UFO'S of UAP'S, ASTRONOMIE, RUIMTEVAART, ARCHEOLOGIE, OUDHEIDKUNDE, SF-SNUFJES EN ANDERE ESOTERISCHE WETENSCHAPPEN

One strange phenomenon associated with UFO abductions is the mystery of missing time, when people experience a jump forward in time without realizing where they have been and unaware that any time has passed at all. Such cases are many, and one odd one comes to us from the year1966. On October 1, 1966, 19-year-old First Class Airman Robert Matthews arrived at a bus stop in the Cape Cod village of North Truro, Massachusetts, at 8:45 am in order to be picked up and ride off to his very first tour with the U.S. Air Force at the nearby base. He was already nervous enough to begin with, but became more so when he realized that no one was there to pick him up and the area seemed deserted. He called the base from a phone booth and they told him a truck was already on the way to get him and that he should wait there, as it would only take a few minutes. It seemed normal enough at first, but from there things would get very strange, indeed, unfolding into a weird case of missing time and alien abduction.

Lights seen by Robert Matthews

As Matthews waited for the truck, he noticed “strange lights moving from right to left across the sky,” and felt an irrational fear begin to spread through him. While the lights were certainly odd, he was not sure where this sudden, overbearing feeling of dread was coming from, and in a slight panic he called the base back and asked how long it would be before the truck arrived. The base personnel that took the call was confused by this, as he informed Matthews that the truck had already been there to pick him up and hadn’t seen him. Matthews insisted he had been standing there the whole time and had not left the phone booth, but had seen no truck, and that was when he realized with a certain pang of panic that the time was now 9:45 am, which didn’t make any sense as he had just called the base the first time not 5 minutes before. Or so he thought.

When Matthews got to the base he was extensively questioned on where he had been when the truck arrived to pick him up, but he honestly had no idea. In his mind he had been standing there for only around 5 minutes, had seen the lights, and then had called the base again to ask where the truck was. He was not aware at all that a full hour had passed between those calls and he was sure that he had not left the designated pick up spot. Officials at the base didn’t believe him, thinking that he had been drinking or was making up a tall tale, but Matthews stuck to his story. After this it was sort of forgotten about, he went to work at the base, and would later serve in the Vietnam War, but through the years that strange incident gnawed away at the back of his mind. He became more and more certain that his bizarre bout of missing time had some connection to the lights he had seen, and he had some vague fragments in his mind of strange faces and a medical room, but he couldn’t quite figure out exactly what had happened. Years later he would by pure chance come across a book by notable ufologist Budd Hopkins, and Matthews would have a sort of epiphany, of which he has said:

I was on vacation looking for something to read and on the shelf there in front of me, I saw this book with this creature on it you know. I read the book and I thought someone had stepped into my head and taken my innermost fears and put them in a book. It brought tears to my eyes, you know, I couldn’t believe this was actually happening to someone else.

He contacted Hopkins immediately, and after several interviews the ufologist became convinced that Matthews was experiencing a case of missing time caused by an alien abduction. This is a condition frequently suffered by UFO abductees, in which they have little to no memory of what has happened during their ordeal, thought to be because the aliens have perhaps wiped their memory, often waking up later with no idea of where they’ve been, or in many cases not even realizing that anything has happened at all until they look at a clock and see that so much lost time has passed. Hopkins has said of it:

It is not perceived as a break in which something happens and then a resumption. It is… remembered as continuous and… the half hour trip… turns out to be a two hour trip or whatever, and this is sometimes experienced in conjunction with a UFO sighting or something like a light, but not always.

Hopkins was very familiar with this phenomenon, as he was rather well-known for dealing with missing time cases, had written two books on it called Intruders and Missing Time, and had even organized support groups for these people so they could compare their amazing and often terrifying stories. From his experience, Hopkins suspected that the memories of what had happened during that missing hour were likely still there somewhere in Matthews’ head, and that the best way to dredge them up was through hypnosis. Matthews would agree to be hypnotized and things would get weirder still. Under hypnosis, Matthews could recall many more details of what had happened. He explained that one of the lights he had seen had approached him at a rapid pace, and that it was some sort of otherworldly flying craft. This craft had then landed and a ramp had lowered, revealing three odd-looking beings standing within. Matthews said that these entities had led him into the craft, where he was examined in a room that looked like a sterile medical room of some kind. According to Matthews, the apparent aliens looked at his chest, took samples from his body, and probed him, before depositing him back where they had found them when they were through. Interestingly, Hopkins also learned that Matthews had had another abduction when he was just a child, of which he says:

This was not the only UFO encounter that Robert had in his life. When he was about five or six years old, he saw a green glowing figure in his bedroom, and he tried to scream but nothing came out and he thought he lost his voice and hearing, then all of a sudden, the figure came towards him lifted up his pajamas and then did something to his chest, but when he told his mother, she didn’t believe him.

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Hopkins certainly seems to believe him, deeming him a solid example of the missing time phenomenon considering there were indirect witnesses to the incident in the military truck that arrived at that phone booth to find no one there. What is really going on here? Was Mathews really a victim of an alien abduction or is this just a misunderstanding or even a prank he played? If it was a prank it was a dangerous one to pull considering he was reporting for his first day on duty. We will probably never really know for sure what happened on that day, but Mathews’ case adds to the ever growing pile of similar cases of missing time in relation to UFO phenomena, which gets no less stranger and which is no more closer to being fully understood.

Do aliens sometimes come to us with benevolent intent? Lynne Plaskett has had quite a run of things. A former councilwoman of the Volusia County Council, as well as two terms as Vice Mayor for the city of New Smyrna Beach, Florida, she has had a successful career, considered to be an expert on planning and zoning issues and still very much involved with a number of community organizations including Habitat for Humanity, the Salvation Army, the Council on Aging, and the Department of the Interior. She seems like a bright, engaging and successful figure in her community, and she also just happens to have her share of inexplicable experiences, such as the time she claims aliens cured her of cancer.

In 1975, Plaskett went in for a routine physical examination at the doctor’s but came away with very grim news. She was told that she had carcinoma in her uterus and that she would likely require a hysterectomy. A biopsy was performed and it would turn out that this procedure would not be needed, but they also found that she had a rare T-cell lymphoma in her neck, and not only that, it was estimated she likely had only about three months to live, as the cancer had spread to invade her entire body. This was crushing news, as she had a son and family, and wasn’t sure how to break this news to them. At first she didn’t, instead just going home and crying inconsolably in her bedroom, which at that time was in Long Beach, California. However, it would turn out that she was not as alone in that room as she had first suspected.

Lynne Plaskett

As she sat there lost in her despondency and weeping uncontrollably, she allegedly heard a strange buzzing noise, which sounded mechanical in nature. Curious as to where this sound was coming from, she looked around the seemingly empty room and that was when she noticed a mist filling the area, as well as a small, disc shaped object. She would say of her bizarre experience:

I’m lying in bed, and I hear this electronic buzzing sound behind me like it’s emanating from the wall. The room filled up with a fog-like smoke. I was levitated off my bed, and a disk-like object about 8 inches in diameter came in, hovered over me and passed three times down the length of my body but never touched me. It was almost as if it was examining me. I know it wasn’t God. I know it wasn’t of this Earth. It was alien in nature. Everything went back the way it was. The smoke cleared, I was back on my bed and I went to sleep. When I woke up the next morning I knew I was going to be all right. I knew I wasn’t going to die.

She says that at first she didn’t remember anything after this, waking up in her bed the next morning without any memory of what had happened at all. According to her, she just assumed she had fell asleep as usual, and at the time she couldn’t even recall the strange fog or the mysterious disc. When she went to see her doctor for a check-up on the progress of her cancer, it was found to have decreased drastically, much to the shock of all present. The cancer would continue to dwindle in the coming months, until after four months it was in complete remission. The doctors couldn’t believe it, but extensive scans and work-ups all came to the conclusion that this woman, who had not been expected to live long at all, was now mysteriously cancer-free.

Plaskett at the time did not relate this to her strange encounter at her home, and indeed she didn’t even remember that at the time. It would not be until 1981 that the memory would come back, after watching a show on UFOs in which she heard the same distinct buzzing sound she had heard. This brought her memories racing back to the top of her mind, and she would find out later that her sister had actually come home at the time and heard the buzzing too, but had been too nervous about opening the door. Even after remembering what had happened, Plaskett would keep the experience to herself before deciding to come out with it on a segment of the “Maury Povich Show” in 1996, which also happened to coincide with a reelection campaign she was running for the Volusia County Council. Her alien claims made major headlines at the time, and ultimately costed her the reelection, although she would go on to win election to the New Smyrna Beach City Commission in 2003.

As to her story of aliens curing her of cancer, what are we to make of this? Was this some sort of misguided publicity stunt or is there anything to it all? Plaskett has given proof from medical records that she indeed was diagnosed with cancer in April of 1975, and in fact did experience a complete remission with four days, but this apparently happened after she had started chemotherapy, which perhaps takes some of the mysterious edge off of it all. One skeptical oncologist by the name of Dr. Walter Durkin, has said of Plaskett’s remission:

Back then, we had reasonably good treatment for lymphoma. Lymphomas are very chemotherapeutically sensitive. Today, about 90 percent of lymphoma patients go into remission, and half are cured for good. Would a four-day turnaround seem unusual? No, Not at all. Cancer patients given little time to live often don’t know how to explain it if when they suddenly get better. They often fill that gap in their understanding with “recollections” of miracles or strange encounters. What she should be doing is encouraging people to get treatment because her doctor is the one who cured her.

So what are we dealing with here? Was this woman cured of cancer by aliens, and if so, why? Is this merely a publicity stunt or the rantings of a delusional mind? Is there something we are perhaps missing here? One thing that can be agreed upon is that Plaskett is a well respected former politician and member of the community, so would there be any reason for her to make any of this up? Is there a chance that she is mistaking her normal remission from cancer as something more mysterious? whatever the case may be, it certainly is an intriguing case, which remains unresolved.