In a strikingly similar Indian relief (c. 800 AD, Fig. 2-2), a "lily" growing on a stalk from the god Vishnu's navel carries the infant Buddha to Earth, presumably from another world.

Note that in both traditions there is a placental flying "craft" with a pendant umbilical tube. Thus artists from two cultures widely separated in time and place have made identical imaginative associations between perinatal processes and otherworldly vehicular travel. Support for perinatal/CE3/fantasy connections could hardly have come from more diverse sources.

Umbilical symbols are plentiful in religious art. Some of these take the form of beams from the sky that seem based on the umbilical tube and the movement of fluids within it. In Fra Angelico's painting of the Annunciation (Fig. 2-3), God impregnates the Virgin's womb with a beam from Heaven. This heavenly beam, rendered similarly in dozens of such works, is actually a hollow tube through which the Holy Spirit (usually given the symbolic form of a dove) according to tradition descended from God directly to Mary.

Another divine sky beam can be seen in an anonymous medieval painting of a beam of the "breath of life" given by God to Adam (Fig. 2-4). The perinatal implications of umbilical respiration are clear here and elsewhere.

Analogous umbilical sky-beams occur in psychiatry: one of Jung's schizophrenic patients sketched the sun with a dangling tube that he associated with the wind (i.e., breath). Thus the patient's wind-tube is symbolically umbilical. In a seemingly far-fetched but common transformation, this sky umbilical becomes a sky-ladder in folk tales such as Jack and the Beanstalk. Ladders are not unknown in UFO sighting reports, and one of our Imaginary subjects even sketched a UFO with a "ladder" hanging down. Such descriptions shed perinatal light on the Biblical story of Jacob who supposedly observed angels descending a ladder. Other stories change the sky-tube image to a tunnel – a sky-tunnel such as the tornado that whooshes Dorothy away in The Wizard of Oz, or one deep in the ground as in such fantasies as Ali Baba, Alice in Wonderland, and The Pied Piper of Hamelin.

BIRTH DATA IN SPACE FANTASIES Symbolic and literal birth data thrive in fantasy and science-fiction story illustrations and in fantasy films, especially those involving space voyages or contact with other worlds. Any good collection of science-fiction illustrations teems with highly detailed placental, umbilical, amniotic, and fetal imagery and events. This situation is not, however, a contemporary innovation, for we can see the perinatal/space connection in early examples of science fiction and fantasy literature (by far the older of the two literary forms).

For example, the 1897 illustrations for H.G. Wells' periodical publication of War of the Worlds showed the Martians as octopoid (i.e., placental) entities with tentacles flying from discoid spacecraft with spidery umbilical legs (Fig. 2-5).

The 1950 filmed version of Wells' story used a much different design for the Martian craft, but with perhaps unconscious ingenuity it preserved the original's perinatal form: the film's spaceship was an upside-down placenta with an umbilical neck and head (Fig.2-6).

Wells' notebook sketch of a Martian, a huge fetal head with a body of tiny tentacles, was a product of his Darwinian assumption that mankind would evolve into a purely intellectual being. Wells' Martian has enormous eyes and its other facial features are undeveloped, consistent with abductees' fetal entities (Fig. 2-7).

FIG. 2-7 -- Wells' notebook sketch of his "Worlds" alien creature

TENTACLES IN CE3 ENTITY DESCRIPTIONS A brief digression here about tentacles in CE3 creature descriptions. Although tentacled aliens have been common in science fiction at least since Wells, Jules Verne, and maybe Poe, reports of UFO entities with tentacles are rare.

However, UFOs are sometimes described with tentacular "landing gear," ropes, or other apparati dangling, as in a 1977 New York report (Fig. 2-8).

There are tentacles aplenty in science fiction. In a seemingly strange if not prescient ufological event, the November, 1929 cover of the then new periodical,  Science Wonder Stories, shows a classic placental flying saucer with interminable umbilical tentacles -- eighteen years before the first modern wave of UFO sightings (Fig. 2-9).

It is worth emphasizing that this particular saucer was unrelated to any story in the magazine, but instead was part of a story-writing contest -- i.e., it was the core of a deliberate plan to stimulate readers' fantasies. Yet how did it happen that a more or less typical perinatal flying saucer appeared on an obscure magazine cover nearly two decades before people all over the world were claiming to have seen similarly shaped craft zipping through the skies (maybe with something dangling)? The cover was the product of the editorial staff’s own perinatal fantasies. ETH-happy UFO proponents can not explain such elaborate, odd, and contradictory parallels because their alien genetics theories give them no clue.

One of deMause's many pioneering insights connects old world myths and legends of tentacled, multi-headed dragons and writhing serpents with the placental/umbilical complex. In the last weeks before birth the fetus is in constant, uncomfortable, full-body contact with the swollen placenta and the full-sized umbilical tube. DeMause believes that all the bug-eyed monsters in literature, fantasy, film, and tradition have a common origin in the fetus' physiological, tactile, and psychological experiences with the pulsing, serpentine umbilical cord and the sprawling mat of throbbing placental vessels.

The placental shape, essentially discoid, has long been associated with objects that float or fly. Another 1929 SF magazine illustration, this one of floating cities supported on umbilical sky-beam legs, adds an amniotic dome to the standard UFO conception (Fig. 2-10).

A much earlier version of this floating vehicle/city idea is Jonathan Swift`s fantasized sky-island, Laputa, described in Part III of Gulliver's Travels (1726). Note that Swift's illustrator in this 19th-century etching cannot resist adding the faint suggestions of umbilical or tentacle matter hanging down below (Fig. 2-11). Most such sketches show them less ambiguously.

A half-century before Swift, Cyrano de Bergerac's moon-voyage fantasy, A Comical History of the States and Empires of the Moon (1687), made other perinatal associations. An etching shows the author rising toward the moon in a bubble of dew, pulled upward by the sun's rays (Fig. 2-12). An allegorical interpretation of the sketch shows it persuasively combines four perinatal/space voyage parallels: sun=placenta; rays=umbilicus; bubble=amnion or womb; and Cyrano=fetus.

Lloyd deMause's perinatal views not only explain the origin of tentacled monstrosities (for once and all, I believe), it also accounts for the enduring oral and literary traditions of blood-sucking vampires and similar creatures. In deMause's terms, vampire fantasies originate in the "poisonous placenta" of late-stage gestation, at which time the inefficient and aging placenta gradually deprives the fetus of needed oxygen and food, and is increasingly unable to cleanse the fetal blood supply of poisonous wastes. In effect, the placenta is sucking the healthy blood from the fetus as surely as if with the same horrific 2-inch fangs of all the bloodthirsty vampires in story and cinema.

Oddly, there are few blood-sucking aliens in CE3s, vampires being one creature with perinatal origins that abductees do not routinely include in their other-world fantasies. The only substantive and repeated vampiric echo I know of in CE3s is the "needle in the navel" motif during which body fluids are taken, as in the Betty Hill, Andreasson, and other narratives. The exsanguination of cattle and other livestock may fit the vampire motif, but I most firmly do not believe that animal mutilations have anything to do with abduction fantasies.

Treatises on extraterrestrial life and space journeys go back at least 2500 years in Western literature. Since fantasy has played a major role in all such material, its perinatal content is manifest, however long overlooked. Some of these sources are discussed, though from the perspective of an NDE (an abduction analog), in Carol Zaleski's Otherworld Journeys: Accounts of Near-Death Experience in Medieval and Modern Times (1987). Zaleski mentions NDE/birth parallels repeatedly but ultimately dismisses perinatal explanations as reductionist. Her quoted sources, however, contain an abundance of perinatal imagery and so provide strong evidence to the contrary.

BIRTH DATA IN UFO/SPACE FANTASIES Cinematic space operas -- from UFO films to TV cartoons -- are a peculiarly rich medium for perinatal fantasy imagery, as a review of a few of the hordes of such films over the past four decades will verify. In the 1951 film The Day the Earth Stood Still, audiences witnessed a dramatic birth parallel as the alien UFO/womb opened just a crack to "deliver" Klaatu, the alien/fetus who came bearing a moralistic warning message. The concluding scene of 2001: A Space Odyssey (1969), which shows a newborn infant in an amniotic space capsule, allegorizes mankind's technological rebirth and destiny in the stars. The central symbol in Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977), the Devils Tower monument, is umbilical: in the key scene the massive placental UFO hovers directly over the Tower, and later the hero enters the craft through a low door and finds himself in a vast open hall, and thus is reborn. Several of the spacecraft in Star Wars (1977) and its sequels are shaped like actual human gonads -- uterine systems with fallopian tubes and ovaries, or testes with a truncated penis. The Mel Brooks lampoon of Star Wars reflects these anatomic parallels in several phallic spaceships as well as in its title, Spaceballs (1987).

Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978), like its classic 1950s original, uses perinatal events to intensify an allegory of the dangers of Communism: giant womblike seed-pods give birth to zombie replicas when real people lose their political vigilance and "sleep." Alien (1979) and its sequels Aliens (1986), Alien3 (1992), and Alien Resurrection (1997) are steeped in birth imagery and events: the initial Alien's on-board corrupted computer is named "Mother"; and the title entity, a female placental dragon, lays "eggs" that gestate in human bodies and kill them at its birth. E.T.--The Extraterrestrial (1982), a perinatal allegory that is probably the greatest children's film ever made, presents a placental alien whom the boy hero first learns to tolerate, then love, then finally give up. The overtly perinatal resuscitation/rebirth/escape scene at the end of E.T. features a vast array of placental/umbilical/vaginal tubes and tunnels. The British alien fantasy, Xtro (1982), I thought once was unsurpassed for sheer obstetrical gore, although increasingly intense perinatal special effects in films since then may have eclipsed it.

It is worth noting that E.T. and the very different perinatal alien flick Independence Day (1996) (called ID4 by some) are two of the biggest money-earning movies ever, worldwide. (The Arrival, also a 1996 release, failed to register strongly with the public, despite being a much better film than Independence Day.) Perhaps the latter film’s 200-mile-long mother vessel, the fantastic miles-wide placental attack ships, and similarly huge birth-related artifacts throughout helped it achieve an incredible popularity, for ID4 continues the perinatal mythic tradition of E.T. with a special effects vengeance.

Many TV perinatal science-fiction and fantasy space programs have appeared over the years. Remarkably, since the very beginning of network programming, the U.S. television audience has never been without one or more adult or child-oriented space/alien fantasy series, and thoughtful analysis of any episodes will reveal their hefty perinatal content. A partial list with the beginning year includes the early Buck Rogers (1949), Flash Gordon (1950), and Space Patrol (1951); anthologies such as Science-Fiction Theater (1955), Twilight Zone (1959),  Outer Limits (1963), and Night Gallery (1971); sitcoms  My Favorite Martian (1963) and  Mork and Mindy (1978); alien dramas  The Invaders (1967) and the British imports  UFO (1970) and  Space: 1999 (1975); the  Star Wars copycat  Battlestar Galactica (1978); and of course  Star Trek (1966) and  Star Trek--The New Generation (1987). The syndicated weekly series  Alien Nation (1988-1990) went to unprecedented perinatal lengths during its first season and afterward in an interesting multi-episode exploration of the aliens' unique procreative processes.

A complete list of perinatally interesting movies would be extensive. There are many mediocre fantasy films with good birth-related segments, and there are many non-fantasy films with individual scenes that are perinatally impressive. For example, many recent horror films deal in highly explicit perinatal terms with the birth of a supposed demon-possessed or Anti-Christ child – such as  Rosemary's Baby  (1968), The Exorcist, (1973), and the Damien  series (1976 ff ). Most of these works, regrettably, are marred by cheap sensationalism and by their cynical exploitation of Christian Satanic mythology.

Any list of reasonably well-made recent birth-related film fantasies should include, besides E.T.: Starman (1984), Splash (1984),  The Last Starfighter (1984),  Cocoon (1985),  Nightflyers (1987),  Abyss (1989),  Look Who's Talking (1989), Millenium (1989),  The Handmaid's Tale (1990),  Total Recall (1990), The Unborn (1991), Beauty and the Beast (1991), the Alien series, some of David Lynch's films (including the cult classic Eraserhead (1974), Dune (1984), and Blue Velvet (1986)), of course Independence Day, and perhaps a score or two more. Judging from my experience with cable TV, the movie industry releases two or three birth-oriented fantasy flicks of varying quality for theaters or TV every month.

It is possible to relive the physical and psychological ordeal of one's own birth with the aid of hallucinogenic drugs, as psychiatrist Stanislav Grof has shown, or even under hypnosis. Our hypnotized real and imaginary CE3 witnesses were giving us loads of perinatal imagery long before I recognized it, and before I found that Grof's drug-assisted birth narratives contain many parallels with abduction image constants.

Not incidentally, the connection works in reverse: some of Grof's subjects describe LSD hallucinations involving "flying saucers," aliens, and Star Trek-like adventures. Together with reports that terminal patients on certain drug therapies experience spontaneous CE3s, such accounts imply that UFO fantasies are recurrent if seldom acknowledged clinical events.

Grof classifies his subjects' descriptions into what he calls the four major perinatal stages in the birth process, which he views as matrices for later personality development and behavior.

Figure 2-13 contains a reasonably complete compilation of perinatal images and events from CE3 reports and Grof's sessions. I have indicated Grof's perinatal stages for clarity. The organization is roughly chronological, although abductees' narratives tend to jump back and forth randomly and thus violate Grof's presumed sequence. Not all of these 50-plus parallels are necessarily reported in every abduction or birth narrative. Page numbers refer to Grof's Realms of the Human Unconscious.]

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 CE3 IMAGES, CASES, STAGES, & BIRTH IMAGERY/EVENTS:

LOSS OF CONTROL -- [All Cases; Stage IV--'It was as if I were...losing control, and being quite unable to arrest the...plunge...' (p. 146 in Grof's 'Realms of the Human Unconscious')]

This section discusses several major groups of perinatal echoes in CE3 narratives, including fetus/entity parallels, tunnel/tube references, placental/umbilical imagery, cervical passageways, and womblike and amniotic (transparent) rooms or containers.

FETAL HUMANOIDS AND OTHER REPORTED ENTITIES Grof's birth revivification narratives contain the same six distinct classes of entities as CE3 reports. The fetal humanoid, the dominant entity type in CE3s, shows many parallels with abduction data as well as birth memories. The major similarities are specified below in lists of reported humanoid characteristics and comparable details from prenatal development, and in the illustrated comparison in Fig. 14. Several of these details are more characteristic of the embryo (i.e., through eight weeks) than to the fetus (nine weeks to term), implying that the psychological matrices for the fantasized physical appearance of some fetal UFO humanoids originate very early. It would be more accurate to describe every fetal humanoid, including the familiar "Gray" entity, as an embryonic/fetal humanoid.

TUNNEL/TUBE IMAGERY IN CE3s DeMause has shown us that there are separate perinatal origins for tube (umbilical) and tunnel (vaginal) imagery, though ufologists usually use the terms interchangeably, and as a result the tunnel/tube imagery from cases is often confusing. Tunnel imagery is well established in CE3s, often masking itself figuratively as long hallways, elevators, transparent containers, or as cylindrical tubes that suck witnesses into a UFO or move them about when aboard. Tube imagery appears in a multitude of sizes and functions, from columns to delicate needles. Abductees sometimes say they were probed or "injected" in the navel with needles attached to tubes (Fig. 2-15).

PLACENTAL and UMBILICAL IMAGERY IN CE3s Placental and umbilical symbols abound in CE3s. Placental symbolism is manifest in the most pervasive perinatal symbol in ufology, the discoid shape of a classic flying saucer. Placental forms are also suggested in witness sketches of entities' "backpacks" or similar equipment, nearly always with dual or multiple (umbilical) tubes affixed. The tubes fit into bubbledome headgear, backpacks, or similar apparatus, as if for respiration, which is the precise function of the umbilical tube (see Fig. 2-16 below). Entities' supposed breathing tubes connecting headgear with backpacks, etc., have similarities to a late-term fetus with its placenta and umbilical tube in the amniotic sac. Also reported are various placental "black boxes" with projecting tubes that aliens wear or use during examinations of witnesses.

The umbilical cord, a tube containing other tubes (i.e., a vein and two arteries), is present in the form of tubes of various sizes described or sketched in nearly every CE3 narrative. Anything dangling from the (placental) UFO's underside is an umbilical symbol. The umbilical cord also has analogies with the often reported and very strange retracting beam of light, which abductees describe as a lighted tube or tunnel with several bizarre qualities. It reportedly emerges and retracts slowly; it shows a flat "end"; and its unearthly bright light seemingly casts no shadows. The beam's back-and-forth probing and retreating movements may be unconsciously modeled on the umbilical cord's pulsing two-way blood flow. The improbable yet fascinating "end" of the beam may originate in the natural separation point of the umbilical near the navel, or perhaps in the delivery room umbilical clamp. (See Fig. 2-17.)

Real abductees report perinatal imagery abundantly, but two of our Imaginary witnesses also described clear placental/umbilical images. One reported a placental UFO with an umbilical rope ladder dangling below it. Another surprised us by describing and drawing an aptly named dumbbell UFO, which has actually been reported a few times. Its configuration is aeronautically absurd, but in perinatal terms its dumbbell form is richly symbolic: it suggests not one but two placentas joined by an umbilical, and so embodies deMause's insightful concept of the ambivalent nurturant/poisonous placenta. The dumbbell pattern has a second parallel in the two-headed "cosmic pillar" of folklore and mythology, which depicts the contrasting realms of heaven and hell.  

AMNIOTIC IMAGERY IN CE3s UFOs are obvious placental symbols, but they are also simultaneously symbolic of the womb, and many reports of them are blatantly amniotic. The amniotic sac, the transparent material that envelops the fetus, apparently has analogs in the bubbledome headgear, translucent enclosures, and windowed UFOs described by both real and imaginary witnesses (Fig. 2-18). Could the imaginary/real abductees have copied these designs from current space technology? Yes and no. Astronauts' spacesuits do have bubbledomes (and backpacks). But NASA has no large-windowed spacecraft with see-through cubicles, nor space-related equipment like the body-sized bubble that several abductees said they were placed in. A perinatal source for all these amniotic constructs is almost certain.

CERVICAL DOORWAYS IN CE3s Images of UFO doors or passageways in abduction narratives are nearly as plentiful as tubes and tunnels. Witnesses may describe unusual doorways that appear suddenly in walls or on a UFO's exterior, many of which open from the center like a camera lens, then close again and disappear without a trace. The absence of simpler hinged, sliding, or familiar aircraft doors is significant, and it is surely more than coincidental that doors in TV and film space epics also open from the center. These unusual doorways suggest a perinatal event: the dilation of the cervix during birth. One of our imaginary abductees spontaneously confirmed this interpretation during birth regression by describing cervical dilation with the comment, "It's like a door opening!"

Some abductees seem to focus on doors and doorways, and unless otherwise discouraged will lead the hypnotist on a near-endless round of passages from womblike chambers through cervical doors leading into big rooms, then out other doors into still other womblike rooms. The psychological aftereffects of birth are surely a more credible interpretation of such narrative material than any plausible alien craft's interior architecture. These repeated trips through doorways and other openings stem -- it seems obvious to me -- from the subject's need to re-experience in fantasy the vaginal passage, i.e., to be reborn.

VII. THE ANDREASSON ABDUCTION CASE

In order to give context to the abduction/birth parallels, it will be helpful to show the nature and extent of perinatal imagery in a prominent abduction. One such case is that of Mrs. Betty Andreasson of South Ashburnham, Massachusetts. Unfortunately, I am unable to provide copies of the fascinating and unquestionably perinatal drawings that Ms. Andreasson has published in the various books about her case, and I must refer readers to those volumes. In the interests of clarity, I have based the following discussion and analysis of the Andreasson CE3 largely on Betty's earliest and most straightforward abduction account, which is in the first book on her case,  The Andreasson Affair (1979).

CREDIBILITY PROBLEMS The Andreasson CE3 is instructive, for its details are representative and extensive, there were supposedly two other witnesses (Betty's father and her 10-year-old daughter), and Betty was articulate and detailed, and also produced numerous illustrations of her adventures. In addition, the case was investigated at great length, and at least four books have been written about it (see Raymond E. Fowler, in addition to The Andreasson Affair, his The Andreasson Affair, Phase Two (1982), The Watchers (1990), and Watchers II (1995)). Along with the Garden Grove hoax and one or two others, the Andreasson case is one of the most intriguing of all abduction tales. Unfortunately for alien-contact proponents, no other CE3 has such an abundance and variety of birth-related imagery, and if any one report can validate our CE3/perinatal theories, the Andreasson case is it!

Betty Andreasson says (in the first and most succinct version of her CE3) that her abduction began about 7 p.m. January 25, 1967, when a bright light flashed outside her house, shortly after which a group of 3-foot tall beings floated  through her closed kitchen door. She claims that several family members who were home at the time suddenly fell asleep. The aliens communicated with Betty, then levitated her outside -- again through the door -- into a waiting craft where she was examined, immersed in a liquid, and then seemingly taken for a journey into alien realms. At the climax of her adventure she witnessed a huge bird that spoke to her then, phoenix-like, consumed itself in flames. By the time her captors returned her home safely, more than three hours had passed.

Betty's abduction claims suffer major credibility problems. First, her CE3 event was 10 years old at the time the investigation started (it allegedly occurred in 1967, three months after publication of the Look magazine articles on the Betty and Barney Hill abduction). Even worse, as the other Andreasson investigators freely admitted in their unpublished conclusions about the case, neither Ray Fowler nor any other researcher was ever able to interview one of the supposed co-witnesses, Betty's father, because according to Betty he was too ill. The only evidence that he witnessed any part of Betty’s CE3 was a scrawl on the bottom of a testimonial that Betty said she administered to him on his deathbed – mere weeks before he died. More disturbing was the fact that Betty’s daughter (by then an adult) was allowed to witness Betty's hypnosis sessions, thus compromising the corroborative value of all of the daughter's later hypnotic and other testimony. Incredibly, despite these facts and the cautionary assessments of the case by his fellow investigators, Fowler's books (and all other accounts of the Andreasson report) ignore such negative evidence and describe the Andreasson CE3 as an unqualified multiple-witness abduction. Such selective use of case details shows a high degree of bias on the part of Fowler and others involved. Ultimately, the Andreasson abduction cannot be considered as anything more than yet one more dubious single-witness claim.

Note: Fowler and his hypnotist, Fred Max, encouraged Betty's present husband, Bob Luca (himself an alleged abductee), to regress her at home -- which he did, repeatedly (detailed in both parts of The Watchers). This investigative switch from trained hypnotist to amateur, true-believer status helps invalidate any remaining credibility Andreasson's yarn might have. But Betty's repetitious and interminable CE3/birth fantasy was never persuasive. In Fowler's redundant and increasingly dubious volumes it remains the same alien soap opera it had been from the beginning.

BETTY'S PERINATAL CE3 ADVENTURES Betty Andreasson Luca is the most prolific perinatal fantasist in ufological history. Betty's abductors were typically fetal humanoids -- short and rather frail, with grayish skin, oversized heads, huge eyes, and underdeveloped facial features. One seemed to change to an even more fetal appearance in its final meeting with her. She describes womblike chambers on the UFO where she was immersed in fluid and given prenatal experiences. She was thrice enclosed in an amniotic liquid-filled "chair" while tubes in her mouth and nose gave her food and oxygen (as with a fetus). Betty passed in and out of many rooms -- all snug and comfortable but without evident purpose, and she crashed through cervix-like (center-expanding) doorways several times. Such events have no obvious relevance to supposed aliens or abductions, though they are clearly perinatal.

Betty spent much of her time on the UFO floating from room to room via tunnels, elevators, or other counterparts of the birth canal. Her tunnels varied in length but typically ended with openings into brightly lit amniotic chambers or large domes where she said she was undressed, examined, cleansed, and so on.

Some UFO interior doorways suggest an opening cervix, expanding from the center: a bare wall suddenly separates, Betty steps through, and the wall unites again leaving no trace. A circular membrane and some mirror-like doors recall similar disintegrating doors in other CE3s. There are dozens of cervical doors and tunnel-like passageways in the whole of Betty's adventure.

The richest event in terms of perinatal imagery occurred in what Betty described as the Cylindrical Room, where she was enclosed in a clear plastic "chair" (i.e., fetal position) and fitted cover that her captors filled with gray fluid. She breathed through clear tubes in her nostrils and mouth. A voice told her to close her eyes. Suddenly she felt pleasant vibrations, the fluid whirled, she was fed some sweet substance through her mouth tube, and she felt relaxed and happy. "Oh! This feels good!" she exclaimed. Floating, tranquilized, she became one with the undulating fluid. After a time her container was drained and she was taken out.

This part of Betty's experience is an obvious return to the womb -- and it occurred at least three times during this segment of her CE3 fantasy! The Cylindrical Room itself is only one of several vaginal or womb echoes in Betty's narrative. The transparent chair in which Betty floated in a fetal position suggests the amniotic sac; the gray fluid is the amniotic medium; the breathing and feed tubes are the umbilical cord. Swallowing of fluid is a common fetal event, and acute gustatory sensations are frequent among Grof's drug-assisted perinatal subjects.

PATTERNS OF UMBILICAL PAIN During Betty's examination in a big bright room, the aliens inserted needle-tipped tubes into her sinuses and navel, which caused her much pain. She was told (as was Betty Hill) that the navel probe was a test for "procreation," but afterwards the aliens said that there were "some parts missing." Betty had recently had a hysterectomy and some of her "parts" indeed were missing. Amazing, no?

Well, no.... There are non-exotic explanations for this and every other part of Betty's story. By reliving her hysterectomy Betty fulfilled at least three well-established CE3 image/event patterns: 1) she relived her own medical history; 2) she evoked the body dismemberment motif reported routinely by abductees, shamans, and Grof's Stage III narrators; and 3) she added still another obvious birth-related concept to her already perinatally overloaded experience.

But what about the extreme pain Betty suffers? The needle-tipped tubes that the aliens stuck in her abdomen seemed to probe her body deeply and agonizingly:

Betty's words echo, with surprising consistency, Grof's description of umbilical pain in a Stage IV session:

The aliens told Betty that their probing was "awakening" something, which is consistent with the purpose of shamans' dismemberment. Remember that in shamanic lore, ego death (dismemberment) precedes the rebirth of a new, reawakened self and sensibility. Betty's abduction fantasy follows the traditional spiritual rebirth model in more than one way.

THE PHOENIX: BETTY'S DESIRE FOR REBIRTH The death/rebirth theme in Betty's case was embodied most fully by the legendary phoenix. She saw the bird consumed by fire, and from its ashes emerged a gray "worm" (i.e., the fire-impervious salamander of myth, the phoenix reborn). Betty interpreted this part of her CE3 as a religious experience and felt that it had resulted in her spiritual renewal or rebirth. At one point she thought she heard God's voice saying, "I have chosen you to show the world," apparently because of her sincere Christian faith.

Betty's phoenix is apparently unique in abduction reports; I know of no other. But Grof says that the phoenix is common in Stage III rituals of purification by fire leading to moral and spiritual rebirth. So this part of Betty's yarn is more obviously perinatal than ufological.

Immediately after the phoenix vision, Betty experienced alternating chills and hot flashes, and then underwent what she said was "the worst thing I've ever experienced..." as something seemed to pierce every cell in her body. Grof reports that Stage III subjects describe similar agony.

Betty's suffering was extreme but hardly unique; many abductees describe agonized torment far beyond Grof's usual "bad womb" events. Their reports thus support deMause's view of the later womb as a place where trauma is routine and from which birth is not a separation but a liberation.

CONCLUSIONS ON THE ANDREASSON CASE Skeptics have attacked the Andreasson CE3 in part because Betty knew more than a little about abduction reports and she had also read a book about the phoenix myth. But her CE3 report is incredible not because of what she knew about other abductions or the phoenix, but because there is absolutely no unambiguous physical evidence in support of her wild tale. Since the data Betty's narrative provides are perinatal rather than extraterrestrial, the most charitable interpretation of her abduction yarn is that it was a spontaneously revivified fantasy originating in her own birth memories. Thus the Andreasson case's seemingly endless profusion of birth images and events supports a non-exotic, perinatal interpretation of Betty's claims, and of the abduction phenomenon generally.

Our research with both imaginary and real abductees supports deMause's view that any fantasy activity by individuals or groups stimulates birth imagery. Thus a UFO abduction fantasy -- whether hoaxed, hallucinated, or extracted under hypnosis -- cannot avoid manifesting figurative or remembered perinatal images and events. Hoaxes aside, the best description is this: a supposed CE3 experience is an involuntary fantasy/hallucination involving belief or self-deception, in which the individual's perinatal history plays a central role.

As with Ishmael's linkage of the sea and meditation, so it is that fantasizing and birth memories seem wedded forever.