Close Encounters of the Fourth Kind: A Reporter's Notebook on Alien Abduction, UFOs & the Conference at Mit
C. D. B. Bryan

The most concrete book yet on the subject of UFOs. At the center of this serious, richly explicit, riveting work is a five-day UFO conference held at MIT, which the author attended, and from which he has recreated the accounts of close encounter experiences of many abductees, telling their stories in chilling detail. Bryan is the author of the bestselling Friendly Fire.

Annotation

The most concrete book yet on the subject of UFOs. At the center of this serious, richly explicit, riveting work is a five-day UFO conference held at MIT, which the author attended, and from which he has recreated the accounts of close encounter experiences of many abductees, telling their stories in chilling detail. Bryan is the author of the bestselling Friendly Fire.


From the Publisher

One might expect that a "scientific conference" devoted to people who have reported being kidnapped by "little green men" would be dismissed out of hand. But C. D. B. Bryan did not dismiss it: the conference was to be held at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and would have as its chairmen a Pulitzer Prize-winning Harvard psychiatry professor and a professor of physics from M.I.T. Bryan attended the conference throughout its five days. He approached the subject with no prior stand, no agenda, and an open (if slightly skeptical) mind. As the conference progressed, he was astonished by the quality of the stories told by the hundreds of men and women who came forward hesitantly and reluctantly with their utterly amazing - and utterly convincing - accounts of having been abducted and then examined aboard extraterrestrial spacecraft by spindly limbed, telepathic gray creatures with outsized foreheads dominated by huge, compelling, tear-shaped black eyes. What most astonished Bryan were the similarities found again and again in these accounts and the consistency of their details. It is here that the heart of the mystery lies: as the Harvard professor John E. Mack asked at the conference, "If what these abductees are saying isn't happening to them, then what is?" This question - and the possible answers - are at the center of this richly explicit, serious, and riveting book.


From The Critics
Publisher's Weekly

Bryan (Friendly Fire) brings top-notch reporting skills to this open-minded account of a five-day conference on UFO abductions held at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1992. Many of the purported abductees, who spoke at the symposium and in subsequent interviews with Bryan, tell of being floated aboard spacecraft by gray, four-foot-tall creatures with big heads who subjected them to clinical examinations. Bryan believes in the abductees' sincerity but remains undecided whether such experiences are encounters with nuts-and-bolts craft and real aliens, disturbances of the collective unconscious or something else. Among the ufology heavyweights attending the conference were bestselling abduction researchers Budd Hopkins and David Jacobs, who believe aliens are conducting an ongoing breeding experiment with humans; Harvard psychiatrist John Mack (Abduction), who emphasizes that close encounters often involve personal transformation and growth; folklorist Thomas Bullard; and Sacramento psychologist Richard Boylan, who divulges his own recent encounter with three ``interdimensional'' beings in the New Mexico desert. Bryan's thought-provoking report takes us to the frontiers of current UFO research and controversy. 50,000 first printing; BOMC and QPB selections. (June)

Booknews

The author offers a narrative report on a conference at MIT for people who claim to have had alien abduction experiences, and delves into the stories of men and women who say they were taken aboard alien spacecraft and examined. He explores possible explanations for the phenomenon in discussions with medical and mental health professionals and scientists, and presents the experiences of two women in depth. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)