Emma Woods in her preface to her 2022 book, Glimpses of Magonia: A Memoir of My Anomalous Experiences, underlines the point that she is agnostic regarding the range of cultural explanations commonly applied to the sorts of experiences she relates (ie "UFO", "alien abduction"). Her stance receives support in a foreward by Ufological observer and author Jack Brewer: "....it is important to refrain from reinforcing dubious extraterrestrial and supernatural explanations. There are appropriate and inappropriate times for debating cases and arguing likelihoods."
Woods' book and her perspective and presentation in it represent a clear break from her past involvement working with David Jacobs and the content and "cultural explanations" assumed by her then. This book doesn't overtly relate that history, instead focusing on the bare bones of experiences noted in her extensive journaling. Brewer covers the details of that history in a book 'The Greys Have Been Framed' and at his The UFO Trail blog. The indirect referencing of that history comes from Brewer's introductory warnings of falling for the "Texas sharpshooter fallacy as it pertains to researching portential anomalies. Overemphasizing similarities in data and ignoring differences is an inherent challenge..."
Alot of her normally remembered experiences shared especially from chapter 11 ("Journal Entries") and on beyond that do not seem overtly connected to UFO events and encounters and alien abduction. There are episodes recounted in the first five chapters that clearly do seem to have features common to reported alien encounters and abductions. And, I will note some of that and attempt to describe some of the types of anomalous and puzzling experiences she otherwise shares and tries to understand. Her husband writes a long chapter near the very end that details many odd things he has witnessed.
This is one detailed accounting that overall will require careful rereading and consideration.
The book opens up with a fragmented and disturbing memory from when she was 15 and living in Africa. Or, actually a few separate but related ones.
She is in a courtyard with high walls and trees and running towards a gate in a desperate attempt to escape. She notices a large building at the other end with a foyer at the back end facing the courtyard. A separate memory fragment apparently represents activity just prior to her running: she is standing in that foyer, feeling "slightly switched off" amidst a group of people. She remembers several persons, two very tall, wearing blue-gray military uniforms and a specific young man in civvies. Others present are not clear to her. And, finally, there is another episode remembered, of activity prior to the above scene. A disturbing memory.
She describes "hazy, fragmentary memories of lying on a doctor's bench next to a wall in a doctor's room...A man in a white coat was in the room, and he did a medical examination of me". She felt immobilized or "pecularily passive"and the remembered young man in the foyer was present. Then: "Afterward, someone ad sex with me there, although I cannot recall it clearly, and I do not know who it was. It was almost as though I was drugged and not fully aware". (Pg. 24)
Woods says that when she turned 24, 9 years later, that further fragmentary memories arose that she felt were associated with the above courtyard scene and episode. And here the alien but now widely familiar (to the world today) Greys were involved.
There is a lot more precise details shared about the surrounding environment, activity and different beings involved. She was on a table "with a smooth, shiny surface and curved edges". She noted that the material of the table had an unusual feeling. She was next to a curved white wall in a room which "had a clinical, utilitarian look to it". The light over the table had no apparent source. AND: "There we're three or four short gray people to the right of the table..."
She describes in this scene short beings with "huge black, staring eyes, narrow shoulders, and a thin chest". The gray entities are examining her, including a gynecological one with a small Gray holding a small cylindrical instrument. A human-appearing male in blue coveralls is also on scene. This memory fragments ends with her feeling someone having sex with her.
There was also another fragmentary memory surfacing at this time. She has a view of being above the courtyard in a craft that is slowly descending at an angle towards the gate area.
Throughout her childhood she has memories of visitations with a Gray entity that was also experienced by her friend Ella on sleepovers. Emma quizzed both her parents and Ella about this memory later in life, receiving corroboration with Ella also remembering Emma being prompted to go outside at night to sleep by the water tanks.
Woods shares a feature common in the surrounding context of other experiencers of similar sounding anomalous experiences (pg44):
"Once I began investigating my anomalous experiences in my thirties, I learned that these types of experiences often appear to run in families. On speaking to my father and other relatives about my situation, I was amazed to discover that several of them, from both my father’s and mother’s sides of my family, had also had a lifetime of anomalous experiences."
She reports that her Dad felt that he was followed or overseen by unknown somebodies.
(Pgs 44-45):
"Although my father did not share all his experiences with me, the ones that he did tell me about included the following:
-Having several UFO sightings.
-Seeing a beam of red light of unknown origin sweeping into the room at night.
-Experiencing poltergeist activity in his home.
-Finding furniture in his home inexplicably moved to other locations, including across the room.
-Having unexplained winds inside his home and air movements around him.
-Being physically moved by an invisible force, including on one occasion being forcibly moved to a place of safety when he was in danger.
-Being woken by strange sounds.
-Meeting strange people, in odd situations, who seemed to know a lot about him.
-Hearing a strange sound while visiting a haunted house, and on another occasion feeling an “invisible” person brush past him.
-Seeing energy around plants that sparkled like fire.
-Experiencing a metal object that he carried on his body slowly bending of its own accord. -Having a levitation experience.
-Seeing a small light like a star floating in the room.
-Being able to use his mind to affect another person physically and the other person feeling it.
-Having unexplained bruises.
-Experiencing many odd synchronicities."
Woods shares alot in this super-rich accounting of head-scratching and unresolved anomalous events throughout her life, some seemingly UFO-related and many others not clearly so. A familiar sounding story of missing time (over two hours!), for example, is related that involved her and her first husband James on a road trip. He took at one point a puzzling detour on a bad road that went up a hill. They have no memory of what happened, only that significant time had passed unaccounted for.
The table of contents demonstrates the rich range of experiences covered:
Foreword by William J. Birnes, PhD
Foreword by Jack Brewer
Preface Author’s Note Acknowledgments
PART I: THE OTHERS 1: Abducted 2: Strange Visitor
PART II: EARLY CHILDHOOD 3: A Family Inheritance 4: Signs and Omens 5: Views From Above
PART III: RESEARCH 6: Paranormal Surveys 7: Geophysical Perturbations
PART IV: PHYSICAL ASPECTS 8: Medical Mysteries 9: DNA Tests 10: Body Marks
PART V: EXPERIENCES 11: Journal Entries 12: Mystery House
13: A Laboratory 14: Trench in the Road 15: Man in Dark Clothes 16: Electrical Anomalies 17: Metallic Plasma 18: Energy Lesson 19: Alien Footprints 20: White Lady Portent 21: Red Eye Foreseen 22: A Double Life
PART VI: CONCLUSION 23: Witness Testimony 24: NASA and Aliens 25: Glimpses of Magonia About the Author Notes
The reader may have noted chapter 20, White Lady Portent and thought of experiencers Chris Bledsoes' accounts of visionary encounters with a woman also wearing a long white gown. Woods saw her more than once. The chapter 20 account seemed to her to represent a warning using symbolic imagery that indicated the upcoming COVID pandemic.