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Regret Is Alien to UFO Abductees

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Vixen
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« on: May 11, 2007, 01:19:15 am »

Regret Is Alien to UFO Abductees
Randy Dotinga  10.13.05 | 2:00 AM

 
Susan Clancy's book Abducted : How People Come to Believe They Were Kidnapped by Aliens. View Slideshow  Harvard University psychology researcher Susan Clancy thinks the chances are good that you know at least one person who claims to have been abducted by aliens. And she has another surprise: The people who tell these stories aren't candidates for the funny farm.

"They're not nuts," said Clancy, a postdoctoral researcher and author of a new book, the first to analyze the psychological underpinnings of abduction stories. "They're normal."

Not that Clancy gives any credence to the countless tales of **** aliens, UFO-borne medical examinations and intrusive probes of nether regions. No one, she said, has actually been kidnapped by extraterrestrials.

Instead, Clancy points to other causes including sleep hallucinations, innate suggestibility and a deeply human desire to explain the world. Pop culture plays a major role, too.

These theories have been around for a while, but Clancy weaves them together in Abducted: How People Come to Believe They Were Kidnapped by Aliens to create a new, overarching explanation for alien-abduction stories, one that draws heavily on her own interviews with about 50 alleged abductees.

And she throws in a new wrinkle: Despite the horrors that many abductees report enduring, including ****, they don't regret the experiences.

In each case, the abduction "transformed their lives, made them feel better about themselves and the world they were living in," said Clancy, a postdoctoral fellow and one of the few American academics who study alien-abduction stories as a way to understand how people develop "unusual beliefs."

It's impossible to know exactly how many Americans think they were abducted by aliens, although polls suggest about a quarter of us think extraterrestrials have dropped by the planet. While it's true that plenty of abductees are happy to tell their stories on the radio and the internet, Clancy said in an interview, others keep their stories to themselves because they fear being written off as crazy.

Regardless of whether they broadcast their stories to the world, "they're not more likely than people who don't believe to be psychiatrically impaired," she said.

In fact, the lives and occupations of abductees are often entirely ordinary. Clancy writes about her interviews with several schoolteachers, a dermatologist, a spa chef and a house cleaner. One was abducted while watching David Letterman's show in order to create "hybrid babies"; another told about aliens who wanted to "buy land in New Hampshire, stay here and breed."

But not all had extensive memories. In fact, only about 10 percent of people who think they were abducted actually have detailed stories of what happened. The rest simply consider bits of evidence -- a mysterious bruise, perhaps, or a vague feeling -- and figure they must have been whisked away by aliens.

Why would they do that, when other explanations would seemingly make more sense? Many people would look at a bruise and assume they innocuously injured themselves without knowing it. And the typical person wouldn't send something that fell out of his rear for analysis to see if it was a remnant of an anal probe. (One abductee did that, according to Clancy, and refused to believe the lab finding that it was actually a hemorrhoid.)


http://www.wired.com/culture/lifestyle/news/2005/10/69176
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Vixen
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« Reply #1 on: May 11, 2007, 01:20:31 am »

Regret Is Alien to UFO Abductees
Randy Dotinga  10.13.05 | 2:00 AM
Then there's the common assumption that even if extraterrestrials exist, they're too advanced to bother hobnobbing with lowly humans, let alone abducting and having sex with them. "I think there are aliens, but I don’t think you have to worry about them kidnapping you," said Seth Shostak, senior astronomer at the SETI Institute, which tries to find signs of alien life in space. But these explanations don't satisfy abductees, who tend to be imaginative people prone to two things -- "magical" thinking and suggestion, Clancy said. Indeed, she says her research has confirmed that abductees are more vulnerable to the implanting of false memories.

Hallucinations that appear during "sleep paralysis" -- a kind of twilight sleep that affects some people -- can act as a catalyst by creating delusions, Clancy said. When especially imaginative people grasp for an explanation, alien abduction -- now ingrained deeply in our culture -- comes to mind.

Not surprisingly, abductee advocates dismiss these theories. They say the false memory studies are irrelevant -- they have to do with memorizing words, not stories of UFOs -- and point to the complexity of the abduction stories themselves.

"The precision of the details is so astonishing, it takes your breath away," said Temple University history professor David Jacobs, an author who tracks abduction stories and says he's helped 140 abductees try to recover their memories through hypnosis. (He doesn't claim to have been kidnapped himself.)

Among other things, he said the book -- which "drips with condescension" -- ignores the phenomenon of multiple abductions, in which two or more people are kidnapped at once and support each other's stories. He also said it fails to note that abduction researchers have tried their best to find better explanations for the stories.

Why? Because they realize that "on the surface, it's extremely insane," Jacobs said. "We have looked at ... about 30 explanations for what this phenomenon is." But only one theory -- that the abductions are real -- holds up in most cases, he said.

And what of Clancy's theory that abductees develop their stories because they satisfy an inner need to put the world in order? Ridiculous, said Jacobs, who points out that abductees are ridiculed when they tell their stories.

"Everybody realizes the downside to this," he said. "The upside is zero, and the downside is 100 percent."

Not quite, Clancy argues. Just as religion gives people a chance to experience "the divine," alien abductions do, too. She writes: "Doesn't it make sense to wrap our angels and gods in space suits and repackage them as aliens?"

She said she asked abductees if they'd relive their experiences if given the chance to change the past. "Not one of them ever said, 'I wish it didn't happen.'"

http://www.wired.com/culture/lifestyle/news/2005/10/69176?currentPage=2
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« Reply #2 on: May 11, 2007, 01:22:14 am »

Tales of Abduction
Theta Pavis  04.12.99 | 3:00 AM

NEW YORK -- Attending the 1999 UFO Abduction Conference was a lot like watching a year's worth of The X-Files, crammed nonstop into one day. There were theories of alien-human hybridization, metallic implants shoved deep into human craniums, plans for world domination, and government cover-ups. The only thing missing was the spooky set. The conference took place in a Chelsea community center where fresh flowers adorned the registration table.
A calm collection of people bought a lot of books and a few glow-in-the-dark t-shirts as they chatted about physics, near-death experiences, cancer cures, what aliens might be up to, and the location of the nearest coffee shop.

"I've sort of come to Mecca here," said Richard Sitts, a retired electrical engineer who used to work for General Electric. "All the big names are here, and it's nice to rub elbows with them."


----


Cosmic cable access: A two-man crew from New York cable-access television grabbed several UFO luminaries for live interviews in the lobby.

On camera, Peter Robbins, a member of the Intruders Foundation staff and the author of a book about a famous UFO case in Britain, was asked why aliens might be interested in human reproduction.

"There are no reports of sexual organs on them," he said, speculating that the aliens may have moved into such a highly developed state that they've lost the knack for reproduction.

"Maybe it's a thinning of the gene pool," he said. "Their heads are so big and their bodies so small... and that's not healthy."


----


Easy listening: During one break, the soundman filled the auditorium with background music as attendees shuffled out for lunch. His choice of melody? The song "Calling Occupants of Interplanetary Craft Earth," a Carpenters cover of a mid-70s tune.


----


Self-promotion in the Space Age: One thing the speakers at the conference all shared was a sense of humor, poking fun at themselves and their detractors.

During a slide show, nuclear physicist and author Stanton Friedman snuck in a shot of himself holding some of his books, pausing to let the audience laugh.

Some of his videos, including "Flying Saucers Are Real" were on sale at his table. Friedman said the government's cover-up of aliens amounts to a "cosmic Watergate."


----


Regression on the high seas: Flyers for a Paranormal Cruise hosted by the Carnival cruise line were stacked up on tables at the conference. The cruise features Deloris Cannon, a past life regressionist and hypnotherapist, lectures and seminars with other "spirit communicators," plus "all the food you can eat 24 hours a day." A deluxe interior cabin for the cruise to Cozumel goes for US$899. [/color]


http://www.wired.com/culture/lifestyle/news/1999/04/19058
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« Reply #3 on: May 11, 2007, 01:24:38 am »



Regret Is Alien to UFO Abductees
10.13.05 | 2:00 AM
Drawing by Temple University professor David Jacobs of an alien abductee's memory of three aliens preparing to perform a procedure on him. The memory came during hypnosis.
Courtesy of David M. Jacobs
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« Reply #4 on: May 11, 2007, 01:26:19 am »



Drawing by Temple University professor David Jacobs of an alien abductee's memory of three aliens preparing to perform a procedure on him. The memory came during hypnosis.
Courtesy of David M. Jacobs

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« Reply #5 on: May 11, 2007, 01:27:53 am »

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