Insight

Synchronicities and Experiencers: the Brigitte Barclay Story by Lorin Cutts

Wednesday, February 1, 2012
Shortly after my article about James Gilliland and ECETI appeared in print early in 2011 (UFO Matrix Magazine Volume 1, Issue 04) I received an email from a woman in England saying that she’d like to talk with me. I didn’t really think too much about this and got busy working on various things. Another email arrived two weeks later, this time more intriguingly saying that she would like to talk to me because she’d had a dream about me after reading my article. If I am being totally honest, I wondered if I had attracted a crazy person through my article. Nothing, however, could have prepared me for what was about to unfold.

A few weeks went by before we finally managed to speak. It turned out that this woman was Brigitte Barclay/Bridget Grant, one of the UK’s better known UFO abductees - or ‘experiencers’ to coin the more modern (and politically correct?) term. Brigitte’s alleged experiences spanned many years and two continents and appeared to be ongoing.

Brigitte began telling me about her dream. She said we were in a church and I was talking to her passionately about religion and ufology and that something appeared to be happening with my left eye. She watched as my eye moved back and forth and then a beam of white light shot out of it and she wondered if she should tell me. Unknown to her - and unnervingly to me - my left eye had been spasming involuntarily for the past few months. UFO Matrix had not printed my picture in my last article, yet on seeing my photograph Brigitte said she was looking at the same person that had been in her dream.

As we spoke it became obvious we had many things in common and a sudden wealth of coincidences and seemingly out of this world synchronicities began to present themselves. Brigitte emailed me some of her encounters that she’d documented. One was titled ‘Topanga Tones’ about an experience she had in Topanga, California in the early nineties. Her experience began with ringing in her ears and included a vision that showed her what appeared to be a graphical representation of a musical tone played through a monitor or TV screen.

Unknown to Brigitte, I had become fascinated with Topanga when I had arrived in the USA in 2006; so much so that I had written and recorded a piece of music called ‘Topanga’. The track begins with tones that are as close as possible to the permanent ringing in my ears (tinnitus) that I have suffered with since the beginning of 2006. Brigitte explained that the tones I had used in my track were very close to the ones that she had heard during her experience.

Topanga is located in the Santa Monica mountains. It’s a beautiful, rural and idyllic suburb of Los Angeles that feels a million miles from the hustle and bustle of nearby Hollywood and downtown LA. I had no idea at the time - nor did Brigitte at the time of her experience - that Topanga is a UFO hotspot. This is well documented in the 1999 book UFOs Over Topanga Canyon by Preston Dennett.

During the next several weeks I began to learn Brigitte’s story, which involved a lifetime of encounters with UFOs and non-human entities. These included a lot of the usual stuff that comes with such encounters: scoop marks, possible screen memories, men in black, and unmarked black helicopters. 
In the late nineties former Ministry of Defence UFO expert Nick Pope began work on ‘The Alien Within’, a book about Brigitte’s encounters. During this time Nick did a large amount of research into Brigitte’s life and experiences, even taking her to New York to work with renowned UFO abduction expert, the late Budd Hopkins.  In 2000, nearing the conclusion of his work with Brigitte, Nick submitted a very compelling book outline to several publishers. They were successful in receiving offers for the book, but due to personal reasons Brigitte felt the time wasn’t right for her to go public and she pulled out. Although the project faltered, Nick and Brigitte remain close friends to this day.

As Brigitte and I got to know each other the coincidences continued. I learned about the village where she had her first encounters as a child, and the small village some miles away where she had her most recent encounter just last year. It suddenly dawned on me that I had mentioned both of these inconsequential villages in a recent article I’d written for Railways Illustrated magazine. I checked my copy and found that both of these tiny villages are mentioned one after the other at the very beginning of the article.

The train connection didn’t stop there. Brigitte mentioned to me that her great grandfather was a Victorian steam locomotive designer. Knowing Brigitte’s maiden name of Barclay, I immediately made the connection to Andrew Barclay - much to her surprise. As an interesting aside, Andrew Barclay had almost bankrupted his locomotive company by spending much of his money and manpower on building telescopes in order to satisfy his obsession with astronomy.

I believe I have had around fifty UFO sightings and several strange synchronicities around crop circles, but up to this point I did not claim to have ever seen a non-human entity. In the early nineties I read Abduction, the classic book on the subject by psychologist and Harvard professor John Mack. The book left me feeling perplexed, although I did find his conclusion interesting: that these experiences had some basis in physical reality and the patients he studied were not suffering any apparent delusion. However, the fact that hypnosis had been used as the centerpiece of his work had left me feeling somewhat lukewarm about the book and the subject itself.

With this in mind, I experienced mixed feelings when Brigitte asked me if I wanted to take on the job of completing her book. She felt that the time was now right for her to go public; and given our apparent connection and the string of coincidences between us, she said it felt right that I should write the book.  

I weighed up the thought that on the one hand it almost felt like we were being brought together by some higher power. On the other hand stood my skepticism, not of Brigitte, who seemed sincere in her beliefs, but of the abduction phenomenon as a whole. To be completely honest, I don’t think I would have taken Brigitte’s project on had it not been for the previous involvement by Nick Pope and others.

Brigitte began scanning and sending over Nick’s files and the details of her story became a lot clearer.  It was during this period of receiving and digesting file after file that something strange happened to me.

I was walking my dogs with my friend Jenna on their usual route along the banks of the Willamette River in the suburbs of Portland, Oregon. It was twilight and we were walking down a hill when I observed what I first thought was a small grey dog on the road about one hundred yards ahead. One of my dogs, Tara, is nervous around other dogs, so I stopped to put her on a lead.  With Tara safely on the lead, I looked up to see the greyish ‘dog’ rear up into a humanoid form. It wasn’t a dog at all. I would say this being was just as tall as myself, if not taller. Suddenly, out of thin air, another one appeared. Before I could say anything the two beings floated off to the right over impassable scrub land. It was as if they weren’t fully formed - they were translucent and not totally solid. 

At that point I managed to get some words out. ‘F***ing hell Jenna! Aliens!’ (I would like to point out that although these beings appeared to be the standard tall, grey type ‘aliens’, I do not take it for granted that these things were definitely extra-terrestrial in origin – this was just what came out of my mouth).  Before we had time to discuss anything, I then perceived the two beings floating back the other way, a little farther down the lane and alongside a railroad track that runs parallel with the river.  

Some time later, I developed another memory of seeing a being closer up, about 30 feet away. This puzzles me because my original memory – and the one confirmed by Jenna – was that once they disappeared I said ‘let’s go find them’ and off we went towards where we had last seen the thin, ghost like figures.  We didn’t see anything further, so we decided to head back up the hill towards home. Suddenly, about halfway up the hill, every hair on my body stood on end and I couldn’t wait to get the hell out of there.

This wasn’t the first time I had seen something strange in this area.  My last UFO sighting was in October 2010 only a few hundred feet from this same spot.  I saw a brown organic-looking UFO remain stationary about 50 feet off the ground. It was about four feet wide by four feet long and it shot off at an incredible speed and trajectory and made a high-pitched whistling sound as it did so. After the experience of seeing the two ghostly entities I had just had, another memory came to me of seeing a smaller entity whilst walking the dogs in the same area sometime last year. For whatever reason I had forgotten about that until this new experience. Jenna also recalled a time when I said to her I’d just seen a small entity while walking with her in this same area. I have no memory of saying this or of that incident to this day.

Something about this latest experience made me begin to take Brigitte more seriously. It almost felt as if it had been played out for my benefit. Was this designed to sway me into pursuing the book and follow Brigitte’s story? It certainly had a profound effect on me. Can someone who is witnessing strange phenomenon themselves remain an impartial researcher of that phenomenon? Could I effectively keep a rational, objective, and unbiased view of Brigitte’s story? Was I about to become a part of that story?

Mindful and cautious of all of this, I began forging ahead with the research for the book, and I present the following as a brief sample of some of Brigitte’s experiences thus far. My thanks go to Nick Pope for doing much of the original research into Brigitte’s experiences prior to 2000.

 

PATIENT ZERO TO PAGE THREE

 

Brigitte has led a full and interesting life by anyone’s standards regardless of the UFO phenomenon; however Brigitte’s UFO/non-human encounters are interesting and possibly unique in several respects.

Firstly, there are other witnesses who can back up several of her claims of seemingly strange encounters. Secondly, there are a number of unusual medical conditions (with records) that add significant weight to her story. Thirdly, Brigitte’s encounters have, for the most part, occurred whilst fully awake and neither in bed nor having just awoken from sleep. I believe this rules out sleep paralysis, dreams, or anything of that kind.

An interesting aspect to this case occurred before Brigitte was even born. Brigitte’s mother had been rhesus-negative, a blood condition that used to have potentially fatal consequences for some children of rhesus-negative mothers who could die of haemolytic disease of the newborn. Brigitte’s mother was actually the first person in the world to be given the anti-D injection which solved this problem. This had come about as Dr Colin Mantell – the pioneering professor who developed this lifesaving technique – was actually Brigitte’s godfather. Thanks in part to Dr Mantell, Brigitte and many other babies were able to survive. The link between the abduction phenomenon and human blood type has long been speculated upon. Does Brigitte’s unique position as ‘patient zero’ in this ground-breaking project mean she has been further subject to interest and observation by others?

 

Brigitte grew up in the 1970s in a small, sleepy fishing village in Devon, England. She remembers seeing ‘little people’ coming into her room on occasion and both of her brothers also witnessed a UFO by the nearby railway line in the village where they lived.  Brigitte frequently saw a strange, tall figure dressed entirely in black in the garden of the family home. After one of these sightings, Brigitte noticed a large, deep scoop mark on her right thigh which is obvious and visible to this day. Notably this person or being was also witnessed on one occasion by her brother who ran down the garden to try and find him. More sinister possibilities about this figure came out during hypnosis sessions with Budd Hopkins in New York City in 1998. 

On another significant occasion Brigitte recalls meeting a little oriental girl with striking, almond shaped eyes in her village. The girl showed Brigitte what appeared to be Chinese or oriental money and then pointed to her house. They arranged to meet the following day at the same place… except the house had gone and in its place was a circular ‘gazebo’ with lanterns adorning the edge and with something like shimmering water beneath that reflected the light from the lanterns. To the mind of a child, could the oriental girl have been a non-human entity and the gazebo a UFO? Or were these screen memories given to young Brigitte to make the whole experience more palatable?

As a teenager Brigitte was rebellious and restless and couldn’t wait to escape the confines of life in a small rural village. With her sights set high, she headed up to London to reach for a lifestyle a million miles away from the green hills and sleepy estuaries of Devon. Brigitte was instantly successful in becoming a page three model. This lead to other assignments – becoming a Penthouse Pet, appearing in Playboy, doing TV adverts and traveling around the world. She mingled with pop stars and actors, dated celebrities, lived in a glamorous apartment, and collected vintage cars that were hired out for film and TV shows. She even appeared in the movie ‘The Rainbow Thief’ alongside Peter O’Toole, Omar Sharif and Christopher Lee.

 

THE 405 INCIDENT and TOPANGA

 

Brigitte relocated to California in the early nineties. Tired and dissatisfied with modeling, she became a make-up artist in Los Angeles. It was here in February of 1993 in the LA suburb of Brentwood just outside of Hollywood that she had a significant encounter. Interestingly, this happened around sunset during the evening rush hour on a slip road off the 405 freeway. Brigitte was driving with a female friend in her car when they both witnessed a solid, metallic flying saucer with a red/orange glow on the underside only five to seven meters away. Brigitte recalls ‘I felt strange before we even saw the UFO. I’ve never had a feeling like that in my stomach before. My hands were gripping the steering wheel like glue and there was dead silence all around’. 

Brigitte then turned a corner and recalls seeing the object in her rear window. She felt very strongly that they should drive to the top of a hill and see if they could see it. They arrived at a viewpoint but didn’t see the UFO again. The girls then drove to her friend’s house some five blocks away, with Brigitte in a state of shock and disorientation. Too agitated to go inside they decided to head home. Brigitte felt drunk and had difficulty balancing and driving. Once they exited the driveway they noticed a black car up ahead that seemed out of place. It was a vintage car but was in mint, showroom condition. Hypnosis sessions would later reveal that this car was incredibly troubling for Brigitte. She likened the blackness of the car (including a unique black chrome-like radiator) to the blackness of her abductors’ eyes. 

Paradoxically, Brigitte’s conscious memory of this black car is that she had the words ‘so I never forget’ come to her when she saw it. On the way home and at exactly the same place where they had seen the UFO earlier, they now observed four or five unmarked, black, military style helicopters heading in the direction of the departed UFO.

Many things about this encounter are perplexing. Did other people see the UFO? If so, why did the 405 freeway not come to a grinding halt? Was missing time involved but not realised by the girls? Much more would appear to have taken place, according to later hypnosis sessions with Budd and Nick. These sessions suggested the distinct possibility that this may have evolved into a full blown abduction scenario. One thing that strikes me as interesting about one particular hypnosis session is that Brigitte recalled being taken out of the car and taken someplace else where a non-human being handed her a part human-looking hybrid baby. Rather than believing that this baby was hers - which is the typical response in encounters that involve cross-breeding - she acted confused and refused to bond with it.  Brigitte’s response is notable in that it varies significantly from the script of many abduction scenarios.  Many abductees report feeling a huge sense of joy or love on being reunited with their alleged, long-lost offspring. Why would Brigitte refuse to believe this?

An interesting aside to this encounter is that the girl who was in the car with Brigitte has never been able to be traced. As a reaction to this experience, both women left Los Angeles shortly afterwards and lost touch with one another. Brigitte and others have spent years trying to trace her passenger but without success. There are other witnesses to Brigitte’s encounters that will be included in my research, but tracing this woman is something on which I will be focusing particular attention. Only two weeks ago an interesting lead appeared out of seemingly thin air. I am currently following this up and remain optimistic that we may yet be able to locate Brigitte’s acquaintance in the 405 encounter.

Brigitte continued to have UFO experiences after she left Los Angeles to stay in Santa Cruz.  During a later visit to the Los Angeles area she had her ‘Topanga Tones’ episode as already mentioned. Also whilst in Topanga, Brigitte felt very uneasy one evening, like something wasn’t right. She developed a gynecological condition that meant she was rushed to the doctor. Medical records of this incident are inconclusive; the doctor surmised that the only thing that could rationally explain her condition was being bitten or stung by an insect, but Brigitte is adamant that this wasn’t the case. 

THE RETURN

In May of 1993, a couple of months after the 405 encounter, Brigitte returned to the UK to be closer to her family. Here she found time to try and make sense of her experiences in the USA and contacted various people within the UFO community. It was through this process that Brigitte eventually met Nick Pope and this is where he became interested and involved with this extraordinary case.

A number of years passed without any significant UFO events in Brigitte’s life, but this changed in 2010 when she had two close UFO sightings within two weeks – the last one being by a large railway viaduct near her home at the time. She wondered what this could mean after such a long break. Two weeks after her last UFO sighting she went to her doctor complaining of a lump in her ovary area. Her doctor was unsure of what was happening and referred her to a specialist who, in turn, admitted her to hospital to be urgently operated on. Brigitte had developed an extremely rare gynecological disorder. Is this the kind of physical evidence that we can expect to see from individuals who have gone through real, physical abduction procedures over the course of many years? Or is this unique to Brigitte? I don’t want to go into the details of this unusual condition here, because my research is ongoing. Whereas it may be impossible to categorically link this and other medical conditions of Brigitte’s to the UFO/abduction phenomenon, given Brigitte’s alleged encounters, I still believe this condition could be extremely noteworthy.

In both Brigitte’s childhood experiences and the later Los Angeles incidents it would appear they might involve a move into some kind of parallel reality. If this is the case, at what point does the experiencer’s reality change from that of others’ around them? It is the almost dream-like descriptions and series of events in many of these encounters that make the abduction/experiencer subject so difficult for many ‘nuts and bolts’ ufologists and for those of a more scientific persuasion.

There is much more to reveal and I have only given a brief taste of Brigitte’s story in this article. It has been a a fascinating experience going through the notes and research relating to this case. I currently keep an open mind, and am trying hard not to draw conclusions about any of Brigitte’s alleged encounters just yet. There is a wealth of information to take in from medical records, witness testimonies, notes, research and writing by Nick Pope, and recordings of the hypnosis sessions with Budd Hopkins and Dolores Cannon. More than a decade later are we any closer to understanding the true nature of these experiences and the way they interact with our reality? Are we any closer to finding out the truth about who or what is behind this bizarre aspect of the UFO phenomenon?

 

I will leave you with a quote from Nick Pope’ s original notes for ‘The Alien Within’ back in 2000. ‘This four year investigation is the most in-depth study ever carried out into a particular case, certainly in the UK, if not the world. No case like this exists, whether in the files of the Ministry Of Defence, or on the books of any civilian UFO researcher’.

The fact that this extraordinary case appears to be very much ongoing means that I am forging ahead with further research and I hope to have the book ready for publication in 2012.

Brigitte will be speaking at various conferences (including some joint presentations with myself or Nick Pope) in the UK and USA through 2012.

LORIN CUTTS
Lorin Cuttts' website is LorinCutts.com.

British UFO researcher Lorin Cutts became fascinated with the subject after his first encounter in Portugal in 1993. After returning to the UK he began to accumulate as many books on the subject as he could, and spent days photocopying every back issue of “Flying Saucer Review” at the Imperial College Library in London. On the advice of FSR editor, Gordon Creighton, Lorin began investigating some of the UK’s most intriguing multiple witness sightings.

Now based in Portland, Oregon, Lorin splits his time between music production, writing, researching UFOs and frequency healing. He has spent the last few years specializing in high strangeness UFO related reports and, more recently, lifetime “alien” abduction/contactee cases. He is currently writing two books on the UFO subject “None Of The Above”, and “Unearthly Child: The Brigitte Barclay Story” with foreword and additional research by Nick Pope.

Lorin is an executive partner of Eyewitness Radio and hosts the monthly “High Strangeness” show there. He is currently developing several TV projects relating to the UFO subject in the USA.

 

 

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