What Really Happened at Roswell? The Roach Abduction (1973)
Typical of the abduction reports as they have become known was that of Pat Roach, a divorcee living with her children in a small Utah town in the fall of 1973. Early on the morning of October 17, she called the Lehi, Utah Police to report a prowler, either in the house, or just outside it. By the time the police arrived, the prowler was long gone, and a search of the neighborhood failed to find anyone who might have been prowling the area. Police noted the report in their log, noted the negative results, and thought nothing more about it because there was, quite frankly, nothing more for them to do.
Two years later Roach wrote a letter to one of the old men’s magazines, Sagaexplaining that she now believed that alien creatures had invaded her home. She believed that she, along with three of her six children had been taken from the house, had been aboard an alien spaceship, and then returned to the house. She said that she had awakened to chaos as the children cried and the cat howled. She wanted to know exactly what had happened to her and thought that the reporters of Sagaand their companion magazine, UFO Reportmight be able to answer a few of her questions.
In this time frame, about thirty-five years ago, few people had reported such interaction with the alien creatures. Contactees, men such as George Adamski and George Van Tassel, claimed they had flown to various planets inside the Solar System on alien ships at the invitation of the flight crews, had seen the wonders of science on these other worlds, but always returned without the proof needed to convince most that the experiences were real. Few people outside a small circle of friends believed the tales.
Then, in 1961, Barney and Betty Hill, a couple from New Hampshire suggested they had seen a UFO that paced their car for miles in the White Mountains, one dark night. Eventually, they arrived home but were hours later than expected, and under hypnosis, recalled the terrifying events of an alien abduction. Betty Hill remembered a modified gynecological exam, remembered small, humanoid creatures who seemed surprised by Barney’s false teeth, and remembered conversations with the ship’s captain. Returned to their car after the examination on the alien ship, they had been ordered to forget all that had happened, and remembered nothing consciously until Betty began having vivid dreams about some sort of UFO experience several days later.
But, one tale of alien abduction, told by a single couple, did not prove much of anything. There were those inside the UFO community who believed the tale was invented by Betty Hill, confabulated really, whose nightmares about the UFO sighting in the weeks to follow were the result of an overactive imagination rather than an actual experience. The story was too wild to be true.
But then, other, similar stories began to emerge. An Ashland, Nebraska, police officer Herbert Schirmer reported that he had seen a UFO while on patrol late one night in December, 1967. His sighting was investigated by the University of Colorado UFO study, sponsored by the Air Force, and chaired by Dr. Edward U. Condon. Scientists with what became known as the Condon Committee noted a discrepancy in the times written in Schirmer’s log book, and the times as outlined by him for the investigators. There were, according to the scientists, specifically Dr. Leo Sprinkle, twenty minutes missing. Sprinkle wanted to use hypnotic regression to learn if anything related to the UFO sighting had happened.
Under the prodding of the scientists including Sprinkle, Schirmer described a brief encounter with the alien creatures. He suggested that his patrol car had been “pulled” to the side of the road and then up a hill to where, consciously, he remembered seeing an alien ship. Now, under hypnosis, he claimed that his car was stopped by the alien creatures and that one had reached inside, touching him on the neck. As the creature stepped back, out of the way, Schirmer “came right up out of the car [and] was standing right in front of him.” This creature asked Schirmer, “Are you the Watchman of this town?” Schirmer replied, “Yes, I am.” They then headed for the ship and entered it. Schirmer was given a tour, and provided with limited information about it.
On the second level, which, according to Schirmer, they floated up to, was “…like a red light… and this big cone spinning, and there was all kinds of panels and computers and stuff like this; and there was a map on the wall, and there was this large screen, like a vision screen… and he walked up and he pressed some buttons, and he pointed toward the stars and said, ‘That’s were we’re from… it was a map of a sun and six planets… he never said exactly where they were from or anything…” The alien told Schirmer that they were there to “get electricity” and that the “extracted electricity from one of the power poles there…” When the short tour ended, the alien leader said, “Watchman, come with me.” They climbed back down, out of the craft and walked over to the police car.
As they approached, the alien said, “Watchman, what you have seen and what you have heard, you will not remember. The only thing that you will remember is that you’ve seen something land and something take off…” The logic of this seems inverted. Why provide a tour, why show Schirmer a “map” of the aliens’ home system, and then tell him he will not remember it? Why let him remember anything at all? Had it not been for Schirmer’s memory of the alien craft, Sprinkle would not have found the twenty minute discrepancy in the log and not used hypnotic regression to undercover the abduction experience.
The Hill and Schirmer abductions, as well as others that would be reported in the 1960s and 1970s, were considered “targets of opportunity.” The victims were out in isolated areas, normally late at night, and there were no other witnesses available to corroborate the story. The victims were taken simply because they were there, to be had, and the chance that the aliens would be seen by anyone else was remote.
Following that pattern, and of critical importance in understanding the phenomenon of alien abduction, is the report from Dionisio Llanca in Argentina. Although now almost universally accepted as a hoax, Llanca’s adventure was reported first in the APRO Bulletin, the official publication of the private Aerial Phenomena Research Organization, and later in Saga’s UFO Report.
Like the others, Llanca claimed he was driving late at night when a flat tire forced him to the side of the road. As he worked, a bright light caught his attention, and he spotted three people, two men and one woman, who were not really human. He was taken onto their ship, examined, given some sort of important message for the human race, and returned to Earth.
Pat Roach, the Utah mother, read that article in UFO Report, and she believed that she too had been abducted by alien creatures. It was that tale that inspired her to write to me, care of the editors of the magazine, explaining, “I think I know how entire families can disappear.” She then wrote, “We had a visit from someone about 11:00 at night in the middle of October 1973.”
She wrote that there had been stories of a prowler in the neighborhood but that he seemed quite harmless. It seemed that he would unlock doors or gates and leave them unlocked. He took only food, and the few witnesses who saw him said that he was “dressed, ‘like for Holloween.'”Roach then explained what had happened that night.”…I lay on my living room couch and my four-year-old son lay beside me dragging a blanket along. I fell asleep and when I awoke the entire house was in commotion. The cat was screaming. My son was across the length of the living room staring at the space between the bookcase and drapes hysterical saying, ‘Skeleton, skeleton’.” After she quieted her son, she heard a noise outside that sounded as if someone was dragging the branches of a tree across the side of the house.
Something shook the windows. Although Roach wrote that she wasn’t terribly frightened, she couldn’t bring herself to look outside for the prowler. The next morning, when she inspected the fence around the empty field next to the house, she discovered the middle strand of barb wire had been broken. Standing there, near the fence, she told her oldest daughter, “They must have made us forget.”
Debbie, the youngest daughter, according to Roach’s letter, said that two men had walked her out of her room the same way they had walked her sister out. “She thought she floated out rather than walked… She did say that she was afraid they wouldn’t bring her back. She said there was a man in the corner of the living room and he smiled at her.” Apparently Debbie and the man had a conversation. “She said there were no lips on his mouth and he didn’t talk with his mouth but with his ‘head.’…She said in the spaceship they told her she wouldn’t be sick anymore. She said the spacemen looked like Indians but with shorter hair. There was an ‘Indian’ girl with a long dress in the spaceship seated at some controls.”
Debbie said that she had seen “a lot of children from our neighborhood in the ship. There seemed to be a few from each family on the block. She said one child was lying on the examining machine and another was standing in a small room off the large entrance room. She said they told her to tell no one but her family about the incident.”
Roach, in her letter to me, wrote, “When I tried to think if I could remember anything about the night it was very hazy. All I could remember was a bright light coming into the living room. I remember walking up steps like that of an airplane with a solid grey steel wall to the side.”
In the text of the letter, Roach also reported that family members had been moved. Of Bonnie and Debbie, her daughters, she wrote, “She [Bonnie] woke in bed and Debbie, the six-year-old, was gone. She awoke again and their places were switched in the bed.”
Reporting what her daughter had said, Roach wrote, “She also said Kent [her four-year-old son] was across the room covered by a blanket and I was on the couch. He would never voluntarily leave my side so someone had moved and covered him.”
Next to the Roach house was an empty field. Although partially hidden from the rest of the neighborhood by trees, the side next to the street was open and would allow those living across the street to see anything in the field. Roach wrote, “She [Debbie] said there was a spaceship parked in the field. It was saucer shaped with port holes on the sides. She said as she walked up the steps entering the ship she heard a “beep beep and didn’t remember anything [sic] except pressure on the top of her left arm. She said she returned through the fence and as she did cut her chin on the wire. She did have a cut in the morning that hadn’t been there the night before. As they took her through the dining room she noticed the clock said 1:00 A.M.”
She finished the letter, writing, “It was hard to believe although I knew ‘something’ had happened that night so I placed Bonnie and Debra in separate rooms and told them to draw a picture of the ‘spacemen’. The drawings were just alike except the triangle at the top of the suit was reversed in Debbie’s drawing.”
Here was what would eventually be seen as a classic abduction case that demanded investigation. It held everything that the researcher could want, from the multiple witness point of view, the suggestion of independent, neighborhood corroboration, and even the possibility of police documentation. Most importantly, this was the first time it had been reported that the aliens had entered the house to take the people out to the ship.
It was Roach who suggested hypnosis and the Aerial Phenomena Research Organization (APRO) Headquarters had the solution. Coral Lorenzen, one of the organization’s founders, suggested Dr. James Harder, APRO’s Director of Research, as the scientist to use hypnotic regression. Harder was not a psychologist but a civil engineer who had been trained in the use of hypnosis and who had investigated other abduction reports.
On July 8, 1975, Harder and I visited Roach at her home in Utah. Harder and I discussed the case with her for a short time, he told her about hypnosis and what it was, and then suggested a session to put her at ease. He wouldn’t ask any questions about the abduction during that first session. He would just put her under so that she would experience hypnosis with no pressure.
Two hours later, with Roach relaxed, the first of the three hypnotic regression sessions began. Harder put her under and then told her, “Get the feeling of concentration, going back in time, get that feeling that you had that day, that you were going to bed… tell me, tell men that… you’ve got the feeling of being on air… What was the feeling you had.” “I’m surprised by… It was a bright light…” “Did you go to the window?” “No. I was in the living room and I was on the couch… I sleep there occasionally… You know two figures were standing over me. I was lying down, you know, and they’re bright. They’re skinny. Whatever they were, they’re skinny and they look like they’ve dressed up in all white. People that would be in the service or something? “What gave you that idea?” asked Harder. “Their uniforms.” “Did they talk to you at that time?” “No.”
Harder continued to probe trying to determine who was present in the room. Once he had established that some of Roach’s children, but not all of them, were with her in the living room, he wanted to know what happened next.
But Roach claimed she couldn’t remember anything else. She mentioned that one of the men was in the corner. “He’s standing by us… I don’t remember what happened.” Harder told her that she could remember, pressing her on this point and she finally said, “They have a machine that they carry. They’re very businesslike, and they hurt my arms because I don’t want to go anywhere… They seemed to grasp me on my upper arms… I don’t remember going out the door… I see bright room, big bright room… They’re standing around.”
Harder had her describe what she could see around her. She was in a big, round room and she could see stars. “It looked like a lot of technology. It’s all machines and buttons and on the wall.” Finally she said, “That’s all I want to remember… I don’t remember being examined but I know I was and that’s what bothers me.” “You think you have been physically examined?” “Yes.” “Probed?” asked Harder. “Somebody touched you?” “Yes.”
https://scienceandspace.com/ufos/roswell-ufos-and-the-unusual-the-roach-abduction-1973-part-2/
https://scienceandspace.com/ufos/roswell-ufos-and-the-unusual-the-roach-abduction-1973-part-3/