When the pickups got real

 Growing up, my folks liked to watch a lot of documentaries about UFOs. It was of interest, I think, more to my father than my mother although she enjoyed the shows as well. As a child, I took it for granted I think... when my father would play "psychic cards" with my older brother and I, how he taught us to use the pendulum, or would talk for hours about things he had seen, done, and how the paranormal world worked. This was the norm for me.

The documentaries of then aren't really that different from now - except talk of what happened to people who made contact of the third kind (abductions) was rare. It was equally rare to talk about the horrors many people faced, from stolen babies to rape to painful experiments. Hell, it's almost as rare still today what with all of that drowned out by people preaching love and light from the same entities that do these frightening things.

So I'm a child of 11, or 12.. maybe younger... and it was my fervent hope to be picked up by one of these saucers. I didn't want to be on Earth - never felt like I fit in really and was bullied at school - and I saw the aliens as a means of escape. For a while I'd step out into my backyard and think as hard as I could, Here I am! Please come get me! And of course no one came.

It was hot weather - summertime I believe - when my mother stopped hanging clothes to look at the sky. I had been playing by the back porch and my older brother was hanging somewhere about. "Look!" my mother said to us, "There's a UFO!"

So we, all three, stopped and stared in the sky for a while. I didn't see it at first and when I did think I see it, it was nothing more than a grey dot in the distance that didn't seem to move. I was actually disappointed that it didn't come closer or wasn't, at least, close enough for me to see better detail.

After a while, my mother got bored and went back inside. My older brother had gotten bored and wandered off a long time ago. It was only me standing there, staring at the sky, hoping. After a while I gave up, too. I can't remember if I saw the UFO wink out of sight or not.

The incident was forgotten over the next year or so. We were a poor family - what with the new fishing laws squeezing the already-thin wallets of generation shrimpers like my father - and real life seemed so much more important. Our living conditions were changing - we had gone from living in a converted church bus my father had bought when our trailer was repossessed to a one bedroom trailer with the church bus stowed in the far back of our acre yard. My little brother was getting too old to sleep with my parents, so Dad converted the church bus again into a two bedroom suite for me and my older brother. My little brother was given a space in the trailer with the parents.

I hated sleeping in that bus. I was caught between feelings of being abandoned by my parents, jealousy that my little brother got to be in the house, and insecurity over being so far away from Mom and Dad at night. I was already given to having night terrors. The situation didn't help me any more.

But on a side note, my parents were doing the best they could. As I said before, we were very poor. We were probably lucky to get food on occasion, and I can remember my parents going hungry just so me and my brothers could have something to eat. They meant well by building that bedroom bus for my brother and me. They were providing as best they could.

It’s just that as a terrified child, I couldn’t understand all of that.

At first, right before being exiled to the back yard, things weren't as bad. I was always given to waking up screaming in the night, so much that my parents had stopped coming to my aide years ago when I was about five or so. I thought nothing of the reoccurring dreams I had of my dolls coming to life, always to come and hurt me. I would never have confessed, of course, that I was terrified of my Raggedy Anne doll. To be honest, I thought I had gotten the idea from a book I had read. The doll in that story would come to life, too. And, I thought, this only happened in dreams.

I hated to be alone, too. I always felt like I was being watched - unless I was in the woods. There I would find peace. But around the house I was jittery and always looking over my shoulder, especially when no one else was home. But I couldn't tell anyone how I felt. My parents had no patience for my insecurities, and I didn't have much in the way of friends.

My time in that back yard went from bad to worse in just a matter of weeks, it seems now that I think back on it.

Blanche

Dr. Karla Turner pointed out one day that the only fact we had about the experiences abductees describe is that these experiences are verbal tellings of what has been perceived. The problem is that the aliens, and these days the military, have the ability to control what is perceived, to make the abductee believe they are going through something completely different. So it is that we see a beautiful woman instead of a hungry Reptilian, or think we're giving a speech when really we're being experimented on.

When I was a child I lived in fear of my dolls, because I knew they were going to come and try to kill me. I had a doll that was about 2 feet tall; one of those dolls that's meant to be a life-size buddy to a small child. That doll freaked me out. I woke up many times in the night thinking she was right next to me by the bed, reaching for me to grab me.

Back then my family was extremely poor. Our trailer had been repossessed at one point, and my father had converted an old school bus into a passable home. We had all lived in it at one point. Then my parents managed to get another small trailer, which they placed at the near front of our 1 and a quarter acre while the bus stayed in the far back. The bus was then divided into two rooms; one for me, and one for my older brother.

There was an entire yard away from my bedroom and the trailer where my parents now lived with my youngest brother. I was already an insecure child who felt abandoned. So when my dreams were pervaded with images of bright lights, of me clinging to the bus door and screaming while I tried not to be sucked into that horrible light, I basically became a nervous wreck. Getting me to go to bed became a fight between me and my father, who'd yell and scream and finally resort to violence while I wept and told them how terrified I was.

Couldn't I just sleep on the couch? No. To bed with you.

But I perceived my predators as my dolls - which I now know is a common thing. Many people perceive them as dolls. I have memories of countless nightmares where I'd be in bed and a doll would be on the bed waiting for me. Even though it appeared to be a harmless Barbie or baby doll, my reaction would always be one of abject terror. The doll was there to do evil to me. To kill me, or hurt me horribly.

When I was younger I could scream myself awake, but there was one time the doll said, "Go ahead and try to scream." And I tried. I kept trying. But no sound ever came out again.

This is the power of the perspective that they use to hold power over you.

When I was 14, to my knowledge a succubus came through one of the mirrors in my bedroom and wooed me. He wooed me a long time; took me places, things like that. He was a pale man with curly blond hair. I called him George because back then I called everything George.

One night he asked me to marry him, promising me great beauty if I said yes. (He dressed an image of me in a white Sioux wedding dress with romantically long fringe, pale brown hair, and a perfect figure.l) I said yes at first, but then this woman came from far away and claimed to be one of my ancestors and got me to say no. I'll never forget the hurt on George's face. It was like that moment in the Labyrinth when dummy spoiled girl says "You have no power over me."

And then he proceeded to haunt my bedroom and drive me outright nuts. Throwing things at me, making the room cold in the summer, etc. Dad got mad and told him his ass was just as good as kicked, and I never saw nor felt George again.

But I also stopped having my period. Mind you, I'd only had one and sometimes a girl doesn't have another for a full year. But my belly got bigger and my mother kept asking if I was pregnant (and you know, I was a kid I had no idea) and then one night I dreamed the men in suits came and took my child from my body. It was a girl. They let me see her and then they took her away.

And from then on every time I went to that "other world" I'd do what I was there to do, get relieved for the night, and waltz happily over to the nursery, pick up my young'un, and make a run for it. :-) In that fashion I got to watch her grow up, sorta - so it's hard to say if she's a figment of my imagination or not.

But somewhere along the way I decided her name was Jennifer, after Guinevere, because she looks like her pale father. I'm not sure what they call her. That's my name for her.

Thus. Jennifer White - this name is my badge of experience perceived.