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                                  SKYBALD
                   Some Comments on the Goodland, Kansas
                    Double Abduction of November 7, 1989
                            by Martin Kottmeyer
John S. Carpenter has written up this case in at least two papers. The
first was Double Abduction Case: Correlation of Hypnosis Data and appeared
in the Journal of UFO Studies, new series # 3 (1991) pp. 91-114. The second
was Investigating and Correlating Simultaneous Abductions and was delivered
at the Abduction Study Conference held at M.I.T. June 13-17, 1992, and
recently published in Andrea Pritchard, et. al. Alien Discussions (North
Cambridge Press, 1994, pp. 246-54). The two individuals involved are
referred to by the pseudonyms of "Susan" and "Jennifer." It has since been
revealed that "Susan" is really Skye Ambrose. Though the pseudonyms will be
retained in this discussion for convenience, I felt it worth mentioning for
the benefit of people like myself who first became aware of the case from
an appearance on television where Skye used her own name. The poetry of an
UFO percipient being named Skye sticks in the mind.
Briefly, the story is that Susan and Jennifer were returning home to St.
Louis from a conference (nature undisclosed) in Aspen, Colorado when,
outside Flagler, Colorado around 11:40 p.m., they noticed a bright object
ahead of them in the east, very high up and slightly to the south. They
observed the object to be flashing, showing colored lights on it, and
making occasional little movements. They also noticed the sudden appearance
of many smaller green lights near the brighter UFO. They watched this for
nearly an hour, pulling over their car several times to get a better look
with the lights off.
After 12:40 a.m. a ball of light suddenly descended to within a hundred
feet of their vehicle. It hovered in a field to their right. Below the
light appeared a V-shaped "cone" of "fluffy" white light which reached
toward the ground with colored rays of pastel pink, blue, and lavender.
These beams established the edge of the cone and they criss-crossed
slightly at the bottom point. They also noted "black waves" through the
lower part of the car's windshields reminiscent of heat waves on the
horizon of a desert highway. They felt a rush of adrenaline and pulled back
onto the highway. They subsequently both felt suddenly exhausted and
irritable with a desire for silence. Stopping at a rest area farther along
they could still see the bright object. They arrived at their motel
destination in Goodland, Kansas, soon after at 2:30 a.m.
In due course it was determined that the 72-mile drive to Goodland from
Flagler took three hours. Thus rose the specter of missing time and a
potential alien abduction. Hypnosis was performed yielding abduction
stories from both UFO witnesses. Various correlations between their
hypnotically-derived testimonies were tallied up and found to be
impressive. Additionally, some details matched obscure bits of other
abduction accounts. Carpenter concluded the case argued for the "bizarre
reality" of the UF0 enigma. M.I.T. conferees offered no on-the-spot
criticisms of the case. Comment fell along the lines of such double
abductions as this being enormously important and extremely common. C.D.B.
Bryan devoted a dozen pages of his account of the M.I.T. conference --
Close Encounters of the 4th Kind -- to popularizing the case. He asks how
does one explain it? (p. 140.) Fair question, but it may be answerable. The
Goodman, Kansas, case almost has the air of nostalgia about it, a throwback
to an earlier time when abductees still had conscious recall of having
encountered a UFO before they had their regressions. I'm not forgetting
Allagash and Gulf Breeze, but it still seems bedroom visitations are more
the norm nowadays. It is nice to be reminded that alien nightmares and
regression tales still have their ties to the UF0 phenomenon proper, but
this is a double-edged sword. UF0 sightings were always tricky things. As
investigators like Allan Hendry used to admit, upwards of 90 percent of
sightings were explicable in prosaic terms. They tended to involve
misinterpretations of things like stars, advertising planes, balloons, and
such.
It is an inevitable question to wonder if the Goodman, Kansas, sighting
might have a prosaic solution. This is especially so because the initial
bright object was seen for close to an hour and that is usually a danger
flag that a star or planet is being mistaken for something more mysterious.
Even worse, Carpenter admits there were no other UFO reports in that part
of Kansas at that time despite the fact it is described as being high up in
the sky. This doubt elevates to practical certainty when one checks the
star chart for the evening and learns that high up in the east and slightly
to the south was sitting Jupiter shining at magnitude -2.6, brighter than
anything else except the first quarter moon down near the horizon.
Carpenter realizes Jupiter is a possibility but dismisses it with a
peculiar remark. He said, "It was only half as bright as Venus (-4.4) and
less likely to draw as much attention." What renders the comment ridiculous
is that Venus had set hours earlier and was not around for visual
comparison. A magnitude of -2.6 would impress any amateur astronomer as
unusually bright and there are ample examples of misinterpretations
involving lesser magnitude objects than this.
Carpenter correctly grants the flashing lights, the colors, and little
motions are interpretable as the effects of scintillation and autokinesis,
but states the witnesses are adamant the bright UF0 was not a star and that
it paced their car. Pacing however is also a common illusion with stars
seen from moving objects. (Allan Hendry, The UF0 Handbook, Doubleday, 1979,
p.27.) The smaller green lights seen next to the main object likely include
stars like Castor and Pollux which were located very near Jupiter that
evening. The green color may, but not necessarily, be from green tinting
commonly part of car windshields.
I suspect the real main reason Carpenter rejects the involvement of Jupiter
despite the clear match in position is that he considers the part of the
experience involving the close encounter in the field with a light bearing
the cone and emitting "black waves" as being with the same stimulus.
Jupiter could not be responsible for those phenomena. But something else
could have. It was Susan's description of the cone when I saw her on
television which first made me suspect this was not a real alien
experience.
cont...
--- msgedsq 2.0.5
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