CASE OF "ALIEN ABDUCTION" SOLVED

Wellington--“I really find it embarrassing now, that I thought that I was being abducted by aliens. It’s not the sort of thing that you want to admit to.”

Sheila Bragg, of Wellington, had been suffering from what she thought were nighttime excursions for two years. “I first started having these dreams during the summer of 2006. There was a blinding light shining through my window, I was abducted and flown off into space. I could never actually see who was abducting me.”

The dreams were so disturbing that she turned to psychotherapy, only to find the therapist unhelpful, and the sessions which cost $150/hr, were not covered by insurance. Bragg also tried hypnotherapy, which did have the benefit of curbing her appetite for chewing fingernails, which she describes as a “terrible, filthy habit,” but did not resolve the dreams. “The dreams did not go away, and I was becoming frantic. I thought, and in hindsight this is so silly, that maybe I wouldn’t be returned to earth and I’d just be gone. I thought about how sad that would make my mom and my best friend, Doris Klingart.

It was Klingart who suggested that Bragg consult with a not-for-profit investigative agency based in Roswell, New Mexico. “It wasn’t free, I had to pay their travel expenses, but they were very, very nice and completely supportive.” Two team members from Alien Watch and Recovery came to Bragg’s home, with the intention of documenting the extraterrestrial visitations. They had planned to stay two weeks, but on the second night, they got lucky.

“They sat in my closet and mounted cameras in the room, and I just lay down and went to sleep as I always do.” At about 4:00 a.m. Tuesday, the team members were surprised when a flashlight began to sweep the room from the backyard. Bragg explained, “I keep the window open with a fan in it during the summer months, and I never thought that anyone would be audacious enough to come into my fenced yard and look into my room.”

The team members were quick to wake Bragg with the good news that the case of alien abduction was simply a peeping tom, but not before chasing the interloper from her property, following him into his backyard and witnessing him enter his house, which is next door to Bragg’s. At the urging of AWR team members, Bragg contacted the Sheriff’s department, which provides police services to the Wellington township. “The deputy was really friendly, and told me that I should just keep the windows and shades closed at night, even if it is so hot that I can barely breathe, and I guess that is the right thing to do. I don’t think that it is against the law to look in the window of a sleeping woman, and as he explained to me, I am an attractive nuisance.”

AWR supports a neutral stance on alien abduction, and seeks to promote open-mindedness. “We don’t want the public to think that people who think that they have been abducted are nut bags. We also don’t want the public to get a negative view of extraterrestrial visitation. We figure that we shouldn’t, as we have with stem cell research, close the door to the possibility that there may be answers in space for problems here on earth.”

When asked if any trespassing laws had been broken, the Sheriff’s Department said that unless the person could be identified, it would not proceed with an investigation. Asked why they had belatedly responded to Bragg’s 9-1-1 call, an unidentified spokesman stated that the Department’s focus that day had been on procuring a search warrant for a drug bust.