In the world of UFOlogy, Budd Hopkins was a big deal, an investigator, who rather than focusing on sightings of crafts, zeroed in on the abduction phenomenon in his books. In doing so, he opened himself to criticism from not only mainstream science and media, but also ufologists who rejected the abduction scenario. We met Hopkins once at a UFO convention and drove him to the home of an abductee, where he regressed her and she re-lived her experience.
Budd, who was also an artist, died in August of 2011 and we wrote about him here following his death. In the hours that we spent with him, we observed a man with a large, dominant personality, one who focused on his work with the woman and was convinced she was a true alien abductee. That may be so, but there was an elephant in that house that Budd didn’t seem to recognize.
The woman’s husband, a large man with a mane of gray hair and a full beard, wore a prominant gold Satan pendant around his neck. His black shirt was open at the top and the pendant was visible. He told Trish and I, when we inquired, that he was a former Baptist minister who had switched sides. We don’t know what role, if any, that played in the abduction scenario, but it wasn’t anything that Budd considered relevant, if he was even aware of it.
I bring up this oddity because I recently read something surprising about Budd’s attitude about life after death, and also that he supposedly has made at least one return visit since his departure.
The information comes from journalist/author Leslie Kean, who has written a phenomenal book, Surviving Death: A Journalist Investigates Evidence for an Afterlife. Kean also is the author of fascinating UFO book that focused on interviews with generals, pilots, and government officials. At some point, she interviewed Hopkins and they became friends.
Kean writes that after she found out that Budd was seriously ill, she brought him a few books that offered evidence of life after death. When she next saw him, he told her he wasn’t interested in reading the books because he didn’t believe in an afterlife. When you’re dead, you’re dead. That brush-off surprised Kean who knew Budd as an avid reader with an expansive curiosity.
Sometime after his death, Kean had a reading with a medium named Laura Jackson, who had been highly recommended. It was Kean’s first reading, and it was undertaken as part of the research for her book. In preparing for the reading, she had focused on Budd and her late brother. However, she didn’t tell that to the medium, who conducted the reading by phone and didn’t know anything about Kean, only that her first name was Leslie.
Kean found the reading astonishing. After a few minutes of tuning in, Laura told her that an “eager male” was “bursting through,” and was very excited to talk to her. Laura accurately described him as 12 to 15 years older than her, that he’d died two to three years earlier, and she wasn’t married to him. She came close to his name. She said, “I see a big B—a B-name, it’s short like Bub or Bubba.” She said it was a nickname, that there was another name. (Budd actually was his middle name.) Laura later corrected the name to “Buddy” and said there was an ‘E’ related to his name. (His first name was Elliot.)
She also accurately picked up that Budd died of cancer, that Kean was with him when he died, that he had one daughter, that his third marriage was a big mistake, that he died in late August, that his lungs had filled with fluid. (He died Aug. 24.) He also wished her happy birthday, and indeed it was Kean’s birthday.
Beyond those accurate comments, Kean was startled early on when Laura relayed this message: He says, “You were right. You were right!” Laura added: “I feel like it’s like you were right about the other side; you were right about this.” Kean said she knew immediately what it meant, and Laura confirmed it.
Kean also was surprised that Budd’s “big ego” personality came through. He dominated the reading and wanted all the time for himself. Laura said: “He acted as if ‘This is all about me.’” Indeed, Kean remembers Budd as having “a big, shining, sometimes overpowering personality.” Kean was amazed and said it was as if Budd, the person, was present.
Interestingly, though, not a word about UFOs!
Trish and Rob, thanks a lot for the article post.Much thanks again. Fantastic.
As a born medium. I’ve always said I live with one foot among the living and one foot among the dead. When I was a little girl and was visited by a person who was “dead”, for some reason it never frightened me, but my Mom got angry and told me “these are things we don’t talk about!” What, I’ve never failed to inquire, would be the point in living if physical death carries our animating souls/spirits with it into nothingness? There have been a few occasions, not many, when as a Hospice RN I’ve actually witnessed a soft blue lighted ‘something’ lift out of the deceased body at its moment of death, and float away, disappearing through the ceiling. Am I crazy? Maybe. I’ve also witnessed the moment of final death when the person who was in a coma actually opened her eyes, smiled a beautiful smile, raised her (paralyzed) arms up and said, “MAMA” in a joyful, clear voice. Having been in various kinds of contact through the decades with the so-called dead, my conclusion is that when Jesus said, “IN MY FATHER’S HOUSE ARE MANY MANSIONS”, those “mansions” are are myriad DIMENSIONS, and each soul goes to a dimension specific to its purpose. I, myself, have died twice. Not a near death experience. I was quite dead for seven minutes the first time, following a massive hemorrhage after the birth of our 1st son. I didn’t see the Light, but I was totally free of pain and watched the medics trying to bring me back altho there was zero brain and heart function. I didn’t want to come back, but a dis-embodied voice said, “Connie, you can’t stay here now. You have a little son to care for, and two more coming”. Then I slammed back into my body. Life after death? Yes indeed. YES!!!!!!! By the way, I corresponded with Budd Hopkins and he with me. In his final email to me, he told me he had several questions to asked me; he requested my phone number and asked me if it was OK for him to phone me; of course I responded in the affirmative. However, he did tell me he was recovering from a bout of awful pneumonia and our conversation would need to wait a few days, that the medications the physicians were giving him for the illness were worse than the illness itself. He transitioned not long after that, so we didn’t get to enjoy the phone discussion.
I agree. I think there are many dimensions, and many death experiences based on the person transitioning and their belief system. Some see Jesus, some see Allah, some meet old friends and relatives. I think this is the period where we become aware we didn’t disolve into nothing. There was plenty of activity in our house in the first 48 hours after my husband passed. Open drawers, crystals falling off of windowsills despite any breeze. Could it be they try to get our attention? After my father passed many years ago we had all kinds of little things happen, stuff falling over, etc. Then it just stopped. Both times, it just stopped after a couple of days. Maybe that “bardo” period is over and then it is time to move on to the next phase or dimension.
But some people report contact over a period of months and years. Maybe it depends on the person. Intriguing stuff, Nancy.
You would have liked Budd. He was a nice guy with a lot of knowledge.
I contacted him about the UFO experience and he wanted the full story, but I never heard anything back. He was sick at the time, however.
Very interesting. I did the same thing with my husband as he was close to death. I found a few interviews with people that had NDEs and talked of life after death, and played them as if I was listening to them. I tried not to force my beliefs, but wanted him to hear of others that had died and swear to an afterlife. I hope it helped with the fear of death, which we all have. I do believe he survived because of the text message I received a short time after he passed. Too many people have had experiences relating to those who have passed before them to just brush it off as wishful thinking. They want us to know they are okay, that everything is as it should be.
That text message is one of the best instances of spirit contact I’ve heard of, Nancy.
I’ve only had one other instance with a text, which can only be called a synchronicity, as it was a text message I received that had obviously been sent to someone else and “just happened” to come to me at a very significant time. It differed from the first as it didn’t show up on the text line, but popped up as a text sent from an actual number. I’ll tell you about it sometime.
would love to hear about it!
I would love to be convinced of an after life but except in a few dreams, no one is “talking” to me. Your post reminds me of a similar experience with a medium.
Many years ago a friend told me of an interesting experience she had by going to a medium, a Mrs. Smith, who ran the spiritualist church in Old Greenwich, Connecticut. I made an appointment where she told me a number of interesting things she “saw” about me. A lot had to do with past lives. We had never met but told me I had been an artist in many lifetimes going back to Egypt. None of that is provable and might be fun for one’s ego. I thought the experience interesting enough to make an appointment with Mrs. Smith for my mother.
Mrs. Smith had no association with my mother and could have no clues about her background or of my father’s. My mother attended the meeting with Mrs. Smith with an open mind but with no specific questions or expectations.
When my other returned to my house after her meeting she was visibly weird looking – very white and sort of trembling. You might say, she looked spooked = shook up.
Mrs. Smith told my mother that she saw a young man in an airplane flying over Germany who crashed his plane but had been o.k. She also mentioned the name of another English relative who was saying hello. This was a name my mother never heard of.
About 20 years earlier when I was a kid my English Grandfather was visiting us, taking a tour of his American relatives. My father’s parents were English, got married in the United States, had 7 boys and then moved back to England where they lived until they died. They lived through the London blitz.
My uncle had been brought back to England with his twin brother when they were 8 years old. My father, just age 17, and his 2 older brothers were left on their own in this country.
This uncle, my father’s brother, was in the RAF during the war – was in fact shot down by the Germans’ and spent most of the war in a German concentration camp. How did Mrs. Smith see this?
My mother was now curious to know if indeed the woman Mrs. Smith and seen was real. She did not tell my father she was going to see a medium because he would have ridiculed her. She never revealed to my father anything that smacked of something scientifically unexplainable. My father was still working in New York City. My mother was so curious about finding out if the woman’s name Mrs Smith mentioned, she called my father at his office and told him the big fib that I was doing some family history research and wondered if he knew of this person. My father confirmed the fact that this person was a relative. I forget all the details of this incident that happened so long ago. But I always remember that a total stranger saw my uncle being shot down over Germany.
What really shook my mother up was the fact that at the time my Grandfather was visiting us the two of them had a conversation in my mother’s garden. They had that in common, love of their gardens. My mother says they were talking over a bed of For Get Me Not flowers. My Grandfather was a devout Catholic convert.
Mrs. Smith told my mother that she saw this older man who had a message for her. He said, “I don’t find Christ here and there are no For Get Me Not flowers.” This was a very strange message and would only be understood by my mother. That is the part that spooked her, more even seeing the plane crash over Germany.
Fascinating story, Adele!! I’d say that medium was the real thing! Thanks for sharing this.