A former UK defence chief has said a video allegedly showing a Midlands woman's alien abduction could be a "hoax or genuinely spooky". Nick Pope, who worked at the now-defunct UFO desk at the Ministry Of Defence (MoD), said he "briefly" met the couple who took the video in Droitwich, Worcestershire.
Footage of the incident, recorded in 2010, went viral last year - after BirminghamLive published the clip obtained by Birmingham UFO Group (BUFOG). The woman appeared to "dematerialize" beneath her bed sheets and suddenly remerge 12-and-a-minutes later, in the video which can be viewed above.
The eerie incident was captured on an infrared camera, which was installed after she had complained to her husband about experiencing "two abduction experiences in the space of a week". Dave Hodrien, lead investigator at BUFOG, analysed the footage and concluded in a report it appeared to be "genuine and not a deliberate hoax".
BirminghamLive approached Mr Pope - who investigated reports of UFO sightings at the MoD between 1991 and 1994 - for his thoughts and expertise on the subject and case. He said: "I've seen this video before and I briefly met the couple concerned, though I haven't investigated the case personally.
"Frankly, there's not much middle ground here: it's either a hoax, or something genuinely spooky and - perhaps - out of this world. Sadly, I'd taken early retirement from the MoD before I saw this video.
"If I had the footage while I was working on the UFO desk, and if I also had access to the camera equipment, I could have secured a proper scientific analysis using intelligence community imagery analysis resources and capabilities. That would quickly have told me if the footage was genuine, or had been faked."
Although Mr Pope investigated reports of UFO sightings at the MoD, he was also contacted by people regarding "alien abductions". It was a topic he said he had to "tread carefully" with, due to the risk of "political embarrassment".
He continued: "While alien abductions weren't formally in our terms of reference on the UFO project, you can't investigate UFOs without finding yourself drawn into the debate about alien abductions. People did contact us about abductions and other so-called alien contact experiences, but I had to tread carefully, because it's been MoD policy for decades to play down our interest and involvement in the UFO phenomenon.
"So getting too closely involved in abduction research could have caused extreme political embarrassment if it had been found out. I had some ideas though: blood and DNA tests of abductees would have been a good start, in a double-blind study with a control group of people who have no such experiences.
"We could even have tasked the SAS with undertaking covert surveillance of abductees' houses, dressing the whole thing up as a training exercise. But the risk of exposure was too big."
Mr Pope said one of the most notable UFO incidents he looked into while working at the MoD happened in the West Midlands. Dubbed the Cosford Incident, it happened over RAF Cosford, an airbase near Wolverhampton in Shropshire, in 1994 where an MoD police patrol reported seeing lights over the site.
Mr Pope's final posting in the MoD was to the Directorate of Defence Security. While the UFO desk closed in 2009 because it had received no reports in 50 years suggesting a military threat. At present, there is no official agency for reporting UFOs, with sightings sometimes being made to police forces and independent UFO investigative groups.
In decades gone by, the topic of UFOs has faced stigma including those who make reports of sightings, due to their believability. But Mr Pope said there appears to have been a shift in attitude in the US recently.
He continued: "The fact that the US Congress and NASA are taking UFOs seriously has lessened the stigma of making a sighting report, though fear of being disbelieved or ridiculed is probably still a factor for some people. But alien abductions are probably a bridge too far, for the time being.
"Perhaps that will change, but for now, in the US at least, the focus is on pilots and radar operators who've seen or tracked UFOs, and on intelligence community personnel who've been involved in UFO programs. Congressional representatives are comfortable with that, because they can frame the UFO phenomenon as a defence and national security issue. Abductions would be a harder sell.
"What all this means is that people are probably more interested and open-minded about UFOs than they've ever been, but that having abduction experiences are still unlikely to come forward in great numbers. Sadly - because some of these people are genuinely traumatized - they'll have to deal with things themselves, or contact civilian UFO organisations."
Mr Pope said he was "open-minded" about abduction stories, although he believes some cases can be attributed to hoaxes and hallucinations. He added: "Over the years I've met enough people who claim to have had alien abduction experiences to say that the majority seem sincere, with no signs of psychopathology. As with UFOs, there's unlikely to be a single explanation here.
"Some cases will be hoaxes, some may be the product of vivid dreams and hallucinations, and some may be false memories resulting from regression hypnosis. But as with UFOs, it only takes one case to be genuine and we're in game-changing, paradigm-shifting territory."
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