Alien abduction claims explained [seriously!]

Harvard Gazette ^ | 9/22/05 | William J. Cromie

[Enchante]

Alien abduction claims explained: Sleep paralysis, false memories involved

Many of the people who believe they have been abducted by aliens are bombarding Susan Clancy with hate e-mails and phone calls. The Harvard researcher, who has spent five years listening to the stories of some 50 abductees, has described her (and their) experiences in a new book to be published in October.

Clancy, 36, likes most of these people. "They are definitely not crazy," she says. But they do have "a tendency to fantasize and to hold unusual beliefs and ideas. They believe not only in alien abductions, but also in things like UFOs, ESP, astrology, tarot, channeling, auras, and crystal therapy. They also have in common a rash of disturbing experiences for which they are seeking an explanation. For them, alien abduction is the best fit."

As you might guess, the people behind all that hate mail and the phone calls don't buy that. They were there, she wasn't, they insist.

In her book, "Abducted: How People Come to Believe They Were Kidnapped by Aliens," to be published by the Harvard University Press, Clancy describes a typical reaction. "Can you believe the nerve of that girl (Clancy)," one abductee says. "She comes to me, like, 'Oh, I believe you've been abducted! Let me interview you to learn more.... Oh, what really happened [she says] is sleep paralysis.' Riiight! How the - - does she know? Did it happen to her? There was something in the room that night! I was spinning. I blacked out ... it was terrifying.... I wasn't sleeping. I was taken. I was violated, ripped apart - literally, figuratively, metaphorically, whatever you want to call it. Does she know what that's like?"

Paralyzing dreams

Abduction stories are strikingly similar. Victims wake up and find themselves paralyzed, unable to move or cry out for help. They see flashing lights and hear buzzing sounds. Electric sensations zing through their bodies, which may rise up in levitation. Aliens with wrap-around eyes, gray or green skin, lacking hair or noses, approach. The abductee's heart pounds violently. There's lots of probing in the alien ship. Instruments are inserted in their noses, navels, or other orifices. It's painful. Sometimes sexual intercourse occurs.

Then it's over, after seconds or minutes. The intruders vanish. Victims are back in their own beds and can move again.

Clancy, Richard McNally, a professor of psychology at Harvard, and other researchers tie such horrifying happenings to sleep paralysis, a condition where the usual separation between sleep and wakefulness gets out of synchronization.

When you dream, you are paralyzed. It's a natural adaptation to prevent people from lashing out, jumping out of bed, walking into doors or windows, and otherwise injuring themselves. But it's possible to wake up while still paralyzed.

"We can find ourselves hallucinating sights, sounds, and bodily sensations," Clancy says. "They seem real but they're actually the product of our imagination." One researcher describes it as "dreaming with your eyes wide open."

Bizarre effects aside, sleep paralysis is as normal as hiccups. It's not a sign of mental illness. About 25 percent of people around the world have experienced it, and about 5 percent get the whole show of sight, sound, tactile hallucinations, and abduction.

Some of these people become completely absorbed by what happened and seek an explanation of it. That can lead them into a grab bag of different techniques well known to those with a rich fantasy life and a distaste for scientific explanations.

Such techniques include hypnosis, guided imagery, regression, and relaxation therapies. "These all work in roughly the same way," Clancy comments. "The therapist lulls the abductee into a suggestive state, in which normal reality constraints are relaxed, and then asks the person to vividly image things that might have happened." Or might not have happened.

Hypnosis, she says, "is a bad way to refresh your memories. Not only that, it renders you susceptible to creating memories of things that never happened, things that were suggested to you or that you just imagined. If you (or your therapist) have pre-existing beliefs or expectations, you're liable to recall experiences that fit with these beliefs, rather than events that actually happened."

False memories

Clancy knows all about false memories; they got her into studying abductees in the first place. When she arrived at Harvard to work on a Ph.D. in 1996, she was fascinated by the political, legal, and social impacts of people who suddenly recovered memories of childhood sexual abuse. Using standard laboratory tests, she found that women who reported recovering such memories were more likely to remember things that never happened than women who always remembered such abuse.

That result, however, does not prove whether or not the woman with recovered memories had actually been sexually abused. Clancy then got the idea that she could get a better scientific grip on false memories by studying people who recovered memories of events that could not, in her mind, have possibly happened, i.e., being abducted by aliens.

"Boy, was I naïve," she says in retrospect. "You can't disprove alien abductions. All you can do is show that evidence is insufficient to justify the belief, and try to understand why people have those beliefs."

On the way to doing this, she, McNally, and their colleagues made some tantalizing discoveries. Measurements of sweating, heart rate, and brain waves showed that those claiming to be abductees show the same symptoms of post-traumatic stress syndrome as combat veterans. The researchers did not, however, conclude that the abductees had experienced combat-type trauma. Rather, they believe, it is the emotional significance of a memory, whether it is true or not, that causes sweaty hands and rapid heartbeats.

Earlier this year, Clancy and McNally reported on another study that found those who recalled childhood sexual abuse or abduction by aliens experience higher rates of sleep paralysis than those who do not make such claims. Strikingly, the first group also scored high on underlying traits of fantasy proneness, paranormal interests and experiences, and inability to relate socially to others.

Add to this mixture a recurring interest in aliens expressed in books, in movies, and on television, as well as true discoveries of more than 150 planets orbiting other stars in our galaxy. Overwhelmed by this hurricane of sleep paralysis, false memories, and fantasy, some people seek explanations and succor in ghosts, reincarnations, and multiple personalities. Others find that alien abductions provide answers and peace of mind, says Clancy.

"It probably doesn't matter much to the abductees whether they are right or wrong," she comments. "They simply feel better because of what they believe."

Clancy is finished with space abduction studies. She now works in Central America, teaching, continuing research on trauma and memories, and writing a book on recovered memories of childhood sexual abuse. You can bet that book will bring another high wave of hate mail.

[badpacifist]

or this
http://www.anomalies.net/ufo/nasaufo/3902/warpspeed.mov

[DLfromthedesert]

I wonder if she studied Calypso Louie's abduction in Mexico.

[Liberty Wins]

"there is some weird crap out there . . ."

Yeah, athiests, welfare bums, Hollywood drunks, abortion enthusiasts, union thugs, screeching feminists, government-addicted minority "victims", socialist college professors, pornographers, and alien abductees. They make up the Democrat base.

[JmyBryan]

Now that we have the explanation, we can go to bed assured that people who experience "UFOs" are just dreaming and that there are no, as yet, unexplained phenomena.

And we can ridicule anyone who "holds unusual beliefs and ideas", even if they actually experience something unusual, because we know that nothing unusual ever really happens.

[Cvengr]

Every once in a while, people may experience a Twilight Zone moment. In most cases, when they do occur, our belief systems tend to override those moments and frame them in more acceptable perspectives.

The real arrogance doesn't exist with those who report a bizarre instance, but with those so scarred in their thinking that they insist no such bizarre phenomenon exist other than that which is simply explained by rationalism.

My emphasis here being on the assumption that the bizzare is immediately cast in doubt, while the rational is presumed to prevail.

This article and several others regarding 'sleep paralysis' over the past several years have contrived elaborate mechanisms to account for the phenomenon as though it is mere normal physical activity. All such studies I have per chance encountered, tend to dismiss things such as demons or the spirit as a lessor educated perspective. For those who remain truthful, faithful, and sincere the phenomenon of sleep paralysis is also frequently associated with spiritual warfare of a very real nature.

Articles which relate to a phenomenon and call it 'sleep paralysis' are as naive to significant events in that domain as somebody who witnesses a flotilla of aircraft carriers, nuclear submarines and an amphibious landing by remarking that there is nothing eventful, because such things happen when one understands a ship's displacement in water allows it to float. The significance might be the more obvious event.

[Enchante]

Neither of your statements can be implied by the article, and neither are statements that I endorse.

[Marie]

I talked to someone not long ago who believed that becoming too engrossed in a video game, for instance, could "open you up" to a demonic attach. Since you are a believer, what is your opinion? What makes one vulnerable to a demonic or spiritual attack?

I'm no demonologist, but IMHO one would open themselves up to demonic attack by expressing interest and pursuing the occult (talking to "ghosts", Ouiji board, tarot cards, etc), throwing out a challenge (come and get me, you buggars!), or by direct invitation.

I also think that demons/devils attack those who God may have a more than usual interest in. I think that some of the most holy of people are pursued, haunted, distracted and tempted by demons than average folks.

As for video games, I really don't know. I know that I've seen peoples' personalities change after playing video games a lot. I also know that the games can change brain waves. I believe that God designed our brains to be tuned into the spiritual and that an altered state may "change the channel" to something better left alone. I think that some people may be more vulnerable than others and that what may be nothing to one, may open the Gates of Hell for another. (it's the same with alcohol, sex, etc)

But that's just me. I used to claim wiccan beliefs, but I could never wrap my mind around the idea that I knew more about what should be done spiritually than God. The only "spells" I did were for healing, comfort, etc. (I guess I was just praying fancy.) The wiccans I hung around with were dealing with things that I felt were too dangerous and it was repulsed by it. Finally I met enough wiccans that I came to the conclusion that it was a twisted religion that was NOT for me. It's a religion of arrogance.

[bluefish]

Heh heh... Um, my comment was a joke. Hippo / Hypno. But I found your post interesting nonetheless.

[Cvengr]

Perhaps the approach you have well stated is the reason some 'alien abductee' stories are so significant. Many consistently express and manifest the behavior of somebody who sincerely would agree with the same position, but has a reality thrust upon them that forces them to not only consider, but enter into an otherwise conflicted domain.

Some of those reports touch upon issues which aren't as well discussed elsewhere from a similar perspective. Volumes are written regarding spiritual warfare in Scripture and religion, yet many in our generation are not well studied or faithful in that domain.

[Cvengr]

Believers are exposed to demonic influence, while unbelievers may be exposed to demonic possession of their thinking processes.

Most misery is self imposed through wrong thinking. For this reason, most people simply have their hands full controlling their own scarred thinking processes. There does exist other persons in spirit that can influence our persons and in some cases malevolvently deceive us.

[bluefish]

I see from your prior PM that you got the joke. Anyway, I won't quit my day job for stand-up anytime soon.

[JmyBryan]

I have no problem with the article. However, I think the phenomena of "alien abduction" is not easily demarcated. Certainly sleep paralysis and hypnosis are reasonable explanations for the testimony of some indviduals. However, there are "alien encounters" that are experienced in fully awakened states, not recovered by hypnosis. Others are accompanied by physical evidence and corroborating testimony.

See the Allagash Abductions for example, a tale difficult to categorize as sleep paralysis.

[rwfromkansas]

What a crock of crap.

These people have the same exact memories, and have had this even before it became well-known what an abduction experience is popularly like in the underground culture.

To explain it as false memories is incredibly idiotic.

[Calvin Locke]

A few years back, Art Bell had a real medical researcher on. The guy was studying an LSD class/type of drug. His drug,
like LSD, affected the pineal(sp?) gland. The most active time for that gland, without drugs, on average, is 2-4AM.
That's the typical time that abductions reportedly occur.

Perhaps a number of leftist, anti-commonsense types have an overactive pineal gland? Maybe they dropped acid at
least one too many times, or the LSD wasn't quite what it was supposed to be?

[SoCal Pubbie]

"When you dream, you are paralyzed. It's a natural adaptation to prevent people from lashing out, jumping out of bed, walking into doors or windows, and otherwise injuring themselves."

Then how come I frequently do all those things, plus talk and walk around, while still asleep? I'm not kidding, I do it all the time.

[tomakaze]

re:Alien abduction claims explained: Sleep paralysis, false memories involved
 
Theory: They're making it all up to get attention.
there, mystery solved. now somebody toss me a big fat cash research grant and i'l write it all up and pad it out to about 2-300 pages or so.

[Vince Ferrer]

There is a connection indeed between UFO theory and hate of America. The third world use it to revive hate of colonialism, While liberals talk about the US stealing technology from aliens so we can dominate the world, what not.

A consistent theme that I have noticed is that many abductees relate that the aliens start "monologing" to the abductees about the need to get rid of nuclear weapons, clean up the environment, etc, or other such semi-political statements. By reading the testimony of the abductees, it often becomes clear that this political ideology of the aliens is almost identical to the abductees, even before their alleged abduction.

When an alien travels across the galaxy to tell someone what they already know, perhaps they should consider that it is coming from inside them, rather than out there.

[Born in a Rage]

People don't want to believe things that they aren't ready to accept. Maybe the author should also do a study and publish a book about that theory as well...

[Southack]

Forget the authors' opinions and the hate mail...the real tragedy is that this sort of article is titled as explaining a phenomenon (inplying that the solution was scientifically found).

It wasn't. Not scientifically. This article merely treats us to informed opinions.

To be scientific, the researchers should have devised and shown a way to *repeat* the behavior being studied...even if it took a large study group that would only yield one or two "successes."

If they were to show that "behavior X" can be induced in .03% of any study group whenever the conditions for sleep are XYZ, and then if other research teams at other schools were able to duplicate those results by following the above procedures...then...you'd have a scientific explanation.

Regardless of what you are studying, you shouldn't be published if you are sloppy. Study. Test. Conclude. Test. Find someone else to test "your way" and if the results are consistently duplicated, then publish.

[Bellflower]

What about the fact that many remember their abduction and were not asleep or even near a bed when it supposedly happened?