. One
is that they are almost comically derivative. If you have read one
you have read them all.
All aliens look the same. They all have saucer eyes, pointed heads
and are inherently benign. If they were monsters no one would ever
get back to their beds. Nothing new in the literature has appeared
in half a century, since the first B- movies of the Forties and
Fifties.
Second, the victims of abductions cannot lose. It is impossible to
disprove a paranormal invention. All they have to do is get their
story right and stick to it. If witnesses say you never left the
house that night, you simply devise a scenario when every one else
in the house was zapped into frozen immobility for several hours.
Why didn't the video camera and the tape recorder set up to capture
the aliens see the bright lights and hear the noises? Because they
knock out all electronic equipment. And so on. For each reasonable
question there is an unreasonable but complete answer. The aliens
have all power.
So are the Andrews just liars and fantasists trying to earn a little
media money? The answers to these questions are fascinating and
complex.
AND the answers, in turn, pose intriguing questions about so much of
the burgeoning UFO industry. There is no doubt Jason was a disturbed
little boy. He suffered from bad dreams and he sleep-walked. Both he
and his older brother, Daniel, told their mother they had seen
things in the night.
Jason's schooling was a disaster. He began to be disruptive and was
threatened with expulsion. He was forced to undergo psychiatric
counselling.
Up until that point neither of his parents made any claims of alien
intervention. Then Paul got some books from the library. And they
began to immerse themselves in the cult of alien visitation and
abduction.
>>> Continued to next message
 * SLMR 2.1a * You don't fool me!  You're not REALLY an idiot!         f
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