The Great Barrington Historical Society & Museum has decided to formally induct the accounts of 55-year old Thomas Reed of being abducted by aliens.
"I know that this is hard to stomach," Reed told Metroplus "Hell, it's hard for me to stomach."
Reed and his younger brother Matthew first began to feel some strange occurrences back in the 1960s. In Reed’s first encounter in 1996, a 6-year-old Reed saw weird lights and figures in the hallway of their family home.
Suddenly the two were in a strange ship to which they were examined and showed a projection of a willow tree.
The next year Reed recalled an occurrence involving more strange lights, doors slamming, and then him and his brother being again inside of the strange ship. Before he knew it, he was once again at home in his driveway to which his mother had been frantically searching for him.
In a third encounter two years later, the family was driving one night. Their car stalled and then the entire Red family (Thomas, Mathew, their mother, and grandmother) found themselves in a large room surrounded by “ant-like figures.”
Soon enough, they were back in their car.
Although the Reed brothers are not entirely sure what happened, they speculate it had something to do with extraterrestrial life.
Reed, who actually has gained nominal fame among UFO enthusiasts, shared his account many times, and recently the The Great Barrington Historical Society & Museum has decided to take the accounts as fact.
What does that mean? “It means that we believe it is true,” said Debbie Oppermann, the director of the society, told the Boston Globe.
“I know we’re going to get a lot of backlash. We’re going to get hammered,” she said. “But we have given it an awful lot of thought, and, based on the evidence we’ve been given, we believe this is a significant and true event.”
Despite all the opposition, Opperman explained this will be the first time that a museum or historical society in the United States has declared a UFO encounter as fact.
The historical society is particularly interested in the 1969 encounter, because there were multiple accounts of people seeing UFOs around this time.
“They took a stand and have chosen to recognize something that many people in their position would have stepped away from,” said Reed.“We know what we saw, and it was not local. It was definitely off-world. And it affected my whole family, and there has been a lot of post-traumatic stress.”
