Dr. John Mack
|
Harvard professor and psychiatrist John Mack was hit by a
car and killed in London on Monday night, September 27.
After meeting UFO researcher Budd Hopkins in Cape Cod, where
both of them spent the summers, Mack became intrigued by
people who claimed to have UFO abductions. He professionally
analyzed many of these people and found them to be sane and
mentally stable and thus became one of the first scientists
to take alien abduction seriously. His courage in risking
his career by acknowledging the validity of the UFO
phenomenon was highly valued and he will be greatly missed.
While he did not conclude that we are being visited by
beings from other worlds, he did feel there was definitely
something real going on that we don't yet understand and was
especially intrigued by the messages that abductees brought
back warning about a future environmental catastrophe, years
before global warming was in the news.
After he wrote his groundbreaking book "Abuction?Human
Encounters with Aliens" in 1994, Harvard tried to revoke his
tenure. However, they were unable to do so without
compromising freedom of expression and research for all
Harvard professors, so he continued to teach. He published
his second book on the subject, "Passport to the
Cosmos?Human Transformation and Alien Encounters" in 1999
and formed the non-profit organization PEER to further
investigate the UFO phenomenon. He traveled to many
countries, investigating UFO reports. One of his most
provocative investigations was a film he
made in South Africa, where he interviewed several white
children who witnessed a UFO landing and a tribal Shaman who
was abducted nearby.
Ever intellectually curious, one of the reasons Mack was in
the U.K. was to speak at a crop circle symposium. According
to reporter Linda Howe, "he spoke
before the T. E. Lawrence
Society Symposium, in Oxford, England. According to Will
Bueche, Communications Director for the John Mack Institute
in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Dr. Mack's first presentation
was so
well-received that he was asked to do a second on Sunday
evening. On Monday he was in London and had gone with
colleagues to
dinner. He had called the family with whom he was staying
after 10 p.m. to say he would arrive at their home around 11
p.m., London time. At 1 a.m., the London police confirmed
that John Edward Mack, M. D., had been pronounced dead on a
street near the Symposium's location, killed by a motor
vehicle."
Dr. Mack was killed by an intoxicated motorist, a young
Czech man who lives in the neighborhood.
To read Whitley's Journal about John Mack,
click here.
