The UFO “Repeaters” Phenomenon

Venerated UFO researcher J. Allen Hynek used to say that if a UFO case involved a witness who had experienced multiple sightings, this disparaged their credibility. What Hynek (and most other UFO researchers) didn’t want was ammunition for fundamentalist skeptics who associated “repeaters” with wide-eyed publicity-seeking wackos. Unfortunately, this overlooks some important facts and famous, well-supported cases.

Perhaps the most discussed (at least in the hardcore UFO field) is the Mc Minnville case of 1950. When it was discovered that the Trents had seen UFOs on at least two other occasions, some Ufologists became worried and the fundamentalist skeptics howled. Mrs. Trent said that she felt that they were fortunate to have a camera handy when a saucer appeared near their home. It also came to light that others in the area had also seen strange things flying about over McMinnville for months, but had not discussed this with outsiders. It was a classic “flap” situation.

Another famous case with “repeater” status was the Pascagoula event of October, 1973. One of the witnesses/ abductees, Charles Hickson described two other close encounter events that happened to him in the years following his harrowing night. One was witnessed along with other members of his family on a lonely stretch of road in rural Mississippi.

Many would be surprised to learn that Maurice Masse, who encountered small beings in a lavender field in Valensole, France in June of 1965 saw UFOs on multiple occasions. The sightings affected him such that some might be moved to categorize Monsieur Masse as a contactee. Investigators Aime Michel and Charles Bowen interviewed Masse in 1967. Tellingly, he said, “I know when they are about. On several occasions, something in me has told me ‘they aren’t far off,’ and then I actually have either seen something in the sky, or I have learned afterward from the newspapers that something had happened…that has happened to me several times.” Bowen went on to comment “What seems essential to him [Masse] is the mental relationship existing between these beings and men. But in him this realtionship is felt, rather like a religious concept.”

Bowen also remarked that Masse’s original encounter was in an open area that allowed the UFO occupants to see anyone who might approach and take evasive action very quickly, but that Masse was able to approach the beings to within a few meters before he was apparently paralyzed by some sort of device that one of the beings pointed at him. Bowen hypothesized that the event was premeditated by the ufonauts, as some sort of “theater” for the benefit of Masse. This certainly adds a surprising twist to the story, and to our view of the the phenomenon.

Perhaps what occasionally happens is that people are “marked” or affected in some way that attracts the phenomenon, or makes them more sensitive to it than others. In the case of contactees, the mere act of talking about UFO occupants and the subject in general, in a spiritual way, may have a similar effect. As I have mentioned before, some contactees may have had an initial sighting, which in their minds made it OK to make things up later. Perhaps some of them didn’t make up as much as we have thought. Some people by design, or accident, seem to turn into “strange attractors.”

Well-known abductee Travis Walton has to my knowledge not claimed any more weird episodes other than his 1975 encounter, strangely enough.