New study aims to unravel hundreds of U.S. alien abduction stories
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Roughly 100 alien abduction cases spanning over the past 30 years are set to be investigated by scientists with hopes of unraveling the mysterious experiences.
Researchers at Rice University in Texas plan to analyze a trove of archives consisting of thousands of documents in the form of books, journals, photographs, slides, reports, meeting notes and letters.
The cases include the famous story of Betty and Barney Hill, a New Hampshire couple who say they were abducted in 1961 while driving up a mountain.
Other cases include one that inspired a new Netflix show – the Pascagoula abduction.
The ‘Archive of the Impossible’ at Rice University plays host to material from Jacques Vallee (whose work inspired Steven Spielberg‘s ‘Close Encounters of the Third Kind’) and author Whitley Streiber, who claimed to have been abducted by aliens in his 1987 book Communion among hundreds of other abduction stories.
The Pascagoula abduction
Featured in the new Netflix series ‘Files of the Unexplained’, the Mississippi abduction of Charles Hickson and Calvin Parker occurred happened in 1973.
The two men reported to the sheriff’s department that they had been abducted by aliens while fishing – and each appeared with a puncture wound in their arm.
Both men passed polygraph tests when interviewed about their experiences – and it appeared their stories matched.
The two men reported being manipulated by aliens with pincer-like claws and experimented on.
Hickson told The Washington Post, ‘I was just getting ready to get some more bait, when I heard a kind of zipping sound. I looked up and saw a blue flashing light. Calvin turned around too.
‘We saw a 30-foot-long object with a little dome on top.’
Detectives secretly left a tape recorder running to catch the men out but they did not ‘drop the act’ once police left the room.
Another witness, Maria Blair, recently gave video testimony that was obtained by DailyMail.com, which appeared to corroborate the men’s story.
Whitley Strieber
Science fiction and horror writer Whitley Strieber’s abduction story in his 1987 non-fiction book Communion has become one of the iconic stories of alien abduction.
The cover image of the book, showing a slender, almond-eyed alien is an iconic image of what UFO fans refer to as ‘grey’ aliens.
The alleged abduction happened on Boxing Day in 1986, after Strieber and his wife went to bed after eating Christmas leftovers.
Strieber describes the beings he encountered as ‘visitors’, but makes no conclusion about their origin.
Strieber wrote, ‘In 1985 I had an experience of close encounter that frightened and confused me. I was injured by it but still could not believe that it had been a physical experience. It was just too strange.
‘Still, I was very curious and began going out into the woods at night from our little upstate New York cabin to try to somehow re-engage.’
He has since written several books on the subject of alien encounters.
Betty and Barney Hill
Betty and Barney Hill’s 1961 experience became one of the iconic alien-abduction stories – with the couple encountering a strange light on a road in New Hampshire’s White Mountains.
The couple couldn’t remember some of the drive, and their watches had stopped working.
Psychiatrist and hypnotist Benjamin Simon helped the couple to remember their experience of being walked into a flying saucer by grey-skinned aliens.
Under hypnosis, they recalled being attached to needles attached with long wires, as aliens took samples of their hair and skin.
The couple’s story became a book and a film starring James Earl Jones – and both stuck by their story until their deaths.
Travis Walton
The abduction of Travis Walton in 1975 gathered national attention because of the presence of six witnesses – fellow forestry workers.
On November 5, 1975, the 22-year-old UFO enthusiast Walton spotted a light in a forest, and ignored warnings and ran towards it.
Struck by a blue light, Travis disappeared and the other forestry workers fled the scene.
It was the first UFO abduction to be reported while the victim was still missing.
Seven days later, Walton reappeared – and revealed that he awoke being observed by three small aliens, and then found himself walking along a highway five days later.
He detailed his experiences in a book, which became the 1993 film Fire in the Sky: in 2021, he appeared on Joe Rogan’s podcast.
Dr Leo Sprinkle
Many UFO abduction experiences are frightening and disturbing – but some who claim to have encountered aliens have a more positive view of their abductee.
Dr Leo Sprinkle, a psychologist at the University of Wyoming, hypnotically regressed alleged abductees in the Sixties, following Betty and Barney Hill’s encounter.
Sprinkle eventually identified as an abductee himself – believing that the aliens are helpful ‘cosmic citizens’ helping humans to deal with their problems.
Sprinkle went on to hold an annual Rocky Mountain UFO conference on the more positive aspects of UFO encounters before retiring from the university in 1989.
Sprinkle claims that UFO encounters are part of ‘cosmic consciousness conditioning’, designed to enhance human consciousness.
Nigel Watson, author of Captured by Aliens? A History and Analysis of American Abduction Claims, told DailyMail.com, ‘I think it is great that they are conducting an intense analysis of the data in these files, and it will be fascinating to see what they do with this material.
‘The major problem with alien abductions is that we have to consider how they come about. Such psychological concepts as sleep paralysis, fantasy proneness and false memory syndrome have all been used to ‘explain’ alien abduction experiences.
‘Even the methods by which we use psychology to examine these processes in pursuit of alien abduction investigation can be conditioned by our culture.
‘In the USA there has been far more recourse to using polygraph tests and hypnotic regression compared to other countries.’
‘Besides looking at those areas of ‘normal’ psychology and sociology, perhaps this new study project might discover rarer factors involved with the abduction experience.
‘Will it even support the popular idea that real extraterrestrial aliens have come here to take and examine humans against their will?’
This article has been archived for your research. The original version from Daily Mail can be found here.
