During the second hypnotic regression, the psychologist takes Penniston back to the debriefing by two Office of Special Investigation (OSI) agents, and he recounts the scene and events just as he recalled them consciously. But then, according to Penniston's memory under hypnosis, those two agents leave the room and two other officials, one American and one with a British accent, come into the room and ask Penniston to again recount the story. They ask him, he says, if he would mind being given a shot of something and then telling his story again while they tape-record it. Penniston agrees, "if that's what it takes." But he also tells his interrogators that he doesn't like shots.
In a dramatic and striking scene on the videotape, Penniston lifts his arm for a shot of sodium penthathol and the agents question him repeatedly about the trajectory of the craft, its speed and approach. Penniston calmly repeats over and over that he did not see any of that, that the craft was already on the ground when he saw it.
The interrogation continues, and Penniston answers the officials' questions about the craft itself and the symbols he found on one side. He recalls the two agents talking to themselves, saying there was "no point in going further," that they knew what had happened and now the question was how to contain the situation. "They know about what I've seen. They knew it already," Penniston says under hypnosis.
As the regression continues, the psychologist begins questioning Penniston about possible "beings" in the craft and he begins to answer. On the tape, it seems that Penniston knows the answer to just about every question the psychologist asks. "I look at this and find it hard to believe it's me," said Penniston during one viewing of the tape.
Under hypnosis, Penniston describes the alien visitors, saying that they are "travelers from our future." They have been coming here in teams, each team assigned a different "tasking," a different mission. Each team targets certain people when it comes back to our time, rather than just encountering people randomly.
When the psychologist asks him why, Penniston -- still under hypnosis -- says, "They've got a serious problem. The world isn't like it is now. It's darker, in bad shape. It's very polluted and much colder." He goes on to recount that the visitors from the future also have serious social problems and difficulties with reproduction. Accordingly, one of the travelers' main tasks is to obtain sperm and eggs and chromosomes in order to keep the species alive. The species in question, he says in response to the psychologist's question, is "us. They're humans."
"The problem here," says Penniston to Rayl after the videotape ends, "is I don't know if this information is real in any sense, if it's been planted in my mind or if any of it is actually rooted in truth as we know it."
OMNI asked David Jacobs, one of the country's leading abduction researchers, to view and comment on the videotape of Penniston's second hypnosis session. Jacobs, history professor at Temple University, has conducted more than 600 hypnotic regressions and has written two books on the phenomenon, Secret Life and a new book, tentatively entitled The Threat, due in June 1997 from Simon & Schuster. Based on his research, Jacobs believes that the alien abduction phenomenon is real, that people really are being taken aboard spacecraft and subjected to often cruel medical and genetic examinations.
"The hypnosis started out fine," Jacobs says of the Penniston session. "The psychologist didn't ask a lot of probing questions. She did ask a few leading questions, but he didn't bite. It was okay. I feel quite certain that they, the military agents, did get him up into the office for an interrogation and that they did inject him with sodium pentathol, put him on a table, and ask him all those questions. It was quite a striking scene, and it all had the ring of truth to me. In other words, it appeared that this is exactly what happened. It had a beginning, a middle, and an end and each part led logically to the next up until the sodium pentathol. Once that was administered, it was chaos as far as I was concerned.
"He zoomed off into a channeling mode, and the psychologist didn't recognize it," contends Jacobs. "He simply dissociated, which is what happens when people begin to channel. The information is coming from one part of his brain, and the other part hears it and think it's coming from the outside. And suddenly he knows the answer to everything, as the psychologist begins to ask him one question after another about the beings. He knew the answer to absolutely everything, and only one question was he unable to answer. This is a certainty of channeling. It's a psychological phenomenon, and all the information that comes from this is internally generated. If the hypnotist isn't real experienced and doesn't recognize this, they can easily fall into this trap, and this I believe was a classic situation of just that."
Whether the information recounted under hypnosis is genuine or not, Penniston's account of what he consciously remembers fills in most of the remaining blanks as to what actually occurred at Bentwaters on that first mysterious night in late 1980. Still, two questions remain: Where did the craft come from? Who did it belong to?
The Air Force refuses comment on all aspects of the Bentwaters case.
But, I did look up to admire the view and I saw a "shooting star." It was awesome. Now, I "know" what it was and I understand it wasn't visitors from "outer space" But, it got me to thinking about "psudeo skeptics" just a little bit. I thought "Ya know there is no problem with me seeing a "shooting star" Nobody will jump down my throat and yell it's not scientific. But, suppose we had never "observed" one before with the naked eye. Then I said I saw it. Wonder what a good skeptic would say? I came up with some stuff.