The Tempest Universe

UFO Buster Radio News – 305: Believe you have been abducted?

11.26.2019 - By The Dark Horde NetworkPlay

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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...

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