Budd Hopkins UFO Researcher
Budd Hopkins, UFO researcher and professional artist, died at home of cancer complicated by pneumonia on August 21. His daughter and son-in-law and his companion, Leslie Kean, were with him in his last hours. Mr. Hopkins had been struggling with liver cancer since at least 2006.
Best known for his Abstract Expressionist paintings and sculptures prior to becoming involved in the UFO Abduction phenomenon, Mr. Hopkins leaves behind an extraordinary body of work produced in both his artistic career and his avocation as a researcher and writer on UFOs and Alien Abductions. Mr. Hopkins’ art appears in collections at the Guggenheim, the Whitney, the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, the Metropolitan Museum Of Modern Art, and numerous galleries.
Budd Hopkins UFO Researcher
I was unaware of Mr. Hopkins’ interest in the UFO phenomenon when I happened
upon a copy of one of his books, Witnessed: The Brooklyn Bridge UFO Abductions. What captured my attention was the fact that amongst the witnesses on the night in questions were “high ranking diplomats from the U.N.”. The likelihood that such people would be involved in a hoax was non-existent. No one in the public eye could afford to be associated with anything as outlandish as “Alien Abductions”, a subject I had presumed was some sort of weird fantasy cooked up by attention-seeking nutters looking for their 15 minutes of fame. But senior UN diplomats? That put a whole new complexion on the matter. I flipped through the Table of Contents and the Index and then read at random from an early chapter. The author, Budd Hopkins, was known to me as an artist of repute and it was doubtful he would risk his professional standing by writing something that could see him dismissed as a card-carrying member of the lunatic fringe. Nor was he the sort of sensationalistic writer that I assumed wrote pot-boilers on UFOs and Aliens, long on drama and short on credibility. Hopkins’ writing was lucid, restrained, and carefully analytical. I bought the book and set out on a journey that would challenge everything I thought I “knew” about reality.
In New York, Anything Can Happen
Witnessed is the story Linda Cortile (Napolitana), an unsophisticated, Bible-reading wife and mother whose life is forever changed when other people witness her abduction from her New York apartment by “ugly little creatures” who surround her and float with her into a spacecraft waiting overhead. Witnesses on the Brooklyn Bridge, the FDR freeway, and nearby buildings received the shock of their lives when they realised that what they saw was real and not some movie being made in New York as some had at first supposed must be the explanation. A witness drawing of the abduction of Linda Cortile at left accords with others drawn by additional witnesses in different locations. What they had witnessed was a terrifying reality and one they were helpless against. And still are.
Just The Tip Of The Iceberg
After finishing reading Witnessed, I had to re-assess my assumptions about the whole UFO thing. Dismissing it out of hand was simply irrational in the face of evidence that suggested otherwise. Consequently, I read Mr. Hopkins’ two other books on cases he had personally researched: Missing Time and Intruders. Then in 2003 came Hopkins’ pièce de résistance, Sight Unseen, which revealed
for the first time details previously withheld from the public, details that only genuine abductees would know. These details had been used to separate the wheat from the chaff of alien abduction reports. The book is written in counterpoint style with Hopkins’ then wife, Carol Rainey, supplying a running commentary on cutting-edge scientific and technological developments (up to 2003) that had the potential to enable humans – someday – to duplicate some of the feats of alien technology. Dealing with such issues as UFO cloaking and invisibility, Hopkins explores possible explanations for some of the more exotic experiences of UFO contactees/abductees such as the ability of UFOs to seem to ‘disappear’ and then reappear a distance away in a fraction of a second, and how UFOs can be present around us all the time without our awareness of it (inter-dimensional travel).
The Time For Ridicule Is Over
The work done by Mr. Hopkins, although not formally “scientific”, is nonetheless systematic, critical, analytical and carefully reported, all hallmarks of good practice for investigating phenomena for which we have no conclusive explanation.
In his autobiography,
Art Life And UFOs, Hopkins demonstrates an admirable honesty about his shortcomings, his conflicted feelings about family and his marriages, the place of rigorous intensive work in leading a fulfilled life, and about placing the search for the truths about our existence and the nature of “reality” at the center of our lives rather than relegating them to a course in philosophy or unquestioningly accepting what religion or culture tells us we must believe. It was his own experience of witnessing a UFO in the summer of 1966 that opened Hopkins’ own mind to the possiblities beyond the received definitions of “reality”.
The Legacy
Together with researchers like John Fuller and Raymond Fowler, Hopkins sought to remove the stigma that prevented serious scientists from doing the research that the phenomenon deserves. If, indeed, there is almost “routine” contact between Alien species and humans going on, hadn’t we better at least arm ourselves with information since there is no way we can effectively resist their technology? People’s lives have been shattered by this unwanted intrusion into the most private aspects of their physical existence. The emotional and psychological scars have wrought – and continue to wreak – severe damage that leaves people feeling utterly helpless and isolated. To be disbelieved in the face of the evidence of alien intrusion into their lives is the final insult from the “official” world. Budd Hopkins at least shone a spotlight on the dilemma of witnesses, contactees, and abductees. It’s time for the rest of us to demand that the official secrecy and cover-ups stop and that governments meet their obligation to inform the people of the world that there is a real but little understood phenomenon that challenges our assumptions about what is “real” and what is “possible”.
I respected and admired Budd Hopkins for his integrity, his sincerity, and his humanity. His loss will be felt by a great many people. My condolences go out to his family and his companion in his last years, Leslie Kean.
Go with “God”, Budd, whatever that turns out to be…
Budd Hopkins founded The Intruder Foundation to support the efforts of other researchers in uncovering evidence of abductee experiences. If you would like to contribute to its ongoing work, contact Leslie Kean for more information HERE
If you would like to read any of the books or purchase the VHS of Intruders (above), please, visit Delia’s “A List” Amazon Shop HERE
Commissions from any item relating to Budd Hopkins will be donated to The Intruder Foundation.
Picture credits The Intruder Foundation Archives.
Great article, excellent research… and the article made it straight to Google Top 10 together with the New York Times – well done!