Jim had spent the last 25 years
wondering about a certain day in his life which stuck in his mind. It had
been a warm August evening when he had been sharing tea and biscuits with four
of his friends in the kitchen of his flat. When someone suggested
something a little stronger, Jim and Dean set off to the local off-license to
buy a few beers.
They had barely taken a couple
of steps outside the flat when Jim noticed the light in the sky. It was an
electric red light darting back and forth - it danced around their heads as they
gazed open-mouthed. Dean ran back to the flat and called the other to come
and see the light and even as they watched, it changed to two silver stars which
hovered above them, before doing somersaults in the sky, before streaking away
down hill at the speed of lightening.
Jim and his friends chased the
light down the hill - they were joined on the way by two others and all seven of
them we entranced by the light in the sky which eventually vanished before their
very eyes.
For a while they stared in
disbelief at where the light had been, before returning to the flat to discuss
their thoughts. Jim phoned the local radio station to see if anyone else
had seen it, but there had been no reports.
When Jim walked into my office
25 years later the events of that night were just as vivid in his mind.
But what really bothered him was that for years he had suffered 'flashbacks' of
images of himself being led down a slope to the saucer shaped vehicle waiting
for him. And laid on a bed he realized that the aliens could communicate
with him through his thoughts. They were matter of fact, neither friendly
or otherwise and he obeyed their every command as if his will had been
relinquished completely.
The flashbacks were always the
same, though sometimes they were more detailed but always had the same effect on
him afterwards. He learned that others who had been with him that night
were having similar images and one of his friends had a nervous breakdown as a
result of that night.
"All I want to know,"
said Jim, "is this - were those flashbacks dreams, or were they memories of
something that had really happened?" He explained that he'd spend a whole
week on Dartmoor just walking and looking for answers. "Can hypnosis help
me to remember, or to know, exactly what happened?"
I assured him that there was
every possibility that he would recall the events of that night plus he could
know for certain whether those flashbacks were really unconscious memories.
We set up ideomotor signals in case Jim went too deep into hypnosis to respond
verbally, but they weren't necessary as Jim was an excellent subject.
As he went deeper into
hypnosis so the events of that night began to unfold as Jim recalled in every
detail what had happened to him. I took him forward in time from that date
to the first flashback he'd had - then the second and the third and each
subsequent one.
Jim could see that these
were dreams, not memories, but dreams, figments of his imagination. He
knew without a shadow of a doubt that nothing sinister had happened that night.
He remembered how he'd started reading books on UFOs and his imagination became
active and once he lost all sense of reality and couldn't distinguish a dream
from reality.
Jim told me later that he
wished he'd been hypnotized years ago. He felt that he'd wasted more than
half of his life thinking about that night, and now he felt able to get on with
living and enjoying himself and his family.
