Paranormal, The | Introduction
Kate, a woman profiled by journalist Marcia Jedd in a 1997 Fate magazine article, claims to have pleasant memories of small, gray humanoids visiting her throughout her childhood. These beings often peered into her family’s Michigan farmhouse at night, and on occasion visited and talked with her in her room, Kate maintains. She professes, however, that she became afraid of the beings as she grew up and realized that other children were not having similar experiences. When a minister she consulted at age fifteen reacted negatively to her stories about contact with the gray creatures, she buried her memories and refused to talk about the visitations for twenty-eight years. Yet Kate asserts that she continued to encounter the beings, who would periodically appear, take her on board an alien spacecraft, and conduct medical examinations. Eventually Kate began exploring specific incidents of contact with the beings while under hypnosis. Now in her fifties, she believes that the aliens have always been with her. “The beings told me they did things to me before I was born. I believe my abductions happened as a result of pre-birth contact,” she states.
While Kate’s story is astonishing, it is not unique. An estimated nineteen million Americans say that they have seen a UFO. Moreover, a controversial 1991 Roper poll claims that up to four million people have experienced the alien abduction phenomenon.
Researchers’ reactions to reports from people claiming to have been abducted and subjected to experiments by aliens il13 lustrate the debate between parapsychologists and skeptics. Skeptical scientists reject the existence of such phenomena on the grounds that there is no convincing scientific proof. They decry belief in the paranormal as an example of an antiscientific attitude that promotes disdain for the principles of logic and reason. However, parapsychologists and others who explore unexplained phenomena contend that there is overwhelming anecdotal evidence to suggest that many of these phenomena are real. They maintain that rejecting the possibility of the existence of the paranormal is itself unscientific.
John E. Mack, a Harvard University psychiatrist who has studied and published books on the abduction phenomenon, contends that physical evidence and similarities between abductees’ stories supports the validity of abductee accounts. In a typical case, the abductee awakens in a state of paralysis with a feeling that there is an alien presence in the room. Unable to resist, he or she is levitated from the bedroom and taken to an awaiting spaceship. The experiencer is subjected to an examination in which samples of hair, skin, sperm or ova, and other tissues are taken and a tracking device is implanted. Finally, the abductee is returned to his or her room with all conscious memories of the experience erased (only later to be recovered with the help of hypnosis). Mack notes that most abductees are ordinary, healthy people who have no apparent reason for deception and who are not seeking the public limelight. He maintains that the abductees he has studied were “quite sane [and] had come forth reluctantly, fearing the discrediting of their stories or outright ridicule.”
To further support his claim that the alien abduction phenomenon is genuine, Mack points to physical evidence such as signs of psychological trauma among experiencers, physical scars, and “implants” (foreign objects removed from abductees’ bodies). He contends that the trauma exhibited by abductees is not the result of psychosis or fantasy and therefore must have a basis in real experience. As for the implants, he argues that electrochemical tests have failed to identify them as being of earthly origin, leaving open the possibility that they are extraterrestrial. “In virtually every case,” Mack asserts, “there are one or more concrete physical findings that accompany or follow the abduction experience.”
Supporters of the abduction theory have various hypotheses about the aliens’ purpose in kidnapping humans. Some, like Mack, believe that aliens have arrived as part of an ultimately benevolent plan to bring about a spiritual awakening and a profound change in human consciousness. Others think that aliens are conducting a vast breeding program to create a hybrid alien-human species—homo alienus—that will eventually populate and take over the earth.
Skeptics argue, however, that there is no conclusive evidence to support the alien abduction and breeding theory. Most contend that it is extremely unlikely that intelligent beings capable of interstellar travel exist on other planets. Therefore, they maintain, consideration of otherworldly kidnappers as the explanation for the abductee phenomenon is beyond the pale of science and reason.
Acclaimed skeptic Susan Blackmore, a psychology lecturer at the University of the West of England, argues that there are simpler and more plausible explanations for the experiences of alleged abductees. For one thing, she points out, the often-cited Roper poll claim that four million people believe they have been abducted by aliens is based on a seriously misleading interpretation of data. The poll never asked respondents to answer the question “have you ever been abducted by aliens?” Instead, respondents were asked if they had had certain “indicator experiences,” such as “waking up paralyzed with a sense of a strange presence in the room,” feelings of flying through the air, experiencing periods of lost time, and discovering puzzling scars but not remembering how the scars were received. Respondents who answered “yes” to a certain number of indicator experiences were said to be alien abductees. Blackmore maintains that the poll is severely flawed because it assumes that certain common experiences might be signs of alien abduction.
Interestingly, one of the Roper poll’s so-called indicators— waking up paralyzed—does offer a clue about the real source of the alien abduction phenomenon, asserts Blackmore. A relatively common sleep disorder known as sleep paralysis is probably what alleged abductees are suffering from, she contends. Normal sleep brings on a harmless paralysis of muscles that prevents people from acting out on their dreams. But about one in five people has experiences of waking from sleep while this paralysis persists. Such sleep paralysis, Blackmore maintains, is often accompanied by hallucinations or by a related sleep disturbance called false awakening, in which people dream that they have awakened but in fact are still dreaming. With prevailing cultural myths about UFOs and extraterrestrials, she contends, it is no wonder that people today dream about being abducted by aliens. Many past cultures also concocted myths to explain sleep paralysis, such as the tale of the incubus and succubus— “demons” who sexually violated their sleeping victims.
Blackmore discounts Mack’s claim that alien-designed “implants” provide proof of abduction, as no evidence has arisen proving that the objects are extraterrestrial. In fact, skeptics point out, a few pathology labs that have analyzed such objects have concluded that they were compacted pieces of human tissue. Moreover, alleged abductees’ “unexplained” physical scars could have entirely mundane causes—active and busy people often forget the origin of a scar, Blackmore and others contend. In the absence of extraordinary evidence to support claims of extraterrestrial kidnappings, Blackmore and other skeptical researchers maintain that hallucinations related to sleep disorders should be accepted as the most likely explanation of the abductee phenomenon.
“Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence,” skeptics often say. Without solid scientific proof of the existence of the paranormal, they argue, phenomena such as UFOs or alien abductions should be considered hallucinations or fantasies. Devotees of the paranormal, however, often maintain that the skeptics’ outright rejection of the possibility of the existence of paranormal phenomena is in itself unscientific. In the chapters: Is Belief in Paranormal Phenomena Unscientific? Is There Proof That Paranormal Phenomena Exist? Are UFOs Extraterrestrial Spacecraft? Does Life After Death Exist? Paranormal Phenomena: Opposing Viewpoints explores the fascinating debate between doubters of and believers in the supernatural.
