Alien abductions (ufologists call it abduction) is a phenomenon that continues to scare and attract the attention of scientists, enthusiasts, and even high-ranking officials and American congressmen.
The most important question: did aliens really abduct people around the world? The most likely answer is yes, the abductees are telling the truth, because they believe what they are telling.
While the veracity of their words cannot be verified, most of the people who made such statements experienced real psychological trauma. This indicates that even if they were not abducted by aliens, they did go through some kind of inexplicable experience, and their words are not just a figment of fevered imaginations.
Scientifically refuting claims of alien abduction is as difficult as proving it. But some scientists have tried to find a logical explanation for this phenomenon. In the article “Not Just a False Memory” in Psychology Inquiry, the authors hypothesized that the alien abduction memory is a product of masochistic thinking and a person's conscious or subconscious desire to escape from himself.
But there are researchers who believe that such stories are really lived experiences. One of them is John E. Mack, professor of psychology at Harvard Medical School. He believed that most of these people were indeed abducted by aliens and subjected to traumatic and cruel experiments.
His work has attracted the attention of hundreds of people who believe they have been abducted by aliens. They saw in him a person who can be understood without fear of ridicule.
Professor Mack, who died in 2004, was a Pulitzer Prize winner for his article "The Prince of Our Disorders" on Lawrence of Arabia.
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Abduction history
The first case to be known was about American spouses Betty and Barney Hill. They claimed that they were abducted by aliens on a rural road in New Hampshire in 1961. They have no direct memories of their abduction, but Betty began to have vivid and very realistic nightmares about being on an alien ship with her husband and subject to inspection.
The artist drew Betty Hill's memories, which she recounted under hypnosis. She remembered how the alien creature showed her the star map and the system of planets from where they flew, located at the Zeta Grid. Zeta Grids is a double star in the constellation Grid. At that time it was not yet discovered.
Boston psychiatrist Benjamin Simon conducted a series of hypnosis sessions with the couple, during which they described in more detail the encounter with the aliens, including the abduction, examination, and Betty's conversation with one of the aliens.
Simon concluded that they were not lying, but these memories arose because Betty's subconscious had filled a brief period of amnesia with an encounter with aliens. And Barney subconsciously took over Betty's memories and told about them during a separate session of hypnosis.
Another famous case was with Travis Walton. In 1993, the sci-fi feature film Fire in the Sky was filmed, based on the book Fire in the Sky: The Walton Experience.
The alleged kidnapping took place on November 5, 1975, while Walton and six other loggers were working in a forest in Arizona. As they finished their work, the forest lit up with light and a flying saucer appeared. Curious, Travis approached the aircraft and was hit by an energy beam. The rest of the men fled in panic, fearing that the same would happen to them.
Walton was away for five days. He remembered being surrounded by three small humanoids with very large brown eyes. Subsequently, he said that they did not kidnap him intentionally. Their ship tried to fly through the forest, and Travis was injured by an energy beam from the ship's engine. The aliens decided to take care of him. However, this experience was very traumatic.
To prove that he didn't make up the story, Travis took a lie detector test. As lie detectors improved, he continued to repeat these tests for decades. He passed all the tests.
Physical evidence?
If alien abduction does occur, then there must be physical evidence. In reality, many of the abductees had scars, marks and even strange implants in their bodies.
Some people did not remember anything about the abduction, but found a bump on the body. The X-ray showed an object placed under the skin, which was removed. In one such case occurred with 37-year-old Lucia Davidson, from whose body a crystal-like object was removed in 1997, according to MUFON (Mutual UFO Network, an organization of ufologists).
Other cases include Pat Parrinellio (47) and Mary Jones (pseudonym, 52). Metal objects were removed from their bodies, which were inside the left hand and in the big toe. Derrell Sims, head of the Houston UFO Society, sent the recovered items to the National Institute for Scientific Discovery (NIDS) for analysis. They were studied using laser spectroscopy and scanning electron microscope, metallurgical analysis was done.
The recovered items showed no signs of any technological devices or chips. But around the tissues where the objects were placed, there was no inflammation, which usually occurs when a foreign object is placed in the body. In addition, in all cases, the implants appear to have been connected to or surrounded by nerve tissue.
Why would aliens abduct people?
Assuming that aliens do abduct people, the next question is: why are they doing this? It is very difficult to get an answer to it, because we cannot just find aliens and ask them.
One likely explanation is simple curiosity. Such a parallel can be drawn. Modern scientists often conduct experiments with wild animals. They ring them or attach devices to observe the behavior of animals in their natural environment and to keep track of them during migration.
In other hypotheses, there are not so harmless motives, for example, obtaining human genes, sexual intercourse for the production of hybrid offspring, cloning, etc. These theories lead us into a more esoteric realm, and hypothetical answers raise new questions.