THE VmGINIA HoRTON CASE
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with a case that preceded it by eleven years! A few other cases earlier than 1961 had come to light in the years following John Fuller's book on Betty and Barney Hill, and a few had been rather summarily studied, though very few had been explored through hypnosis. Here, we had an unfolding case with an eminently intel ligent and credible witness, who bore a physical trace-Virginia's very noticeable scar. (see illustration section) Even more important was our realization at that moment that Virginia, like Steven Kilburn, had no conscious recall of a UFO sighting. When these two cases which we had uncovered were seen in context with the "Patty Price" case of 197311 and the Judy Kendall case, we knew that there was a sub-group within the UFO abduction spectrum: cases in which people are abducted and all memory traces of a UFO sighting are subsequently suppressed. As Steven wondered aloud on NBC's UFO presentation, how many people may have had this experience without knowing it? And how many years has it been going on? Ted Bloecher, drawing on his mental storage files, pointed out that a significant number of humanoid cases over the last decades involved sightings by children, and many of these took place in rural settings. In dozens of instances, children reported that, while they were outside playing, one or two small men wearing strange silvery or gray costumes approached them and then departed as suddenly as they had appeared. How many of these cases, we wondered, might have involved time lapses that a six-year-old girl or a ten-year-old boy, playing alone in the afternoon, would never have noticed? What were the dimensions of the problem? It was as if our classic type of abduction case-the automobile being stopped at night as a glowing object descends-may represent only a narrow aspect of the phenomenon. And what were "they" doing with a six-year-old child, and why did they need to take a "little, bitty piece" of her? What was the problem or "puzzle" they were working on? Most of the ab duction cases on record involved some kind of sample taking dur ing the examination, if that last term is indeed even remotely accu rate; skin samples, blood samples. hair samples,12 almost every thing one could imagine, but this seemed somehow more serious a piece of her flesh, a deep incision across many layers of skin and muscle. One of the differences between Virginia's encounter and the other abduction reports we have been considering is her apparent