by Vince Johnson
Master hypnotherapist Derrell Sims has been taking a different approach to the abduction phenomenon. Sims uses forensic hypnotic regression as well as a barrage of other techniques to break through induced amnesia and screen memories that mask the abduction experiences of his clients, who usually come to him only knowing that they experienced something weird, like missing time, or paint mysteriously bubbling off their car at night. “When someone comes to me and says ‘I’ve been abducted by aliens,’ it’s almost always fantasy or delusion,” says Sims.
He takes a different approach, however, by utilizing “active measures” to deal with abductees’ interactions with their abductors. As chairman of HUFON’s Abductions Investigation Committee, Sims, along with his research assistants Patrice Eldridge and Dale Musser, provide an abductions support group for Houston-area abductees.
He is not exactly awed in his opinion of the mysterious entities that reportedly kidnap people, and take them aboard flying saucers to conduct medical procedures indicative of a genetic engineering/cross-breeding project.
“First of all, they’re stupid–they make mistakes,” says Sims. He goes on to describe instances where the otherworldly visitors make surprisingly dumb errors, such as when one of his clients was a little girl and was taken aboard a UFO in her tee shirt, and was later returned wearing a man’s oversized military jacket. Sims assumes that somewhere, a soldier awakened to find himself squeezed into the child’s tee shirt, and is currently attempting to locate the man. Another case in point concerned Mr. Sims’ own abduction experience as a youth in New Mexico. He had been target shooting, and when he suddenly came out of a trancelike state, he saw a grey “alien” a short distance away. Says Sims, “I’m sure they did not intend for me to come out of the trance state with a loaded rifle in my hands.”
Like many abductees, Mr. Sims’ children were at risk for abduction; his son has also experienced the phenomenon.
Mr. Sims’ case load exploded after the airing of the CBS mini-series of Budd Hopkins‘ “Intruders.” Some of the abductees who have come forward have presented some remarkable medical evidence, such as the mother and daughter whose x-rays reveal tiny T-shaped implants in their feet. He is currently arranging for interested M.D.s to extract these implants for analysis.
According to Sims, “They seem to be discontinuing the use of metallic implants in favor of organic implants, which are much harder for us to detect.” Increased frequency of sightings of UFOs by abductees indicate that the organic implants are not as efficient as the metallic ones, and that UFOs must be closer to the abductees to “download” the data collected by the implants. Sims believes that all UFO sightings are abduction-related, and surmises that, “they’re not here sightseeing.”
One problem with recovering implants seems to be a reluctance on the part of the abductees to have them removed. “Abductees have received a very strong hypnotic suggestion not to tamper with them, they’ll come up with a variety of reasons not to have them removed,” says Sims.
Like fighting fire with fire, Mr. Sims is attempting to establish post- hypnotic suggestions in the abductees in order to establish a channel of communication with the abducting entities. Another area of his research is in attempting abduction intervention. This has met with some success; one abductee who was hypnotically “programmed” to resist was able to thwart an abduction attempt.
The HUFON abductions investigation team is compiling a personality profile on abductees. One interesting common denominator among abductees in this study is that many have the same rare allergy.
High strangeness is apparently the norm in abductions research. Several of Sims’ clients have reported “peripheral people,” i.e., men-in-black (MIBs), zombielike people, and even an “alien woman” wearing a cheap wig and driving a red Escort! Persons unfamiliar with abductions research might scoff at such claims, except that several of the abductees have reported the same entities in different states and years apart.
At a recent HUFON event entitled “Working with the Abductees,” Mr. Sims presented a panel of six abductees who answered questions from a sometimes skeptical audience. The abductees revealed themselves to be articulate, rational, and convincing. Far from being self-proclaimed heralds of some “Cosmic Brotherhood,” they were just as puzzled about the phenomenon as the rest of the audience.