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Alien Abductions: Reports, Theories & Stories (Not IHTM)

Mind you, interesting to see blonde aliens back in the picture, and talking about god - they haven't been around for a while...
 
Documentary filmmakers are interested in Romanek's case because it is one of the most well-documented encounters, it is rich in evidence, and there were numerous witnesses to many of his UFO sightings, Lindemann said.

While under hypnosis, Romanek recalled that during the night after one of the UFO sightings, three humanoid creatures -- two men and a woman-- came to the door of his sister's house, where he was staying, at 2 a.m.

"We went to the balcony and I grabbed at the male," Romanek said. "The next thing I knew, I was in a room and I was stuck to the wall. I wasn't glued to the wall. It's like someone had turned the gravity on that wall. ... Then they were doing stuff to my back."

Romanek tried to convince himself that this was a dream, but wounds on his back wide enough to stick his little finger in made it hard to ignore it. His sister also remembers the humanoid creatures, he said.

"This wasn't a dream. This was real," Romanek said. "Being hypnotized is not like you think it is. Stuff just comes out. I remembered it. ... I know for a fact that this is real. And they make sure they leave evidence."

The creatures revealed complex mathematical equations to him, Romanek said.

"I have a learning disability. I'm severely dyslexic. When I went through the regression and came out with these equations, I was floored," Romanek said. "All of the top scientists have looked at these."

At least twice, Romanek has awakened with rows and rows of equations he has written spread out in front of him. Mathematicians have said that the equations have to do with high-level concepts in quantum physics such as wormholes, zero point energy and element 115, Romanek said.

Romanek, who now lives out of state, prefers that his location not be revealed in order to protect his privacy.
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One story from this page - also discussion of temporal lobes, sleep paralysis, etc.
 
Problems with regression hypnosis

The biggest problem with any hypnotic recounting of a memory or alleged event is contamination.

Throughout our society, abduction stories are the norm. Books, magazines, movies and TV shows. We all now know what a classic abduction event should be like and we also know what the aliens are supposed to look like.

So, if we have a dream about an abduction, we will normally see the usually visuals as we see throughout the media.

But the problem is with certain people that can not define the boundaries of dreams and reality. They will see the dream as a concious memory of a real event and then seek help through regression hypnosis.

But that too can also lead to a problem. Hypnotheropists can also lead to further contamination. Leading questions can cause the subject to create an even wilder story of abduction. To steal a topic from a good book, the Betty and Barney Hill case is a good example. They saw what they thought to be a UFO and Barney was scared they might be abducted. This planted the idea in Betty who then researched abductions and then began to have dreams about an event involving them both.

The contamination had started and leading questions from keen hypnotheropists who want to prove that abductions are really happening, lead to an even greater story.

How can we prove that this is something real, when time after time we see cases being debunked by society's interest in UFOs and questionable hypnotheropy?

How can any hynotheropy session (abduction case or not) be seen as valid when nearly every question asked can be written off as a leading question?
 
Long page with 8 contact/abduction stories.
http://www.llewellynjournal.com/article/474
Here's the last one, and a summing up:
CASE EIGHT: "It Is Very Important We Do This."


Melinda Leslie of Los Angeles, California, is an office manager and secretary who has been having ET contact her entire life. Even more amazing is that Melinda has been able to recall many of her experiences consciously, without the aid of hypnosis. She is what UFO researchers call a conscious abductee.


While she has had virtually the entire range of UFO experiences, one of her most dramatic occurred in July 1991 while driving with two friends through the Los Angeles forest. All three experienced a two-hour-long abduction into a metallic craft piloted by grey-type ETs.


Once on board, they were undressed, examined, separated and given separate messages. Melinda Leslie was able to recall the entire event consciously. As she was laid out and examined, she hammered the aliens with questions, none of which they answered.


She saw her friend sitting in a chair with a bizarre-looking headset on him and she screamed out, "What are you doing to him?"


One of the aliens replied, "It’s all right, we’re giving him information. It’s all right. We’re educating him."


"Don’t hurt him," Melinda said.


"We’re not hurting him. He’s all right. It’s all right."


Melinda continued to let out a stream of questions, however, she was rarely answered, and then, only in an evasive manner. Says Melinda, "They don’t give you straight answers. They say, ‘It’s okay. We need to do this. You understand.’"


At one point, the three friends were separated and placed into different rooms. Melinda found herself in a room with a dozen greys. One stepped up to her and said, "Now, we’re going to do something. Don’t be afraid, but this is very important that we do this. We’re going to put this over your head."


What followed was a bizarre procedure. Melinda was immobilized by a device placed over her head. The aliens stood in a circle around Melinda and pushed her back and forth like a punching clown. Melinda felt she was going to fall, but each time she was caught and pushed again. Finally, she relaxed. At that point, they stopped and removed the device. One of the aliens said, "You needed to learn that....You needed to learn to trust us."


Meanwhile, Melinda’s friend, James, was receiving a different message. Says Melinda, "James said when I was out of the room, they came over to him, and they showed him a device, a bunch of stuff. They told him how to make a UFO detector, and they gave him the information. He said, they said because they wanted him to document and videotape them. When sightings happen, they told him he has a mission to document this stuff."


According to James, "They showed me how to do this. And they explained the whole thing technically to me, and I was given the information how to build those. They were done and they made sure I understood. And I said, ‘Yes, I understand.’"


Melinda’s other friend was unable to recall much detail other than being taken onboard and examined. Melinda continues to have experiences and has lectured extensively about her encounters.





CONCLUSIONS


There are many other cases where aliens have conversed with human beings. However, the patterns are usually the same. For the most part, aliens are not only extremely taciturn; when they do speak they are often evasive. When abductee Travis Walton was taken onboard a UFO, he asked numerous questions of the aliens, none of which were answered. When abductee Betty Hill asked her abductors where they came from, they told her, "You wouldn’t understand."


But as the above cases show, the aliens do sometimes reveal information about themselves, their feelings, their intentions, their desires, fears and beliefs. By piecing together these accounts, we are beginning to get a clearer picture of who the aliens are and what they are doing on this planet. The main message revealed by the aliens' conversations is that they have a strong interest in humanity. Whether they are removing genetic material, imparting spiritual knowledge, predicting natural disaster or studying our emotions, the aliens are obviously fascinated by humanity. The conclusion is clear. For whatever reason, they are deeply interested in us. And if the patterns reveal anything, the aliens will remain here for a long, long time
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In Case 7 the aliens claim they live in ships under the ocean, and have been here a long time.

All the stories contain one or more of the usual elements:
Greys, missing time, transportation into a UFO, cross-breeding, medical examinations, amnesia, etc.
 
I wonder if the woman in the above case has seen greys all of her life, seeing as they don't seem to have entered the whole 'ET' pantheon until fairly recently.
 
rynner said:
All the stories contain one or more of the usual elements:
Greys, missing time, transportation into a UFO, cross-breeding, medical examinations, amnesia, etc.
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And a remarkable lack of any important information communicated by these advanced aliens to the people they are supposedly educating;
this is always a feature of the abductions- they don't actually tell the abductees anything remotely interesting, even when the abductee remembers it all perfectly (like this woman).
 
learn

why would we wish to learn anything from greys and could we trust anything they said?

they seem to do some dodgey things.

granted they are ,if they exsist,more high tec than us but any tec we gain from them may have a detrimental effect

giving us what they wanted not what we needed.
 
Professor McNally is talking out of his arse! Conform to a common recipe?

C D B Bryan in his book 'close encounters of the fourth kind - alien abduction and ufo's, witnesses and scientists report' and Jacobs in 'the threat' and in loads of other books i've read state quite clearly that research groups either pick their subjects - which reveal the 'common recipe' cited, or they pick themselves. If a researcher is open to experience being a positive and interesting phenomenon some of the subjects are horrified and think that the aliens are threatening and abhorrent and will leave the study group in order to find a more sympathetic group, and abductees who find it a positive experience don't want to be frightened by the thought that they aren't the guardian angels they've been considered and will likewise move to a sympathetic researcher or study group. THIS is the reason for a 'common recipe'. Also the over-riding opinion amongst MOST books and articles I've ever read state categorically that these people actually WANT it to be a brain seizure! The last thing they want is for it to be objectively true and fight it all the way! Many of them don't even get to the hypnotists couch IN CASE it turns out to be real and their brains go 'pop'.:eek!!!!:

MOST people are not abducted in their beds. Some accounts are remembered when they're in bed because that's where hypnotists start looking - particular incidences which happen at night-time like child-abuse or recurring dreams, etc. are seen by hypnotists as possible triggers for the memories so this is where they start to look. But in fact when the memories begin to surface there are MANY incidents that take place during the day and when other people claim to have missed them, including the story of a woman who was abducted and her body was seen to come out of her apartment building and float up into the sky into an awaiting UFO which was not only reported to her researcher by herself but reported by a car of three men who were very upset and confused and later on by another car with one woman in it. Both cars were driving across the Brooklyn Bridge in the night and were severely traumatized each contacting the researcher believing that they were the only witnesses and it could not be independently verified.

The problem with most researchers into this phenomenon is that they cherry pick. Cherry pick to the point where I have to dismiss everything they say because it is too unreliable to trust. I have read many accounts that I believe to be trance-states or hallucination, or attention-seeking breakdowns, but at least I don't ignore all of the evidence in order to let it fit into my own precious theories. When I read a book that accepts everything without analysis I dismiss this also as unreliable but the core of the stories are there for all to see whether you believe in UFO's and Alien abduction or not. It drives me nuts when people ignore verifiable accounts because it falls into a grey area - excuse the pun:D

So lets have no more about Sleep Paralysis, or frontal-lobe epilepsy, or fantasy, because despite what we wish for, it doesn't make verifying and documented accounts with multiple witnesses and physical evidence go away. There can be no doubt that SOMETHING is happening. The only problem is if its mass-induced hysteria that can generate a physical effect upon our environment (Jungish and poltergeist-esque) which is amazing, or something actually real that is masking itself to us and would explain all the differing description (Keel and Hough) or a world-wide conspiracy to topple the foundations of science and technology (???):confused:
 
A very long page here about more friendly alien-human interactions.

Includes aliens:
  • Fixing a crashed motor-bike(!)
  • Curing Carpal Tunnel syndrome
  • Taking electricity from power lines

The usual bright lights, missing time, 'greys', are here, but also praying-mantis-type aliens in an underground base... :eek!!!!:
 
Ouch. Emergency room report.

http://www.rense.com/general46/dont.htm

Upon examination by the ER physician, patient was found to have bled (profoundly) from the bladder through the penis. His clothing was soaked with blood about the groin and upper thigh areas. There was sensitivity in the lower left quadrant even though the patient was unconscious. Patient was also found to have been bleeding from the nose and tear ducts. There were obvious signs of surgery in the nose above the septum, near the entrance to the sinuses....

...A cystostoscopy of the bladder was performed indicating contusions of the lower left bladder area. A total of four such areas were found, which was apparently the reason for bleeding. The wounds were odd in that there appeared to be no apparent reason for their presence. Again, there was no indication of causative external trauma....

...The blood found on the patient's clothing proved recent (within two hours) profuse bleeding....Yet those areas were no longer bleeding (at the time) and should have been. This was a very curious and impossible scenario....

...The CAT scans and MRI's confirmed recent (healed) nasal surgery which the patient insisted he never had. As his personal physician, having only recently given the patient a complete annual physical only days before, I can testify to the fact that no such surgery had been done at that Time....
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I wouldn't lose too much sleep over it. :D After all, what kind of medical report uses phrases like "nearly miraculous", "very strange, very strange", "I haven't a clue" and "should be impossible"? And why would the examining physician be identified only by Mr ___ ______ (MD)! The answer is that this whole thing originated in someone's head.

I believe there is definitely something in this abduction thing, it's a valid phenomenon that needs investigating; unfortunately, here's little on Rense that not sensationalist, bogus, hoaxed or plain nonsense, and it lends nothing to the valid study of this area.
 
Desperado said:
unfortunately, here's little on Rense that not sensationalist, bogus, hoaxed or plain nonsense, and it lends nothing to the valid study of this area.
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:eek: I am completely disillusioned now. Excuse me while I go lie down and rethink my whole world-view. :D
 
I'm in two minds about the abduction phenomenon. However I was reading the Times at work the other day (lunchbreak of course :) ) and I came across an article about the odd ways that some people wind up in hospital. Among the list was a couple who spent a few days in hospital as a result of prolonged weightlessness. Apparently hospitals in the UK get a few submissions every year with ordinary people suffering the effects of prolonged weightlessness. The first thing that jumped to my mind was that they had been abducted and spent time inside a UFO. I cannot thing of anything else that would cause this in people with ordinary jobs, i.e. not astronauts.

btw here's the link to the Times website if anyone wants to read the article. Hit the search option and type in 'accidents'. The article is entitled 'Rats, drills and lawnmowers all drive Britons to hospital beds. And watch out for those pyjamas' 22 Dec 2003.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/
 
I remember a very interesting statement made by Betty Hill in an interview, where she said that her and Barney left out some vital feature about their abduction that they keep secret. If anyone else mentions it, then they'll know it was real. Apparently, none of the accounts she heard ever had this detail in it.

I wonder what it was?
 
I still think the Ilkey moor thing is funny as hell - simply due to the weirdly cliched description of the "little green man with pointy ears" (which sounds kinda like Yoda)

and the fact that no one can figure out if the photo is faked
 
rynner said:
And here's another look at one of the more intriguing stories, the Charles Hickson case.
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The U.F.O. in the drawing looks like a fish to me. I wonder if the fact that they were fishing in any way influenced the way the two men percieved the object in the sky.
 
My friend Mike and I had picked up copies of Strieber's Communion separately because of the picture on the cover. That archetypal image seemed familiar to us because of memories from childhood. For me, it was 2 dreams: one when I was 3 or 4 (1968-1969) and one when I was 11 or 12 (1976-1977). Date references for those who are interested in the cultural influence theory

So Mike and I were intrigued by Strieber's ideas and wanted more info, including personal experience. We looked at our own childhoods for more confirmation. The only thing I could think of was the time my brother, sister and myself all had sores on our right ears at the same time (this would have been about the time of the first dream pre-school for me). I asked my mother about it as an adult because in my memory "doctors" had made the bloody spot. It seemed like a strange place to put a vaccine injection. She said that I had it backwards. She had taken us all to the doctor because of the sores, who told us that the sores were from us picking our ears. The sore was on the ridge just above ear canal opening. Quite a coincidence for all three of us.

Oops, I still haven't gotten to the UFO sighting... So Mike and I were friends but had other friends that weren't mutual friends, so didn't spend every waking minute together. I was on the way to the beach with Rich on a summer's evening. We were about thirty miles from Lake Michigan's shore when I saw a huge orange ball falling fast at a sharp angle. I said "Holy crap, a meteor's going to hit Holland" (the town where we were headed). Then the ball righted itself and moved slowly off in a straight line toward the Lake. I suddenly went all dreamy and heard myself say "They're here for me". I couldn't believe I said something like that and I didn't even know why I had said it. There was no conscious thought behind the statement. What I saw didn't look like a "Close Encounter's" style UFO and "meteor" was the first thing that sprang to mind not "alien machinery". Rich said "We're never going to talk about this again", like he was an automaton. At the time, I certainly didn't want to talk about it, but later when I tried to ask him about it, he acted like he didn't even remember.

So after this, strange events kept happening, but always when I was alone or with different people other than Mike. Mike and I were the only ones who talked UFOs. Everyone else I knew were pretty uninterested in SF scenarios. The events are spaced out over a year.

My friends and family could no longer listen to radio at the condo where I lived because someone in the neighborhood seemed to have a CB that they used frequently. But everyone in the neighborhood denied having a two-way radio and no one else had any problems listening to their radios. Nevertheless, whenever we turned the radio on, we would get a very loud voice over the sound of the music, but without understandable words that would help us identify the person responsible.

I had a vivid dream about a small flying machine that accompanied some UFOs and had to be specially prepared. When I was visiting my friend Claire's family in Chicago, her brother started talking about his job as an engineer and mentioned the word "dialectrics". The word triggered something for me and I began to describe his job to him because of the dream. The little machine in the dream was supposed to hover around and keep down the build-up of static electricity. It was embarrasing because I couldn't explain my knowledge or understanding to him.

I went to bed early one night (still light outside because it was summer) and stumbled out of bed 30 minutes later to use the bathroom. I saw a small tan figure and started to laugh. "You AGAIN?" Then stopped when I realized it was my jacket hanging on a doorknob. I honestly had no idea what I had said such a thing, or why I had used the word "again" as though small tan people showed up unanounced all the time to cause mischief and fun. Like the UFO sighting, there was a subconscious part of me that seemed to have relationships with the unknown, leaving my conscious mind in the out of the experience.

I was with Claire again and another group of friends at a cottage on a golf course in the fall. I was in my room unpacking and changing when a black van at another cottage caught my eye. I had seen it earlier that day, parked in the same spot, there were no markings and the windows were tinted. As I looked at it, taking a moment to take in the surroundings and the view, the van seemed to come apart as a bright light emanated from it and completely filled the room I was in. This van was about half a block down the street. I screamed and three people came running in to see what was wrong. The van was gone and I felt like a fool trying to explain. Everyone thought I had seen a ghost and I can't even remember how I explained it away. It was completely embarrasing and humiliating.

After that, I said "enough". There were other, smaller events. The little spidery thing was showing up in my bedroom at this time (see the ITHM thread). There were dreams, strange coincidences, etc. I wanted all this nonsense to stop so I completely rejected it. And it did stop which was weird in itself. That's why I liken UFOs / "aliens" to the "Good Folk" and believe our ancestors were wise not to call attention to them. Once you call them, they seem to do things that they think are funny but make you look like a total loon.

Mike was experiencing his own strangeness at the time, separate from me. We both had difficulty believing each other's accounts because we weren't there to see it for ourselves. The events led to the break up of our friendship, for myself because I wanted to distance myself from the strangeness and Mike wasn't ready to let go. I've always hoped he pulled free eventually, but I'm not so sure.

I only recently read John Keel's The Mothman Prophecies. It certainly brought back memories and made me wonder just how common my experience was.
 
WOW, that's some story. I have a story of my own, but after yours I'm afraid everyone will just ignore mine. Oh well, here it goes....

I have already posted this on the "it happened to me" forum so if you have already read this I apologize. Feel free to skip it. When I posted it there I was very new to the site and didn't realize there were other forums here where I could post it, and this seems like a good place for it too.

Ok, so when I was very little, prob. between 3 and 5 years old, I used to have weird dreams about a guy who lived in the wall who would kidnap me. He was paper white and naked, although there was nothing to see. All the dreams were different but in the only one I can remember he took me to a place in the walls where I found out a couple years back there is a closet. In there there were a bunch of other people who looked just like him. They all pointed at me and laughed because I looked different from them. After my family moved to a different house I had one of these dreams and then they stopped. It occured to me that he looked kind of like the grey aliens. I also have a spot on my arm and a spot on my knee where there is definetly something under the skin. You can feel it, but it doesn't hurt or anything. The one on my arm has been there as long as I can remember and no one seems to know what it is or how it got there.

I am not saying that I was definetly abducted or that there is something implanted in my arm, but I have wondered about the possibility a number of times. I was wondering what people thought???:confused:
 
You account is much more intriguing than mine. Now that I reread it, mine sounds like a bad case of hysteria.

Have you ever thought of getting those spots xrayed?
 
Yes, get those spots looked at (or even opened up). Could be interesting...
 
"Have you ever thought of getting those spots xrayed?"

I have considered going to the doctor about them, but I really don't like my doctor at all and would really like to find a new one first. Unfortunately I am still living with my parents and have their health insurance and I pretty much just get ignored when I say I want to find a new doctor.

Also, I thought your story was really interesting.
 
Source: American Psychological Society

Date: 2004-06-22

Probing The World Of Alien Abduction Stories

When people remember traumatic events, they'll show signs of their distress, like increased heart rate, sweating and muscle tension. These reactions are often seen as a testament to the authenticity of the memory - some have gone so far as to use physical reactions to memories to prove their validity, even when the memory is as far-fetched as ritual abuse by satanic cults. Recently, though, a team from Harvard has challenged the significance of these reactions by looking into one of the most widely reported and least likely memories people claim: alien abductions.

The study, conducted by Richard McNally, Natasha Lasko, Susan Clancy, Michael Macklin, Roger Pitman and Scott Orr at Harvard University, will be published in the July issue of Psychological Science, a journal of the American Psychological Society.

The researchers recruited people who reported being abducted and had them describe the alien encounters as well as other stressful, happy, and neutral memories. The researchers converted these stories into 30-second audiotaped narratives and played them for the "abductees" while recording heart rate, sweat production, and facial muscle tension, three strong indicators of stress. The researchers also played the tapes for a control group of people who had no memories of alien encounters.

The researchers found that those who claimed to have been abducted had similarly strong reactions to the stressful narrative and the alien abduction, and weaker reactions to the happy and neutral narratives. The control group barely reacted to any of the stories.

When people believe they've been abducted by aliens, recalling their abduction can evoke reactions not unlike those evoked by a genuine memory that is stressful. This suggests that a person's reaction to a memory doesn't indicate whether the event happened, but only whether the memory, real or not, is traumatic.

###

To read the article, visit http://www.psychologicalscience.org/media.

Psychological Science is ranked among the top 10 general psychology journals for impact by the Institute for Scientific Information. The American Psychological Society represents psychologists advocating science-based research in the public's interest.
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http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2004/06/040622012449.htm

Oddly I can't seem to find the report at that link abive.

Emps
 
Why are the messages given to abductees so trite? I mean, we know that nuclear war, pollution, disease etc etc are bad, so why tell us? If the aliens simply handed over blueprints for a safe, cheap fusion power generator....

And why is it that these messages of doom and gloom are always given to people with relatively little power to act upon them?

Something doesn't quite ring true somewhere. Either these abductees are lying or the phenomena has a different objective to that which the messages appear to convey.

If alien abduction is a true, objective fact, then why would these messages be given?
 
Hhhhhmmmmmm.................Maybe nuclear war, pollution and such are ACTUALLY good for the planet in the long run and they want to destroy us.;)

I actually already posted my theories on this somewhere, so I won't bore you all by typing them again, but they are there.
 
You mean it's a bit like reverse psychology?
 
Alien thinking
By Angela Hind

Not many scientists are prepared to take tales of alien abduction seriously, but John Mack, a Harvard professor who was killed in a road accident in north London last year, did. Ten years on from a row which nearly lost him his job, hundreds of people who claim they were abducted still revere him.
Professor John E Mack was an eminent Harvard psychiatrist, psychoanalyst and Pulitzer Prize winner whose clinical work had focussed on explorations of dreams, nightmares and adolescent suicide.

Then, in 1990, he turned the academic community upside down because he wanted to publish his research in which he said that people who claimed they had been abducted by aliens, were not crazy at all. Their experiences, he said, were genuine.

They were not mentally ill or delusional, he said, and it was the responsibility of academicians and psychiatrists not only to take what they said seriously, but to try and understand exactly what that experience was. And if reality as we know it was unable to take these experiences into serious consideration then what was needed, was a change in our perception of reality.


"What are the other possibilities?" said Mack. "Dreams, for instance, do not behave like that. They are highly individual depending on what's going on in your sub-conscious at the time.
"I would never say, yes, there are aliens taking people. [But] I would say there is a compelling powerful phenomenon here that I can't account for in any other way, that's mysterious. Yet I can't know what it is but it seems to me that it invites a deeper, further inquiry."

Lifeline

For many people who claimed they had been abducted, John Mack was a lifeline. He worked with more than 200 of them, including professionals, psychologists, writers, students and business people.

I would never say, yes, there are aliens taking people...] I would say there is a compelling powerful phenomenon here that I can't account for in any other way
John Mack
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Many had never told anyone else of their experiences apart from Mack for fear of ridicule from colleagues, friends and family. Here, at last, was a highly respected psychiatrist who was not only prepared to listen - but also take what they were saying seriously.
An abductee - or experiencer as they prefer to be known - says that alien encounters begin, most commonly in their homes and at night. It can however, happen anytime, anywhere. They say they are unable to move; they become extremely hot and then appear to float through solid objects, which their logical mind tells them can't be happening.

Usually the experiencer says they are accompanied by one or two or more humanoid beings who guide them to a ship. They are then subjected to procedures in which instruments are used to penetrate virtually every part of their bodies, including the nose, sinuses, eyes, arms - abdomen and genitalia. Sperm samples are taken and women have fertilised eggs implanted or removed.

Hybrid offspring

"Have I questioned my own sanity"? says Peter Faust an experiencer and close friend of John Mack's. "Absolutely, every day to a certain degree because the majority of the world says you're crazy for having these experiences. But if it was just me who had contact with aliens, who had intimate experience with female aliens and producing hybrid offspring, I would say I'm certifiable, put me away, I'm crazy.

"And that's how I felt when I initially had these experiences. My wife thought I'd lost it. But then I began to look at the experience outside myself and realised that hundreds if not thousands of people reported that exact same experience. And that gave me sanity. That gave me hope. I knew I couldn't be fantasising this."

The whole experience is often accompanied by a change in cosmic consciousness and understanding of our place in the universe. And it was this that forced Mack to question who we are in the deepest and broadest sense.

"I have come to realise this abduction phenomenon forces us, if we permit ourselves to take it seriously, to re-examine our perception of human identity - to look at who we are from a cosmic perspective," he said.

Extraordinary work

In 1990 John Mack's book Abduction: Human Encounters with Aliens was published. It shot to the top of the best sellers list and John Mack appeared on radio and television programmes. Harvard decided enough was enough.

Mack was sent a letter informing him that there was to be an inquiry into his research on alien abductions. It was the first time in Harvard's history, that a tenured professor was subjected to such an investigation. John Mack decided to fight back and hired a lawyer, Eric MacLeish.

"It was appalling that John had to go through this," says MacLeish now. "And we made it clear that if we were to have a full blown trial here, then we were going to have a very public trial and call on everyone who worked with John - all of whom had nothing but praise for his extraordinary work and dedication to his patients - and I don't think that's what Harvard had in mind at all."

We made it clear that if we were to have a full blown trial here, then we were going to have a very public trial and call on everyone who worked with John
Eric MacLeish
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There followed 14 months of stressful and bitter negotiations. "They tried to criticise me, silence me - by saying that by supporting the truth of what these people were experiencing, possibly I was confirming them in a distortion, or a delusion. So instead of being a good psychiatrist and curing them, I was by taking them seriously, confirming them in a delusion and harming them," said Mack.
The inquiry made front page headlines all over the world, and eventually Harvard dropped the case and a statement was issued reaffirming Mack's academic freedom to study what he wished and concluding that he "remains a member in good standing of the Harvard Faculty of Medicine".

He continued to work and write. But Mack was killed in a car collision last year in north London after leaving a Tube station. He was visiting the city to deliver a lecture on the subject which had won him the Pulitzer Prize in 1977, T E Lawrence. Lawrence, of course, was also killed in a road crash.

But Mack's work lives on with an institute which now bears his name; the hundreds of people in the experiencer community still hold him in particular affection.

His search for an expanded notion of reality, which allows for experiences that might not fit traditional perceptions and worldviews, is one they, at least, will be hoping continues.

Abduction, Alien and Reason, a programme about John Mack, is broadcast on Wednesday night on BBC Radio 4 at 2100BST.


Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/m ... 071124.stm
Published: 2005/06/08 10:38:06 GMT

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I've just finished reading 'Abducted' by Ann Andrews and Jean Ritchie. It's about the abduction experiences of a young lad in Kent in the '80's and '90's. Quite an interesting read, and I'm beginning to question my earlier scepticism.
 
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