Well known UFO researcher Dr. R. Leo Sprinkle died this past week. He was a Professor of Psychology at the University of Wyoming. MUFON joins the UFOlogy Community in mourning his passing. The man was not only brilliant but was a friend to many many experiencers throughout the years.
Dr. Sprinkle was very close to MUFON’s Colorado State Director Katie Griboski who wrote an entire book about the correspondences Dr. Sprinkle received over decades from the people he helped.
For those of you unfamiliar with him, Katie has allowed us to post this short biography from her book Letters of Love and Light.
Psychologist, hypnotherapist, and UFO contactee researcher R. Leo Sprinkle was born in 1930 in Rocky Ford, Colorado. As a young man he joined the United States Army, serving two years as a corporal in 194th Field Artillery Battalion in Wertheim, Germany.
He then returned to the United States, and began his studies at the University of Colorado, where he earned his bachelor’s degree, then a Master’s of Personnel Service in Counseling. He received his Ph.D. in Counseling and Guidance at the University of Missouri in 1961.
In 1964, after serving as Director of the Counseling Center at the University of North Dakota, he became Associate Professor of Guidance Education at the University of Wyoming. Leo served as Counselor and Associate Professor of Psychology there from 1967 till his retirement in 1989.
Leo’s many published writings have included his book Soul Samples (1999, Granite Publishing) and his approximately 50 articles published in academic and UFO journals. These have focused mainly on UFO research, extrasensory perception, hypnosis, reincarnation, spiritual growth, and counseling theory and practice.
Not long into his career, Leo became increasingly known in UFO circles as a researcher of contactee experiences, offering an open mind and a sympathetic ear for those needing to speak of their experiences. A nonbeliever for many years, Leo migrated, as he puts it, from “scoffer” to “skeptic” after experiencing a UFO sighting himself in 1949. A second sighting with his wife in 1956 then moved him from “skeptic” to “unwilling believer.”
By the mid 1960s, Leo was involved in trailblazing research and investigation of UFO abductions. As psychology professor and therapist, over the decades he has performed more than 500 hypnotic regressions of possible contactees and abductees. Viewed as an authority in the UFO field, he has spoken on this topic on national television and at international conferences.
Among the many cases Leo has investigated have been some of the most extraordinary and well-known UFO incidents to have occurred since 1930.
In 1964, using a set of standard tests, Leo’s breakthrough research included the first psychological study of hundreds of individuals who had reported sighting or experiencing a UFO. He concluded from this that most UFO witnesses operate within the normal psychological range……..
“My approach is to minimize the tendency to ‘explain’ (or explain away) the reality of psychic experiences,” Leo has said, “and to emphasize the willingness to explore the personal meaning of these human experiences of spiritual emergence.”
In 1980, Leo founded the University of Wyoming’s annual summer Rocky Mountain Conference on UFO Investigation as a meeting place for hundreds of UFO contactees, abductees, and other experiencers seeking affirmation and support.
In 1988, Leo published the PACTS model of abductee/contactee experience. Based on 24 years of study, it marked out five stages of experience. Briefly, these were: Preparation (family and cultural experiences of ESP and/or spiritual contacts, including childhood visitations by Spiritual Beings (SBs), Abduction (UFO sightings and/or abduction experiences inducted or initiated, involuntarily, by SBs), Contact (adult visitations inducted or initiated voluntarily by SBs), Training (instruction for a mission or task), and Service (cooperation with SBs—channeling verbal or written information from them, providing healing, instruction, or assistance to others).
There is also the accomplishment which this book celebrates: Leo’s active correspondence over 40 years, in supportive yet academically responsible ways, with UFO and ET experiencers all over the world.
Over the years, as a result of his research, Leo has concluded….that UFO activity is a part of an incoming wave of human consciousness—a shift into viewing ourselves not only as “planetary persons,” but as “cosmic citizens.”
Thank you Dr. Sprinkle. You will be greatly missed!
