The Mammoth Encyclopedia of Extraterrestrial Encounters

by Story, Ronald

  The work of Elizabeth Loftus and others over the past decade has demonstrated that the human memory works not like a tape recorder but more like the village storyteller—i.e., it is both creative and recreative. We can and we do easily forget. We blur, shape, erase, and change details of the events in our past. Many people walk around daily with heads full of “fake memories.” The unreliability of “eyewitness testimony” is not only legendary but well documented.

  All of this is further complicated and compounded by the impact of suggestions provided by the hypnotist—supposedly “regressing” the subject—plus the social demand characteristics of the typical hypnotic situation. Under such conditions, there is little wonder that the resulting “recall” on the part of the regressee bears no resemblance to the truth. In fact, the regressee often does not know what the truth is.

  Confabulation shows up without fail in nearly every context in which hypnosis is employed, including the forensic area. Thus it is not surprising that most states have no legal precedents on the use of hypnotic testimony. Furthermore, many state courts have begun to limit testimony from hypnotized witnesses or to follow the guidelines laid down by the American Medical Association in 1985 to assure that witnesses’ memories are not contaminated by the hypnosis itself. For not only do we translate beliefs into memories when we are wide awake, but in the case of hypnotized witnesses with few specific memories, the hypnotist may unwittingly suggest memories and create a witness with a number of crucial and vivid recollections of events that never happened, i.e., pseudo-memories. It may turn out that the recent Supreme Court decision allowing the individual states limited use of hypnotically aided testimony may not be in the best interests of those who seek the truth. Even in their decision the judges recognized that hypnosis may often produce incorrect recollections and unreliable testimony.

  There have also been a number of clinical and experimental demonstrations of the creation of pseudo-memories that have subsequently come to be believed as veridical. Hilgard (1981) implanted a false memory of an experience connected with a bank robbery that never occurred. His subject found the experience so vivid that he was able to select from a series of photographs a picture of the man he thought had committed the robbery. At another time, Hilgard deliberately assigned two concurrent—though spatially different—life experiences to the same person and regressed him at separate times to that date. The individual subsequently gave very accurate accounts of both experiences, so that anyone believing in reincarnation who reviewed the two accounts would conclude the man really had lived the two assigned lives.

  In a number of other experiments designed to measure eyewitness reliability, Loftus (1979) found that details supplied by others invariably contaminated the memory of the eyewitness. People’s hair changed color, “stop” signs became “yield” signs, yellow convertibles turned to red sedans, the left side of the street became the right side, and so on. The results of these studies led her to conclude, “It may well be that the legal notion of an independent recollection is a psychological impossibility.” As for hypnosis, she says: “There’s no way even the most sophisticated hypnotist can tell the difference between a memory that is real and one that’s created. If a person is hypnotized and highly suggestible and false information is implanted in his mind, it may get embedded even more strongly. One psychologist tried to use a polygraph to distinguish between real and phony memory, but it didn’t work. Once someone has constructed a memory, he comes to believe it himself.”

  CUEING

  Without a doubt, inadvertent cueing also plays a major role in UFOabduction fantasies. The hypnotist unintentionally gives away to the person being regressed exactly what response is wanted. This was most clearly shown in an experimental study of hypnotic age regression by R. M. True in 1949. He found that 92 percent of his subjects regressed to the day of their tenth birthday, and could accurately recall the day of the week on which it fell. He also found the same thing for 84 percent of his subjects for their fourth birthday. Other investigators, however, were unable to duplicate True’s findings. When True was questioned by Martin Orne about his experiment, he discovered that the editors of Science, where his report had appeared, altered his procedure section without his prior consent. True, Orne discovered, had inadvertently cued his subjects by following the unusual technique of asking them, “Is it Monday? Is it Tuesday? Is it Wednesday?” etc., and he monitored their responses by using a perpetual desk calendar in full view of all his subjects. Further evidence of the prevalence and importance of such cueing came from a study by O’ Connell, Shor, and Orne (1970). They found that in an existing group of four-year-olds, not a single one knew what day of the week it was. The reincarnation literature is also replete with examples of such inadvertent cueing. Ian Wilson (1981), for example, has shown that hypnotically elicited reports of being reincarnated vary as a direct function of the hypnotist’s belief about reincarnation. Finally, Laurence, Nadon, Nogrady, and Perry (1986) have shown that pseudo-memories were elicited also by inadvertent cueing in the use of hypnosis by the police.

  As for advertent, or deliberate, cueing, one of my own studies offers a clear example. Sixty undergraduates divided into three groups of twenty each were hypnotized and age-regressed to previous lifetimes. Before each hypnosis session, however, suggestions very favorable to and supportive of pastlife and reincarnation beliefs were given to one group; neutral and noncommittal statements about past lives were given to the second group; and skeptical and derogatory statements about past lives were given to the third group. The results clearly showed the effects of these cues and suggestions. Subjects in the first group showed the most pastlife regressions and the most pastlife productions; subjects in the third group showed the least. (Baker 1982)

  Regression subjects take cues as to how they are to respond from the person doing the regressions and asking the questions. If the hypnotist is a believer in UFO abductions, the odds are heavily in favor of him eliciting UFO-abductee stories from his volunteers.

  FANTASY-PRONE

  PERSONALITIES AND

  PSYCHOLOGICAL NEEDS

  “Assuming that all you have said thus far is true,” the skeptical observer might ask, “why would hundreds of ordinary, mild-mannered, unassuming citizens suddenly go off the deep end and turn up with cases of amnesia and then, when under hypnosis, all report nearly identical experiences?” First, the abductees are not as numerous as we are led to believe; and, second, even though bestselling UFOabduction authors Whitley Strieber and Budd Hopkins go to great lengths to emphasize the diversity of the people who report these events, they are much more alike than these taxonomists declare. In an afterword to Hopkins’s Missing Time, a psychologist named Aphrodite Clamar raises exactly this question and then adds, “All of these people seem quite ordinary in the psychological sense—although they have not been subjected to the kind of psychological testing that might provide a deeper understanding of their personalities.” (emphasis added). And herein lies the problem. If these abductees were given this sort of intensive diagnostic testing, it is highly likely that many similarities would emerge—particularly an unusual personality pattern that Wilson and Barber (1983) have categorized as “fantasy-prone.” In an important but much neglected article, they report in some detail their discovery of a group of excellent hypnotic subjects with unusual fantasy abilities. In their words:

  Although this study provided a broader understanding of the kind of life experiences that may underlie the ability to be an excellent hypnotic subject, it has also led to a serendipitous finding that has wide implication for all of psychology—it has shown that there exists a small group of individuals (possibly 4% of the population) who fantasize a large part of the time, who typically “see,” “hear,” “smell,” and “touch” and fully experience what they fantasize; and who can be labeled fantasy-prone personalities. (Wilson and Barber, 1983)

  Wilson and Barber also stress that such individuals experience a reduction in orientation to time, p
lace, and person that is characteristic of hypnosis or trance during their daily lives whenever they are deeply involved in a fantasy. They also have experiences during their daily ongoing lives that resemble the classical hypnotic phenomena. In other words, the behavior we would normally call “hypnotic” is exhibited by these fantasy-prone types (FPs) all the time. In Wilson and Barber’s words: “When we give them ‘hypnotic suggestions,’ such as suggestions for visual and auditory hallucinations, negative hallucinations, age regression, limb rigidity, anesthesia, and sensory hallucinations, we are asking them to do for us the kind of thing they can do independently of us in their daily lives.”

  The reason we do not run into these types more often is that they have learned long ago to be highly secretive and private about their fantasy lives. Whenever the FPs do encounter a hypnosis situation it provides them with a social situation in which they are encouraged to do, and are rewarded for doing, what they usually do only in secrecy and in private. Wilson and Barber also emphasize that regression and the reliving of previous experiences is something that virtually all the FPs do naturally in their daily lives. When they recall the past, they relive it to a surprisingly vivid extent, and they all have vivid memories of their experiences extending back to their early years.

  Fantasy-prone individuals also show up as mediums, psychics, and religious visionaries. They are also the ones who have many realistic “out-of-body” experiences and prototypic “near-death” experiences.

  In spite of the fact that many such extreme types show FP characteristics, the overwhelming majority of FPs fall within the broad range of “normal functioning.” It is totally inappropriate to apply a psychiatric diagnosis to them. In Wilson and Barber’s words: “It needs to be strongly emphasized that our subjects with a propensity for hallucinations are as well adjusted as our comparison group or the average person. It appears that the life experiences and skill developments that underlie the ability of hallucinatory fantasy are more or less independent of the kinds of life experience that leads to pathology.” In general, FPs are “normal” people who function as well as others and who are as well adjusted, competent, and satisfied or dissatisfied as everyone else.

  Anyone familiar with the the fantasy-prone personality who reads Whitley Strieber’s book Communion will experience an immediate shock of recognition. Strieber is a classic example of the genre: he is easily hypnotized; he is amnesiac; he has vivid memories of his early life, body immobility and rigidity, a very religious background, a very active fantasy life (he is a writer of occult and highly imaginative novels); he has unusually strong sensory experiences—particularly smells and sounds—and vivid dreams. But even more remarkable are the correspondences between Strieber’s alien encounters and the typical hypnopompic hallucinations to be discussed shortly.

  It is perfectly clear, therefore, why most of the UFO abductees, when given cursory examinations by psychiatrists and psychologists, would turn out to be ordinary, normal citizens as sane as themselves. It is also evident why the elaborate fantasies woven in fine cloth from the now universally familiar UFOabduction fable—a fable known to every man, woman, and child newspaper reader or movie-goer in the nation—would have so much in common, so much consistency in the telling. Any one of us, if asked to pretend that he had been kidnapped by aliens from outer space or another dimension, would make up a story that would vary little, either in its details or in the supposed motives of the abductors, from the stories told by any and all of the kidnap victims reported by Hopkins. As for the close encounters of the third kind and conversations with the little gray aliens described in Communion and Intruders, again, our imaginative tales would be remarkably similar in plot, dialogue, description, and characterization. The means of transportation would be saucer-shaped; the aliens would be small, humanoid, two-eyed, and gray, white, or tan. The purpose of their visits would be: (1) to save our planet; (2) to find a better home for themselves; (3) to end nuclear war and the threat we pose to the peaceful life in the rest of galaxy; (4) to bring us knowledge and enlightenment; and (5) to increase their knowledge and understanding of other forms of intelligent life. In fact, the fantasy-prone abductees’ stories would be much more credible if some of them, at least, reported the aliens as eight-foot-tall, red-striped octapeds riding bicycles and intent upon eating us for dessert.

  Finally, what would or could motivate even the FPs to concoct such outlandish and absurd tales that without fail draw much unwelcome attention and notoriety? What sort of psychological motives and needs would underlie such fabrications? Perhaps the best answer to this question is the one provided by the author-photographer Douglas Curran. Traveling from British Columbia down the West Coast and circumscribing the United States along a counterclockwise route, Curran spent more than two years questioning ordinary people about outer space. Curran writes:

  On my travels across the continent I never had to wait too long for someone to tell me about his or her UFO experience, whether I was chatting with a farmer in Kansas, Ruth Norman at the Unarius Foundation, or a cafe owner in Florida. What continually struck me in talking with these people was how positive and ultimately life-giving a force was their belief in outer space. Their belief reaffirmed the essential fact of human existence: the need for order and hope. It is this that establishes them—and me—in the continuity of human experience. It brought to me a greater understanding of Oscar Wilde’s observation. “We are all lying in the gutter—but some of us are looking at the stars.”

  Jung (1969), in his study of flying saucers, first published in 1957, argues that the saucer represents an archetype of order, wholeness, deliverance, and salvation—a symbol manifested in other cultures as a sun wheel or magic circle. Further in his essay, Jung compares the spacemen aboard the flying saucers to the angelic messengers of earlier times who brought messages of hope and salvation—the theme emphasized in Strieber’s Communion. Curran also observes that the spiritual message conveyed by the aliens is, recognizably, our own. None of the aliens Curran’s contactees talked about advocated any moral or metaphysical belief that was not firmly rooted in the Judeo-Christian tradition. As Curran says, “Every single flying saucer group I encountered in my travels incorporated Jesus Christ into the hierarchy of its belief system.” Many theorists have long recognized that whenever world events prove to be psychologically destabilizing, men turn to religion as their only hope. Jung, again, in his 1957 essay, wrote: “In the threatening situation of the world today, when people are beginning to see that everything is at stake, the projection-creating fantasy soars beyond the realm of earthly organization and powers into the heavens, into interstellar space, where the rulers of human fate, the gods, once had their abode in the planets.”

  The beauty and power of Curran’s portraits of hundreds of true UFO believers lies in his sympathetic understanding of their fears and frailties. As psychologists are well aware, our religions are not so much systems of objective truths about the universe as they are collections of subjective statements about humanity’s hopes and fears. The true believers interviewed by Curran are all around us. Over the years I have encountered several. One particularly memorable and poignant case was that of a federal prisoner who said he could leave his body at will and sincerely believed it. Every weekend he would go home to visit his family, while his physical body stayed behind in his cell. Then there was the female psychic from the planet Xenon who could turn electric lights on and off at will, especially traffic signals. Proof of her powers? If she drove up to a red light she would concentrate on it intently for thirty to forty seconds and then, invariably, it would turn green!

  HYPNAGOGIC AND HYPNOPOMPIC HALLUCINATIONS

  Another common yet little publicized and rarely discussed phenomenon is that of hypnagogic (when falling asleep) and hypnopompic (when waking up) hallucinations. These phenomena, often referred to as “waking dreams,” find the individual suddenly awake, but paralyzed, unable to move, and most often encountering a “ghost.” The typical report goes
somewhat as follows: “I went to bed and then sometime near morning something woke me up. I opened my eyes and found myself wide awake but unable to move. There, standing at the foot of my bed was my mother, wearing her favorite dress—the one we buried her in. She stood there looking at me and smiling and then she said: ‘Don’t worry about me, Doris, I’m at peace at last. I just want you and the children to be happy.’” Well, what happened next? “Nothing, she slowly faded away.” What did you do then? “Nothing, I just closed my eyes and went back to sleep.”

  There are always a number of characteristic clues that indicate a hypnagogic or hypnopompic hallucination. First, it always occurs before or after falling asleep. Second, one is paralyzed or has difficulty in moving; or, contrarily, one may float out of one’s body and have an out-of-body experience. Third, the hallucination is unusually bizarre; i.e., one sees ghosts, aliens, monsters, and such. Fourth, after the hallucination is over, the hallucinator typically goes back to sleep. And, fifth, the hallucinator is unalterably convinced of the “reality” of the entire experience.

  Strieber’s Communion provides a classic textbook description of a hypnopompic hallucination, complete with the awakening from a sound sleep, the strong sense of reality and of being awake, the paralysis (due to the fact that the body’s neural circuits keep our muscles relaxed and help preserve our sleep), and the encounter with strange beings. Following the encounter, instead of jumping out of bed and going in search of the strangers he has seen, Strieber typically goes back to sleep. He even reports that the burglar alarm was still working—proof again that the intruders were mental rather than physical. Strieber also reports an occasion when he awakens and believes that the roof of his house is on fire and that the aliens are threatening his family. Yet his only response to this was to go peacefully back to sleep. Again, clear evidence of a hypnopompic dream. Strieber, of course, is convinced of the reality of these experiences. This too is to be expected. If he was not convinced of their reality, then the experience would not be hypnopompic or hallucinatory.