What really happened in the Roswell UFO incident? The Roach Abduction (1973)
Harder was impressed by a couple of details. Because the majority of the story was reported while in a hypnotic state, Harder believed it added a note of authenticity. Harder was aware that a subject can confabulate under hypnosis, but he was impressed by her emotions. Her emotions, and her repeated worries about the children, suggested to Harder that the abduction was real. Of course, Harder had reinforced that idea several times telling her that she must be worried about her children.
(And yes, that would be a natural assumption, but Harder erred in saying it to her on many occasions while she was in a state of hypnosis.) There are a number of other very disturbing aspects in this case, however. First, and foremost, is the way the case reached the hands of researchers. Roach, after having read the story of an abduction in Saga’s UFO Reportwrote to me in care of the magazine. Although Roach said she had read no books about UFOs and abductions, it is clear from her first letter that she had read magazine articles
about them.
There are a number of parallels between what was reported in that article Roach read and what Roach said. For example, both report a domed disc, male and female beings involved, long hair, and elongated eyes. There are other similarities as well.
The problem for researchers is that there is a known source of contamination. It can’t be suggested because there are similar items in both stories they both must be true. What can be said is that Roach could have picked up that information through her reading of the Llanca abduction tale.
The other point that must be made is that the family had discussed this among themselves for nearly two years. Almost from the very beginning, the family was talking about alien intruders. The story of Hickson and Parker was being reported nationally at that time Roach thought she was abducted. Hickson and Parker claimed an abduction on October 11, and according to various records, news of the case was reported, nationally, the following morning.
According to The A.P.R.O Bulletin, September-October 1973, it was at 9 a.m. on October 12, that APRO Headquarters received the first call about the Hickson-Parker abduction. After learning the details, Coral Lorenzen tried to find a psychologist to go to Pascagoula to interview Hickson and Parker, but none of the consultants could get away fast enough. The job fell to James Harder, just as it did two years later.
Harder interviewed both men and used hypnosis to attempt to learn more. After the sessions, he told APRO Headquarters that it would be nearly impossible for the men to simulate the feelings of terror while under hypnosis without some kind of outside stimulus. According to Harder, the terror both men displayed seemed to be quite real.
This was almost the same thing that Harder would say about the Roach case two years later. In fact, during the first session, Harder was concerned by a lack of any real emotion. Roach related the material and answered the questions in a flat, cold voice, as if reporting on a TV program she had seen.
But throughout the first session, Harder told Roach, “It may be a little bit frightening.” Later he asked, “Is there something that you think would be frightening to remember?” Not long after that he said, “…It might have been a very frightening experience at the time.”
In the first session, Harder told Roach it was frightening, though she had suggested no such thing herself. In later sessions the fright and the fear is evident. It is clear that Harder, through his technique and questioning, told Roach that she was to be frightened and that she picked up on the suggestion.
Harder was guilty of providing other information to Roach and leading her in other directions. For example, Roach mentioned there were machines and buttons. Harder then asked, “What kind of machines? Did they look like typewriters, computers?” When she responded, “They looked like computers,” Harder asked, “What made you think they looked like computers?” Although Roach said, “Because they had wavy lines going through them,” a better answer might have been, “Because you just mentioned it.”
That’s a little point, however. Implanting the idea that there were computers on an alien spacecraft isn’t of much importance. Much more important is that during the interview, Roach said, “I don’t remember being examined but I know I was.”
This contamination can be traced directly to the Llanca article published by Saga’s UFO Report. Llanca mentioned some of the things that Roach had described during her session. The examination by the aliens is an obvious one.
The elongated eyes, which Roach mentioned several times was also mentioned by Llanca. He mentioned the eyes several times as if they were of overwhelming importance. There is one other interesting parallel between the Llanca story and Roach’s report. Llanca said, “There are many viewing devices, many… two viewing screens. In one, stars can be seen.”
Roach, in her first session said, “It’s very bright [in the room]… Door’s on my right hand side and a look out, you can see out at the stars, not the top but the side, toward the ship.”
Harder asked, “You can see stars? Is it clear?” “No, I can see stars. It’s as if you could see the stars. It looked like a lot of technology.”
Later, as Harder and Roach, discussed what she was talking about, she said that she could see the stars on a screen. She wasn’t looking outside the ship, but at a screen near the top of the room in which she stood. In other words, she is describing a scene straight out of the article about Llanca.
But when the Llanca case failed to provide a lead, Harder was there with a leading question. After Roach mentioned that she knew that she had been examined, Harder said, “You think you might have been physically examined?”
Roach had said nothing about a physical exam and to that point had been talking about a mental examination. Later, he asked, “Did you get the impression that you were up on a table?”
He also told her “They probably were just taking a little skin sample or something superficial, cells or something?” There had been nothing in the interview, to that point, to suggest that the aliens were collecting any kind of tissue samples, but Harder implanted the idea.
Worse still, during the interview, Harder asked, “Did they put a needle into your stomach or anything like that?” Roach said that she remembered nothing like that during the first session. She did say, after Harder’s leading question, “They put needles in me in places.” But she said nothing about needles until Harder asked his question.
Later, as mentioned, Harder told Roach about Betty Hill’s experience with needles into the stomach. After she awoke from the final hypnotic session, she told Harder that a needle had been pressed into her stomach. Clearly this was a detail implanted by the sloppy work of the hypnotist.
It is equally clear that Harder was looking for something specific. He wanted to be told that Roach had a needle pressed into her. He was trying to draw a parallel between the Hill abduction and the Roach case.
The one area that Harder believed to be an important area of corroboration probably demonstrates the suggestibility of abductees. When Bonnie mentioned a human with the aliens, Harder thought it important. However, looking at the transcripts and notes carefully, it is clear that Bonnie was present during one session when her mother described the event.
Remember, both Roach and her daughter were in the room for the final session. Harder put both under, telling Bonnie to concentrate on what she could see. He then interviewed her mother, who provided a description of lying on the table, of the human with the aliens, and the scene as she remembered it. Later Bonnie told the same story with the same details. It’s no mystery how she learned of it if she hadn’t witnessed during an abduction. She had just heard her mother tell Harder all about it.
Harder, throughout the sessions, was telling Roach exactly what he wanted. At one point, he said to her, “That’s a very intelligent thing for you to recognize.” Later, he told her, “It would be very helpful for me to know, as a scientist, what kinds of things that they are looking for…” He also told her that he found some things interesting or very interesting.
The later sessions demonstrate the influence that Harder exerted. He mentioned something, either in the first session, or in private conversations held between the sessions, and those things appear later. Studying the transcripts now, it is very easy to see what ideas were implanted by Harder and what ideas were contamination by the Llanca article she read.
The Roach abduction is a clear case of contamination. The event that precipitated it was the prowler in October 1973. But with the country talking about UFO abduction, and headlines from various newspapers telling readers that the scientists (Harder and Dr. J. Allen Hynek of Northwestern University) believed the tale, it is not a stretch for Roach to leap from a prowler to alien intrusion.
The prowler, however, might never have existed outside of Roach’s mind as the police suggested to me. Science now recognizes a phenomenon know as sleep paralysis. According to various published figures, somewhere between a quarter and half the population have experienced an episode of sleep paralysis. In about eighty percent of the cases, the people have reported some sort of entity or creature in the room with them.
Sleep paralysis occurs either just upon falling asleep or just after waking. It is a paralysis that prevents any movement, and often gives the victim the impression that something heavy is on the chest making respiration difficult. The paralysis lasts a short time and the victim usually falls back to sleep. The next morning, he or she remembers the event, remembers the fear, and remembers the vague creature that lurked in the shadows.
Pat Roach, it seems, suffered a classic manifestation of sleep paralysis right down to the little man in the corner and the two creatures standing over her. And then, suddenly, the little men were gone and the house erupted into confusion. Roach had no idea what had happened to her and began to search for an answer.
Although she claimed that the object had landed in a nearly empty field next to her house, there was no evidence recovered from that field. No one along the street, which had dozens of trees that would have made a landing difficult, had seen anything that night. Reports of other neighbors and their children on the craft went unverified, though I talked to many of them. No one seemed to have any memory of any event that would suggest they had been part of an alien abduction. Remember here that Roach had some conscious memory, but no one else reported any unusual happenings on that same night.
Roach’s search for an answer led her into the world of alien abduction. The theory explained the little men, the invasion of the house, and the other details. The problem was that no evidence, other than the somewhat fragmented testimonies of her children were ever offered, and they had been under her influence for nearly two years before investigators arrived.
There seems to be little evidence that anything extraterrestrial happened to Roach and her family. The tale came out of a desire to believe, the contamination of the news media and, more importantly, to the scientist who conducted the hypnotic regression sessions. It is obvious that he wanted a report that would underscore and validate the Hill abduction and he unconsciously provided the details for Roach to do that.
While it might be that the circumstances around the Roach case were unique, and now that it seems logical that Roach had suffered an episode of sleep paralysis, it wouldn’t have happened without the unconscious and sometimes unsubtle coaching of Dr. Harder. To fully understand alien abduction, it would be necessary to learn just how pervasive such coaching might be.
What is important to learn from this case is that sleep paralysis can be the explanation for some, but certainly not all cases of alien abduction. As some researchers have pointed out, and rightly so, some witnesses, such as the Hills, were abducted while wide awake. If there is a terrestrial explanation for the Hills, it does not lie in the direction of sleep paralysis.
Secondly, it must be noted that Harder did, unfortunately and probably unconsciously, lead Roach into the details that she hadn’t gotten from the magazine article. His desire to validate the Hill case with another, similar case becomes obvious when the transcripts are read.
Third, it much be noted that the stories offered by the children were not as complete or as detailed as that told by their mother. A logical conclusion to be drawn is the children, in talking with their mother picked up those details from their mother, but hadn’t observed anything themselves.
In the end, this case doesn’t involve an abduction. The answer is terrestrial and it seems that there will be no new evidence in the case. And even though we can draw this conclusion about this case, it is not an explanation that can be applied to all reports of abduction. The search for answers must be continued in those other cases but the Roach abduction report can be removed from the unidentified category.
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-1/