Interview with Karla Turner, Ph.D.

Interview with Karla Turner, Ph.D. From Contact Forum, May/June 1995

CF: You are widely regarded as one of the leading experts in the field of UFO and "alien-abduction" research. How did you get started in your study of these things?

KT: Our family knew nothing about the phenomenon when we started having UFO sightings and abduction encounters. Being a researcher, I turned to the UFO literature for an explanation. When I absorbed what was available, I found no answers that I felt were trustworthy. I decided that this was a crucial situation for my family (if not globally), and the only way I could get answers was to do the research myself. The only way to do the research, in this case, was to go out into the field and deal with abduction cases.

CF: Was "Into the Fringe" the first result of that? [Karla's first book]

KT: Actually, "Into the Fringe" was not a result of research to gain answers. It is more of an account of my family's awakening to, and coping with, these experiences during the first year and a half, when they were very intense. It was not until after that that I started to branch out and work with other people. I worked with Barbara Bartholic on our case, and began working with her on other cases. Many times she would come to Texas (where I lived) and we would set up a four- or five-day work session, during which people in that area who wanted to work with her would come to my home. She would interview them and place them under regressive hypnosis there. I began to learn by acting as her assistant. (If Ph.D.'s were available in this field, Barbara should certainly have z\one. Working with her proved to be much more educational than my academic career.) Then Barbara's caseload got so heavy that she was no longer able to handle it. It was no longer enough for me to assist, and I had to being doing preliminary investigative work myself. And that was how my involvement developed.

CF: We have been finding, in a lot of cases, that experiencers' parents, sometimes their great-grandparents have had the same types of encounters that they have. Is that what you found in your family?

KT: Yes, it is definitely "transgenerational" in Elton's family. [Elton, Dr. Turner's husband, was given the pseudonym "Casey" in 'Into the Fringe' and 'Taken'. They no longer feel it is necessary to protect his identity.] Before Elton's grandmother died, in 1990 or 1991, the family knew she was near the end of her time here, so they asked her to tell some of the old stories, and videotaped her response for posterity. One of the stories she recounted seems to be a clear account of an abduction that occurred when she was a child. It took place between 1905 and 1908 in East Texas. It had a lot of the earmarks of the classic abduction--screen memories, missing time, a miraculous return from a place she should not have been and should not have been able to get out of etc.

There is no doubt that both his mother and father have had sightings, abduction encounters and other unusual experiences peripherally associated with the phenomenon. Elton is involved, ant at least one of his children was involved as a child. I don't know about my real father because he was killed in Korea when I was four years old, but I believe that his brother, who is 80 now, may have had experiences. My son and I have each had experiences.

My brother and sister-in-law and their children have had experiences--which we did not know about until "Into The Fringe" was about to be published. They were so upset by those experiences (and by other things going on in their lives) that they removed themselves from the family for about ten years. Only when they heard about my experiences did they et back in contact and say; "Okay, now we can talk." And a cousin of mine--whom I was closest to, both geographically and emotionally--has obviously had some kind of experiences. She was been compelled to write a fictional account of the alien situation. She is working on it now.

My mother refuses to say anything, because it is just too frightening to her. She has not yet even finished reading "Into the Fringe". Each time she reads a page or two, she becomes so upset that she can't go any further--which tells me that there is probably a reason for her feelings. I remember that, in 1965, when I was a senior in high school, a big flap was making national news. It was one of the few times that I had ever paid attention to the UFO thing. One day, Mother and I were listening to the TV while doing something in the kitchen. Walter Cronkite was talking about the UFO flap, and I told Mother that if a UFO landed in the backyard, I probably would go get on it. My mother, who is extremely gentle, and who never raised her voice or hit me, stopped what she was doing, grabbed me by both shoulders and shook me until I felt as if my teeth would fall out. All the while, she was saying, forcefully, "You swear to me, you will not ever, ever, ever get near one! Don't you dare even say that!" It was the only outburst I have ever known my mother to have in my entire life. I now know--from research--that extreme responses like that to this phenomenon are often indicators that a person has had experiences.

CF: You mentioned the use of hypnosis, which has been the subject of a lot of controversy. Some of the other researchers have said that people under hypnosis can come up with scenarios that did not happen, in order to please the hypnotist. Some have said that the multiple levels of experience--where one can break through screen memories and ferret out buried memories that are different--are artifacts of the process of hypnosis. What are your opinions about these issues?

KT: I think those positions are completely untenable, they grow out of what I call armchair research. I don't conceive you will find them being espoused by anyone who has actually had the experiences. If they have been through them and want to come back and talk about what happens when they undergo hypnosis, to look at what they consciously remember, then we can have a dialogue. Right now, they are speaking without knowledge. They are speaking hypothetically, and their opinions are based on erroneous understandings of the phenomenon, of the experiences, and of the control exerted upon abductees during these experiences. It is easy to philosophize any number of explanations, but that does not mean that those explanations have any relationship to what is really going on.

Also, there are bad hypnotists and good hypnotists. A bad hypnotist probably can foul up a number of things. I know that people who have gone to hypnotists for smoking or dietary problems have sometimes suffered more after hypnosis. Obviously, some things can be mishandled. But my experience with hypnosis and the veracity of what is recalled has, in several cases, been proven to me to be accurate. I have been able to investigate these cases. At times erroneous material does surface, or is created because of the situation, but that is not typical.

I conclude that hypnosis is, by and large, one of the most excellent tools we have. Used properly, it may be the only tool we have to get certain pieces of information (or levels of information) back up to the conscious state. I have been able to test a number of hypnotically recalled memories against externally verifiable evidence, and they have proven to be correct.

CF: You have found, have you not, that sometimes there are multiple levels, like the layers of an onion? An experiencer undergoes hypnosis and comes up with a scenario, then, when he is regressed to a deeper level, he breaks through the first level (you find out that it was a screen memory), and a different scenario emerges.

KT: Yes, and it seems to me that, in some cases, a bottom level can be reached.

CF: How many layers are there; how deep can you go; and what's at the bottom?

KT: We have not done enough research to answer any of those questions without being an armchair philosopher. Typically (not always) the first recall deals mostly with conscious information. When the subject is taken to the next deeper level of the trance state and asked to focus, often what will be reported is that what was seen was not the same as the conscious recall. Then a groping process begins. The subject thinks, "This was inaccurate; I feel that something was wrong; and when I focus, I see that it was not what I thought it was." That is a transitional level.

There may be only a couple of levels--as opposed to, say twenty levels--but there certainly is a cover level, underlain by a more solid foundation. If the subjects are helped to program their mental computers to penetrate illusion and to speak only truthful, accurate statements, to, as Barbara has often said, "clarify vision," then they will recall radically different scenarios--not expanded versions of the firsts scenarios, but something quite different from what their conscious memories had left them with. There are at least two levels, and possibly three.

CF: People have told us that they can break through screen memory after screen memory until they get to a scenario involving reptilians, and that is as far as they can go. Have you found that to be the case?

KT: In the few cases that I am very familiar with, when the "base line" was reached, reptilians were involved.

CF: Are the greys always involved in the top level?

KT: Sometimes the first level involves greys, sometimes humans, sometimes Pleiadians, sometimes strange animals.

CF: Abductees tell stories of seeing beings--angelic Nordics, for example--and then, when they concentrate and try to focus on their memories of those beings, they disappear, and behind them are these "lizard people."

KT: I am not familiar with a number of cases. I have heard other researchers talk about the same thing. In one case that I recount in "Into the Fringe," James had mostly conscious recollections and almost no hypnosis. He remembered being drawn into the proximity of a beautiful "Pleiadian" woman, who was very alluring and tender, and almost seductive. She wanted him to come into her embrace. When he got into the embrace, and thought she was going to kiss him, she disappeared entirely, and what was left in her place was a purplish-black, bumpy, almost slimy-looking character with fairly asymmetrical features.

I have encountered this same type of creature in a couple of other cases. The entity was very strong. Instead of embracing James, the creature threw him down on the ground and shoved a two-foot-long tube down his throat, into his stomach, and pulled up stomach juices. The next day, he still had some of the bile taste, the interior of his throat was sore, and he discovered claw marks around both sides of his neck, where he had been held down. Whatever the entity was, there was something claw-like about it (which, of course, matches reptilians). Maybe, as close as he was to it, he could not perceive the whole figure. But he could see a bumpy covering, which could equate to the rough, scaly exterior sometimes reported to be reptilian. It is described as bumpy, ridged, bony, strong, clawed.

CF: Apparently these beings have the ability to project different images.

KT: Some people say that they transform--that they mutate or change their own real forms. I don't accept that as accurate. I don't believe they really look like a blond, and they do something to trick you and then they suddenly look like a reptilian. I think that what they alter is human perception. They certainly can project false images--just as Ted's [Ted Rice's] grandmother was shown her dead husband, so that she would consent to have a sexual encounter. Ted's grandfather had been dead for six years. And in the middle of having the encounter with what she thought was her restored husband, the image disappeared--I suppose because the aliens wanted to get the "emotional juice" from her--and she saw a "reptoid" on top of her.