Later in the afternoon Jenny Randles speaks of “an interesting study in which individuals were asked to describe imaginary abductions.” She explains that if such a study indicated there were significant similarities between a “fantasized abduction” and an actually reported one, then it could be argued that “actual” abductions must be fantasy as well.
[…]
Jenny Randles’s findings strike me as significant: people who are asked to describe imaginary abductions do not come up with the scenarios, sequences, or Beings described by the overwhelming majority of abductees.
– Close Encounters of the Fourth Kind: Alien Abduction, UFOs, and the Conference at M.I.T. (1995)
After lunch Budd Hopkins discusses “The Roper Poll on Unusual Personal Experiences.” Robert Bigelow, the wealthy Las Vegas entrepreneur who sat with Jacobs and me at breakfast this morning, had approached Hopkins the year before, in January 1991, at a conference on anomalous phenomena they were both attending in Philadelphia. There Bigelow had suggested to Hopkins that if he and Jacobs were to create a questionnaire that might be used in conjunction with a Roper Organization nationwide survey to ascertain what percentage of the United States population may have experienced UFO abductions, he, Bigelow, would pay for the publication of its results [“[a]nother sponsor of the questionnaire is rumored to be the Crown Prince of Liechtenstein”].
[…]
Three separate Roper “Omnibus” polls, involving a total of 5,947 adults, were taken, in July, August, and September, 1991. Eleven Hopkins/Jacobs-designed questions were seeded among the regular in-home service Roper Reports questionnaire. Such a Roper Poll normally contains a mixture of questions on topics such as lifestyle, behavior, attitude, activities during the past week, optimism/pessimism about our country’s future, and other political, social, and economic issues.
– Ibid.
In his commentary published with the results of the Roper Poll, John Carpenter compared the difficulty the outside community has with accepting that there might be anything to these abduction reports with the initial doubt and disbelief with which the first reports of family incest and child sexual abuse were received until, he wrote, “the growing number of reports finally forced the consideration of these issues by the mental health community” [John S. Carpenter, commentary in “Unusual Personal Experiences: An Analysis of the Data from Three National Surveys,” conducted by the Roper Organization (Las Vegas, Nev.: Bigelow Holding Corporation, 1992), p. 52]. Another parallel might be the skepticism with which the first reports of the Epstein-Barr syndrome (chronic fatigue) were greeted.
– Ibid.
“By the time of the Travis Walton case,” Linda [Moulton Howe] was telling me, “animal mutilations were being reported worldwide. They were occurring three cases per county per day in some Colorado sheriffs’ offices and other places! Animals still warm to the touch with this same cookie-cutter stuff. And then something else happened: Jimmy Carter became President in 1976. He had been elected talking about his own experience of a UFO sighting shared with his son and had said when he became President, he would open up the government files on UFOs. But then, when he did become President, an extraordinary thing happened. He had been in office only a few months — I don’t remember precisely how long now — and everything concerning UFOs was officially transferred to the National Security Agency” [“[a] report of Carter’s account of his UFO sighting and subsequent efforts to make the government’s UFO information public appears in British author Timothy Good’s investigative book Above Top Secret: The Worldwide UFO Cover-Up […]”].
– Ibid.
[Richard J.] Boylan, addressing the audience, asks, “Do you trust the aliens more than you trust the military?”
There is a chorus of yeses.
But [John E.] Mack warns, “We are at a point where, as a result of this phenomenon, we have more cynicism toward our own establishment than we do toward the phenomenon. We should raise some flags before we say it is ultimately good without some evidence”
Mack’s presentation ends; but while it was going on there was a new excitement in the room, almost a revival-meeting [emphasis mine] fervor.
– Ibid.
David Hufford, a folklorist from Pennsylvania, speaks next, on “Sleep Paralysis and Bedroom Abductions.”
Sleep paralysis, he explains, is that temporary paralysis which occurs immediately before or upon awakening. “However, the psychophysiology of sleep literature,” he says, “grossly underestimates the prevalence of the experience and is totally lacking in phenomenological description. It is in the phenomenology of this event, and especially in the presence of a strange ‘visitor,’ that its anomalous nature lies.
“Also,” he continues, “from the phenomenology it is clear that either (a) sleep paralysis is often involved in the early stages of an abduction, or (b) the similarity of the sleep paralysis and the ‘abduction acquisition’ experience constitutes a very high volume of noise in the abduction data. This statement is in no way intended to debunk or explain away any part of the abduction mystery,” he insists. “At present ‘sleep paralysis’ is not an explanation, even though some of its neurophysiological mechanisms are known with reasonable confidence—rather that sleep paralysis itself is an anomaly on a par with abductions.”
– Ibid.
I am struck by the parallels suggested by the seeming rigidity of the sequences in the “Old Hag” phenomenon and the rigidity of the sequences reported in the alien abduction phenomenon by investigators such as Dave Jacobs and Budd Hopkins. But then Gwen Dean, a California therapist, follows Hufford with a presentation containing even more striking comparisons: the parallels found in ritual abuse and abduction accounts.
“Although there is no satisfactory definition of ritual abuse,” Dean begins, “there are striking similarities between accounts of ritual abuse and alien abductions.” She throws a transparency on the overhead projector:
Abduction Accounts Ritual Abuse Accounts examining table vs. altar table forced intercourse vs. ritual rape scary eyes vs. scary eyes babies important vs. babies important out-of-body experience vs. out-of-body experience wounds, scars, bruises vs. wounds, scars, bruises amnesia vs. amnesia observers vs. observers fear of hypnosis vs. fear of hypnosis forced against will vs. forced against will feels like drugged vs. may be drugged told you are special vs. told you are special isolated from other humans vs. isolated from other humans abducted at young ages vs. abducted at young ages In all, Gwen Davis tells us, she was able to find some forty-four parallels.
– Ibid.
The Robertson Panel met for only four days, January 14-17, 1953, reviewed just twenty-three cases, viewed some films, then drafted its classified final report. This paper, signed by Berkner, concluded that although there was no evidence that UFOs were a direct threat to national security, such phenomena could become a threat if the great mass of reported sightings were to continue. Unless such reports could be eliminated, or at least greatly diminished, the Robertson Panel noted, the accounts might create “morbid national psychology in which skillful hostile propaganda could induce hysterical behavior and harmful distrust of … authority.” In an interesting perceptual shift, the panel made not the UFOs but the reports themselves the opponent. The panel’s consequent recommendation was to create an aggressive public education program of “training and debunking” to result in a “marked reduction in reports” and the concomitant loss of public interest in UFOs.
– Ibid.
I ask Mack why he thinks there is such resistance within the psychiatric and scientific community to even the possibility that the source of the trauma is what the abductees are saying. He momentarily deflects my question to tell me that in the 1960s, when he began research for his Pulitzer Prize-winning psychoanalytic biography of T.E. Lawrence, the reputation of the charismatic Lawrence of Arabia was “somewhat of a buffoon, a Rudolph Valentino, Desert Sands and flowing robes” individual. The debunker mentality, Mack explained, existed about Lawrence in those days as much as it exists today concerning the alien abduction-UFO phenomenon.
– Ibid.
In his Preliminary Report, Mack referred to the [alien abduction] phenomenon as a “kind of fourth blow to our collective egoism, following those of Copernicus, Darwin and Freud” […].
– Ibid.
Budd [Hopkins] shoots me a look. I half-expect him to whisper that old Twilight Zone line of Rod Serling’s: “Coincidence? I don’t think so…”
– Ibid.
[According to Keith Thompson, i]t is the questioning of this relationship between mind and matter around which much of the current thinking about UFOs revolves. Philosophers, physicists, psychologists, neurologists, neurosurgeons, biochemists, researchers, scholars, folklorists, abductees, and journalists alike circle this issue like dogs circling a spot on the rug, searching for a warm and comfortable place where they might set their intellects down.
– Ibid.
When Vaclav Havel, president of the Czech Republic, received the Philadelphia Liberty Medal at Independence Hall on July 4, 1994, he referred to two specimens of postmodern science, the “anthropic cosmological principle,” first set out by English physicist Brandon Carter in 1974, and the “Gaia Hypothesis,” suggested by another Englishman, James Lovelock, two years earlier, in 1972.
The anthropic cosmological principle, Havel explained, “brings us to an idea, perhaps as old as humanity itself, that we are not at all just an accidental anomaly, the microscopic caprice of a tiny particle whirling in the endless depths of the universe. Instead, we are mysteriously connected to the universe, we are mirrored in it, just as the entire evolution of the universe is mirrored in us.”
According to the Gaia Hypothesis, Havel continued, “we are parts of a greater whole. Our destiny is not dependent merely on what we do for ourselves but also on what we do for Gaia as a whole. If we endanger her, she will dispense with us, in the interests of a higher value—life itself.”
Near the conclusion of his remarks Havel declared, “The only real hope of people today is probably a renewal of our certainty that we are rooted in the earth and, at the same time, the cosmos. This awareness endows us with the capacity for self-transcendence. Politicians at international forums may reiterate a thousand times that the basis of the new world order must be universal respect for human rights, but it will mean nothing as long as this imperative does not derive from the respect of the miracle of Being, the miracle of the universe, the miracle of our own existence” [Václav Havel, “The New Measure of Man”, New York Times, July 8, 1994, p. A27].
– Ibid.
“Being an active researcher in physics, especially Quantum Mechanics,” [David E.] Pritchard recently wrote me, “reaffirms this faith in the scientific approach. Philosophers could never convince a large majority (even of philosophers) that time and length can transform into each other or that reality doesn’t exist until it is measured—but the scientific method has done this by finding theories that make quantitative predictions of the degree to which these things happen that agree with reproducible experiments. I don’t think it is sensible to try new epistemologies on any phenomenon until the old reliable scientific method has been carefully and assiduously applied and come up empty—obviously not the case with abductions since this [was] the first truly scientific conference on the subject.”
– Ibid.
The recognition of folkloric parallels to UFO events has become a staple element in the literature as researchers expand ever further on Vallee’s pioneering work. The dwarfish occupants reported in most UFO landings have their parallels in the almost worldwide beliefs about diminutive supernatural beings. Physical and mental effects of close encounters such as mental time lapse, paralysis, or subsequent illness resemble effects of encounters with ghosts, fairies, and demons. Fear of kidnap by sorcerers in motor cars panicked Haitians in the 1940s, in a predecessor to the current UFO abduction epidemic. The floating effect reported by abductees compares with transvection phenomena among 17th-century witches; the bedroom intrusion of strange beings in the night [compares] with incubus visitation. Even vehicle stoppages attributed to electromagnetic interference by UFOs are nothing new, since supernatural beings often exerted similar effects on horses and even bicycles.…
The bizarre, surreal abduction story has proved the richest hunting ground for folklore parallels. Comparison has focused on imagery motifs, narrative structure, and extended mythological patterns, most notably initiations and shamanic journeys. How closely folklore and UFO abductions parallel one another is perhaps best exemplified by shamanic initiation: while the candidate is sick or entranced, his soul leaves his body and meets two friendly companions. They accompany him into an underworld where unfriendly demons capture the candidate and tear him apart, then reassemble him with new knowledge and magical powers added. A rock crystal inserted into his head gives him power, and further inspection takes place in a domed cavern illuminated with a uniform but sourceless light. When the initiate returns he may have been unconscious for hours or days, and subsequently leads a changed life as a shaman, capable of healing, magic, and communion with the spirit world. Anyone familiar with abduction reports readily identifies the shamanic equivalents of time lapse, alien escorts, gruesome examination within the spaceship, and life-transforming aftermath. Even the implanted electrode and uniform lighting in the examination room compare motif for motif among Siberian and abduction stories alike.
These similarities seem too impressive to dismiss as chance, and weighty with important clues about the ultimate nature of UFOs. Why aliens should act like fairies or demons makes no sense outside of discredited ancient-astronaut speculations, but a great deal of sense if UFO reports are subjective experiences or supernatural fictions adapted for a modern audience. So many parallels suggest as much.
– Thomas E. Bullard, “Folkloric Dimensions of the UFO Phenomenon,”, Journal of UFO Studies 3 (1991), pp. 17-18, cit. ex ibid.