UFO abductions - a change of tactics?

Hi all,

My co-blogger, Pauline Wilson, recently drew our attention to the precognitive sentient phenomena (click here for her post) hypothesis of John B Alexander. In one statement, Alexander, said "Every time researchers get close to an understanding of the situation, the parameters are altered or new variables are entered into the equation." (pp227-228 of Alexander's book.)

When I read Pauline's post, at this point I was transported back to the late 1980's and early 1990's. Here in Australia, we were inundated with accounts of UFO abductions. I recall spending day after day, sitting listening to Australian men and women giving me detailed descriptions of their encounters with a variety of strange entities. Many of these visitations took place in the bedroom.

My fellow researchers were also spending their time interviewing and working with these intriguing accounts. There were strong similarities in the data we were all gathering. Our discussions were all about this one type of UFO event. Overseas researchers spoke of abductions being the end of UFOs in the skies; and close encounters of other kinds. They said that abductions proved the ETH. Abductions would reveal all. The UFO phenomenon was about to be explained. Full disclosure was at hand. The aliens were here to create hybrid beings which would take over the Earth.

It seems to me that the UFO phenomenon has altered. Abductions haven't ended our research. The UFO phenomenon hasn't been fully explained. Despite what some elements of the field say, full disclosure has not happened. In fact, it seems to me, that it is the abductions which have gone away.

Close encounters:

The same may be said about close encounter reports. Colleagues I have spoken to, report a decrease in the numbers of close encounters as a percentage of total incoming reports. Back in the 1970's it seemed that every fourth or fifth incoming report was a close encounter. People reported UFOs near the ground, on the ground and UFOs chasing cars at close range. Today, just about every UFO report I read about is a vague light in the sky, often a video clip; a cluster of lights which could be balloons, or maybe an odd small angular diameter object seen in the day time. A look at the websites of Australian UFO groups UFOR(Qld); TUFOIC and UFOR(NSW) confirmed this view.

The phenomenon has altered again. Gone are the days of numerous close encounters; and gone are the large numbers of abduction reports.

What does this mean? Were we in some way getting close to some kind of understanding? If so, what? More importantly, what comes next?