Customer Reviews

Missing Time: A Documented Study of UFO Abductions

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This book predates Intruders by the same author and Communion by Strieber. It paints a scary picture about abductions and might keep you up. Discusses many cases in depth. Although I find abduction stories hard to accept, this book details a few impressive cases with nice illustrations. A classic for any UFO library.

This was one of the earliest works published in modern times investigating the bizarre and outlandish subject of alien abductions. The 1957 Villas Boas case had been publicised, and Fuller's `The Interrupted Journey' on the Hill case published as early as 1966. The MA MUFON team had investigated the Betty Andreasson case and that of the Allagash Four, and the case studies were subsequently written up and published by Raymond Fowler. There were books on the Hickson-Parker abduction in Mississippi (the Pascagoula case) and the abduction work of Leo Sprinkle and Ann Druffel had been published.

`Missing Time' however, published in 1982, was groundbreaking in that Hopkins revealed the persistent and repeat-nature of this phenomenon (first seen in the Andreasson case, but the significance was missed by Fowler and the other investigators) and its seeming prevalence in certain family lines, the result of rigorous application of scientific methodology to this terrifying and extraordinary phenomenon.

The seven cases investigated in MT seem rather 'tame' when laid alongside later revelations uncovered by other investigators, but the reader needs to constantly remind him/herself how revolutionary this material was in 1982, and how it revealed the scale of a `hidden epidemic.' Hopkins was the first to uncover the repeat and intergenerational nature of this phenomenon and to document the persistence of scoop-mark and straight-line scarring on abductees, many photographs of which are printed in the book. The recovery of suppressed memories in all seven cases was undertaken by qualified psychiatrists utilising hypnosis, and not by Hopkins himself, who took no part in the proceedings. These practicing psychiatrists like Dr. Aphrodite Clamar, did not initially believe in the reality of the abduction phenomenon as a physical happening, but the abductees were most insistent of their memories and the skeptical psychiatrists were eventually forced to confront the issue and honest enough to report what they found.

Hopkins 'hit the nail on the head' with this work, evidenced by the thousands of letters received from other suspected abductees following publication, opening the floodgates and eventually interesting other serious investigators such as Professor David Jacobs in PA & Professor John Mack at Harvard MA, Yvonne Smith in CA, John Carpenter in MO and many others who took up the investigative work.

The writing style is literary, good humored, intelligent and highly readable. You can't fail to be persuaded by the cool, scientific and skeptical attitude, and the investigative rigor - never allowing opinion to cloud the evidence, always following the facts no matter if they lead outside the 'comfort zone' of accepted paradigms. I mean, we know abductions can't be real, right? Just as we 'knew' powered flight was impossible, and we 'knew' the Earth was flat.

Hopkins placed this important subject on the map, and made its scientific study respectable. The public recognition he received from all this was unlooked-for and not welcomed. He was and has always been a best-selling professional artist, and neither sought nor made money from his abduction research.

If you know something about the abduction issue but have never read this book, you are strongly recommended to do so. It's a classic, highly readable and engrossing, and you'll read it in a day. If you have no acquaintance with the subject, this is where you should start.


Budd Hopkins died on 21st August 2011, aged 80. RIP Budd: your legacy is a great one.