The Memory Path of Leah Haley
Leah Haley was disturbed—not in the clinical sense but in the way that any of us are niggled at by peculiar memories we can neither explain nor fully recall. A native Alabaman, Haley had been flashing back to fragments of childhood memory suggesting that she had been abducted by a UFO. She found the memories disconcerting, and entered hypnosis therapy in 1991 with John Carpenter, a psychological therapist trained in clinical hypnosis and MUFON’s director of abduction research from 1991 to 2000. Haley and Carpenter engaged in fourteen hypnotic sessions in 1991, and as Haley’s memories grew clearer, she knew she had been taken by extraterrestrials. Just as startling as the abduction itself was Haley’s now-restored memory of being aboard the UFO when it was shot down by—as she discovered later—jet fighters scrambled from Eglin Air Force Base, located south of Alabama in Florida’s central panhandle.
The clarity of Haley’s abduction memories, if not unique, surely marked her as a significant abductee, and thus an important figure in abduction study. Her 1993 book Lost Was the Key (published by Haley’s own Greenleaf Publications) is widely read by UFO enthusiasts and scholars. Initially able to investigate only her own story and forced to ignore others, Haley plunged into general abduction research. Her zeal was such that her past threatened to overtake her present. The intensity of her effort to get at the truth triggered family dissension and led, Haley is sure, to the failure of her marriage. She also began to feel that Carpenter had let her down, and finally accused him of exploiting his secondhand link to the CIA by selling her case file. This struck Haley as sinister, and she became convinced that something more than just her long-ago abduction was in play.
In a disquieting turn, Haley’s abduction memories began to assume new forms.
Elements other than aliens entered her thoughts. There must be a reason, she thought. She noted during research that the general UFO-abduction timeline corresponded to dramatic advances in the application of electromagnetic frequencies (EMFs). In time, Haley became convinced that she, and other abductees—perhaps every one—had not been abducted at all, but subjected to government-mandated EMF mind control. Haley pointed out that exposure to the frequencies alters the victim’s consciousness, and can even implant voices in the brain.
Assisted after 1993 by her second husband, a UFOlogist named Marc Davenport, Haley continued to research her past, and the experiences of other abductees. Her 2003 book Unlocking Alien Closets: Abductions, Mind Control and Spirituality introduced her followers to her revised, conspiratorial turn of mind.
Physical discomfort dogged Haley in June 2000, when she heard voices in her head, and entered what she felt was an altered state of consciousness. Soon, she was temporarily paralyzed. Not long after, a helicopter hovered near her house.
In 2005, Haley’s husband and collaborator, Marc Davenport, died of cancer— cancer that Haley feels was induced by the government.
During a 2011 interview with UFO Trail blogger Jack Brewer, Haley said that after spending thousands of dollars and years in alien-abduction research, “the only evidence I found was of human-instigated mind control. . . .” Haley and other abductees had been guinea pigs. “That’s where the evidence pointed,” she told Brewer. “I didn’t find any concrete evidence—no absolute concrete evidence—of aliens, but plenty of evidence of human intervention” [emphasis in original transcript].
Despite her awareness of having been physically tortured by military personnel, Haley perseveres with her story, becoming the central figure in one of the most convoluted of all UFO abduction cases.