Droitwich "Bedroom Abduction" Video Once Again in the Spotlight after Comments by UFO Investigator Nick Pope

The witness’s duvet can be seen rising significantly during her “return.” *(Birmingham UFO Group / YouTube)*

A video of one woman’s purported abduction from her bedroom in Droitwich, England, is once again making its rounds on the internet following new comments regarding the event made by former Ministry of Defence (MoD) UFO investigator Nick Pope.

The video was first released to the public in September of last year by the Birmingham UFO Group (BUFOG), who posted it to their YouTube page, although the footage itself was reportedly shot in 2010 and featured on the television show ‘Fact or Faked’ in 2012.

According to the video’s description on YouTube:

Infrared camera footage potentially showing an alien abduction actually taking place! The footage was taken by a family from Droitwich a number of days after the mother had vivid recollections of an abduction experience. The camera was set up by her husband in an effort to set her mind at ease and help her sleep better after this incident. During this particular night she had a second abduction experience and in the morning the camera footage taken throughout the night was checked.
In the footage the father is on the left and the mother on the right sleeping under a duvet. The duvet on the mother's side is lifted up but then falls flat on the bed, giving the appearance that she has vanished. After 12.5 minutes time the duvet again lifts up very high and when it settles the mother is once again visible.
The family were unable to extract the video file from the infrared camera as it was not intended for this purpose. To get round this they connected the camera to a monitor and then recorded the screen. This footage is believed to be genuine and not a deliberate hoax. The family sent this video to be analysed by the American television series 'Fact or Faked.' They were unable to successfully recreate the footage without the use of hidden contraptions.

UFO investigator Dave Hodrien explained in a report published to the BUFOG website last September that the event captured on camera occurred as part of a “follow on” abduction just six days after the witness’s initial experience.

Hodrien used the pseudonym “Susan” for the witness to protect her privacy.

"The experience began at an unknown time of the night and felt to Susan like a vivid dream at the time," Hadrien said. "The first unusual thing that happened was that she heard a buzzing sound inside her head. Sounds such as this are often heard by contactees directly prior to or after experiences. She then felt the familiar feeling of being drawn along a darkened tunnel, similar to in her previous experience. Next, she found herself in a room which reminded her of a doctor’s office. The walls were covered in brown wooden panels. Once again, she was lying down, but this time appeared to be on a flat table, naked and covered in a thin white sheet. There was some kind of pillow under her head."

Susan looked to her right and saw a "strange looking little man" with short, red hair and "very pale skin,” who was wearing dark glasses and a white doctor's coat.

The “little man” told Susan that it was a doctor without opening its mouth, in a way that seemed to her as though the voice was "directly inside her mind."

To Susan’s left was a tall being that she recognized from her previous abduction experience.

The "short doctor" moved its hands closely over Susan's body without touching her, speaking in her mind as it did so.

Susan reported that the being told her she had a stomach ulcer that wasn't causing her any discomfort, and that she had low blood sugar but wasn't diabetic.

She became frightened that the “doctor” was preparing to give her bad news, but instead, it moved its hands further down, over her uterus, and told her not to worry.

Following that, Susan felt like she was rushing along a tunnel and woke up the next morning.

According to Hodrien, "When she got up and looked in a mirror, Susan also noticed there were two non-symmetrical bruises on her belly around the area of her ovaries. She also started bleeding again, more heavily this time. In the weeks after the experience, Susan found that she now has a normal 28-day menstrual cycle, whereas before her experiences it was always an abnormal 45-day cycle. She seems to have been altered permanently in some way."

Hodrien included an analysis of the video in his report.

As part of that analysis, he noted that, even after Susan’s “disappearance,” there is movement towards the head and foot of the bed and “there appears to be what may be the base of her foot protruding from under one of the folds in the bed cover.”

"This does remain for the duration of the footage, which would suggest that she was not physically taken," Hodrien said. "However, it is possible that it is not her foot but just an empty fold creating the impression there is something there. Unfortunately, the footage is not clear enough to say either way for definite."

Hodrien also speculated that the abduction experience might have been metaphysical in nature and Susan's consciousness might have been taken, but her physical body did not, in fact, go anywhere.

In this scenario, an optical illusion is to blame for Susan's "disappearance"; a strong possibility given that her foot seemed to remain visible for the duration.

Perhaps she merely rolled onto her stomach and was significantly less visible under the duvet after doing so, only to "reappear" once she rolled back over to her side.

Despite this, Hodrien said he believes the abduction to have been a physical event.

"Personally, I feel that there is enough evidence to suggest that the follow on abduction really took place and was not just a strange dream, there are too many aspects of it which fit in with contact," he said. "It also appears to have been a physical abduction rather than metaphysical. Therefore, unless proven otherwise, I currently feel that the footage is genuine and actually shows Susan dematerializing from the bed."

Pope, on the other hand, was not willing to make such determinations.

"I've seen this video before and I briefly met the couple concerned, though I haven't investigated the case personally. Frankly, there's not much middle ground here: it's either a hoax, or something genuinely spooky and—perhaps—out of this world. Sadly, I'd taken early retirement from the MoD before I saw this video,” he told Birmingham Live in an interview this month. "If I had the footage while I was working on the UFO desk, and if I also had access to the camera equipment, I could have secured a proper scientific analysis using intelligence community imagery analysis resources and capabilities. That would quickly have told me if the footage was genuine or had been faked.”

While alien abductions were not something Pope dealt with regularly in his time with the MoD, the subject did come up.

"While alien abductions weren't formally in our terms of reference on the UFO project, you can't investigate UFOs without finding yourself drawn into the debate about alien abductions. People did contact us about abductions and other so-called alien contact experiences, but I had to tread carefully, because it's been MoD policy for decades to play down our interest and involvement in the UFO phenomenon," he said. "So, getting too closely involved in abduction research could have caused extreme political embarrassment if it had been found out. I had some ideas though: blood and DNA tests of abductees would have been a good start, in a double-blind study with a control group of people who have no such experiences."

"We could even have tasked the SAS with undertaking covert surveillance of abductees' houses, dressing the whole thing up as a training exercise. But the risk of exposure was too big," Pope added.

However, he said, governmental interest in such phenomena might increase with renewed interest in UFOs—although it isn't quite there yet.

"The fact that the US Congress and NASA are taking UFOs seriously has lessened the stigma of making a sighting report, though fear of being disbelieved or ridiculed is probably still a factor for some people. But alien abductions are probably a bridge too far, for the time being," Pope said. "Perhaps that will change, but for now, in the US at least, the focus is on pilots and radar operators who've seen or tracked UFOs, and on intelligence community personnel who've been involved in UFO programs. Congressional representatives are comfortable with that, because they can frame the UFO phenomenon as a defense and national security issue. Abductions would be a harder sell."

In Pope's opinion, this will likely lead to more investigations performed by civilian organizations.

"What all this means is that people are probably more interested and open-minded about UFOs than they've ever been, but that having abduction experiences are still unlikely to come forward in great numbers," he explained. "Sadly—because some of these people are genuinely traumatized—they'll have to deal with things themselves or contact civilian UFO organizations."

And while Pope said he was "open-minded" about the abduction phenomenon, he still believes that some cases can be explained by hoaxes and hallucinations.

"Over the years I've met enough people who claim to have had alien abduction experiences to say that the majority seem sincere, with no signs of psychopathology. As with UFOs, there's unlikely to be a single explanation here," he said. "Some cases will be hoaxes, some may be the product of vivid dreams and hallucinations, and some may be false memories resulting from regression hypnosis. But as with UFOs, it only takes one case to be genuine and we're in game-changing, paradigm-shifting territory."

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