Pots of coffee were poured, a guitar softly played from within the small, lakeside house and loud chatter and laughter echoed through the chilly air.

“It’s going to be a good night,” said Audrey Hewins of Oxford, who founded Starborn Support in 2006 to assist and provide emotional support to people worldwide who feel they’ve experienced an extraterrestrial alien abduction or encounter.

The Pisces full moon, closest to the Earth, bigger than usual and more energizing, was a positive sign for the group, which was already electrified from attending a weekend conference in Portland with worldwide experts on extraterrestrial encounters.

“Experiencers Speak,” Starborn Support’s premiere event, co-sponsored by Northeast UFO Conferences, provided an opportunity for the group and many others to focus specifically on experiencers, those who have had encounters either by being abducted, seeing mental pictures or hearing voices.

Lee Hazel, an IT engineer from England, flew from London to Portland late last week to attend the two-day seminar. He found himself in an elevator with two people he admired immensely — nuclear physicist and lecturer Stanton Friedman and Kathleen Marden, the leading expert on Betty and Barney Hill, a New Hampshire couple who in 1961 became the world’s first widely published abductees.

“And here I was fixing her computer,” Hazel said of a request from Marden to help straighten out a computer problem.

Hazel has never been abducted, seen a spaceship or had contact with extraterrestrials. But he has had a lifelong fascination with the topic. In recent years, he found an old school book that was covered with pictures of extraterrestrials he drew as a boy — a sign that he says means he was in the right place Monday night.

Unlike Hazel, almost all of those attending Monday night’s vectoring had interactions with extraterrestrials. The group included healers and psychics, an analytic chemist and Ph.D. who helps those who have experienced close encounters get over their nightmares and paranoia.

“We’re not all here by accident. We’ve just been led to each other,” said Audrey Hewins, who along with her twin sister, Debbie of Mechanic Falls, say they have both been abducted and visited by aliens since they were young.

Audrey Hewins said the world must accept extraterrestrials.

“It’s coming,” she said. “We all know this and it’s time for the world to accept this. What’s happening on this planet is not apparent to everyone. We’re the ground crew assisting humans with accepting this.”

Monday night’s event was a “CE-5,” a deliberate, conscious attempt to interact with an extraterrestrial spaceship.

Psychic Pam Loffredo, who moved to Maine from New York two years ago, said the method is based on a 1990 book by Steven Greer.

Greer, a retired American medical doctor and Ufologist, founded the Center for the Study of Extraterrestrial Intelligence  and The Disclosure Project. His goal is to disclose the suppressed UFO information, Loffredo said. Greer has developed a variety of methods to draw in and interact with aliens.

The Thompson Lake CE-5 event began just before 11 p.m. as the group was asked to gather in a circle and begin to settle down and draw its energy inward with deep breathing followed by an “Ah” sound that Loffredo described as being “from the heart.”

The wood crackled in the fire pit and smoke curled up into the air through the thick pine trees. Some said they sensed a ship nearby. Others said the signs that extraterrestrials were near was evidenced by a variety of animal encounters earlier in the evening.

Loffredo encouraged the group to repeat certain mantras: “We are your star family and ground crew. Bless us with your presence.”

The group was then asked to make the symbol of a triangle and draw it into their faces.

“Draw energy to the third eye and you’ll make contact,” encouraged one participant.

“I’m seeing that something’s over there,” said another as she looked up into the sky.

“We need to focus on love. There can be no negativity. It can hurt some of these aliens,” Suzanne Chancellor of Rhode Island warned.

The group created the triangle symbol again and envisioned the image of a red, glowing heart, then with palms facing up they were asked to visualize holding onto a giant blue bubble with a floating red heart in the center. They released it in unison toward the night sky.

Spotlights were taken out and beamed three times into the air. “Let them know we’re here,” said a psychic in the circle.

A movement in the sky caught the group’s attention, but it was just a plane.

“Oh, my God,” someone murmured.

Energized by what they believed was a close encounter, the group collected blankets, cameras, video equipment and headed down a dirt road to the lake.

“Be extremely reverent. Have humility,” a psychic warned.

The group gathered at the edge of a cove on a hillside overlooking an ethereal scene as the full moon lighted up the water and mist.

It was well after midnight, and occasionally a flashing light was seen in the sky causing excitement to ripple through the group. Many of the participants’ camera batteries had died, they noted.

“It may take a long time,” Chancellor said.

Whether an encounter was made was interpreted by each individual. Some say they may never have an encounter; some say they are routinely in contact with extraterrestrials.

“You wake up, and there they are. That’s how it first happens,” said Hewins, who said she was 4 when she first had contact with extraterrestrials aboard a ship.

For Lee Hazel of London, it was the experience, the ability to hear and share stories of encounters without judgment, the camaraderie, the gathering of a “soul family,” as Hewins put it, that mattered.

He was having the time of his life, Hazel said.

“They’re all very down-to-Earth people … no pun intended,” he said.

The night was still young.

ldixon@sunjournal.com

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