Valerie Barrow was one of the presenters at the recent Close Encounters Conference on the North Coast of NSW at Byron Bay. The event was an opportunity for many people to speak and share their encounters with star people (often called aliens) and star-ships (frequently known as UFO’s). Research has shown that over 3000 people who reported an encounter found their lives changed for the better – in a positive direction – afterwards. This event was not designed for sceptics, and convincingly shares the news that there is life beyond Earth. Samantha Turnbull of ABC North Coast reports …
Having what you believe is an alien encounter is not necessarily a bad experience, with such an event prompting people to change their lives for the better, a conference has heard. Almost 3,000 people who report having had an alien encounter have been surveyed about their experiences, with the initial findings presented at the Close Encounters Conference at Byron Bay on Sunday and Monday.
Anna (not her real name) believes she was taken into a spacecraft where she helped create human-alien hybrids with some of her eggs. “They wanted some help with their hybrid project, so they chose me,” she said. It is a story she only shares with certain people. “I discern who I tell and who I don’t because I can tell who’s ready for that information and who’s not,” she said. “I don’t want to freak people out.”
Anna was one of about 300 people who attended the inaugural conference.
Photo: ‘Anna’ says aliens took her into a spacecraft where she shared her eggs with them. (ABC North Coast: Samantha Turnbull)
Stories like hers are being recorded in the survey by the Edgar Mitchell Foundation for Research into Extraterrestrial Encounters (FREE). FREE board member and researcher Mary Rodwell presented the survey’s initial findings at the conference. “They’ve talked about seeing strange craft in the sky, being taken to a spacecraft, procedures being done to them, being educated on the craft,” Ms Rodwell said.
“And what we’re finding is that 85 per cent of people change their lifestyle after these experiences.”
Positive experiences reported
Photo: Mary Rodwell is a board member of the Edgar Mitchell Foundation for Research Into Extraterrestrial Encounters. (ABC North Coast: Samantha Turnbull)
The results of the survey are set to be published in the Journal of Consciousness Studies. Ms Rodwell believes they will challenge the perceptions of many in the ufology community who have associated alien contact with fear and negativity.
“What we’re finding is that people are speaking about their experiences in an overwhelmingly positive way,” she said.
“Their attitude to the materialistic world changes, they become more ecologically minded, they feel more empathy for the planet and themselves, and they are being changed in ways that many people can’t understand.”
Ms Rodwell said while she had not had an alien or UFO encounter herself, the stories of others had convinced her of life beyond Earth. “The way they speak about their experiences, it changes you,” she said.
“When you hear doctors, nurses, social workers, pilots, celebrities, lawyers, farmers, children, talking about this experience … when they’re all talking about similar things and similar patterns and you hear the emotion and the feeling, all of that is an authenticity you cannot dismiss. “This affects their lives and changes them, and that doesn’t happen after a hallucination or a fantasy.”
Not an event for sceptics
Conference organiser Kathryn Hand acknowledged the event was not designed for sceptics.
“We found that by organising this, people have started to feel more comfortable talking about it. We’re giving them a platform to talk about it,” she said. “People are scared that if they start talking about it too openly other people might think they’re crazy.
“We’re bringing people together who have had encounters, and trying to make it something that can be discussed in an environment where they won’t be ridiculed and where they can discover they’re not alone.”
Source: ABC North Coast