Barbara: The Story of a UFO Investigator Read online

  I once interviewed another farmer who lived near Mt. Magazine in Arkansas. He’d had cattle mutilated very close to his farmhouse. He claimed that his other cattle and his dog went “beserkers” in the night. In the morning they walked out to find dead cattle. The offspring of the mutilated cows would not approach them. But that’s not all. The calves of the remaining living cows refused to suck from their living mothers for a few days.

  Because of the ruckus in the near pasture he had gone out of his house to look around the night before. There had been UFO sightings in the area for some time. The reports had been made by both teens and adults who lived in the Mt. Magazine area. This farmer walked out at night and then stared at a spectacular sight. A UFO rose straight up from Mt. Magazine to light the hills and the river as brightly as if it were day. The ship took a course north over the river.

  “It was so bright,” he said, “I could see the shoreline, the water, the trees on the hillsides. Everything was visible, everything for miles around was just bathed in brilliance.”

  Several days later, in that same Mt. Magazine area, something happened on one small farm owned by an older woman who lived alone. She got out of bed because she saw a bright light from her window. She looked out to see what she thought was her pasture on fire. She called the Sheriff. She told the dispatcher that her pasture and woods were on fire. They poopoohed her complaint and told her to go on back to bed. She then called her brother-in-law who came soon but the light had gone. He and she walked out to where she’d observed what she’d thought to be a fire, only to find that some large vehicle had landed in the center of the clearing. Proof was in the imprint of the large pods which had created deep impressions in the moist earth of the pasture. Something bearing considerable weight, probably tons of weight, had landed there not long before they had made their trek from the house.

  In those days we heard very little about abductions and such, but we heard a very great deal about UFO sightings and cattle mutilations. In fact, other than from Bo and Peep, I’d never heard of people going onto the alien ships. The Southeast Missouri, Northeast Oklahoma, and Northwestern Arkansas areas centered in or near the Ozarks, were constant hotbeds of UFO activity, constantly observed by teachers, farmers, kids, teens, lawmen, oil field workers, cowboys, housewives and store owners. The kids and the old folks, the educated, and the uneducated, the rich and the poor, the believers and the nonbelievers, all saw, and reported on, the brilliantly lighted vehicles that swarmed in the sky each night.

  Even though I’d seen, over and over again, what the aliens from the UFOs had done to cows, I remained my optimistic naive self. The people in the alien craft above us were here merely to observe us. I told myself that and I also told other people that. These are benign creatures who are here to protect us from our own careless use of the earth. I said, and so did many others who were surveying the vessels in the sky. We all believed we had our feet firmly planted on the ground. Our understanding of the sudden spate of UFO activity was complete, we thought. Those creatures in the metallic-looking saucers were here merely to observe.

  All of us in those years, in every state where we visited, local people and visitors, standing in groups or watching alone, we all stared up at them. All fascinated. All mesmerized by the displays. None of us ever dreamed that we, or anyone we knew, could ever be taken up or taken away in those swooping, hovering, illuminated, flying saucers that often filled our night skies.

  I believe I had completely forgotten my own childhood experiences. I never even spoke about them to anyone. One thing the aliens do very well. They can, with the greatest of ease, disguise, hide or wipe out your memories of any UFO contact whatsoever.

  I’ve certainly had proof of that in the years of my involvement with the victims of those aliens. I now know that aliens start by abducting the very young, then they continue to abduct and experiment with the chosen ones for the rest of that particular child’s life. The victims’ memories of the abductions are shrouded so the subject never knows exactly what is going on, only that he or she has had some sort of strange experiences. The experiences rise to trouble the surface of his or her mind at unexpected moments. The common reaction is this: “Barbara, can you help me? Am I going crazy?”

  My inner slate is wiped as clean as anyone else’s. Here is an incident from my own experience.

  At a party one night a friend of mine said, “Barbara, I want you to meet a friend of mine.” She pushed forward a well-groomed man in a three-piece suit. “He’s a lawyer. Barry Lewis.” She gestured toward me, “This is my friend, Barbara Bartholic, Barry.”

  I shook the stranger’s hand.

  “Here it is, 1984, and although I’ve known Barry all my life,” my friend continued, I haven’t seen him for ten years.” The woman pulled on my arm. Her smile promised something amusing. “But I remember something weird about my old-time pal.” She made a gesture toward the lawyer. “Take off your glasses, Barry.” She laughed. “Look at his eyes, Barb. Isn’t that strange?”

  The man smiled and lowered his sunglasses to stare into my eyes. Each of the pupils of the lawyers’ eyes contained a small quarter-moon-shaped, white crescent. I stared back.

  As if I had no control over my own movements, I felt my hand rise to point at the man.

  “You had a UFO experience when you were very young.” My own words shocked me.

  The stranger grunted surprise and sat down.

  “How did you know? I’ve never told anyone except my parents.”

  “I don’t know. I just know. Can you tell me about it?”

  My friend stepped closer to the man. She talked quietly but I could hear what she said.

  “Go ahead, Barry. Barb is a well-known investigator, a UFO investigator. She hears that kind of stuff all the time.”

  Barry Lewis motioned to me to sit on the chair facing him.

  “I was a bedridden ten-year-old Iowa farm boy when it happened. I was dying of blood poisoning in my feet and one day, just after the doctor left, I found myself inside some sort of a strange vehicle... with strange little beings standing over me.”

  He stared at me. His pupils dilated. The white moons gleamed across at me.

  “The people in the space ship worked on me, Barbara. And...” he hesitated “...there were a lot of kids there.”

  He paused again.

  “My God.” Barry Lewis leaned forward and his gaze bored into mine. “Why… I know you. You were there too. You were a blonde alien woman, and you were on that space ship with me, Barbara. Don’t you remember?”

  I could almost remember, but not quite. The guys in the sky had done their best on me, and on my memory. It was several years before some of those things came to light.

  So, nowadays, when parents ask me about what might be happening to their children, those children who keep crying and screaming that monsters are coming into their rooms at night, I answer, usually very quietly, “Pay attention to what your children are saying they can see in their room! They probably are telling the truth. They’re probably seeing what they say they are seeing.”

  Chapter 11

  NEW JOB; MORE INVESTIGATIONS

  Once it dawned on me that television, fascinating as it was, was not my real passion, it wasn’t long until I bowed out of the job with Bill Blair. I was grateful for all he’d done for me but I had been put on this earth for a specific purpose. I just knew that. I’d thought television production could be my purpose, but now I knew that while TV was fun, it wasn’t my reason for being on this earth. I was quite sure of that. By this time, Jacques Vallee and I had almost agreed to let our partnership rest for a time. I was back in Turley with lots to do but with very little that I wanted to do. Certainly I wasn’t receiving any income from my efforts in our house and yard.

  I tried to pick up my painting again and although I was fairly successful as a painter, that didn’t compel me either. I knew what I wanted to do. I wanted to continue my own UFO investigations but I knew we couldn’t afford trips a
ll over the map. Car, gasoline, motels, restaurants, tolls, airplane flights, clothing... everything cost money, and unless Bob received a commission for a sculpture or sold a painting we didn’t have any money. I sighed inwardly. There was nothing else for it, I would need to take another wage earning job. The children all needed shoes and clothing and equipment for school and I needed to do something with my life.

  Once I’d made the decision my mind eased, at least for the rest of that day. I played with my daughters, helped Bob in his studio, fed all the animals and went to bed early to sleep the sleep of the just. I woke up dizzy and disoriented. My walk from my bed to the head of the stairway was a stagger. The kitchen seemed a million miles away rather than just down a short flight of steps. Holding to the wall, I hobbled down the stairs, then reeled on into the bathroom to see if a little water in the face would help me waken to my planned day which was to be dedicated to a job search. When I headed back toward the kitchen the telephone rang.

  Perhaps my brooding and musing about what I could do for a living called the aliens’ attention to me, I don’t know. Or, maybe what is more likely, they had arranged the whole thing from beginning to end. Anyway, they had a hand in everything that happened to me from that point on, I am still quite sure of that.

  My association with Jacques Vallee had been frightening me because of all the weird things that happened each time we went out together to interview or investigate. I’d told him we needed to cool it. He wasn’t convinced but I’d told him I suspected a fine alien hand in each of the problems which had faced my family. He laughed at the idea and it was clear that he thought I was just being my normal loco “Lucy” type self. I lurched to the telephone, ready to argue the point again. Chasing UFOs had become too dangerous to me and to my family.

  But it wasn’t Jacques on the phone. It was an acquaintance who was calling to tell me about her new job. She worked for a company which took aerial photographs of farm and ranch land in the Oklahoma, Texas, Kansas, and Arkansas area. Her job was to drive to the farms and ranches and try to sell the owners the oil paintings taken from the photos of the farms.

  She knew I’d be interested, she said, because just the previous week she’d seen a mutilated cow. The cow was somewhere near a County road in Kansas. Would I like to drive back up that way with her and search out the cow?

  I could feel energy rising within me, my confusion and disorientation falling away. Yes. This was my chance to do what I really wanted to do. Maybe I could put off my job search for a few days since she wanted me to go with her? Her company was paying for her room so expenses would be minimal.

  “Oh, thank you. I’d love to go with you. You can tell me all about your new job.” I interrupted Bob’s work in his studio to tell him about the chance to go see a mutilated cow in Kansas. He grinned and waved his brush as if to say, “If you’ve seen one dead cow, you’ve seen then all.” He turned back to his work with the words, “Have a good time. We’ll be here when you get back.”

  I raced up the stairs and in seconds had my overnight bag packed, then in just a few minutes more I’d bathed and put on comfortable traveling clothing as she had suggested. All I had to do when she honked in my driveway was to kiss Bob and run to the door. We headed toward Kansas and the cow she’d seen so recently.

  I felt great.

  We searched and searched but no matter how much we searched we could not find the cow nor the farm where she’d seen it. That night she’d arranged for us to meet her boss and two other people who were the photographers from the plane. After dinner in the motel coffee shop, all five of us talked and talked into the evening.

  “Barbara, since you’re looking for a job, why don’t you come join our crew?” The boss asked. “You can make good money if you work hard and you can be home lots of nights and almost every weekend.”

  I accepted his offer on the spot. This was the answer! I could be working while at the same time. I could be looking into UFO sightings and mutilated cattle reports. I could actually talk to the farmers and ranchers who were the citizens who had been most affected by the waves of UFO sightings over their homes and by the mutilations of the cattle on their lands. I now realize that I had awakened that morning after having had an alien encounter which was held, probably, to prepare me for my friend’s call. She told me on our drive north that even though we were only casual acquaintances, my name kept coming into her mind. It was as if someone inside her head kept repeating to her, “Call Barbara Bartholic. Call Barbara Bartholic.” She just knew she was supposed to call me, she didn’t know why except she’d heard I was interested in cattle mutilations. Oh, yes, I’m sure “they” had the whole thing set up for me. The job was perfectly designed for me to go into farmers’ houses or barns and after getting the commission, to turn the now general friendly chat toward the cattle mutilation/UFO questions.

  I stayed with that job about three years. What my friend didn’t prepare me for was the hardest work I’d ever done. It was a far cry from the glamour of a television study. I had to drive what seemed a million miles every day in any kind of weather, carry a huge 4x5-foot leather portfolio in and out of my car at each call and I also had to keep my old car running.

  Here was the common scenario: I’d drive up to the farmhouse door, honk to let them know someone was there and to try to alert them to keep the dogs off me, then I’d hear the clunk sound as my car’s muffler would fall off. I’d drag that hideously heavy portfolio from the car, go up to the door or out to the barn or out to the fence and try to sell the paintings. (I was paid on commission.) Afterward I’d put the backbreakingly heavy portfolio back into the car, take out my special stick which I always carried with me, raise the hood to adjust a little thing under the hood, then bend down to use my long stick to rehook the muffler in place. There were always plenty of guard dogs who came out to do their duty so that stick was a great deal more than just my essential rehooking-the-muffler stick. I treasured that stick and I never, ever, went anywhere without it.

  I learned to love those farmers and ranchers and their families as well. I came to know what the phrase, “Salt of the earth,” really meant. They took me into their homes. They bought my product and answered my questions without reservation. They fed me wonderful food, sometimes insisted that I accept their hospitality and stay over in their guest rooms because a “... little woman shouldn’t be out driving around late at night on country roads.” (In heels, I’m nearly six feet tall.) I learned so much from all those good people. During that time I made a list of all the things that my association with those farm families had done for me. (See Appendix B for that list.)

  I just loved my customers.

  But, of course, some, a few, of my experiences were not so sweet and wonderful.

  There was the time I stood on one side of the fence, earnestly trying to persuade a man to buy a painting of his farm and he just as earnestly was refusing to buy. We weren’t arguing but just haggling, market place style, still pleasant and pleased to be talking to each other. I tried to keep my mind on the business before us and off the slight tickling I felt on first one leg then the other.

  Suddenly I felt as though I’d stepped into a sea of fire. I screamed and jumped away from where I’d been standing but I was too late. I’d been rooted in a huge bed of fire ants and I was being eaten alive by the creatures. I ran to his farmhouse bathroom and began to strip off my clothes and shoes. I was covered with tiny red wounds all over my body. There was nothing, really, that the farmer could have done for me. It took hours for my skin to calm down even though I drove madly back to the motel (shoeless and only partially clothed) and took a shower.

  I thought the least he could have done when I returned later that evening was to buy the painting, but he didn’t. Oh, well, that’s business, right?

  Another anecdote has a darker side.

  I drove up to a long, rambling ranch house, very prosperous looking, set out on a well run cattle ranch. It was about 4 p.m. I was invited to come in by the r
ancher himself who led the way back to his office. I could hear women’s voices in what I supposed to be the kitchen or dining room area.

  The rancher had been drinking. He set his glass down beside the almost empty bottle and sat down before I did. He offered me a drink which I refused. He said he was interested in our paintings so I sat in the chair he indicated then he looked up at me and said, “Just show me what you want.” As he spoke he grabbed my ankle and was working his way up my leg with both hands.

  I jumped to my feet and tried to back off without making a scene and ruining the sale. His wife cane to the study door and smiled and said, “Come on into the kitchen and show us, too.”

  I heaved a sigh of relief and followed her to the kitchen. She and her friend were extremely nice women who, I could tell, were quite religious. They wore the hairdos and long sleeved clothing that proclaimed Pentecostal church membership. I gave them the pitch and the wife really wanted the picture. She wrote out a check.

  As I brought out my receipt book to finish the deal I made a tactical error by saying, “Have you or anyone you know ever had a UFO encounter out here in the country?”

  The wife grew very excited.

  “Oh, yes. Just the other night we were leaving the church after the evening service. My husband and I were in our car with our teenaged daughter. A UFO flew right directly over us and we suddenly had engine trouble. Our new car stopped. Bob had to get out...”

  The rancher came into the kitchen and lunged toward me. He beat me on the back while shouting, “Witch. Demon. Get out of here. You’re a witch.”