Sleep paralysis or alien abduction?

Nearly four million Americans have had experiences of alien abduction, but in a study of 126 school-age children and 224 university students, it has shown that “alien knowledge” is more connected to television viewing, rather than to the abduction experience.

Millions of people are believed to have been visited by members of an alien species and, in some cases, physically taken to an alien planet, or a scientific laboratory. Wright, in 1994, summarized 317 transcripts of hypnosis sessions and interviews from 95 separate cases and concluded:

“Numerous types of entities have visited our planet with a certain regularity. However, the “gray” is clearly the most common alien form”.

ABDUCTION EXPERIENCES

In many reports of kidnapping, the experience begins at night, when the person is at home in bed. Almost always, even if sometimes abductions occur during the day or outdoors, the abductees see an intense blue or white light, hear a hum and have a sense of an inexplicable presence, which generates a state of anxiety. Many see an aircraft with flashing lights, to then be led inside it. Once inside, the person can undergo various medical procedures, which often involve the implantation of a small object in the nose or other parts of the body. In almost all cases, communication with alien beings occurs through telepathy, while the abducted almost always feels completely helpless and paralyzed.

The alien figures they see are about four feet high, with a thin body and neck, a large head and huge almond-shaped black eyes. Grays usually have no hair and often only three fingers per hand. The rarer aliens include green or blue types, the northern aliens have blond hair, they are taller, and sometimes there are even seemingly human figures that collaborate with extraterrestrial creatures.

PURPOSE OF THE ABDUCTIONS

So far, abduction reports show two types of purpose: abductions for the reproduction of hybrid creatures (half human and half alien), and abductions where extraterrestrials warn humans of an imminent ecological catastrophe.

Some abductees spontaneously remember their experiences, while others remember the experience under hypnosis. Most of Wright’s ninety-five abductees have been hypnotized and interviewed several times, however there are many cases of “conscious recollection” of the abduction without hypnosis.

Naturally, the hypothesis of mental illness was also evaluated: Bloecher, Clamar and Hopkins in 1985 found a superior intelligence to the average in the patients and no sign of serious pathology among nine abducts. Parnell, in 1988, found no psychopathology among 225 individuals who reported only having witnessed a “sighting” that did not produce a kidnapping. More recently, Spanos, in 1993, compared UFO sighting reports from forty-nine people, finding that they were no less intelligent than the average, no longer prone to fantasy, and showed no more signs of psychopathology.

Also the “temporal lobe lability” has been analyzed: individuals with relatively labile temporal lobes are more inclined to the imagination, and more likely to report mystical and extracorporeal experiences, visions and psychic experiences: however, Spanos did not find any difference in a temporal lobe lability scale, among the people who had seen UFOs and various control groups. Cox, in 1995, compared a group of twelve British abductees with a matched control group and a student control group: once again, he found no differences on the temporal lobes.

SLEEP PARALYSIS

A concluding theory states that abductions “are elaborations of sleep paralysis”, in which a person is apparently able to listen and see, without being able to move.

The ” International Classification of Sleep Disorders ” explains that sleep paralysis is common among narcoleptics, in which paralysis occurs mainly at the beginning of sleep, while only occasionally manifests in isolation during sleep. During paralysis, a person wakes up completely paralyzed, perceives a presence in the room, feels a sensation of panic, complete with lights and buzzing: attempts to get out of the state of paralysis during sleep are usually unsuccessful.

Spanos highlighted the similarities between alien abduction and sleep paralysis: most of the abduction experiences studied occurred during the night and most of the abductees reported symptoms very similar to the phenomenon of nocturnal paralysis: Cox instead divided his twelve kidnapped cases, in six day and six night abductions, discovering in this way that the “night abducts” reported a sleep paralysis significantly more frequent than any of the control groups.

Roper’s organization

The claim that 3.7 million Americans were kidnapped was based on a Roper survey conducted between July and September 1991 and published in 1992. John Mack, a professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, said that hundreds of thousands of American men women and children “may have experienced UFO abductions”: the report was published privately and sent to nearly one hundred thousand psychiatrists, psychologists and other mental health professionals encouraging them to ” be open to the possibility that something exists or is happening to their clients which, in our traditional Western context, cannot or should not not be “ .

The Roper provides a survey service that has been able to demonstrate with indicators, the similarity of the symptoms in the abductees, concluding that the people who have had four or more experiences are probably, really been kidnapped. Of the 5,947 people interviewed, 119 (or 2%) had four or five of the indicators. Since the population represented by the sample was 185 million, the total number was 3.7 million – hence the conclusion that nearly four million Americans have been abducted by aliens. Many scientists have chosen to ignore the survey, considering it imperfect; however, it was decided to extend this investigation, since the sampling technique appears to be solid and the sample broad.

But were these people really abducted or did they just have special psychological experiences like sleep paralysis?

The conclusions of the survey

We publish the conclusions of the Roper research: “The Roper Organization’s research on behalf of Bigelow Holding Company produced results that were unexpected by Bigelow Holding Company; chiefly because the number of people reporting occurrences of items on the list far exceeded what was anticipated, and also because the answers cut across most demographic subgroups… It is clear that significant numbers of people do report that these unusual events occurred, independent of any factors in the survey that might increase responses. “