134: 134: The History of Alien Abductions, Part 6: Budd Hopkins, David Jacobs and the Shaping of a Phenomenon

CW: Sexual abuse

When it comes to the alien abduction phenomenon, no two figures have played a greater roll in its shaping than Budd Hopkins and David Jacobs. And shaping, I think, is the perfect word, because, as we’ve covered on this series, before this point, abductions were very different animals. It was through Hopkins that it became an intergenerational phenomenon, that its captors all looked the same with slight variations, and that those captors were lying, deceiving assholes with an agenda that could be gleaned through hypnosis. Alien-human hybrids dominated the field because of Budd Hopkins. In short, the phenomenon that you know as alien abductions is the product of Budd Hopkins’ research, and the proliferation of that research from other figures, like David Jacobs.

In an interview with Ed Conroy, for his book Report on Communion, Whitley Strieber had this to say about Hopkins and Jacobs: "'He and Jacobs are censoring the experiences of people with visitor experiences in ...