Does Sleep Paralysis Explain Alien Abduction?

Sleep paralysis has become widely known as a common sleep disorder in which the body becomes paralyzed (as it commonly does during dream sleep to protect people from injury) but the person falling asleep is not totally asleep yet.

Instead, during sleep paralysis, the experiencer is trapped in a state of twilight sleep, somewhere in between full consciousness and dreaming.

While in this between-state, the person typically experiences terror, the sense of a malevolent presence in the room, and a heaviness or pressure on the chest or body, as if being held down or paralyzed by that entity.

In some cases the person is only dimly aware of a sinister presence and sees nothing except, possibly, a shadow. In other cases the person sees what look like alien creatures, demons, or paranormal entities. The experience ends when the person wakes up or falls asleep completely.

Sleep paralysis is often put forward as an explanation for alien abduction reports. Before aliens became the bete du jour, people reported being 'hagged' (ridden by an old hag, which was understood to be form of witchcraft), or said they had been attacked by an incubus or succubus--demons that preyed on a semiconscious person's sexual energy.

It's tempting to say, "oh well, now we understand that this is a medical problem called sleep paralysis," but in fact, as long ago as 1989, respected academic folklorist David Hufford was making a reasoned argument that 'sleep paralysis' is a descriptive term for what appears to be a consistent discrete phenomenon that we don't really completely understand.

Hufford's book, The Terror that Comes in the Night, based on his academic study entitled "An Experience Centered Study of Supernatural Assault Traditions." revolutionized the academic study of folklore. Previous to Hufford's careful philosophical analysis, it was assumed that folkloric tales were primitive (read: false) ways of understanding things that science could easily explain better.

In fact, science does not have a great explanation for some things that trigger folkloric explanations, and neither does the study of folklore.

Sleep paralysis or 'hagging' (in the language of folklore) is one these cases.

The casual and superficial debunking of paranormal and UFO or alien phenomena often includes scientific 'explanations' that are actually descriptions that are no more accurate than the folklore explanations that preceded them, of phenomena that we just don't understand very well.

A description is NOT an explanation, and it is even less an argument against the validity of an experience.

Sleep paralysis is a fascinating phenomenon. I myself have experienced it several times when I was much younger. It really is a terrifying and weird experience, but the leap from that experience to the experience of an alien abduction is huge, despite the intriguing similarities.

Before we start snickering at these things, it would be so great if we could look into them with an open mind. And I need to mention here that many respected scientific and academic minds have ask for the same attitude.

We might just discover something nobody expects.

And isn't that what science is supposed to be about?

A Biological Approach to the Grays

No one with any scientific or academic street cred is studying Gray aliens.

We all know this.

But what if they were?

I got to thinking about this the other day, as I mentally ticked off the characteristics of Grays most widely reported by experiencers.

It hit me like a lightening bolt from the land of the Obvious:

These things sound like animals. 

As animals, it's completely possible that the Grays are animals that really do come from outer space. I mean, when you know nothing for sure, anything is surely possible. 

But what is most likely?

If the Grays are indeed animals, and if, as it appears, they've been messing with human beings for thousands of years (not just since 1946), then it seems to me a lot more likely that, like all the other animals we know about right now, the Grays probably hail from the very same planet humans currently inhabit:

Earth.

Consider the following list of commonly (if not universally) reported characteristics and ask yourself if this doesn't sound like a description of a creature that could be a part of ordinary, earthly reality:

• Huge black hypnotic eyes with no pupils. Creatures on earth come equipped with many different kinds of eyes. The complex eyes on a fly are as bizarre, if not more so, than anything Lovecraft could have invented for a horror story. Not only that, we know that many creatures do use eye contact to render prey immobile or to signal dominance. Praying mantises do this, for instance. Dogs and many mammals signal dominance this way. So it isn't as if this feature is so alien that it must absolutely originate on some other world. It exists here, now.
• Smooth, glistening skin that can be grey, green, golden, white, or changeable in color. The skin of Grays leaves a vivid impression on many experiencers, who describe it as being similar in appearance to the kind of skin an amphibian might have.
• Skin that is whisper-soft to the touch or rock hard. Experiencers who have been touched by these creatures report that it feels almost ethereal, yet when restrained by the very same creatures the skin takes on the feel of armor and Grays seem super-strong. Some say that this variability proves that Grays are creatures of fantasy, but nature is filled with examples of perfectly real creatures that have exoskeletons or skins that exhibit amazing, changeable qualities. It's not impossible. 
• Insectoid movement and social structure. Many, many repeat experiencers have pointed to similarities between the Grays and certain kinds of social insects, like ants. At least three different body types have been reported: short stocky 'workers' that seem to possibly be robotic, short thin Grays with large heads and long fingers and big eyes (the Close Encounters of the Third Kind version of the Gray and the most recognizable), and tall white beings that share characteristics of the Close Encounter Grays but that seem to be elders or leaders--these are often described as having a praying mantis-like appearance. 
• Insect-like motivations. Again, many social insects exhibit behavior that is both amazing and seemingly alien, yet they hail from right here. Who is to say that a highly evolved insect species doesn't predate ours and doesn't regularly interact with ours for their own purposes? Some experiencers have speculated that the Grays seem not to understand 1) individualism, 2) human emotion, and 3) sexual reproduction. This lack of understanding is reported so often that it may well be part of their reason for studying us. Such a motive seems consistent with the notion that Grays are similar to (or even are) social insects, for whom these qualities are completely unnecessary or not central to their survival.
• Nighttime abductions, altered consciousness. Grays appear beside people's beds in the dead of night and seem to come through walls or drop down through ceilings. Sometimes non-abductee witnesses see UFOs and brilliant lights at the same time that abductions occur, lending credence to the idea that something 'real' happens during abductions--not something delusional. While the bizarre, dreamlike nature of Gray encounters is often used to discount their validity, consider that we really don't understand our own need for sleep, what dreams are, why we need them, or how other species might perceive or use these states. When you find a grasshopper, does it see you? If it does see you, what does it see, exactly? When we don't understand our own perceptual apparatus it seems naive and self-serving to assume no other creature on earth could possibly manipulate it.
• Feet with two split toes, sometimes described as 'cloven'. Pretty straightforward anatomical data, and not a detail you'd expect to remain consistent across reports.
• An odd smell. Some experiencers report a sour, damp odor. Others mention a spicy/sulfurous smell. Others associate the Grays with a burnt smell. All of these share a quality of pungent earthiness; something you'd associate with an animal that lives underground. Some species of ants do scent mark their trails to communicate to other ants how to get from here to there. 
• Lack of genitalia. Not that weird. Hundreds of species of creatures on earth lack the equipment for sexual reproduction. Do worker ants have genitals? They don't need them. So, no. 

I don't know what is happening with Gray aliens and abduction experiences.

But I do feel strongly that when we close ourselves off to experience out of fear or arrogance, nothing good happens as a result.

The more seriously I consider Grays, the more I think they are animals that share our planet.

We might want to ask ourselves, what are they up to?

The answers might be surprising indeed.

My Weird Alien Dreams

At the age of 36, in the middle of what I took to be a normal life, I awoke inside the following bad dream:

I am sitting at a kitchen table with my brother, who in real life is one year younger. In the dream, we are eight and nine years old or so—not quite into puberty, but not little kids either.

The table belongs to one of those 1950s Formica-topped dinettes, the kind with grooved chrome side trim, metal legs, and matching chrome chairs with red vinyl seats. 

(Today these retro sets are popular fixtures in soda shops, hamburger joints, and Atomic home décor. When I was a kid, every household had one.)

The Formica table, my brother, and I are all suspended in black space. The scene reminds me of one of those 1950s existential stage plays in which the theater goes completely black except for a spotlight on an actor or two who blather on about (supposedly) deep stuff.

My brother is wearing pajamas, also from the 1950s, the seersucker kind with cowboys and Indians and lassos printed all over them. His expression is blank and a little strange. I reach out to shake his shoulder, as he seems to be in some sort of trance, and just as I begin to stretch out my hand I hear a voice inside my head hiss, “Don’t touch him!”

But it’s too late.

By the time I hear the voice I’ve already touched his shoulder. The moment my hand makes contact, he is suddenly not my brother anymore but some alien creature with huge deep eyes as black as space itself, only much, much deeper and vast beyond imagining. ‘Hypnotic’ is a shallow word for these eyes—They are infinite and alive, dark in a way that almost gleams or shines.

I recognize this creature. In fact to this day I can see its face clearly and vividly. I have never forgotten it. The face is so real that in the dream it feels hyper-real, as if it is somehow more real than everyday reality, and it is clear to me right away that the warning voice and this thing are in fact one and the same.

The thing has staged this scene somehow for my benefit, but my touch has destroyed the illusion and now I am face to face with it instead, locked in its gaze. It is nearly impossible to explain how this feels, but the moment includes extreme terror, paralysis, and the sense of being completely controlled by this other being.

The creature’s skin glistens golden or slightly green-golden, iridescent, like the skin of some colorful Amazon frog. The eyes take up most of the bulb-shaped head. There is no nose to speak of and no proper mouth.  Beneath the eyes, which dominate the entire top half of the face, in the place where the mouth and nose should be, a network of what looks like veins or ridges or some kind of wrinkled skin disappears into an almost nonexistent neck.

Then suddenly this thing, which has no mouth, smiles. It smiles with its eyes somehow and yet it feels like the whole face smiles. The smile is transmitted telepathically in some sense, and yet looking at the face it is still clear that it is in fact smiling—in somewhat the same way you know that a dog is smiling even though dogs don’t have human features.

The smile is not reassuring at all, but weirdly sickening and terrifying. I sense that the creature means to reassure me by smiling, but the smile is so ‘off’ that it only deepens my terror. 

                *************

The dream ends abruptly. I wake to find myself sitting bolt upright in bed, shaking and drenched in sweat. Relieved that I’ve only been dreaming after all, a deep unease and mild nausea settles in nonetheless.

I am convinced against logic that this vignette has not been a normal sort of dream but something dreadfully familiar and all too real, and I now feel as if I am losing my mind. Yet my experience is so visceral I cannot make myself chalk it up to hallucination.

The next night, a follow-up nightmare seems tailor-made to validate these fears:

In this second dream I believe that I am just waking up, as if I am not asleep at all but am in my normal bedroom about to start my day. Standing at the foot of my bed is the creature from the night before, only this time, I sense that there are others with him nearby, even though I can’t see them.

The minute I see this creature again I am frozen in terror. I can’t move and I can’t cry out. The thing is absurdly dressed in what looks like a very ornate, heavily embroidered medieval red robe, and is holding a thin white metallic rod about a foot long that is slightly pointed at the end. The tip of the rod glows.

This thin rod looks exactly like the sort of ‘magic wand’ a stage magician might use as a prop, and the ridiculous ornate costume that the thing is wearing heightens that absurd association. I seem to already ‘know’ that this rod holds a charge of some kind—I recognize it--and I immediately begin to plead in my mind with the thing to please, please not touch me with it.

Of course it does touch me with it, and the second that it does, I am no longer frozen in my own bed but find myself running hard through a downtown alleyway at night, still dressed in my bedclothes.

Just as in the scene from the night before, the run through the alleyway feels hyper real—more real than real—I can feel the cold night air on my skin and I recognize the location.

I come round a corner (I am ostensibly running from this creature though I don’t see it anywhere) and run smack into a street person, a man, in very dirty clothes and wearing an odd expression. He smiles in a way that is oddly reminiscent of the smile on the thing in the other nightmare, but he’s clearly human. I can smell him, and he doesn’t smell good.

“Are you all right?” he asks me solicitously, and reaches out his hand. The minute his hand touches my shoulder (again, much like in the dream the night before where I reach out to touch my brother’s shoulder) I wake up.

                *************

Once again I wake from this dream in my own bed, drenched in sweat, short of breath and more than a little nauseous, still smelling this street person and still stuck with the sick feeling that none of this is a dream, that it’s all way too real and way too horrible.

That same day, I return some books to the public library downtown and check out some new ones. The books I check out are about trauma, PTSD, and multiple personality. I hold a BA in psychology and have a legitimate academic interest in these topics, but my interest is also personal. I’m trying to figure out if I’m cracking up, and if so, exactly what the nature of my insanity is.

I’m about to walk out the door when I feel a hand on my shoulder. I wheel around, and standing there in front of me is the very same bum from my dream, still smiling that odd, inhuman (but not really threatening, just weird) smile, still dressed in the same dirty clothes and still smelling really bad.

“Are you OK?” he asks, and then goes on, “I was worried about you last night.”

I run, literally run, out of the library without responding.


                                        *************************

Well, there's more to this story, a lot more, but I won't go into it here.

I wonder how many people have these odd experiences and never discuss them for fear of ridicule. I have been unable to completely swallow the ET hypothesis when it comes to alien encounters, and weirdly, since all this happened I have found some of the weirder, more ridiculous elements of my dreams (like the wand, the ornate clothing, the wrinkled 'mouth' of the creature) repeated in other people's stories, giving the whole thing a sort of credence that is not exactly welcome.

One thought I've been entertaining lately now that the movie Inception is in theaters is that someone or some thing may well know how to move in and out of other people's dreams for a purpose. This idea is not as fantastic as it sounds. In fact, modern scientific culture is the first in history to NOT believe that such things happen routinely.

That being the case, it does make you wonder WTF.

More later.

Missing Time and the Mystery of Memory

Alien abductions are frequently marked by periods of what has come to be called 'missing time'.

For example, Betty and Barney Hill, the first 'official' modern abductees and certainly the most famous, were driving on a well-traveled highway when they saw a UFO with some strange small inhabitants visible through the windows.

The UFO began to follow the Hill's car, and very soon landed in front of them, blocking their progress.

The next thing the Hills knew, it was two hours later and they were far away from the spot where they spied the craft, driving along as if nothing had occurred.

The two hours between the time the Hills saw the UFO and the time they realized they were driving again many miles away from the location of the sighting is called 'missing time'.

What is really missing though, is not the time itself but any memory of the missing hours. This discontinuity of experience is behind the title of the book and movie describing the Hill's ordeal, Incident at Exeter: The Interrupted Journey.

Later, under hypnosis, both Betty and Barney Hill separately 'remembered' remarkably similar events that involved being forcibly taken aboard that same UFO, examined medically, and then released and sent on their way. Betty Hill remembered being shown a star map showing where the aliens were from, and was able to reproduce it under hypnosis years later.

Much has been made of the unreliability of this kind of hypnotically recovered memory. What is not often discussed is the fact that we actually know that ALL memory--not just recovered memory--is creative, selective, and mutable. That's why three different people in the same family can all remember the same family gathering differently, and why our parents seem one way when we are in our teens, another way when we are in our 30s, and different still when we are elderly ourselves.

Our parents are still our parents. They are the same people no matter how we remember their past behavior. The same events comprise the story of our lives no matter how we interpret those events. But our memories of people and events change as we change, and evolve as our circumstances and our understanding evolve.

Normal memory constantly shuffles and adjusts the 'facts' of an experience to fit our current situation and what we know now; highlighting some bits that we discarded earlier, and discarding other bits that we cling to for years.

This process is not the same as lying or fudging the truth; it is adaptive and normal. It is as if memory is less like a bank of discrete bits of data stored on some internal hard drive, and more like language.

Language is symbolic. It means nothing until we put it together to form a story and share it with others or use it to understand our environment. Memory is like this too: It is not just a collection of facts, but also a constellation of meanings. 

Letters are just letters until we actively form them into words. Words are just sounds until we use them to tell stories. Stories that are irrelevant get discarded in favor of ones that shed light on current circumstances. Language and memory are both ongoing processes that help us figure out where we are in relation the rest of the worth and to other people.

So what happens when a period of time simply vanishes after a strange event? What happens when there is a big gaping hole in a story that has just gotten a little too interesting?

Skeptics say that human cognition abhors a vacuum, so memory automatically makes stuff up to create an illusion of continuity--even if the made up stuff is outlandish and strange.

The idea here is that there are really two kinds of memory: 'true memory' tied to things that really happened; and 'false memory' implanted by the hypnotist or created by the subject in order to explain hours of inexplicable amnesia.

This idea is actually profoundly deceptive.

What skeptics don't say is that memory itself is in part the the process by which we take random experiential data and make a story out of it, and that all memory is partially false and partially true. All memory is full of errors and highly personal interpretations, and is subject to change over time.

If there is no such thing as strictly 'true memory', there can be no such thing as strictly 'false memory'. Even memories that are not 'real' in a material sense often are rich in symbolic emotional content and therefore do contain a kind of truth, even though it might not be reductive or empirical. For that matter, material reality itself is a LOT more slippery than we generally assume.

Things are not always what they seem.

I personally distrust UFO 'researchers' who get ALL their data from hypnotic regressions and take whatever emerges as material fact, but I also don't think it's right to trash the phenomena just because the methodology has been sloppy and the facts are baffling.

If anything, you'd think that would encourage more serious study.