UFO Case Report:

Kelly Cahill Abduction

Date: August 8, 1993
Location: Dandenong foothills, Australia

In August 1993, 27-year-old Kelly Cahill, her husband and three children were driving home after a visit to a friend's house. After midnight the Cahills first noticed the lights of a rounded craft with windows around it. It silently hovered above the road. Different colored lights were clearly visible on the bottom of the object.

Classification & Features

Type of Case/Report: MajorCase
Hynek Classification: CE4
Special Features/Characteristics: Missing Time, Abduction, Witness Photo, Portholes/Windows

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Full Report / Article

Source: Bill Chalker, International UFO Reporter, Sept/Oct 1994, Vol 19, No 5
[go to original source]

AN EXTRAORDINARY ENCOUNTER IN THE DANDENONG FOOTHILLS
Bill Chalker, International UFO Reporter, Sept/Oct 1994, Vol 19, No 5

As a scientist I am always aware of the maxim that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. To date Mainstream UFO events have revealed some compelling evidence for their physical reality. The challenge for researchers has always been to determine if that evidence is consistent with an alien reality. Comparable evidence to support the reality of abduction events has been lacking Or relatively uncompelling.

In my two decades of research into Australian abduction claims, it has been difficult not to hold the position that abduction cases have perhaps told me more about the human condition than they have about UFOs. What follows, however, is a report On an affair which may amount to evidence for a reality behind abduction reports.

Kelly Cahill, a 27 -year-old housewife and mother of three children, is a pivotal figure in a remarkable episode which may have much to tell experiencers and researchers alike. She contacted me on October 4, 1993, seeking assistance in understanding a bizarre experience she underwent near the outer Melbourne suburban housing estate of Narre Warren North, in the foothills of the Dandenongs, Victoria, between Belgrave and Fountain Gate, during the early hours of August 8, 1993.

Kelly told me that apart from her husband with her in their car, she was aware of another vehicle farther down the hill from their own position. That car contained at least two persons, a man and a woman. She paid little heed to them at the time because she and her husband had their attention riveted on a massive UFO which had landed in the field opposite them.

Because Kelly lived in Victoria and I live in New South Wales, I passed details of Kelly's experience on to John Auchettl of Phenomena Research Australia (PRA) and urged Kelly to contact him. PRA got on the case immediately .

By November 17 PRA had located the man and woman Kelly had seen that night. It turned out that the couple also had a friend (a woman) with them. These witnesses took Auchettl to the encounter site, to a spot consistent with Kelly's description. The group's drawings of the UFO and entities also closely coincide with Kelly' s.

Here we have a striking situation. Two groups of persons unknown to each other have witnessed the same UFO encounter and entities. They also experienced missing time, and each group has been available to competent investigators. Independent witnesses have provided information which enable cross-checking and correlations to reveal a remarkable amount of similar information. The result is a compelling case for the reality of the strange events.described. The ontological status of the events is further strengthened by a range of apparently related physical traces, including ground traces, a magnetic anomaly, and effects on some of the witnesses.

What is perhaps even more extraordinary about this case is that the second group described seeing yet another car parked farther back down from them. In it was (it appeared) one male who seemed to be gazing fixedly toward the encounter site. So we have the situation of three cars present: Kelly and her husband in one near the top of a hill, the three-person group (Bill, Jan, and Glenda) another 150 meters down the hill, and the other car, with one visible occupant, about 25 to 30 meters farther back.

The first two cars were parked with their lights off. The other had its lights on. This circumstance may explain an apparent anomaly, in that Kelly was able to glance down and spot the second car, with what to her seemed only two persons (in fact three), but the group of three could not see Kelly, her husband, or their car. It was a dark and cloudy night. Evidently Kelly could see the second car only because it was backlit by the headlights of the third car.

From the trio' s testimony, investigators could determine the location of this third car. The male was looking at the UFO's position through a break in the vegetation cover. The trio's evidence coupled with Kelly' s allowed for triangulation of the encounter site with the UFO. The location was consistent with the anomalies discovered (to be discussed later). Unfortunately, this potential additional witness has yet to be found.

Typically witnesses to these sorts of events are known to each other, and such relationships often beg the question of whether the witnessed events have emerged from shared delusions or even collusion. Through Auchettl, Kelly became aware of the independent witnesses, but they knew nothing of her existence until quite recently. Kelly tried hard to persuade Auchettl to give her the other group' s names, but he refused because he wanted to maintain the integrity of the testimony. Only when the investigation was completed did the three learn what Kelly had been saying. So far they have not attempted to contact her. PRA has uncovered no evidence of a previous connection between the Cahills and the other group.

After the encounter Kelly' s recollection faded from conscious memory, despite animated discussions about it with her husband in the immediate wake of the incident. Her husband remembered at least the UFO encounter but not the entities and has not acknowledged the missing time. It was her husband' s reference to the August 8 event at a barbecue on September 16 that led to Kelly's initial confused attempts to reconcile this troubling situation. Kelly found this temporary amnesia along, especially since she has vivid memories going all the way back to age two.

Other events began to be seen in a different and bizarre perspective. These included a "dream" she had immediately after the encounter, upon getting home and going to sleep on August 8, and two "dreamings" in September. Each involved (apparently) the same entities as those encountered on the road. The latter two "dreamings" had a strange physical dimension. A further two "dreamings" followed, one on October 23 and the last during January 1994.

Alarmed, Kelly sought help with little success from universities and aviation authorities. The latter gave her two UFO contact numbers, one in Victoria and mine in Sydney.

After getting no satisfaction from the Victorian group, she contacted me, and after our preliminary discussion of her experience, the PRA investigation commenced.

What follows is the transcript of an interview Kelly gave to my associate Robb Tilley on March 21 of this year.

The details are consistent with those recounted to me on October 4, 1993, in numerous conversations with me since then, with the PRA investigation, and with a manuscript she is writing about her experience.

THE INCIDENT

My husband and I were driving to my girl friend's place up in the mountains. It was her daughter's . . . birthday.

It was just after dark, and we were nearly there, about half an hour from her place. It takes us about an hour and a half from our place. It was just after 7.

[The area has] little bits of field . . . and then you run right into a major shopping centre. . . .

My husband drives really fast. . . . I'm just busy looking out the window . It's turned dark, and I look over towards this field as we are going past, and I see a ring of orange lights. It was the first time I ever thought I had seen something that wasn' t normal. . . . I was going to shut my mouth. I thought, "No, he' s just going to have a go at me." But a couple of minutes up the road I said, "I swear I saw a UFO." He said, "Don't be stupid! It was probably a helicopter." I said, "It wasn't making any noise. It was just sitting on the ground. Anyway, after a few jibes at me, he forgot all about it, and we arrived at [my girl friend's place].

When we were there, my friends bring up this conversation, about what I thought I had seen. Her father says, "You think you've seen little green men or something, . Kelly?" and all this sort of stuff. It was turned into a joke, and I just totally forgot about it.

We went out and played bingo. We came back. We had a bit of a problem about what time we left. As far as my husband's concerned, because we got home at 2:30 in the morning, it means we must have left at one o'clock.

But that night I think we left at a quarter to 12. We got back from bingo at about 1 1, and we didn't stay for very long because [my friend's] daughter' s boy friend had just . . . split up with her and had gone home with the new girl friend . . . and she was really upset and crying, and we didn't want to stay. So we weren't there for that long at all.

THE ENCOUNTER BEGINS

Anyway, we were driving back down the road in the same stretch. Both of us,just me and my husband . . . we both saw this ring, mind you ... . in front of us, hovering above the road. It was just something sitting there. . . . I couldn't tell what it was. We were at first far away, but as you got closer to it was sort of . . . well, it wasn't like the orange light in the field. It was a round shape with some sort of glass around, or what looked like windows and lights around the bottom. Because it was dark, you couldn't really tell at first. But as we got closer and closer, there was no noise or anything.

Even my husband's going. "You're right! That's something. That's very, very strange." And I swear we saw people in there, and then just as I said to him, "I swear there's people in there," it just shot off to the left as fast as it could go. I mean it just disappeared. Within a split second it had gone.

We kept driving and about a kilometre ahead, all of a sudden, there's this really, really bright light in front of us, and I've got my hand up, up above my brow, to look out the window, because it's that bright, but I can't see anything.

I said to [my husband], "What are you going to do?" He said, "l'm going to keep driving." From there, that is the last we remembered until . . . I knew I was going to see a UFO, you know, I just knew, because of what we had seen, I'd seen it twice in one night and he had seen it once . . . and the adrenalin is pumping, the heart is thumping, I'm so excited. All of a sudden I'm sitting in the car, and I'm saying to my husband, "What happened?" And he says to me, "I don't know. We must have gone around a corner or something." By the time we got home, he was definite of everything, but at that time he didn't know what happened either. I said to him, "I swear I've had a blackout," because adrenalin just doesn't disappear in a split second
like that. I mean your heart is going mad! And all of a sudden. . . .

One thing that really annoyed me was that I could smell vomit. I couldn't figure out where the smell of vomit was coming from.

I argue about this half the way home until it started getting ridiculous, and I ended up just shutting up to stop all the fighting that was going to come out of it, you know, because we fight like cats and dogs. . . .

As we were getting close to our home, about 20 minutes away from where we live (there was no one on the road), I saw a figure standing on the side of the road a tall dark figure. It was only for a couple of seconds, and I didn't relate it to anything until much later on at all. But it made me turn my head. I kept it in my mind, because it reminded me of a story I was told when I was a little girl about the headless horseman on the side of the road . . .because it was on the side of the road. It wasn't headless or anything,just this tall black figure. I saw it for only a couple of seconds, and then I couldn't see it anymore, but I thought I saw it.

POST ENCOUNTER FALLOUT

I get home. That night I actually had a dream about UFOs to top it all off, that something happened . . . but a whole lot of it went out of my head.

Kelly and her husband argued about what happened for part of the way home. They agree they saw a UFO but cannot agree on the feeling Kelly had of experiencing a blackout or missing time and seeing people. They also could both smell vomit. Each experienced unexplained stomach pain. For Kelly it was like a pain from severe muscle fatigue which radiated from her lower abdomen to the upper shoulders.

Later, after they got home, Kelly experienced menstrual bleeding and became quite ill. She had had her period only the week before. Eventually she entered the hospital with a womb infection. The doctors there said she must have been pregnant; either that, or she had had some kind of gynaecological operation. In fact, she had had neither in recent times. A strange triangular mark was also found on her abdomen along with a scar.

Kelly elaborated on these matters: But when I got home that night, that's when I found the triangular mark below my navel, with what I thought was a little laparoscopy cut, and I also started bleeding that night. Three and a half weeks later I ended up in hospital... . . [The hospital] actually did a laparoscopy, another laparoscopy. This was not when I first went in. I went back in later, another six weeks after that, because I had a lot of pains in my stomach and just wanted to have it checked to see what it was. And I still had the triangular mark there. . . .

They just did a blooming laparoscopy cut right next to it. [There was] no comment whatsoever. . . . I have a letter from a friend saying that she saw it.

CONSCIOUS RECOLLECTIONS

Kelly's recollections did not come from any hypnosis. Indeed she had only one session well after the main investigation had been completed. It failed to reveal anything of significance. Feeling that at best she had been only lightly under, she felt the session had been of little value.

With regard to the August 8 encounter, she recalls crossing the road to the paddock, seeing at first one tall black being with glowing red eyes, then many. These latter seemed to be approaching rapidly, as if gliding. The large group of tall black beings apparently were split into two groups, one focused on Kelly and her husband, the other one on the other people who had also crossed farther down the road. The rest of her recollection is largely confusing and fragmented. She experienced voices and blindness.

Kelly elaborated on how her memory came back: We went down to a girl friend's place a little bit later, a few weeks later, and the subject of UFOs came up, and her husband was saying, "Oh, I don't think they really exist." It was my husband that said, "If you had seen what Kelly and I saw, you might change your mind." I said, "What are you talking about?" You know, if I'd seen something, I'd have remembered it. I didn't even remember that I had seen it hovering in the middle of the road. It had been totally blanked out of my mind. And I search my head for days, because I knew he wouldn't say something if he didn't mean it. He was telling me, "Remember, on the way home from [your girl friend's], remember, it wasn't making any noise?" And I was just sitting there. I couldn't remember it.

And a few days later, all of a sudden I remembered it! It hit me! And .. . . then I remembered going into the light, and then I couldn't remember anything else. A couple of weeks after that, this started to really bug me, because I remembered that light, and I remember arguing with him all the wayhome, but it was all I did remember.

I went up to [my girl friend's] house again in October, this time for her other daughter's . . .birthday, and again we went to bingo. On the way home from bingo that night, we went along the same road, and as we passed a certain spot I just got this incredible feeling of terror go through me, I mean absolute terror. All of a sudden I just started remembering, and by the next morning I had remembered just about everything that happened, except there's still missing time that I can't.

What we had actually done, we had driven . . . into the light, but the road curved, and the light we had thought was in front of us was actually to our right-hand side. It was in the field, and it was massive. . . . [Estimates put the possible diameter of the UFO at the "size of a house" or perhaps close to 5O meters.] So it was very big.Why I knew it was very big was because we could have driven for five minutes. The road sort of wound around this part.

You could have driven for five minutes and not had it out of your sight the whole time.

Kelly and her husband had a clear, uninterrupted view of a craft of enormous size. It was much larger than the UFO seen a few minutesearlier, and it was at ground level in the field at the bottom of a gully area.

I asked him to stop the car, and we both got out. I remembered leaning back in, actually on the floor, to pick up my handbag, because I didn't go anywhere without my handbag. And that' s one of the sort of things that triggered off a lot of these memories doing that. The other thing was telling myself, "You are conscious. This is real! This is happening! This is real!". . . .

For a while it was just absolutely terrifying, but you can't help it because it sounds really wacky. I mean this is not the way it's supposed to happen at all. . . .

We crossed over the road. We jumped the gutter, and we walked up. . .I looked down the road, and there was another car-a light blue car-pulled up. Some people got out and went across the road. I only thought it was two, but it was actually three, but I didn' t pay much attention. They must have been at least a hundred meters down the road from us. When you've got something like that in front of you, and you' we got people down the road . . . well, I was more interested in what was in front of me than them, so I didn't get any detail. . . .

I'm standing there, and we are looking at this thing [for about 3O seconds]. All of a sudden there is a black figure on the field. It's about seven foot tall. . . . I knew it was really tall at the time.

For Kelly this was quite startling. She expected to see a human being, but this was not human. Kelly tried to use thought as a means of communication. She was immediately overwhelmed with fear. Its eyes seemed to turn to a red fire.

At the distance of about 150 meters, they possessed an extraordinary luminosity .

It started coming towards us, only slowly, and it had big red eyes. It sounds stupid, but it had great big round red eyes, like huge flies' eyes and they were red like, not like a reflection of red, but like burning red, like . . . fluorescent stop lights, I suppose, that sort of real burning red.

All of a sudden I started screaming out [to my husbands. . . . Now this has really got me baffled because of the fact that a human being doesn't know this, so I don't even know how I came out with this, but I started saying, "They've got no souls." And then I started screaming, "THEY'VE GOT NO SOULS!" Then all of a sudden there were heaps of them in the field, not just one, a whole heap of them, and they started coming towards us . . . faster than a man could run, and they were gliding off the ground. They got halfway across the field.

They split up. Some of them went towards the other people [two or three, Kelly thought]. and some of them [the rest] came towards us. Kelly found herself screaming to the other people down the road, "They're evil! They're going to kill us!"

The next thing I know, I felt this oomph! in my stomach, right across here like I was winded, but I was thrown right back, and I was on my back on the ground. I sat up, with my head between my knees. Here, I'm trying to stay conscious. I couldn't see. My eyes. . . . It was all black.

.. . . I'm screaming out to [my husband]. . . .

Kelly speculated that her "winding" may have been caused by an electric fence present at the site. That may or may not be true. The fence may not even have been on at the time. Even if it was, the power may not have been strong enough to generate the effect she described. Nonetheless this possibly prosaic incident led her into confusion over whether the forces she was confronting were "good" or "evil."

But the next thing I heard him saying, "Let go of me." His voice was all sort of cracked up with fear, and I'd never heard that from my husband. He's not frightened or afraid of anything. . . .

Then this male voice said, "We [don't] mean you any harm." And then he said, "Why did you hit Kelly then?" That's the last I heard of [my husband]. No one else talked except me. I heard the male voice. Then I heard myself saying, "Oh, God, I'm going to be sick." I've got my head between my knees, and I just felt, like, violently nauseous. Then I must have blacked out for a little while.

I don't remember being sick. Then I remember hearing talk about being a peaceful people, and I started screaming out, I said, "Don't believe them! They're going to steal your souls!" I know it sounds so ridiculous now, but at the time I was hysterically terrified. . . . I had never felt terror like that. Not even in my worst nightmares had I experienced terror like that. . . .

Oh, there's one thing I remember that he said: "I wouldn't harm her. She's my daughter." Now when I first saw the-on the way up to [my girl friend's] in the field, the first thing I did was pray. And I took it as sarcasm straight away. And it sounded like sarcasm. . . .

It sounded like there was even a small laugh after that. I don't know-it just wasn't good to me.

For Kelly, a strong faith in God often involved an ability to get answers to many of life's situations, albeit sometimes in the most subtle and unlikely ways. For her the brief observation of a possible UFO on the way to her girl friend's place on August 7 was perhaps a glimpse of one of life's mysteries, perhaps even a lesson from God. So she made a silent prayer which began with "Father." She thought for a moment, "Wait for me. I'll be back down this way in a few hours." To put this in context, it should be pointed out that Kelly had long been on a spiritual quest, anchored in a religious journey and a desire to understand the great mysteries.

Though she had little time for organized religions, she had a deep interest in the great religious works and had studied them, particularly the Bible, in great detail. Therefore, given her brief prayer for clarification of the nature of the UFO event on the way up to her friend, as well as the use of the word Father, she got a sense of "mockery" when she heard the voice saying, "She is my daughter."

Anyway, I started screaming and going on about demons trying to steal people's souls. . . . I like not to admit that it came from my mouth, but it did. . . . But I'm going to tell it the way it is.

Next thing I hear him saying, "Would somebody do something about .her?" And I felt a hand . . . touch my shoulder. It wasn't hard. It was quite gentle.That's when I absolutely cracked! I'm still sitting on the ground, and I couldn't see a thing, but I made sure that my eyes were just fierce. . . . Something snapped in me. Before that I was crying. All of a sudden something snapped in me, and I got so angry . Then I started screaming out, "How dare you do this to these innocent people?" Like it was my fault. Because I was on a big spiritual search, and I really got the impression that it was my fault. And I thought, why involve other people?. . . I felt like, almost like there was a fight for me. Like it was something I had to do. . . .

Anyway, I started screaming out stupid things, told them to go back where they came from. Next thing I remember I was sitting in the car. I've still got missing time.

When she found herself sitting in the car, her last memory was of driving into the light.

THE DREAM OF AUGUST 8, 1993

Once she was home and asleep, the night brought a bizarre dream. This dream is of interest in that it emerged within hours of the encounter and it places Kelly back in the encounter. The subsequent "dreamings" do not have this quality about them. Nonetheless they were unusual in their own way, for reasons that will shortly be apparent.

In the August 8 dream she is on the side of the road with her head between her knees. She becomes aware that she can see again. A being is leading her husband down the slope onto the field. Throughout the dream she is unable to see the beings above the level of their elbows. Their limbs seem long and thin.

Inexplicably convinced that the being with her husband is female, she tackles it and then blacks out. In the dream she once again regains consciousness to find herself on the extreme right of the field with the UFO further down the field to the left. Before her on the ground is a still body, at first nonhuman, then changing to human. A middle-aged woman standing further down the field is screaming at her, "Murderess! Murderess!" She is overcome with grief with no awareness of having killed anyone.

Still in the dream, a hand on her shoulder leads her, and she follows obediently. Eventually Kelly becomes aware that she is in a small room, with only a small table and a being standing before her. The being tells her she did not kill anyone and they had to use her sense of morality to overcome her fear. Kelly has a profound feeling that she knows this being. On a table behind the being is a Bible, one of hers, which had disappeared a few weeks before. The being gives Kelly a strange choice which deepens her suspicion of the beings' motives. She is told she can come but must leave the Bible behind. In the dream the being gives her this Bible.

The dream ends at that point. A few days after the encounter, her husband found the Bible in the car.

The "dreamings" mentioned earlier, first interpreted as something like a ghostly episode, take on a bizarre perspective when Kelly's recollections flooded back. The first two preceded the point when more complete recall of the events of August 8 returned.

THE "DREAMINGS"

The first started with a presence which warns her to be calm. Then a frightening "sucking" sensation begins as if something is being taken from her. She comes out of the dream terrified and is confronted by a tall black figure in a floor length hooded cloak, about seven feet tall, with glowing red eyes. She screams, and the being disappears.

Initially Kelly interpreted the being as like a "soul vampire" or the Grim Reaper. At the time she did not place this incident in a UFO context, since the memories had yet to resurface.

In the second "dreaming" she experiences her legs being lifted and drawn out of the bed. She wakes and once again finds the same or similar being present, but this time the cloak obscures the eyes.

When after I did remember it, I had another dream, and these dreams seemed very physical. I know I'm dreaming, and I've got to wake up out of them. . . .

In this particular one, I felt as if my legs were being pulled off the bed, and it was like I was paralysed from my waist down, and my legs were being pulled over to the side; yet I could almost use the top of my body. Then I'm grabbing a pillow, trying to hit my husband, to wake him up. . . . I'm fighting this. I'm not going to let this thing drag me off the bed by my legs. Then I woke up and saw it standing there again! This time the hood covered the eyes, and it didn't scare me. . . . I was still terrified, but it didn't scare me quite as much, because each time it scared me, it was that same power like I felt out in the field that night.

When I was sitting on the ground, it was like something, almost like a frequency or a sound vibration or something. And it's getting right into my head! And I couldn't get it together. Like I was trying to get my logical thoughts together, not logical, almost conscious thoughts, and I was fighting it the whole time, which is probably why I seemed to remember more than my husband or even the other people.

The third "dreaming" occurred at a friend' s place on October23 (see front cover). By then Kelly had experienced the flood of recollections. The two earlier "dreamings" took on an added significance, especially given the presence of the beings after Kelly had awakened from her "dreamings." This time she wakes from a "dreaming" which seems to take the form of a "peak experience" (as psychologist Abraham Maslow calls it; Richard Maurice Bucke defined it as the sense of"cosmic consciousness"). She sees apparently the same creature as before; but unlike earlier manifestations, it is naked and leaning over her as if about to kiss her navel area. It is tall, with a head much larger than normal, long and thin arms, with an abdomen out of proportion to its thin frame, like a child's stomach suffering from malnutrition.

Its skin is like gray-black plasticine. Kelly's screams turn into an "uninterrupted stream of hysteria" and words.

In the morning she insisted that her husband check under the car. She had heard a distinct voice during the night urging such a check. He ignored her request, but their car subsequently suffered such a problem.

Numerous other "psychic" events and "electrical disturbances" followed. Frequently their car started up when no one was inside it. The vehicle had a kill switch which rendered these events even more startling and curious. Kelly thought she had developed enhanced psychic powers. The electrical events apparently ended in January 1994, as did many of the psychic incidents.

The fourth "dreaming" occurred in January of this year.

In the dream the bathroom light is blown. There is a sense of presence. Something persistently tries to grab Kelly's right hand. Eventually she lets her hand be taken. Immediately she wakes up. Once again the creature in the black robe is standing by her bedside. It goes away. It turned out that the light had indeed blown and that diamond and sapphire rings .she wore on her right hand had disappeared. To date they have not
been found.

OTHER MATTERS

Other, earlier episodes, experiences, and issues of possible significance: . From July through September 1993 small orange fireballs, about the size of tennis balls, frequently hit the windows of the house. Kelly, her husband, and her mother witnessed the phenomena.

o About two and a half years earlier, at Lalor, Kelly had a peculiar dream in which she moved through a flesh-like hourglass apparatus. The same night she experienced a "vision" of opening their back door and seeing a light for a few seconds. Then she blacked out. Kelly experienced the same sense of power she felt in the field in August
1993.

o After the encounter and until July 1994, the Cahill house (built in 1949) had been the scene of fleeting observations of tall "shadows," seen by both Kelly and her husband.

o A bad smell occasionally permeated the house and seemed to move around.

THE OTHER WITNESSES

If the August 8 encounter had revolved only around Kelly, it could be argued that the experience may have been some sort of psychological episode. But the presence of other witnesses - a married couple and their friend, plus a possible other observer in a third car-forcefully argues for a real encounter. Indeed, the PRA contends that the focus of the incident was not Kelly but the two other women.

As in Kelly' s situation, the females in the other group seemed to play a dominant role. Bill, the male witness in the trio, appears, like Kelly's husband, to have had only limited involvement. The two women consciously recalled onboard episodes. They remembered the UFO and the tall black beings. Their description did not feature the red eyes Kelly saw.

For the trio the experience apparently started when they approached the site. All three could hear a strange noise and suddenly felt ill. Bill thought he was going to faint. He lost control of the car and ran off the road, striking a pole. After checking for damage, they drove off. A few minutes later a speeding car with its high beams on shot past them. Then another passed. They came to a bridge with a sharp turn following it almost immediately. Farther along this section the trio stopped. As all this was going on, Bill's vision was impaired. Obviously he had Some type of vision as he was driving, but he was unable to remember seeing the UFO. The two women with him recall the UFO clearly, and their descriptions closely match Kelly's.

In some unexplained manner Bill was isolated from the central experience. He has conscious recall of smells and sounds and remembers that a lot of activity was going on. He does not recall seeing anything. He subsequently underwent hypnosis, which expanded his apparent recollections to seeming onboard components, but once again these were through the senses of smell and hearing only.

The two women did not think of theirs as an "abduction" experience. They felt as if they had exercised free will all through it. Yet the principal element of their onboard experience was a form of examination-not, however, visually remembered. Other parts of their onboard experience exist in visual images and conscious memory. Hypnosis in their cases appears to have only reinforced what they recall already.

The entities did not speak and provided very little information. Neither woman saw the other or any of the others while in the alien environment presumably aboard the UFO. Curiously, each was still aware of what was happening to her companion, ostensibly through psychic means.

The trio apparently did not have the complex background experiences described by Kelly. Their experience seem limited only to the August 8 encounter.

There is also some physical evidence. PRA found a possible related ground trace and low-level magnetic anomaly at the encounter site.

COMMENT

Kelly has gone on to write her own account of the experience and its difficult aftermath. In October 1994 John Auchettl and PRA, whose investigative thoroughness is to be commended, released a comprehensive report on the affair. In this emotionally explosive area it is easy for people to get caught up in less than satisfactory situations while they attempt to understand extraordinary experiences. I hope this event and the documentation that flows from it will be of some help to others in similar situations.

The victims of these experiences must not be unrealistically encouraged by advocates of an alien presence; nor, at the other extreme, should they be ridiculed by the sceptical among us. They should be helped to deal with their experiences, whether those experiences turn out to be prosaic or profound in origin. The second part of this report will review the PRA report and examine in detail the accounts of the other group of witnesses. It will also consider the physical evidence and provide reflections on the nature and meaning of this event.

Update (12/6/02) The Cahill case, PRA & openness:

It should be noted that the above "comment" in the 1994 IUR report was prepared on the assumption that the "PRA comprehensive report on the affair" was about to be released. Despite nearly a decade passing, John Auchettl and PRA have not released their report other than a few fragments of information.

As the researcher responsible for passing Kelly Cahill onto PRA in the first place, principally because I am NSW based and the incident occurred in Victoria, I have to say now that that decision was, in hindsight, a mistake.

My comment in my 1994 IUR report: "John Auchettl and PRA, whose investigative thoroughness is to be commended", was based entirely on conversations with Auchettl and discussions with Kelly Cahill at the time (1993-1994), and in retrospect should have been qualified more accurately. While Auchettl & PRA may well have been thorough in their investigation, in reality there has been no way to absolutely verify this, because of their unwillingness to release their report and data on the case. PRA have offered some seemingly unusual and convoluted explanations for this lack of sharing.

I have long encouraged openness and sharing in UFO research (my web site is in part an expression of my position on this matter). My attempts to encourage PRA in this direction, from my perspective, have been very disappointing, and have instead lead me to not to refer cases to John Auchettl and PRA. Unless PRA changes their apparent lack of transparency and openness, researchers and witnesses should carefully consider the wisdom of cooperating with Phenomena Research Australia (PRA).

Regards, Bill

Case ID: 187 edit: 187

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