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?" 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.

View: Full Article | Source: Harvard Gazette

Very interesting, very interesting indeed, this clearly shows that when you apply science to abductions the "aliens" seem to only exist in the heads of the people who claim to have been abducted. No real surprise, but still good to have scientific research to back you up.

its not denying that aleins have abducted people, its saying there may be a natural phenomenon such as sleep paralysis.
its only stating that people shouldn't jump to the conclusion of alien abduction, but saying you have to consider other reasons than just jumping into the 'aliens abducted me boat'.
but it isn't denying the fact that some people could have been abducted.

it isnt? they could've fooled me. its more likely that only a few people had that sleep paralysis and false memorys, than that only a few were abducted. there are other proof besides just storys too, so i think its just a atempt from a sceptic, who happened to be a scientist, to prove his opinion. not everything is about halucinations and other brain related phenomenom.

No matter how much research and interviewing is done to those who claim they have been abducted we can never really know unless we have experienced what they "all" experienced.

In this day and age every one is writing a book giving thier own idea of reality. We will have to read Susan Clancy's books to see if her opinions are based on Scientific testing, or she simply went looking for some ideas to confirm her pre- existing beliefs. I try to keep an open mind with authors, but dont take the written word as gospel. She may be Wrong.

thats BS, she probably is an alien

LOL

jokes aside, I think she had this "theory" already set up even before she interviewed one abductee.... therefore, it cannot be taken seriously or without discretion...

So now we see what believers are mainly accused of happening. A non-believer trying to profit from it with a book. So all fifty people she interveiwed were suffering from sleep paralysis eh? I have to wonder how prevelant this problem is. Statistically speaking how many in a given population should exist.

good point.... there are tens of thousands of abductees world-wide... I seem to recall an account where two woman a hundren miles apart woke up with strange marks and each had the other womans night gown on! (they figured it out by conicidence, both women joined the same abductee support group!)

imagine waking up with different clothes on then what you were wearing when you went to sleep... someone elses clothes you had never seen before... that would be a pretty hefty mind-trick don't you think?

not necessarily. some, actually most, people who have been abducted DON'T believe in that type of stuff and are extremely freaked out and want to know what the heck happened to them. some think they're going crazy. i think this lady should do a BIT more research before coming to conclusions.

Yeah fifty seems like a good cross section on six billion, who could doubt the accuracy?

Although i don't believe most of the people claming to be abducted but you can't explain how people have 'implants', when analysed they don't match up to anything on the peroidic table

Most of the implant evidence is inconclusive sad to say, I would like it to be otherwise. Unless there are some out there that I have not seen yet. I believe the ones you speak of do appear on the periodic table, its the combination of the materials that doesn't appear in nature but seems to show up in humans. Could be as simple as blood chemistry and time that produces some of these anomolous objects.

the only reason it is inconclusive is because we can't figure out what it is and because the scientists dont publish their results from a fear of ridicule.

Yeah thats a real problem thats been around forever. Change is the nightmare for established science, most mainstream scientist great any challenge of their intelectual authority with something less than enthusiasm. Never believing that they could be wrong, based on a lifetime of study. What most fail to realize is that they are not wrong per say. If you don't have all the information, then any conclusion you come to will be flawed and suseptible to revision.

Here are some quotations from the article to answer some questions posters had.

"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."

Seems like sleep paralysis is a pretty common phenomenon. If the world population is taken to be roughly 6 billion, then 25% of that would be 1,500,000,000 or 1.5 billion, that's a lot of people. Then, the article claims that 5% of those that experience sleep paralysis have the sight, sound, tactile hallucinations and abduction experiences. 5% of 1.5 billion is 75,000,000 or 75 million. That's still a large amount of people.

"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 <strong>not</strong>, in her mind, have possibly happened, i.e., being abducted by aliens."

There goes her objectivity argument. She went into the studying already believeing that what happened to these people was nothing but sleep paralysis induced hallucinations. She very well could have, consciously or unconsciously ignored or missed data that went counter to her expected results.

Yeah but the conclusion that sleep paralysis is that common is false. There is no realistic way that there could be known that 1.5 billion people suffer from it. Thats complete BS, where are they getting these numbers. If you go by that there should be about five hundred people in my town with this thing. But I have never heard one peep about this until about five years ago when they started saying that it was what people were experiencing instead of abduction. Think about it for a second, in order for that to be right they would have to have 1.5 billion doctors files with that diagnosis, it would be more common than cancer for christ sakes, and hardly anyone's ever even heard of it, does that sound right?

Woh there killer I wasn't agreeing with her at all. I was just posting what she said were her "facts" on sleep paralysis. I don't buy that explanation either. It seems the skeptics only pull out the "mind over matter" bullsh*t when it suits them.

Heck, I believe in aliens and I've never even dreamed of abduction or aliens or whatever. I have these images in my mind all the time and never have an abduction experience, while most abducties are non-believers, probably hardly ever think of aliens, but are the ones being abducted.

Sorry, wipes foam from mouth, I sometimes get a little frothy.

I remember seeing a TV special wherein when applying a magnetic field stimulation to certain artas of the human brain, the subject was caused to experience things similar to alien abduction phenomenon, such as paralysis, a feeling of being in a strange place, and grey, waxy humanoid figures with large eyes. I wish i knew what the hell i saw that on, it was mighty convincing.

I'm not ruling out that it could be a medical condition or something like that, but where would the magnetic field come from if it is an outside energy affecting the brain? Is there really "ambient" energy of a sufficient intensity to cause the changes in the specific areas of the brain seen in this experiment?

I just don't know.