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Abduction Digest Number 38
Abduction Digest, Number 38
Friday, January 10th 1992
Today's Topics:
UFO Contactee Center - Seattle
Re: abductions
Re: UFO Contactee Center - Seattle
Jerusalem Syndrome
Advice
Re: abductions
Re: abductions
Re: abductions
Re: abductions
Re: If Ufo's
Re: abductions
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From: Linda.Bird@f8.n1012.z9.FIDONET.ORG (Linda Bird)
Subject: UFO Contactee Center - Seattle
Date: 5 Jan 92 01:54:55 GMT
Hi Mike,
I've ben reading with interest all your posts with Sue Widemark.
You mentioned the UFO CC International based in Seattle. There's a long
article in the recent edition of the UFO News Clipping Service publication on
Aileen and the UFOCCI in Seattle. It seems to me that group in Seattle is
becoming more New Age and religion based . Aileen even admits (according to
the article) that she thinks Elvis is still alive! That right there shreds
all their credibility for me!
Why do so many of these contactees start delving into metaphysics and Eastern
religions, I wonder? I'd like to ask Aileen and her group why haven't they
delved into an astronomy book instead? They're looking for answers to aliens
in religion?? It seems to me that astronomy books would be a better place!
Mike, I'd like to send you that article (it was originally pub. in the SEATTLE
WEEKLY). Would you be kind enough to post your address? That article is a
real eye-opener.
Regards,
Linda
--
Linda Bird - via FidoNet node 1:104/422
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INTERNET: Linda.Bird@f8.n1012.z9.FIDONET.ORG
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From: Doug.Rogers@p0.f1.n606.z1.FIDONET.ORG (Doug Rogers)
Subject: Re: abductions
Date: 5 Jan 92 08:37:47 GMT
Your research into the Mensa nonsense is greatly appreciated.
Doug Rogers
Echo Coordinator
--
Doug Rogers - via FidoNet node 1:104/422
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From: Michael.Schuyler@f201.n350.z1.FIDONET.ORG (Michael Schuyler)
Subject: Re: UFO Contactee Center - Seattle
Date: 7 Jan 92 03:56:00 GMT
In a message to Mike Schuyler <01-04-92 18:54> Linda Bird wrote:
LB> Mike, I'd like to send you that article (it was originally pub. in
LB> the SEATTLE
LB> WEEKLY). Would you be kind enough to post your address? That
LB> article is a
LB> real eye-opener.
Linda!
Thanks so much for your offer. But, uh...I have the article already! It
was great. She lives in a trailer park near the Intl Airport flight path and
works for Boeing, I live just across the water from Seattle, have toyed with
the idea of going down there on a research project :-) Maybe someday. I get
her publication, "The Missing Link," at least for this year until my
subscription runs out. Well, I just wanted to see what it was. Really! (It
wasn't my fault.) Thanks again...
--Michael
--
Michael Schuyler - via FidoNet node 1:104/422
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From: Jim.Speiser@p666.f100.n1010.z9.FIDONET.ORG (Jim Speiser)
Subject: Jerusalem Syndrome
Date: 8 Jan 92 15:11:04 GMT
I took the liberty of cross-posting this from ParaNet General. It may have
relevance to the abduction phenomenon.
To: Keith Basterfield Message #: 2770
From: Sheldon Wernikoff Submitted: 30 Dec 91 21:21:00
Subject: JERUSALEM SYNDROME Status: Public
Received: No Group: P_GEN (12)
The following article is from The Wall Street Journal, 12/30/91, published
by Dow Jones & Company, 200 Liberty Street, New York, NY 10281.
.............................
JERUSALEM SYNDROME MAKES SOME VISITORS BELIEVE THEY'RE GOD
Israeli Doctors Are Puzzled By the Temporary Illness;
Dinner With Two Elijahs --- by Amy Dockser Marcus, staff reporter
.............................
JERUSALEM - They come as tourists, hoping to sightsee and relax. But they
end up shouting prophecies from street corners, walking around naked, and
proclaiming themselves the Messiah.
Local psychiatrists call the phenomenon "the Jerusalem syndrome", a form of
hysteria that turns 50 to 200 tourists every year, many of them previously
healthy, into would-be King Davids, Virgin Marys, and other biblical figures.
"Jerusalem can literally drive some tourists crazy," says Yair Bar-El, the
director of Kfar Shaul, the government mental health center in Jerusalem
that, since the early '80s, has provided psychiatric care for all foreign
tourists afflicted with the illness.
IMAGE VS. REALITY
Doctors aren't sure what causes the Jerusalem syndrome. Part of it is
probably just that people are awed to be in a place that psychiatrist Eli
Witztum, who has studied the syndrome, calls "the umbilical cord of the
world." But more than that, experts speculate that the enormous dislocation
that prompts people to believe they are biblical figures arises from the
shock that the image and reality of the city are so far apart. "People come
here expecting everyone to be wearing white robes and playing harps. Instead,
they find a city in tension," says Jim Jerrish, project director of Bridges
for Peace, a Jerusalem group promoting interfaith relations that sponsors a
number of tourist groups.
Tourists expecting to reflect in the quiet of an ancient church are often
disappointed to find that it probably strides a traffic-choked roadway. Via
Dolorosa, with its Stations of the Cross, is lined with Vendors hawking
everything from Kodak film to cheap souvenirs. Most disconcerting is the fact
that Jerusalem, the fabled city of peace, lives in an almost constant state
of political stress.
Jerusalem's 4,000 year old grip on the imagination of three major faiths
has always made the city a magnet for madmen and eccentrics. The English
woman who could be found on Mount Scopus waiting daily for the lords return
with a hot cup of tea and the Dutch countess who built a huge building in the
center of town to house the "hundred and forty and four thousand... children
of Israel" in the Book of Revelations are well established parts of city
lore.
SOME THINK THEY'RE SATAN
Nonetheless, the modern version of this phenomenon doesn't occur just among
people with a history of psychiatric problems. Dr. Witztum, the Jerusalem
psychiatrist who has been studying tourists afflicted with the illness, says
that when a patient is admitted to Kfar Shaul, psychiatrists speak with the
patient's family and doctors about past medical history - and often discover
that they don't have prior psychiatric disorders.
Gathering scientific data on the Jerusalem syndrome hasn't been easy.
"Someone who thinks he's the Messiah just doesn't have the time to fill out
a questionnaire," Dr. Witztum says. Still, a study of 89 former patients
released earlier this year by Dr. Witztum and others revealed that nearly a
third thought they were the Messiah. God came in a very distant second. Satan
was third. "People tend to stay within their own religions. Jews prefer
Abraham and King David. And we get a lot of Christians found wandering around
the desert thinking they're John the Baptist," says Dr. Witztum.
The Jerusalem syndrome tends to strike very quickly. It took only five days
before a 33-year-old American vacationing here, a former Air Force cadet with
no history of psychological problems, exchanged his clothes for a sword. He
then ran naked, sword in hand, through the Arab quarter of the Old City
shouting that God had instructed him to cure the blind.
A 41-year-old German tourist, a secondary-school teacher, walked into his
hotel's kitchen just a few days after arriving, declared that he was Jesus,
and then went to file a complaint at the police station when the cook
appeared skeptical.
Some longtime residents of the city have even seen friends from abroad
transformed while on vacation in Jerusalem. Rabbi David Rosen, director of
interfaith relations at the Israel office of the Anti-Defamation League, once
bumped into a college friend - who had been "a very stable, normal English
public-school schoolboy" - standing outside a city gate dressed in sackcloth
and ashes and exhorting mankind to repent. "I tried to convince him that God
didn't want him to do this, but I didn't make any headway," says Rabbi Rosen.
Mr. Jerrish of Bridges for Peace recalls a dinner party at a friend's house
where two guests were tourists who, it turned out, both thought they were
Elijah the Prophet. "They spent the whole dinner glaring at each other,
accusing the other one of being an imposter," he says.
FALSE PREGNANCY
At Kfar Shaul, Dr. Bar-El brings in clerics, family members and local
consulate representatives to speak with his patients in an effort to get them
well enough to travel home. While most patients snap out of it after a few
days of treatment and return to normal, some are more difficult to handle.
One 36-year-old British woman, a London high school teacher, continued to
claim she was carrying the son of Jesus, even after doctors at the hospital
showed her physical exam revealed she wasn't pregnant.
For the most part, the hospital is unable to do any follow-up once the
tourists go back home. But Dr. Witztum did correspond for several years with
one former patient, a man in his early 20s from Zurich. The man had been
taken to the hospital a day or so after visiting a Jerusalem church. "He had
stopped eating and was seeing Jesus Christ everywhere," Dr. Witztum says.
"When he was brought into the hospital, there was a strange light on his face
and an expression of elation. When I called his father, he was amazed. He
said his son was very shy and inhibited." Soon, the young man went back to
Switzerland, fully back to normal, and began studying at a university in
Zurich. For years, Dr. Witztum received Christmas cards from him.
Dr. Bar-El says that when people snap out of the syndrome, they remember
the experience as very pleasant, and not traumatic. Still, Dr. Bar-El, whose
one last name means "Son of God," says he usually stops short of telling
patients they aren't who they think they are. After all, he says, "I'm not
sure the patient will be any happier when he realizes that he's not God."
...........................
End of Article
-+-
--
Jim Speiser - via FidoNet node 1:104/422
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INTERNET: Jim.Speiser@p666.f100.n1010.z9.FIDONET.ORG
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From: Jim.Speiser@p666.f100.n1010.z9.FIDONET.ORG (Jim Speiser)
Subject: Advice
Date: 9 Jan 92 22:43:40 GMT
A situation has arisen here that I need some advice on. An "abductee" has come
to me with her story, some of which is consciously remembered and some of which
is buried. She has rejected hypnosis, as she does not trust it - too much
chance for confabulation. Yet she does have a sincere desire to find out the
meaning of her recollections. And I have *no* desire to force my own particular
-or any- agenda on her. She seems a prime candidate for a self-help group which
I am considering forming here, but I'm not sure that's wise until her
recollections have been explored in more depth.
I guess the big question is, what advice does one give a potential abduction
victim who has no desire for hypnosis?
Jim
--
Jim Speiser - via FidoNet node 1:104/422
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From: Sue.Widemark@f100.n1010.z9.FIDONET.ORG (Sue Widemark)
Subject: Re: abductions
Date: 10 Jan 92 10:54:00 GMT
>That is laughable at best, unless you remove the words between
superficial
>and Christianity. I think Christianity is not alone in its appeal
>to narrow-mindedness and superficiality.
Right. I am narrow minded and you (just as strong opinion) are not!
Now THAT is laughable or maybe one might cry because it's sad when one
accuses someone else of something of which _he_ may be guilty.
>My point, which you
>have neatly skirted, is that structured religion has appeal
particularly
>to the uneducated or those of 'average intelligence.' I think the
>Mensa claim is rather overblown for several reasons.
And just what do you base this claim on? Your vast store of knowledge?
Oh yes, that must be it. Like your great understanding of what
Christianity teaches. If a surgeon had a similar vast store of
knowledge, all hapless victims who fell under his knife would DIE. Why
can't you admit that YOU believe what YOU believe and I believe what I
believe and ... read my lips.. BOTH ARE VALID, OK? If you say anything
else than that, then it is _you_ who are the narrow minded one, not
myself!
>I also know too many people of little thought
>who are rabidly religious, and it is my observation that these people
>appear to be hypnotized and seek in their religion the answer to
>all questions great and small.
Yes, and I know too many UFOnuts who are of little thought and as
superstitous as hell so should I conclude that UFOLOGY must appeal to
the uneducated superstitous fool? That's the conclusion you are making
for religion!
>And, for that matter, membership in
>Mensa means you have passed a test and feel compelled to join a
>so-called high-IQ organization, an interesting phenomenon in itsel4f.
Elementary my dear Watson. Being surrounded by fools, the idea of
being in a room which excludes a vast quantity of such fools is rather
appealing... quite appealing. And I didn't 'pass' the test to get into
MENSA. I took an IQ score from a previous test and submitted it. It
far exceeds the qualification needed for MENSA (IQ 132), so you see I
am really not that impressed with the figure.
I came here to try and obtain some information. I asked some searching
questions to try and extract this information from those supposedly in
the 'know' about these things. I did not come here to be told I am a
narrow minded so and so or that my belief system stinks, anymore than I
expected to say that to someone else. I had never found any REAL
positive information even providing reasonable suspicion that aliens
have visited and/or abducted. I thought you folks could provide me
with such but instead I got attacked for daring to doubt the vast
quantity of anecdotal and somewhat not too believable data I have seen
in the past on this subject.
It's interesting to note that I asked the same searching questions
about the Catholic church but unlike here, I got very definitive and
intellectual answers. So, laugh away at religion, you fools... right
now, it's looking a lot more convincing than your deal. TTFN
--
Sue Widemark - via FidoNet node 1:104/422
UUCP: !scicom!paranet!User_Name
INTERNET: Sue.Widemark@f100.n1010.z9.FIDONET.ORG
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From: Sue.Widemark@f100.n1010.z9.FIDONET.ORG (Sue Widemark)
Subject: Re: abductions
Date: 10 Jan 92 11:03:00 GMT
>Please, stick to a scientific approach, or pass this echo by. Further
>religious discussions will result in a second warning to get on
>subject here.
> A third warning will result in your being locked out. This is
>part of the agreement you participate in by using these echos, and
>should be posted on the board through which you have access.
>
>Asking the researchers here to accept religious rationnalizations
>is NOT what this echo is about.
Oh, no freedom of speech here, right? A scientific approach will knock
YOU out of the water as well. In fact, it will knock you out of the
water much quicker than it will Christianity. There is historical
proof the man Jesus existed. There are many logical proofs that God
exists as well... these are so respected - Thomas Acquinas for
example.. that they are studied in secular universities.
Proof for UFOS and abductions is anecdotal. This is NOT scientific.
(and they call ME narrow minded... hrumph.). I just wanted to obtain
some information. Are you saying I cannot question this but MUST
accept that yes, because a bunch of people said so-and-so, it must have
happened? Even though there has been NO observable evidence and no
logical proofs thereof? That is truly blind acceptance if I ever heard
of it. Well, if one must blindly accept your deal and not question it
(and by the way, the scientific method does question ALL) then it is
not really 'scientific' you want me to be. You want me to be a blind
believer. You are worse than the fundies (I have never been locked out
of a fundamentalist board even though Catholics ain't their favorite
cup of tea). But do as you wish. I do have free speech.
(if anyone would like to discuss this on a FREE SPEECH BBS where people
don't get locked out for disagreeing or questioning... call:
{Cheese Whiz Wildcat! BBS 602-279-0793 <300/1200/2400}
{Sue}
--
Sue Widemark - via FidoNet node 1:104/422
UUCP: !scicom!paranet!User_Name
INTERNET: Sue.Widemark@f100.n1010.z9.FIDONET.ORG
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From: Sue.Widemark@f100.n1010.z9.FIDONET.ORG (Sue Widemark)
Subject: Re: abductions
Date: 10 Jan 92 11:15:00 GMT
(you're such a friendly group!)
>I called Mensa. I talked to their public
>information officer. I discovered your statistic is ERRONEOUS.
Well, whomever you talked to was not aware of this. And they DO have
stats... maybe he just was not bothering with you. These stats were
published in the MENSA directory as a matter of fact and yes, it is
over 60 percent who claim a belief in God. This is obtained from the
forms we fill out... oh, I see what might have happened.. you mentioned
a study so whomever you were talking to didn't think of the demography
which is obtained from the forms we fill out when we renew.
>Superficial and unknowledgeable is exactly how I would characterize
>your understanding of this entire phenomenon. This is interesting
>for the rest of us to see in that it shows such a poor grasp of
>the scientific method and of basic logical principles. It also
>pretty well proves that your veracity is at an all time low. Why
>should anyone believe anything you say when it has been shown you
>use untruths to bolster your argument?
No, you just didn't check the right thing because not being a member of
MENSA, you wouldn't have known about the demographic data. I did a
check on it because I wanted to start a SIG for Catholics but wanted to
see if there would be any interest in it before I went through the
work.
A more intelligent answer to my claim from you would have been 'but
yes, that is lower than that of the general population' (75-85 percent
claim a belief in God.. I wonder what percentage claim a belief in
UFO's) I wonder what percentage of MENSA claims a belief in UFO's..
this would be more difficult to obtain because it's not a question
asked on the demographic data sheet we fill out for renewal.
And in all of this, you have insulted me, been rude about my belief set
but you have not PROVEN YOUR DEAL! Now, my dear, what else could I
conclude but that there IS no proof.
I am obviously getting locked out of here. IF you want to provide
such proof, I am still interested. This can be books or whatever. If
you have such a thing (which was my original reasons for asking
searching questions), please do log on my BBS and post this proof.
Thank you.
{Sue}
{Cheese Whiz Wildcat! BBS 602-279-0793 <300/1200/2400}
--
Sue Widemark - via FidoNet node 1:104/422
UUCP: !scicom!paranet!User_Name
INTERNET: Sue.Widemark@f100.n1010.z9.FIDONET.ORG
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From: Sue.Widemark@f100.n1010.z9.FIDONET.ORG (Sue Widemark)
Subject: Re: abductions
Date: 10 Jan 92 11:17:00 GMT
>Your research into the Mensa nonsense is greatly appreciated.
Even if his
'research' was erroneous? <snicker>
But of course.. it agrees with you, so it's great... <sigh>
--
Sue Widemark - via FidoNet node 1:104/422
UUCP: !scicom!paranet!User_Name
INTERNET: Sue.Widemark@f100.n1010.z9.FIDONET.ORG
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From: Sue.Widemark@f100.n1010.z9.FIDONET.ORG (Sue Widemark)
Subject: Re: If Ufo's
Date: 10 Jan 92 11:34:00 GMT
re: if UFO's exist...
That's a question I have asked a few times myself. Perhaps someone
here will answer it...
--
Sue Widemark - via FidoNet node 1:104/422
UUCP: !scicom!paranet!User_Name
INTERNET: Sue.Widemark@f100.n1010.z9.FIDONET.ORG
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From: Sue.Widemark@f100.n1010.z9.FIDONET.ORG (Sue Widemark)
Subject: Re: abductions
Date: 10 Jan 92 11:45:00 GMT
Well hi there sweetness. I did some checking myself and could not find
the 60 percent statistic I quoted in the lastest MENSA register. But I
did find something of interest which I thought I'd share:
49 percent of Mensans claim a Christian orientation. And only 7
percent are agnostic, and 3.6 percent atheist! hahaha.. that's better
than the 60 percent!
Oh, and when you call to verify this, tell the public information
person that he can read this in the 1989 MENSA Register, page I about
the middle of the page.
TTFN
and I DON'T appreciate being called a liar... that is the rude-ist.
But you don't have to worry about being locked out of the echo because
you agree with the coordinator... *grin*
{sue}
{Cheese Whiz Wildcat! BBS 602-279-0793 - We don't do "Windows"}
--
Sue Widemark - via FidoNet node 1:104/422
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