
                       DOCTOR SAYS ALIENS TOOK HER ON UFO

    By: David A. Maurer
    of The Progress Staff

     What  dr.   rauni-leena luukanen saw outside her living  room  window, 
    nearly  four  years ago,  scared her more than death threats and  angry 
    soldiers waving machine guns at her. 
     
     the sight she now refers to "as the shock of my life," occurred during 
    august 1986. she and a friend were enjoying a quiet evening fogether at 
    her home on the outskirts of rovaniemi, lapland. 
     
     "in an open field, about 100 meters from my home, i saw a large craft, 
    illuminated in a yellow glow,  hovering about 20 or 30 meters above the 
    ground,"   she said.  "i yelled for my friend to look,  and she saw it, 
    too."  this sighting and the subsequent events that follow have altered 
    luukanen's entire perception of the world, she said. 
     
     a physician,  luukanen served as the chief medical officer in  lapland 
    for  13  years.  she describes herself as a "very down to  earth,   no-
    nosense-type person." 
     
     "in my medical practice,  i've worked with the boat people in malaysia 
    and  had  machine  guns pointed at me and  have  been  threatened  with 
    death,"   said luukanen during a visit to a friend  in  charlottesville 
    before  attending  a  conference  on  unidentified  flying  objects  in 
    blacksburg. 
     
     "but,   i  have never been so terribly shocked and scared before in my 
    life," she said. "i think i got so frightened because, when i saw it, i 
    knew  that i was seeing something from another world or dimension.   it 
    was very big, about one hundred meters in diameter. 
     
     "it stayed in one place hovering for perhaps fifteen minutes. after it 
    was gone,  i convinced myself that it was the moon or something,  and i 
    tried to forget about it." 
     
     before the sighting, luukanen said she was as skeptical as most people 
    when it comes to the subject of ufos. but, the following day, she found 
    it hard to rationalize what she saw. 
     
     "the  newspaper  had a story about the sighting the night  before  and 
    about 100  other people had seen it,"  luukanen said.  "two days later, 
    officials  at the local air force base said that it had been  a  soviet 
    rocket.   i  really got scared then because a rocket doesn't hover  for 
    fifteen minutes." 
     
     recorded sightings of ufos go back thousands of years,  but the modern 
    era of ufo sightings is considered to have began on june 24,  1947.  on 
    that  date businessman and pilot,  kenneth arnold,  from boise,  idaho, 
    reported  seeing  a formation of nine objects flying at  a  high  speed 
    around the peaks of the cascade mountains in washinton state. 
     
     he described them as "shiny,  disc-shaped craft,"  and said he clocked 
    their speed at about 1,350  mph. this was months before air force pilot 
    chuck yeager would break the sound barrier at a mere 741.8 mph. 
     
     when  arnold  described what he saw to reporters:  "they flew  like  a 
    saucer would if you skipped it across water,"  he inadvertently  coined 
    the now-common term for ufos-"flying saucers." 
     
     during the following weeks,  scores of other sightings were  reported, 
    not only by ordinary people,  but military and civilian airline4 pilots 
    as well.  these events received heavy coverage in the media and perhaps 
    fueled  the  imaginations  of many who reported  sightings  during  the 
    ensuing weeks. 
     
     nonetheless,  in january of 1948, the u.s.  air force began a study on 
    ufos that would last for 22 years. the first name for the investigation 
    was  "project  sign."  the name was changed to "project  grudge,"   and 
    finally to "project blue book." 
     
     by  the  time the investigative project officially ended  in  december 
    1969,,  it had 12,783  cases of ufo incidents on file.  of these,   air 
    force officials said 701 couldn't be explained. 
     
     even more disturbing than seeing a ufo is being taken aboard one.   in 
    an  apparently  recent phenomenon,  people report that they  have  been 
    abducted by alien beings and taken onto ufos.  luukanen numbers herself 
    among  the  hundreds  of individuals who say they've been  abducted  by 
    beings from another planet. 
     
     the   conference  that  brought  luukanen  to  virginia  was  held  in 
    blacksburg  recently  and it dealt with these alleged abductions.   the 
    first conference of this kind was held in connecticut in may of 1989. 
     
     the  blacksburg conference was called treat ii-treatment and  research 
    on experienced anomalous trauma.  attendance was by invitation only and 
    was  said to include physicians,  psychologists,  psychiatrists and ufo 
    experts, among others. 
     
     "in  november,   1986,   i   was attending  the  annual  parapsycology 
    conference in basel,  switzerland,"  luukanen said.  "during one of the 
    meetings,  a  large group of us were hypnotized,  and as soon as i went 
    into a hypnotic state, i saw the sky and a ufo coming toward me. 
     
     "i  was totally surprised by this,  and didn't know what it meant.   i 
    didn't tell anyone about it because it just seemed too bizarre. 
     
     "that  afternoon we were hypnotized abain,  and it began to happen all 
    over,"  luukanen said. "after the second time,  i  told the whole group 
    and they were as surprised as i was." 
     
     luukanen said after these two initial revelations, she underwent other 
    hypnosis sessions in which she remembered the events in more details. 
     
     "i  was  on a table like the type you will find in  operating  rooms," 
    luukanen said.  "there were three or four little ones around the table, 
    and they looked to be about one meter high.  they had no hair, big eyes 
    and a grayish brown skin or covering like a diver's suit. 
     
     "i  was  paralyzed,  but i could think and communicate  telepathically 
    with them," she said. "they worked with hazy instruments that put off a 
    white beam of light and also a bluish violet color.  at one point, they 
    took a long needle-like instrument and inserted it in my lower abdomen. 
    as  a  doctor,  i  know where they put it would give them access to  my 
    ovaries." 
     
     luukanen said after she remembered her ordeal,  she found a small scar 
    she  believes  was caused by the needle.  she said  the  aliens  didn't 
    appear to express any emotions and that they went about their task with 
    a detachment that reminded her of dissecting rats in medical school. 
     
     "my  conviction  is  that  they don't want to  harm  us  or  upset  us 
    psychologically,"  luukanen said. "i think that's why the memory of the 
    episode  is  taken  away.  but when most people  remember,   it's  very 
    traumatic.   one of the main purposes of the conference is to learn how 
    to treat and deal with these people who have been abducted." 
     
     luukanen  said  she is convinced that what she said  happened  to  her 
    really did.  she said her gut feeling is the earth is being prepared to 
    be taken into the largercommunity of the universe. 
     
     "i  have a feeling of responsibility now to inform people that we  are 
    not alone in the universe," luukanen said.  "the question in my mind is 
    not whether or not they exist, but "how do we deal with them?"

