UFO, Aliens, Abduction Budd Hopkins A Disussion With Art Bell

Guest Budd Hopkins s a child, Hopkins experienced, firsthand, Orson Welles' 1938 radio play The War of the Worlds. This both terrified Hopkins and his family and left psychic scars. He considered the radio play a dramatic, theatrical hoax and, because of his childhood scare, felt it added to his skepticism about alien invasions rather than enamor him to the idea of it.[7]

His interest in UFOs and alien visitations was renewed when, in August 1964,[4] Hopkins and two others[2] reported experiencing a day time sighting of an unidentified flying object, or UFO, in the form of a darkish, elliptical object off Cape Cod in Truro, MA.[4][29] Dissatisfied with the response Hopkins received when he reported the incident to nearby Otis Air National Guard Base, he suspected a possible government cover-up.[2] Hopkins began reading about UFOs[4] and collecting stories of people who claimed to have experienced contact with alien beings.[3] He also joined the now-defunct UFO research group National Investigations Committee On Aerial Phenomena (NICAP).[citation needed]

In 1975, Hopkins was approached by George O'Barski who, purportedly, witnessed alien figures step out of a spacecraft and take soil samples at North Hudson Park in North Bergen, New Jersey.[30][31] Hopkins, Ted Bloecher, then director of New York State's Mutual UFO Network (MUFON),[21] and Jerry Stoehrer, also of MUFON,[21] investigated the incident, interviewing the witness and taking soil samples.[21]

After Hopkins' account of the O'Barski case appeared in The Village Voice in 1976,[2][21] he began receiving regular letters from other UFO witnesses,[3] including a few cases of missing time, seemingly inexplicable gaps in abductees' memories.[32] Hopkins, using data from his investigations with Bloecher and psychologist Aphrodite Clamar,[33] expanded this idea in his book Missing Time.[citation needed]