by Paul McCarthy

Ever wonder what an alien craft might look inside? If the information collected by Temple University historian David Jacobs is correct, it may now be possible to know. After dozens of interviews with UFO abductees, Jacobs has pieced together a picture of what's under the dome.

It's incomplete, says Jacobs, because the atmosphere aboard a UFO is all business and no one is offered a guided tour. Abductees are there for a physical exam, he says, and they see only as much of the craft as is necessary to get the job done. That's why they invariably describe Spartan, efficient, and sterile surroundings with virtually no luxury features at all. These are clinical-looking rooms with domed ceilings, skylightlike windows, and gray or white walls, Jacobs explains. And the aliens are good housekeepers. "It is clean and neat. We have had some cases where people vomited and it was cleaned up immediately."

Despite these broad similarities, Jacobs adds, there are at least two types of craft, "with the typical large UFO checking in at about two hundred feet in diameter and its smaller cousin at about thirty-five feet. If the craft is on the ground, abductees climb a staircase that is lowered from the object. But if the vessel is hovering, they are floated up."

Accidental tourists find themselves in a hallway with metallic walls that are usually bare but sometimes contain a floor-to-ceiling window. Usually they are ushered along a curved corridor, which gives them the feeling that they are walking around the perimeter of the ship, although no one makes a complete loop, says Jacobs. Eventually they are led to the vessel's center, the "medical arena," where unpleasant physical examinations occur. Virtually all medical zones are illuminated by a mysterious light source that abductees cannot locate, Jacobs says. But they have pinpointed the position of voluminous medical equipment attached to walls and ceilings, in drawers, or on rolling carts. As for the examination table, Jacobs says, it's generally "hard, with very little give," and contains lighted, armlike devices snaking up from its sides. In many cases, Jacobs notes, the examination room resembles the hub of a wheel. The spokes, or hallways, lead from the hub to other chambers, revealed only to some abductees after the exam. Also circular, with domed ceilings, white or gray walls, and built-in benches, some of these seem to be "visiting rooms" in which human-alien hybrid babies are touched, held, or viewed. Finally, abductees may pass through a control room that sounds nothing like the bridge of the starship Enterprise. There is a console with lights, an unpadded seat, and no windows.

While all this is fascinating, equally interesting is what abductees don't report, Jacobs says. His witnesses are remarkably consistent in not describing living areas and other details expected to pop up in fabricated or imagined accounts. "Of course," Jacobs says, "that doesn't mean they don't exist in other parts of the UFO."

(Originally appeared in OMNI Vol. 13, No. 3, December 1990)

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