Tujunga Canyon Contacts: A Continuing Chain Reaction of U.F.O.Encounters and Abductions [Hardcover]

`The Tujunga Canyon Contacts' (TTCC) was published in 1980, a year after Raymond Fowler's abbreviated report of the MA MUFON team's investigation into the Betty Andreasson case was published as `The Andreasson Affair', and two years before Budd Hopkins' landmark book `Missing Time.' It is therefore important as being one of the early works (of many) which identified that the abduction phenomenon seemed to focus on certain individuals who had lifelong, repeated encounters.

The book is co-written by investigators Ann Druffel and D. Scott Rogo. It describes a long and detailed investigation into the abduction experiences of a group of interconnected women who lived in California between the early 1950s and the late 1970s. These experiences are described in the text as `alien abductions' because they involved classic grey-alien-looking entities initiating the contact, juxtaposed with bright lights and UFOs plus other related phenomena. The early reported episodes all happened in the Tujunga CA area in the 1950s and 1960s, but the team later moved on to investigate related episodes in the northern part of the state near San Francisco.

The format adopted is a chronological narrative of the investigation as it unfolded. From the two initial contacts given the pseudonyms `Jan Whitley' and `Sara Shaw', three more abductee contacts are uncovered, and we are introduced to them as they enter the story. Hypnotic regression was employed by Dr. Martin Reiser, an LA police psychologist with "an impressive reputation for successfully using hypnosis to uncover forgotten details from witnesses and victims of serious crimes" who offered his time and expertise for free, and later by other psychologists all working voluntarily, to try in each case to uncover more detail from the memories of the abductees, with varying success. Many of these sessions are transcribed verbatim.

The unusual (possibly not even relevant) aspect of this case is that the abductees were all lesbians, and were connected through the gay community, much more covert even in California in the 1950s and 1960s than today. They formed co-habiting relationships, broke up after a few years and formed new ones, and the authors tried for a time to find a single common source of the `contagion' - i.e. one of the women who might be unwittingly responsible for causing the others to be abducted. We now know that it doesn't exactly work that way: though non-abductees can occasionally be abducted as a one-off because they happen to be with a serial abductee when the incident is initiated, as for example in the Allagash case, most abductees experience life-long serial episodes from around age four. The percipients in this case variously describe what, decades later, we would now recognise as `standard' abduction narratives together with details like being floated through walls and doors to a metallic disk-shaped craft by the small grey entities, physical examinations and procedures in a quasi-medical environment, telepathic communications and so on. These descriptions were not commonly heard in the 1970s (apart from a few high profile cases like the Hills, Carl Higdon, Travis Walton, Hickson & Parker in the Pascagoula incident) and were completely unknown in the early 1950s.

The two authors concluded this complex investigation with differing perspectives, and a chapter is devoted to each of their separate theses at the end of the book. Reading these essays is the most instructive part of TTCC. Lacking the intelligence and insight of Budd Hopkins or John Mack, Rogo in particular strays off into Jungian-Keelian territory and ends up proclaiming that at least one abductee's experiences were "rape fantasies drawn from her mind and objectified into physical reality in the form of a genuine UFO sighting and abduction" (p232); the astute reader knowledgeable about the proven behavior of this phenomenon and its sharply-defined parameters may remain unconvinced. Rather depressingly, academics like Susan Clancy are still, more than 30 years later, barking up this particular tree and spreading what amounts to confusion and disinformation about the nature of this phenomenon. Druffel's perspective is more intelligent and grounded though even she strays off into `angels and demons' territory.

Right at the end of the book there is a short section of photos and drawings of the entities encountered by the abductees, and the text concludes with an appendix examining the similarities between the Tujunga and Andreasson cases.

In conclusion: interesting, but not one of the best investigative works of the genre. The main value of TTCC lies in its very early publication, before detailed and widespread study of this phenomenon got into its stride in the 1980s: the incidents described, and the complex MO of the abductors, is always reported to be essentially the same.

This was an interesting book and is worthy of being an addition to anyone's UFO library collection. But because the witnesses were lesbians, the manner in which the authors presented their subjects is very dated, and detracts from the books overall objectivity. It does not stand up to the test of time as others that have been written earlier than this book, because of the authors' lack of impartiality and neutrality toward their subjects' lifestyle. Although I know they probably thought they were being open minded, their preconceptions were obvious to me.

It is dated in a way that is unexpected given it was written in 1979 when those in the gay community had made strides in changing people's attitudes toward gays and those in psychoanalysis had abandoned their notions of gays being emotionally and mentally maladjusted. Yet these particular writers, Ann Druffel and D. Scott Rogo seemed to have been from an earlier period of gender perceptions and sexual preferences in human sexuality, in which their biases as heterosexuals clouded their investigation not only about the witnesses being lesbian, but the false notions of gender politics they inserted into their investigation in analyzing their subjects.

I do not believe that they were bigoted, but they were prejudiced by their outdated viewpoints. I give them the benefit of the doubt that they were victims of the conventional wisdom still left over from their early days when gays were perceived as "queer".

However, it didn't stop me from cringing when these authors could not even respect these women's relationship and would refer to them as roommates when they were clearly much more than that to each other. The authors could have used domestic partner, or significant other - or even lovers. At one point D. Scott Rogo actually refers to one of the witnesses, who later abandoned her lesbian relationship for a heterosexual one, as going into a "healthy" relationship, psychoanalyzing her abduction by aliens as a woman who was having a rape fantasy, because what she really wanted was a penis. In his view, because she was sexually repressed, she went into a lesbian relationship because it was safer than having to deal with scary men, who, he thought, she was genuinely attracted to, and who, according to him, her mother poisoned her against.

He never once considered the fact that the social pressures placed upon her living in an unorthodox relationship in a society that denigrates and ridicules gays, forced her into a heterosexual one, actually pressuring her to be straight, even though she might have genuinely been a lesbian, rather than the other way around, which statistical data bears out happens quite often with lesbians. Nurture is often stronger than nature for a lot of lesbians.

I found both the authors outlook very old school and very biased to heterosexuality being the default relationship which, in turn made me skeptical of their investigative skills into the UFO phenomenon. If they tend toward an unfair assessment of same sex relations, then they could read into the UFO phenomena with their own suppositions that have been filtered by their own personal beliefs and emotions, making their findings very introspective and abstract - which they were.

Unfortunately I have found the paranormal community to be guilty of the same thing - they often have some very personal, nonobjective and somewhat damaging explanations for homosexuality which are disturbingly regressive. Even in this day. Considering there are large numbers of gays in those centers of interest, I find it ironic and backward thinking in the New Age/Body/Mind/Spiritual Evolution/Reincarnation/Psychic Powers/Parapsychology communities - especially in light of their theories and beliefs surrounding awareness and understanding; enlightenment and illumination.

I haven't encountered it that much in the UFO community until this book.

Ann Druffel's explanation at the end of the book was a bit too religious and fanciful for my taste, sighting a "First Cause" or "Final Cause", basing it on biblical doctrine which I thought was a condensed and over simplified interpretation and conclusion. D. Scott Rogo's had some interesting points but was too baroque and convoluted, bordering on the absurd and loopy.

I understand the drive to explain the UFO phenomenon as something different than nuts and bolts type entities arriving here from another planet due to witnessed reports of them defying the laws of physics. But being a good investigator is asking the right questions which these two - and others as well - didn't do.

Because they appeared to defy our laws of physics doesn't mean that they did. And if they did, perhaps that is part of being an advanced civilization, is being able to alter the laws of physics.

One explanation could be that such an advanced state of technology can make them appear as if they defied the laws. We are making a very wrongful assumptions in thinking that we know everything there is to know in our universe. We need to humble ourselves and realize that there can be civilizations out there that we will never understand, that we are not wired to understand, anymore than an ape can understand what humans have created. And for investigators to define these entities according to what we know or we think we know, will get us very little information, because we know so very little of what we have to measure it against.
Perhaps defying the laws of physics is what these advanced entities are capable of and to also understand that that is something we will never achieve as a species.

This is not to say that these entities don't come from another dimension. They could very well be doing that. But wouldn't that be defying our laws of physics too? So it doesn't seem to be an alternate explanation to the nuts and bolts theory.

This book does have some merit in that it does explore other avenues of the entities and how they manifest themselves. My big complaint was the conclusion by the authors, not their exploration, and of course their propensity for dealing with human sexuality so one dimensionally.

I recommend you read the book and judge for yourself.

I found this to be an interesting review of several Alien Abduction cases which are investigated through the use of Regressive Hypnosis.