Pseudoscience and the Paranormal

goal of all this, according to Budd Hopkins, a New York artist and one of the leading proponents of the reality of abductions, is to create a new race of human/alien crossbreeds.

The wave of claimed alien abductions got a slow start at the beginning of the 1980s. Hopkins published the first major book on the topic, Missing Time, in 1981. His list of “symptoms” of being abducted includes things that have happened to almost everyone. For example, have you ever looked at the time and noticed that it is either later or earlier than you thought? Guess what—that shows you’ve been abducted. The aliens have altered your sense of the passage of time. In 1985 Ruth Montgomery, who had earlier described that psychic wonder Jeane Dixon (Montgomery 1965), published the little-noticed book Aliens Among Us. She contended, based on numerous personal reports she had received, that the “space brothers” had already arrived and were on Earth disguised as humans. Montgomery’s aliens were of a very different character than the aliens that became the popular image of the abductors as the 1980s wore on. Her aliens were beneficent fellows, here to do good works for humanity. They did not abduct anyone. The stereotypical aliens in Hopkins’s Missing Time are anything but beneficent—they are cruel, subjecting humans to various highly unpleasant medical procedures for their own ends with no concern about the pain inflicted. Montgomery’s aliens promptly vanished from the popular scene, if they were every really there in the first place, to be replaced as part of popular culture by Hopkins’s version.

UFO abduction claims, which had been a fringe element of the UFO movement, quickly became the major focus of that movement and came to the attention of the general public in the late 1980s. This was due to the publication in 1987 of two major books touting abduction claims as real. One was Hopkins’s Intruders and the other Whitley Strieber’s Communion. As these books appeared, claims of alien abduction began to be features on the numerous TV talk shows, always on the look out for ever more bizarre topics to keep rating up. (After all, teenage lesbian handicapped midget twins can only keep ratings up for so long!) And, to be serious for a moment, the average abductee who appeared on a talk show was not an obvious crazed psychotic, but appeared to be a reasonable human being who truly believed that he had been abducted and was genuinely frightened by what had happened to him. And, in good measure, abductees were genuine in these respects. They did believe that they had really been abducted and that they had been cruelly used by the aliens. And they were frightened, sometimes terrified, that it might happen again.

The alien abduction story took a surprising turn in 1994 when John Mack, a psychiatrist at Harvard University, published his book Abduction: Human Encounters with Aliens, in which he argued that the abduction events were real and represented real happenings that could not be explained by science. What most impressed Mack, as he reiterated later, were the “strange consistencies and unbelievable aspects of the abduction phenomenon” (McLeod, Corbisier, and Mack 1996, p. 166).

In spite of the huge number of the alleged abductions, there has never been a single piece of physical evidence produced by any abductee. No bits of alien technology from the spacecraft. No recovered implants such as the aliens are sometimes said to use. Nothing. Rumors and claims for real alien artifacts have floated around for years in the abduction community, but no artifact has ever been produced for independent study. Of course, should a genuine alien artifact be found, it would immediately be produced as positive proof by those so intent on showing that the abduction experiences are real. Such artifacts are conspicuous by their absence.

This total absence of physical evidence strongly suggests that the abduction experiences are not real. But if they aren’t, how can it be that so many seemingly sane individuals have come to believe that such a horrible event befell them? An event for which, as noted above, they seem to have real memories; memories that cause a great deal of fear and psychological suffering. It is important it make it clear that in the great majority of these cases, the explanation is not that the individuals are just lying to get attention or to take on the status of victim, nor are they suffering from any psychopathology (i.e., schizophrenia). Rather, the explanation lies in the power of multiple persuasive techniques to create powerful false memories in humans. Variations within the normal range in certain personality traits may enhance susceptibility to these techniques, but one of the important insights to emerge from the UFO abduction claims (as well as claims of recovered memories of childhood sexual abuse and/or ritual satanic abuse—see chapter 5) is that many more normal people are susceptible to these techniques than was previously realized. Another important factor is that one usually thinks of “techniques of persuasion” being used on those who don’t want to be persuaded of something, as in the case of “brainwashing” for political reasons. Especially in the case of UFO abductees, however, the individual on whom the persuasive techniques are used is an active and willing participant in the process of creating the false memories.

An important factor in understanding the psychology of the abduction experience is that the great majority of these experiences take place at night, often when the abductee is in bed or asleep. Some abductees even initially describe their experiences as dreams. There is a very common phenomenon that is well known to psychologists and sleep researchers, but is almost unknown outside the field, although its effects are fairly well known—that pleasant state of drowsiness that occurs in between being fully awake and fully asleep, usually called hypnagogia. During this state, people experience dreamlike hallucinations. However, since they are not fully asleep, the experiences seem to be very real. (It’s not by chance that most ghosts—chapter 3—are also reported when the witness is in bed sleeping or in a hypnagogic state). In most cases, the hypnagogic hallucination is a simple one—hearing someone call your name, for example. It’s important to understand that this is not simply imagining that you hear your name being called. When I imagine that experience, I consciously call up the sound of someone calling “Terry Hines.” But in the hypnagogic state, you actually seem to hear your name. It’s a much more direct experience than imagination. Occasionally the hallucinations will be much more elaborate and will involve not only auditory, but visual and even tactile experiences. During this state, the body is paralyzed and movement isn’t possible. If the hallucination is a frightening one, this inability to escape can only add to the terror. These events can be impressive to the “experiencer,” to say the least.

Several years ago I had a very dramatic such experience. At the time my then-seven-year-old daughter, Clare, was living with her mother in Moscow while I lived in New York State. It was in January 1998, just a few days after Clare had flown back to Moscow. I awoke around 3 A.M. one Sunday morning, heard Clare climb out of her bed down the hall from my room, and felt the vibrations as she walked down to my room. I further felt her climb onto my bed, as she often did in the mornings when she thought Daddy was sleeping too late! In addition to the sensory experience, there was a very strong sense of Clare’s “presence.” All this time I was completely paralyzed so I couldn’t turn and look at her. But the sensory experiences were as real as if they had been actually happening. Of course, I knew this was a hypnopompic hallucination and was fascinated by its reality. As soon as I broke the paralysis, the sensory experience abruptly stopped and Clare’s “presence” vanished.

Imagine a similar experience on the part of someone who, like the vast majority of people, has never heard of the hypnopompic state and for whom the hallucination is of a frightening nature—having an alien being in the room, for example. This can be the start of a seemingly very real alien abduction experience. Baker (1996) has noted that these experiences in the past have been interpreted in the context of the times. For example, in medieval times, hypnopompic hallucinations were the source of reports of scary nighttime visits from incubi. In Newfoundland culture, there is the legend of the “old hag,” a terrible spirit in the shape of an old woman who terrifies people in the night (Effis 1988)—another manifestation of this kind of hallucination. With one exception, I know of no common references in Western (specifically American) culture to these hallucinations. The one such reference comes from an unlikely place: the words to the lovely theme song from the Muppet Movie (1979), “The Rainbow Connection” by Paul Williams and Kenny Ascher. The first two lines of the third verse are: “Have you been half asleep and have you heard voices? I’ve heard them calling my name.”

Of course, not everyone who has a frightening hypnopompic experience involving aliens will interpret it as being a real alien visitation and kidnapping. But some will, especially since they have no alternative explanation to fall back on. As publicity about alien abductions became more and more widespread in the 1980s, such abductions became more and more available to people seeking an explanation for their experiences. After all, here were thousands of other people, some going on national television with their experiences, almost all fully believing they had been abducted. Those on TV, as noted, came across as quite normal—perhaps traumatized, and understandably so, but normal nonetheless. If that is what happened to them, it was quite natural to adopt abduction as an explanation for one’s own experience.

As the 1980s progressed, the abduction experience became part of American cultural knowledge. In fact, it had been around the fringes for some time. It had been a theme in science fiction for decades. Kottmeyer (1989, cited in Newman and Baumeister 1996) has traced the themes in abduction reports as far back as those of the Hills to science fiction films and television programs. Some abduction experiences have the victim “transported” up to