hummingwolf | Inspired by a discussion in this morning's e-mail

An old boyfriend of mine was very convinced that the typical abduction stories came from people who had some sort of memory of their birth experience. It made sense, in a way.

You find yourself taken from a place of comfort (the womb), the transition involves a light brighter than you've ever seen before (light outside as compared to the amount of light that filters through into the womb). The creatures around you have large eyes, no mouth, and no hair - imagine a doctor wearing a head covering, a mouth covering: all you see are the eyes, and as they are darker than everything else around them, they seem larger.

I'm not sure if i believe it (for that matter, i'm not sure i believe in the whole alien thing in general), but it's an interesting theory.

The alien abduction theme is too similar to sleep paralysis for most cases of abduction to be anything but that.

I think you're right about many of the experiences, but there's an irreducible residue that fascinates me--cases in which others also saw odd lights (even shows up in Communion by Whitley Streiber, many of whose experiences seem to be sleep paralysis), for instance. Actually, to me one of the most interesting kind of events is the sighting that could as easily be classified with UFOs but is traditionally religious, such as the lights and female being that were sighted at Fatima. In general, contact experiences have a profound effect on the person's life, more than just the neurological glitch would. I'm perfectly willing to think that it may be brain wiring, and I do not think it is extraterrestrials, but I think there's plenty of evidence that in at least some cases, there's something in the environment affecting the brain. This is not a new idea among strange-phenomenon researchers, either.

Do you have any suggestions for good books on the topic?

Jacques Vallee is good; in one book, he compares "UFO experiences" to movies, and says most researches take the movie at face value and aren't looking for the film projector. I'm intrigued by British writer Paul Devereux, who thinks there may be a geological phenomenon that affects viewers; he doesn't even call them "UFOs" but rather "earthlights."

As far as exploring religious events as UFO-like sightings, one good but hard to find book is Hilary Evans' Visions, Apparitions, and Alien Visitors. I first encountered the idea in Robert Anton Wilson's Cosmic Trigger, which is wacky and mostly about other things but wonderful in many ways.

I've read a lot of contactee memoirs--hypnotists like Hopkins get remarkably similar stories, but I think that has to do with the hypnotist! The best stories may involve hypnosis but are unique and have an eerie dream-logic; Betty Andreasson's story in The Andreasson Affair, for instance. Anyone reading that book, I think, would feel that something important to her life went on; the questions are what and why.

If you haven't read Mothman Prophecies you should. And for an added kick, read American Gods by Neil Gaiman immediately afterwards.

I've been a fan of John Keel's writing since I read Our Haunted Planet when I was in high school, mumblemumble years ago. A decade ago I would have mentioned him instead of Devereux, but the strain of paranoia in Keel's writing is undeniable--fascinating, but not what I'd want to introduce somebody to takingthe ideas seriously. I liked the appearance of the Keel-like person in the Mothman movie.

Weirdly, I can't see the connection to American Gods that well; at least none occurred to me when I read it.

Sure, but there still is the question of where all these people are getting the imagery from.

It's not much of a question to me. People that suffer bouts of sleep paralysis more often than not attribute to it some form of cultural imagery. A few hundred years ago it was succubi or demons, now its vampires or ufos. The ufo imagery blossomed around the time that xenophobia became an active phenomena in this country, generally about when we began speculating that there was life on mars and sci fi movies started getting made, and when the alien idea of the big eyes became widespread people started seeing that image more and more.

A lot of stories I've heard have more complexity to them then sleep paralysis alone can explain. But I think it's a safe bet to say most cases are simply sleep paralysis.

Well, yes. But why the specific facial features that look so fetal? Why did that specific image become widespread when it did? There's no reason why aliens couldn't have looked more like medieval angels or demons, after all.

I can't for the life of me remember the details so all I can say is that I swear I remember learning that the more common wave of people seeing aliens of this type that we are talking about came AFTER depictions of that sort of alien became common in the media and movies.

One theory I heard a long time ago is that aliens actually are demons in disguise trying to toy with us. Another is that aliens are fae or earthbound creatures trying to mess with us.

Actually, by a lot I mean maybe 20-30 which is a lot to me, but when it is culled from what is probably thousands of cases... And by complexity, you have to keep in mind that a lot of people associate unassociated things, or become paranoid and imagine further experiences. But once in a while George Noory has somebody on the show who pulled a funky piece of metal out of the back of somebody's neck and it make me wonder.

Yes, I've heard that theory before. The imagery must have come from someplace in the collective psyche, so that idea does have some plausibility. I still kinda think fetuses and Grays have a lot in common, though.

One possible link between fetuses and alien Grays could be big-brained future humans or mutants in sf movies and TV, such as David McCallum on The Outer Limits.

Inspired by a discussion in this morning's e-mail

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