Are alien abductions real, or are they a product of a dream, sleep paralysis, or just an overactive imagination? Those who claim to have been abducted or "abductees," as they are called today, say that they are being awakened from sleep, and transported to an alien spacecraft. Hard core scientists believe that these abductees never left their bed.

Once the abductees are aboard the alien craft they are subjected to medical tests by strange looking creatures not of this world. These tests vary greatly from one account to another, but generally consist of a general overview of the human body, and sometimes sexual probing. Men may be milked of their sperm; women may have their eggs taken. Tormented afterwards by nightmares or fragmented memories, they often seek professional help.

Read Full Article Here:
Are Alien Abductions Real?

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I voted no.

I think the entire alien abduction experience is more than just one thing. I think it is a combination of SP, ignorance, and hypnosis. When ppl are ignorant of SP they might believe they've been abducted by aliens, go get hypnotized to "remember" the experience and that's where all the confusion begins. When a person is hypnotized their reality is the now and they can be led by the simplest of questions or suggestions. They get the idea that they've been abducted implanted inadvertently by the hypno therapist. That's just my opinion.

Yes, they are.

I believe alien abductions are authentic not hoaxes or sleep paralysis. Many of the cases can be explained off as sleep paralysis and hoax but certainly not all. There is far to much to this subject to simply dismiss. David M. Jacobs of Temple University has spent a good portion of his life investigating the phenomena and has written a series of books. His website "International Center for Abduction Research" can be found here: http://www.ufoabduction.com/

The subject of alien abduction is an intriguing one, indeed, as well as a bit controversial, but surely should not be overlooked or completely dismissed as has been the case thus far by the majority of the scientific community as well as by most average citizens.

I believe that alien abductions are part of a mental illness.

That may certainly apply to some cases, I agree. However, there are particular cases that totally rule out this possibility as well as the hoaxing and sleep paralysis possibilities which certainly makes you wonder. I can go into further details about these select few cases if you would like, but I'm sure you've probably seen my posts regarding the particular cases on this site in the past.

Yes, alien abductions do happen and are only too real.
Some of the best alien abduction cases never make it into the public domain.
You'll have to meet these people face to face.

Certain details during a genuine alien abduction are very specific. One (of many) example is the contents of the alien’s message. This specific information is way beyond the scope of cultural influence and thus enables abductees to communicate to other genuine abductees.

The hoaxers and fantasists would not know the exact details.

To the skeptic, alien abductions look like mythology because this information is passed on via the same route mythology takes. ie word of mouth.
It’s a far from ideal situation but what can you do? We’re all playing the waiting game until the time come when the irrefutable evidence finds its way in the hands of civilian scientists. With the current situation, I’m not sure if I can see a plausible way for this to ever happen in the near future.

I voted 'Possibly'.

Indeed, 99.38485% of abduction stories are just rehashed / recycled versions of the exact same archetypes:
-They abducted me, did all sorts of freaky torturous surgery on me, erased my memory temporarily.
-They abducted me, appeared as supermodels and made me copulate with them so they could harvest my genetic material.

I do believe that maybe once or twice, an abduction has taken place, like the Barney & Betty Hill case. All the 'abductees' coming out of the woodwork since then are just attention-seeking virgins.

Not sure a face to face meeting would convince me. The idea is very hard to come to terms with.



Do you mean an individual message for each abductee, or a generic message one and the same for all.



A skeptic has trouble with it because it is a huge story with millions of holes. Taken up to craft that are not witnessed by the whole town, somewhow managed to stay undercover. No detection of the visitors in any way. The amount of proven hoaxes. The amount of repeat encounters. I mean, how many abductions do they need, been going on for best part of a century. How thick are alien scientists? They should be able to make their own humans by now. How can these abductions take place without a nosey neighbour seeing anything, and some claim recurring encounters, but why doesn't one such witness carry a GPRS in your pocket, leave an iPod taping in your pocket, I dunno, leave a trail of breadcrumbs. Something, anything. But what do we have, hypnotic accounts of people asleep. Hrrmzz, see where I am coming from......unless it actually happened personally, it's quite a tale to swallow. I reckon many cases are creepy Uncles. The cases need to be taken a wee bit more seriously and investigated properly I agree. There is more convincing aspects to the UFO/Alien phenomena than this.

Personally, I'm going with option 2 offered by Wayfaerer.

The two most authentic of all alien abduction cases were the abductions of Travis Walton and Betty and Barney Hill.

Travis Walton Case

In November 1975, a group of six tree-trimmers were driving home from work in a truck in the Sitgreave-Apache National Forest in Arizona, USA. The driver stopped the truck when he noticed that a flying saucer was hovering about fifteen feet above some nearby trees. Travis Walton approached the craft on foot, despite the objections of his workmates. He was then knocked to the ground by a blue and white light. When the men in the truck saw this, they were terrified and sped off down the road leaving him for dead. Once they had calmed down, they returned to that spot and couldn't find any sign of Travis or the flying saucer. Five days later, Travis was returned to earth wondering what had happened to him for the past few days.

The following report on the final polygraph examination of Travis Walton was actually sponsored by a skeptic, Jerry Black. The test was performed with the latest state of the art equipment, by Cy Gilson, the most highly respected polygraph expert.

On February 4, 1993, a polygraph examination was administered to Mr. Travis Walton. The purpose of this examination was to determine whether or not Mr. Walton was being truthful in his statement about seeing a UFO and being abducted by the UFO in addition to other facts surrounding the abduction.

During the pretest interview, Mr. Walton said he had worked for Mike Rogers intermittently for about six years on a seasonal basis. He never socialized with any of the crew.

On November 5, 1975, they had worked a little later than usual trying to meet the contract commitment. By the time they were driving back to town, the sun had gone down but there was some light, like twilight.

As they were driving, he could see a glimmer of light in the trees ahead. At first he thought it may be a downed airplane. The light was very unusual. It was like nothing they had seen before. As they neared a clearing he saw the object he called a UFO.

As the truck came to a stop, Mr. Walton got out. Believing it may take off, he walked towards the UFO but slowed his pace before reaching it. He described it as being round and hovering about 20 feet above the ground. He didn't go underneath it but stood there looking up at it. He said the UFO started to wobble slightly and make a noise. Mr. Walton said the noise was like a low rumble that developed into a higher pitch that seemed to increase in frequency. At this point he became afraid and decided to go back to the truck. He recalls being hit with an electrifying type of shock that stunned him, leaving him unconscious.

He recalls he slowly regained consciousness and found himself in a small room that was damp or humid. He had pain throughout his body but mostly in his chest and head. He then saw three creatures he described as being about four feet tall with large, dark eyes. He was lying on some type of table. As these creatures approached him he got off the table. There was some type of shelf near the wall where he found a straight pipe­like object lying on it. He describes it as being round like a piece of a pipe but lightweight. He cannot recall if it was solid or hollow. He picked it up and used it to keep the creatures at bay.



The creatures left the room by an open doorway, turning right.

Mr. Walton walked to that doorway, looked down a hall and he went left. He walked into another room, trying to find an exit. He didn't know if he was in a spaceship or a building. A human­like creature came into the room, took him by the arm, leading him to another very large room where several more human­like creatures were. By this time most of the pain was gone. He was forced down on a table and had a mask, similar to an oxygen mask, put on his face.



He doesn't remember anything else until he awoke next to the road, just outside Heber. As he regained consciousness, he looked up, seeing the UFO or one similar to the original one, hovering overhead. As he looked up at it, the UFO sped off into the sky.



Mr. Walton said his story is true. He said accusations made about him are lies. He had not been on any drugs of any kind. He was not hiding out somewhere on the Gibson ranch. He urinated in a jar and the sample was given to Dr. Kandell later that same day. Mr. Walton denies he conspired with Mr. Rogers to perpetrate a hoax to help him get out of the Turkey Springs contract with the Forestry Service.

Two series of questions were asked to cover all the areas we believe were important.

The relevant questions asked and the answers given are as follows:

Series #1:

Question #R1:

On November 5, 1975, in the forest area called Turkey Springs, did you see a large glowing object hovering in the air?

Answer: YES

Question #R2:

While you were standing near that UFO­like object, did you believe you were struck by an energy source emitted from that large object?

Answer: YES

Question #R3:

After regaining consciousness in a small, humid room, did you see nonhuman creatures with large dark eyes?

Answer: YES

Question #R4:

Did you conspire with your brother Duane or anyone else or act alone to stage a hoax about your UFO abduction?

Answer: NO

Series #2:

Question #R1:

Between November 1 and 11, 1975, did you use any drugs, either legal or illegal?

Answer: NO

Question #R2:

Between November 5 and 10, 1975, were you hiding anywhere on the Gibson ranch?

Answer: NO

Question #R3:

Was the urine sample given to Dr. Kandell on November 11, 1975, your first voided specimen following your UFO experience?

Answer: YES

Question #R4:

Was this UFO incident a conspiracy to help Mike Rogers get out of his Turkey Springs contract?

Answer: NO

Mr. Walton's physiological responses were monitored during the presentation of these questions by means of a Scientific Assessment Technology's Computer, Model CAPS 700. The following responses were recorded on this instrument's strip chart: relative blood pressure; skin conductance; thoracic and abdominal respiration. Data from three presentations of these questions were respiration. Data obtained for each series, and were subject to numerical scoring and computer­ based analysis.

The numerical score of Series #1 was +34. The numerical score of Series #2 was +26. In the system of numerical scoring developed and validated at the University of Utah, total numerical scoring of +6 or more is considered indications of truthfulness.

The computer­based analysis returned a posterior probability of truthfulness of .964 in the first series, and a .961 in the second series. These indicating that charts like these produced in each series, by Mr. Walton, are produced by truthful examinees 96% of the time.

Based on the numerical score of the polygraph charts and the computer based analysis, it is the opinion of this examiner that Mr. Walton was being truthful when he answered these relevant questions.

These examinations clear the air with a thoroughness, an utter finality, which can't be refuted. Cy Gilson used a widely practiced, extremely accurate, state­of­the­art method developed and perfected at the University of Utah. This involves a computerized monitoring and analysis of the tracings along with a point­scoring system of the charts applied by the examiner.

In summary: The computer put all three of the witnesses (that took the test) near the top of the range designated as conclusively truthful (almost no one ever achieves the theoretical maximum of 1.00), with Travis at .964 and .961, Mike at .990, and Allen at .993. On the numerical score Travis was first with +34 and +26 points, Mike had +31 points and Allen had +22 points.

Therefore, the probability of this being a hoax or simple misidentification of some kind is tremendously low. Considering these overwhelming odds, what other explanation is there?

The Hill Case

This was the abduction that started them all. The first widely publicized alien abduction that was considered credible. While driving back to New Hampshire from Canada the couple encountered a UFO that seemed to follow their car. It eventually got very close after which Barney stopped the car and got out to take a closer look. He became frightened and ran back into the car and the couple proceeded to drive straight home. After resuming their journey home, they were not able to see the strange craft anymore. Oddly though, they heard a beeping sound. They then heard the beeping a second time, noticing that they were suddenly thirty-five miles farther down the road than a minute or two ago. They were now in Ashla. The mood in the car was quiet as they proceeded home, and went to bed. They both slept until the next afternoon. Time went by before Betty and Barney Hill decided to undergo hypno therapy to recall what happened in the missing time. While in a hypnotic trance Betty described the EBE's tugging on her teeth at one point. Why would they be doing this? As it turns out, Barney Hill had dentures. The extraterrestrials could not figure out why his teeth could come out and Betty's couldn't. Who would make up something like that?

The most credible piece of evidence from this case in my opinion has to be the Star Map that Betty drew while in the hypnotic trance state.

Original:


Cleaned Up Version:


The connecting lines apparently indicate heavy trade routes, light trade routes, and occasional excursions. Unfortunately, at the time it was less than credible evidence. They figured they would probably never know what it means. There are a few hundred billion stars in our galaxy and this map could be argued to fit any set of stars from a particular angle, or so they thought. Marjorie Fish, an astronomer, decided to create a 3-D model of our entire local neighborhood to see if this map matched up with any set of stars. When she completed it she found that it didn't match up with anything. Then a new catalog of the best distance data ever published came out. Marjorie revised her star map to match the new distance data. What she found was astonishing. The star map matched up perfectly with a particular group of stars, a binary star system called zeta 1 and zeta 2 reticuli. Another very interesting fact is that the binary stars, zeta 1 and zeta 2 reticuli, just so happen to be the closest pair of sun like stars in our entire local neighborhood. Not only that, but the stars are not even visible in the northern hemisphere! You have to go below the equator to view them in the night sky and remember this encounter happened in New Hampshire! Another interesting thing is, all the pattern stars in the map are the right kind for planets and life! Only 46 out of 1,000 qualify and yet every star in the pattern qualifies. All the right kind and only the right kind, the chances of that being a coincidence are 1 in 10,000. It is NOT a coincidence! It also turns out that all the pattern stars are in a plane, like slices of pepperoni on a very thin slice of pepperoni pizza, NOT like raisins in a big fat loaf of raisin bread. It is very helpful when you are travelling to stay within the plane because it takes up less energy. What other explanation is there? After you review all the available information there isn't any other explanation that comes close to explaining this encounter and for that reason I believe that the Betty and Barney Hill encounter was very real.

Proof That the Map is not a Hoax:

1. No earth astronomer in 1961-1964 would have known the triangle background stars existed as a cluster in its present position because:

A. The parallax (distance measurement) of 86.1 had not been taken then. Its position was printed in 1969.

B. The distance of Gliese 97 was thought of as 55.2 light years which would put it beyond Gliese 111 before the
1969 catalog.

C. The distance of Gliese 95 was thought of as 37.5 light years (pi.087 ±11) or 35.8 light years (pi..091) before the 1969 catalog. This would move it above rather than below the line of Gliese 111.

Only correlation of several different types of parallax measurement (spectral, photometric, and trigonometric) result in the present more accurate parallaxes. Earlier catalogs usually used just one type of measurement.

The triangle would be remembered as it is very near the surface of the map and is quite prominent.

2. The earlier parallax for Gliese 86 would put it at a much poorer angle.

3. Variable main sequence single stars were avoided. They would be unlikely for life because it requires even heat over a long period of time to develop. The probable main sequence variable stars are marked “var?” in the Catalog of Bright Stars by Dorrit Hoffleit which was published in 1964. Betty’s experience was in 1961. The map was drawn early in 1964. It is very unlikely that she could have had access to the catalog even if she knew how to interpret it, and if it was released before she drew the map. (It took me two years to see the catalogs even though I knew what I needed generally. They are not found in normal university libraries, much less local ones, and book stores do not carry them. Some cannot even be purchased from the author.)

The fact that these main sequence single F5-G-K1 stars are probable variables was not caught by astronomers who specialize in stars that might have planets with life, even in recent books. Delta and Gamma Pavonis, Sigma Draconis, Beta Hydrus etc. are some of the stars listed as good for life, but which are really probable variables. This shows the map maker knew variables should be avoided and which stars were variable.

4. Many exobiology books list doubles as suitable for planets with life. Kuiper s work showing that planets are not likely to develop in a multiple system was published in 1955, but it is apparently not well known. Even if multiple stars can have planets, circular orbits in the ecosphere would be difficult to maintain. Normal doubles were avoided in the lined portion of Psyche.

Epsilon Eridani was announced to be a multiple system in March 1973 by Dr. Peter van de Kamp. Its companion is halfway between a planet and a star in mass. It was avoided in Psyche, although it is near Tau Ceti and the sun. Before 1973 exobiologists considered Epsilon Eridani one of the best prospects for life, and it was part of the Ozma study. The mapmaker knew it should be avoided long before we did.

Proof that the Similarity Between Betty’s Map and Reality is not Coincidental:

1. The top and bottom surface of the depth of Psyche are squares. The height of the map is 2/3 the size of the square. It is highly improbable that this could be coincidental.

2. The lines represent a logical travel pattern to investigate all the best stars for life from Zeta Reticuli, best star for life to the next best (closest) star for life to the next closest, etc.

3. The double dotted line to Tau Ceti represents two expeditions. Two expeditions were likely, the first to 82 Eridani to Tau Ceti to Earth, since the sun is closer to Tau Ceti than 107 Piscium is to Tau Ceti. The dotted (expedition) line to the sun was dropped when the solid line directly from Zeta Reticuli was put in, just as all the dotted lines were dropped when solid lines were put in to 82 Eridani, Alpha Mensae and Gliese 86. The second expedition went from 82 Eridani to Tau Ceti, then in the opposite direction from Earth to 107 Piscium.

4. Only the best stars for life are used. These are non-variable main sequence stars, F6-G-K1, absolute magnitude 3.7 to 5.9. To show the proportions of these stars to all stars, the stars within the volume of a sphere with a radius of 10 parsecs (32.59 light years) was used. There are twelve such stars compared with 201 known systems and 259 known components in this volume. This gives a ratio of 1/17 and 1/21 respectively. I spent over six months checking all possible combinations using all kinds of main sequence stars F2 and dimmer, including doubles, in the 10 parsec model. The only one that resembled Betty’s map was that part of Psyche within the model. Since the-best-stars-for-life ratio is so small compared to stars in general, it is hardly coincidental that the only pattern like Betty’s should be made up solely of these stars.

5. All the stars suitable for life in the Psyche volume are included in Betty’s drawing.

I definitely believe that they have happened and that the hoaxers have made it difficult for any credibility to be given to genuine claims these days..

OK Prophecy Guru. Good call. Thaks for the info Gonna take me at least a day to read all that before I get back on it though.

To me the Allagash abduction is more credible than Betty and Barney Hill.

The Allagash Abduction is one of my favorite cases as well, but it is not more credible than the Betty and Barney Hill case. In my opinion, and the opinion of many other UFO investigators as well, the Hill abduction is the most credible abduction case of all.

I personaly think they are all BS...

Maybe not intentionally hoaxed but everything from dreams, and states of mind brought on from strong EM fields have been known and prooven to make people hallucinate audio/visual etc.

Oh well if Dr. Mack and Stanton Friedman say it's real then it must be....

It goes far deeper than that! Did you even bother to read it? The probability of the Hill abduction being a hoax or a coincidence is nearly impossible. The available scientific evidence pertaining to the Hill abduction far out weighs that of the Allagash abduction.

Some only see what they wanna see.

Some only see what they wanna see.

Sure, if you woke up to find aliens in your bedroom you shouldn’t jump to conclusions. I recommend a process of elimination; From SP to other rational explanations.
As long as these ‘rational’ explanations fit the criteria and can explain all the aspects of the experience. Otherwise you’d be just a deluded as a fantasist. You could be abducted by aliens but fool yourself into believing it’s a SP episode for the sake of a ‘rational explanation’. I’ve seen this happen many times. Although I concede this is not as common as some people jumping to conclusion they’ve been abducted by aliens over nothing more than say waking up with ‘unexplained bruises’.
Anyway the key difference between SP and AA is; Hallucinations cannot interact with the physical environment and experiments can be done to prove this. eg even if you set up a trip wire.. if the hallucinations trips ups, chances are, it’s not a hallucination.



I meant the details during an abduction are very specific. I think of it as analogy compared to the codes Russian spies used during the cold war such as "The donkey has two umbrellas walking in the park" er if you catch my meaning?
I mean it really is this accurate. Two genuine abductees who know the exact details would be able to communicate to each other. It's not perfect by any means..each one wouldn't know for a fact each other has been abducted but it increases the probability of likelihood opposed to a hoaxer or delusional fantasist who would not know the detailed specifics no matter how much they read up on the subject.
Of course it's not a simple as this; each abductee would also have to check out each other's rationale. It’s a long a cautious process.



You raise some very logical points. I understand completely because I used to be a skeptic and judging from some of your posts I was a much harder skeptic concerning the subject of ufos/aliens than yourself. It took a hell of a lot to convince me; none of it remotely provable on an internet forum so my position will always appear weak.

Anyway, you right these aliens do seem to display illogical patterns of behavior which are totally mystifying; for example why do the aliens even need to be present during an alien abduction? Why not send in some type of nano remote controlled probe to implant the abductee and then leave. The chances of detection are greatly reduced.

The fact the aliens are present during an abduction seems to suggest they want the abductee to meet them.
But then, why do the aliens spend a hell of lot of effort trying to get the abductee to forget the experience! Totally illogical to me.. makes no sense. This just one of many examples concerning the alien’s apparent illogical behavior.

And yet I still maintain alien abductions are real based on personal experience.
I don't want to go into it but I'm just at least offering a reason to explain my rationale.

Although it's a separate issue maybe the alien’s rationale can be explained by looking at us.
We humans as a whole act quite irrationally most of the time and yet we're supposed to understand human behavior better than alien behavior. Take the current situation erupting in the Middle East. We understand all sides of the argument and yet it's still mayhem.



I would maintain they know humans and the human race better than any individual human on this planet.
This isn't a worship them as gods type situation; it's just they have amassed an impressive amount of knowledge via their advanced technology.
I've personally seen a glimpse of this database of information and I can tell you; there is absolutely no way the information could've originated from my subconscious.
This is slightly beside the point considering I was fully conscious and using a form of interactive hard tech. The information is in the process of being verified. That is, the parts which are capable of being verified.

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Their tech is extremely good. Not only do they have the ability to make most people completely forget the experience but they also have the ability to knock out all known human tech such as our recording equipment. Have you ever seen the film Contact? At the end, the only evidence Jodie Foster’s character had of her experience was 18 hours of blank tape. If you did set up recording equipment it would malfunction but who knows maybe you’ll get lucky but don’t count on it.



I wouldn't class someone as an abductee if their experiences are only based upon memory recall from hypnotic sessions.
Good to see you've acknowledged the happened to you personally bit. I know quite a few highly rational people who have been abducted by aliens. Ok, I wasn't there so I'd have to put it's an extremely high probability they were abducted by aliens. These people do not seek attention and are quite capable of distinguishing the difference between objective physical reality and subjective reality.
Although I suppose on one level everything is subjective but you’ll find all definitions of reality are actually always more complicated than you first might think.

It you suspect for whatever reason you are getting abducted by aliens I recommend you should be extremely objective and rational with yourself. AA should be the last conclusion or judgment to make.



Yeah, I agree. Some cases I’ve read about certainly seem to suggest they are in fact suppressed sexual fantasies or suppressed memories of sexual abuse. I’ve noticed these particular cases usually involve the so called Alien human hybrids. Cases of AA which include these incidents of abuse are usually acquired via hypnotic therapy sessions.
I’m not convinced the aliens are engaged in a genetic alien hybrid program.
It’s completely outside my experience and I’ve not heard of a plausible case of AD in which the abductee has full conscious memory recall mention anything about the alien hybrid program. This may change in the future.



Really? Didn’t make much sense to me. He believes in only one single case of AA and then he decides all other AA cases are the produce from attention seeking virgins?
Odd. He also voted 'possibly' to the question "have you been abducted by aliens?"

Much deeper.

In a landmark decision, the National Council for Hypnotherapy (NCH) has issued a policy statement concerning alien abductions. So far as I am aware, this is the first time that any of the professional bodies representing British hypnotherapists has made an official pronouncement on this issue, let alone issued guidance to its members.

On 14 December 2001 the NCH wrote to David Howard, enclosing a document entitled Alien Abduction Policy Statement. The text was as follows:

“With the recent interest in this phenomenon, the National Council for Hypnotherapy issues the following guidelines.

Alien Abduction Clients (AAC) are to be treated with the same respect and courtesy as any other client. Regression techniques that should be utilised with AACs should follow these guidelines:

a. Non Directive

b. Non Leading

c. Preferably Indirect

The therapist must also be aware of the implications of False Memory Syndrome (FMS). We recommend that therapists should not introduce the subject of Alien Abductions unless the client refers to it in the first instance. Additionally, therapists should not engage in corroborating these incidents. Therapists should take a neutral stance on the existence of Alien Abductions.

source

http://www.nickpope.net/alien_abduction_and_hypnosis.htm

The cultural influence argument.

Writers and film producers pick up upon abductees claims and include them into their work thus the cultural influence argument is strengthened. It then becomes a self fulfilled prophecy.

A squadron of surrealistic soldiers-silent, menacing. They were humanoid, but they weren't human. They were insectoid, but they weren't insects. They stood, four feet at the tallest, slender trunks, limbs like sticks, oversized heads perched on pencil-thin necks. Huge black eyes that wrapped partly around the head stared from almost featureless faces. Their skin was grey, their hands were four-fingered. And on their tight-fitting uniforms was the symbol Daniel was so familiar with-the symbol of a snake. He feared for Sara; he feared for himself.

source http://www.awe-struck.net/PREVIEWS/TH/THpv.html

Sgt. Schirmer abduction

Sgt. Schirmer was on patrol when he encountered a UFO hovering above the road, which shot up when he flashed his high beams at the object. Soon, Schirmer realized he had experienced "missing time", and a red welt appeared on his neck. Hypnotic sessions revealed that the occupants of the landed craft came and took Schirmer aboard, and communicated with him through some form of mental telepathy. They told him that they would visit him twice more and that some day he would "see the universe".

source http://www.ufoevidence.org/cases/case659.htm

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Much deeper.

I'll clean it up later. UM's a bit slow today.

Yes I have actually. The probability of it being a hoax is nearly impossible is a broad statement to make. I just said that I'd be more inclined to believe the Allagash incident than Betty and Barney Hill. I've been into UFO's for more than 25 years. I have read lots of information about these cases and based on all the information I've read and the knowledge I have that is my opinion.

Yes, people will believe what they want to believe.

It's ridiculous that we're even arguing which abduction story is more credible.

I was being silly with the way I voted, though I admit it could well be possible.
Yes, I only confirmed outright belief in the Hill case, but I said 'I do believe that maybe once or twice an abduction has taken place, like the Barney & Betty Hill case'. This means I believe there have been other factual cases, granted a small amount. You either misinterpreted me or wanted to distort what I said.

I'd also like to learn more about what changed your mind about being a skeptic, Rapid.

I didn't misinterpret you; I just figured it was semantics. ie to believe aliens are here abducting people in only one or two cases in the past yet all the other cases since are hoaxers doesn't make too much sense to me.



What? All of them? Every single one?
I just couldn't see how you could back up that statement and I'm very forgiving in the UM for statements I have to be . I don't expect any proof at all but to give reasons and explain your rationale is fair enough.



Personal experience changed my mind. Cases where skeptics become knowers interest me the most. The best alien abduction case rarely make it into the public domain because these people do not want any attention of any kind. You got to be subtle with these people though and respect their rights to privacy etc. Some of them have been through very traumatic experiences.

Some people who claim to be abducted by aliens are hoaxers. Some are fantasists or just geniunely mistaken and some really have been abducted by aliens.

That was very well written and an excellent rebuttle Rapid7. Pleasure to both read and reply to it.

I am a massive fan of the process of elimination. I think I could be convinced about anything proven by this method. Never seen it fail yet applied correctly. You have me on side there.
So many wake up with a pin prick, or as you mentioned bruises. So incredibly explainable, but so many drama queens take the story to a silly level. Discredits the whole idea for me. If say only a dozen cases in history had ever been reported, I thik I'd take the whole idea a little easier. It's not just UFO cases, drama queens make the smallest coincidence seem like the world is coming to an end. People like that drive me nuts.



K - I see what you mean. I will have to read more cases to get a more specific understanding, but I know what you mean.



Yep, once again, I see where you are coming from, but these EBE's are supposed to be more enlightened for a start. The whole thing is contradictory. It also makes the whole package even more on the unbelievable side when we can see the fallacy in the reports. As I said, they should be all over us technologically. How can we see problems they cannot?
Illogical seems a light term. The list of inconsistencies goes on forever. Especially in repeat cases. When I hear of these, I canot get past the breadcrumb analogy.



Leaving me on a string here.......glimpse and all....

They would have to know more about humans, and if we have come up with marvels like X Ray, why do they need anal probes? Why not use our less painful, less invasive methods?



I have Contact at home on DVD. Big Jodie Foster fan She is one awesome actress.
I have heard this before - knock out digital cameras, radar etc. What about a good old fashioned photograph?? It's internals are mechanical. Wont be affected. Nobody ever seems to get lucky and that is another good reason it becomes harder to swallow. A genuine find - Homo Florensis, or the Celocanth, the Okapi, all those pics were easy to make out, why do pics of Aliens, Nessie, Bigfoot all come out blurry?? Seems a great deal more than co-incidence.



Agreed. The very last choice, that is the only sensible order if deploying a process of elimination.
I don't think someone has to have a screw loose to make a mistake, the human brain is a very complex thing. I find it far easier to accept vivid hallucinations whilst dreaming, which could to any rational person seem 100% real. A process of elimination would also conclude this.



Easy way for the human brain to deal with a traumatic event. The more exposure AA gets, the more cases we wil see I think. I hope someone catches onto this aspect and helps to make people aware in these instances. It would beneficial to catch the creppy ones and if any case is genuine, some verification should be caught. If not by the equipment in the house/area in question, military forces all over the world scan everything all the time. Something far away should be able to detect something moving through the atmosphere in the area at the very least. Would help with confirmations.



Just meant tounge in cheek, you must admit - option 2 sounds alluring

Thanks man . Usually, I just like to observe the threads.
Just checking on something to see about the other points you made.



This would be the icing on the cake! Verification from an outside source. Verified by military personnel.
Oh no, then you'll have to try to prove this to other people with the added disadvantage of sounding like a real hardcore conspiracy theorist..

I dont think anyone will ever know if abductions are real or not, youd have to experience it yourself. You just cant believe or disbelieve someones word. Then again if you experience it yourself, how would you ever know if it was something real or a figment of your imagination. For all you know you could be going crazy and seeing things like you were on acid or something. This is why i think we will never know..

One time i had a dream that little ET's landed in my backyard and took off my fly screen, they used a red laser to come in throw the window then i was in a ship with wierd writing everywhere i blacked out to wake up again with cold sweat dripping down my back i got up to see the flyscreen was gone!

Im sure there must be a explination????? maybe not?

just like all the sightings over the year sof lake monsters,bigfoot,ufos and other irregular or unknown creature/object,there has to be something to it.i just can't see millions of people getting together and faking it so well!

Not necessarily miltary, what about the other institiutions that have an interest in the sky - even television stations have staellites up there these days, not to mention millions of amatuer astronomers. Someone would have to be able to corroborate something. Surely they could not constantly 'slip past' the whole world.

While history has shown that crimes carried out by a group of people (a "conspiracy"or coverup) are not uncommon, the term "conspiracy theory" is usually used by scholars and in popular culture to identify a type of folklore similar to an urban legend, having certain regular features, especially an explanatory narrative which is almost always constructed with certain naive methodological flaws (the moonlandings, 9-11 or aliens on Earth). The term is also used pejoratively to dismiss allegedly misconceived, paranoid or outlandish rumors. If it comes with a "military or government coverup tag" it must be true.

Does the conspiracy accusation satisfy an identifiable psychological need for its proposer?

I think that most people are able to deal with fears and accept them as part of life...

But for others, this burden is too great.
As a result, they ignore the real fears and instead create massive new things to be concerned about.


Enter the conspiracies:


Its simply more comforting for the conspirasy nut (yes, they almost always believe in more than just one) to believe that either their evidence is better, or those disproving their claims are in on the conspiracy.

Thus, the elaborate explanation of a simple event occupies the part of their minds that would otherwise be flooded with insecurities about everyday life.

Inconsistencies are the foundation of these sorts of conspiracies. The conspiracy believer create them because they don't understand the details, then they project them onto "the establishment" as proof, implying that the "masterminds" of these events were somehow so inept in the execution of "their plan" that any uneducated fool could see right through it.

Even if there is a genuine person who say's they have been abducted there will be 50 others who will lie and say they have been abducted this then buries the genuine person since more and more idiots come forward and jump on the i have been probed be aliens band wagon. This then makes the genuine person look like a liar also and then other geniune people become afraid to say anything incase they get laughed at or accused of being a liar.

to the question could an alien craft operate in our space and fly about in our airspace--hover over out towns,and abduct our citizens . all the while being undetected ?

well old-technology stealth can fly into highly "covered" airspace and remain undetected so long as it's limitations are kept in mind.

--so a technology 1000's of years ahead of ours should be able to do that with ease.

but there are bigger problems with abduction storys than if the UFO's/ EBE's can do it --

the problem is "why" --why would a EBE from who knows where have any need to abduct human beings ?

another problem area is --why would a EBE of a super advanced technology 1000's of years ahead of us need to abduct more than a handful of people to gain the necessary data?

lastly-- this whole abduction thing is questionable. --and why is is questionable you ask ?

well i'll say--the method that is used to determine "real" abduction cases is backwards. you can't prove a negative. you want science to prove betty and barney weren't abducted. this is not possible.

to have any credibility you must prove that betty and barney were abducted. from what i see is just some things that suggest they might have been abducted --but no actual proof that couldn't be explained by some other more earthly things.

so my vote is NO . i wouldn't rule it out because of some shortfall of alien technology but because of lack of any proof and the likelihood of aliens with such an advanced technology needing to abduct humans is very low.

then when you add in the large numbers of abducts involved it begins to look like mass hysteria.

it is very remotely possible that a small number of people may have been abducted but there lost in the mass-hysteria .

the facts (or should i say lack of facts) don't add up for the abduction scenario--what were presented for evidence is 20,30,40,50+ year old stories given under hypnotic regression? and another disturbing thing is the stories themselves often mirror the mass-media definition of alien abduction/contact ? i'm sorry but this kind of evidence don't prove a thing.


a situation that makes an equation read 2+2+3 or 2+2=5 tells me that the method used is off the mark.

most credible--or the least un-credible ?

I’m sure astronomers see UFO's all the time but even a strong UFO sighting can be judged inconclusive ie an astronomer could only judge a UFO as either being a black budget project, an odd celestial event etc. Without having access to the relevance data what other conclusion could it be? Without using probability?

I'm pretty sure alien craft will be the last possible out come of what it could be (as it should be).
They might think it could be an aliencraft in private but not mention it to colleagues for fear of not being taken seriously.

Take this UFO sighting for example (witnessed by astronomer). Highlights the problems.

http://worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=42767

A question similar to that which you have pointed out was asked during the question and answer session at the end of the disclosure project press conference at about 1:44:28.

Question:
"My question is this: since 1972 with the launch of Landsat 1 and now with the launch of commercial space imagery there are some archive, I would say upwards of 35 million photographs of the earth from space and not one of them has shown a flying saucer. Are you suggesting these have been airbrushed out?"

Answer:
"We are suggesting that there is a system before the public gets hold of anything that's off of a government connected satellite. There is a compartmented operation that does, indeed, sanatize them from this type of evidence and I think the testimony of the gentlemen here who is with the defense intelligence agency, Mr. Maynard, and others will substantiate that. We have others who have worked in projects where such items have been sanatized out. It could also be that if you did a thorough search you might find a few that slipped through. We obviously have had all the research dollars to go through all the images that are cataloged to look for them. But, we do know there has been a very thorough sanatizing of this and people should not be naive about the extent at which covert programs using billions of our tax dollars have been able to effectively hide this. This is one of the sort of myths of both the media and the public its sort of a pollyanna myth that we live in a society where such things could not be done. In fact, they are done and we can prove that they have been done."

Although true in some cases, you seem to be suggesting this applies to all conspiracy theorists. This is the equivalent to those conspiracy theorists who accuses all skeptics as being sheeple.

What about those people who have experienced a strong event in conjunction with military personnel being present? They would still be classed a theorist in its strictest definition, they would know a cover-up was in action but they wouldn’t know all the details ‘how the cover-up is applied’ or even ‘why the cover up is in action’.

They would and could theorize though, or even, ‘suspend judgment’ until further evidence is available. Yet, to the outside world they’d be classed as a conspiracy theorist; not because they feel the need to fill a ‘psychological hole’ but because they don’t have any hard evidence.
Why don’t they have hard evidence? In these particular cases, hard evidence would be hard to acquire for obvious logical reasons; such as, there is a man holding a gun and he doesn’t want the evidence going anywhere other than where his orders dictate.

Has anyone here read Susan Clancy's book "Abducted: How people Come to Believe They Were Kidnapped by Aliens"? Susan Clancy, if I remember correctly, has appeared on many UFO specials including the ABC special and one of National Geographics "Is it Real?" episodes. She is the primary advocate of the sleep paralysis theory.

Here is what Stanton Friedman had to say about her book:

Review of Susan Clancy’s
Abducted:
How people Come to Believe They Were Kidnapped by Aliens
Harvard University Press 2005
179 pages

by Stanton T. Friedman
April 2006



I hadn’t had high hopes for the book Abducted: How people Come to Believe They Were Kidnapped by Aliens by Dr. Susan A. Clancy. After all, the segment about abductions which featured her on Peter Jennings’s grossly-misleading “documentary” on February 24, 2005, was definitely unscientific. The focus was on sleep paralysis with no recognition being given to multiple persons being abducted at once, the fact that most abductions have taken place other than when the abductee was sleeping in bed, and that many people have recalled the details without the use of hypnosis. This despite the fact that all of these had been discussed by Budd Hopkins during his PJ interview, but never made the program. I also was not impressed with what she had to say on last July’s Larry King TV show. Still I was shocked by how much bias and prejudice she shows in the book. She should have been flunked for her gross inaccuracy in her accounts, brief though they were, of various cases about which I am well informed. Remember that her so-called research was conducted at Harvard University using government research grants and the book was published by Harvard University Press. I guess they couldn’t afford a fact checker.

She describes how she got into abduction research because she had been working on the false memory syndrome with regard to sexual abuse of children. There was always the problem of determining whether any abuse had ever taken place. Abductions would be much easier because “Here was a group that had ‘repressed memories,’ but the memories would be much less painful to hear about than memories of childhood sexual abuse.” No basis is given for this silly proclamation. Dr. Benjamin Simon, an outstanding psychiatrist who used medical hypnosis to help numerous shell shock war veterans regain horrifying memories and work through them, had even told Dr. James McDonald that the intensity of emotion in the Betty and Barney Hill sessions was sometimes more intense than any he had found in the military cases he had treated. I have seen the movie the Army made starring Dr. Simon about treatment of a host of anguished war veterans and their amnesia.

She goes on, “Even better, alien abductees were people who had developed memories of a traumatic event that I could be fairly certain had never occurred. A major problem with my research on false memory creation by victims of alleged sexual abuse was that it was almost impossible to determine whether they had in fact, been abused. I needed to repeat the study with a population that I could be sure had ‘recovered’ false memories.” Alien abduction seemed to fit the bill. She notes how she would use the same techniques with the abductees as with the sexual abuse people, and addressed the “corroboration issue since it was certain the event hadn’t happened.” It is hard to imagine so-called research starting out with such strong bias. Is this what passes for research at Harvard University?

Dr. Clancy describes how she got her study population. She advertised in newspapers seeking subjects “Have you been abducted by aliens?” Would she have asked for pilots or brain surgeons or persons speaking Croatian without checking their credentials?

She dumped any she thought were psychotic, for which, I suppose, we should be grateful. It isn’t clear that she accepted any subjects who claimed that they had been abducted with somebody else and not out of their beds and who hadn’t been hypnotized. She does admit her preconceptions that people thinking they had been abducted played Dungeons and Dragons as a kid, were computer programmers or sci-fi buffs and had attended Star Trek conventions. What is really crazy here, to me as a scientist, is that normally one expects somebody beginning research in a new area to do a literature search first. She couldn’t be bothered. However, she insists “I believe I have read every account of alien abduction ever published, and just about everything that social psychologists, psychoanalysts, post modernists, journalists, physicists, biologists and ex-military personal [sic] have to say about them... I’ve watched nearly every American movie and TV show ever made about aliens.” If she did, she must have been sleep-walking, as she seems to get almost everything wrong.

Here is a typical example of her gross inaccuracy. Speaking of a meeting with a number of abductees she says, “Highlight of Saturday evening was a conversation with two brothers from Manchester, New Hampshire. These men were relatively well known abductees who had written a book about their experiences. One night in the late 1960s they had been canoeing on a lake in Maine and had seen some weird lights across the water. A few years later one had fallen down an elevator shaft at work; he’d suffered brain damage, developed epilepsy and became severely depressed.” The simple fact of the matter is that there were four people involved, not two; the event took place in August, 1976, not in the 1960s. The book The Allagash Abductions was written by an experienced investigator, engineer Raymond Fowler, not by the brothers. It was based on data obtained independently from each of the four. The book is, of course, not referenced though she has 14 pages of noted references including 146 items. Her own “research” papers were each cited several times.

Clancy not only seems to consider herself a truly knowledgeable abductionist, but also an expert on UFOs in general. “So far as we know there is no evidence that aliens exist.” “You can’t disprove alien abductions. All you can do is argue that they’re improbable.” Obviously she didn’t intend this next comment to be referring to herself: “The Confirmatory bias — the tendency to seek or interpret evidence favorable to existing belief or reinterpret unfavorable evidence is ubiquitous, even among scientists.” Amen, and she provides many examples of her own tendency. “We don’t accept the alien abduction explanation because there is no external evidence to support it.” Isn’t it amazing that she never discusses physical trace cases, at least 16% of which involve reports of strange beings? She doesn’t mention the many cases in which abductees separately indicate that missing time was confirmed. She never mentions Marjorie Fish’s star map work connected with the Betty and Barney Hill case, though she does mention the case.

As might be expected, her comments are seriously in error. She says “Betty had spotted a bright star that seemed to be pursuing them. Nervous, they had turned off the main highway onto narrow mountain roads arriving home two hours later than expected.” And she claims to have read The Interrupted Journey ??? Sounds to me like she read a Parade Magazine piece, by Carl Sagan, which makes the same false claims. They had both observed the large object at close range with binoculars, for goodness sake. There was a double row of windows through which Barney recalled seeing strange beings.. without hypnosis. Starlike??? She says, “Betty was a long time believer. Betty was a fan of science fiction movies featuring aliens (she had seen Invaders from Mars ) and had already read Donald Keyhoe’s Flying Saucers Are Real .

This is more unadulterated hogwash. Betty read the book AFTER the experience, had not been a sci-fi fan, or seen the movie. Clancy says Betty and Barney were “advised to undergo hypnosis, in order to determine whether, as she firmly suspected, they had been abducted.” Their purpose was to see if the Doctor could rid Barney of his ulcers and find out what happened during the missing time. Clancy then says Barney had seen “The Bellero Shield,” an episode of the science fiction TV series The Outer Limits and that his drawing of an alien is based on what he saw. Simon had asked him about sci-fi movies. He and Betty were too busy to watch such stuff. It would be interesting to know just where Clancy’s misinformation comes from besides her fertile imagination. She certainly hadn’t read the book carefully or Terence Dickinson’s The Zeta Reticuli Incident or watched the UFO Incident on NBC or spoken with Betty or Barney or Dr. Simon or John Fuller or even Betty’s niece, Kathy Marden, very familiar with the case and possessor of Betty’s files. John Fuller’s files are at Boston University not far from Harvard. Clancy obviously hadn’t been there either. I have done all these things. An artist I know watched “The Bellero Shield”  and indicated that the alien’s facial features did not match drawings made in response to Barney’s description and was about 6 feet tall or much taller than the Hill aliens.

Demonstrating both her bias and ignorance, she claims, “Betty and Barney Hill — the mom and pop of abductees — became famous in abduction history in the 1960s because, in the words of Seth Shostak, an astronomer associated with the SETI Institute, “They were more or less Mr. And Mrs. Front Porch.” An interracial couple in New England in 1961 were hardly Mr. And Mrs. Front Porch, whatever that is supposed to mean. Surely no reasonable person could consider Seth Shostak an expert on any aspect of ufology, no less abductions. I debated with him for three hours on Coast to Coast Radio (audience vote was 57% for me, 33% for him, 10% undecided) and have read many of his articles and books. He never displays any knowledge of abductions or UFOs in general. There are no references to large-scale scientific studies such as Blue Book Special Report 14, or Dr. Hynek’s The UFO Experience or the Congressional Hearings of 1968. His comments on Larry King and Peter Jennings demonstrate no knowledge at all, though they certainly demonstrate his confirmatory bias. Clancy and Shostak certainly share an affinity for “Don’t bother me with the facts, my mind is made up,” and “What the public doesn’t know, I won’t tell them,” and “Do your research by proclamation, investigation is too much trouble.”

Clancy doesn’t discuss the UFO evidence either. She almost gets into the Condon Report with this strange comment: “In 1969, the National Academy of Sciences sponsored a study of all the available evidence on UFOs. The conclusion: ‘On the basis of present knowledge, the least likely explanation of unidentified flying objects is the hypothesis of extraterrestrial visitations by intelligent beings.’ ” The fact is, this is from a brief summary by the NAS at the beginning of the 965-page Condon report. The NAS didn’t sponsor the study. The Air Force did. It was certainly not a study of all available evidence. The NAS review committee did no investigations itself — not one single case.

Clancy misrepresents the Travis Walton case, speaking disdainfully of his books claiming he was abducted two weeks after the Hill case movie and describing his experience on National TV. No mention, of course, of his being gone for five days and the initial zapping being observed by five other people, and all the rest of the investigative work done by APRO and others.

Clancy mentions Kenneth Arnold flying his “private jet.” It was very definitely a prop plane and there was a ground witness. Her clear and unambiguous bias — there are no UFOs and no aliens — is demonstrated by her comment, “Show me an alien and I’ll believe they exist.” This is scientific? She only believes in the existence of things she can see???? Surely that leaves out love, hate, neutrons, gamma rays, black holes, etc.

As might be expected, Clancy gets Roswell all wrong. She repeats garbage from Air Force disinformation expert Colonel Weaver that Jesse Marcel’s story first came out in the National Enquirer in 1978 — even though it was 1980, and after Bill Moore and I had spoken with sixty-two people about the case. I gave the late Bob Pratt, who wrote the article, Jesse’s contact information. She has the date the rancher Mac Brazel found the wreckage and the date he came into town, the date Jesse went out, and other details, all wrong.

Clancy says that The Roswell Incident claimed that “Pieces of aliens had been among the debris. This was attested to by more than seventy witnesses who had some knowledge of the event.” This is totally false; no such claim is made in the book, to which I was a major contributor. She really blasts off: “The evidence for a crashed spaceship and dead extraterrestrials was entirely anecdotal consisting of firsthand reports from people who ‘wished to remain anonymous’ and even more tenuous second and third hand reports (so-and-so told what’s-his-name who told me that such-and-such really happened thirty years ago).” This nonsense comes from a woman claiming to have read everything about UFOs and aliens. I am a physicist who has written more than eighty UFO articles and two books relating to Roswell and was a major contributor to The Roswell Incident. No, I am not referenced at all. There are lots of real people named by me and Don Berliner and Kevin Randle and Don Schmitt — none referenced — and other serious researchers as opposed to Clancy’s pseudoscientific claims. The video “Recollections of Roswell” has firsthand testimony from twenty-seven witnesses — all named.

One could write a lot more about the trash in this book and the selfserving nonsense about being objective. Not surprisingly there is a blurb on the back from Dr. Elizabeth Loftus, one of the leaders of the False Memory Syndrome cult-like group: “Abducted is an enormously brave, smart, original book.” I suppose that is true once one recognizes that most of it is Fiction masquerading as Truth.

Stan Friedman

fsphys@rogers.com
www.stantonfriedman.com

Well said openmind1963 - that's just it - the evidence, or accounts, from hundreds of thousands of different sources cannot be fake!

The Allagash case to me is the most credible. I was abducted by a craft exactly the same as they described, My abduction was around the same time as theirs too. I only started looking into my experiences more deeply after haveing confirmation by a story told to me of a mass sighting by a family friend who was there. The craft they saw had the same description , was also silent and not only traveling at the same speed but same height and exactly same course as when I saw it approximately 25 years previously. My memory of the sighting was supressed, coming back abruptly around 10 years after the event, at that time I only told family about it. I have since found two other guys who had the same experience, same craft and same memory supression. I recently reported this on

http://www.ufoevidence.org/sightings/report.asp?ID=9515

Here is another article in review of Susan Clancy's grossly misleading book "Abducted: How People Come to Believe They Were Kidnapped by Aliens" this time by Dr. David Jacobs of Temple University. Like Stan's review, it proves the biased viewpoints and ignorance of the facts. Frankly, it is simply deliberate misinformation to fool the uneducated public and should not be tolerated! This is a must read for EVERYONE, believer and skeptic alike. Source of article: http://www.ufoabduction.com/clancyreview.htm

A Review of Abducted: How People Come to Believe They Were Kidnapped by Aliens by Susan Clancy

Some years back, Carl Sagan wrote an article about UFO abductions for the Sunday newspaper insert magazine, Parade. This was in preparation for his next book, The Demon Haunted World. I had received a copy of the manuscript and I noticed a number of factual errors, not errors in interpretation but errors of truth. I carefully noted the problems and sent the manuscript back. When the article was published, all the factual errors were included, except for one very small one: Barney and Betty Hill did not say the aliens “slithered” as Sagan had originally written.

What would possess a scientist to allow for known factual errors in his publication? This is normally unthinkable in any scientific or even a responsible popular article. But this type of behavior is common in debunking and skeptical writings about the abduction phenomenon. When it comes to abductions, scientists become unscientific with speeds approaching that of light. Of course, abductions are not in the normal scientific milieu. They are so far out of the norm that it leads to a line of reasoning as follows: “It does not matter how I get to my Explanation. Doing careful research is a waste of my precious time. Everyone knows that UFO abductions cannot and do not exist. Therefore, even though a UFO fanatic out there might take issue with petty factual problems, I am not required to get everything right because my Explanation will, in the end, be correct.” Thus, when it comes to abduction debunking, careful research and academic and/or scientific justification or rationale is not necessary. The ends justify the means.

In my forty years of UFO research, the last twenty of which spent studying the abduction phenomenon, I have learned a simple evidence truism: All debunkers make one or more of three fundamental mistakes: They do not know the evidence, they ignore the evidence, or they distort the evidence. Any one of these errors would be catastrophic and perhaps even scientifically dishonest when writing about something of accepted scientific consequence. Leaving in mistakes is tantamount to ignoring or to distorting the evidence. Unfortunately, when it comes to abductions, all debunkers comply with the evidence truism. There are no exceptions.

Susan Clancy’s book, Abducted: How People Come to Believe They Were Kidnapped by Aliens, is the latest in a dreary parade of debunking academics, scientists, and writers who have an explanation for the abduction phenomenon while obeying the evidence truism. Clancy has a Ph.D. in psychology from Harvard. She has worked with Richard McNally who has done research in false memories. She had a post-doc appointment in Harvard’s Department of Psychology where she was also able to study false memories. Eventually she came up with a study of abduction claimants. Now she and her book have been all over the media, appearing on Larry King Live, and many other television and radio shows. To the uninitiated she appears to be a sensible and logical voice carefully solving an exceptionally complex and difficult problem. She has received positive reviews in Science, and other media outlets.[1]

Her book does not actually have a new explanation for abductions; she recycles old ones but puts a veneer of “science” around them. She has a plethora of explanations from which to choose. It might be instructive to list some of them. They are in no particular order: Conscious lying for any reason (encompassing many forms and variations), the desire to lead glamorous lives, normal hypnosis, incompetent hypnosis, the collective unconscious, millennial fears, false memory syndrome, childhood sexual abuse screen memories, childhood physical or verbal abuse, fantasy prone personalities, multiple personality disorder, myth and folklore, psychosis (schizophrenia, bi-polar disorder, delusions), brain tumors, gullibility, hallucination, waking and lucid dreams, night terrors, sleep walking, hypnogogic and hypnopompic experiences (sleep paralysis), birth trauma, the will to believe, baby desires and fantasies, pseudocyesis, stigmata, illegal drugs, psychogenic fugue state, media influences, “epidemic hysteria,” hysterical contagion, mass hysteria, post-modern anxieties, popular culture absorption, the psychological creation of a physical alternative universe, alternative realities, angels, demonic possession, temporal lobe lability, guided imagery, tectonic plate stress, and/or a combination of any of the above. This list is by no means inclusive. I have left out many, and new ones come about all the time. As I write, the soporific specter of Ambien looms.

Clancy’s book is based on interviews with and tests of self-reporting abduction claimants whom she got from placing ads in newspapers. She soon noticed they have had their experiences at night and they had viewed media depictions of abductions. For Clancy, this means that they have suffered from sleep paralysis with its fears and sometime hallucinations. Searching for the meaning of these poorly understood events, she found that some sleep paralysis victims might think that they were abducted. If they do not at first think this, they “fall into the hands of” (57, 63) an abduction researcher who convinces them to undergo hypnosis. The hypnotist, also influenced by popular culture and the media, leads these vulnerable people into thinking that space aliens have indeed abducted them. Victims, also having absorbed media abduction depictions, buy into it willingly. This theory is based on several variables that must all fall into place neatly: Sleep paralysis is correctly diagnosed, abduction researchers’ analyses are wrong, hypnosis is not correctly conducted, false memories are generated, those memories are influenced by media abduction accounts in both the victim and the hypnotist, and the two people incorporate them into a belief system that becomes hardened as a “real” memory.

The explanation has some problems, the first of which is the content of abduction testimony. One would think that when writing a book about a subject it would be incumbent upon the author to know something about that subject in order to ascertain a baseline of what people actually say when they are abducted. However, for abduction debunkers not knowing the evidence (number one on the truism list) is not worrisome. In fact, ignorance of abduction activity is a driving force behind all previous debunking explanations. Clancy does appear to be vaguely cognizant of this problem and she reassures the reader that she does indeed know something about the subject. Says Clancy: “I believe I’ve read every account of alien abduction ever published, and just about everything that social psychologists, psychoanalysts, postmodernists, journalists, physicists, biologists, and ex-military personal [sic] have to say about them. In addition...I’ve watched nearly every American movie and TV show ever made about aliens.” (82) But because her book contains no bibliography, one must carefully analyze her references. In fact, most are from debunking sources. This accomplishes two important things: It allows her to go forward, free from a having to engage in serious research into the phenomenon (she read a few popular books about it) with all its pesky disconfirming evidence for her explanation, and it allows her to appear as if she has read “experts” on the subject, when in fact most of the authors she has read are debunkers and, like Clancy herself, anything but experts.

Furthermore, given the large number of abduction accounts that have been published (if she had looked in my edited book UFOs and Abductions: Challenging the borders of Knowledge, she might have noticed a bibliographic section of books written by abductees, but her references do not indicate that she has done that), it is unclear how many she actually read. What is clear is that she apparently gained much of her abduction information by watching television shows. One might recoil in horror at this thought, but it, along with her lack of knowledge of the phenomenon, enables her to not have to deal with the abductions wie est eigenlicht gewesen ist (“as it actually was”)-- to quote nineteenth century German historians who strove for accurate narrative history.

I do not want to suggest that Clancy is entirely ignorant of the abduction phenomenon. She has a superficial awareness of some its reproductive aspects like sperm taking, egg harvesting, holding babies, and examinations. This knowledge comprises a very tiny amount of the information known about abductions, most of which has never appeared in the media. About seventy-five percent of the information I included in my 1992 book Secret Life had never been in the media or written about in even the most esoteric UFO literature. Yet, the abductees with whom I was working were describing procedures and events with remarkable accuracy and consistency that I, as the hypnotist and researcher, had never heard before, and of which neither I, nor the abductees, knew the meaning. The people who described these procedures and events so precisely were unaware that others were saying the same thing with the same exact details.

As I learned about the phenomenon it became far more complex than I ever imagined but all within fairly narrow procedural pathways. When I wrote The Threat in 1998, I had learned quite a bit more and once again most of the information in that book had not been in the broadcast media or in print. Rather than going into the complexities and precise details of the abduction phenomenon, it is simply worth mentioning that Clancy’s book does not display the slightest awareness of any of the material that Budd Hopkins or other researchers discovered. More disturbingly, she displays no awareness of anything that does not “confirm” her theories.

Along with her obvious lack of knowledge of the subject, Clancy seems unaware of the debates that have taken place over UFO abductions in the past forty-five years. For that matter she even seems entirely oblivious to the debates that have taken place about her own specific explanations. She does not appear to know about a book that came out five years ago, The Abduction Enigma, (one of whose authors is a clinical psychologist) that gave practically her same explanation. Well, I believe that she believes that she has read every academic work on the subject. So, how can we explain her vacuity about the phenomenon itself? The answer is that if you have The Explanation, you need not be bothered by having to acquire this knowledge and therefore in spite of her belief system, she obviously is profoundly ignorant of the phenomenon about which she is writing an academic book.

If she had learned a little more about abductions, she would have realized that her explanations must take into account some of the phenomenon’s verities: During abduction events, abductees are missing from their normal environments. Police have been called, search parties have been sent out, parents have frantically searched for their children, etc. When people remember abductions, they sometimes return with marks on their bodies – not just any marks, but with seemingly impossible fully formed scars. They sometimes return with broken bones and they have no idea how they happened. Sometimes people return with unusual stains on their clothes that were not there before the abduction. Attempts to discover the nature of these stains have been unsuccessful. They return with their clothes on backwards, and/or inside out. They return wearing someone else’s clothes. When people are abducted, they are often abducted with others who can confirm the details of their abduction, as with Barney and Betty Hill. Often it is family members, but there are instances when friends or bystanders witness the abduction as well. People are abducted while fully awake, driving a car, gardening, and so forth. Clancy either ignores or is not aware of all of this.

It is also critical to understand that about half (I am being generous here because my own statistics, based on about seven hundred abductions, indicate about 40%) of abductions take place at night in bed. That does not mean that people are sleeping. Many of them were in bed but had not gotten to sleep yet and might be watching television, reading a book, or just not asleep. In fact, about 100% of the people who were sleeping wake up right away and realize that something is happening to them. Some of them feel paralyzed and others do not. Clancy automatically and without evidence interprets all of this as sleep paralysis. Sleep paralysis has long been known to overlap superficially with the edges of abduction activity. I wrote about it in Secret Life. Skeptics have bandied this about for many years as they tried their best to force the abduction phenomenon into it. It died down for a number of years but now it is back in vogue. In sleep paralysis, people cannot move, some people sense a “presence” or even “figures” in the room, some can even feel a floating feeling, and they can sometimes visualize “light.” Sleep paralysis is relatively common, but its effects differ in their frequency. It makes a tempting answer to the abduction problem, especially when you do not know what abductions are.

But Clancy, aside from not knowing what the problems are that have to be surmounted when coming up with a sleep paralysis explanation, has another void in her knowledge that is even more appropriate to her “study.” She has no criteria for establishing who is or who is not an abductee. For Clancy there are no such things as true abductees, there are only people who erroneously think they are abductees. Therefore, uninvestigated, unfiltered people who do not meet a long-established criteria for having abduction events are, for her, “abductees.” Everyone is the same when it comes to abductions because she is “fairly certain” that abductions had never happened to anyone because the victims convey the events anecdotally and the confirming physical evidence is too thin. In fact, Clancy’s qualifier of “fairly certain” reads as “impossible” in her book. One cannot prove a negative, as she points out, but the book conveys a powerful sense that for her this negative is fact.

Sensing some weakness in this area she covers herself by saying that as a graduate student she was taught that there should be no “forbidden questions.” But she learned differently when doing research on sexual abuse and there had been forbidden questions. She did not like this. (19) Alas, when it came to abductions, the lesson did not take. She does have a forbidden question: “What criteria will I use to discern whether people might be abductees before I include them in my study?” She never asks this question and it is one of several critical questions at the heart of the abduction controversy. But Clancy does not care if her self-proclaimed population of “abductees” might have a variety of causative factors as long as one of them is not being abducted by aliens.

Armed with her “abductees” Clancy makes sweeping claims about the evidence she develops to show that people are not being abducted. She used the Deese/Roediger-McDermott (DRM) test to demonstrate that abductees fashion false memories. In this test a person is given a list of closely related words and then asked to remember them. One of the related words was not on the list. Clancy says that people who claim to be abductees will say that they remember the unlisted word in greater frequency than those who do not claim to be abductees. Thus, they made up false memories. There might be quite a bit of data behind this test, but the actual meaning and reason for “hearing” the false word is unclear. Does this mean that by remembering a “false” word they also remember a lifetime of complex events in which they and others were participating? Does this mean that they were just mistaken about the word and therefore it does not really have any significance? Does it mean that abduction experiences cause one to think that they heard a word that was not there because of the commonly reported telepathic communication during abduction events? Does it mean that people think they are abductees but they are not? Of course, Clancy does not have a way to determine this. There are other problems. Why does falsely remembering words increase with age? Does age correlate with the abductees who did or did not falsely remember the words? Why was not another abduction debunker able to replicate her data?[2]

Some of the people in her study did seem to have the experiences that would argue for strange things happening to them, but with no set criteria for determining whether they had experiences that abductees have had before they even thought were abductees, there is no way of filtering out who scored what on which test. Oddly, the book has no test results or numbers. The readers are required to believe her story that the abduction claimants responded the way they did.

In Clancy’s world, the media has the power to supply the key information for false memories, if not the false words. This is a hardened fact; if it appeared in the media, it filtered into the abductees’ consciousness and became actual memories of events happening to them. It is an idea with direct causative factors that allow for no doubt. A movie comes out and people think that they are living within it. Motion pictures and television shows about aliens are so powerful that they enable people to think that aliens have abducted them. It is all so simple and obvious.

Memories, of course, are also a prime culprit. They are pliable and so extraordinarily unreliable. In Clancy’s world they are of little use. She gives a personal account of misremembering a pleasant series of events that happened to her years before. Memories appear to be so untrustworthy that it would be pointless for me to remember what happened to me yesterday (and I have to admit, the older I get the more difficult that becomes). Even without popular culture absorption, memories degrade, they change, they can be totally wrong. They can have no relation to reality whatsoever: They can even be of alien abductions. Memory, the basic element that gives us our identity, our sense of an independent self, and is the storehouse of information needed to survive, is all but worthless. I have investigated abductions that happened only a few hours before. But what difference does it make? Memory will never be accurate.

This, of course, would be news to the psychiatrists, psychologists, physicians, attorneys, professors, nurses, teachers, and other PhDs and MDs who are quite aware of sleep paralysis, the problems with hypnosis, the problems of media contamination, the problems of memory, and so forth. They are all abductees whose cases I have investigated. In Clancy’s simple world, her idea of causative factors for very difficult problems allows for no doubt. Investigation is not an option. She takes her self-described abductees at their word, never wondering whether some of them are lying about their memories to skew the results of her study. One would assume that this is not true, but who knows?

The same is true of Clancy’s assertions about the interplay of hypnosis, media, false memories, and of abductions. They are just that – assertions. The science behind her claims is either thin or nonexistent. She overreaches her evidence so much that she launches herself into inner outer space.

She tries to impress the reader that she is compassionate towards her subjects. She takes great care to say throughout the book that abductees are not crazy (I have known a few who were, in fact, both crazy and abductees). She feels somewhat sorry for the poor people who are led to believe that they are abducted. She tries to explain to them calmly and rationally that they were not really abducted but they will not hear of it. They think it happened to them and they will not be talked out of it. It is just the way people are, they cannot help it and she cannot help them. Her book contains an extremely unpleasant condescension throughout.

Even though she tries to display compassion for her population she points out that the abductees scored higher than average on a test for schizotypy which, she says, indicates that they are more imaginative and might believe in paranormal phenomena like telepathy and clairvoyance. They are perfectly normal but they are often “loners” (a loaded word in this serial killer society). Rather than leaving it at that, she puts in a zinger: “if symptoms of schizophrenia lie on a continuum, alien abductees are perhaps closer to being schizophrenic....” (129) She mitigates this by saying they are thus inclined to “magical thinking,” and “perceptual aberration” but the subtext is there: These people are further along the road to being nut cases. Once again, we do not know which “abductees” scored higher and which scored lower on the lunacy continuum.

Clancy’s actual knowledge of abduction patterns is severely limited. She is aware of the reproductive activities of the abduction phenomenon -- sperm and egg taking, and baby holding. Beyond that her knowledge appears to drop off considerably. In addition, she has no idea of the great mass of material that has never been publicized or appeared in the media. If she actually were, as she calls herself, “an alien-abduction researcher,” she would know that the phenomenon is not one in which all abduction stories are completely diverse with no details except the grossest matching.

Every abductee with whom Clancy talked had a different story. If she knew about the abduction phenomenon she would have a variety of reasons to pick from that would explain this phenomenon, one of which would be hers; they are not being abducted. The other reasons for this more than adequately deal with the difficult problems of consciously remembered events. Rather than go into why these disparate stories exist among consciously remembered events, it is important to understand that researchers have found most conscious memories of abductions to be notoriously inaccurate and scattered. I would refer the reader to my discussion of these problems in The Threat. Although a minority of abductees are fairly accurate in the conscious memories, researchers and hypnotists who automatically take abductee remembrances at face value tend to make fatal errors.

Everything comes together in Clancy’s revealing discussion of Betty and Barney Hill, probably the best known abduction case in history. How could two people say the same thing about being abducted, especially when all abductions are different? Easy. You see, she explains, the material was retrieved through hypnosis which was bad enough, but a few days before the hypnosis, an episode of the science fiction TV show The Outer Limits called “The Ballero Shield” had aired. In it, she points out, “the aliens looked remarkably similar to those of today: they had big, black, wraparound eyes, no noses or mouths, and delicate waif-like bodies.” (89) This show, she suggests, was the genesis of the gray beings so commonly described today. I would urge anyone who has access to “The Ballero Shield” video to view it (I bought mine at my local video store). In it there is only one alien. He is a normal-sized guy in a jump-suit type of clothing. He does have a large head, but his actual eyes are his normal eyes. He has a flattened nose and a regular mouth. His body is normal and not waif-like. Every fact that she describes about the show is demonstrably wrong. But Clancy would certainly know this because she says that she has seen nearly everything on television ever made about aliens. She is making a crucial point in an academic book about an extremely important case. Surely, she has seen this Outer Limits episode. It would be academically reckless, or worse, to not have seen it. If she did see it, one wonders if she were deliberately distorting the evidence. If she did not see it, it suggests even more serious problems with her research.

Curiously, Clancy appears to be unaware that in 1997 UFO researchers and debunkers had debated the role of “The Ballero Shield” episode in the Hill case. Thus, when Barney described wrap-around eyes that he had never seen before she proclaims: “The problem is that contrary to what Barney said, he had seen eyes like that. ‘The Ballero Shield,’ which had aired twelve days before his regression session, featured the same eyes.” [her emphasis] (97) Once again, I urge readers to look at Barney’s drawings and then view “The Ballero Shield” and judge for themselves.[3] More than that, when this came into debate in 1