Is it normal to believe you have been abducted by aliens?
by Dr Ema Sullivan-Bissett, Department of Philosophy
Link: https://www.birmingham.ac.uk/research/perspective/abducted-by-aliens.aspx
Strange beliefs are prevalent among humans, from the recent rise of the anti-vaccination movement, to the prominence of the Flat Earth movement, many of us have very strange beliefs. At the time of writing, 1.6 million Facebook users have marked themselves as attending a storming of Area 51, the Air Base in Nevada, United States. The reason for this? ‘To see them aliens’, presumed hidden by the United States government.
There are all sorts of explanations we can give for the prevalence of conspiratorial beliefs, including the make-up of our social groups, and the wide access to an internet packed full of conspiratorial claims (researchers ran a Google search for ‘vaccination’ and ‘immunization’ which turned up results 43% of which were anti-vaccination websites).
Why might some people believe that there are aliens being hidden by the United States government? Sure, via the usual routes of one’s social group and internet activity, but also because many people claim to have been in contact with aliens.
For some, this contact is a matter of aliens visiting their bedroom at night, but for others it can mean being abducted, taken aboard a spaceship, and once there, being subjected to medical experimentation including the removal of eggs or sperm. Some abductees claim to have formed sexual relationships and produced hybrid offspring with their abductors, as well as having received important information about the fate of the Earth.
So why do people believe that they have been abducted by aliens when, presumably, they haven’t? Psychologists looking to answer this question have appealed to awareness during sleep paralysis (ASP) and accompanying hallucinations.
During Rapid Eye Movement (REM) sleep, the sleeper is immobilized. In ASP, the sleeper wakes up before the paralysis has disappeared and is aware that they are unable to move. 75% of subjects will hallucinate whilst experiencing ASP.
Abductees report a variety of these experiences; the hallucinations may be visual, including ‘lights, animals, strange figures, and demons’, or auditory including ‘heavy footsteps, humming or buzzing noises’. Several reports from abductees chime well with this explanation.
The Responses
Dear Ema.
I read your article with much enthusiasm as I’m always interested in the views of psychologists in regard to the subject of close encounters. While I agree that the UFO field is replete with personal beliefs making it a minefield for UFO researchers like myself, there are very well documented cases of alien abduction experiences from experiencers and their families. I’ve personally interviewed many hundreds of witnesses and although I have not had any formal training in psychology, I have found them to be highly intelligent, well-balanced individuals, and so have other psychologists such as Dr John Mack, Dr Ken Ring and Dr Berthold Schwartz, just to name a few off the top of my head. If anyone decides to write about this field of enquiry, I suggest they speak to the witnesses personally, then decide for themselves as to whether they are delusional or if there could be a real possibility that they are telling the truth. I would love to read another article by yourself after having done so. Perhaps that experience might challenge your own beliefs and change your mind.
Dear Ema,
I was definitely abducted by aliens several times in the late 1950s. I actually remember this happening on one occasion and for many years I thought my memory of this event was a dream. At around the same time I frequently experienced a strange and rather frightening sensation when lying in bed at night. The air in my bedroom would take on a different texture and seemed to be charged with static electricity. I did not like this feeling and would fervently wish that it would go away and always went to sleep waking up in the morning feeling perfectly normal.
I was aged around 16 or 17 at this time. The ‘dream’ that I had was of being taken into a flying saucer and flying at speed above the ground which I found quite thrilling. I have since realised that I must have been ‘beamed up’ into the saucer from my bedroom, I cannot remember what my abductors looked like but have a vague memory of them being friendly. I was able to see the ground underneath us as the bottom of the saucer appeared to be transparent.
That is all that I remember, I don’t know if they performed any medical examination on my body or made any alterations to my DNA or whatever. but would very much like to know the reason for my abduction.
Yours sincerely, Martin Northey.
Pastor Ed Forrest,
I have stopped going to church’s tell I truly get some answers for missing time,a 12 hours of it. Benson county TN. Rented a small cabin for fishing trip, 3 of us. The last thing we all seen was what we thought was a fish was turning into a fish much bigger than our boat, then 10 am at night we where many miles away and none of us remember anything at all. We still don’t talk to anyone about it.none of us see or talk to each other any more. All divorce, just don’t know anymore.
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