Abduction Phenomenon - A Preliminary Report. by John E. Mack. Department of Psychiatry, Cambridge Hospital, 1992

The Abduction Phenomenon/John T. Mack, M.D.
The Abduction Phenomenon: A Preliminary Report

John E. Mack, M.D.
Department of Psychiatry
Cambridge Hospital
1493 Cambridge Street
Cambridge MA 02139
June, 1992
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The Abduction Phenomenon/John E. Mack, M.D.
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Introduction
From February, 1990 through May, 1992 I interviewed 38 adults
/ and children who reported that they had been taken aboard
unidentified spacecraft by strange humanoid beings and subjected to
medical or surgical-like procedures that are often traumatizing. In
addition I have interviewed fifteen adults and children whose
experience fits the basic description, but whose reports are incomplete.
I have spent between twenty and fifty hours with several of these
individuals in one-on-oile sessions, hypnotic regressions, and group
meetings. Four of the adults with whom I have worked extensively
have been given a battery of psychological tests. To my surprise no
psychiatric or psychosocial explanation for these reports is evident.
Even though over the past twenty-five years thousands of
individuals throughout the United States and in other countries have
reported abduction experiences to UFO investigators and mental health
professionals, the phenomenon appears to be more widespread than
anyone might have expected. A Roper poll of "unusual events," for
example, that surveyed 5,947 adult Americans between July and
September, 1991, suggested that hundreds of thousands if not millions
of individuals in the United States may have undergone abduction or
abduction-related experiences. The fact that a phenomenon defies
conventional explanation, or even challenges our notions of reality,
should not permit us to ignore its existence or prevent us from
exploring its dimensions and significance. At the very least, mental
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health clinicians need to be familiar with a condition that causes so
much anguish among their potential patients or clients. Furthermore,
the sheer extent of the phenomenon, and its unusual psychological and
physical features, indicate that the problem may be of considerable
socio-cultural, scientific and philosophical importance. In this paper I
will describe the basic features of the UFO abduction experience, the
impact these experiences have on the abductees, and the implications of
the phenomenon for our profession and society.
There are other investigators who have had longer expenence
with abductees, but because of the unusual or controversial nature of
this material, I will depend whenever possible upon my own work so
that I may take personal responsibility for the observations and
experiences reported. In light of the uncertain ontological or "reality"
status of what abductees report has "happened" to them, there is an
issue of what might be called the narrator's attitude or point of view.
Rather than using quotation marks to indicate that something is what an
abductee believes happened, I have related abductee accounts
"straight," without quotation marks if, to the experiencer, what is being
related really occurred. This does not presume a viewpoint on my part
regarding the reality status of the event--only agreement that the
abductee is sincere and that to him or her what is reported really
happened.
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Who are the Abductees?: Psychopathology and Personality
Few generalizations can be made at this time about this important
question because of a paucity of research data and the unusual nature
of the phenomenon. Several co-researchers have set the absence of
gross psychopathology as a precondition for their inclusion of a case in
their series. Nevertheless, none of the abductees with whom I have
worked have revealed obvious psychopathology, such as schizophrenic
psychosis, severe depression, or other major psychiatric disturbances,
that could account for the reported experience. Indeed, what has struck
me most has been the "ordinariness" of the population, including in my
sample, for example, a restaurant owner, two musicians, secretaries, a
writer, a prison guard, university students, and several housewives.
Several demonstrated resentment, slight suspiciousness, a sense of
victimization, and other post-traumatic symptomatology. Most seemed
burdened in their lives by their abduction experiences.
Some, though not all, of the abductees I have seen report troubled
relationships in childhood with one or both parents, alcoholism in the
family, and childhood or adolescent abuse. Several report personal
isolation, troubled adult relationships, and problems related to
conceiving and bearing children and to parenting. But in other cases
these disturbances are not present. In some cases, attitudes toward
sexuality and decisions relating to having or not having children seemed
to be affected by the abduction history. In no case so far have I found a
way of tying the non-abduction aspects of these individuals' histories to
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their abduction stories, nor have I found convincing psychodynamic
links between the specific narratives of the reported abduction
experiences and other aspects of the personal histories or emotional
lives of the abductees.
Four of my cases, Jill, a 34-year-old mother of two, Ann, a 25-
year-old college student, Donald, a twenty-year old college student, and
Paul, a 34-year-old therapist, were tested by different psychologists.
Jill was given several objective tests--a general symptom inventory (the
SCL 90), the Taylor Manifest Anxiety Scale, the Beck Depression
Inventory, coping and stress inventories, and the Crowne-Marlowe
measure of social desirability--and one projective test, the Rorschach.
The tester concluded that she was "a high functioning woman within a
healthy neurotic level of development." There was "no evidence
whatsoever of a thought disorder." "The- only consistent theme," the
tester noted, "is that she fears threatening creatures of one sort or
another. Overall, her test responses are consistent with those of a
relatively healthy individual in the denial phase of post-traumatic
recovery." He observed that Jill is "vulnerable to social influence and
much in need of an explanation for her decades of strange occurrences,"
and cautioned about the possibility of her elaborating "hypnotic
pseudomemories" to explain what she has been through. He concluded
that "the exact nature and status of her anxiety remain somewhat of a
mystery even after the testing."
The Abduction Phenomenon/John E. Mack, M.D. 6
Ann was given the MMPI (Minnesota Multiphasic Personality
Inventory), Cattell 16 Personality Factor Questionnaire (16PF), TAT, and
figure drawings--House-Tree-Person and Kinetic Family Drawing. The
psychologist wrote, "The subject shows every sign of being normal and
high functioning, though showing indication of insecurity and caution
consistent with the reported events. There are no indications of
hallucinations, delusions or lying, or even a tendency to distort her self
presentation." She concluded, "there is no significant evidence of a
psychological 'explanation' of the reports.
Donald, a twenty-year-old student who had dropped out of
college, was given the Clinical Interview, Wechsler Adult Intelligence
Scale-Revised (W AIS-R), Bender Visual Motor Gestalt Test (BVMG),
Thematic Apperception Test (TAT), Rorschach, and MMPI-2. His test
results revealed the greatest degree of psychopathology among those
tested, including positive indices for schizophrenia and depression on
the Rorschach Test. The examiner found considerable religiosity and
preoccupation with images of good and evil and God and the Devil,
"transient changes in cognitive functioning and a diminution in reality
testing, which impaired "overall adjustment and functioning." In an
extensive discussion of the results with the tester he said that some
Vietnam veterans when adjusting to their traumatic experiences might
become quite disorganized and "could look very psychotic," but he was
unable to find a major traumatizing stress in Donald's case other that
the highly elaborated and detailed abduction stories. "There's
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something about him that feels like he might have been traumatized"
but "we don't have enough trauma indices." The abduction stories, he
said, could be delusions, but they did not "feel" like delusions to him.
"The feel is," the psychologist said, of "something that he's experienced
[that] is real." He amplified further how the abduction stories differed
from delusion: "There's a clarity about it that I haven't seen ... a level of
detail rather than a level of simplicity." Donald has done well with
therapy that has included several hypnotic regressions. He is returning
to college, has been working steadily, relates well to his friends and
family and to his therapist. The psychologist said that in his experience
delusional belief structures tend to be given up as the personality
recompensates. Donald on the other hand has been telng of his
abduction experiences in ever greater richness with powerful emotions
of fear and rage that are consistent with the narratives that he is
relating. The tester noted the contradiction contained here if this were
a psychosis with delusions. "The healthy ego," he said, "is not going to
tolerate a delusional system." Donald and I have also noted the cuts,
red marks and scars on his legs and head which often have been
reported following abduction experiences.
Paul, a 34-year-old graduate student, has experienced several
abductions beginning at age six and continuing during his adult life. He
has conscious memories of being taken onto spaceships by aliens on at
least two occasions. In three hypnosis sessions he has recalled in detai I
procedures done to him on the craft, including forced removal of sperm.
with blood-curdling intensity, shaking and screammg in terror and rage.
. .
He was given the Clinical Interview, \71E-F, BVMG, TAT, MMPI-2, and
Rorschach by the same psychologist who tested Donald. The
psychologist wrote, "most significant is tle absence of psychopathology
... Levels of anxiety and dysthymia were noted. These appear to be
situationally related and hence are not thought to be endogenous ... It is
felt that underlying psychological themes do not impact in a
dysfunctional manner at the present time."
Rodeghier, Goodpaster and Blatterbauer administered the ICMI
(Inventory of Childhood Memories and Imaginings), MMPI, CIS
(Creative Imaginative Scale), and a 13-page survey questionnaire to 27
persons in the Chicago area who met the authors' criteria for an
abduction experience (subject recalls, with or without hypnosis, being
taken against his or her will into an enclosed space believed to be a
spacecraft and subjected to various procedures). The authors concluded
that the respondents could not be characterized as fantasy-prone
personalities or especially hypnotically responsive. The MMPI results
"suggest that the sample as a whole suffers from no overt pathologies"
(1991, p. 59).
June 0. Parnell for her Ph.D. dissertation at the University of
Wyoming analyzed the MMPI, 16PF, and the Adjective Check List
administered to 225 persons who had reported "UFO experiences
involving visual sightings and/or communication with UFO beings" to
Leo Sprinkle, a Wyoming psychologist, one of the pioneers in working
with abductees (Parnell 1986; Parnell and Sprinkle 1990). Parnell
concluded that "participants in the study exhibited a high level of
psychic energy and a tendency to be questioning authority or be subject
to situational pressures or conflicts. They can be eer as self-sufficient,
resourceful and preferring their own decisions." Mean scores also
indicated "above average intelligence, assertiveness, a tendency to be
experimenting thinkers, a tendency toward a reserved attitude, and a
tendency toward defensiveness. Participants were honest persons and
no overt psychopathology was indicated." A subgroup who reported
communication with "UFO occupants or space beings had a significantly
greater tendency to endorse unusual feelings, thoughts, and attitudes;
be suspicious or distrustful; and be creative, imaginative, or possibly
have schizoid tendencies."
Psychologist Elizabeth Slater took part m an interesting
experiment in 1983. She was asked by abduction investigator Budd
Hopkins to test nine individuals but was given only "vague suggestions
that the study related to some aspect of creativity," i.e. she was not told
that they were abductees. Slater administered the W AIS, Bender-
Gestalt, Figure Drawings, Rorschach, and TAT, and sent me her Report
and Addendum (Slater 1983). These results were summarized by
Bloecher, Clamar, and Hopkins (1985).
In her initial report, written before being told who the subjects
were, Slater noted that the subjects were of above average intelligence
and demonstrated "a considerable richness of inner life." She found
some to 1e "eccentric" or "odd" with "spontaneity and originality in
thought and feeling." The inner richness Slater tied to a "risk of being
overwhelmed by the urgency of their impulses." The subjects were "in
a rather continual struggle to bind [their impulses] and keep them at
bay." "Under stressful conditions," she noted, "at least six of nine
showed a potential for more or less transient psychotic experiences
involving a loss of reality testing along with confused and disordered
thinking that can be bizarre, peculiar or very primitive and emotionally
charged." She also noted a degree of identity disturbance (especially
sexual identity confusion and "self-inflation"), lowered self-esteem,
relative egocentricity and/or lack of emotional maturity and minor but
frequent "boundary failures" on their figure drawings. One spoke
specifically of "a sense of smallness and victimization in the face of
overwhelming outer forces."
Slater also observed "some degree of impairment in interpersonal
relationships," "problems in intimacy" for some, and "a certain mildly
paranoid and distrusting streak in many of the subjects" together with
hypervigilance, "a marked tendency to attend and to be sensitive to
nuance and fine detail," "!eeriness and caution," and a "disposition
towards wariness."
After Slater was told of the nine subjects' reported UFO abductions
she reconsidered her report from that standpoint. "The first and most
critical question," she noted, "is whether our subjects' reported
experiences could be accounted for strictly on the basis of
The Abduction Phenomenon/John E. Mack, M.D. 1 1
psychopathology, i.e. mental disorder. The answer is a firm no." "If the
reported abductions were confabulated fantasy productions," she wrote,
"they could have only come from pathological liars, paranoid
schizophrenics and severely disturbed and extraordinarily rare
hysteroid characters subject to fugue states and/or multiple
personalities." "Not one of the subjects," she wrote, "based on test data,
falls into any of these categories." None, she said, demonstrated
"psychopathology by which they might have invented their reported
experiences of abduction."
Slater then considered the possible impact of the reported
abductions. "Such an unexpected, random and literally other-worldly
experience as UFO abduction," she suggested, "during which the
individual has absolutely no control over the outcome, constitutes a
trauma of major proportions." She noted also the denial of "opportunity
for even minimal forms of mastery" in association with the UFO
experience and the "social stigmatization" and "alienation" the victims
would encounter. She concluded that their interpersonal problems,
damaged sense of identity and body image difficulties, emotional
tunnoil and anxiety and wariness were "the logical outcome of the
invasive and injurious nature of the reported UFO experiences." In
1991 Slater told me she had previously considered herself to be a
"reality-oriented, plodding person," but this study "extended my
narrowness" and "changed my thinking around." She saw scars from
incisions in several subjects and wondered "what is this about?"
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In the light of the traumatic nature. of the reported abduction
experiences, extending back to childhood, the question of child abuse,
especially sexual abuse, has naturally been considered (Laibow 1989).
One much-critiqued retrospective mail questionnaire study did actually
show a higher incidence of sexual abuse among UFO experiencers than a
group of other individuals interested in UFOs, but without direct
encounters with them (Ring and Rosing 1990; Jacobs 1991). I am not
aware of an abduction case that turned out on examination, with or
without hypnosis, to be a screen or a symbolic representation of
childhood physical or sexual abuse.
History
The modern history of abductions begins with the expenence of
Barney and Betty Hill in September, 1961 (Fuller 1966). The Hills, a
stable, respectable interracial couple living in New Hampshire, had
suffered from disturbing symptoms for more than two years when they
reluctantly consulted Boston psychiatrist, Benjamin Simon. Barney was
insomniac and Betty had frequent nightmares. Both were persistently
anxious to the point that it became intolerable for them to continue
their lives without looking into disturbing recollections of what
happened to them on a September night in which they could not
account for two hours that were lost on the return journey from a
holiday in Montreal. Except for the distresses related to the incident
they described, Dr. Simon reported no psychiatric illness.
On the night of September 19-20, 1961 the Hills reported that
their car was "flagged down" by small gray humanoid. beings with
unusual eyes. Before this they had noticed an erratically moving light
and then a strange craft. With binoculars Barney had been able to see
the creatures inside the craft. The Hills were amnesic for what
happened to them during the missing hours until undergoing repeated
hypnosis sessions with Dr. Simon. In their meetings with him, Dr. Simon
instructed the Hills not to tell each other details of the memories that
were emerging. After being taken from their car the Hills said they
were led by the beings against their wills onto a craft. Each reported
that on the craft they were placed on a table and subjected to detailed
medical-like examinations with taking of skin and hair "samples." A
needle was inserted in Betty's abdomen and a "pregnancy test"
performed. Researchers have discovered recently that a sperm sample
was taken from Barney, a fact that was withheld by him and John Fuller
because it was too humiliating at the time for Barney to admit (Jacobs
1992). The beings communicated with the Hills telepathically, non-
verbally, "as if it were in English." The Hills were "told to" forget what
had happened.
Despite Dr. Simon's belief that the Hills had experienced some sort
of shared dream or fantasy, a kind of folie deux, they persisted in
their conviction that these events really happened, and that they had
1 4
not communicated the mutually corroborating details to each other
during the investigation of their symptoms. Barney, who died in 1969,
had been particularly reluctant to believe in the reality of what
occurred lest he appear irrational. "I wish I could think it was an
hallucination," he told Dr. Simon when the doctor pressed him. But in
the end Barney concluded, "we had seen and been a part of something
different than anything I had seen before," and "these things did
happen to me." Betty, who continues to speak publicly about her
experience, also believes in the reality of these events. In 1975 a film
about the Hill case, The UFO Incident, starring James Earl Jones as
Barney, was widely shown in the United States.
A number of books and articles documented abduction
experiences by other individuals in the years following the Hills'
testimony (Lorenzen and Lorenzen 1976; Lorenzen and Lorenzen 1977;
Haisell 1978; Fowler 1979; Rogo 1980; Druffel and Rogo 1980; Bullard
1987, pp. 1-15; Clark 1990, p. 2). However, it has been the pioneering
research of New York artist and sculptor Budd Hopkins, over two
decades with hundreds of abductees, which has established the
essential consistency of the abduction phenomenon. Hopkins' first book,
Missing Time, documented the unaccounted-for time periods and
associated symptoms which may indicate that abduction experiences
have taken place and their characteristic details ( 1981 ). He also found
that abduction experiences were possibly associated with previously
unidentified characteristic small cuts, body scars or scoop marks, and
the narratives even suggested that small objects or "implants" may have
been inserted in victims' noses, legs or other locations. In his second
book, Intruders, Hopkins defined the sexual and reproductive features
that have come to be associated with the abduction phenomenon
(1987). Temple University American historian, David Jacobs, has
further refined the basic pattern of an abduction experience (1992).
Jacobs identifies primary phenomena: manual or instrument
examination, staring, and uro-gyn procedures; secondary events:
machine examination, visualization, and child presentation; and
ancillary events: miscellaneous additional physical, mental, and sexual
activities and procedures.
My Own Relationship to this Work
When a psychologist friend and colleague in the fall of 1989
offered to introduce me to Hopkins (whose name and work were
unfamiliar to me), describing him as an artist who took the reports of
abductees seriously, I dismissed the idea, assuming that both he and his
clients must share some sort of delusion or other mental aberration.
When out of curiosity I visited Hopkins on January 10, 1990--one of
those dates that tend to be remembered--! was impressed with his
sincerity, depth of knowledge, and deep concern for the abductees, who
had often been incorrectly diagnosed and inappropriately served by
mental health professionals. But what affected me even more was the
internal consistency of the detailed accounts by different individuals
from various parts of the country who would have had no way to
communicate with one another and whose stories had emerged only
with difficulty, accompanied by distressing emotions.
Soon after this initial encounter I met with several abductees m
Hopkins' home and again was impressed by the consistency of the
narratives, and also with the absence of any obvious mental illness or
emotional disturbance other than the traumatic sequelae of the
abductions themselves. No obvious explanation that could account for
the abduction reports was apparent then, nor has any emerged in the
subsequent two and a half years. I felt that this group of people was in
need of understanding and help and reflected a mystery of more than
purely clinical interest. I determined, therefore, to work with abduction
experiencers myself. By the end of May, i992 I had seen more than 50
possible abductees. Of these, 38 fulfilled the basic criteria of full-
fledged abduction experiences: recollections, with or without hypnosis,
of being taken against the subject's will into some sort of non-normal
enclosure by small humanoid creatures where medical or surgical-like
procedures were performed. Although I offer support and counseling to
abductees, my role has been as much that of a co-investigator as a
therapist. Since October, 1990, I have also been holding monthly group
support meetings in my home, which have been attended by 15-25
individuals. My first cases were referred by Hopkins. Later I was
referred people through the network of individuals interested in UFOs
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or the abduction phenomenon, or people called me self-referred who
learned of my interest in the subject by word of mouth or saw me on
television, heard me speak on the radio or read articles describing my
work in this field. Of the 38 I am calling abductees, there are 20
females and 18 males, including a two-year-old child. I have done one
to five hypnotic regression sessions with 17 of the 38 and have been
present during hypnosis sessions with three others. The adults range in
age from 19 to 56.
Basic Dimensions of the Syndrome
Abductions have been reported from all parts of the United States
and from most parts of the world, although English speaking countries
predominate. As Bullard states in his extensive 1987 review, "How
much this distribution owes to the phenomenon and how much to
uneven prospecting stands as the key unknown in abduction
geography" (p. 349). In some studies more women are represented; in
others more men. My own impression is that men and women are more
or less equally affected, although men may be less willing to report
their experiences because of greater shame and humiliation over the
passivity and helplessness they have undergone. Abductions have been
reported from early infancy and throughout the life cycle--both by
parents telling about their infants and children and through adults'
retrospective recall. The bulk of reports are in the age range 20-45.
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The oldest investigated case was 62. More than one family member and
generation may be involved. One case investigated by psychologist Leo
Sprinkle involves abductions over possibly four generations (Howe
1989, p. 56).
Alerting Symptoms. Signs. and Memories
There are a number of symptoms, signs and memones found in
my cases and also reported by Hopkins, Jacobs, and eleven other
abduction investigators, including six physicians and mental health
professionals whom I consulted in preparing this report, that suggest an
abduction incident or case. By history likely abductees tell of having
seen "little men" or other beings, or feeling a "presence" in their room as
a child. They have often felt they were "different" or have led a "double
life." They may have had close-up sightings of strange craft or objects
in the sky during the day or night, or have seen unexplained intense or
bizarre bright lights in their living or bedrooms. In association with a
UFO sighting, and at times independent of it, they report unexplained
time lapses of an hour or two or more, or have found themselves
dislocated to a place yards, or even miles, from home and cannot
explain how they got there. Abductees may not have been interested in
UFOs, but some have been strangely drawn to abduction-related books,
react with terror to their content, especially to pictures of aliens ("I saw
that face on the book and I almost fainted," one experiencer said to me).
cannot finish them and often seek help as a consequence.
1 9
They may recall awakening during the night feeling a dread,
"numb" or paralyzed with the sense of a physical presence, or even
seeing small beings with large black eyes in their room. Other
symptoms include a strong sense of vulnerability, generalized anxiety,
fear of hospitals, flying, elevators, animals and insects, and sexual
contact. Sounds, smells, images, or activities that are disturbing for no
apparent reason may later prove to be associated with the abduction
expenence. Insomnia, fear of the dark and of being alone at night,
covering windows against intruders, sleeping with the light on (as an
adult), disturbing dreams and nightmares, especially associated with
flying craft or "alien ships" taking the person away, are common. Odd
rashes, marks, cuts, or scars may appear overnight, or unexplained
bleeding from the nose, ear, or rectum, which by itself might not draw
attention, but attains significance in association with the other
phenomena. Other symptoms include uro-gyn complaints, including
unexplained pregnancy changes, and persistent gastro-intestinal
symptoms.
Use of Hypnosis for Investigation and Treatment
From the time of the Hill case, hypnosis has been widely used to
obtain information and to help abductees who wish to recover the
memories of their abduction experiences. This has led to criticism about
the validity of abduction reports on the grounds that memories
recovered through hypnosis may be unreliable, or that the hypnotized
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informants may be suggestible or wish to please or comply with the
wishes or presumed expectation of the hypnotist (confabulation)
(Hilgard 1981; Klass 1988; Orne 1979; Vallee 1990). Some researchers
have developed techniques for insuring against this (Haines 1989). My
own experience, which is consistent with others, is that hypnosis tends
to complete or confirm memories which were already partially recalled
(Bullard 1987, p. 34). Some of my clients have recalled abductions in
considerable detail without hypnosis. . In a recent review of the
relationship of hypnosis to the UFO abduction phenomenon Bullard
concluded, "In each case the form and content of abduction stories
seems independent of hypnosis" (1989b). I have tried on several
occasions for experimental purposes to suggest ideas about the beings
or ships to hypnotized subjects and been contradicted by the abductee--
e.g. JM, "Full lips or r11<w, thin lips?" JiB, "No lips." Hypnosis does
seem to be a vital tool in the abduction process both for investigation
and therapy. It seems to have a specific capacity to reverse the
amnesia, although often with intense resistance. Abductees often feel
they have been given instructions not to remember and may feel they
are disobeying when they recover and report their memories.
How Abductions Begin
What follows here, and in subsequent descriptions, are composite
pictures of abduction phenomena, illustrated as much as possible from
tape-recorded interviews with my own cases. No one person
2 1
demonstrates all of these manifestations. Most of what is described
below appears in the literature on abduction. A few features seem to
be unique to my experience.
In several cases abductees have given me diaries, journals and
other contemporary accounts in which they have set down their ongoing
experiences. Will, a 42-year-old retired fireman, gathered his extensive
contemporary journal entries in a "Chronicle of Alien Intervention."
August 24, 1967 (age 19): There was something in bed with me,
by my legs, something very large, like half a body, and I could
feel it rubbing up against me. I'm sure I wasn't dreaming ... there
were three or four of 'us' in the room.
June 10, 1973: I was lying in bed when I felt the presence of
someone walking towards me on my side of the bed. I wanted to
reach the light but found that I was unable to move.
January 7, 1990: In my third camp experience [on vacation in the
Adirondacks] one being's head was no more than two feet away
from mine .... I have fought desperately the memory of those eyes.
The memory is there, as I was there. The feeling of being lost in
those dark void pools is also there.
January 15, 1990 (dictated into a tape recorder): Large gray
heads, small mouths, short, no hair on head, we're communicating,
the right frequency.
In each case the abductees have distinguished the expenences
from dream or fantasy. Rhonda, . a 39-year-old housewife and mother of
four, describing an abduction, said, "I seem to know when I'm dreaming
and when I'm not. When I am dreaming I can control what I'm
thinking to some degree ... m this situation I seemed to be awake but
out of control." At the same time they resist the possibility that their
experiences are real. In no case has an abductee welcomed this idea.
"I'm just hoping that I'm wrong. I just hope that it's some sort of weird
fantasy" or "my mind is telling me these things can't happen" are typical
statements. One experiencer came to me hoping I would tell him he
was "crazy."
The experiences are usually found to have begun in early
childhood, even in infancy. Ginny, a 36-year-old secretary, recalled an
abduction and examination at age four. She was given "a complete
physical," including an "anal probe." Afterwards the "doctor" who did
the exam said "that I shouldn't worry because it has something to do
with love." This "stroking" of small children is common. Abductions can
continue throughout the person's life and seem to taper off in the early
40's. There seem to be periods of intense activity, even nightly, which
can be followed by many years with no abduction, only to resume again
unpredictably. Particularly impressive to me has been the intense
resistance and disturbing affect, especially fear, as memories of
traumatic abduction experiences begin to emerge under hypnosis or
through conscious recall.
Abductions most frequently begin in the early hours of the
morning when the abductee is asleep in the bedroom. But experiencers
are also taken from other rooms, cars, schoolyards, and, in the case of
one young woman, from a snowmobile. The experience begins with the
sighting of a craft, the appearance of a bright light, a humming or
buzzing sound or the sense of something wrong or a presence,
associated often with intense terror, or the sight of small humanoid
figures.
Jill at 21 and a friend were driving a truck through southern Utah
when they saw "a spaceship or a UFO or a |flying saucer" out of the
driver's window. She noted it was about 1:30 p.m. The craft "shot off,
right up into the sky over the mountains." In what seemed like the
next moment Jill looked at her watch and it was 3:10. She said to her
friend "something to the effect of, 'oh, why didn't you wake me up,' or
'was I asleep,' and the friend said 'Oh I only just saw it. I didn't have
time.'" A vehicle that turns out under further investigation to be
perceived as a spacecraft may be remembered initially as a more
familiar craft such as a helicopter, van, bus or, in one case, "a 'wrecker'
come down out of the sky."
24
After the initial sighting or signal the abductee may expenence
traveling up +a ramp, or a beam of light, onto the ship. They may
experience being floated through doors, windows, walls, and ceilings
into the ships, sometimes accompanied by the beings. Transport may
occur via a smaller vehicle which takes the abductee up, as on an
elevator, into a larger ship.
Abductees describe feeling paralyzed, numb, frozen and powerless
at the beginning of the abduction experience and during the process
that occurs on the ship. Will, recalling a childhood abduction, said, "I
couldn't move my legs and I couldn't move my anns. All I could move
was my head." The paralysis and helplessness 1s associated with
intense fear. "Unless you've experienced terror m your life, of the
unknown, true terror, you don't know what it feels like," Dorothy, a 43-
year-old childless woman said of the start of an abduction which she
recalled from college. "Your bowels are gone, you're sweating and
you're freezing at the same time; your heart you don't think is ever
going to stay inside there." Will recalled the beginning of an abduction
with a cousin when he was on a camping trip. "I woke up, looked in
front of me and there was a dim light at the end of the bed ... I'm
looking at it and thinking well, that's odd, no terror. Then I felt this
pressure going down the length of my spine, lifting me up. And I still
was not afraid, and then I felt myself turning to the left and going up,
like I was being put in an upright position and I became terrified. I
said, 'God protect me and here we go again,' and I started to lift up, and
then I went void of consciousness."
Witnesses. Multiple Abductions and Multiple Generation Abductions
Witnesses may corroborate or complement the description of
someone else's experience. Dorothy recalled under hypnosis her
abduction with a friend, Lisa, from their college dorm room. Lisa was
taken first. "Lisa is on the outside of the bed. I'm over in the corner ....
The first thing that shocked me about the hypnosis is that the two taller
ones grabbed Lisa first and whisked her right out of the room m some
fashion. ... I couldn't move; I couldn't turn my head."
Mike, 35, Jill's husband, says "I've kind of been more of a skeptic,"
and does not believe that he has been abducted. But he senses when
his wife is visited. "I would sense what I thought was a creature or
creatures entering the room, 'the presence,' I call it. My feeling of their
presence begins with a very low-frequency humming, typically
emanating from the left side of my brain. ... It starts out with a lower
sound and then gets stronger as it feels like they're getting closer."
Not infrequently more than one family member is abducted at the
same time. Charlotte, 45, tells of a childhood abduction with her
younger sister. "I heard somebody crying and when I turned it was my
little sister and she was wetting herself, sitting on the floor in the ship
because there's no bathrooms. And I remember having to constantly
hold everything in." Resentment may grow up between or among
abductees within a family who are often unable to talk with each other
about their experiences. Children may- feel angry or let down by
parents when they fail to protect them from abduction expenences.
Multiple abduction cases are of scientific importance because of
the opportunity for independent correlation and witnessing that their
investigation provides. Ann was taken when she was a teenager with a
girlfriend from the basement TV room of the girlfriend's home. Both of
the teenagers' parents were upset when the girls could not be found for
several hours. The friend confirms Ann's account. Psychiatric social
worker John Carpenter writes of a case of "two mature, no nonsense
women in their forties" who arrived in their car two hours later than
they should have. According to Carpenter, "At least 40 correlations
could be found among descriptions of the creatures, craft interior,
behaviors, procedures, and general scenario II ( 1991 ).
The Beings
The beings themselves are quite uniformly described by the
abductees, with some variation. These descriptions are entirely from
my own cases. They are of at least two basic types, "little guys" 3 1/2' -
4' tall, and somewhat larger figures, frequently called "doctors" or "the
doctor" when, as is usual, only one is seen, who are 4 1/2' - 5'. The
doctor is in charge of the abduction process. The smaller beings seem to
function as assistants. In addition, human-looking beings, whom an
27
abductee senses is an alien in human form, or tall humanoid figures,
may also be seen either on the ships or on earth.
The small beings' skin is a shade of gray, with a rather leathery
feel. The head is "smooth," pear-shaped and "bald," r11<w1r@usually
to a pointed chin, "protruding in the back." The neck is "high" and
"skinny;" the torso is slight but "boxy" with long, thin arms. There may
be three or four fingers, which are long, though the digits are sometimes
"thick." The legs are rarely described and no one has reported seeing
feet.
The face is "angular" with a "little line" for a mouth. In a
December 17, 1980 diary entry Rich, a 34-year-old musician, wrote, "I
saw a being who looked like this [draws familiar alien head], color pale
milky blueish white, mouth seemed fixed like a fish mouth." There IS a
"very flat, small nose," "like holes" and no ears. By far the most
prominent feature of the face, indeed of the whole being, is the eyes.
The eyes are "enormous" and "seal-like," all black, "egg-shaped" or
"elliptical," "pointed at the outer edge but round at the inner edge," and
"curving up black, like a negative of a human face," for "everything
around it was white." There are no lashes, but membrane-like
translucent lids sometimes are seen closing down over the bulging eyes.
Garments are simple, seemingly of a single piece, gray or blue, like
a tunic, sometimes with a collar or partial hood, with boots below.
Descriptions of the doctors' appearance and clothing are similar to the
smaller beings but more detailed and vivid. Jill spoke of "her" doctor as
28
having extremely long arms and fingers with hands that were "long and
bony and grey." She spoke of a bony -forehead and an "all bumpy" head
with "rich and mottled" skin. When I asked if she saw any pupils in his
huge eyes she said "it's all pupil."
The small beings move in a robot-like manner, lock-step, which,
together with their appearance, lead abductees to describe them as like
various sorts of insect--grasshoppers, ants, wasps and cockroaches have
been mentioned by various abductees. Communication between aliens
and humans is telepathic--by "mental communication" or "I don't hear a
VOICe. I just know it. n Abductees seem intuitively to distinguish male
from female aliens more by manner than anatomical differences.
Animals seem to have a prominent place in the experiences of
abductees, and frequently turn out to cover over or disguise the more
frightening memories of aliens.
The Inside of the Spaceships
Inside the spacecraft there is a soft, hazy white luminosity.
Abductees describe archways, balconies, alcoves and rooms of various
sizes with curved or "round" walls. Various "symbols" or maps may be
seen. A large room is described as a "lab," "examining room" or
medical-like facility with machines, "computer terminals," screens or
"monitors," mobile equipment and lights imbedded in the walls or
ceiling. A variety of needles, tubes and other instruments are observed.
There are examining tables onto which abductees are placed, as if "laid
out flat on a slab." Abductees generally feel quite cold during the
examination.
Several of my cases describe an atmosphere and smell of
dampness or mustiness on the ship, a kind of el<1e-111e, fetid
dankness.
What Abductees Say Happens to Them Inside the Craft
Inside the craft abductees say they are subjected to a variety of
procedures which to them have the character of medical examinations
or experimentation and surgical invasions. Reproductive and sexual
elements are an especially frequent and prominent part of the
experience. Skin or hair samples may be taken. The procedures may
be intensely frightening, painful and distressing, which seems to
contribute to the difficulty in recalling them. Terrifying penetration of
the nose, legs, head, abdomen or vagina or anus with long needles or
more complex-looking instruments have been elaborately described by
the abductees. Jill described an injection in her right thigh.
JM: What does it feel like?
Jill: Like a needle.
JM: What does he do? Does he take blood? Does he inject
something?
Jill: There's something 1rthere. I can see it.
JM: What do you see?
Jill: I see him inject something.
JM: A solid thing? A fluid thing?
Jill: It's a fluid. Clear.
In a long hypnotic session Ann reported elaborate
30
instrumentations of her head, which seemed to her like "brain surgery,"
and were accompanied by observable twitching and a variety of other
powerful sensations throughout her body. In another session she
recalled a complex, painful pushing and deep probing procedure in her
groin ("something in my ovaries") involving a "hovering" cylindrical
machine, a long hypodermic needle, and other vividly described
instruments that left her feeling enraged and humiliated "like I'm being
raped," "like a lab animal," or on "an assembly line." Jill's descriptions of
the instruments used are vivid and highfy detailed--"big cylindrical
thing with a little spout and a big handle ... a gray cloth underneath
everything. A bunch of tubing. Gray tubing. It's got silver stuff on it,
needles, a pan," "a tube curled around his [the doctor's] hand maybe
three or four times and it's got silver bands on it every six or eight
inches." She perceived a "diamond" shaped object at the top of a tube
that goes in her vagina. "The diamond opens up like petals and there's
a ball on the stick, and it's all silver and with some blue, somewhere."
Ann has described a similar instrument that opened into petal-like
blades. She recalled under hypnosis something "cone-shaped that was
vibrating, came up between my legs and was placed very slowly up into
my vagina as far as it could go. It seems. like it was pushing me apart.
And my back. They had poked a needle up under my ribs ... extremely
painful to re-live this needle poking under here."
Reproductive and Sexual Phenomena
Human reproductive functioning and sexuality appear to be at the
center of the abduction phenomenon (Hopkins 1987; Jacobs 1992).
Women and men report a great range of experiences related to
reproduction and sex which includes gynecological probing, removal and
reimplantation of ova, removal or disappearance of fetuses, forced
taking of sperm samples, extrauterine incubation of embryos on
spacecraft, human nursing of hybrid fetuses with observation by aliens,
alien-human sexual intercourse and "bonding," and human intercourse
observed by aliens on and off the spacecraft. I must stress that
however bizarre all of this may seem, the recovery of the memories of
these events, with or without hypnosis, is accompanied by the kind of
powerful, disturbing affects that have so often been encountered in
work with post-traumatic stress victims. In the case of men, the rage,
fear and sense of humiliation that accompanies ejaculation and taking of
sperm samples may reach an intensity that I have rarely observed in
any other clinical situation. So much shame accompanies their
experience that men, more even than women, may resist exploring their
abduction histories. My cases have reported forced ejaculation while
paralyzed through intercourse with alien females, machine-induced
taking of sperm samples, oddly pleasurable forced sexual bonding with
an alien (in the case of hitherto quite assertive and dominating men),
sexual and reproductive disturbances that include a decision not to have
children, loss of interest in sexual relations, and fury as parents over
not being able to protect their children from alien abductions.
Women often feel that they have been selected as healthy
specimens for some sort of breeding process, which they resent but to
which, with help, they may become more or less reconciled. Ann's
statement, "in me what they've got is a breeding machine," is typical of
how female abductees summarize their experience. Lois, a 38-year-old
psychiatrist, remains bitter over the fact that she has experienced the
loss of at least six pregnancies to alien intervention. Female abductees
also describe complex, forced intercourse-like experiences which may
result in their feeling "bonded" to a particular alien. Jill told me of an
extraordinarily powerful connection that occurred through looking into
the eyes of an alien. Ann found especially humiliating a staged act of
sexual intercourse on a craft with a young human male she knew while
several aliens looked on, "like scientists watching."
The experience of forced removal of a pregnancy is one of the
most disturbing aspects of the abduction process. Although many
women have reported losing fetuses by this means, no gynecologist to
my knowledge has documented a pregnancy by conventional tests,
ultrasound or other means that subsequently mysteriously disappeared
in association with an abduction (Druffel 1991; Neal 1992).
33
Nevertheless, the abductees describe breast changes and abdominal
thickening and believe they are pregnant before the abduction.
Further, I have not seen the wish fulfillment aspect or other
psychodynamics generally associated with pseudocyesis. The intense
affect, often associated with powerful resistance, gives an authentic
character to the experience as the memory of it is recovered. The
terror, sobbing and rage which accompany the reliving of a forced
pregnancy removal are extremely poignant and upsetting to the
hypnotist. Sometimes the "doctor" who is performing the procedure on
the craft will "tell" the woman, as if to mollify her or gain her
cooperation, that the process is "good for" her, or that the baby Is not
really hers.
Following the removal of the conception with a surgical
instrument that seems to open up inside the woman's uterus, she may
see the tiny fetus being placed in a pan. Later, or during a subsequent
abduction, they may see the baby or older children in a special room.
The children have a hybrid character with mixed human and alien
features. They tend to have a larger than human head and eyes, little
or no hair, thin torsos with "skinny buns," and genitalia that are "kind of
hidden." The abductees may be shown "birthing" or child-rearing rooms
where the hybrid babies are developing. Sometimes they will recognize
their own offspring, who resemble them in one feature or another.
Ginny believes she has been taken to see at least fourteen of her babies.
The aliens may encourage the human women to nurse or hold their
children, as if to provide nurturance and love, and they seem especially
interested in human parenting and emotimial processes. As Charlotte
put it, "I think there's something that they want to know."
Visions of Planetary Destruction
On the ships, abductees are frequently shown visions of nuclear
and, especially, ecological destruction, sometimes as if on a television
screen. Ann's visions have included scenes of socio-economic and
governmental collapse. Shannon, a mother of four sons, saw that "we're
killing ourselves" and was shown "droughts and trees drying up and
crops drying up and people dying of famine, streams drying up, oceans
were polluted. I mean the pollution was unbelievable. It was scary. It
was scary." Sometimes abductees feel they have been given a special
mission--for example, to distribute hydroponically-grown food to
survivors in Jill's case, or to commit herself to leadership m
environmental responsibility in Ann's.
Return
The experience of returning from the spacecraft to the place of
departure reverses by and large the sequence of the "ascent." There
may be a feeling of falling, sometimes but not necessarily inside an
"elevator" or small craft. The abductees may "wake up," or find
themselves in their bed, car, etc. before they hit the ground. Sometimes
an abductee may not recall any aspect of the return with or without
35
hypnosis, but wakes up the next mormng . with an unexplained cut,
nosebleed or simi.ll lump on the nose or a leg, arm or elsewhere
(Hopkins 1981), or with a headache and the feeling that they have been
through something stressful. On occasion they may 111e| 1_see the
beings who the abductees believe returned them before they departed.
A kind of quirky humor or odd irregularity may be expressed m
relation to the return. Clothes removed during the abduction may be
neatly piled on the ground. Rumpled bedcovers are straightened, or the
abductee is tightly tucked in to bed while their spouses sleep.
Relationships Between Humans and Aliens
For abductees the aliens are real beings with whom they have had
a relationship beginning in childhood, especially with the leading figure
or "doctor." As their histories are explored, especially under hypnosis,
the doctor, and sometimes other beings, become familiar entities. They
resent, sometimes bitterly, the lack of control, helplessness, invasion of
their lives, and repeated traumatization they have experienced.
Abductees differ intensely about the meaning of the reassurances
and support that the aliens give abductees during the process. Hopkins,
Jacobs and other researchers believe this is part of a deception process-
-"stroking" --intended to disarm the abductee in order to enable the
process to move ahead smoothly (Jacobs 1992). The abductees are
unanimous in describing their powerlessness to deter the aliens from
their purpose, even when they struggle and rage at them, although this
may give some temporary satisfaction. Some experience primarily a
cold indifference on the part of the aliens. Jill said of her doctor, "I have
a feeling he's just doing his job." Dorothy saw only "absolute coldness,
no emotion" when she looked into the head alien's eyes. "I felt like I
was a hunk of steak there. It was business pure and simple."
Yet some abductees are convinced that there is more involved
than simply a relationship of exploitation and victimization. Ann deeply
resents what has been done to her, but accepts the process with
resignation. "If the aliens are stroking me at least they have some
perception that I need to be stroked, whereas I can walk around
through life, nobody would ever stroke me; they're not going to be
bothered." "I don't say this is a good thing for me," she says.
"Personally it's sacrifice and it's a burden and it's hard and it sucks. I
would have it that they wouldn't do that to me, but the fact of the
matter is, something is created and it's special and it's important that it
be." For some abductees the contact with the aliens has been so intense
that they feel they have been leading a "double life," even that they are
"bonded" with them or are themselves part alien. The complex
relationship that abductees feel evolves between themselves and the
aliens, especially when they work intensively to explore their
experiences, is a subject that needs to be studied more fully.
3 7
Abduction of Children
Psychiatrists Ezell Branham and Laura Boyle and Budd Hopkins
presented research at a Philadelphia abduction conference in January,
1991 on the abduction of children. This subject is <1t1111r@and can
also be of particular scientific interest insofar as small children may not
have been exposed so much to media accounts or discussions within the
family, or by peers or friends.
Jill and Mike Ward have told me troubling things concermng their
three-year-old son, Ned. When Ned was 21 months old Jill went up to
his room one night and found "his blanket was all screwed up, as is
typical. He was laying on it, and so I couldn't straighten the blanket out.
The next time I went up to check on him his blanket was perfect. It
was laying out over him beautifully as if someone l<smoothed it over
him." Mike "does not get up with babies- ... and my daughter can't reach
into the crib."
When Ned was just two, Jill saw him talking to the alien face on
the cover of Strieber's Communion, kissing it and calling it "Pi." A few
months later after waking from a frightening dream, he told Jill, "I fly in
the sky ... to the spaceship." Asked who was in the spaceship, he
responded, "a man ... little man." Six weeks later the Ward's seven year
old daughter came into her parents' room at five a.m. to tell them that
Ned had come in to see her with a lot of blood on his face and coming
out of one nostril. They also found blood on his pillow case and a
scabbed-over incision mark on the back of his head. When Jill asked
him if anyone had been in his room Ned said, "little man come through
window. Man bited me on the nose." _
When Ned was two years and seven months old I interviewed him
with Jill. He was a lively, warm and outgoing child. I asked him to
identify the cards in the Hopkins Image Recognition Test (HIRT) which
contains -ten cards devised by Budd Hopkins to explore children's
abduction experiences. They consist of ten large black ink drawings
from faces that would be familiar to children--a boy, a girl, Santa Claus,
a policeman, a clown, Batman, a Ninja Turtle, a witch, a skeleton and a
typical alien. Ned alertly identified each card correctly and matter-of-
factly. When I showed him the alien card Ned said, "I write it on the
board." Jill said they had done "a doodle like this" together on a
blackboard. I asked if he had "ever seen this guy." "I open door, I
drive the spaceship," Ned said. He said it was "that man's, that man's
spaceship." He seemed to be getting uneasy and said, "I have my
blankie. I put my thumb in my mouth." After talking casually about
where he had seen some of the other figures, I returned to the alien
card and asked "where did you see this guy?" and whether or not he
liked him. "I don't like him," he said. "What does he do?" I asked. My
assistant, who had been present, noted "up to this point Ned has been
generally talkative and attentive, giving unsolicited information. Now
he often doesn't answer at all, or only after long silences."
JM: Is he nice or is he scary?
Ned: He's scary.
JM: [Tries to calm and reassure. hirri, then:] Does he come into
your room sometimes?
Ned: Yeah. I have a big sword, now hit him out of my room [gets
excited as he talks about fighting.] ... "I have my blankie, put
my thumb in mouth. I were very tired."
JM: You get tired when he comes?
Ned: Yeah.
JM: And you put your thumb in your mouth?
Ned: Yeah. The guy breaks my window. I can't fix it anymore.
Ned becomes increasingly silent and edges across his chair to his
mother and sits in her lap. "A man came in my room," Ned said. "Man
has big flashlight to my eyes." Ned said. After this Ned told of how "he
hurt me." ("Where?") "On neck." He said, "I don't want to cry." Then
he said, "I feel better," after which we talked about how he likes to
watch Star Trek and fights back against the man. "A man run after me.
I run faster," he said. Soon he came into my lap to be comforted.
Physical Features
The physical features which accompany UFO sightings and
landings, such as changes in physical and chemical characteristics of the
soil (Faruk 1989; Swords and Faruk 1991; Verga 1988), and, in relation
to this report, alien abductions, are among the most interesting and
compelling aspects of the phenomenon. They provide a seemingly
objective corroboration of reports that are otherwise so bizarre as to
defy our credulity. With or without accompanying physical
manifestation, as a psychiatrist my approach has been to credit as valid
psychological data that abductees provide if I find them to be reliable
as informants or suffering from no evident mental illness, other
discoverable historical trauma or motive for distortion that could
account for what they say happened to them, even if this leaves me
mystified as to what, indeed, did actually occur. However, it is clear
that such physical evidence would, if corroborated, relieve abductees of
the burden of persuading themselves and others of the actuality of
events which are so powerfully real yet defy accepted notions of reality,
and would focus attention and resources on the needs of abductees and
the meaning of the abduction phenomenon.
Physical manifestations at times frighten abductees, who do not
want to believe that their experiences are real, and at other times
reassure them of their sanity. For the abductee population, physical
manifestations are elusive and inconsistent. Some are not by
themselves pathognomonic of an abduction, but gain their significance
by appearing in conjunction with, or immediately following, an
abduction.
Abductees may tell of their surprise on waking on top of the
covers or upside down on the bed, in a room of the house other than the
The Abduction Phenomenon/1 ohn E. Mack, M.D. 4 1
bedroom, or sometimes even outside the house. Their clothes may be
removed, folded by the bed or nowhere to be found. Abductees
describe their confusion and disbelief on coming to the realization while
driving that they are many miles from their location just moments
earlier, sometimes finding themselves closer to their destination, at
other times completely off their intended path.
Abductees sometimes find nosebleeds, fresh cuts or red spots on
waking or returning to consciousness after an episode of missing time.
These are later traceable to physical probing, cuts or intrusions during
an abduction. Many abductees display scars that fall into one of two
characteristic types: straight-line or scalpel, and depressions or scoop
marks. Sometimes an incident recalled under hypnosis on later
checking is found to have left a previously unknown or unremembered
small scar, cut, or sore spot, seeming to corroborate the recollection.
These small lesions might be unremarkable, or go unnoticed, if it were
not for the context in which they occur.
An area of physical evidence which has received attention
recently is the subject of "implants" (Pritchard, in press). The
experience of painful and frightening implantation procedures unfold
under regression, usually involving the insertion into the ear or high up
into the nose of a small item held on the end of a long needle-like
instrument. Such procedures may be followed the next day by
nosebleeds or diminished hearing. At the time of this writing I am
aware of three objects under study which appear to have emerged from
the bodies of abductees and which seem to be connected with abduction
episodes. These possible implants consist of familiar chemical elements
in proportions not found to be distinct from synthesized materials
produced on earth. Abductees speculate that implants may be used to
control their behavior, monitor their activities, or tag their location.
Most disturbing and elusive of all are the alleged pregnancy
removals, as discussed earlier. Although many removals have been
claimed, none has been documented at the time of this writing (Druffel
1991; Neal 1992). Progress in this area awaits the close collaboration
between obstetricians and abduction researchers.
Residual Experiences of Abductees
Painful. Disturbing or Traumatic Sequelae
Whatever may ultimately be found to be its source, for abductees
their experience is profound, lasting and inescapable. Abductees may
learn, with or without help, to live with, even transfonn, their
experiences. But they have suffered, and sometimes continue to suffer,
from the residua or sequelae of their disturbing or traumatic
expenences.
Psychologically they feel "different." Ginny says, "it's like living
another life. Rich feels as if he is a split being." Dorothy says, "I think
it's made me an 'other."' Despite their distress, abductees are often
reluctant to seek, or resist, help. In a written narrative he called "UFO
Report," Dan, a 42-year-old amateur astronomer, wrote, "I've been
wondering since the day of my discovery of being an abductee myself,
how I will eventually handle the strairi. ... One of the first things I found
myself asking myself was 'why me?'" Jill told me of "big mood swings"
and "depression" with showers of tears that had followed a hypnosis
session three days earlier that confirmed to her many traumatic details
of her abduction experiences. "This can't be real. It's awful. It must be
my imagination," she said she had told herself.
Nightmares and other disturbing dreams are regular sequelae of
abductions. Some dreams that are post-traumatic in character may also
mask abduction experiences. Jodie, a 35-year-old mother of two, calls
dreams she believes are alien-related "their dreams" to distinguish
them from more routine dreams of her own.
Sexual intimacy may be difficult if the sexual act evokes
memories of procedures recalled on the craft. Ann worried about the
effect of her multiple abductions on future child bearing. "If your
insides are getting ripped apart all the time," she told a seminar group,
"you can't expect much past 35 that you're going to have any chance at
all. That's another anxiety." Dorothy told me, "I have a feeling I make
myself undesirable because I've been under sexual attack. ... When they
take you, and they do things to you sexually ... not necessarily a
physical rape by 'being on being' but I mean it's definitely your worst
gynecology nightmare."
44
Abductees suffer from a great range of physical pains and fears
which seem to correspond anatomically and. physiologically to the locus
of invasive procedures experienced during abductions. In addition to
the sexual/ gynecological sequelae discussed, _ryt<r include
headaches, nasal sinus pains, limb pains, gastro-intestinal pain and
distress, intense fears of needles and, commonly, of doctors and
hospitals. Dorothy said, "I'm terrified of doctors and I'm terrified of
needles. ... I think I'd rather die of cancer than go to a hospital."
Abductees suffer from a complex traumatic picture. It would be
incorrect to call it "post" traumatic, as the threat does not become a
matter of the past. There are four dimensions to the trauma: 1) the
disturbing experiences themselves; 2) the personal isolation that grows
out of the difficulties of talking to others about the experiences; 3) the
inconsistency between these experiences and the consensus reality
which abductees have learned; 4) the fact that the experiences can
happen again at any time to them and their children.
The events themselves and their sequelae have been described.
The other dimensions of the trauma need also to be stressed. A
distance often develops when abductees tell their parents or others
what they have seen or experienced. They are most frequently told
that they have been dreaming, having nightmares, are "lying," are "too
imaginative," "making up things," or, as Rhonda put it, "they just kind of
tried to humor me." But to the child the experiences are real and
clearly distinct from dreams. They learn not to talk with their parents
or siblings (some of whom do not want to hear, despite or because of
being experiencers themselves) about _these experiences, which creates
an intense sense of isolation and alienation that continues in adult life
among friends and peers.
Tim, a 36-year-old single factory worker and a probable
experiencer whose case has not been fully investigated, told our support
group haltingly, shaking with fear, of childhood memories of "extremely
skinny people with large eyes that seemed to come out of the closet." I
asked him what it was that was, even now, so tenifying that it "makes
your body shake, and you just have such a huge terror?" After a long
pause he said, "The fact that nobody believed me." His mother told him
"it was my imagination, but there's no imagining that. ... I was very
much alone with this, you know." The experience of sharing this history
with the group took a "tremendous load" of shame, fear and guilt off of
him, he told us in the next meeting.
Although they may come to accept that their experiences are
"real," at least for them, abductees struggle intensely with what this
means for their lives. The problem for them is not only one of
ontological threat and confusion. It also means that they are unable to
dismiss their experiences as easily as they could a dream or fantasy.
Rich said when he first realized he was having unusual experiences he
remembered "I was trying to think what is this, some sort of weird
psychic experience, am I going crazy, is it demons?" Dorothy's lifelong
friend June, 44, said of an abduction, "This is this nice story because I
don't want it to be real." Jill has said, "I just don't like the idea," and, "it
shakes your whole foundation." Dan wrote in his "UFO Report," "It's so
difficult for most to accept this. ... There is no way to relate this to
anything that approaches reality that we have all come to know."
Lynn, a 42-year-old mother of two sons, remembers "when I was a
child if I was dreaming . .. I would wake up from sleep, but the dream
didn't end." Ann in our first meeting said, "I know there's a part of me
that doesn't want to believe this is happening, because if it's just
dreams then it's fine."
Finally, abductees must live with the fact that their expenences,
whatever their source, can recur at any time, even after years without
"activity." Jill, speaking of one of her experiences, said, "if this really
happened, then I'm very vulnerable. I don't like being vulnerable."
Dorothy expresses a characteristic "quandary." After a period of active
experience, "Do you allow yourself to think, 'okay, pfew, it's over, I'm
free'? Or do you worry about it for the next ten years? So let's say that
for the next few months they don't bother you at all and you start, you
know, you relax, and all of a sudden they snatch you ... and it's really a
horrendous experience." Lynn, Charlotte and Rich each have told me of
the "desperate things" they have done, especially before they began to
explore their experiences, to barricade their rooms or arrange furniture
and mirrors in order to see the intruders before they could be surprised
by them. Each realized afterwards how silly and ineffectual these
"ritual" measures were. Abductees' parents are deeply troubled when
their children are involved and anguished that they cannot protect
them.
Personal Growth and Transformation
But there is more to the abduction experience than trauma,
pathological sequelae and victimization, especially when the
experiencers investigate their experience, struggle with its meaning for
them and their worlds and try to come to terms with it. Rich says, "I
feel that for me it's more intimate than it is for a lot of people that I've
talked with .... Some abductees don't 'do well.' But it has been a fire
under my ass and I embrace it."
For Rich, Ann and others, confronting their terror and belplessness
has been an important aspect of the personal growth they have
experienced. Jill's husband Mike, both agreed, had been a person who
always needed to be in charge, "wouldn't trust," and was highly
controlled. He said, "I've come to a sort of resignation that they're just
going to do what they want to do." As a result of his surrender of the
need to be in control, Jill said, which she related directly to the alien
abduction phenomenon, he had become a "completely different person,
forward, open." Jill claims that she herself "grew twenty years" during
the three years of intense abduction activity when she was in her late
teens and early twenties. Many abductees seem to become more
intuitive or "psychic," and develop philosophical interests which they
believe are an outgrowth of the abduction phenomenon. One of the
most striking results of the abduction experience for many abductees,
especially those who work actively to integrate their experiences, is a
strong sensitivity to environmental desecration that sometimes leads to
various forms of ecological activism. Even the '11ee<1r@' phenomena,
some abductees feel, may in some way be serving a life-preserving
function.
Whether the spiritual growth and ecological commitment that 1s
observable among the abductees I have studied is a secondary by-
product of their experiences--the expanded consciousness that follows
the stretching of consciousness that may follow any extended painful or
traumatic experiences--or is a more intrinsic aspect of the whole
process is a question that needs further exploration. Rich believes that
the aliens "have been sent as engineers of evolution to do repair work,
come to show our consciousness has moved down the wrong track ... It's
like the butterflies have come back to stop the caterpillars from
denuding the bushes of food."
Themy: What is This? What is Going On?
Any adequate theory of alien abductions, even a useful
hypothesis, must account for a broad range of puzzling phenomena.
These include at the least:
1) Narrative consistency. The stories which abductees tell
vary in their details, but they have a hard edge of narrative
consistency. It is sometimes argued that abductees influence one
another, i.e. "get" their experiences from what others tell them,
visual media or reading. My impression, however, is that what
more often happens is that when abductees communicate with
each other about their abductions or watch television or film
versions of abductions, they find support from one another or fill
in details of what they have already experienced or are trying to
clarify. "Modern communications," as folklorist Bullard has
written, "certainly spread folklore widely and with speed, but
they are not the agents of homogenization that folklorists once
feared. The media serve as just one more voice in the
transmission of folklore. As soon as the next narrator repeats an
item, he usually begins the process of variation" (1991).
2) The absence of diagnosed mental illness. The majority of
abductees do not appear to be deluded, confabulating, lying, self-
dramatizing or suffering from a clear mental illness. This does not
mean that abductees cannot also be psychotic.
3) Association with UFOs. Even though many abductions
seem to occur independent of UFO sightings by the abductee or
other witnesses, a close association between UFO encounters and
abductions has been consistently observed.
4) Bizarre physical effects. Whatever may prove to be the
ontological status of such accounts, a convincing theory needs to
account for the unusual physical effects described above.
5) The reports of young children. Parents can, of course,
influence their children's experience. Nevertheless, for a theory of
the abduction phenomenon to be complete we must find a way to
account for the emotionally intense and seemingly authentic,
detailed experiences of children as young as Ned whose exposure
to outside sources of information has been limited.
Current theories include psychiatric, psychosocial/cultural,
extraterrestrial explanations, and what might be called the hypothesis
of "other dimensions of consciousness."
Psychiatric
No clear pattern of mental illness has emerged, though psychiatric
disturbances may exist among abductees, related or unrelated to the
abduction history. I have been struck by how little mental illness
manifests among abductees, considering the often lifelong nature of the
abduction phenomenon and its disturbing intensity. Many abductees
suffer from the symptoms of a post-traumatic stress syndrome, but it i:
not clear, other than what abductees report, what the traumatizing
event might be. It is difficult to conceive of a post-traumatic clinical
picture which arises entirely from within the psyche. Child abuse,
including sexual abuse, has been considered as a possible source, but
does not appear tto account for the syndrome in any of my own or other
researchers' cases.
The changes in mental state brought about by the traumatic
power of the abduction phenomenon, and the importance of hypnosis in
recovering memories of abduction experiences, raise the question of
whether the syndrome is a new kind of dissociative disorder, akin to
multiple personality or PTSD (Ganaway 1989; Spiegel and Cardena
1991). Dissociation does in fact occur in relation to abductions, and the
alterations of feeling, memory, thinking, relationship, and perception
characteristic of other dissociative conditions do take place during
abductions, often requiring hypnosis or other relaxation techniques to
recover the split-off elements of the experience. But dissociative
disturbances generally occur as a response to some sort of trauma
originating in the outside world and the question that remains concerns
the original source or stimulus of the trauma.
Kenneth Ring, who has obtained data suggesting a possible higher
incidence of child abuse among abductees, has postulated that they and
individuals prone to near death expenences have what he calls
"encounter-prone" personalities (Ring 1992). Ring proposes that the
childhood traumatic histories of abduction experiencers may render
them more vulnerable or sensitive to "alternate or psychic realities" (p.
145), but he does not suggest that this hypothesis accounts for the
abduction phenomenon or tells us what is the source of the encounter.
Psychosocial/Cultural
Initial confrontation with stories of abductions onto UFOs by alien
beings raises in many listeners' minds the idea that this is a form of
mass hysteria or collective madness. Arguing against this idea,
however, is the fact that abductees are rarely in communication with
each other before they are brought together by support groups or
somehow find one another because of their common experiences. It has
also been suggested that abductees pick up the details of their
experiences from the larger culture, especially the mass media. This is
an appealing possibility, but does not hold up to careful scrutiny. UFO
phenomena have been reported in the mass media at least since 1947,
and abductions have been on the scene since the Hill case was widely
reported in 1966. But most media depictions, like Close Encounters of
the Third Kind and ET, are general, inaccurate, superficial, and crude,
and do not provide the intricate, consistent detail that is found in so
many abduction narratives. Even the 1975 documentary film of the Hill
case, Interrupted Journey, lacks the level of detail of most of the cases I
have seen. A few recent documentaries have been more faithful to the
realities of the abduction experience, but many abduction reports have
preceded them and these films too are quite general and lack the
richness of the accounts that abductees provide. Others have applied
Jung's idea of the collective unconscious and "psychoid" phenomena to
the shared experiences of abductees (Jung 1959; Thompson 1989;
Thompson 1991).
Jacques Vallee linked modern UFO abductions to historical and
mythic accounts of visitation by small beings, contact with flying craft,
and kidnappings or abduction onto space vehicles (Vallee 1969; Vallee
1988). As Thomas Bullard has written, "The search for parallels is dear
to the hearts of folklorists" (1989a). This is a complex question, leading
us deeply into the nature of reality as perceived by particular cultures.
The modern UFO/abduction phenomenon seems to differ from ancient
and medieval accounts in that there has been such a high degree of
consistency and richness of contemporary documentation. The
historical and mythical accounts, on the other hand, have arisen under
particular cultural circumstances and their preservation has often
depended on the oral transmission of stories and legends. A leading
contemporary ufologist, Jerome Clark, has documented the similarity of
the widespread U.S. airship sightings of 1896 and 1897 and the
contemporary UFO phenomenon (1991).
In a discussion of my work with historian of science Thomas Kuhn
and his wife J ehane, she asked, "How could a rich stereotype coagulate
out of a shared soup of affectively laden imagery without being directly
passed on?" This question presses us to stretch or reformulate our
notions of the collective unconscious. She is posing the same basic
question which philosopher W.V. Quine asked at Harvard a few days
later when I presented this material, viz. how could a complex, detailed
54
and traumatic set of ideas and events, some of which lie outside of our
notions of reality, that are experienced by otherwise sane people as
literally happening, arise spontaneously in thousands of minds of
human beings geographically separated and not, as far .as one can tell, in
contact with one another? An explanation based on such an expression
of the collective unconscious would surely stretch our notions of the
psyche or how the mind works. Again, the physical phenomena
associated with UFOs themselves and the experiences of young children
must be unaccounted for in any such explanation.
Extraterrestrial Hypothesis
Almost as if by a process of elimination many investigators, at
least in the United States, have come to the conclusion that UFOs are
spacecraft navigated by extraterrestrials and that these beings exist in
our material reality and perform the abductions. As Bullard has
written, this hypothesis "squares with shared experience better than
with personal fantasy or cultural learning. ... Never mind the whys and
wherefores, the extraterrestrial explanation works. It satisfies
believers with a systematic, internally rational account of the abduction
phenomenon, all for the price of buying a single premise: alien origins"
(1989a). Jacobs seems to be correct when he states "no significant body
of thought has come about that presents strong evidence that anything
else is happening other than what the abductees have stated" (1992 p.
304).
Yet there are problems with the extraterrestrial hypothesis as
well, especially as literally formulated. We are hard pressed to explain
such phenomena as human beings being passed through walls and doors
while potential witnesses are "switched off," or abductees taken on and
off the craft without people (other than other abductees) seeing them
come and go. Also, it is difficult to conceive of where the UFO occupants
might reside when they are not invading earth air space, how they
could live on any of the inhospitable planets in our solar system, how
they could get here from distant stars or galaxies, or why the beings are
so human-like and the procedures they perform so much like our
medical/surgical activities. Also, if these are, literally, extraterrestrial
craft and beings, why is solid information so sparse? Professor of
Natural Sciences, Michael Swords, explores some of these questions m
his article "UFOs as Time Travelers" (1990). Further, why have we not
seen better photographs of UFOs landing, for instance, in populated
areas, and none of the beings themselves? Why, with the possible
exception of the controversial Roswell incident (Berlitz and Moore 1988;
Randle 1991), do we have no artifacts that confirm an alien presence?
And where are the hybrid babies being raised, or, for that matter, the
crafts themselves when the abductees are undergoing their
experiences?
Penetration of Other Dimensions
Any theory, then, faces virtually irreconcilable contradictions. If
the abduction phenomenon is considered from the standpoint of the
psyche, we are faced with extremely bizarre material reported si.ncerely
by otherwise sane people, and we cannot account thereby for the
accompanying physical manifestations. On the other hand, a literal
extraterrestrial hypothesis stretches our notions of the physical
universe and its properties to and beyond conventionally accepted
limits of reality. Faced with this dilemma some ufologists, especially
Jacques Vallee and Karl Brunstein, are writing of the penetration into
our reality of parallel worlds, even other universes (Bronstein 1979;
Vallee 1988; Wolf 1990). Vallee, for example, now states, "I believe
that the UFO phenomenon represents evidence for other dimensions
beyond spacetime; the UFOs may not come from ordinary space, but
from a multiverse which is all around us ... " (1988, p. 53).
Interestingly, the abductees themselves, who are often
scientifically unsophisticated and largely unfamiliar with such writings,
speak, including under hypnosis, of the sense that they have of the
penetration into their consciousness of other dimensions beyond our
familiar space/time reality. Many of the abductees I have met with
have the sense of the operation of some other intelligence beyond our
own which they feel is responsible for breeding new life forms,
changing their own consciousness and affecting basic human notions of
reality. Rich, for example, says, "When we witness their coming it is like
57
scrim [a piece of fabric used in a theater to create the illusion of a solid
wall or backdrop], or a movie screen. When they arrive you are looking
at ordinary reality as a mov1e screen. When they come it is like
someone shines a bright light behind the movie screen and obliterates
the scene. What we perceive as the movie screen, what we call reality,
they bum through, proving it's only a construct, a version of reality."
Summary and Conclusions
The abduction phenomenon confronts us with an authentic and
disturbing mystery. But perhaps, as Edmund Bolles has written, "it is
important to confess when something is mysterious" (1991, p. xv). For
there is no way, I believe, that we can even make sense, let alone
provide a convincing explanation, of this matter within the framework
of our existing views of what is real or possible. Our psychological
theories do not include a way of accounting for the simultaneous
occurrence among thousands of people, unacquainted with each other,
including small children, of complex, elaborate, and sometimes
overwhelmingly powerful experiences that resemble one another in
minute detail, accompanied by a variety of equally peculiar physical
phenomena. At the same time our understanding of physical reality
cannot explain the technology whereby a population of beings from
some other space/time realm can enter our world with such limited
detection and affect so many people.
Yet it may be precisely from those phenomena which do not fit
into our established scientific categories, like near death experiences or
the "old Hag" (or nightmare) as described by David Hufford, from which
we may learn most, even if it forces us to change our views of reality
(1982).
These individuals--the abductees themselves--are deeply affected
by their experiences, which may be emotionally and physically
disturbing and traumatic. They need empathic, intelligent diagnostic
and therapeutic interventions by individuals who are familiar with the
details of the phenomenon and willing to suspend belief about its source
or cause. In fact, a little help often goes a long way in these cases. For
these are generally not deeply disturbed individuals in need of
extensive psychotherapy. When they encounter someone who listens,
takes their accounts seriously and does not, as has so often happened to
them in the past, try to fit their stories into familiar diagnostic
categories, there is usually great relief and improvement in their mental
status, although they are troubled initially to have to face the actuality
of experiences they have preferred to dismiss as dream, fantasy, or
even delusion. Some abductees wish to explore more deeply through
hypnosis or other means the buried memories of their abductions.
More intensive work of this kind requires the development of standards
of care, which some abduction researchers, especially internist David
Gotlib in Toronto, are seeking to establish (Gotlib 1990). Also proving to
be of great value for this population are support groups, led by someone
who does abduction treatment and research, through which abductees
can meet each other and share their histories and experiences. For, as
has been noted, abductees often live in a kind of self-enforced isolation,
fearing, with justification, that they will meet, as in tle past, not only
disbelief but ridicule or dismissal as "crazy" if they talk about this
aspect of their lives.
In summary, the abduction phenomenon is of considerable clinical
and scientific interest. No convincing explanation of the experiences
abductees report is currently evident. We may learn from further
research a great deal about the nature of the human psyche and expand
our notions of psychological and physical reality. In particular we need
to understand more about the relationship between this phenomenon
and other conditions, such as MPD, PTSD, satanic ritual abuse or other
traumatic disorders in which dissociative phenomena play a prominent
part, and also the abduction syndrome's relationship to near death or
out of body experiences, which seem to challenge our notions of
physical reality. But any theory to be useful or complete must account
for the fact that from the experiencer's point of view the stimuli which
give rise to the experience are real, i.e. that the source of the encounter
is in the outside world.
In the end, the phenomenon may deliver to us a kind of fourth
blow to our collective egoism, following those of Copernicus, Darwin and
Freud. For we may be led to realize that not only are we not physically
at the center of the universe, transcending other life forms and rational
masters of our psyches. We are not even the preeminent or dominant
intelligence m the cosmos, in control of our psychological and physical
existences. It appears that we can be "invaded" or taken over, if not
literally by other creatures, then by some other form of being or
consciousness that seems able to do with us what it will for a purpose
we cannot yet fathom. Perhaps as a species we may learn and grow
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