On alien abduction, grays, and consciousness

[ubavontuba]

Hello,

I'm new to this part of the forum and thought it might be fun to poke a stick into the hornet's nest (so to speak).

Lot's of folks have alien abduction stories to tell, and lots of these stories have unsettling similarities. Some of these similarities are the apparent ability of the aliens to go through walls at will, they have big, dark eyes, they are gray, and whatnot. I was wondering if anyone had any stories they'd like to share?

Mostly, I'm interested in determining the activities of the abductees just prior to and after their experiences. The reason why is that I've developed a personal hypothesis that the human mind may have a form of "hard-wired" instinctual reaction to stress. That being that brain stress might trigger primitive danger signals that the higher brain (in dream-state), might interpret as a stranger-danger threat.

I'm wondering if this might tend to cause the brain to dream certain dreams that might be shared in similar fashion by many people. Something so basic that it's a fear-response, common denominator.

These shared dreams have many models in psychology. For instance, many people dream of being naked in public, or of falling, or of flying. Many of these dreams can have lots of shared characteristics and details.

Paralysis seems to be a common experience in these stories. As we know, sleep paralysis is common and normal. Therefore (supposing this is a dream experience), I'm wondering if any sleepwalkers that tend not to be paralyzed by sleep have tried to fight off the abductors. If so, what was the result? Were you able to act? Were there any witnesses?

Also, besides the aliens being gray, what can you say about color overall during the abduction? Was the ship gray? Were the rooms gray? Were your clothes gray? Were their clothes (if any) gray?

The reason I ask is that people mostly dream in shades of gray, but often have false memories of color for familiar objects. Thinking carefully about the things you saw during your abductions, were the things that were unfamiliar to you mostly gray or metalic in color? Are the details of these unfamiliar rooms and equipment harder to remember than the color and texture of the clothes you were wearing?

I look forward to reading your responses.

 

[matthyaouw]

I've heard as a phenomenon called sleep paralysis which has been used to explain a number of "abductions". A person will wake up and find themselves unable to move, and this is often accompanied by a feeling of a heavy weight on the chest, and hallucinations, and a feeling of a presence in the room.

http://www.stanford.edu/~dement/paralysis.html

Sounds a lot like an abduction story eh?

 

[ubavontuba]

matthyaouw,

Yeah, that's pretty much what I'm talking about.

 

[PIT2]

Here is a story about abductions and sleep paralysis:

A careful look at the existing data is enlightening. During the first two decades of research when the very concept of a UFO abduction was formed, all of the central cases involved people who were outside their homes when they were taken. None were lying paralyzed and half asleep in their bedrooms. Instead they were driving automobiles, fishing, hunting, making their rounds as police officers, even, in one famous case, driving a tractor on a farm. So where do nighttime sleep paralysis experiences come into the data pool of these crucially important first decades of abduction research? Nowhere. There are none.

With that undeniable fact having demolished its thesis, how can the august New York Times then claim that science has satisfactorily "explained" the abduction phenomenon? Easily. By simply abandoning the rigors of science and taking up the baseless deceptions of Junk Science.

And as if that alone weren't enough to sink the Times explanation, in many accounts - one thinks of the Betty and Barney Hill case, the Hickson-Parker dual abduction at Pascagoula and the Travis Walton case, among others - there were two or more individuals simultaneously involved in the abduction. And none were home, lying paralyzed, side-by-side, in bed.


http://www.intrudersfoundation.org/junk_science_paralysis.html

 

[chief]

Carl Sagan's Demon Haunted World had some good information on this.

 

[ubavontuba]

PIT2,

That was interesting. However, testimony alone is highly suspect in these cases. What's needed is some solid forensic science. Has anyone ever lifted alien DNA from an abductee? As far as I've read, the aliens don't usually wear HazMat suits, so shouldn't their DNA, skin oils and whatnot become bound to the abductees and their articles of clothing?

It's commonly surmised that one of the reasons we don't hear the conscious abduction stories anymore is for the very reason that they are easily debunked for the lack of such telltale physical evidence.

However, I would gladly expand my interest to recent conscious abductions. Anyone have any good stories to tell?

 

[PIT2]

PIT2,

That was interesting. However, testimony alone is highly suspect in these cases. What's needed is some solid forensic science. Has anyone ever lifted alien DNA from an abductee? As far as I've read, the aliens don't usually wear HazMat suits, so shouldn't their DNA, skin oils and whatnot become bound to the abductees and their articles of clothing?

It's commonly surmised that one of the reasons we don't hear the conscious abduction stories anymore is for the very reason that they are easily debunked for the lack of such telltale physical evidence.

However, I would gladly expand my interest to recent conscious abductions. Anyone have any good stories to tell?

Ur right, they are unproven, but it remains true that in the pool of abduction accounts there is a large number that do not match sleep paralysis and thus SP alone cannot explain the phenomenom.

Here are some videos of people telling their stories:

1. http://play.rbn.com/?url=usanet/usanet/g2demand/scifi/diaries/intro_80k.rm&proto=rtsp
2. http://play.rbn.com/?url=usanet/usanet/g2demand/scifi/diaries/phillip_80k.rm&proto=rtsp
3. http://play.rbn.com/?url=usanet/usanet/g2demand/scifi/diaries/kathy_80k.rm&proto=rtsp
4. http://play.rbn.com/?url=usanet/usanet/g2demand/scifi/diaries/bill_80k.rm&proto=rtsp
5. http://play.rbn.com/?url=usanet/usanet/g2demand/scifi/diaries/michael_80k.rm&proto=rtsp
6. http://play.rbn.com/?url=usanet/usanet/g2demand/scifi/diaries/landi_80k.rm&proto=rtsp
7. http://play.rbn.com/?url=usanet/usanet/g2demand/scifi/diaries/sandy_80k.rm&proto=rtsp

U will notice that many of them do seem to fit SP, but i believe there are a few that happened while they were awake. Of course the explanation for those could be false memories or something else.

 

[PIT2]

One recent abduction account with multiple witnesses that didnt know each other and were driving on the road, is the Kelly Cahill abduction in Australia 1994:

We crossed over the road. We jumped the gutter, and we walked up. . .I looked down the road, and there was another car-a light blue car-pulled up. Some people got out and went across the road. I only thought it was two, but it was actually three, but I didn' t pay much attention. They must have been at least a hundred meters down the road from us. When you've got something like that in front of you, and you' we got people down the road . . . well, I was more interested in what was in front of me than them, so I didn't get any detail. . . .

I'm standing there, and we are looking at this thing [for about 3O seconds]. All of a sudden there is a black figure on the field. It's about seven foot tall. . . . I knew it was really tall at the time.

For Kelly this was quite startling. She expected to see a human being, but this was not human. Kelly tried to use thought as a means of communication. She was immediately overwhelmed with fear. Its eyes seemed to turn to a red fire.

At the distance of about 150 meters, they possessed an extraordinary luminosity .

It started coming towards us, only slowly, and it had big red eyes. It sounds stupid, but it had great big round red eyes, like huge flies' eyes and they were red like, not like a reflection of red, but like burning red, like . . . fluorescent stop lights, I suppose, that sort of real burning red.

All of a sudden I started screaming out [to my husbands. . . . Now this has really got me baffled because of the fact that a human being doesn't know this, so I don't even know how I came out with this, but I started saying, "They've got no souls." And then I started screaming, "THEY'VE GOT NO SOULS!" Then all of a sudden there were heaps of them in the field, not just one, a whole heap of them, and they started coming towards us . . . faster than a man could run, and they were gliding off the ground. They got halfway across the field.

They split up. Some of them went towards the other people [two or three, Kelly thought]. and some of them [the rest] came towards us. Kelly found herself screaming to the other people down the road, "They're evil! They're going to kill us!"

The next thing I know, I felt this oomph! in my stomach, right across here like I was winded, but I was thrown right back, and I was on my back on the ground. I sat up, with my head between my knees. Here, I'm trying to stay conscious. I couldn't see. My eyes. . . . It was all black.

...

http://www.theozfiles.com/kelly_cahill.html

Here is an image of what happened:

http://img96.imageshack.us/img96/6122/all6ic.jpg

There is a documentary u can download called 'Oz encounters', in which her story is shown and done with computer animations. In the same documentary there is also a woman who saw a UFO and an alien with 3 of her friends when they stopped their car somewhere. Her husband didnt believe her until a few months later when their son said aliens came in his room and they decided to look out of the window, and saw the same craft that the woman had seen earlier flying over the rooftops. So this is another one with multiple witnesses who weren't sleeping.

 

[SGT]

From the Skeptic's ictionary:

The alien abduction story that seems to have started the cult beliefs about alien visitation and experimentation is the Betty and Barney Hill story. The Hills claim to have been abducted by aliens on September 19, 1961. Betty first "remembered" her abduction during a series of nightmares, which she told Barney about. Barney claims the aliens took a sample of his sperm. Betty claims they stuck a needle in her belly button. She took people out to an alien landing spot, but only she could see the aliens and their craft. The Hills recalled most of their story under hypnosis a few years after the abduction. Barney Hill reported that the aliens had "wraparound eyes," a rather unusual feature. However, twelve days earlier an episode of "The Outer Limits" featured just such an alien being (Kottmeyer). According to Robert Schaeffer, "we can find all the major elements of contemporary UFO abductions in a 1930 comic adventure, Buck Rogers in the 25th Century."

Some of the stories about alien abductions are from people wanting attention. Others are remembered through hypnosis, like the Hills case. This may be what is called a false memory syndrome: the person is led by the therapeut to create a memory of something that never happened.
It is possible that some alien abductions can be real, but why no abductee was able to take with him/her any object from the alien ship, like an ashtray or a piece of toilet paper?

 

[PIT2]

PIT2,

Has anyone ever lifted alien DNA from an abductee? As far as I've read, the aliens don't usually wear HazMat suits, so shouldn't their DNA, skin oils and whatnot become bound to the abductees and their articles of clothing?

Actually there is this one case where DNA was found(in the form of a hair) after a man was sexually assaulted by two weird females.

. . . mitochondrial DNA analysis of the hair shaft from
a reportedly tall, blonde alien female shows that she is
biologically close to normal human genetics, but of an
unusual racial type. . . . One might predict further that
her DNA should match closely that of racial types in
Finland, Iceland, or Scandinavia, given the long, thin
blonde hair as direct evidence, plus her tall stature and
fair skin from eyewitness testimony, but . . . that seems
not to be the case.

. . . The blonde hair provides for a strange and
unusual DNA sequence, showing five consistent substitutions
from a human consensus (present in all cloned
sequences), which could not easily have come from
anyone else in the Sydney area except by the rarest of
chances; is not apparently due to any sort of laboratory
contamination; and is found only in a few other people
throughout the whole world.

What implications might these comparisons have
for possible authenticity of the alien hair sample as
collected by the young man in Sydney in 1992? While
it would not be impossible for him to have had sexual
contact with some fair-skinned, nearly albino female
from the Sydney area, such an explanation is ruled out
by the DNA evidence, which fits only a Chinese Mongoloid
as a donor of the hair. Furthermore, while it
might be possible to find a few Chinese in Sydney with
the same DNA as seen in just 4% of Taiwanese women,
it would not be plausible to find a Chinese woman here
with thin, almost clear hair, having the same rare DNA.
Finally, that thin blonde hair could not plausibly represent
a chemically-bleached Chinese (including the root),
because then it’s DNA could not easily have been
extracted.

The most probable donor of the hair must therefore
be as the young man claims: a tall blonde female who
does not need much color in her hair or skin as a form
of protection against the sun, perhaps because she does
not require it. Could this young man really have provided,
by chance, a hair sample which contains DNA
from one of the rarest human lineages known . . . that
lies further from the mainstream than any other except
for African Pygmies and aboriginals?

http://www.cufos.org/strange_evidence.pdf

 

[ubavontuba]

The most probable donor of the hair must therefore
be as the young man claims: a tall blonde female who
does not need much color in her hair...

Or, it was an older woman that naturally lost her hair color! Who wants to admit they spent an evening with an aging hooker!?

 

[Chronos]

Hello,

I'm new to this part of the forum and thought it might be fun to poke a stick into the hornet's nest (so to speak).

Lot's of folks have alien abduction stories to tell, and lots of these stories have unsettling similarities. Some of these similarities are the apparent ability of the aliens to go through walls at will, they have big, dark eyes, they are gray, and whatnot. I was wondering if anyone had any stories they'd like to share?

Mostly, I'm interested in determining the activities of the abductees just prior to and after their experiences. The reason why is that I've developed a personal hypothesis that the human mind may have a form of "hard-wired" instinctual reaction to stress. That being that brain stress might trigger primitive danger signals that the higher brain (in dream-state), might interpret as a stranger-danger threat.

I'm wondering if this might tend to cause the brain to dream certain dreams that might be shared in similar fashion by many people. Something so basic that it's a fear-response, common denominator.

These shared dreams have many models in psychology. For instance, many people dream of being naked in public, or of falling, or of flying. Many of these dreams can have lots of shared characteristics and details.

Paralysis seems to be a common experience in these stories. As we know, sleep paralysis is common and normal. Therefore (supposing this is a dream experience), I'm wondering if any sleepwalkers that tend not to be paralyzed by sleep have tried to fight off the abductors. If so, what was the result? Were you able to act? Were there any witnesses?

Also, besides the aliens being gray, what can you say about color overall during the abduction? Was the ship gray? Were the rooms gray? Were your clothes gray? Were their clothes (if any) gray?

The reason I ask is that people mostly dream in shades of gray, but often have false memories of color for familiar objects. Thinking carefully about the things you saw during your abductions, were the things that were unfamiliar to you mostly gray or metalic in color? Are the details of these unfamiliar rooms and equipment harder to remember than the color and texture of the clothes you were wearing?

I look forward to reading your responses.

Personally, I think you make an excellent point. Some people, due to injury or duress, have difficulty distinguishing between dream states and reality. I see a correlation between the descriptions of 'greys' and human infants that is difficult to ignore. The sense of attachment to them in nearly all accounts is striking.

 

[PIT2]

Who knows, maybe they (aliens) are the haunting shame of aging hookers' infants relived during SP.

 

[zoobyshoe]

I was abducted in broad daylight from a McDonalds.

This was in Minnesota about 25 years ago. I got up from a nap one day and walked down to a McDonalds where I always went because all my friends hung out there. As I was standing in line to get my coffee I suddenly fell backwards for no apparent reason right onto the guy who was standing behind me. A second later I was lying on my back, back in my bed at home. But I was lying on top of the guy I had fallen onto at the MCDonalds. He had my arms pinned and he was sniggering in my ear. I was pretty much paralyzed. There was someone else in the room, too. This guy paced back and forth slowly, not looking at me or the other guy, seeming to be waiting for something to happen. He looked depressed. The guy holding me down kept sniggering in my ear and seemed to be enjoying the fact I was paralyzed. I was completely terrified, to say the least, and couldn't even struggle.

This went on only a short time, though, maybe a quarter minute at most, and then they both suddenly evaporated. I was there alone lying on my bed. I could move now, but was completely upset and in shock about what had just happened. It had all been completely vivid in all detail: I could see, hear and feel them perfectly clearly while it was going on.

I didn't learn about the phenomenon of sleep paralysis until quite a few years later, and used to just think of the incident as some kind of nightmare. Anyway, I know why "abductees" are loathe to assume they are any kind of hallucination: they seem too vivid. We have the false preconception that hallucinations are supposed to be unrealistic somehow, have some dreamlike insubstantiality that gives them away as hallucinations, but they don't. What was especially peculiar was the "set up": the part where I hallucinated walking all the way to the McDonald's when I was actually still at home in bed. I suppose I really wanted to go down there but got caught in some "interzone" where my neurotransmitters hadn't all shifted back into waking mode allowing me to hallucinate I was doing what I wanted to do.

Had it been two grey alien looking things instead of two humans, I'm sure I'd have been seriously considering that I'd been abducted by space aliens.

 

[SGT]

...
Had it been two grey alien looking things instead of two humans, I'm sure I'd have been seriously considering that I'd been abducted by space aliens.

The hallucinations during sleep paralysis are cultural ones. I don't know if grey aliens were familiar to a youngster 25 years ago. Remember that the Hills were only able to describe their captors after seeing a movie depicting them.

 

[Entropy]

I was abducted in broad daylight from a McDonalds.

This was in Minnesota about 25 years ago. I got up from a nap one day and walked down to a McDonalds where I always went because all my friends hung out there. As I was standing in line to get my coffee I suddenly fell backwards for no apparent reason right onto the guy who was standing behind me. A second later I was lying on my back, back in my bed at home. But I was lying on top of the guy I had fallen onto at the MCDonalds. He had my arms pinned and he was sniggering in my ear. I was pretty much paralyzed. There was someone else in the room, too. This guy paced back and forth slowly, not looking at me or the other guy, seeming to be waiting for something to happen. He looked depressed. The guy holding me down kept sniggering in my ear and seemed to be enjoying the fact I was paralyzed. I was completely terrified, to say the least, and couldn't even struggle.

This went on only a short time, though, maybe a quarter minute at most, and then they both suddenly evaporated. I was there alone lying on my bed. I could move now, but was completely upset and in shock about what had just happened. It had all been completely vivid in all detail: I could see, hear and feel them perfectly clearly while it was going on.

I didn't learn about the phenomenon of sleep paralysis until quite a few years later, and used to just think of the incident as some kind of nightmare. Anyway, I know why "abductees" are loathe to assume they are any kind of hallucination: they seem too vivid. We have the false preconception that hallucinations are supposed to be unrealistic somehow, have some dreamlike insubstantiality that gives them away as hallucinations, but they don't. What was especially peculiar was the "set up": the part where I hallucinated walking all the way to the McDonald's when I was actually still at home in bed. I suppose I really wanted to go down there but got caught in some "interzone" where my neurotransmitters hadn't all shifted back into waking mode allowing me to hallucinate I was doing what I wanted to do.

Had it been two grey alien looking things instead of two humans, I'm sure I'd have been seriously considering that I'd been abducted by space aliens.

Well, that can rule out outdoor abductions experenced by one person. But what about when multiple people claim to have been abducted together. Other than the possiblity that they're working together in a hoax, I can't think of any explanation of this.

 

[zoobyshoe]

The hallucinations during sleep paralysis are cultural ones. I don't know if grey aliens were familiar to a youngster 25 years ago.

This was definitely after Close Encounters had come out, and so I was familiar with the image of the grey. Alien abduction wasn't suggested to me, I'm sure, because it was broad daylight, and McDonalds. Had there been some kind of night sky with stars involved then I had all the cultural presets to suggest aliens.

Remember that the Hills were only able to describe their captors after seeing a movie depicting them.

I know the bare bones of this story but don't think I ever read the original book. What are the details of this not being able to describe the abductors till they were shown a film? I wasn't aware of that.

 

[zoobyshoe]

Well, that can rule out outdoor abductions experenced by one person. But what about when multiple people claim to have been abducted together. Other than the possiblity that they're working together in a hoax, I can't think of any explanation of this.

I know in the case of the four guys who were abducted together out of a canoe at night on a lake that the twins later started to have complex partial seizures. This suggests that all four of them experienced something that affected their brains on that trip. They may all have rubbed up against a poisonous plant, ate something tainted, or who knows what, that made them black out when they got on the lake. Then later, bit by bit, the first one to reconstruct what happened during the blackout fed his story to the others and they developed the elaborate false memory from there.

I think that people, like the Hills, who get abducted out of cars are simply hypnotized by driving fatigued, and go into trances. They end up with missing time, and likewise reconstruct what happened during that time as a false memory of an alien abduction. I think a lot of these people drive for a long time in silence, get hypnotized, and then become dazzled when they see the lights of a low flying plane, pull over to watch it and, being half asleep, dream/hallucinate it is a flying saucer.

Alot of cases are parent and children abductions. I think it's the parents having the hallucinations first in most of these cases and feeding them to the kids as false memories: "Oh, you had a bad dream? Did little grey men come and take you away in the dream? They did, didn't they!" That sort of coaching.

 

[PIT2]

One would think that after all these years a satisfactory explanation would have been found.
This definitely has to be investigated by more scientists.

 

[SGT]

This was definitely after Close Encounters had come out, and so I was familiar with the image of the grey. Alien abduction wasn't suggested to me, I'm sure, because it was broad daylight, and McDonalds. Had there been some kind of night sky with stars involved then I had all the cultural presets to suggest aliens.

I know the bare bones of this story but don't think I ever read the original book. What are the details of this not being able to describe the abductors till they were shown a film? I wasn't aware of that.

http://www.csicop.org/sb/9409/eyesthat.html is the analysis by Kottmeyer.

 

[ubavontuba]

Zoobeyshoe,

That was most excellent. Just imagine if you'd been a sleepwalker and could literally fight back. Might things have been different?

 

[zoobyshoe]

http://www.csicop.org/sb/9409/eyesthat.html is the analysis by Kottmeyer.

Yes, that is quite telling! Even though the "abduction" took place before the Outer Limits episode aired, the description of aliens with "wraparound eyes" didn't come up in Barney's hypnosis sessions till 12 days after it aired!

 

[zoobyshoe]

Zoobeyshoe,

That was most excellent. Just imagine if you'd been a sleepwalker and could literally fight back. Might things have been different?

Most neurologists think the reason we become paralyzed during dreams is exactly so that we can't physically act them out. We would otherwise be sleepwalking every night often hurting ourselves and others.

That is, in fact, a rare kind of sleep disorder: dreaming without becoming paralyzed, and incorporating quite a bit of the reality around them into the dream.

My grandmother had this happen to her once. She "woke up" in the morning and could no longer recognise my sister who was taking care of her at the time. She kept asking her who she was and what she was doing there. She also kept saying that she had to get to a certain part of town where she was to meet a saint who was going to take her to heaven (she was a lifelong devout Catholic). After an hour or so, she suddenly snapped out of this, and was amazed at her own delusion.

It was an anomalous, one time occurance. She was very old at the time, in her late nineties, but it wasn't Alzheimer's or even the beginning of it, because it never happened again.

 

[ubavontuba]

zoobyshoe, et al,

Vivd dreams is another interesting and related subject. I've had some doozies.

My favorite so far, was one in which I was a waist gunner in a WW2 B-17 bomber. I still remember the cold air, the bright sky, the rattle, shake and "roll" of the plane as it tore through the sky. I remember the deep numbing rumble of the engines. I remember the colors! The plane's exterior was a light green camouflage, the interior mostly green and beige. I remember the feel of my wool-lined leather flight jacket. I remember firing the .50 caliber machine rifle... the bullets feeding into it from racks wrapped around me... the spent brass shells ejecting and silently clattering to the floor (couldn't hear 'em over all the noise). I remember standing on spent bullet casings. I remember the engines burning... smoke filling the plane. I remember the plane going down and bailing out...

What was really weird was later seeing the movie "Memphis Belle," and later still touring a real B-17 bomber. How my dream had so many details right, is beyond me to explain. Anyone care to consider reincarnation?

 

[zoobyshoe]

Vivd dreams is another interesting and related subject.

Are you entering and exiting these "dreams" in the usual way, i.e. by sleep? Or do they occur any time anywhere, as a "daydream" state?

I have had exceptionally vivid dreams at night while asleep, but nothing so accurate in factual detail as yours. The things I sense vividly in them end up being as chaotic when viewed in the light of waking consciousness as much as less vivid, more murky dreams are. In other words, they're vivid, but surreal.

 

[ubavontuba]

Are you entering and exiting these "dreams" in the usual way, i.e. by sleep? Or do they occur any time anywhere, as a "daydream" state?

I have had exceptionally vivid dreams at night while asleep, but nothing so accurate in factual detail as yours. The things I sense vividly in them end up being as chaotic when viewed in the light of waking consciousness as much as less vivid, more murky dreams are. In other words, they're vivid, but surreal.

It was during normal sleep, but I only included the bizarrely accurate details. There were surreal aspects as well. For instance, the bomber was apparently based in the Pacific(?) since I parachuted down to an island full of hot hula-babes. I'm doubtful that pale green B-17s were used in the Pacific war. Maybe the hot hula-babes were a soldier's fantasy/heavenly reward? Who knows? It's the accurate details that boggle me though, just the same.

 

[newp175]

Despite the fact I don't believe in aliens at all (far more likely UFO's are human constructs) I will post because I find the experiences shared interesting. Ubanova, do you have any artistic ability at all? Can you remember complicated shapes and their colors? Zoobyshoe, perhaps I haven't read well but you didnt mention the most important, were there any witnesses at all in these McDonalds?

 

[PIT2]

Michael Shermer (a skeptic @ scientific american) once wrote a story about his own alien abduction:

Abducted!
By Michael Shermer

In the wee hours of the morning on August 8, 1983, while I was traveling along a lonely rural highway approaching Haigler, Neb., a large craft with bright lights overtook me and forced me to the side of the road. Alien beings exited the craft and abducted me for 90 minutes, after which time I found myself back on the road with no memory of what transpired inside the ship. I can prove that this happened because I recounted it to a film crew shortly afterward.

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?articleID=00008C3F-3EFD-11E7-BB5883414B7F0000

However, its not quite the average abduction account:

My abduction experience was triggered by sleep deprivation and physical exhaustion. I had just ridden a bicycle 83 straight hours and 1,259 miles in the opening days of the 3,100-mile nonstop transcontinental Race Across America. I was sleepily weaving down the road when my support motor home flashed its high beams and pulled alongside, and my crew entreated me to take a sleep break. At that moment a distant memory of the 1960s television series The Invaders was inculcated into my waking dream. In the series, alien beings were taking over the Earth by replicating actual people but, inexplicably, retained a stiff little finger. Suddenly the members of my support team were transmogrified into aliens. I stared intensely at their fingers and grilled them on both technical and personal matters.

Is it a coincidence that Michael Shermer(the founding publisher of Skeptic magazine and the director of the Skeptics Society) has had an alien abduction experience while on the road and knows that it had a normal explanation?

It would just as coincidental as Travis Walton writing that he was dreaming about riding on a bike for 83 hours and experiencing an alien abduction caused by it, but then waking up and realising it was just a dream and that it was totally different from his real abduction experience

 

[zoobyshoe]

Zoobyshoe, perhaps I haven't read well but you didnt mention the most important, were there any witnesses at all in these McDonalds?

Yeah, you need to read it again. I was never at the McDonalds to begin with. That was just some kind of hallucinatory trip that preceeded the sleep paralysis.

 

[zoobyshoe]

It was during normal sleep, but I only included the bizarrely accurate details. There were surreal aspects as well. For instance, the bomber was apparently based in the Pacific(?) since I parachuted down to an island full of hot hula-babes. I'm doubtful that pale green B-17s were used in the Pacific war. Maybe the hot hula-babes were a soldier's fantasy/heavenly reward? Who knows? It's the accurate details that boggle me though, just the same.

Yes, it's seems way too realistically detailed for an experience you didn't actually go through in real life. However, there's a film called 12 O'clock High made late in the war you might have seen at some point and forgotten about, which was about the B-17 missions out of England, and that film spawned a TV series that ran two or three years in the 60's which you might have seen in reruns at some point. I can't believe there weren't some B-17 fight sequences in other films as well before Memphis Belle that could have provided the details.

 

[ubavontuba]

Yes, it's seems way too realistically detailed for an experience you didn't actually go through in real life. However, there's a film called 12 O'clock High made late in the war you might have seen at some point and forgotten about, which was about the B-17 missions out of England, and that film spawned a TV series that ran two or three years in the 60's which you might have seen in reruns at some point. I can't believe there weren't some B-17 fight sequences in other films as well before Memphis Belle that could have provided the details.

This is possible, but I don't remember any movies that depicted this gunner position quite so well until "Memphis Belle" came out. I'm not even sure that I've ever seen the ammunition racks before I toured a real B-17 (A crewman gave me a souvenir sparkplug!).

 

[SGT]

This is possible, but I don't remember any movies that depicted this gunner position quite so well until "Memphis Belle" came out. I'm not even sure that I've ever seen the ammunition racks before I toured a real B-17 (A crewman gave me a souvenir sparkplug!).

In the fifthies there were a lot of movies about WW2 and several of them showed the interior of bombers and flying fortresses. You may well have seen some reruns on TV, with your subconscious retaining the scenes in the gunner's pit.
One example of such is the Bridey Murphy case:

Bridey Murphy was a 19th century woman from Cork, Ireland, who began speaking through Virginia Tighe in Pueblo, Colorado, in 1952 when Morey Bernstein, a local businessman and amateur hypnotist, hypnotized her. Bernstein encouraged past life regression of his subject and she cooperated by speaking in an Irish brogue and claiming to be a 19th century woman in Ireland. Bernstein hypnotized Tighe many times after that. While under hypnosis, she sang Irish songs and told Irish stories, always as Bridey Murphy. Bernstein's book, The Search for Bridey Murphy, became a best-seller. (Tighe is called Ruth Simmons in the book.) Recordings of the hypnotic sessions were made and translated into more than a dozen languages. The recordings sold well, too. The reincarnation boom in American publishing had begun.

Newspapers sent reporters to Ireland to investigate. Was there a red-headed Bridey Murphy who lived in Ireland in the nineteenth century? Who knows, but one paper--the Chicago American--found one in Wisconsin in the 20th century. Bridie Murphey Corkell lived in the house across the street from where Virginia Tighe grew up. What Virginia reported while hypnotized were not memories of a previous life but memories from her early childhood. Whatever else the hypnotic state is, it is a state where one's fantasies are energetically displayed.

Hypnotic state is similar to dream state. In a dream one can fabricate a whole scenario with parts of long forgotten memories.

 

[zoobyshoe]

This is possible, but I don't remember any movies that depicted this gunner position quite so well until "Memphis Belle" came out. I'm not even sure that I've ever seen the ammunition racks before I toured a real B-17 (A crewman gave me a souvenir sparkplug!).

Now that I think about it, The B-17 ball turret incident in the first Amazing Stories movie, probably preceeded Memphis Belle. That's another contender for where you might have picked up the details of such a thing. I don't recall how much footage they had of the waistgunners in action, but you can't have a film about a B-17 mission without showing the waistgunners having at the German "bogies". Heck, there's tons of documentary footage of them that crops up in WWII history shows all the time.

Not to underplay the vividness of your sensory imagination, though. It's one thing to intellectually realize the gunners would be stepping on spent cartridges, and to dream the actual feel of that, or the feel of wool against your neck, or the motion of the plane. That's pretty impressive detail.

 

[newp175]

Now that I think about it, The B-17 ball turret incident in the first Amazing Stories movie, probably preceeded Memphis Belle. That's another contender for where you might have picked up the details of such a thing. I don't recall how much footage they had of the waistgunners in action, but you can't have a film about a B-17 mission without showing the waistgunners having at the German "bogies". Heck, there's tons of documentary footage of them that crops up in WWII history shows all the time.

Not to underplay the vividness of your sensory imagination, though. It's one thing to intellectually realize the gunners would be stepping on spent cartridges, and to dream the actual feel of that, or the feel of wool against your neck, or the motion of the plane. That's pretty impressive detail.

His experience reminds me of the abilities of certain autistic savants, composing complicated music and paintings (masterpieces) from nothing while being severely retarded. I remember reading that the ability was inducible to a certain degree. Perhaps it is uninhibited during dreaming in some people and leads to recollection of vivid experiences.

 

[PIT2]

This is possible, but I don't remember any movies that depicted this gunner position quite so well until "Memphis Belle" came out. I'm not even sure that I've ever seen the ammunition racks before I toured a real B-17 (A crewman gave me a souvenir sparkplug!).

Did it happen to be a lucid dream?
Ive read lucid dream stories and they can apparently seem just as real and detailed as awake conscious experiences.

 

[zoobyshoe]

His experience reminds me of the abilities of certain autistic savants, composing complicated music and paintings (masterpieces) from nothing while being severely retarded. I remember reading that the ability was inducible to a certain degree. Perhaps it is uninhibited during dreaming in some people and leads to recollection of vivid experiences.

I read a book about autistic-savants and a lot of people have studied the origins of their abilitites. It turns out these aren't the kind of full-blown superpowers they seem to be, springing from nothing. They are actually the result of being the only things these people can do. In other words, if the only thing you've ever been able to grasp is music, then that's all you do and think about 24/7. If music is all you think about 24/7 then you end up with a facility for it. The same goes for math, art, or whatever they get involved with. They get really good at it because it's the only thing they do all the time, not because it starts out being any easier for them than for anyone else.

Normal people can develop the same abilities by intensly focusing on one thing for extended periods. They did an experiment where they got a college math student to practise calculating calendar dates in his head, figuring out what day of the week any given date had fallen on. At first this was quite difficult and tedious for him. He got better and better at it, though, and practised constantly, and eventually crossed some kind of threshold where he suddenly always knew the answer without having to consciously calculate it.

I doubt if ubavontuba's vivid dreams have anything to do with that. I suspect that he simply experiences the right balance of neurotransmitters during dreaming to make for the most vivid sensory experiences. My own dreams are more mood oriented than physical sensation oriented. I wake up recalling, and still feeling, strong moods, not sensory impressions. When I do recall a lot of sensory detail it's unusual and memorable.

 

[Entropy]

I wake up recalling, and still feeling, strong moods, not sensory impressions.

That happens to me a lot. I'll wake up and forget what actually happened in a dream, but I'll remember how I felt during it.

 

[ubavontuba]

In the fifthies there were a lot of movies about WW2 and several of them showed the interior of bombers and flying fortresses. You may well have seen some reruns on TV, with your subconscious retaining the scenes in the gunner's pit.

Altough I am certainly open to the suggestion that my dream's details came from somewhere of which I am not aware (I feel this is the most likely explanation) this wouldn't expain the details from the vantage point of the gunner, the colors, nor the details of how things feel.

Now that I think about it, The B-17 ball turret incident in the first Amazing Stories movie, probably preceeded Memphis Belle. That's another contender for where you might have picked up the details of such a thing.

Possibly, but I don't remember the waistgunner's position being featured so prominently in this episode.

Not to underplay the vividness of your sensory imagination, though. It's one thing to intellectually realize the gunners would be stepping on spent cartridges, and to dream the actual feel of that, or the feel of wool against your neck, or the motion of the plane. That's pretty impressive detail.

Yeah. I don't always dream so vivdly. When I do though, it's just like I've actually lived the event.

Did it happen to be a lucid dream?
Ive read lucid dream stories and they can apparently seem just as real and detailed as awake conscious experiences.

This particular dream wasn't lucid. It played out more like just living an event.

I have had lots of lucid dreams though. I often have dreams that will be playing along and I'll realize that I don't like what's happening and I'll simply change things around to suit me. I seem to have self-taught myself this technique when I was fairly young in order to avoid nightmares. Sometimes I'll begin dreaming of someone trying to attack me or my family, and I'll shoot 'em or beat the splat out of them. Sometimes I'll just make up a dream that makes me happy (like playing with my son in the park).

This effect leads directly into my original question in that in one instance (which I will desribe in a later post) I attacked "aliens" that were trying to abduct me.

I'll wake up and forget what actually happened in a dream, but I'll remember how I felt during it.

This happens to me sometimes too. However I usually remember the dream as an event that struck me a certain way. Sometimes, I wake up chortling with laughter at something that seemed insanely funny in my sleep (lots of fun) but usually isn't quite so funny in consciousness. My wife gets a kick out of this.

Once, I was singing "Santa Claus is Coming to Town" along with Bruce Springstein in a dream. I was having so much fun and I was so happy! My wife caught the trailing sentence of the song I was singing on tape. In my dream I sounded great, in reality I can't hold a note.

 

[newp175]

I read a book about autistic-savants and a lot of people have studied the origins of their abilitites. It turns out these aren't the kind of full-blown superpowers they seem to be, springing from nothing. They are actually the result of being the only things these people can do. In other words, if the only thing you've ever been able to grasp is music, then that's all you do and think about 24/7. If music is all you think about 24/7 then you end up with a facility for it. The same goes for math, art, or whatever they get involved with. They get really good at it because it's the only thing they do all the time, not because it starts out being any easier for them than for anyone else.

Normal people can develop the same abilities by intensly focusing on one thing for extended periods. They did an experiment where they got a college math student to practise calculating calendar dates in his head, figuring out what day of the week any given date had fallen on. At first this was quite difficult and tedious for him. He got better and better at it, though, and practised constantly, and eventually crossed some kind of threshold where he suddenly always knew the answer without having to consciously calculate it.

I doubt if ubavontuba's vivid dreams have anything to do with that. I suspect that he simply experiences the right balance of neurotransmitters during dreaming to make for the most vivid sensory experiences. My own dreams are more mood oriented than physical sensation oriented. I wake up recalling, and still feeling, strong moods, not sensory impressions. When I do recall a lot of sensory detail it's unusual and memorable.

I don't agree with your interpretation of autistic savants. There are numerous cases of infants with prodigous artistic and musical abilities, read the following: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/low/health/467029.stm.
Remember that we are talking about profoundly retarded todlers here, they don't even know the basics of what they are doing and they are too young and disabled to have practiced at all. Furthermore, the ability is inducible by the suppresion of the left hemisphere through disease or damage. In savants that have managed to devellop language skills, those abilities tend to disappear whether they practice or not. So it is not training that brings about savant abilities, they are inherent to probably all people but supressed. It could be that during sleep they are less inhibited and therefore lead to stunning and confusing recollections of imaginary events.

 

[zoobyshoe]

I don't agree with your interpretation of autistic savants.

The analysis I presented isn't my interpretation. It was the conclusion of doctors who studied the phenomenon in depth.

There are numerous cases of infants with prodigous artistic and musical abilities, read the following: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/low/health/467029.stm.
Remember that we are talking about profoundly retarded todlers here, they don't even know the basics of what they are doing and they are too young and disabled to have practiced at all.

If they can do it, they can practise it.

Furthermore, the ability is inducible by the suppresion of the left hemisphere through disease or damage.

You mean the ability to draw, or what? Are you maintaining that as soon as someone's left hemisphere is suppressed, they can pick up a pencil suddenly draw well without having practised?

In savants that have managed to devellop language skills, those abilities tend to disappear whether they practice or not.

This is just plain not true. Most savants can talk fairly well, and they retain their abilities when they do. Most of them prefer not to talk much because they aren't social people, but they can understand and use language well enough to get by.

So it is not training that brings about savant abilities, they are inherent to probably all people but supressed.

Not training, as with a coach or teacher, but self-motivated practise, yes.

It could be that during sleep they are less inhibited and therefore lead to stunning and confusing recollections of imaginary events.

This is what you suggested might be happening with Ubavontuba's dream, but I don't think the extravagant notion that we can become savants during sleep is at all necessary to explain his, or anyone's, vivid dreams. More likely than not, if we ran a series of neurological tests on him we'd find he generally pays more attention to sensory detail in waking life than most people. I, personally, don't pay too much attention to it being more absorbed by thoughts and emotions than sensory imput. As a result my dreams are mostly visual and emotional events, with very little of taste, touch, smell, hearing, or sense of motion to them.

 

[newp175]

Look what 5 minutes in Pubmed have produced!

Here, ill post the abstracts for you..

//
Postgrad Med J. 2005 Dec;81(962):753-5. Related Articles, Links


Unexpected development of artistic talents.

Gordon N.

Huntlywood, 3 Styal Road, Wilmslow SK9 4AE, UK. neil-gordon@doctors.org.uk

The development of exceptional and unexpected artistic skills at any age must be a matter of curiosity. This can occur among young children with severe learning difficulties, especially if they are autistic. Some examples of these so called idiot-savants are given, and the way in which their brains may function. It is also true that elderly people who suffer from frontotemporal dementia can find that they are able to express themselves in remarkable art forms. This can occur in other types of dementia, but then more often it is the changes that result in the paintings of established artists, for example in the paintings of de Kooning. Possible links between these two phenomenon are discussed, and it is suggested that in both instances it may be that if the brain is relieved of a number of functions it can concentrate on the remaining ones. Ways in which this may operate in both groups are reviewed.

PMID: 16344297 [PubMed - in process]



Dev Med Child Neurol. 2005 Jul;47(7):500-3. Related Articles, Links


Savant talent.

Pring L.

Psychology Department, Goldsmiths College, University of London, London SE14 6NW, UK. l.pring@gold.ac.uk

The notion of talent is an elusive concept but there appears to be sound evidence that both savants and experts share important qualities. Brief descriptive accounts of the talents displayed by savants are presented, along with a discussion of intelligence, implicit learning, and the organization of knowledge. Cognitive theories helpful in understanding exceptional abilities in people with autism are also discussed. It is concluded that a certain cognitive style, i.e. weak coherence, may predispose individuals to develop their talents. Although it would be interesting to speculate that some great artists and mathematicians show a similar degree of obsessive preoccupation and a cognitive style reminiscent of autistic spectrum disorder, presumably as a strategic mechanism, there is, as yet, little research on the subject.

Publication Types:
Review

PMID: 15991873 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]



Autistic savants. [correction of artistic]

Hou C, Miller BL, Cummings JL, Goldberg M, Mychack P, Bottino V, Benson DF.

Department of Neurology, Washington University, St. Louis, Missouri, USA.

OBJECTIVE: The objectives of this study were to examine common patterns in the lives and artwork of five artistic savants previously described and to report on the clinical, neuropsychological, and neuroimaging findings from one newly diagnosed artistic savant. BACKGROUND: The artistic savant syndrome has been recognized for centuries, although its neuroanatomic basis remains a mystery. METHODS: The cardinal features, strengths, and weaknesses of the work of these six savants were analyzed and compared with those of children with autism in whom artistic talent was absent. An anatomic substrate for these behaviors was considered in the context of newly emerging theories related to paradoxical functional facilitation, visual thinking, and multiple intelligences. RESULTS: The artists had features of "pervasive developmental disorder," including impairment in social interaction and communication as well as restricted repetitive and stereotyped patterns of behavior, interest, and activities. All six demonstrated a strong preference for a single art medium and showed a restricted variation in artistic themes. None understood art theory. Some autistic features contributed to their success, including attention to visual detail, a tendency toward ritualistic compulsive repetition, the ability to focus on one topic at the expense of other interests, and intact memory and visuospatial skills. CONCLUSIONS: The artistic savant syndrome remains rare and mysterious in origin. Savants exhibit extraordinary visual talents along with profound linguistic and social impairment. The intense focus on and ability to remember visual detail contributes to the artistic product of the savant. The anatomic substrate for the savant syndrome may involve loss of function in the left temporal lobe with enhanced function of the posterior neocortex.

Publication Types:
Case Reports

PMID: 10645734 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]


Br J Disord Commun. 1989 Apr;24(1):1-20. Related Articles, Links


The 1988 Jansson memorial lecture. The performance of the 'idiot-savant': implicit and explicit.

O'Connor N.

'Idiots-savants' are people of low intelligence who have one or two outstanding talents such as calendrical calculation, drawing or musical performance. Such people are mostly male and occur with high frequency among the autistic population. Do they perform their amazing feats because of an outstanding memory or do they draw on some faculty of reasoning to help them? Although they cannot easily make clear how they carry out their tasks by using speech, experiments reveal that they follow simple rules which they use to aid them in recalling correct dates and sequences in classical music. It has been said that they cannot abstract but this turns out not to be true: all can abstract to some degree and some are more at home with abstract than with concrete material. Whatever else is true of these handicapped but gifted people their gift becomes apparent at an early age and is apparently not improved by practice. Perhaps the most important conclusion from work with these groups is that their gifts force us to think again about the concept of general intelligence. How far is it possible to have low intelligence and yet be an outstanding musician or artist? Speculation on this idea may force us to revise our concepts of intelligence, neuropsychology and handicap.

PMID: 2638187 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]


Neurocase. 2004 Jun;10(3):215-22. Related Articles, Links


Switching skills on by turning off part of the brain.

Young RL, Ridding MC, Morrell TL.

Department of Psychology, Flinders University of South Australia, Adelaide, South Australia. robyn.young@flinders.edu.au

Snyder and Mitchell (1999) have argued that the extraordinary skills of savants, including mathematics and drawing, are within us all but cannot normally be accessed without some form of brain damage. It has also been argued that such skills can be made accessible to normal people by switching off part of their brain artificially using magnetic pulses (Carter, 1999). Using repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) to interrupt the function of the frontotemporal lobe, a region of the brain implicated in the development of savant skills (Miller et al., 1996,1998), we tested this hypothesis. Here we show that savant-type skills improved in 5 out of 17 participants during the period of stimulation. The enhanced skills included declarative memory, drawing, mathematics, and calendar calculating.In addition to overall improvement being observed, striking improvements in individual performance on various tasks were also seen.

Publication Types:
Clinical Trial

PMID: 15788259 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]



Concept formation: 'object' attributes dynamically inhibited from conscious awareness.

Snyder A, Bossomaier T, Mitchell DJ.

Centre for the Mind, Australian National University, ACT 0200, Australia. allan@centreforthemind.com

We advance a dominant neural strategy for facilitating conceptual thought. Concepts are groupings of "object" attributes. Once the brain learns such critical groupings, the "object" attributes are inhibited from conscious awareness. We see the whole, not the parts. The details are inhibited when the concept network is activated, ie. the inhibition is dynamic and can be switched on and off. Autism is suggested to be the state of retarded concept formation. Our model predicts the possibility of accessing nonconscious information by artificially disinhibiting (turning off) the inhibiting networks associated with concept formation, using transcranial magnetic brain stimulation (TMS). For example, this opens the door for the restoration of perfect pitch, for recalling detail, for acquiring accent-free second languages beyond puberty, and even for enhancing creativity. The model further shows how unusual autistic savant skills as well as certain psychopathologies can be due respectively to privileged or inadvertent access to information that is normally inhibited from conscious awareness.

PMID: 15139077 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE


1: J Integr Neurosci. 2003 Dec;2(2):149-58. Related Articles, Links


Savant-like skills exposed in normal people by suppressing the left fronto-temporal lobe.

Snyder AW, Mulcahy E, Taylor JL, Mitchell DJ, Sachdev P, Gandevia SC.

Centre for the Mind, The University of Sydney, NSW 2006, Australia. allan@centreforthemind.com

The astonishing skills of savants have been suggested to be latent in everyone, but are not normally accessible without a rare form of brain impairment. We attempted to simulate such brain impairment in healthy people by directing low-frequency magnetic pulses into the left fronto-temporal lobe. Significant stylistic changes in drawing were facilitated by the magnetic pulses in four of our 11 participants. Some of these "facilitated" participants also displayed enhanced proofreading ability. Our conclusions are derived from 11 right-handed male university students, eight of whom underwent placebo stimulation. We examined performance before, during and after exposure to the stimulation.

PMID: 15011267 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]


Int J Psychoanal. 2003 Aug;84(Pt 4):1061-2. Related Articles, Links


Comment on:
Int J Psychoanal. 2003 Feb;84(Pt 1):17-30.

Savant syndrome and dreams.

Blechner MJ.

//

Of particular interest is number 5 and 7. I couldn't access the content on the last one and there was no abstract.

Thank you for making me research this area; it is very interesting and I never bothered with it before...

 

[Chronos]

Newp did a good job scoping this out, as did zoob. It's either a hoax, hallucination, or delusion. Why do 'abductees' never bring back alien artifacts or rosetta stones? My guess . . . hoofprints.

 

[zoobyshoe]

Thank you for making me research this area; it is very interesting and I never bothered with it before...

Yes, but I don't see that your argument is vindicated. All the abstracts say essentially the same thing I did, which is that when something is all you can do, you end up able to do it remarkable well. The normal subjects who had parts of their brains suppressed merely showed "improvements" in skills they already had, which is not a surprise since distractions were removed. No one demonstrated a sudden ability to do something they couldn't do before.

Savants, who are always unresponsive to certain normal distractions, take what they can learn and ruminate on it endlessly, becoming exceptionally skilled at it. These skills don't pop from their brains full blown, but are acquired in a normal learning process.

 

[PIT2]

Newp did a good job scoping this out, as did zoob. It's either a hoax, hallucination, or delusion. Why do 'abductees' never bring back alien artifacts or rosetta stones?

Or they really are being abducted. Let's not forget the possibility that these events actually are what they seem to be.

 

[Entropy]

Or they really are being abducted. Let's not forget the possibility that these events actually are what they seem to be.

But they seem to be false.

 

[SGT]

But they seem to be false.

An unlikely event is not impossible, only unlikely. I classify the probability of the truth in alien abductions in the same level of the truth about Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny. Nobody has proved they are false (it is impossible to prove the a universal negative), but they are highly unlikely.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

How many Santa reports do we get every year?

 

[SGT]

How many Santa reports do we get every year?

Thousands. They show up in every department store near Christmas.

 

[PIT2]

But they seem to be false.

To the abductees the experiences seem like completely real encounters with alien beings. So much so in fact that some end up with Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome, similar to what war veterans have.

Also:

"Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence."

 

[SGT]

To the abductees the experiences seem like completely real encounters with alien beings. So much so in fact that some end up with Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome, similar to what war veterans have.

Also:

"Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence."

The delusions of a schizophrenic seem real to him/her. The same happens with false memories implanted in their patients by therapists. Remember that the Hills were only able to remember their experience after they got therapy.