"The Alien
Jigsaw, by Katharina Wilson"
Reviewed by Sean Casteel
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UFO Magazine, Volume 11, Number 1, 1996 The Alien Jigsaw When Katharina Wilson self-published her book about her abduction experiences, The Alien Jigsaw, she of course had no guarantee that her venture into the competitive literary market would be successful. Therefore, the fact that the sales of the first printing were enough to finance a second, and that both the first and second editions were picked up by national bookstore chains like Barnes and Noble and B. Dalton Booksellers, is certainly a boon both for Wilson and for those who wish books on the subject of abduction to have at least a minimal acceptance by mainstream readers. Originally published in 1993, The Alien Jigsaw tells the story of the first 32 years of Katharina Wilson's life. The bulk of the book is drawn from journal entries Wilson began even before she realized that her bizarre personal experiences fit the larger pattern of alien abductions, thus making those first journal entries and consciously recalled memories all the more precious. Had she not begun a process of record-keeping early on, much of her later narrative might have been lost. Wilson at one point was looking forward to a promising career in music, but after she saw "a very bright yellow light" in her bedroom that she remembered as being terrifying in the extreme, everything changed. "Something had happened to me," Wilson writes. "The bright yellow light did something to me...I started practicing in my room instead of the music school because I didn't want anyone to hear how bad I sounded. My professor was extremely disappointed that my level of playing wasn't up to professional standards anymore." Though she still managed to graduate from the university, her playing and her life were never the same again. Looking back at the loss, Wilson said, "I cannot imagine that these Beings understand the pain they cause in people's lives." From this early experience of being manipulated by an alien presence, Wilson then moves on to tell her story of slow and painful transformation by the agonizing process of alien abduction. In many of her encounters, she quite candidly admits to feeling strong, loving emotions passing between herself and her abductors, as well as enduring severe psychological testing (the aliens painfully and repeatedly test her intense love for stray cats and dogs, for instance) and other phenomena, to include "Teaching Dreams," visions of the future, and scenes of possible U.S. military involvement in the abduction experience. Wilson acknowledges that much of what she has gone through does not fit with the standard abduction scenario that other researchers and experiencers continually rediscover in the day-to-day study of the phenomenon, and that, she feels, is her real strength. Just because most of what she talks about is not regularly reported, in no way nullifies the fact that others also experience events similar to her own. The courage to break free from established patterns that have achieved a kind of respectability within the UFO community will make possible the sharing of many factors at first thought to be only aberrations that happened to very few individuals. Established abduction researchers freely admit that they withhold from their public reporting on the subject those things which do not fit into general patterns, for the sake of legitimizing the subject by giving it at least the outer trappings of an emerging orthodoxy. According to Wilson, they do both the subject and experiencers a terrible disservice by sweeping under the rug events that may seem to happen only to a few given individuals, but which are actually more common and widespread than even the most seasoned researchers are aware. So, from the disappointing loss of her musical talent and ambition to a cathartic emergence from a sometimes nightmarish but always instructive complex of memory, conscious awareness, and educated reflection, Wilson's experiences are there for anyone willing to sift through yet another book on abduction-in the hope that enough information will eventually accrue that we will at last have some basic answers. And when and if those answers ever do come, we will owe a great deal of gratitude to people like Katharina Wilson who possess the intrinsic honesty required to share with the world both their heartbreak and their ecstasy as they piece together The Alien Jigsaw. -Sean Casteel ©1996 Sean Casteel is a freelance writer with a BA in Journalism from the University of Oklahoma, 1985. Sean has an interest in UFOs and has been covering the subject for more than seven years. Sean is a frequent contributor to the Ventura County & Coast Reporter, The MUFON UFO Journal, UFO Magazine, UFO Universe, Unsolved UFO Sightings, Unicus, and others. Sean Casteel lives and writes in Ventura, California. Visit Sean's web page at http://www.phantoms.com/seanc.htm This article is reprinted with permission from UFO Magazine. For more information, write to UFO Magazine, P.O. Box 1053, Sunland, CA, 91041. ©1993-1996 Katharina Wilson. All Rights Reserved. Puzzle Publishing, PO Box 230023, Portland, Oregon, 97281-0023, USA. The preceding is reproduced with permission of the Author. Permission is given to reproduce and redistribute in printed form, for non-commerical purposes only, provided the information and the copy remain intact and unedited. http://www.alienjigsaw.com |
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