Hopkins notes (111):
recollection of the beach scene was blocked for Linda and the three men for many months, even though she had undergone hypnosis on the events of that night. Then, somehow, Dan, Richard, and the third man are allowed to "spontaneously" recall the Lady of the Sands. A letter is sent to me about their recollections, I bring Linda in for another hypnosis session, and she, too, recalls the scene. There is an unsettling—and unearthly—precision in all of this.
Hopkins' suggestion was not that the story only existed once Napolitano created it as much as that the aliens had triggered memories on her schedule. "My ace in the hole was the fact that she had no idea the three men also recalled the scene at the beach" (112). When he read Dan's letters about the Lady of the Sands incident to Napolitano, Hopkins recorded her reactions, which he considers entirely convincing and in no way practiced, as she would have no idea what they would contain. Except, of course, if she had a hand in writing them--something Hopkins barely considers.
Napolitano again underwent hypnosis, recalling the beach, scoop and pails, dying sea creatures, and ecological message--all factors she had not alluded to in earlier sessions. For the first time, she also recalled seeing "three [men] sitting on the sand" and showing them a bluefish to explain how people like them had done this (p. 95). On Hopkins' prompting, described in Witnessed: The True Story Of The Brooklyn Bridge UFO Abductions, Napolitano remembered they were Richard and Dan.
Hopkins said he was pleasantly surprised by "the extraordinary and highly detailed consonance between Dan's letter and Linda's recollections of her seaside experience" (p. 110), seeing this as evidence of its reality and not that Napolitano and Dan/Richard might have a closer relationship than they let on--possibly because they were all in some way Napolitano. Instead, he admired the alien's ability "to erase [from abductees' memories] any time period they choose and 'spontaneously' to reinstate memories on command" (p. 111), thus why all four of them suddenly recalled the "Lady of the Sands."
Keep reading...
On November 30, 1989, aliens stole Linda Napolitano from her sleep, setting off one of the most extraordinary and harrowing cases in the abduction canon. This event promised to upend all that researchers thought they knew. As Budd Hopkins put it in his book on the case, Witnessed: The True Story of the Brooklyn Bridge UFO Abductions, "This abduction event so drastically alters our knowledge of the alien incursion in our world that it is easily the most important in recorded history." (p. XIV-1)
Alternately, Napolitano was a quick-witted attention-seeker and/or was enabled by some of the biggest names in ufology, which is no less important.
Amber's coworker at the garden center moved a rodent nest. When the babies crawled over his hand, he reacted with a terror only fractionally removed from pesticide.
Amber says, "The mother" -- a fiend who had nibbled the heads of the sunflowers in the greenhouse -- "won't be able to find them if I move them, right?" They meant this as a question but only wanted me to assure them it was true. My spouse is not one given to questions for which they have already established the answer.
I tell them I can't know that, but I have my doubts the mother would bother recovering missing pups (or whatever the proper term for baby mice is) when she exists in a world of month-long gestation; there is always another brood to rear, and most baby rodents in the wild do not make it to their quick adulthood.
They ask if they should leave the babies there or catch them and bring them to our home. I cannot tell my spouse to leave babies to die of starvation.It is beyond their character to allow nature to be apathetically cruel.
Beatty is a short, blonde woman with a welcoming voice and demeanor. She runs a local bait shop, Hook Line & Sinker, when she is not investigating the local Bigfoot population, being interviewed, or attending Bigfoot events -- which are much less of a rarity than the hoi polloi might anticipate. Her fieldwork only sometimes requires her to hike into the dark of strange wood, as she has a habitation site in the undeveloped property behind her house. The shop, also the headquarters of Bigfoot Researchers of the Hudson Valley, is not far from neighbors, down the road from the Red Hook Elks Lodge #2022 and within a mile of the elementary, middle, and high school, as well as Market Street, the main road that crosses Route 9 and which turns into Route 199. The site is likewise close to Bard College, though, to my knowledge, no liberal arts major has mentioned a run-in with ape-men.
Emily Fleur began her well-rehearsed presentation by asking if the audience in this packed pub realizes Patty, the nickname for the star of the precedent-setting 1967 Patterson-Gimlin footage, was female. As it had pendulous breasts and Bigfoots are not a subject on which I am unversed, I nodded. I might have been in small company tonight. There is an air of Girl Power to this question, something Fleur herself exemplifies. The Bigfoot art for her organization's website and printed materials keep the breasts intact, which one sees almost nowhere else in the cryptozoological world. What does it mean that the archetype of our most famous cryptid is widely misgendered? (Sorry, Nessie. You are too geographically locked for widespread appeal. Mothman? What bridge collapses have you warned us about lately?)
Standing behind a plastic table at the Barn Taproom in Red Hook, New York, Fleur wore a lime green top, stretch jeans, and a fanny pack. The latter is utilitarian tonight, carrying money to make change later. In most photographs, she dresses as if for a safari photo shoot, in practical khaki and boots, but fashionably so. Fleur would not be photographed coated in sweat and mud, which is not to say this does not result from her fieldwork--she is no slouch--but that she corrects any smudges before the photos are snapped. She has an image to maintain, and sponsors like Manscaped and Bigfoot Bushcraft (who have paid for her posts) do not make a habit of giving money to messy women.
