619: They Walk Among Us | The Human-Alien Hybrid Program

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Helen Luttrell grabbed the girl's arm to stop her from falling. Her skin felt wrong.
It was cold and spongy like raw mushrooms.

Then the sunglasses slid down the girl's face, and for the first time, Helen saw her eyes. They were large, too large, and they were dark green with vertical pupils like a cat.

Helen couldn't look away when the girl's thoughts flooded directly into her mind. She was terrified.

Her daughter's roommate wasn't human, and the Air Force colonel who arranged for the two to live together knew exactly what he was doing.

He needed a roommate who would never see what Rachel really looked like. He found Helen's daughter, Marissa, a girl who was legally blind.
But the colonel had a problem.

Marissa's vision was coming back.

Helen's daughter, Marissa Luttrell, lost her vision at 13, a complication from childhood diabetes. That would make going to college challenging.

In the fall of 1972, Marissa got a small apartment near American River Junior College in Sacramento, where she studied occupational therapy. The place was clean and quiet.

The only problem was the rent. Her disability check barely covered groceries.
She needed a roommate, and she needed help getting the class.

Her college counselor, Lila Ross, handled both problems. Marissa came to her office looking for a tutor.
That same morning, a student named Bobby had signed up for a part-time tutoring job.

When Lila compared their schedules, she found that they had the same classes. So, Bobby got a job, and Marissa got a guide who can walk her to class and read her the lecture notes.

So that's one problem solved. Next, the roommate.
Lila was in her office about to begin a search when there was a knock on her door. A tall man in casual clothes stood in the doorway.

Next to him, a thin girl wearing wrap-around sunglasses and an oversized hat. The girl looked thin and frail, almost sickly.

The man introduced himself as Colonel Harry Nadian. His daughter Rachel had just registered for classes.
They needed help finding a roommate.

Rachel nodded at Lila and said, it is a pleasure to meet you. I am called Rachel.
This concerned Lila, but the colonel seemed normal enough, and maybe Rachel was just odd.

Either way, both girls were quiet and polite, and Rachel's appearance wouldn't matter to a blind roommate. Harry wrote a check on the spot, half the rent and all utilities in advance.

Lila couldn't believe her luck. Bobby appeared the same day Marissa needed to tutor, and Harry arrived just as she was about to start looking for a roommate.
But none of this was coincidence.

This was all carefully orchestrated. Now the experiment was ready to begin.

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She's been thinking about this sleepover all week, but I think about her food allergies all the time. Fortunately, her doctor prescribed Zolare, Omalizumab.

It's proven to significantly reduce allergic reactions if a food allergy accident happens.

Zolair 150 milligrams is a prescription medication used to treat food allergy in people one year of age and older to reduce allergic reactions due to accidental exposure to one or more foods.

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Zolair may cause a severe, life-threatening allergic reaction called anaphylaxis. Tell your doctor if you ever had anaphylaxis.

Get help right away if you have trouble breathing or if you have swelling of your throat or tongue. Zolair should not be used for the emergency treatment of allergic reactions, including anaphylaxis.

Zolair is for maintenance use to reduce allergic reactions, including anaphylaxis, while avoiding food allergens.

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Living with Rachel took some adjustment. Rachel was nice enough, but her speech was strange.
She said she'd grown up in another country, but she didn't say which one.

Rachel knew nothing about normal life. She'd never heard of Simon and Garfunkel.
She didn't know what sports were. She referred to people as males and females.
She sounded clinical and detached.

She said she'd only met four people before Marissa, a reading instructor and two nurses on the base where Harry worked. No friends, no family besides Harry.
It was like she had no past before 1969.

But Marissa also had a secret of her own. Her vision was coming back.
Now, it fluctuated. Some days were better than others, but she was definitely improving.

Before, everything was dark, but now she could make out shapes and blurry outlines. She could see light and shadows.
But she didn't tell anyone. Not Bobby, not her mother, not her counselor Lila.

If people found out she could see, they would ask questions.

the disability payments might stop Harry might move Rachel somewhere else and Marissa needed this arrangement the rent was covered the apartment was quiet and she finally had independence so she kept playing blind and kept asking for help she didn't always need but she watched Rachel whenever she could for the first few days Rachel spent most of her time in her room but eventually she would sit in the living room and talk Marissa had already seen enough to know Rachel had long reddish blonde hair, but it was a color that she didn't have a name for.

Rachel wore a big hat and sunglasses all the time. But when Rachel thought Marissa couldn't see, she'd sometimes take the hat and glasses off.
Rachel had high cheekbones, thin slanted features.

She was pretty.

Then there was the food. Rachel's food was strange.
She was on a special diet, so her food was delivered in small cardboard boxes every few weeks.

But there was never a delivery truck, never a knock on the door. The small boxes just appeared.
One morning, Rachel left early for class, leaving Marissa alone in the apartment.

So she grabbed her magnifying glass and one of the food boxes in the refrigerator. It was white cardboard.

The only marking was a small red triangle with three horizontal black lines running through it.

She'd never seen a logo like that before, but the same triangle logo was on the jugs of water that also appeared with the deliveries. She opened the box.
Inside looked kind of like chopped spinach.

It was green and mushy. but it didn't smell like spinach.
It smelled like decaying wet grass. One day, Marissa asked Rachel for a taste, but Rachel said no.
She said the food would make her sick.

Then there was the bathroom incident when Rachel tried to take her own life.

One afternoon, Marissa came home and smelled something metallic. Rachel was standing over the bathroom sink, making strange, rhythmic, wheezing sounds.
Then Marissa saw what happened.

Rachel had cut her wrists.

But Rachel's blood looked strange. It was pink and watery, not red and thick.
Marissa quickly grabbed Rachel's arm to try to stop the bleeding. Then she felt the cuts start to move.

Rachel's skin was healing. Within seconds, the cuts were gone.

Marissa wanted to call someone, but Rachel said no. No doctors, no hospitals.
Nobody could know. But she promised something like this would never happen again.

One morning, Marissa left class early and headed home. When she got to her building, she saw a big black car parked out front.
And the license plate was strange.

It was completely blank, except for that same red triangle logo that's on Rachel's food.

Marissa opened the door and heard voices in the kitchen. They were low and deep.
Two men. Speaking to Rachel in formal, official-sounding sentences.

Through the kitchen doorway, she saw shapes at the table. Two figures in dark suits and hats.
One had a black case open.

After they left, Rachel said they worked with Harry at the base and checked on her every two weeks. A few weeks later, Marissa was in her room when she heard them enter the apartment without knocking.

She heard furniture scrape across the floor. Then the men were shouting.
And for the first time, Rachel screamed. But it was not that robotic sound from the early days.

Her screams sounded human, and she was terrified.

Rachel

that night, Marissa called her mother, Helen, told her everything. The healing wounds, the food deliveries, the men in dark suits.
Marissa waited for her mother to say she was crazy.

Marissa knew she sounded crazy, but Helen wasn't surprised by any of it.

Helen grew up in Rome, New York. a small town outside Utica.
She spent as much time as she could in the woods. That's where she'd go to see the light.

She first saw the light when she was eight, a shining ball of blue hovering just above the ground, the most beautiful blue she'd ever seen. She should have been afraid, but she wasn't.

Something about the light made her feel calm and safe. For five years, she'd sneak off to the woods to see the blue light, and every time she did, she got closer and closer to it.

And when she was 13, she finally reached out and touched it.

And that's when everything changed.

And for the first time, the light spoke, with thoughts directly into her mind. They want to know if I'd like to have a baby.
And I said, of course not. I'm too young.
And they said, that's all right.

You don't have to have one now. Later you'll have one.
And when you do, it will look like you.

But it will be like them.

Ellen asked who them was, but she she didn't get an answer. So she just got a feeling of a vast intelligence beyond anything she could understand.
And that was the last time Helen saw the blue light.

Seven years later, Helen got married and moved to a new town. The blue light faded into memory, mostly forgotten.
But the promise it made when she was a girl was about to come true.

Early spring 1951, a woman Helen had seen around the neighborhood invited her for a walk. Helen's husband was out of town, so she thought some company might be nice.

During their walk, the woman said she needed to make a quick stop to see a friend. She led Helen to an old office building.
Inside, it looked like a doctor's office.

Then the woman disappeared down the hall. A doctor came out and insisted on examining Helen.
He said she didn't look well, so she reluctantly agreed.

Helen lay down on the examination table, and as soon as her head touched the surface, she was blinded by a blue light.

They tell me to hold still. Be quiet.
It'll be over soon. Nobody will ever know.
I want to fight. I want to get off the table, but I can't move.
The light pushes me down, but I'm not tied down.

I just...

I just can't move.

The light came closer and closer. Then Helen felt it in her body.

I feel like they're putting something inside of me. It hurts.
It hurts so bad.

Then, nothing.

When she opened her eyes, the light was gone, and the woman who brought her there was standing right next to her, ready to walk her home. Helen was too groggy to argue.

Helen was in pain for two days. Six weeks later, she realized she was pregnant.
But that was impossible. Her husband was out of town.

They say the child will be like any other. Since it's my first, I won't know the difference.

She told herself the visit to the doctor wasn't real, just a bad dream. But she remembered what the light had promised: it will look like you, but it will be like them.

Nine months later, Marissa was born.

In 1955, Air Force recruit Harry Nadian received orders for specialized training.

His assignment, ATIC, Aerospace Technical Information Command, a highly classified unit responsible for investigating unidentified flying objects and alien intelligence.

The classroom was small, six airmen, one instructor, no windows. The lieutenant opened a folder marked with a single word, magic.

Inside were photographs, crashed spacecraft in the desert, bodies recovered from the wreckage, small, gray, definitely not human

harry was assigned to a facility called four corners nowhere near the actual four corners region this one was in the nevada desert a sister installation to area 51.

officially it didn't exist trespassers were shot on site four corners didn't look like much and that was intentional the real base was underground

Within a few months, Harry discovered he had a gift. He could communicate telepathically with the Greys.
Most humans couldn't do this. Our minds are too cluttered.

But Harry's mind was open, and the aliens noticed.

They began requesting him specifically, first as an observer, then as an interpreter, then as a liaison between the visitors and human scientists. By 1966, Harry was in command of the entire facility.

That's when he met Chisky, their leading geneticist. Chisky understood both human and alien genetics.
That's because he was a hybrid. Human DNA spliced with an alien from the Zeta system.

Chisky looked similar to Rachel. He was small and thin.
He had large blue eyes and pale yellow skin. According to Chisky, all humans were engineered.

You were designed to be harvested. Your DNA, your genetic diversity, we built that into you.
Every generation we return. We take samples, we make improvements.

We have been doing this since before your species could write. You're designed to be harvested, huh? You're basically organic, free-range, farm-to-table humans for alien ships.

Well, Harry asked why they needed human DNA. Chiskey explained.
His species had been cloning themselves for too long. They'd lost the ability to reproduce naturally.

Humans shared the same genetic heritage, going back millions of years. Harry finally understood how important his assignment was.
The hybridization program wasn't about creating soldiers or slaves.

It was about saving a dying species.

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She's been thinking about this sleepover all week, but I think about her food allergies all the time. Fortunately, her doctor prescribed Zolar, Omalizumab.

It's proven to significantly reduce allergic reactions if a food allergy accident happens.

Zolair 150 milligrams is a prescription medication used to treat food allergy in people one year of age and older to reduce allergic reactions due to accidental exposure to one or more foods.

While taking Zolair, you should continue to avoid all foods to which you are allergic. Don't use if you are allergic to Zolair.

Zolair may cause a severe, life-threatening allergic reaction called anaphylaxis. Tell your doctor if you ever had anaphylaxis.

Get help right away if you have trouble breathing or if you have swelling of your throat or tongue. Zolair should not be used for the emergency treatment of allergic reactions, including anaphylaxis.

Zolair is for maintenance use to reduce allergic reactions, including anaphylaxis, while avoiding food allergens.

Serious side effects such as cancer, fever, muscle aches and rash, parasitic infection, or heartened circulation problems have been reported. Please see Zolair.com for full prescribing information.

Ask an allergist about Zolair. This is an advertisement for Zolair paid for by Genentech and Novartis.

I'm Austin Hankwitz. And I'm Janice Torres.
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In September 1969, a huge craft spiraled out of control over the desert. Harry led the recovery team to the crash site.

The wreckage was still burning when they they got there. Three bodies in the debris, small, gray, dead on impact.
But Harry saw movement in the rear compartment.

He entered the burning craft and pushed through the smoke. He found a sealed door and touched what looked like a control panel.
It opened.

A tiny, frail figure was trapped under a fallen equipment panel, smaller than any gray Harry had ever seen. And different.

Humans can't tell the sex of a gray by looking at them. But this little being was definitely female, and her eyes were strange, not the solid black orbs of the typical grays.

Her eyes were a soft, dark green, rounded at the inner corners and angling up toward her temples. And her eyes had depth.

They were almost human, except for the pupils that were vertical slits like a cat or

a reptilian, right?

Harry understood immediately. She was part human.
He carried her out of the wreckage and brought her back to Four Corners. Underground at level 8, Chisky examined her.

He'd been expecting new arrivals from the hybridization program. She is from my star system, possibly even my planet.
She is a hybrid, but her blood contains human DNA markers.

The three who died were her family. She is now alone.
With proper care, she could become quite humanized, more so than any hybrid I have seen.

She had traveled from Zeta Reticuli to learn to live among humans. Now her family was dead, and she was alone.
Harry made a decision the moment he looked into her green eyes.

He would raise her as his daughter. He named her Rachel.

The adoption required approval from ATIC HQ and the National Security Council. Harry made his case.

Rachel was the first young hybrid, the first female, and the most human-like hybrid they'd ever seen. If anyone could integrate into society, it was Rachel.
The approval came within hours.

Too fast, Harry thought, but he didn't complain. Then the work began.
Atic sent a language expert to work with Rachel. She learned to form sounds into words, then words into sentences.

Chiskey developed Rachel's food, a dark green nutrient paste. She couldn't digest meat or process food.

The food was packed in white boxes marked with a red triangle, the symbol of the humanization project.

Rachel looked almost human, but not human enough that people wouldn't notice.

So she was given hats and scarves to hide the shape of her head, always long sleeves to cover her thin arms, and sunglasses. She would always have to wear sunglasses.

And after three years of training, Rachel was ready. Three years of training to pass as human, eh? I know a few tech company CEOs that might want to take that course.

Harry received transfer orders, liaison duty at an Air Force base in California, a desk job, perfect for a single father raising an unusual daughter.

He enrolled Rachel at American River Junior College, but she couldn't live alone.

She needed a roommate, someone patient, someone kind, and someone who wouldn't ask questions, someone who couldn't see what she really looked like.

Harry was surprised the housing coordinator had the perfect match: a legally blind girl, quiet, patient, desperate for a roommate who would pay half the rent.

Harry thought this was an amazing coincidence or a stroke of good luck. He had no idea that Atick had been watching Marissa for months.

Helen drove to Sacramento to see Marissa, and she wanted to see this roommate for herself. Marissa introduced them at the door.
Rachel was polite, soft-spoken, and strange.

She wore an oversized hat and a wraparound sunglasses, even inside. Her voice was flat and careful, like she was reading from a script.
Helen tried to shake her hand, but Rachel flinched.

She didn't want to be touched. Later, near the kitchen, Rachel tripped on a bump in the carpet.

Helen grabbed her arm to stop her from falling, and in that moment, everything Helen believed about the world changed. Rachel's skin, her eyes, the flood of fear directly into her mind.
Helen let go.

Rachel pulled up her sunglasses and ran back to her room. Helen left and sat in the car for 20 minutes, confused and unsettled.
She had no idea this was an experiment.

She also didn't know the experiment had failed. That night, Rachel contacted Harry.
He arrived at the apartment the next morning and called a meeting, all four of them. He told them everything.

The Air Force, the classified training, the underground base, the crashed spacecraft, the humanization project, an experiment to see if hybrids could integrate into human society.

She's supposed to be like people, but she can't do it. She tries, and it doesn't work out.
She doesn't look the same. No matter what she does, she can't pull it off.
And she says, I sound funny.

I try to talk like the other people and I cannot do it. Marissa spoke first.
She said she didn't want Rachel to leave. Rachel had been kind to her, patient.
Marissa didn't care what she looked like.

Then Rachel said something that shocked Helen. I have never had a mother.
I do not know what a mother is supposed to be. I wish you were my mother.

Helen said that was sweet and almost dismissed it, but Rachel had more to say. Maybe you do not remember.
Someday you will remember. Suddenly, Helen felt something she couldn't explain.
Recognition.

Harry saw the feeling flash across Helen's face. Then he asked about the moment she caught Rachel's arm and looked into her eyes.
Did Rachel say anything to her? Helen said no, not out loud.

Harry nodded slowly. He had to say something else.
The truth about Helen.

For years, Helen struggled to piece together the memories of what happened between Marissa and Rachel all those years ago. So she underwent hypnotic regression with Dr.
June Steiner.

The regressions unlocked everything. Helen remembered being in the girl's apartment standing in the kitchen.
Rachel was there. She looked at Helen and said, I want to show you where I live.

Rachel walked to the kitchen window. But when Helen looked, it wasn't the street outside.
It was a white corridor. Rachel put her finger against the glass and told Helen to do the same.

When their fingers touched the window, the kitchen dissolved. Suddenly, she wasn't in the apartment.
She was underground in a round room lined with tanks.

Inside the tanks were babies, floating in green liquid, bed-pale skin, and long, thin limbs. This,

this is where I came from. But there was much more to Rachel's story than just a hybrid Harry had adopted.
Oh, God.

That I had a child that wasn't what I thought it was. When I looked in Rachel's eyes, that's why I thought they were so beautiful.
She was maybe trying to tell me something then.

Maybe she was trying to tell me the truth.

The embryo extracted in 1951 was taken to Zeta reticuli, grown in a tank filled with green liquid, modified with extraterrestrial DNA, then returned to Earth.

Rachel's alien family had brought her back, back to the planet where her human side had come from, back to the woman who was her mother.

Helen looked into Rachel's eyes and felt recognition because somehow she knew. because a mother always knows.
Helen sat with the truth.

Rachel was her daughter, taken from her and and grown on another world, returned to Earth in a craft that crashed in the desert. But there was more.
Rachel also had DNA from the colonel.

Harry was Rachel's genetic father and her adoptive father, which meant Marissa and Rachel shared the same biological mother. They were half-sisters.

Harry had wondered back in 1972 if it was all really a coincidence, how Marissa appeared at exactly the right moment. how everything lined up so perfectly.
It wasn't a coincidence.

ATIC knew who Helen was. They knew about the embryo.
They knew Marissa was Rachel's half-sister before anyone else did. Even her tutor Bobby with his perfectly matching schedule had been placed.

The humanization project had specifically reintroduced Rachel to her own family.

They wanted to see what would happen when a hybrid encountered her biological relatives, whether a connection would form, whether that connection could be controlled. Helen finally understood.

The blue lights, the missing time, the surgery. It wasn't luck.
It was a breeding program.

Three generations of women bred like lab rats. But lab rats are disposable.
So with the failure of the humanization experiment, the military began tying up loose ends and they would start with Rachel.

Near the end of the spring semester, Rachel disappeared. She left a note taped to her mirror.
Dear Marissa, I will miss you very much, but I have left you a special gift to remember me by.

Love, Rachel. Marissa sat on Rachel's empty bed and read the note.
Then she stopped. She wasn't using her magnifying glass.
She looked around the room, the furniture, the window, the sunlight.

Everything was sharper than it had been in years. Rachel could heal wounds in seconds.
She healed herself after the crash. Now she'd done something else.
Rachel healed Marissa's eyes.

Marissa's retinas had been destroyed by diabetes when she was 13. For six years, she'd been legally blind.
Now she could read street signs. She could see faces.
She could finish college.

She could complete most of the work for her master's degree. Rachel had given her sight back, but she couldn't heal the diabetes.

When Marissa was 38, she died from complications of the disease she'd fought since childhood. But for 18 years, she could see.
That was Rachel's gift. The colonel chose Marissa because she was blind.

He needed a roommate who would never see what Rachel really looked like. Rachel undid that.
She healed the very condition that protected her cover. She chose her sister over the mission.

And that was the final betrayal.

The humanization project made a mistake. The scientists wanted their hybrids to simulate human emotion.
They needed them to blend in, to smile at the right time, to laugh at a joke.

But they didn't really want them to feel, just pretend to feel. Real emotion is dangerous.
Real emotion creates loyalty. And loyalty to family is a threat to the mission.
Rachel crossed that line.

She loved Marissa and Helen. She called Helen mother.
She called Marissa sister. She stopped reporting back to the base and started protecting her new family.
The men in black noticed.

The reports grew more alarming with each visit. Subject displays emotional attachment to roommate.
Subject refers to H. Luttrell as mother.
Subject has ceased regular reporting.

But Harry saw it coming. He watched his daughter becoming more independent, more attached to her human life.
He tried to protect her. He tried to smooth things over with ATIC.

But the colonel knew how the military handled compromised assets. You don't fix them, you liquidate them.

Two years after leaving the apartment, Rachel was dead, pushed down a flight of stairs. She cared too much about me and Marissa.
She was only allowed to go so far, and she went beyond that point.

It wasn't time yet for that to happen. Then

she was gone.

According to Helen's regression, the order came from the military or the government, and the Colonel knew it was coming. He was connected with her death, but not directly responsible.

He wasn't even there, but he agreed it needed to be done.

But Harry loved her, but he had orders. And somewhere along the way, he convinced himself that Rachel's death was necessary for the greater good of the project.
But he was wrong.

Years later, Helen learned that the Colonel no longer believed the humanization project was good for mankind. He thought it became dangerous, that the hybrids were being used.

But by then, it was too late for Rachel. But Harry Harry could still do one thing: he could make sure someone eventually told the truth.
That's why he told Helen everything.

He couldn't save his daughter, but he could make sure that she wasn't forgotten.

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We're all out of the ordinary.

She's been thinking about this sleepover all week, but I think about her food allergies all the time. Fortunately, her doctor prescribed Zolar, Omalizumab.

It's proven to significantly reduce allergic reactions if a food allergy accident happens.

Zolair 150 milligrams is a prescription medication used to treat food allergy in people one year of age and older to reduce allergic reactions due to accidental exposure to one or more foods.

While taking Zolair, you should continue to avoid all foods to which you are allergic. Don't use if you are allergic to Zolair.

Zolair may cause a severe, life-threatening allergic reaction called anaphylaxis. Tell your doctor if you ever had anaphylaxis.

Get help right away if you have trouble breathing or if you have swelling of your throat or tongue. Zolair should not be used for the emergency treatment of allergic reactions, including anaphylaxis.

Zolair is for maintenance use to reduce allergic reactions, including anaphylaxis, while avoiding food allergens.

Serious side effects such as cancer, fever, muscle aches and rash, parasitic infection, or heart and circulation problems have been reported. Please see Zolair.com for full prescribing information.

Ask an allergist about Zolair. This is an advertisement for Zolair paid for by Genentech and Novartis.

I'm Austin Hankwitz. And I'm Janice Torres.
Join us for season four of Mind the Business Small Business Success Stories from Ruby Studio and Intuit QuickBooks.

We're back and talking to more inspiring small business owners about everything from the changing business landscape to the rise of artificial intelligence and how QuickBooks on the Intuit platform helps you outdo what you're capable of.

So outdo it with Intuit QuickBooks. Working in QuickBooks just makes it easier to run the business, right?

There's so much that you need to do when it comes to running a business, building products, setting up marketing campaigns.

And to run a business, you have to make sure that your finances are in order. So it removes my anxiety from one side of it so that I can focus on everything else.

Listen to new episodes of Mind the Business, Small Business Success Stories, every other Thursday on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

A blind student finds a roommate with mushroom skin and green eyes. Her father, an Air Force colonel, reveals she's a human-alien hybrid part of a government experiment.

That's the story story Helen Luttrell tells in her book Rachel's Eyes. And Helen says this is 100% a true story.
But is it?

The main problem is everything comes from Helen's book. It's always a book.
Right. And Helen wrote a few of them, but they're all sort of a rehash or a small expansion of the same story.

It feels like it. There's nobody around to confirm any of it.
Marissa died before the book was written. Colonel Nadian has never been found.
And in later books, his name changes a little bit.

Helen's encounter happened in 1972. Her hypnosis didn't happen until 1998.
26 years is a long time, especially for memory. And hypnosis is controversial.

It can create false memories just as easily as it recovers real ones. Hypnosis can create false memories, eh? That was soaking cable news.

At least hypnosis doesn't have commercials for a rectile dysfunction. Not that I noticed that.

Helen describes classified projects like Magic and Pounce.

But all this information was circulating in UFO literature long before her aggressions. All the names were changed.
There's no record of the apartment or that roommate arrangement.

But there is one piece of physical evidence that's in one of Helen's books. Investigators contacted American River Junior College.

The college sent the letter back on official stationery confirming that a student named Rachel Nadian attended classes there in 1972. That was the smoking gun.
But not so fast.

When investigators went back to follow up, the letter was gone. The employee who signed it was transferred.
And the college files listed no record of anyone named Rachel Nadian.

It was like she was erased from history. But there are some things that are true.
Helen Luttrell is real.

She wrote the book under her own name and faced decades of ridicule without changing her story. Her therapist, Dr.
June Steiner, staked her reputation on this case.

And Helen was warned years before the book came out that if she ever spoke of the humanization project, harm would come to her and her family, but she published anyway.

And others who knew Marissa remember Rachel. I remember her saying that Rachel couldn't go out in the sun.
She wore sunglasses all the time, even indoors. Apparently, her skin had an odd texture.

Rachel didn't eat regular food. She had to eat special food that came in little white boxes.

Then Marissa told me that the girl disappeared, that she didn't know where she went, that this roommate just was gone.

Helen's story stays consistent. Her descriptions of Rachel's skin and eyes never change.
False memories usually shift over time, but Helen's didn't. Her emotional response was also very intense.

Sobbing, trembling, she was in genuine distress. Trauma therapists say those reactions are hard to fake.
The evidence doesn't prove the story is true.

A single witness, recovered memories, no physical proof. Any prosecutor would throw this case out.
But if the story were fabricated, the details should shift.

The witnesses should contradict each other. They don't.

Now, skeptics say Helen has PTSD from growing up in an unstable household, a violent marriage, and she's experienced something through the only framework that she can make sense of.

Or maybe she's telling the truth. Whatever Rachel was, hybrid, human, or something else, she mattered.
She wanted to belong. She learned to speak our language and walk through our world.

Rachel formed bonds. She healed her sister's eyes.
She felt compassion, empathy, and love. She became human in all the best ways possible.
And that's the tragic irony of this story.

She became more human than the people who raised her. And then they killed her for it.

Thank you so much for hanging out today. I'm AJ.
There's Hecklefish. I am cool to Hecklefish.
It is a pleasure to meet you, human. This has been the Files.

If you learned anything or had fun, do us a favor, like, subscribe, share, leave a comment down below. It'd be nice.
Anyway, all that stuff really helps the channel.

And like most topics we cover here, today's was recommended by you.

So if there's a story you want to see or learn more about, go to the yfiles.com slash tips, send us an email, or hop over to Discord and open a ticket. Remember, the Y Files is also a podcast.

We basically simulcast these episodes to all the major podcast platforms so you can take us with you. But also, we put episodes up there that wouldn't be allowed on the video platforms.

And those are labeled redacted, unredacted. They're labeled something.
Look, this is not a professional operation.

But if you are listening on an audio platform, I would appreciate if you hit thumbs up or like or follow or any of those buttons down there or leave us a nice review. That stuff really does help.

Now, if you need more Wi-Files in your life, check out our Discord. There are thousands of people on there 24-7.
I think we have about 100,000 members. So there's someone on there all the time.

They're into the same weird stuff we are. They're talking about the same topics we do.
It's a great community. It's a lot of fun.
It's really supportive and it's free to join.

And speaking of 24-7, make sure you check out our 24-7 stream on the Wi-Fi's backstage, linked down below. Over there, we run episodes back to back with some fun, unique content in between.

And an amazing community has sprung up over there. So go there and watch the episodes or let it play in the background, but hop into the chat.
It's a lot of fun.

Special thanks to our patrons who made this channel possible. Every episode is dedicated to our Patreon members.
I couldn't have done any of this without you.

And if you'd like to support the channel, keep us going, become a member of this community, consider becoming a member on Patreon.

For as little as three bucks a month, you get access to perks like videos early with no commercials, exclusive merch that nobody else can even see, and you get two private live streams every week, all just for members.

And the whole Wi-Fi's team is on the stream. Everybody's camera's on.
So you get to meet me, Victoria, Hybrid, Jen, Gino, Mary's on there sometimes, AC, everybody's on there, whoever I forgot.

So, and you could turn your camera on, pop up on stage, ask a question if you want to learn more about a topic, or just chat. It's a way to get to know us as people.

I think it's the best perk there is. Another great way to support the channel is to grab something for the live file store.

What are these just a little cuffy mics? You can stick your alien fist in, or your flipper, or your elbow.

Well, it depends.

You can stick whatever you want now.

I'm not going to tell anybody what you're doing.

I don't like it. I I get what he's saying.

Talking animal toy.

But before you buy anything, make sure you become a member on YouTube. I know another membership, but hear me out.
YouTube members get 10% off everything in the store.

Yeah, you want to keep that secret close to your door, Sophie, eh? Those are the plugs. I do have one more coming, but I'll save it for next week because this is a long episode.

So until then, be safe, be kind, and know that you are appreciated.

I play Bolivia and Area 51. A secret code inside the Bible said I would.

I love my UFOs and paranormal fun, as well as music, song singing the like I should.

But then another conspiracy theory becomes the truth, my friends

And it never ends

No, it never ends

I feel the crap guy down, got stuck inside Mel's home with MK out trucks I'm being only too aware

Did Stanley Kufrick fake the moon landing alone

On a film set, or where the shadow people

there.

The Roswell aliens just fought the smiling man, I'm told.

And his name was Cole.

I can't believe I'm dancing with the fish shit. And the fish on Thursday nights when they changed you.
And the rapids have been all through the night.

All I ever wanted was to just hear the truth. So the world was lovely all through the light.

The Mothman sidings and the solar storm still come. She will gather the secret city underground.

Mysterious number stations, planet surfo to Project Starcade, and what the Dark Watchers found.

In a simulation, don't you worry though.

The Black Knight satellite told

me so

I can't believe

I'm dancing with the fish shit.

And we'll fish on Thursday, nights, Wednesday, changing. And the webbed swampy up through the night.

All I ever wanted was to just hear the truth. So wampo, clamber, feet all through the night.

And we'll fish on Thursday nights when they change you. And we're slapping me all through the light.

All I ever wanted was to just hear the truth. So whap on the feet all through the

Gurdy loves to dance.

Gurdy loves to dance.

Girlie loves to dance.

Girdy loves to dance.

Gurdy loves to dance.

Yeah, Gurdy loves to dance on the dance floor

because she is a camel.

And camels love to dance when the feeling is right away

within time.

Gurdy

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