The Allagash Abductions: Undeniable Evidence of Alien Intervention

by Raymond E. Fowler

Fowler's classic book establishes proof of alien abductions. Four artists, independently regressed into their suppressed memories, tell the same details of their 1976 abduction. Richly illustrated by the artists who were abducted. Indexed

Genres: Nonfiction, Paranormal

357 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1993

Reviews

[Dat-Dangk Vemucci · Rating 2 out of 5]

Generic nuts n bolts abduction account. Made me aware of some aspects of the genres stagnation, why these late period books are less intriguing than the earlier ones like the Hills or Andreassons. Primarily it has to do with what I would call "concretization" of the folkloric form in a way which depleted it's original sense of mystery and poetry. The form of the "abduction" becomes strictly literal. The aliens are flesh and blood creatures from another planet. Their motives are based on utility and material gain, their spaceships are advanced technology ultimately not too far removed from the products of our own earthly strip mining ventures. The implicit Freudian symbolism of earlier encounter narratives like the Hills, more compelling for it's shadowy suggestive quality, is hereby replaced with explicit medicalized sexual assault and rendered banal. Similarly the narrative as generic form becomes conventionalized, a factory line procedure of scifi cliche. Good aliens from the good planet, bad aliens from the bad planet. The aliens motives are now explicable in terms of a rather crude utility: having somehow lost their own ability to reproduce they now harvest humans to extract their genetic material. Of course you can still read into all this but why bother when the subtext has been been flattened out on the surface for you, when any visionary qualities, any poetry, has been drained to render fully transperant a rote function by off-world administrative beauracrats and military technicians.
There are obviously many more reasons the alien abduction trend died off in the early 2000s which have been explored in works like Bridget Browns fantastic "They Know Us Better Than We Know Ourselves" and Susan Lepselters "Resonance of Unseen Things". The cultural cache of hypnosis was diminished, the post cold-war turn towards the war against internal destabilising entropic forces in the post-9/11 anthropocene and the massive spread of instant video photography everywhere made the abduction scenario passe. With that said I can't help but feel that, as a genre or legend type, it had reached a evolutionary dead end. Reading this book it's hard to imagine a future for the genre where it didn't descend into the underground paranoia of conspiracy theorists or the inward-looking self obsession of the New Age, geodes and chakras and the like. The encounter with radical exteriority, with the cosmic outside, had already been whittled away by this point, and there was nowhere left to go but back down into the earth.

Nonetheless it is a serviceable book with good spooks here and there. Overall not very compelling material, no evidence that gives one pause or any distinctions in the narrative to separate it from the rest and I came away feeling like it was probably just a publicity stunt. One of the witnesses has since come out saying it was all a hoax which seems likely true. It's just too paint by numbers, too generic and ready-made for a TV movie. Maybe it's because I've read too much of this stuff but nowadays I only really feel moved by high strangeness, the arthouse forteana.

I like the authors earlier book The Andreasson Affair because of that surreal dream like dimension and becuase that lean book was largely without commentary from the author. Here the author not only pads out proceedings with lots of fluff that should have been trimmed he also self - inserts into the narrative, claiming his own recently recalled abduction experiences. This is unappealing personally, I want the author to at least have the pretense of being an objective scientific minded observer, not a fully on board participant.

Honestly the two stars are mostly just for the amazingly goofy-creepy drawings by the witnesses. Some really striking imagery here. The Outsider Art genre of abducted drawings is an untapped mine shouting for a fully sourced exhibition.

[Susan · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is my second reading of this book, the first being many years ago. So long ago that I forgot that I had read it before. I continued reading it to see if it "held up" after all this time. It does.

If you are looking for a fun read, don't bother with this one. The whole book is a transcription of hypnosis sessions of 4 men who shared an experience while camping. Each one tells a very similar story from their perspective, which leads one to conclude that something extraordinary actually happened to them collectively. There are conclusions by the investigators which you may or may not agree with verbatim, but I am sure this will give you something to ponder for a long time.

[Meghan · Rating 4 out of 5]

A relatively objective look at a shared abduction event. Fowler's best book, The Watchers, has proven to be hard to locate, so I read this instead and wasn't disappointed and the bibliography has provided me with enough "to-reads" to keep me occupied for a few years ...

[Joshua · Rating 5 out of 5]

The author jumps to all sorts of conclusions that I never would. The incident explored in this book, however, remains an intriguing and compelling one. If you can filter out all of the subjective fanfare, there are some interesting experiences and observations reported within.

[Jvelo · Rating 4 out of 5]

classic 1970's abduction lore

[Brian Merrill · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Allagash Abductions was a fascinating book. I am not sure I believe it or not, but I absolutely could not put it down!

[Kevin Hogg · Rating 4 out of 5]

The book documents the abduction and related evidence very thoroughly. Much of the evidence comes through hypnosis sessions, which uncover much more than just the Allagash incident. It is well-organized, and I appreciate the investigators' efforts to avoid leading questions or influence the interviews. The author builds a solid case for the abduction, explaining the significance of the revelations and using a systematic approach based on accepted UFO research practices.

With all of that said, I don't know that it can be called undeniable. People who want to believe in the abduction will find what they're looking for. People who don't want to believe will find multiple ways to dispute or discredit the information. I remain in between--while I have no reason to doubt the possibility, I don't know enough about hypnosis or the research team to determine whether it's a hoax, confirmation bias, or something else. I suppose that's what I was looking for, though--an unsolved mystery that's intriguing enough to leave me wondering.

Overall, the writing was quite good. There was a bit of repetition, but some of that came from interviewing multiple subjects (not so much the stories themselves, which obviously repeat each other to some extent, but in the context provided for each). In the second half of the book, I did find that the repeated use of "the sixty-four million dollar question" got distracting, both from the frequency of use and my uncertainty about whether he meant "$64,000 question" (like the game show) or if he was deliberately using a higher number. The author, convinced of his own UFO encounter in the past, is obviously leaning toward belief (as evident in the title, so that's no surprise), but at times I was a bit unsure of his interpretation of the evidence or statements--it didn't seem to quite line up all the time, and I wasn't sure in a few places how much of his analysis was wishful thinking. I've been looking for the book for quite a while, and I'm definitely glad I had a chance to read it at last. Quite enjoyable, even if some readers may not find it as "undeniably" as the title suggests.

[B. · Rating 3 out of 5]

i just don't really even know what to put here... i read this book very quickly and found it very engaging, not in craft but in content. i have never read any sort of paranormal or UFO literature before and had nothing in mind re: what to expect, but maine is my home state and i reckoned i should know about this event.

what this book did give me was a lot of things to genuinely think over and consider; the stuff in here is very thought provoking and just interesting to entertain. i do think the claims this book makes that it has indisputable proof of alien abduction are obviously in no way truly verifiable, but if you're willing to suspend a little bit of doubt there's a lot of food for thought in here.

my biggest issue with this book was the writing craft and how the author chose to approach things like tone and objectivity. my standards for craft are lower when reading nonfiction because it seems only fair, but there were some glaring craft issues that actually for me were the greatest lack of credibility in the story. the editing is very poor. obvious letters and words are missing from sentences even in the third edition. the author is very presumptuous when describing the witnesses under hypnosis and will use overdramatic language that betrays bias while simultaneously giving the feeling that he's exploiting the real emotion and trauma of the witnesses. it's a genuine bummer when the actual testimony and evidence is hampered rather than helped by how an author presents it, but this book really suffered that way.

deeply interesting read trapped up in the confines of being told by an overconfident/egotistical writer.

[Stacey · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book centered around a multiple person abduction that took place in 1976 while four guys where on a camping trip. Two of the men were twin brothers, and the other two were friends. The abduction was investigated by the author and a couple other experts through hypnosis. Each of the four were told not to discuss the hypnosis sessions with the others until the investigation was complete so as to not contaminate the others subconscious memories. The accounts were virtually identical. During the investigation, it was learned that three of the four (including the twins) have had numerous abductions since childhood. As with most abduction scenarios, there was physical exams and collection of semen and other bodily samples. This book was extremely well done, documenting a professional and convincing investigation. The author is a highly regarded investigator in the field of UFO studies.

[Mark Marquez · Rating 4 out of 5]

Terrifying interviews and recollections of a true story. Do you believe their story? Seems pretty convincing. Their lives were forever upended. Their lives were ruined.

Four fishermen went on a camping trip. They went fishing in canoes. They saw an unidentified flying object. They thought nothing of it. Next day they saw it again and approached it. Later, they woke up confused and missing time. They went about their business and returned home. Weeks later is when the nightmares started. Then, they started sharing these vivid nightmares with each other. They realized they all had the same similar dreams. The author conducted hypnotic regression on these guys and the story they tell is something to keep you up at night and will keep you away from strange things in the woods.

[K S · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed this book simply because I love abduction literature. In terms of a compelling narrative this isn't exactly it. This is a MUFON report in book form. It's dry and clinical, most of the book is transcripts of hypnosis sessions for the four men who experienced the abduction on the Allagash. There are a few segments that are descriptive enough to give you chills, but if you've read anything by David Jacob or Budd Hopkins you won't find anything new. The event covered is noteworthy for having four corroborating people, two of which are twins, and makes a good read for the hardcore abduction lit enjoyer. But otherwise there's nothing much else for the few who are simply curious about the phenomenon.

[Samantha · Rating 3 out of 5]

Did it change my perspective on aliens? Yes. Was is unsettling? Yes (but mostly because it challenged what I believed). Do I think aliens are malevolent? No - it seems they treat us as scientific test subjects, i.e. insentient organisms, just like we treat other life forms on our planet.

This was my first nonfiction book on the topic of aliens and it was a good introduction into that research.

[Janet Jenkins · Rating 4 out of 5]

Recommended by a friend with a similar interest in UFOs and CEs, I am glad I read this book. The writing is academic and provides transcripts of hypnosis sessions with the “Allagash Four” The ending of the book compares the Allagash experiences with that of the Bullard study and methodically compares the different aspects of the encounters. The whole thing is fascinating and hard to accept as reality, yet there is compelling evidence that this event did happen. It’s a big question…

[Dan Zarfati · Rating 5 out of 5]

Although the situation related in this book is not new, the importance of this book is not only the detailed report, but it is a multiple witness case, an abduction with multiple experiencers. Very important.

[Marko]

I have the german edition: The Allagash Entfuehringen

[Aimee · Rating 3 out of 5]

love these scamps

[Sierra Zorn · Rating 4 out of 5]

Extremely interesting and thought provoking, almost terrifying. But there were bits that were repetitive… that is the only reason for less than 5 stars!