While perusing some articles on UFO/ET “abduction” cases, I stumbled across this most interesting take on what I thought would be a stream of experiencer stories of classic E.T. abduction. Not the case at all. This turns out to be a description akin to what has been popularly described as shadow people – those billowy, smokey, blackish silhouettes that have reportedly invaded and perplexed perhaps millions of unwitting experiencers.
The following article written by experiencer Mary Kerfoot is an extremely well theorized assessment of this anomalous phenomenon that I am convinced is a common phenomenon among the human species and has been for many, many years.
In my research into the area, I have spoken with many shadow people experiencers and have both written about and interviewed on the subject at some length. As is often the case, when I do speak with individuals who have had these encounters their ideas fall into several different though related categories:
- “I thought I was the only one having these experiences.”
- (When I explain the experience and the term that is used – Shadow People) – They say, “I’ve never heard of such a thing.”
- “I believe they are ghosts….or…demons…or Djinn…or…E.T.’s.”
The latter statement; a preconceived idea or assumption as to the nature and origin of these visitors is typically derived from some familiar context the experiencer can tangentially relate to, based on what they’ve been told in the past. There is understandably this incredible reach to decipher this oddity of reality, and a fairly broad swath of explanations as to who and what shadow people are.
The following assessment takes on a much different hypothesis about the possible nature of both these beings and the experiencers (or abductees as she refers to them) who encounter shadow people. Several statements that are made by Mary peaked my interest in particular. I’ve highlighted these statements in bold to underscore what stood out most for me.
My thanks goes out to Mary for such an intelligent assessment about a phenomenon that still plagues most with a great sense of ambiguity.
A Black Hole Being
and Anomalous Experiences Reported by Alien Abductees
By Mary Kerfoot, B.S., M.S.
Experimental Psychology, B.S. Mathematics
I was born in Ottumwa, Iowa in 1942. I received my B.S. degree in experimental psychology at the University of Iowa and a Master’s degree in experimental psychology at Lehigh University. Four years later I went back to school to obtain a degree in math at Michigan Tech University specifically to begin a career in computers. I have worked in the computer industry for the past 21 years. I currently work as a systems analyst. I live in Schaumburg, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago. I have two sons, ages 28 and 30, with my late husband, a retired Ph.D. structural engineer. Our eldest son is a programmer like me and our younger son is completing his Ph.D. in electrical engineering, following the path of his father.
I have been interested in UFOs all of my life. My first consciously remembered encounter with other-worldly Beings is from the age of two and a half. It was not until four years ago that I became actively involved in the UFO movement. A significant event at that time caused me to want to remember more of my UFO related experiences. This event propelled me into a course of action that seemed to fulfill an educational purpose. I joined MUFON as a research specialist in 1992, and I am on the board of directors of Operation Right To Know. In 1993, I demonstrated in front of the White House to encourage our government to end UFO secrecy.
Frequent ongoing visitations prompted me to form a support group for other people like me. The name of our group is the Chicago Area Center for Encounter Support. I have been dedicated to promoting public awareness for the past four years. In 1994, I organized and funded an outdoor event at the Kluczynski Federal Building plaza and lectures at the Field Museum. Our speakers were Robert Dean and Stanton Friedman. I organized and funded a similar event in 1995, at the Federal Building, College of DuPage, and the Museum of Science and Industry. Our speakers in 1995, were John Carpenter, Yvonne Smith, AJ, and Edward Carlos, Ph.D.
The reason I was prompted to write this is because I was immediately drawn to the cover of the Sept./Oct. 1994, issue of IUR. I was very interested in Kelly Cahill’s description of the black Being as “a hole in matter.”Though Kelly’s account of this Being was the first I remembered seeing in the literature, I believe this entity type may be more commonly encountered than reports suggest. Motivated by Kelly’s description and sketch, I wrote to a fellow experiencer to relate my encounter with the dark, shadowy figure. As I was writing, he called to talk about his own encounter thirty-some years earlier with the same type of Being. He was reminded of this incident after being contacted by Kelly. Although we were both fully aware of this entity type in our lives, we had not yet got around to discussing it even after exchanging voluminous correspondence about our experiences. I had never felt a strong desire until now to learn more about this Being, perhaps because of its vagueness and tendency to slip to the back of my mind. I wonder how many other experiencers have noticed a similar lethargy or disinterest in delving into the nature of enigmatic entities with whom they may have had contact.
I am consciously aware of only one encounter with this very unusual Being. The experience occurred one night forty-seven years ago when I was six years old. I lay frozen in terror as the Being stood and waited patiently beside my bed. I had experienced this irrational, seemingly conditioned terror response several times before. The first time was at the age of two and a half in the presence of an intense white light outside my bedroom window. I saw this entity as a dark, shadowy figure, very much an absence of light, but without the red, glowing eyes described by Kelly. I also felt its presence. Despite my feelings of terror, I did not think of the Being as sinister. At that age I did not attempt to find an interpretation for my experience or fit it into a familiar framework because I had not yet developed such a system of reference. I simply accepted it as something in my life. When I was older, I applied a psychological interpretation to the Being as looking dark and shadowy because its true form must have been too terrifying for me to behold.
I thought it unusual for me to make the visual connection with the Being on the cover of IUR because I generally do not relate well visually. My vision has been affected by a corneal disorder (keratoconus) resulting in poor vision in one eye and the loss of the other eye through numerous corneal transplants, a cataract extraction, and detached retina surgeries.
Some of my most significant encounters have occurred at the time of these surgeries and one, in particular, took place when I was effectively unable to use my eyes. I was confined to a face-down position after detached retina surgery. This encounter was prefaced by a sudden stillness of sound and movement. I then heard several squawks of terror from our family cockatoo. I felt as if I ran head-long into a wall of the alien presence as I sprang to the bird’s rescue. My initial response was the old, conditioned terror which caused me to freeze in my tracks. For the first time, I was consciously aware of being given a choice and an opportunity to confront my fear and learn to break through the barrier of conditioning. I made the decision to go forward and participate with full consciousness in what was about to transpire.
I stepped into the hallway with my face down to commune with the Being. Suddenly, there ensued a barrage of poltergeist activity and considerable remote viewing. (I have experienced instances of spontaneous remote viewing in non-encounter situations in the past. In addition, during a hypnosis session I was aware of the mechanism which allowed me as a child to see without eyes.) Of interest at this time was the ‘switched-off’ condition of our dog who looked dead and displayed a frozen-in-time characteristic. She showed no sign of molecular vibration and seemed to be suspended in a state even more still than death.
After my interest was peaked by Kelly’s account, it was inevitable that I would begin to think more in depth about the nature of the black-hole entity and the implications of its strange properties. I wondered if this Being intentionally projected itself as an absence of light as a means of low-profile camouflage. Instead of a hole as Kelly thought of it, perhaps the Being was composed of ultra dense matter. An entity which is sufficiently dense in our environment might trap light and other forms of energy and have a very low vibrational frequency. Is it possible that this is the antithesis of what some experiencers report as incorporeal or light Beings whose frequency of vibration is very high? I believe we should consider the possibility that density and vibrational frequency can be manipulated by an advanced technology to produce such variations.
Learning how the encounter experience is interpreted in the absence of visual cues may help us understand the relationship between alien abduction experiences and religious, near-death, out-of-body, and childhood sexual or ritualistic abuse experiences, as well as visitations by Beings described in folklore and mythology. There is a need for fresh data which enriches and expands our stereotypical view of the encounter experience. There is also a need to reexamine existing data from a fresh perspective.
Abduction research could move forward in significant new directions by looking beyond our comfortable existing models and exploring alternate paradigms suggested by some of the following:
Anomalous Experiences Reported By Abductees
- Sporadic, often very specialized memory impairment. (Also known as “screen memories”)
- Spontaneous episodes of invisibility.
- Passing through physical obstacles that the experiencer is on a collision course with. (Well known in out of body experiences)
- Spontaneous episodes of dissociation producing a gap in consciousness; a unique sense of non-existence that feels like you have slipped into some other plane of reality for a time. This should be differentiated from functioning on ‘automatic pilot.’
- Simultaneous awareness of events or objects in multiple planes of reality; a variation on the dissociation (above) in which consciousness remains functional in several dimensions simultaneously. (Also known as parallel realities or dimensions)
- Free-fall for a long distance with no injuries. For example, falling from a cliff or an airplane and being drawn gently toward the Earth as though encapsulated in a reduced gravitational field.
- Encountering two dimensional objects which behave like three dimensional objects.
- Full, unobstructed view of a luminous, glowing sphere that should be partially hidden by trees or shrubs. However, the trees or shrubs seem not to exist between the object and the viewer.
- Materialization and dematerialization of objects in the environment.
- Feeling an emotional, spiritual, or psychological ‘alien state’ either telepathically, empathetically, or remembered on your own.
- Rearrangement of objects in the environment to effect a sudden, miraculous rescue of a person.
- Frequent occurrence of striking synchronicities.
- Consciously remembering UFO related material by reliving the incident through any of the senses or abstract conceptualization, as though it were happening at the moment.
These seemingly improbable events are really occurring to normal people who believe they have had abduction experiences. These and other unusual phenomena have been discussed in support groups throughout the country and warrant serious investigation. Research should be open enough to entertain the possibility that these phenomena are not, in all cases, attributable to intervention by external agents. Abductees themselves may be altering their immediate environment at an unconscious level to produce effects such as alterations in time or a change in vibrational frequency. The techniques required to effect such change may have been learned or acquired during the encounter experience.
Some of the symptomatology such as memory impairment and sporadic invisibility, may be the result of exposure to elements such as electromagnetic fields in the alien environment. For example, a hypnotherapist in Santa Barbara, California, named Donna Higbee described instances of spontaneous invisibility that were reported by abductees in her support group and by other researchers across the country. She published her report in the September, 1994, issue of the “MUFON UFO Journal.” In her report, Donna speculated that this effect may be the result of passing through a space craft’s force field. In other anomalous experiences the effects seem not to occur randomly, but arise specifically in response to emergency situations. Some experiencers seem designed to convey knowledge about the visitors or knowledge about higher levels of existence to which mankind may aspire. Some effects demonstrate special properties of alien technology.
AS WE BEGIN TO BROADEN OUR UNDERSTANDING OF THESE EXPERIENCES AND OTHER INTELLIGENCES IN THE UNIVERSE, WE MAY BEGIN TO UNDERSTAND OURSELVES.
Through support groups we are learning that the traditional, simplistic model of an alien encounter does not adequately accommodate the immense complexity and diversity of actual alien visitations. This model also fails to encourage an understanding of the reality of the Beings with whom we are so intimately connected. The “good-bad” single agenda approach to the alien experience does not explain the many different occurrences of alien encounters. Our new model must encompass an alternative rational for the clandestine nature of some alien encounters; interaction at a participatory level with diverse species; reverse flow encounters in which the visited becomes the visitor after interdimensional penetration is learned by the abductee; and out-of-body encounters.
We are being invited through our encounter experiences to extend our minds and sensitivities. We must emerge from our self-made cocoons to initiate contact with other sentient species on an individual level. This is required in order to partake intellectually, spiritually, and physically in a much more expansive universe. As we begin to broaden our understanding of these experiences and other intelligences in the universe, we may begin to understand ourselves. The first step in this process is breaking through a very fixed mind-set. I think some of these alien visitors are trying to show us how to do this. It could be the key to our survival.
