Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT hosts Abduction Study Conference

Beginning on June 13, 1992, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology hosted an Abduction Study Conference in Cambridge, Massachusetts, chaired by David E. Pritchard and John E. Mack and financed by the Robert Bigelow Foundation and the Fund for UFO Research. Researchers such as Budd Hopkins and David Jacobs spoke alongside newcomers, abductees, skeptics and contributors from Brazil, Canada, the United Kingdom and Australia. According to Eberhart, the conference marked the split of American abduction researchers into at least two schools: the pessimist view of Hopkins, Jacobs and others and the optimist view presented by co-organizer John Mack, with a third, more cautious position represented by Mark Rodeghier, Stuart Appelle and David Gotlib. Kenneth Ring compared abductions with near-death experiences, David Hufford discussed the “Old Hag” imagery of sleep paralysis, and Thomas E. Bullard found that two-thirds of all abduction reports originate in North America. Journalist C. D. B. Bryan interviewed several presenters for a book, and the proceedings were published in 1994. The account follows the entry in George M. Eberhart's chronology UFOs and Intelligence (CUFOS) and the sources cited there; it is not an independent determination by From Beyond Space.