Part 3 of this continuing series about the Science Fiction Origins of UFO and Alien Abduction Accounts.
Bertrand Méheust’s study of the science fiction origins to UFO sightings highlights what he considers to be a genuine mystery. He notes that in many cases the details reported by witnesses have corresponding science fiction antecedents. The mystery is, if these stories are derived from SF culture, how these abductees came into contact with those ideas before making their report, especially if those witnesses were, in Méheust’s words, “not very cultured”. He considers it farcical therefore to confront such witnesses with accusations of plagiarising obscure French literature:
“Go and tell them [the abductees] that the story they tell under the influence of terror is only a succession of literary clichés that made French teenagers dream of 1930!“
Among the examples he gives is Carl Higdon, but as we’ll see, plagiarism of a sort might very well be the best explanation for the story he told about his encounter with aliens1.
Carl Higdon was a 41 year-old oil well driller in the United States. He claims that on 25 October 1974, while out hunting in Medicine Bow National Forest, south of Rawlins, Wyoming, that he met and conversed with an alien being, entered a craft, took a trip to a distant planet, and was returned to Earth.
It’s 45 years since Méheust published his excellent study, Science-Fiction et soucoupes volantes, and that was only a few years after the Higdon case. Méheust may not have been aware, at that time, of at least one plausible pathway the details found in Higdon’s story could have taken, travelling from the high-brow ‘merveilleux-scientifique‘ of the early 1900s across the ocean and land to rural Wyoming and into the mind of a hard-working outdoorsman.
Higdon’s encounter roughly follows the generic abduction narrative (contactee might be a better description since he was not taken by force but went on his journey willingly) and the details of it are fascinating – even poetic.
Outline
- 4:15 pm Friday 25 October 1974 Carl Higdon leaves his pickup truck to go hunting.
- Something happens.
- 6:30pm as it starts to get dark, Higdon is back at his pickup truck and makes a call over the radio.
- The pickup is now on rough ground around 3 miles from where he originally parked it.
- 11:40pm, some five hours later, a rescue party finds him, they tow his truck and he’s taken, dazed and confused, to hospital in the early hours.
- 10am Monday October 28 he’s released from the hospital.
Higdon is troubled by the day’s events and has a vivid story in his mind about something that happened. He’s interviewed by Rick Kenyon, an art teacher at the local school, and begins to tell his story to family and friends.
- 2 November 1974 he was interviewed and recalled his story under hypnosis to one of the first academics to study the supposed phenomenon of alien abduction, professor of psychology, Dr. Leo Sprinkle. The interview, drawings and transcripts were compiled. .
- 17 November 1974 he had a second interview and hypnosis session, also with Dr. Sprinkle.
Some of the details of the story that emerged from those interviews were as follows:
- Hunting alone Higdon found himself near a clearing in the woods where he saw five elk.
- He describes an eerie silence, like entering a “void”. There was no sound, no animal noises, and no birds.
- He raised his gun toward the elk and fired but the gun made no sound and the bullet travelled only 50-60 ft before it hit something unseen. It stopped and dropped to the ground.
- He saw a figure dressed in black, who he learns later is named Ausso One, and who said “how you doin’” and asked Higdon “are you hungry?”
- The being offered Higdon food pills, one of which would last him “four days”, he took two.
- The being said “you want to go with me?” and invited Higdon into a craft. He accepted.
- The craft was a transparent cube with no doors measuring 7 x 5ft.
- Suddenly, somehow, the five elk were also in the cubicle with him.
- The craft took him “163,000 light-miles2” away from Earth.
- He looked down through the floor of the craft and saw the whole Earth.
- They landed and Higdon said “the lights hurt my eyes” .241
- The alien responded by saying ”We’ll take you back; you’re not any good” .241
- Higdon is returned, but the cubicle doesn’t touch the ground and he’s dropped out of it landing heavily on his shoulder and neck.
- He later claimed that the beings were hunters coming to Earth to take animals for food on their planet that has a different sun.
- He claimed to have seen other humans while “up there”.
As the most famous of alien abduction researchers, Dr. John E. Mack, would often say about the people’s willingness to speak publicly about such experiences:
In Higdon’s case he feels he was rejected and taken back to Earth because he’d had a vasectomy, and so the aliens couldn’t make use of his biology. But it’s worth noting that at the time of his experience Higdon was a father of seven children over two marriages, so feeling embarrassed about revealing this detail publicly seems absurd.
While it may have been true for some during the 1970’s that allegedly being taken away by aliens was “not a club anyone wants to belong to”, there was an incentive that may have overridden any hesitancy to report contact with aliens, even if it included such humiliating details as talking publicly about having had a vasectomy. It was an incentive that had both social and financial value for the abductee – the Blue Ribbon Panel reward5.
This was a cash prize offered by a panel of experts at The National Enquirer newspaper. It offered $50,000 for anyone that could provide proof that a UFO came from space and was not a natural phenomenon, but crucially in the case of not passing the high-bar of evidence the top prize demanded (a prize that no one ever claimed) a smaller prize of $5,000 was offered to the year’s most “scientifically valuable” evidence.
The year after Higdon’s story was reported forestry worker Travis Walton, allegedly abducted from a forest in Arizona, would share that $5,000 reward with his friends6. Since then, and to this day, Walton is a fixture on the lucrative ufology conference circuit making rock-star-like appearances and posing for photographs with fans.
Dr. Sprinkle, who just happened to sit on the Blue Ribon Panel, was aware of the incentive the cash prize offered and considered it as a possible explanation for the story Higdon told him, but he dismissed it because he believed Higdon to be sincere.
In 1978 Carl Higdon filmed a reenactment of his experience along with Dr. Sprinkle. He’s shown working on an oil drilling rig, walking in the woods with his hunting rifle, being examined by medical professionals, and sitting with Dr. Sprinkle for hypnotic induction7.
But let’s return to those details and the early French science fiction story that Higdon may very well have read and that likely formed the basis of his hypnotically enticed recollection.
French author Maurice Renard (1875-1939) was inspired by H.G Wells. He wrote imaginative adventure stories about mad scientists and science oriented allegorical ponderings about the place of humans in the universe. Among them was Le Peril Bleu, published in 1911. [We’ll return to this in more detail in the next post in this series]. In brief the story, as it relates to Carl Higdon’s experience, contains the following central idea:
An intelligent non-human species co-exists with humans on an unseen plane in Earth’s atmosphere. They are invisible and use invisible machines of an unknown technological variety to trawl Earth’s surface collecting samples that are drawn up and held in invisible cages on the boundary to space.
On the face of it this doesn’t sound much like Higdon’s abduction story, but the uncanny resemblance will emerge as we look at the text in detail.
But, if this French story from 1911 inspired Higdon how might he have encountered these ideas living in rural Wyoming?
Up Above – The Story Of The Sky Folk
In its original French Renard’s story is novel length at some three-hundred pages. It opens slowly, taking a hundred or so pages to get to the action and develop its central idea.
However, very soon after its publication it was adapted for an English speaking audience by journalist and translator John N. Raphael. This adaptation was published under the title “Up Above – the story of the sky folk”, and it appeared as a more digestible illustrated fifty-page short story in Pearson’s Magazine, a British monthly periodical.
Pearson’s Magazine was also published in the United States. While the issues for December 1912 differ between the UK and US, many of the same stories from the British version eventually made their way to America. Partly due to the fame and success of John N. Raphael who translated works of French literature, but was also notable on the US theatre scene.
Up Above was published, with six full page painted illustrations by an uncredited artist.
Any man with seven children, at least two of whom were teenagers at that time, will likely have heard a lot of stories. Had Higdon read this one?
Snatched Up! Snatched Up!
Up Above has an arresting opening:
“They Disappeared! Man after man, the highest and the lowest, Prime Minister and gipsy, animals and inanimate things, vanished from the earth and left no trace.
How? – and why?”
In the story the British Prime minister had been mysteriously abducted while walking on Primrose Hill in London. A terrible scraping sound like pencils grating on slate, or “metal squeaking on glass” is heard above. People, animals and a random assortment of objects are somehow taken up into the sky indiscriminately.
Much of the narration of Up Above is provided by the character George Verulam, an educated man who is taken up into confinement by aliens and keeps a diary of his observations.
Some of those captured are dissected and their body parts cast down from their mysterious holding cells producing a grisly rain of blood8.
These gruesome details aside, there are at least 12 ideas that correspond very closely with those in Carl Higdon’s story.
1 – The Out of Place Vehicle
In Carl Higdon’s case his two-wheeled-drive pickup truck was found in rough ground, a “mud hole”, approximately three miles from where he parked it. He claimed his pickup truck was “materialised” into its new location, an area only accessible by 4x4s, by alien technology.
In Up Above, to the amazement of onlookers, a hay-cart is “sucked up” by the mysterious sky folk and then dropped. It is found positioned impossibly upon the roof of an inn.
2 – The Oz Factor
In the late 1980s British ufologist Jenny Randles coined the term the “Oz factor”9. It describes “the loss of sensory or environmental activity” that accompanies a UFO experience, where suddenly it is:
“as if the witness has been isolated out from the rest of humanity to be sole percipient in this [UFO sighting or alien close encounter] experience”.
She refers to one woman who describes it as if suddenly being placed within a glass dome.
We see a precise description of this in Up Above, and then again, 62 years later, in Carl Higdon’s story.
Note: Quotes & pages numbers from Up Above, on the left in Blue, those from Higdon’s interivews published in UFO phenomena and the behavioral scientist, Haines (1979) on the right in Orange.
Verulam’s Diary
Moments before Verulam’s abduction by the “Sky Folk” a woman next to him describes an odd change in the atmosphere:
“The feeling of absolute stillness in the air which comes on a hot summer afternoon just before a thunderstorm breaks…all nature seems to go to sleep, and everything for half-an-hour or so is still…as though every thing living on the earth–plants, flowers, birds, people, water–everything, had been stunned, and had ceased to breathe.” – 729
Carl Higdon
Carl Higdon describes an almost identical stillness and loss of sensation when he found himself near the clearing in the woods looking at the five elk:
“It was just like you was in a void…No birds or nothin’”
When he fired his hunting rifle:
“There was no sound or nothin’” – 247
“I really can’t remember the gun going off ” – 252
“I can’t remember no real loud bang, you know. That thing sounds like a cannon when you shoot it… I can’t remember the noise” – 254
3 – The Transparent Enclosure
One of the most memorable details in Up Above is the description given by Verulam of the invisible enclosure he finds himself in. He looks around and sees others imprisoned in similar cells. Some are experimented on horribly, others bash against the invisible walls in futile protest.
Carl Higdon describes the same thing – minus the gorey details. The five elk he saw in the woods on earth were, despite their size, somehow contained in a cell behind him.
Verulam’s Diary
“It was as though I were confined in a cell without a floor, suspended from the ceiling of it, although the ceiling and sides of the cell were invisible.” – 738
“Prisoners are held in a “Shadowy bluish light””10
Carl Higdon
“Thin outline..of this transparent cubicle…you couldn’t see nothin’ else visible other than just this outline” – 258
Higdon also experiences confinement:
“I never got outside the cubicle…I was still inside the cubicle all the time” – 292
Note: In his second hypnosis session he changes this and describes leaving the cubicle and exploring a christmas tree shaped “space tower” and ascending up it in an elevator.
4 – Seeing Earth Through a Transparent Floor
The clearest parallel between the fiction and Higdon’s apparent journey are the almost mirror image descriptions of watching the Earth through the bottom of the transparent enclosure recede away as they travel upwards.
Verulam’s diary describes his journey upwards as like being in an
“express lift with a glass floor“
He sees the earth disappearing beneath him until:
“Gradually this circle grew until I suppose I must have been able to see almost what that was the whole earth” – 738
“When I looked down I seemed to be
peering into an ocean of light of immeasurable depth, and the extraordinary thing about this ocean of air was that one could see its
bottom, and the bottom was the Earth, the Earth with a dim suggestion of forests, of towns, and of mountains” – 741
In his interview under hypnosis Higdon aswers the question:
“Did I see the Earth down below? – Yes.”
Dr. Sprinkle writes:
“Carl recalls the impression that the “cubicle” moved away from the earth; he stated that the “cubicle” was transparent, and he saw what appeared to be the Earth–looking the size of a basketball–as he looked down through the floor of the “cubicle”” – 344
“LS: Take off; uh huh. Then it was shortly after that you had the feeling of seeing the globe . . . the Earth?
CH: Yes, uh huh” – 278
(LS = Leo Sprinkle, CH = Carl Higdon)
5 – The Flattened Bullet
One of the most fantastic elements of Carl Higdon’s story is the “seven mag11”, a bullet fired from his hunting rifle. Usually capable of causing devastating damage, it could typically “go all the way through a telephone pole at a hundred yards with no problem.” When he fired at the elk it travelled only fifty or sixty feet before hitting an invisible object and falling to the ground. The bullet is recovered and analysed. Photos of it are included in Dr. Sprinkle’s report.
In Up Above, the abducted man, George Verulam, carries a revolver. At one point while in his invisible cell he considers firing the gun to break out but he thinks twice fearing a slow death due to oxygen escaping from the hole it would create. He does not fire his gun.
Curiously though, in the original story Le Peril Bleu that it is based upon, the abducted man, named Robert Collin, does fire his Browning revolver within the invisible cell with the same effect Higdon describes.
“I remember trying to shatter my prison with a revolver bullet—but the bullet flattened against the wall.”
It seems too much of a coincidence that the men in the fictional stories and Carl Higdon were taken up into transparent solid enclosures while carrying guns.
Is it also simply coincidence, and does this detail only found in the Le Peril Bleu, mean that Higdon had heard a retelling of the original French story? (There is apparently a rare longer version of John Raphael’s English version of Up Above, perhaps the firing of the weapon is featured?)
Le Peril Bleu was not officially translated until 2010, but any curious reader wishing to know more about the fuller story would have no problem tracing the origin of the idea of a flattened bullet without a visible cause to the original text, because on the very first page of Up Above there is a note that reads:
“The central idea and some of the details of this story have been borrowed by permission from “Le Péril Bleu” by Maurice Renard.”
Meanwhile, Dr. Sprinkle considered the damaged bullet crucial physical evidence.
“The bullet suggests, to some observers, that Carl is telling the truth about his experience. These observers argue that the bullet is “proof” that something unusual happened to Carl. Question: Did Carl make arrangements with someone, or was he able to “smash” the bullet, without scratches, and to extract the lead from the copper casing without structurally changing the copper casing? Answer: Not known, but doubtful.”
6 – Losing Sight
The loss of sight is a significant theme in both Le Peril Bleu and Up Above. However it is significant that the narrators of both fictional stories, and Higdon, experience the temporary loss of sight because of their removal to a radically different environment in the otherworld.
“There was a buzzing in my ear and something like a roll of drums. My arms and neck grew ice cold, and the muscles in them seemed to freeze. I could not breathe, and I lost all sense of sight.” – 740
Carl Higdon reports that:
“The lights hurt my eyes ” – 310
He’s later treated in hospital where he shields his eyes from the lights.
7 – Solid Invisible Craft
The climax of Up Above sees an enormous invisible craft descend from the upper atmosphere. In what is the precursor to the idea of aliens landing on the White House lawn, the sky submarine or “sub-aerine”, as it is called, crash lands in London’s Trafalgar Square. The alien technology is completely invisible yet solid to the touch, it snaps Nelson’s column and destroys a bus that collides with its propulsion mechanism – thought to be some kind of propeller.
Londoners attack it with pickaxes and drills hoping to free the Prime Minister who is trapped inside and who, visible to all, appears to hover in thin air.
The idea of solid invisible craft is as fresh today as it was when Up Above was published. The notion of advanced cloaking technology meaning aliens could be hiding in plain sight yet remain invisible to our senses is compelling and timeless and has influenced over a century of thinking. In addition to well worm popular science fiction, Star Trek etc, it features in daily UFO sightings posted to social media of people supposedly “capturing” glimpses of cloaked alien craft using their mobile phone cameras. Every year or so there is a new report from the cutting edge of military technology anouncing that we will one day be able to hide soldiers, warplanes and even entire structures from direct observation.12
“An extraordinary thing about the sub-aerine was that there were no joints and no bolts in it that we could discover. It was as though the immense, fish-shaped thing were chiselled out of one immense block of invisible material, having the consistency of the hardest metal human mind can imagine, and the comparative transpaency of ice.” – 755
8 – The Invisible Shelf / Platform
Related to the solid invisible technology is the similarity of language used in Up Above, and by Higdon
Higdon’s description includes literally the same description of an invisible shelf or platform.
“Then I began to puzzle as to what was supporting me. It was possibly a mere sensation, but I felt absolutely as though I were on a shelf which I could not see.” – 740
Trapped above the Earth, Verulam writes in his notebook:
“I was on an immense transparent platform in the centre of a bluish atmosphere of absolute calm.” – 741
Describing where the pills in his shirt pocket went to Higdon says:
“Maybe there was a shelf – – transparent, or something.” – 310
“Carl recalled the impression of seeing five people on a platform outside the ”Space Tower”” – 344
9 – Seeing Other Specimens
In both Up Above and Higdon’s story other humans are seen, yet interaction with them is minimal. Verulam sees animals, fish, sheep and cows. Higdon sees the five elk that were in the woods with him – they have also been taken up. He also sees a group of humans who he is unable to communicate with.
“..the walls of their cells nearest to me, but the curious light made them silhouettes of black and white, and they were all one strange, cube-like shape – not like human beings at all. This puzzled me for a long time, until I suddenly realised that I was below them, and that they were kneeling on of their cells.” – 744
“One thing as I look about me is perfectly self-evident. I am one item in a collection of specimens in an aquarium, or rather, and aerarium.” – 745
Verulam recalls a visit to a museum in Monaco:
“I suppose the Sky Folk marvel as much at us as I marvelled at the queer creatures there in their glass boxes.” – 747
“I came level with the upper story on which were the men and women.” – 744
Higdon’s description of his treatment is exactly as though he were a specimen being considered.
When they have examined him and it is decided he is unsuitable he is “thrown back” to Earth in albeit ina less gory manner than the vivisected specimins in Up Above.
Higdon describes similar glass boxes. The “cubicle” that he and the five elk were placed in.
“He cannot account for the observation that he could see the five elk in a cage behind him, while he was strapped in a reclining seat”. – 342
Again, Higdon describes seeing other humans on a platform beneath a “space tower”. He has a conversation with Ausso One who tells him that the aliens need to take creatures from earth to breed them for food on their planet.
10 – Rough Handling
Higdon’s return to Earth is unceremonious. He’s handled in the same way described in Up Above – like cargo. Verulam describes the rough handling of the invisible cells like they were being moved around like a crane moves shipping containers.
“My cell was being hoisted like luggage from the hold of boat.” – 741
“I saw the platform again, then I felt myself dumped down; there is no other word for it. I heard the squeaking of the walls on metal, and suddenly experienced the feeling of being dragged over a lumpy surface. Then there was silence.” – 741
“LS: What was happening when you were landing down?…
CH: It didn’t touch the ground.
LS: So the cubicle didn’t touch down? But it hovered there, or what happened to it?
CH: They stopped. They dropped me out.”
(LS = Leo Sprinkle, CH = Carl Higdon)
11 – Strange Sounds
When taken up in to the sky Verulam hears:
“a great buzzing or droning“. – 738
Others hear sounds of scraping or squeaking.
Higdon looking at the lights that came from a spiral tower on the distant planet. He hears:
“something like an electric razor
a hum” – 280
12 – Time Lapse
Verulam is disorientated and loses all sense of time. Higdon reports a similar disorientation.
“I am not quite certain of time. I have no means of counting it, for my watch has stopped and I do not know how long ago this happened” – 737
“Suddenly, after half an hour, half a day, or perhaps a week, for I have no idea what time elapsed, and until now I had felt neither hunger nor a desire for sleep, the strange, metallic noises sounded round my cell again, and the cell was hoisted.” – 744
Higdon reports blacking-out on his return and waking sometime later before he calls for help.
He’s encouraged by Rick Kenyon to talk about this as a “time lapse”.
The “four day” pills Higdon takes from Ausso One remove his hunger.
A Fantastic Story, But An Old Story
As we explore old science fiction stories in this series we see the uncanny similarities in supposed “real life” encounters that further undermine the arguments made by alien abduction researchers.
To quote Dr. John E. Mack again.
“That these stories have been somehow concocted from bits and pieces of cultural flotsam and jetsam that is floating around. It doesn’t have that character.“
We may never know exactly what happened to Carl Higdon that day, why he lost track of time in the woods, why his vehicle was out of place, or why he was confused and needed hospital treatment for his sore eyes. Did he meet someone who gave him an hallucinogenic pill?
However, what given the above coincidnece of detail it seems beyond doubt is that the story he told appears to have been lifted practially wholesale from a science fiction novel.
In addition, one of the problems with Dr. Sprinkle’s interview of Higdon under hypnosis is that Rick Kenyon, an art teacher at the local school who was present. Kenyon prompts Carl to talk about different aspects of his story almost like he’s reminding him not to miss key details. This is recorded in Dr. Sprinkle’s transcripts “I think some questions about the interior of the cubicle” he says at one point at another he mentions the concept of “time lapse” despite Higdon only really describing having passed out and woken up some time later. Kenyon was also the first person to notify Sprinkle about the events and told him Higdon had a story to tell.
Dr. Sprinkle was disappointed that Higdon’s polygraph test results were not definitive and could have indicated “attempted deception.” Yet he ultimatly concluded his study believing that whatever happened to Higdon was a “display”, “programmed” by “the phenomenon”.
I wonder if Dr. Sprinkle would have reached the same conclusion after seeing the comparison detailed above. I also wonder if the comparisons detailed here simply reinforce the convictions of believers. They may agree that the literary comparison presented here is uncanny. However, rather than seeing it as a parsimonious explanation for one great UFO story, they might view it as confirmation that science fiction writers themselves are part of the targeted group of humans – chosen communicators. Through their writing, we are shepherded toward the acceptance of our inferiority among a cosmos filled with superior intelligent life.
We need to also consider the role Dr. Sprinkle may have played in developing the Higdon experience into the story we now know. Sprinkle is perhaps too honest when he makes a declaration that appears before his interview with Hidgon. As a UFO witness himself he already believed that Earth is being surveyed by intelligent beings. He writes:
“Since 1951, my own bias has changed from that of a “scoffer” to a “skeptic” to a ”believer” in the existence of UFO phenomena. As a consequence of my own UFO sightings, and my discussions with other UFO observers and investigators, I accept (tentatively) the following general hypothesis: The Earth is the object of a survey by spacecraft which are piloted by, or controlled by, intelligent beings from some other civilization(s). The origins, powers, and purposes of these beings apparently are not known, in terms of our contemporary scientific knowledge.”
So, it’s no wonder that he found Higdon’s abduction story compelling since it validated this hypothesis with such poetic details.
With special thanks to archivist Jeff Knox for some important notes and corrections.
Footnotes
- There’s some debate in ufology about the use of the word “aliens” to describe a whole range of otherworldly creatures, time travellers, interdimensional beings, non-human intelligences etc. Since they are all alien to us I use it here as a catch-all term that includes all those categories as well as extraterrestrials. ↩︎
- A confusing term that seems to have no relation to “light-years.” ↩︎
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PqVdg2zESE4 ↩︎
- ↩︎
- For more about this read Isaac Koi’s exhaustive blog on the Blue Ribbon Panel at https://www.isaackoi.com/best-ufo-cases/10-consensus-lists-national-enquirer-panel.html
↩︎ - …and co-conspirators. Read Charlie Wiser’s excellent work on revealing this hoax. https://threedollarkit.weebly.com/travis-walton.html ↩︎
- https://youtu.be/zXvwYBEZH2I?si=OZzS3cB20noyUUBO ↩︎
- An image depicted recently in the horror-science fiction film Nope (2022) https://www.imdb.com/title/tt10954984/
↩︎ - Randles, Jenny. “In Search of the Oz Factor.” BUFORA Bulletin No. 26 (July 1987): 17-18. https://bufora.org.uk/documents/BUFORABulletinNo.26Jul1987Missespage343334.pdf
↩︎ - Blue light is yet another familiar detail found in other abduction stories. It typically marks the begining of the abduction experience and is found in reports from much later in the 1970s-90s. ↩︎
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/7mm_Remington_Magnum ↩︎
- https://futurism.com/the-byte/watch-invisibility-cloak-military-use ↩︎
References