5

Fantastic Memories of Alien Encounters

Surprisingly, I do not recall ever thinking as a child, “I want to be an anomalistic psychologist when I grow up.” Neither did I want to be a train driver, a footballer, a cowboy, or a pirate. I wanted to be an astronomer. Just thinking about the vast scale of the cosmos blew my tiny mind. I was particularly enthralled by those “if the Earth was the size of a pea” comparisons.1

If the Earth was the size of a pea (0.5 cm), the Sun would be the size of a large inflatable beach ball almost 200 feet away. Pluto (which back then was definitely a planet!) would be less than a 0.1 centimeters in diameter, and its orbit would vary between 1 and 1.8 miles from the Sun. And that is just our own puny solar system!

Excluding the Sun, the nearest star to the Earth is Proxima Centauri, which is about 4.25 light-years away. A light-year is the distance that light travels in one year at a mind-boggling speed of 186,000 miles per second (or, if you prefer, 299,792,458 meters per second). As this makes clear, a light-year is a very, very, very long way. If the Earth was the size of a pea located in central London, the red dwarf star Proxima Centauri would be three inches in diameter and 9,800 miles away somewhere in Southwest Australia.

In a probably forlorn attempt to keep things even remotely comprehensible when it comes to galactic and intergalactic distances, let us rescale our model. Imagine now that it is the Sun that is the size of a pea (with the Earth—including almost everything and everyone you have ever known—a correspondingly tiny twentieth of a millimeter in diameter). On this scale, Proxima is a mere ninety miles away. Even on this scale, our galaxy, the Milky Way, is 2.1 million miles in diameter (as opposed to the 100,000 light-years that it really is), and the nearest major galaxy to our own is some fifty-three million miles away. I think we can all agree with Douglas Adams’s immortal words: “Space is big. You just won’t believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it’s a long way down the road to the chemist’s, but that’s just peanuts to space.”2

Our Sun is one of over a hundred billion stars in the Milky Way, and our galaxy is but one of billions and billions of galaxies in the universe as a whole. Inevitably, the question arises: Are we alone in this vast universe or has life—possibly intelligent life—arisen elsewhere? This question has been considered by curious minds for centuries.3 One notable attempt to address this issue was the development of an equation by Dr. Frank Drake in 1961. The Drake equation, as it is known, attempts to estimate the number of advanced civilizations in our own galaxy by considering such factors as the rate of star creation, the fraction of those stars that have planets, the average number of planets per star that might support life, and so on.

The Drake equation was originally put forward simply to provide a framework for thinking about the possibility of intelligent life arising elsewhere in the Milky Way. The range of possible answers generated varied enormously, depending on the estimates used, but it is fair to say that some quite reasonable guesstimates suggested that our galaxy could be teeming with intelligent life. If that is the case, the question posed by physicist Enrico Fermi naturally arises: Where is everybody? To date, conclusive evidence that life has evolved anywhere other than on our planet is lacking according to most scientists.

Many attempts have been made to resolve what has become known as Fermi’s paradox. One obvious possibility is that intelligent life is, for reasons that we do not yet understand, extremely rare. It is even possible that we really are alone in the universe. Another possibility is that advanced civilizations arise but do not survive long enough to perfect interstellar travel. But the answer preferred by many millions of people is that conventional scientists have simply got it wrong. Not only, they would argue, is there plenty of evidence for the existence of extraterrestrial life, there is evidence that such life-forms are regular visitors to Earth. In this chapter, we will take a closer look at such claims and the psychological factors that may underlie them.

Levels of Belief in Extraterrestrials

Opinion polls regularly reveal relatively high levels of belief in the existence of aliens and alien visitation to our planet. For example, a 2019 Gallup telephone survey of a random sample of 1,522 American adults indicated that a third of respondents believe that some UFO sightings are alien spacecraft visiting the Earth, and 16 percent said that they had themselves witnessed a UFO.4

Similarly, around the same time a poll by Ipsos of over a thousand American adults showed that over half (52 percent) believed that aliens exist and over a quarter (29 percent) believed they visit the Earth.5 Most respondents (88 percent) had at least heard of Area 51, a top-secret US Air Force base in Nevada, with over half claiming to be “somewhat” or “very familiar” with it. Of those who had at least heard of Area 51, 26 percent claimed that crashed UFOs are held there, and 21 percent believe that aliens (alive or dead) and alien technology are held there. A YouGov poll revealed similar levels of belief in extraterrestrial life in the United States (54 percent), Germany (56 percent), and the United Kingdom (52 percent).6

Many factors contribute to the belief that aliens have visited the Earth in the past and continue to do so. One such factor is the widespread, and often uncritical, media coverage of certain classic accounts of UFO encounters that have survived many attempts at debunking by skeptics, including two of the most famous UFO cases ever: Roswell and Rendlesham Forest.

The Roswell Incident

The term flying saucer entered the English language as a consequence of press reports of Kenneth Arnold’s sighting of what he believed were technologically advanced aircraft flying near Mount Rainier in Washington state on June 24, 1947. A couple of weeks later, on July 9, 1947, the Roswell Daily Record carried a memorable headline: “RAAF Captures Flying Saucer on Ranch in Roswell Region.”

Some days before, rancher William “Mac” Brazel had found some strange debris in a field near Roswell, New Mexico. The debris consisted of tinfoil, rubber strips, sticks, and paper. The following day, on learning of Arnold’s report of strange craft, Brazel wondered if that was what he had found in the field. He reported it to Sheriff Wilcox, who in turn reported it to Roswell Army Air Field’s Major Jesse Marcel. Following the recovery of more debris, the RAAF issued a press release stating that a “flying disc” had been recovered. Needless to say, the story caused great excitement. A few days later, however, after the debris had been examined at Fort Worth Army Airfield by General Roger Ramey, the military announced to a disappointed world that the debris was, in fact, nothing more than the remains of a crashed weather balloon. Photographs of the foil-like material were enough to convince most people that this was indeed the correct explanation, and that appeared to be the end of the story (figure 5.1).

Figure 5.1

The debris from an alleged flying saucer that crashed in Roswell, New Mexico, in 1947, consisting of tinfoil, rubber strips, sticks, and paper.

Some three decades later, however, interest in the story was rekindled as various ufologists, most notably physicist Stanton Friedman, reinvestigated the case. This resulted in numerous bestselling books with a seemingly endless series of new witnesses coming forward for each one.7 Rather than clarifying the situation, the resulting contradictory accounts only muddied the water. The central claim, that the debris was the remains of a crashed alien craft, was arguably one of the few things that commentators agreed on. But there was disagreement over how many UFOs had crashed, where they had crashed, the number of aliens, whether any of the aliens had survived the crash, and so on. To any readers interested in critically assessing the conflicting claims behind this modern myth, I recommend two books published in 1997, the fiftieth anniversary of Roswell, one by Philip J. Klass and the other by Kal K. Korff.8

So, three-quarters of a century later, are we finally able to provide a definitive explanation for that strange debris found in a remote field thirty miles northwest of Roswell? Strict application of Occam’s razor would suggest that the original description and photographs of the debris are more consistent with the idea that it came from an ordinary weather balloon as opposed to an interstellar alien spaceship.9 In this particular instance, however, Occam’s razor may have led us slightly astray, as the balloon in question was almost certainly far from “ordinary.” According to a report released by the US Air Force in 1994, the debris was the remains of a high-altitude balloon being used in a top-secret project known as Project Mogul. This involved sending microphones high up into the atmosphere with the aim of detecting sound waves produced by Soviet atom bomb tests. Needless to say, ufologists have rejected the report as being yet another cover-up.

The Rendlesham Forest Incident

As with the Roswell incident, it is probably wise to place more trust in the original reports of what happened in Rendlesham Forest in the United Kingdom in late December 1980 than to determine which of the mutually contradictory “eyewitness” reports that appeared later have the most credibility. At first glance, this appears to be a very strong contender as potential proof for a visit by extraterrestrials, including written statements from multiple military witnesses, one of which is an official memo from a senior officer in the US Air Force, and actual physical evidence of a UFO landing in the forest. It took a while for this case to become widely known, but on October 2, 1983, the story was reported by a British newspaper, the News of the World, under the striking headline, “UFO lands in Suffolk. And that’s official!” Since then, it has been the subject of countless books, documentaries, and articles.

There are too many twists and turns in this tale to go into all of the details, but here are the basic facts. The events took place in or close to Royal Air Force (RAF) Woodbridge and RAF Bentwater, bases that at the time were being used by the US Air Force. In the early hours of December 26, 1980, personnel at RAF Woodbridge spotted strange lights apparently descending into Rendlesham Forest. Suspecting that an aircraft may have crashed in the forest, Sergeant Jim Penniston led a security patrol to investigate. According to the official memo to the UK Ministry of Defence written by deputy base commander Lieutenant Colonel Charles Halt (dated January 13, 1981, and wrongly dating the events themselves to December 27, 1980):

The individuals reported seeing a strange glowing object in the forest. The object was described as being metallic in appearance and triangular in shape, approximately two to three meters across the base and approximately two meters high. It illuminated the entire forest with a white light. The object itself had a pulsing red light on top and a bank(s) of blue lights underneath. The object was hovering or on legs. As the patrolmen approached the object, it maneuvered through the trees and disappeared.10

Subsequently, Penniston claimed to have witnessed a “craft of unknown origin” and even to have touched it. This is not corroborated by the other witnesses who were present at the time. Later that day, the servicemen returned to the area and located three small impressions in a triangular pattern on the ground that they assumed to be landing marks, as well as broken branches and burn marks on the trees nearby.

In the early hours of December 28, 1980, Halt and several other servicemen took radiation readings from these depressions. It was subsequently claimed that these readings were higher than the expected readings for background radiation, thus proving that something extraordinary had taken place. Halt made a real-time recording of this investigation on a microcassette recorder. During the investigation, the UFO apparently returned in the form of a moving, pulsing red light. Subsequently, three “star-like objects” were seen in the sky.

Thanks to the work of a number of investigators, most notably writer and broadcaster Ian Ridpath, plausible explanations exist for each and every element of this complex case.11 The strange lights that appeared to be descending into Rendlesham Forest in the early hours of December 26 were almost certainly a bright meteor that was spotted by several other independent witnesses that night over south England. As I was writing this chapter, a bright meteor was seen by several observers in England and caught on several doorbell cameras.12 Looking at the footage obtained, it is easy to see how such an event could be interpreted as a crashing aircraft. The flashing light reported on both nights was almost certainly Orford Ness lighthouse, as first suggested by local forester Vince Thurkettle. He also had an explanation for the “landing marks” reported by the servicemen—they were in all likelihood spots where rabbits had been digging. But what about the excessive levels of radiation found at those spots? There weren’t any. The manufacturer of the instrument used to take the readings confirmed that they were “of little or no significance.” The burn marks on the trees? They were in fact marks made with an axe to mark some of the trees for felling. Given the appearance and location of the “star-like objects” reported by Halt, they were probably simply actual stars.

Close Encounters of Various Kinds

Looking back, it strikes me as odd that it never occurred to me to wonder what the title of Steven Spielberg’s classic movie Close Encounters of the Third Kind actually meant when I first saw it back in the late 1970s. It was not until many years later that I discovered that the title was based on the classification of UFO encounters put forward by J. Allen Hynek (figure 5.2). Hynek was an astronomer who had been an advisor to the US Air Force on two projects undertaken to investigate the nature of UFO sightings: Project Sign (1947–1949) and Project Blue Book (1952–1969). Famously, Hynek began as a skeptic of the ET hypothesis (that is, the idea that UFOs were extraterrestrial in origin) but ended up defending both that hypothesis and the even more controversial idea that UFOs may be evidence of beings from other dimensions. He was hired as a consultant on Spielberg’s film and even puts in a cameo appearance at the end of the film as the aliens disembark from the mother ship.

Figure 5.2

The original classification scheme for UFOs in terms of “close encounters” was proposed by J. Allen Hynek.

Records dating back literally thousands of years show that throughout history people have sometimes seen things in the sky that they could not identify.13 Hynek devised a sixfold classification system to categorize different types of sighting and close encounters. The first category is nocturnal lights, the relatively common phenomenon of seeing lights in the night sky and being unable to identify them. Of course, if people only ever used the abbreviation “UFO” to refer simply to an unidentified flying object, there would be no problem. But these days many people automatically equate “UFO” with “ET.” It has not always been the case that people made this huge inferential leap so readily. Indeed, in the very first survey of the public’s opinion on what UFOs might be, released by George Gallup in August 1947, the option of “extraterrestrial craft” was not even included (and the most popular response, at 33 percent, was a refreshingly honest “No answer, don’t know”). A second Gallup survey in 1950 only included the possibility of extraterrestrial crafts within a more general heading of “Comets, shooting stars, something from another planet”—and a mere 5 percent of respondents opted for this as their favored explanation.14

Ufologists agree that at least 95 percent of such sightings can be explained in mundane terms. Common causes for reports of UFOs include aircraft seen from unusual angles, bright celestial objects (especially the planet Venus), meteors, and laser displays. Such causes can often be identified as a result of proper investigation if the exact time, location, and direction of the sighting are available. Is there any good reason to assume that the few cases that cannot be readily explained are of extraterrestrial origin? No, there is not. Sometimes there will simply not be sufficient evidence available after the event upon which to base an explanation.

The constructive nature of perception and memory has already been discussed. Perception of a stimulus is greatly influenced by what an individual believes they are looking at, especially under the less than perfect viewing conditions that are typical of most UFO reports. For example, Allan Hendry, who at the time was the managing editor of the International UFO Reporter, analyzed reports that were known to have arisen as a result of the misidentification of aircraft towing advertising displays.15 He concluded:

In the three hundred calls that IUR has dealt with that were based on confirmed ad planes at night, 90 percent of the witnesses described not what was perceptually available, but rather that they could see a disc-shaped form rotating with ‘fixed’ lights; many of these people imagine that they see a dome on top and, when pressed, will swear that they can make out the outline with confidence.

Hynek’s second category is daylight discs. Although most of the reports of unusual flying objects in this category are indeed disc-shaped, it is also used to include reports of daytime sightings of crafts of other shapes, such as cigar-shaped, triangular, or spherical. As already mentioned, the term flying saucer first entered the English language in 1947 following Kenneth Arnold’s report of seeing strange craft flying at amazing speeds near Mount Rainier. However, it should be noted that Arnold did not describe the craft he saw as being saucer-shaped. He described them as being shaped more like boomerangs (figure 5.3). When he referred to saucers, he was describing the motion of the craft as being like a saucer skimming across water. But the media loved the expression “flying saucer” and so that became the common phrase. Lo and behold, in another wonderful example of the influence of top-down processing on perception, most subsequent sightings were indeed described as being saucer-shaped!

Hynek’s third category was the relatively rare radar-visual type. This refers to a situation where a sighting is reported along with a corresponding radar reading. Interestingly, Hynek rejected radar-only reports in recognition of the fact that “clutter” could often appear on radar screens for a variety of reasons. Such sightings became rarer as radar technology improved.

Close encounters of the first kind are visual sightings of UFOs seemingly less than 500 feet away. There is an immediate and obvious problem with this category. The conditions under which UFOs are typically observed are far from perfect. There are few, if any, cues to size, speed, and distance of objects seen in the sky. The image on the retina of a small object near to the observer moving relatively slowly is identical to that of a much bigger version of the same object much farther away, moving at speed. This does not seem to prevent people from giving very confident estimates of the size, speed, and distance of UFOs that they spot. Ufologists seem to believe that certain professional groups, such as pilots, military personnel, police officers, and astronomers, are incapable of making mistakes in estimating such factors, despite evidence that conclusively proves this assumption to be wrong.16

Close encounters of the second kind are those that involve physical effects on animate and inanimate objects. The former might include people experiencing paralysis or animals being frightened. The latter include electronic equipment malfunctioning, cars stalling, and physical traces, including impressions in the ground or scorch marks where a craft has allegedly landed. These phenomena are, of course, open to alternative explanations as shown in the Rendlesham case.

Figure 5.3

Although Kenneth Arnold’s report in 1947 of seeing strange craft moving at incredible speeds led to the term flying saucer, he described craft shaped more like boomerangs.

Photographic and video evidence of UFOs would clearly fall into this category. The history of photography has from its outset been intertwined with the history of paranormal investigation based on the dubious assumption that “the camera never lies.”17 This was never true, of course, as proven by the number of fraudulent “spirit photographers” back in the Victorian era. Nowadays, readily available inexpensive software allows hoaxers to produce superficially convincing photographs and videos of a range of paranormal phenomena, including UFOs, with relative ease. It makes one nostalgic for the good old days when the hoaxers had to use other techniques, ranging from Frisbees to realistic-looking models suspended on string, to achieve their effects.18

Of course, not all UFO photographs and videos are deliberate hoaxes. In fact, I suspect that the vast majority are not. There are several means by which someone could sincerely believe that they have captured genuine evidence of extraterrestrial visitation. Several common causes of misinterpretation have already been described. In the absence of any serious attempt to investigate further and consider all possible alternative explanations, anyone capturing such phenomena on camera may remain convinced that they have recorded evidence of a close encounter with extraterrestrials.

Another possibility is that the “UFO” in a photograph was not noticed at the time the photograph was taken but spotted later when it was being examined. This should not come as a surprise, given that research into inattentional blindness shows conclusively that we often fail to notice other stimuli in the vicinity if we are concentrating on another task. Given that a static photograph captures the scene at a particular instant in time, this allows for many additional possible misinterpretations of natural stimuli over and above those already mentioned. For example, you may capture an image of a bird flying in the background, seen from an unusual angle. If your attention had been drawn to the bird at the time the photograph was taken, you would have easily recognized it, but that may be far from obvious in a still photograph.19

As I was in the final stages of writing this book, I inadvertently took one such photograph myself. Our house is opposite the Thames in Greenwich, England, and we are often lucky enough to witness fantastic sunsets over the river that result in the sky appearing to be filled with dramatic hues of orange, red, yellow, pink, blue, and purple. I often capture such moments by opening the window and taking a picture on my mobile phone. On one recent occasion, I decided not to open the window as it was too cold (see figure 5.4). Sadly, the monochrome version of the photograph reproduced in this book does not show the wonderful colors of the sky that evening—but it does appear to show what might be a large alien mothership hovering ominously over the Thames in the top right corner. I will leave it to the reader to figure out what it actually shows.

Given that these days virtually everyone has a good-quality camera and video recorder in their pocket, not to mention the CCTV cameras everywhere, it is odd that we do not have thousands of crystal-clear images of UFOs, ghosts, and cryptids if these phenomena genuinely exist. This was brought home to me about ten years as I crawled along in very slow-moving traffic on my way home from Goldsmiths one day. I did a double-take at the very unusual sight in front of me. There, on the back of the truck in front of me, was a large terra-cotta head of Queen Elizabeth II with flowers for hair (see plate 5). A similar representation of her husband, Prince Philip, was also being transported. Presumably they were something to do with the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee celebrations, but they still made for a somewhat surreal sight. What struck me forcibly was the reaction of the numerous pedestrians as the truck passed slowly by. Almost without exception, they all had their phones out taking photographs and videos of the heads. I am sure the reaction would be identical if a flying saucer were seen hovering above any city or town. If extraterrestrial craft were really visiting Earth on a regular basis, we ought by now to have numerous examples of high-quality images and videos of those craft taken at the same time by numerous independent witnesses. That does not appear to be the case.

Figure 5.4

Is that an alien mothership hovering over the river Thames? Or is there another explanation? Photograph by the author.

Contact!

Things get even more interesting when we consider Hynek’s final category: Close encounters of the third kind. This category consists of cases of alleged human-alien contact. The first and most famous of the so-called contactees in the modern UFO era was George Adamski. On November 20, 1952, Adamski claimed to have met a beautiful being from Venus named Orthon in the Mojave Desert, California (figure 5.5). Orthon is said to have communicated with Adamski via telepathy and hand signals. Adamski went on to write bestselling books about his ongoing interactions with the Venusians, including claims that they were Nordic in appearance. They, as well as aliens from other planets within our solar system, were said to be regular visitors to our planet, and they expressed concern that humans might destroy all life on Earth through the development of nuclear weapons. He also claimed to have been taken on a trip around the solar system, including to Venus, where the reincarnation of his late wife was located.

Many other contactees came forward throughout the 1950s, following in Adamski’s footsteps with equally bizarre and unfounded claims. It is notable that the aliens of this era were generally said to be spiritually and technologically advanced compared humans. They wished only to help us to develop and to protect us from ourselves. Although many of the contactees did indeed make a successful living from their claims, they were generally not taken seriously even by the ufologists of that era who feared that their unbelievable claims would bring the field of ufology into disrepute.

Abducted!

Although Hynek originally proposed just three categories of close encounter, some ufologists felt the need to add additional ones. Close encounters of the fourth kind are incidents in which a human is abducted by aliens. Close encounters of the fifth kind refer to situations where a witness communicates directly with aliens, via telepathy or other means. It is debatable whether extending this system beyond three types of close encounter has added much clarity.

Figure 5.5

George Adamski standing next to a painting by Gay Betts depicting a Venusian he allegedly met in the Mojave Desert, California, in November 1952.

The first reported case of alien abduction to receive wide attention was that of Antonio Villas Boas in Brazil. He claimed that on the night of October 15–16, 1957, when he was twenty-three years old, he was plowing his fields on his tractor when he noticed what looked like a large red star descending from the sky. He then realized that it was, in fact, an egg-shaped alien craft. As it landed, Villas Boas tried to drive away on his tractor, but the engine died. He was grabbed by three humanoid creatures, about five feet high, who dragged him into their spaceship. Once inside, he was stripped naked and covered in a strange gel. He had blood samples taken from his chin and became violently ill when some kind of gas was pumped into the room in which he was being held. He was then joined by a very attractive female humanoid. She was naked and the pair had intercourse (twice). Before leaving, the female pointed at her stomach and then upward, as if to indicate that the product of this unlikely coupling would be born on her home planet (plate 6). Although many people suspected that this was nothing more than a hoax, Villas Boas insisted throughout his life that he was telling the truth.

The first abduction case to really grab the public’s attention was that of Betty and Barney Hill. On the night of September 19, 1961, the Hills were driving back from a short holiday in Canada to their home in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, when, at around 10:30 p.m., Betty spotted a bright light near the moon. When it appeared to get bigger and brighter, they stopped the car and observed the light through binoculars. Betty thought she saw a huge, oddly shaped craft that might be a UFO. Barney initially thought that it was an aircraft. However, he quickly changed his mind.

A little farther into their journey, they stopped again, and Barney got out of the car to observe the craft through the binoculars. He walked toward the craft until he was only fifty feet from it as it hovered at about tree height. He later reported that he saw a huge, pancake-shaped craft with a row of windows behind which were at least a dozen occupants in dark, Nazi-like uniforms. Barney panicked, got back into the car, and drove home. The Hills heard two sets of beeping sounds that appeared to cause their car to vibrate as they drove home, eventually arriving home in daylight at 5:15 a.m. The last 200 miles of their journey had taken seven hours, much longer than it should have done. They did recall leaving the highway onto a dirt road and coming across a roadblock of some kind, as well as seeing some sort of glowing orb.

When he arrived at home, Barney noticed that his shoes had scuff marks and the leather strap on his binoculars was torn. He felt an urge to examine his groin in the bathroom but noted nothing unusual on doing so. Betty noticed an odd pink powder on her torn dress. They found strange polished patches on their car that seemed to affect a compass needle. They also found that they could recall very little of what had happened between hearing the first set of beeping sounds and the second.

Ten days later, Betty began having a series of dreams, lasting over five nights, that seemed to fill in some of the gaps in memory. In her dreams, she and Barney were stopped by a group of humanoids at the roadblock and then taken aboard the alien vessel. The aliens were about five feet tall with large eyes, mouths like thin slits, and no protruding ears. They communicated via a mixture of telepathy and broken English. Similar aliens, now often simply referred to as greys, were described in many subsequent reports of alien abduction. On board the craft, the Hills were separated and each was medically examined.20 This involved the collection of skin, nail, and hair samples and, in Betty’s case, the insertion of a long needle into her navel, causing excruciating pain. Also, Betty was shown a star map allegedly showing the major trade routes used by the aliens.

A few months later, Barney was referred for psychiatric treatment. He was suffering from stress and exhaustion and had developed a ring of warts around his groin. After one year of treatment, he requested to undergo hypnotic regression in the hope that this would reveal what had really happened on that fateful journey from Canada to New Hampshire. He had his first hypnotic regression session with Dr. Benjamin Simon in December 1963, and not long after that Dr. Simon also hypnotically regressed Betty. The memories “recovered” during hypnotic regression were very similar to the narrative revealed in Betty’s dreams. One additional detail was that Barney recalled a cuplike device being placed over his genitals, which he believed had been used to extract sperm. Also, as a result of a posthypnotic suggestion by Dr. Simon, Betty was able to draw a copy of the star map that she had been shown. School teacher and amateur astronomer Marjorie Fish subsequently analyzed the map and claimed that it could only match stars seen from the vantage point of the Zeta Reticuli system, suggesting that this was where the aliens called home.

Figure 5.6

Betty and Barney Hill photographed in 1966 holding a copy of John Fuller’s bestseller, The Interrupted Journey.

The Hills’ story was told by writer John G. Fuller in his bestselling book, The Interrupted Journey, published in 1966 (figure 5.6) and then in the TV movie The UFO Incident in 1975.21 Many of the elements that featured in this classic case were to be commonly reported in subsequent claims of alien abduction, including the sighting of a UFO, missing time, dreaming of aliens, and the use of hypnotic regression to “recover” memories.

As you might expect, the story was subjected to detailed critical analysis by skeptics.22 Evidence suggests that the bright light that initially caught their attention and then appeared to follow them was probably the planet Jupiter. The “missing time” was not noticed until weeks after the incident, following questioning by ufologists. In fact, the Hills had taken an indirect route home, leaving the main highway for part of the journey. Many of the details were not recalled immediately afterward but instead first appeared in Betty’s dreams. These details were then included in the accounts given during hypnotic regression sessions. It should be noted that although the Hills believed their accounts of being taken on board an alien spaceship were accurate, Dr. Simon believed them to be a fantasy based on Betty’s dreams, the content of which would have been known to Barney. Fuller’s account conveniently omits the psychiatrist’s skepticism on this point.

Two bestselling books were published in 1987 that brought the phenomenon of alien abduction to an even wider audience. The first was by Whitley Strieber.23 Communion was allegedly a true account of the author’s own bizarre and horrifying interactions with alien beings, including having needles inserted into his head and anus. It topped the nonfiction bestseller lists of the New York Times, the Washington Post, and Publishers Weekly.

US journalist and UFO researcher Philip J. Klass critically assessed Strieber’s story and was unconvinced of its authenticity.24 Among numerous telling criticisms, Klass points out that prior to writing Communion, Strieber earned a living as a writer of horror stories. He claims to have had many bizarre experiences in his life but also admitted that he often just made claims up. For example, for years he claimed to be present at a real-life sniper attack, describing the horrific scene in gory detail—only to subsequently admit that he was never there. He has an obsession with intruders and appears to have difficulty separating fantasy from reality. His wife reports that he sees things that other people, including her, cannot see.

Here is an example of one of Strieber’s encounters with aliens:

Some time during the night I was awakened abruptly by a jab on my shoulder. I came to full consciousness instantly. There were three small people standing beside the bed, their outlines clearly visible in the glow of the burglar-alarm panel. They were wearing blue coveralls and standing absolutely still . . .

I thought to myself, My God, I’m completely conscious and they’re just standing there. I thought that I could turn on the light, perhaps even get out of bed. Then I tried to move my hand, thinking to flip the switch on the bedside lamp and see the time.

I can only describe the sensation I felt when I tried to move as like pushing my arm through electrified tar. It took every ounce of attention I possessed to get any movement at all . . . Simply moving my arm did not work. I had to order the movement, to labor at it. All the while they stood there . . . I was overcome at this point by terror so fierce and physical that it seemed more biological than psychological . . . I tried to wake up Anne but my mouth wouldn’t open . . . Again it took an absolute concentration of will . . . but I did manage to smile.

Instantly everything changed. They dashed away with a whoosh and I was plunged almost at once back into sleep.25

The other alien abduction bestseller published in 1987 was Intruders by Budd Hopkins (this was Hopkins’s second book on the topic, the first being Missing Time, published in 1981).26 Hopkins, who died in 2011 at the age of eighty, was convinced that the aliens were using abductees in a sinister cross-breeding project to produce human/alien hybrids. He viewed the alien visitors as callous in the extreme, showing no compassion toward their human victims. He was impressed with accounts from women who reportedly had become pregnant despite having no memory of having had normal sexual intercourse.27 Some months later, these women would, equally mysteriously, find themselves no longer pregnant. According to Hopkins, these women had been abducted by aliens, who then artificially impregnated them on board their spaceship. Subsequently, before the pregnancy reached full term, they were abducted again, and the hybrid fetus was removed and given to its alien parents. Memory for both of these abductions, Hopkins believed, was wiped by the aliens, typically resulting in episodes of missing time. However, Hopkins believed, as we shall see, that the abductees could sometimes recall certain telltale signs that they had been abducted even if they could not recall the details of the abduction itself.

Despite having no relevant formal training, Hopkins routinely used hypnotic regression to “recover” the traumatic abduction memories. Some abductees claimed during these sessions that the aliens had implanted tiny devices into their unwilling victims (plate 7). The purpose of these implants was unclear, but it was speculated that aliens might use them for tracking their victims or for mind control. Such devices could potentially provide strong support for the ET hypothesis. If they could be obtained and subject to proper scientific analysis, they might reveal, for example, previously unknown alien technology. Unexplained scars and bruises were taken by Hopkins as evidence of alien abduction.

Budd Hopkins is the man who introduced Professor John E. Mack to the alien abduction phenomenon, resulting in a lengthy book on the topic by the latter, published in 1994.28 This was a very significant development, given that Mack was a Pulitzer Prize winner and the head of the Department of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. The blurb of Abduction claimed that the book would “persuade every reader with an open mind that these accounts are not hallucinations, not dreams, but real experiences.” Mack had a somewhat different take on the phenomenon. Whereas Hopkins viewed abductions in totally negative terms, Mack believed that the experience ultimately led to spiritual enlightenment and increased concern for the environment. He also felt that the experiences should be viewed as examples of visionary encounters similar to religious and mystical encounters through the ages.

There is absolutely no doubt that some claims of human-alien contact are nothing more than deliberate hoaxes.29 However, most serious investigators of UFO-related claims, whether sympathetic toward or skeptical of the ET hypothesis, accept that most claimants are sincere. Supporters of the ET hypothesis claim that there is strong independent evidence to support the claims of contact. Skeptics are unimpressed, pointing out that all such evidence can be explained in more plausible prosaic terms. For example, very few “alien implants” have been subject to proper scientific analysis as they often seem to disappear mysteriously. Those that have been properly analyzed have not been revealed to be based on advanced alien technology. Some turn out to be everyday organic matter, such as cotton, that has somehow become encysted under the skin. A metallic “implant” that Susan Blackmore had analyzed turned out to be a dental filling that had fallen out.30

The unexplained scars and bruises that abductees find on their bodies have a number of potential mundane explanations. I suspect that if most people examined every square inch of their bodies, they would find some examples of such marks and be unable to account for how they got there. Alien abduction would not be top of the list of possible explanations for most people. Another possibility is injuries sustained during episodes of sleepwalking that are not recalled the following morning.

When it comes to unexplained pregnancies that subsequently just disappear, it should be noted that, despite repeated claims from ufologists, no properly documented cases have ever been presented.31 Some such cases may well be examples of the well-documented phenomenon of false pregnancy (or pseudocyesis) in which many of the physical symptoms of pregnancy, such as abdominal growth, tender breasts, and delayed menstrual periods, occur in an individual who is not actually pregnant.

The Psychology of Alien Contact and Abduction Claims

It seems highly probable that the majority of those who claim to have experienced alien contact are sincere, if mistaken, in their claims. The findings of a study by Harvard University psychologist Richard McNally and colleagues is relevant here.32 Previous research has demonstrated that individuals suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) show heightened psychophysiological activity, indicating increased emotional arousal, when recalling the traumatic events that caused the PTSD.

In their experiment, McNally and his team recorded levels of psychophysiological arousal as abductees listened to recorded accounts of their own alien encounter as well as other stressful, neutral, and positive experiences. As expected, higher levels of psychophysiological reactivity were recorded when abductees listened to the abduction and stressful scripts compared to the neutral and positive scripts, and this effect was more pronounced for the abductees compared to a control group.

Such heightened arousal is typically seen when abductees recall details of their abduction during hypnotic regression sessions. They appear to be not just recalling the details of their abduction but actually reliving it, often leading observers to conclude that the events reported must have really happened. McNally and his team, in contrast, concluded that it was only necessary for the abductees to sincerely believe that their reported abduction had taken place for the strong emotional responses to be evoked.

If it is accepted that it is highly unlikely that claimants really have had contact with extraterrestrials but that they are sincere in their claims, is the explanation that they are suffering from some sort of serious psychopathology? This appears not to be the case. Several studies have compared claimants with control groups, and the results overall do not suggest that higher levels of serious mental illness are found in the former compared to the latter.33

On the other hand, those claiming to have had alien contact do tend to show significant psychological differences compared to the rest of the population. They often display symptoms of PTSD, reporting poor sleep patterns and high levels of unhappiness and loneliness.34 In one study, over half of those reporting alien abduction had attempted suicide.35 June O. Parnell and R. Leo Sprinkle concluded that those who claimed to have communicated with extraterrestrials “had a significantly greater tendency to endorse unusual feelings, thoughts and attitudes; to be suspicious or distrustful; and to be creative, imaginative, or possibly have schizoid tendencies.”36 A study by my own group found that nineteen individuals claiming to have experienced alien contact had higher levels of the tendency to hallucinate compared to a matched control group.37

One group of personality variables that are more pronounced in those with conscious memories of alien contact is of particular interest insofar as all of the variables concerned have been shown to correlate with susceptibility to false memories. Absorption, dissociativity, and fantasy-proneness have all been shown to intercorrelate with each other as well as with paranormal belief and the tendency to report a range of ostensibly paranormal experiences.38 This raises the possibility that at least some reports of paranormal experiences might be based on false memories of events that never actually happened. Is it possible, then, that most, if not all, reports of alien contact are based on false memories?

The Relevance of False Memory Research

Before considering this possibility in greater detail, it is worth briefly discussing false memories in general. Of course, there is no clear dividing line between an apparent memory of an event that never took place and a grossly distorted memory of an event that did actually take place. Consider a hypothetical example. Suppose you have a clear subjective “memory” of going to the movies to watch Close Encounters of the Third Kind with friend A. It then becomes apparent that this never actually happened. In fact, you went to the cinema to watch that film with friend B. Is that best conceived of as a false memory of an event that never happened or as a distorted memory of an event that did happen? Although research into the unreliability of eyewitness testimony is sometimes treated as if it were totally distinct from more recent research into false memories, this example makes clear that the two phenomena actually exist on a continuum.

Research into false memories took off back in the 1980s and 1990s in response to the growing number of allegations of childhood sexual abuse being made solely on the basis of memories allegedly recovered during therapy.39 The typical scenario involves an individual going into therapy suffering from a fairly common psychological problem such as depression, low self-esteem, insomnia, and so on. At this stage, the sufferer does not believe themselves to have been the victim of childhood sexual abuse (evidence suggests that genuine victims of childhood sexual abuse do not repress their memories of the experience40).

After a few months of therapy involving certain types of “memory recovery” techniques, such as hypnotic regression and guided imagery, some patients become convinced that they were indeed so abused and often have vivid and horrifically detailed memories to support that belief. In some cases, the memories involve ritualized satanic abuse of the most extreme kind, including memories of bizarre sexual perversion, human sacrifice, and cannibalism. The evidence strongly suggests that such memories are false memories. However, they have often been accepted as true memories by the patient, the therapist, other family members—and juries in courts of law. The result is that many families have been permanently torn apart and many people have been convicted of crimes that they almost certainly did not commit.

As stated, this controversy raged most fiercely in the 1980s and 1990s, beginning in the United States but spreading around the world to many other countries, including the United Kingdom. It still affects families today, as I know only too well from my experiences as a member of the Scientific and Professional Advisory Board of the British False Memory Society. It must be emphasized that childhood sexual abuse is far more common than many people realize, and the consequences can be devastating for the victims. All allegations of abuse should be taken seriously and investigated impartially. However, there are also many families in which the accusations of childhood sexual abuse are almost certainly solely the product of dubious forms of psychotherapy. The accusations are often never retracted, and families remain divided forever. There are a few happy endings, in which accusers eventually came to realize that the memories must be false and have the great courage to admit that they have been mistaken. Tragically, there are still therapists using such techniques in the mistaken belief that their clients’ psychological problems could only be the result of such abuse and that healing requires that such memories be “recovered.”

The one slender silver lining from these tragic cases is that they generated a huge amount of research into the nature of false memories.41 It became clear that human beings are much more prone to false memories than anyone would have imagined. New experimental techniques were developed to reliably induce false memories in large numbers of people, and it was thus possible to investigate whether there is a particular type of personality that is most susceptible to false memories. It turns out that there is: as stated, individuals scoring highly on measures of absorption, dissociativity, and/or fantasy-proneness appear to be more susceptible to false memories compared to those with low scores.

Psychologists have used several techniques to investigate false memories, and the type of false memory implanted can range from the trivial (for example, misremembering a word as being on a list when in fact it was not) up to so-called rich false memories (detailed memories for entire events that never happened). A widely used example of the former is the DRM method, named after the first letter of the surnames of those who first used and popularized it (James Deese in 1959 and Henry L. Roediger III and Kathleen B. McDermott in 1995).42 This technique involves the presentation of word lists. Within each list, each word is strongly associated with a critical “lure” word that is itself not included. For example, a list might consist of bed, snore, dream, pillow, snooze, and doze but not sleep. However, many people would erroneously claim the latter was presented. By counting the number of lure words that are reported when memory is tested across a series of such lists, a measure can be obtained of how susceptible to this type of false memory an individual is.

One technique used for implanting rich false memories for entire episodes involves repeatedly interviewing adult volunteers allegedly to obtain as much detail as possible about events that happened to them during their childhoods. Most of the events genuinely did occur, as testified by other family members, but one (for example, getting lost in a shopping mall) did not.43 However, after repeated interviews and encouragement to try to recall the events, many people do report partial or full false memories for the event that never occurred, sometimes including additional details of what they think happened. Numerous well-controlled studies have shown that simply imagining events that did not happen increases the probability that they will subsequently be believed to have happened, an effect known as imagination inflation.44

Some studies use photographs to prompt childhood memories. However, the set of photographs include some that have been doctored to make it appear that a made-up event occurred (for example, going up in a hot-air balloon with a parent).45 Once again, many participants elaborate on their “memories” of this day out that never happened.

Another approach came to be known as the crashing memories technique after it was first introduced by Hans Crombag and his colleagues in a study carried out in the Netherlands following the crash of an El Al Boeing 747 into a block of flats in Amsterdam in 1992.46 Understandably, news of this disaster was widely reported, and it was headline news in the Netherlands for many days. As part of this study, participants were asked, “Did you see the television film of the moment the plane hit the apartment building?” Over half of the respondents reported they had seen this footage. However, no footage of the crash existed. This technique has been adapted to study false memories of a wide range of other high-profile news events that were not caught on camera, including Princess Diana’s car crashing in the tunnel in Paris and the sinking of the Estonia ferry.47 This technique and others have been used to identify a number of personality measures, such as absorption, dissociativity, and fantasy-proneness, that correlate with susceptibility to false memories.48

Absorption has already been mentioned several times in previous chapters. This is how Auke Tellegen and Gilbert Atkinson first defined absorption in 1974: “a disposition for having episodes of ‘total attention’ that fully engage one’s representational (i.e., perceptual, enactive, imaginative, and ideational) resources. This kind of attentional functioning is believed to result in a heightened sense of the reality of the attentional object, imperviousness to distracting events, and an altered sense of reality in general, including an empathically altered sense of self.”49 Absorption has been shown to correlate with paranormal belief and reports of psychic or mystical experiences, as well as reports of alien contact.50

Dissociativity is as an individual’s susceptibility to experiencing subjective separation between themselves and the world around them. Dissociation can be experienced in a variety of ways, including derealization (feeling that one’s surroundings are unreal), depersonalization (feeling that one’s consciousness is somehow disconnected from one’s body), and time distortion (with time running either faster or slower than normal).

Almost everyone will have experienced at least mild dissociation at some point, perhaps as a result of stress, sleep deprivation, or the effects of mind-altering substances. It is only in extreme cases that psychiatric intervention may be advisable. Many individuals with moderately high levels of dissociativity function well in society but may appear to others to be a bit “spaced out” or, as my grandma would have put it, “away with the fairies.” Several studies have reported correlations between dissociativity and paranormal belief and ostensibly paranormal experiences, including claims of alien contact.51 Dissociativity in adults is associated with reports of past childhood trauma in the form of physical, sexual, or emotional abuse. It has been argued that the tendency to dissociate may develop as a psychological defense mechanism whereby a child learns to dissociate in order to psychologically distance themselves from the pain and harshness of their reality.52

Krissy Wilson and I used the crashing memories technique to directly test the notion that susceptibility to false memories might be associated with both dissociativity and paranormal belief/experience.53 We asked our participants to provide details of where they were, who they were with, and what they were doing when they first saw various dramatic news footage such as the collapse of the Twin Towers on September 11 and Saddam Hussein’s statue being toppled in Basra. Among the genuine examples was one that, although reported in the news, was not actually caught on camera: the terrorist bombing of a nightclub in Bali in 2002. As predicted, the 36 percent of respondents who claimed to remember this nonexistent footage scored more highly than those who did not on both dissociativity and paranormal belief/experience. Neil Dagnall and colleagues reported similar results in a subsequent study.54

The relationship between fantasy-proneness and paranormal belief and the tendency to report ostensibly paranormal experiences has been the subject of a considerable amount of research. Sheryl C. Wilson and Theodore X. Barber provided the first systematic description of this personality variable in the early 1980s.55 Fantasy-prone individuals spend a great deal of their time daydreaming and have very vivid imaginations, claiming that they sometimes confuse fantasy and reality. They are extremely easy to hypnotize and often had imaginary friends during childhood. Notably, no fewer than thirteen of the twenty-seven female fantasizers in Wilson and Barber’s sample had experienced false pregnancies. Very high levels of ostensibly paranormal experiences were reported by this group, including 72 percent who reported seeing apparitions, 88 percent who reported out-of-body experiences or waking dreams, and 92 percent who claimed to have psychic abilities. Two-thirds of the sample believed they could heal people by touching them.

Two distinct routes to developing high levels of fantasy-proneness have been identified. It may be that, as a child, the individual was strongly encouraged to engage in creative fantasy-based activities such as writing stories, acting, and so on. The second route is as a response to an aversive childhood environment involving abuse and/or social isolation and loneliness. This is a similar argument to that put forward to explain the development of dissociativity. In this case, it is argued that the child is able, to some extent, to distance themselves from the harshness of reality by mentally escaping into a fantasy world. Subsequent research by Steven Jay Lynn and Judith W. Rhue supported the general conclusions drawn by Wilson and Barber.56 Fantasy-proneness has been repeatedly shown to correlate with paranormal belief and susceptibility to a range of ostensibly paranormal experiences.57

Opinion is divided as to whether those claiming alien contact are more fantasy-prone than the general population. This division of opinion appears to depend primarily on the approach: Those studies taking a biographical approach conclude that, as a group, abductees and contactees do indeed tend to have many of the classic characteristics of the fantasy-prone. Robert Bartholomew and colleagues analyzed descriptions of the lives of 152 such individuals, with the length of the descriptions ranging from a single paragraph to whole books.58 In 132 of these cases they identified one or more characteristics of fantasy-proneness, including reports of high hypnotic susceptibility, out-of-body experiences, paranormal experiences (including apparitions), healing abilities, and physiological effects. The thirteen detailed cases presented by John Mack were similarly analyzed by Joe Nickell, leading him to conclude that all showed evidence of being fantasy-prone.59

In contrast, studies that compare groups using questionnaire measures of fantasy-proneness tend to find no significant difference between those who claim alien contact and those who do not. Of those studies that use the Inventory of Childhood Memories and Imaginings (ICMIC) to assess fantasy-proneness, neither Mark Rodeghier and colleagues nor Nicholas Spanos and colleagues found significant differences on this scale between those reporting UFO experiences and control groups, although the latter did find that scores correlated with the intensity of the experience.60 Our own study using this questionnaire found a small but significant difference in scores between those claiming alien contact and a matched control group.61 Peter Hough and Paul Rogers, using the Creative Experiences Questionnaire (CEQ) to assess fantasy-proneness, also reported no significant differences.62

Kenneth Ring and Christopher J. Rosing also reported no significant differences in fantasy-proneness between those reporting abductions and other UFO-related experiences compared to the general population using a questionnaire of their own design.63 They did note, however, that as children, their sample of UFO experiencers, including abductees, were more sensitive to what they called “non-ordinary realities.” That is, they claimed to see into “other realities” that were not perceived by those around them and to be aware of “non-physical beings.” It might be suggested, in the absence of any proof that such other realities and beings exist, that their respondents were so fantasy-prone that they could not distinguish at all between perception and imagination.

It may be that those claiming alien contact really do not differ from others in terms of fantasy-proneness, but it is also possible that they are simply canny enough to recognize questionnaires that measure the degree to which they have what might be called “overactive imaginations.” For example, the ICMIC includes items such as “When I was younger, I enjoyed fairytales” and “Now, I still live in a make-believe world some of the time,” and the CEQ includes items such as “Many of my friends and/or relatives do not know that I have such detailed fantasies” and “I often confuse fantasies with real memories.” For individuals who are motivated to convince others that the reported events really did take place, the implications of responding positively to such items would be all too clear. It is worth noting that those claiming alien contact report high levels of childhood trauma, which, as already stated, tend to be associated with heightened levels of both dissociativity and fantasy-proneness.64

Levels of paranormal belief and the tendency to report ostensibly paranormal experiences are typically extremely high among those reporting alien contact. This has been shown to be the case based on both anecdotal observations and systematic research using standardized measures of paranormal belief.65 In other words, lots of weird stuff is often reported as having happened prior to any reported alien contact, although the frequency and intensity of such events may well increase following the alleged alien encounter.

To summarize, it appears that those reporting alien contact do indeed fit the psychological profile of people with a heightened susceptibility to false memories. They score higher than the general population on measures of absorption, dissociativity, and possibly fantasy-proneness, and they report high levels of paranormal belief and experience.

Two attempts, both using the aforementioned DRM technique, have been made to directly assess susceptibility to false memories in those claiming alien contact. The first was carried out by Susan Clancy and colleagues at Harvard University.66 They compared three groups in terms of their scores on the DRM task. The first group reported that they had “recovered” memories of having been abducted by aliens; the second group believed they had been so abducted but had no memory of it; and the third group did not believe that they had ever been abducted by aliens. Those in the first group reported that initially they had no conscious memory of being abducted but had “recovered” those memories either while in therapy, as a result of techniques such as hypnotic regression, or else spontaneously after reading about abduction or watching TV programs or movies about it. Readers may be wondering, with respect to the second group, why anyone would ever believe that they had been abducted by aliens if they had no memory of any such event. The answer is that, as already mentioned, it is widely believed in ufological circles that the aliens are capable of wiping their victims’ memories of the abduction. Certain telltale signs may be available, however, to indicate that an abduction has taken place. In this particular study, those signs include “insomnia, waking up in strange positions, unexplained marks on the body, preoccupation with science fiction.” The scores on the DRM task indicated that the group with conscious memories of alien abduction had the highest susceptibility to false memories, and the group who did not believe that they had ever been abducted had the lowest. However, for reasons that are unclear, my own team found no significant differences in DRM scores between a group with conscious memories of alien contact and a well-matched control group (that happened to include my mum, who has never been abducted by aliens—as far as she knows).

Another reason to believe that claims of alien contact are often based on false memories is the widespread use of hypnotic regression to recover such memories. Thomas E. Bullard reported that hypnotic regression had been used in around 70 percent of the “well-investigated, high quality cases” in his sample of abductees, and both Budd Hopkins and John Mack were known to routinely use the technique, as do many other ufologists.67 The idea that hypnosis can be used as some sort of magical key to unlock hidden or repressed memories is widely accepted but completely mistaken. In fact, the relationship between hypnosis and memory is poorly understood not only by the general public but also by many practitioners who actually employ it.

Daniel J. Simons and Christopher F. Chabris surveyed a large representative sample of US adults regarding their beliefs about how memory works and compared those responses with the views of an expert sample of professors, each with at least a decade’s experience of memory research.68 Whereas 54.6 percent of the general public agreed with the statement “Hypnosis is useful in helping witnesses accurately recall details of crimes,” none of the experts agreed. The use of hypnotic regression in attempts to recover additional details of a witnessed event over and above those recalled in the nonhypnotic state runs the very real risk of confabulation. Gaps in memory may be filled in with whatever comes to mind, producing a detailed false memory that is then sincerely believed in.69 Evidence produced as a result of hypnotic regression is rarely admissible in criminal trials.

Hypnotic regression is used not just to try to retrieve additional details of an event that was actually witnessed but also to recover allegedly “repressed” memories of traumatic events that have supposedly been banished from conscious awareness. In fact, most memory experts are dubious about the very concept of repression, pointing out that traumatic events are much more likely to be remembered than forgotten.70

People are sometimes convinced that hypnotic regression really is capable of mentally transporting someone back in time because they have witnessed the behavior of someone who has allegedly been regressed back to childhood. Such demonstrations are indeed superficially impressive. The regressed subject does not just describe what was happening on, say, the day of their seventh birthday, they actually appear to be reliving it. Their voices, vocabulary, mannerisms, and emotional responses all seem to be appropriate to the age to which they have been regressed. If asked to write something, their writing is childish, as are any drawings they produce. However, when their behavior is subject to detailed analysis by developmental psychologists, it turns out they are not really behaving in the way that a child of that age would behave. Instead, they are behaving in a way that most adults think a child of that age would behave.71

Michael Yapko collected data from psychotherapists regarding their beliefs about the relationship between memory and hypnosis.72 His analysis revealed a worryingly high level of misconceptions:

Survey data regarding hypnosis and suggestibility indicate that while psychotherapists largely view hypnosis favorably, they often do so on the basis of misinformation. A significant number of psychotherapists erroneously believe, for example, that memories obtained through hypnosis are more likely to be accurate than those simply recalled, and that hypnosis can be used to recover accurate memories even from as far back as birth. Such misinformed views can lead to misapplications of hypnosis when attempting to actively recover memories of presumably repressed episodes of abuse, possibly resulting in the recovery of suggested rather than actual memories.73

A minority of practitioners go even further, believing that hypnotic regression can be used to retrieve memories of life in the womb—and even earlier! (The latter will be discussed more fully in chapter 6.) James Ost and colleagues compared first-year undergraduate psychology students (during their first week at university), clinical psychologists, and hypnotherapists in terms of their actual knowledge of how memory works and their self-assessed knowledge of how memory works.74 Hypnotherapists were found to have the poorest understanding of memory but scored highest in terms of their self-rating of their own knowledge.

The rich false memories resulting from the use of hypnotic regression are based on a blend of fantasy, expectation, and fragments of real memories, including memories of dreams, stories, and films. Sometimes the source of the images or conversations in the false memory can be traced directly to a film or television program. For example, it seems likely that Barney Hill’s description of the aliens that abducted him and his wife was influenced by an episode of the TV sci-fi series The Outer Limits. Martin Kottmeyer points out that Barney’s description of the aliens as having “wraparound” eyes through which they spoke telepathically is very similar to the aliens depicted in an episode of that series.75 The episode was broadcast just ten days before the regression session in which Barney first described the aliens as possessing this unusual feature.

Perhaps the strongest evidence in support of the claim that reports of alien abduction are often based on false memories generated as a result of hypnotic regression is that produced by Alvin Lawson.76 Lawson hypnotically regressed eight volunteers with little prior knowledge of UFOs, none of whom believed that they had ever been abducted by aliens, and asked them to simply imagine that they had been so abducted. The accounts of these so-called imaginary abductees proved to be remarkably similar to the accounts produced by those claiming that they had genuinely been abducted by aliens, down to the level of odd, minute details.

Hypnotic regression is not the only way in which false memories are produced. As already stated, false memories can also be implanted by repeatedly interviewing people regarding an alleged event in their past that never actually took place, especially if they are presented with deceptive information implying that it really did take place. Henry Otgaar and colleagues used this approach to implant false memories of being abducted by a UFO at the age of four in a number of younger children (aged seven to eight years) and older children (aged eleven to twelve years), the younger children being more likely to report the false memory.77 One assumes that this study may have raised a few eyebrows on members of the ethics committee that approved it!

False memories can in fact develop without the involvement of either hypnosis or repeated (misleading) interviews. It is likely that, in many cases of individuals who have come to believe that perplexing events may have been the result of alien activity, false memories of alien contact are simply the result of imagining what such contact would be like. The formation of false memories is especially likely to happen in people with very vivid imaginations. Essentially, they end up mistaking their memory of something that they imagined for a memory of something that really did take place.

What might these perplexing events be that lead individuals either to seek the services of a practitioner of hypnotic regression or else to spend time imagining what it would be like to be abducted by aliens? Some of these events have already been referred to. The story of Betty and Barney Hill includes several examples: seeing a UFO, dreaming of aliens, finding marks on one’s body, and the experience of “missing time.” In all of these cases, there are plausible mundane explanations. UFO sightings can almost always be explained in normal terms if one makes the effort. Dreams of strange beings are common, and dreaming of aliens after believing one has just seen a UFO would not be surprising. As already explained, most of us could probably find unexplained scars on our bodies if we looked hard enough and, besides, highly fantasy-prone individuals are known to be susceptible to various psychosomatic effects.

An experience of “missing time” might reflect something as mundane as misreading a watch or clock, or it might reflect a psychological distortion of time perception, especially likely in those with high levels of dissociativity. One common, albeit underresearched, example of a time-distortion effect is referred to colloquially as highway hypnosis. This is the common experience that drivers have of driving on a long, monotonous road on “automatic pilot” and suddenly “coming to” and realizing that they do not recall the previous hours of driving.

One of the most common causes of the suspicion that one may have been abducted by aliens, even though one cannot remember it, is our old friend sleep paralysis, described at length in chapter 2. I am sure that when you read the description of Whitley Strieber’s alien encounter earlier in this chapter, you immediately recognized it for what it was. Also, this is how Susan Clancy and colleagues describe the participants in their group who had “recovered” memories of alien abduction that they believed had been repressed: “They began to suspect that they had been abducted after a sleep episode characterized by awakening, full body paralysis, intense fear, and a feeling of presence. Several participants reported tactile or visual sensations (i.e., levitating, being touched, seeing shadowy figures).”78 The researchers correctly identified these experiences as being due to sleep paralysis.

Many ufologists, such as Budd Hopkins, believe that the aliens have the ability to wipe their victims’ minds of the memories of being abducted but a few telltale memories may survive. What is the nature of these telltale signs that the careless aliens fail to erase? The answer lies in a survey of around 6,000 US adults carried out by the Roper Organization at the request of Budd Hopkins, in collaboration with David Jacobs and Ron Westrum.79 Hopkins and colleagues wanted to estimate how many people were being abducted by aliens, but they felt that simply asking people directly if they had ever been abducted would be futile given, as they believed, the aliens’ ability to wipe memories. Instead, they adopted an indirect approach, including the following unusual experiences, among others, in their survey (the figures in brackets indicate what percentage of the respondents confirmed that they had had the experience described at least once in their lives):

Hopkins and colleagues argued that if respondents answered affirmatively to four or five of the above items, they had probably been abducted by aliens and then had their memories wiped. However, it is quite clear that three of these items (the first, third, and fourth) describe common sensations experienced during sleep paralysis. They found that around one respondent in fifty reached their threshold of being a probable alien abductee, and then extrapolated to the adult population of the United States as whole—leading them to conclude that no fewer than 3.7 million American adults had probably been abducted by aliens! Much to my annoyance, this figure is frequently quoted in articles and programs about alien abduction. Even worse, it is frequently misquoted as “3.7 million American adults believe that they have been abducted by aliens” (my italics). No, they do not! They were never asked if they had been abducted by aliens!

As with other ostensibly paranormal experiences, there is no one-size-fits-all explanation for claims of alien contact and abduction. Having said that, the two-stage model presented in this chapter does provide a plausible explanation for most, if not all, sincere claims of this type. In the first stage, various types of unusual experience, such as seeing a UFO, “missing time,” dreams featuring aliens, finding unexplained marks on their body, or episodes of sleep paralysis, may lead an individual to suspect that they have been the victim of alien abduction. This provides the motivation to “recover” the full memory of the alien encounter either by repeatedly imagining what such an encounter may have been like, based on reports from others, or by the use of hypnotic regression. Those with the appropriate psychological profile may well end up with detailed false memories of alien visitations that never actually happened.

Arthur C. Clarke is said to have quipped, “I’m sure the universe is full of intelligent life. It’s just been too intelligent to come here.”81 In a more serious mood, however, he offered the following observation: “Two possibilities exist: either we are alone in the Universe or we are not. Both are equally terrifying.”82 Speaking for myself, I find the idea of intelligent life elsewhere in the universe considerably more appealing than the possibility that we may be all alone. I tend to agree with comedian and writer Ellen DeGeneres: “The only thing that scares me more than space aliens is the idea that there aren’t any space aliens. We can’t be the best that creation has to offer. I pray we’re not all there is. If so, we’re in big trouble.”83