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Conspiracy Theory
Take Me Away: The Appeal of Alien Abduction
…Driving down an eerily dark, unfamiliar road, you suddenly become aware of disturbing noises and strange flashing lights in the distance. As these hauntings intensify, your uneasiness grows into a paralyzing fear that convinces you to pull over. Several heartbeats later, you regain consciousness and feel normal again, although you don’t recall passing out (or, really, anything about the immediate past). It is natural to dismiss the incident as mundane construction work or an overactive imagination—until you notice that the drive home took much longer than is feasible and discover a strong sensation of having unconsciously lost time. This bizarre detail, or perhaps the ensuing nightmares, merits visiting a psychologist, who, after several taped hypnosis sessions, confirms a barely articulated suspicion: you have survived an alien abduction. Whether the extraterrestrials were classic little green men, tall grays with large heads, or something more esoteric; whether they subjected you to the most painful medical examinations or revealed all of life’s secrets, your voice on the tape almost sounds convincing. Plus, it would certainly explain why you have never quite belonged—perhaps the other-worldly visitors destined you for an understanding far beyond the ordinary…
Out of habit and social custom, sensible individuals rarely take such stories seriously—we dismiss them as yet another episode of the X-Files or an excerpt of poorly-written science fiction. The more genre-appropriate and cliché the hallmarks of the abduction—complete with the media-perpetuated concepts of probes, the “beaming up” satellites, and the inexplicable alien desire to produce a human hybrid—the more likely one is to deny any possibility of the abduction being real. The unspoken assumption is that the abductees’ accounts can be explained by psychological inadequacy: a coping mechanism, a false memory, or a fantasy embellished for the purpose of gaining fame. Yet most narratives are presented by people in otherwise perfect mental health—can they, especially considering the remarkable parallels shared by different stories, be justifiably discounted as entirely artificial constructs of the psyche’s pathology? Neither a medical diagnosis nor the concrete truth of visitations (in the complete absence of evidence) gives a satisfactory reason why ordinary individuals are claiming contact with aliens. An exploration of this mystery promises crucial insights into our collective subconscious and into the way we sublimate fantasies and anxieties as a unified set of very concrete cultural images. It may also lead us to answer a more disturbing question—is our obsession with extraterrestrials and removal from human society symptomatic of a greater problem, a fundamental disillusionment with life on Earth?
Given the vastness of our universe, extraterrestrial life seems far more likely to exist than be conspicuously absent. As early as the sixth century B.C.E, mankind was raising objections to the apparent uniqueness of life on Earth—Pythagoreans believed in an inhabited moon, and later humanists assumed that every part of the heavens contained living creatures that differed from us physically but nevertheless believed in a Creator (Clancy, 85). Theories, or perhaps merely desperate hopes, of something greater or other than humans have undergone much iteration. Extraterrestrial visitations in many ways echo the fairy and demon sightings of pagan superstition. Yet the popularity and familiarity of all things extraterrestrial, which Neil Badmington half-jokingly summarizes as “alien love”, has only recently invaded Western culture, from literature (especially science fiction) to films to TV series such as The X-Files (Badmington, 3). The specific narrative of abduction by aliens did not emerge until the latter half of the 20th century, amidst a sudden increase in UFO sightings and rumors of conspiracy, whether of a malevolent alien presence or the government’s attempts to conceal the former. These stories, typically featuring a sense of “missing time” and a contact experience so shocking that it can only be recalled under hypnosis, show striking similarities. Regardless of their truth value, what is the reason for the ubiquity and appeal of these narratives in contemporary society?
The stories of self-proclaimed victims are rather diverse—some initiate their encounters and can recall them in their detail, others are levitated into spaceships while asleep and remember nothing. The experience ranges from invasive medical exams to enjoyable physical (sexual or otherwise) interaction to abstract feelings of enlightenment. Still, the various cases share crucial details—an initially paralyzing fear of the aliens, a discovery of their intent (which may intensify the fear or the desire for contact), and profound emotional consequences for the victim (Denzler, 32-34). Although images of little green men or “grays” with disproportionately large heads and weak bodies are the most pervasive, the invaders vary greatly in appearance. Figures in “diving suits” or “illuminated by blue light”, “hairy dwarves with glowing eyes”, “robot-like beings” (Hall, 464-466), and beautiful women with “nothing except for cherry-red pubic hair” (Clancy, 105) are but a few of the possibilities.
While these may appear contradictory and confusing, there exists an iconic prototype for most subsequent accounts: the 1961 abduction of Betty and Barney Hill, uncovered in hypnosis sessions three years later (Denzler, 48). The Hills claimed to have been pursued by a “bright ‘star-like’ object” on the highway, only to arrive home two hours later than they expected. As their psychologist helped them discover, during this time, they were supposedly taken aboard a spacecraft and underwent a bizarre medical examination conducted by gray big-eyed humanoids (Denzler, 49). After the sensational story spread through the media (and even appeared on television), the US saw an explosion of alien visitation reports (most likely due to the popularity of the Hills’ narrative and not a rise in abductions). The new stories often echoed the original but diverged on the aliens’ physique and the specifics of the contact: the extraterrestrials were now described as inserting hypodermic needles, taking tissue samples, harvesting reproductive cells to develop a human-alien hybrid, declaring their victim “the chosen one”, and physically engaging humans in many other ways (Hines, 194).
The veracity of these accounts was immediately questioned. Susan Clancy, who has investigated over 200 of them, notes that even the prototype is suspicious. For instance, in his interview, Barney comments, “Betty is trying to make me think I saw a flying saucer” and switches his description of the alien from a “friendly-looking…red headed Irishman” to “evil…like a German Nazi” (Clancy, 96-97). Later on, Betty reports, “[the examiner] tells me to take off my dress…[he] has a long needle in his hand…It’s bigger than any needle that I’ve ever seen…He says he just wants to put it in my navel, it’s just a simple test…No, it will hurt! Don’t do it, don’t do it!” (Clancy, 98). Although Betty claims that she has never encountered a similar scenario, she has a long-standing interest in extraterrestrials and admits to having just seen Invaders from Mars, in which the “female abductee was poked and prodded by the creatures, and needles were inserted into her neck and navel” (Clancy, 96). The implication is that Betty was simply an impressionable individual who projected her fantasies onto a more mundane experience and convinced Barney to play along. This suggestibility hypothesis is supported by another interesting fact: in the two years following the release of the NBC movie inspired by the Hills’ experience, the average number of abductions reported per year soared from two (fifty reports total between 1947 and 1976) to over a hundred (Clancy, 99).
Some authors ascribe this trend to the instant fame that accompanied declaring oneself an abductee (Denzler, 51). Others question the reliability and impartiality of the psychologists who helped the victims recall their traumatic experience. Several interview transcripts indeed suggest that doctors affected their patients’ narratives by emphasizing only the details that fit the “ideal” form of the abduction story and dismissing the more unusual cases. Yet this explanation is not satisfactory. A number of experts—most notably John Mack, a Harvard University professor and psychiatrist—firmly believed that their patients were telling the truth, having no psychological problems and nothing to gain from fabrications (Carroll, 3). Furthermore, the abductees would be unlikely to put their reputation on the line for a mere delusion, and “to believe that aliens really exist and are taking members of the human race on a daily basis is to risk being mocked as eccentric…to claim to have been abducted is to risk ridicule and charges of insanity” (Badmington, 34). Why would victims—in Clancy’s experience, more likely to be socially well-adjusted and mentally sound individuals that not—convince themselves of a horrifying tale of helpless paralysis and invasive medical procedures too traumatic to be processed consciously?
Despite this paradox and the testimony (albeit of a minority) of doctors, the prevalent view among experts is that abduction narratives stem from psychological problems rather than authentic events. One popular answer is that abductees acquire false memories, with or without the help of suggestive hypnosis, “driven by the desire to escape from ordinary self-awareness” and occasionally by sadomasochistic tendencies (Lynn, 155). A person seeking counseling for abduction trauma is already predisposed to believe in its reality, often down to the media-induced images of his kidnappers. Conversations with a sympathetic therapist and perhaps with a community of like-minded victims legitimize the patient’s narrative, providing “ambiguity reduction” and “positive reinforcement” until the “client adopts the role of the ‘victim’ or ‘abductee’” (Lynn, 152). The stories are thus an effective coping mechanism—Clancy adds that, much like faith and pseudoscience, they offer an “explanation and [a] relief of human misfortune” (Clancy, 144). In many cases, the singularity and distinction of the abduction helps victims justify real-life feelings of inadequacy. After prolonged sentiments to the effect of “I knew I felt different, but not why”, “[the victims] simply feel better because of what they believe” and may use the alien contact to justify everything from estrangement to sexual dysfunction (Clancy, 143).
Although Clancy does not explicitly label the narrativesfabrications or suggest that her interviewees have mental defects, her underlying assumption is of a medically explicable cause. Carl Jung also sees the “myth of things in the sky” as a projection of individuals’ earthly problems onto an external manifestation (Jung, 21). Overall, given the existential angst of modern society, the quest for a more substantial meaning to and a more compelling experience of life makes sense. Constructing a narrative of abduction by otherworldly beings is one way of fulfilling this goal, no matter how strange such a coping mechanism may be. Along similar lines, Carroll explains the resemblance between different stories as a manifestation of “shared cultural delusions”. Just as the accounts of mystics converge on several metaphors of enlightenment—the light at the end of dark tunnel, almost sexual ecstasy, nirvana—the narratives borrow the seemingly parallel elements from our collective subconscious.
According to Carroll, this attests to the “uniformity of human experience” rather than the authenticity of abduction—every culture understands fundamental metaphors like “birth, sex, and death” (Carroll, 4-5). The theory of archetypal stages of life serving as the hidden foundation for abduction narratives casts the stories as the latest allegory for gaining greater knowledge of and transcending the physical plane. However, it does not explain why aliens have become the chosen vessels of enlightenment only in the past fifty years when myths of “birth, sex, and death” date to the dawn of mankind. What justifies this particular choice in modernity? Are we supplementing generally accepted methods of transcendence in earlier times—namely spiritual (usually divine) revelation or inspiration through dreams—with a more concrete presence? Despite the considerable academic work on the explanations for alien abduction theories, there are few attempts to clarify why specifically aliens, as opposed to renewed religious devotion or parapsychological events like out-of-body experiences, are now the escapist fantasy of choice.
Of course, such questions and disagreements over suggestibility do not arise if one believes in the reality of alien visitations. The aforementioned John Mack presents the most radical and well-supported argument against dismissive explanations (especially ones involving pathology). Many experts, including Clancy, view him with a degree of condescension—for all his impressive credentials, the professor does claim that aliens are actually abducting people, which understandably disturbs conservative academics. Nevertheless, Mack is compelling because his approach is very skeptical—in an interview with PBS, he comments, “when I first encountered this phenomenon…I had very little place in my mind to take this seriously… I did everything I could to rule out other sources, or sexual abuse”. Only his intensive work with over a hundred abductees convinced him of the physical evidence and of “the consistency of the story, the sincerity…the power of feelings connected with this” until he “came very reluctantly to the conclusion that this was a true mystery” (NOVA, 1). When asked to whether the experience was real or purely psychological, Mack responds,
“It's both literally, physically happening…and it's also some kind of psychological, spiritual experience occurring and originating perhaps in another dimension…the phenomenon …asks us to [consider] realities that are not simply the literal physical world… from which our consciousness, our…learning processes over the past several hundred years have closed us off.” (NOVA, 2).
He thus suggests that the experience is far more profound than our either/or mentalities will allow—it is a deeply personal but nevertheless real phenomenon that requires considerable further investigation before we can even begin to understand it. This willingness to fully trust the abductees is a far more promising investigatory standpoint than dismissing them as insane. Regardless of their truth, what do the narratives themselves suggest about the place of the abduction experience in a new era of technology and skepticism?
Many narratives converge on a general uneasiness, even an unwillingness to be contacted. For example, Laura and Becky, both abductees from a young age, describe vague but nightmarish experiences that began in childhood and progressed to unpleasant sexual encounters with aliens. After seeking counseling, both feel a sense of reward and relief—Laura writes, “I am leading two lives, one that I share with everyone and the other one that involves abductions…. The grays are not spirit guides…[but] I have broken through their secrecy and now I feel I have hope” (ICAR, 7). Becky adds, “at the age of 42, the journey is still ongoing. I have chosen to continue with the hypnosis [and] believe [in] knowing the truth… I don’t like being a part of this phenomenon…. I would love to find a reasonable alternate explanation” (ICAR, 5). For these two women, the terror and disgust becomes a forced learning experience. However, Thomas Rymer, an abductee who believes his young daughter is also being taken by aliens, is not reassured: “I don’t want this experience in my life. It has no place or purpose. What I’ve learned from this strange intervention into my life, I’ve learned in spite—not because—of it” (Rymer, 1). Rymer has never undergone hypnosis or felt drawn to the paranormal—he repeatedly assures readers of his mental health and emphasizes that the life of an abductee is “lonely, uncomfortable, and sometimes terrifying” (Rymer, 5). But even he mentions hearing a “voice in [his] head saying something like, ‘Everything will be okay. You’ll be all right’” throughout the encounters (Rymer, 2). The encouraging reaction provided by his inner self is a stark contrast to his overwhelmingly negative conscious perception. The tension between the two suggests that the abduction phenomenon is a much darker and more powerful experience than mere fantasy.
Since many psychologists appear to highlight the optimistic narratives, it is important to note that other, non-mainstream reports—of extreme trauma or unprecedented imagery—do exist. Whitely Strieber, for example, mentions several unusual comments in documented cases, such as "I knew they were aliens because they had flowers and plants growing out of their heads” or "All of a sudden the little man turned into a bird of paradise" (Strieber, 3). Mack states that he examines each account with the same neutrality; to his knowledge, positive reports are indeed prevalent (NOVA, 6). Some are closer to dreams than traumas: for instance, the climax of Travis Walton’s eerie story of meeting a UFO inhabitant in a deep wood is merely this: “He'd led me through that doorway… he looked friendly...he gestured and smiled but there were no words” (MUFON, 4). The emotional extremes have similar plot elements but much more inspirational and thought-provoking conclusions. Contrasting stories of alien rape, one of Mack’s patients describes a sexual encounter as “different than sex with a human being…more like having spiritual sex…whoever did this cared enough about me …that they came and helped me”; another as “better than the best sex or the best anything you could have, better than fly-fishing for a week” (Badmington, 75). In a more spiritual sense, subjects like Catherine report sensing “energy outlines” and dimensions far beyond “Earth space/time” or echo the gist of many online posts of UFO sightings: “I was just one of millions of humans who saw something unexplained in the sky on night [but] I would like to think that it was something special” (MUFON).