Down yonder, a reader writes:
Jimmy,
Out of curiosity, what do you think about the whole UFO phenomenon,
including reports of alien abductions, crop circles, etc.? It seems to
me that there are several possible explanations:(1) Delusions
(2) Hoaxes
(3) Demonic activity
(4) Some combination of the above
(5) Genuine extra-terrestrial activityMy own opinion is that #4 is probably the most likely explanation. I
would be interested to hear your thoughts if you have time to comment.
Well, let’s see, these are just my suspicions rather than what I can prove, and I go back and forth on the percentages I’d ascribe to things, and anyone who wants is welcome to disagree with me as we’re outside the realm of Church teaching, but . . .
Crop circles (of the modern, complex variety): Total hoaxes. (Though I did like the Invader Zim episode where they found a crop circle being formed by a cow rolling around on its back in a field.)
UFO activity (meaning unidentified flying objects of extraterrestrial, extradimensional, or extratemporal origin): Some outright hoaxes, but usually the product of wishful thinking or misidentification of mundane phenomena, including experimental and classified aircraft that we (or other nations on Earth) have made. For example, I’m virtually certain that the famous "black triangles" that UFO enthusiasts were so hot up about a few years ago are just some kind of stealth technology we’ve got.
Sometimes plausible UFOs are not anything that exotic, though. Here in San Diego, the company Sanyo has (or had) a blimp that was white, had a company logo on it, and lit-up from the inside at night. I saw it one night and, in the distance you couldn’t see the company logo (certianly not as anything but indistinct "markings"). It looked like a floating white oval of light, clearly far too big to be a star, but not shaped like an airplane or helicopter. If I hadn’t seen the Sanyo blimp in the day before (and if I were a passionate UFO believer and if it hadn’t come close enough to identify the logo), I might have interpreted it as a UFO.
Alien abductions: A mix of hoaxes, psychosis and something that I would call "belief-influenced misinterpretation of experience." Lemme ‘splain:
As I am using the term, a psychosis is where a person is deprived of rationality on a particular point due to a pathological condition (e.g., they have a mental illness that leads them to have visions of being abducted by aliens, or they passionately believe that they have been adbducted even though there is nothing in their experience that could plausibly be interpreted as evidence of abduction).
Belief-influced misinterpretation of experience (BIME) is something less than that, and I suspect it is far more common than full-blown psychosis.
BIME does not involve a pathological condition. It involves interpreting an actual event (or events) in one’s experience, based on a (faulty) set of beliefs about how this event should be interpreted, and then coming to an erroneous conclusion.
Consider: Many people have trouble at times telling whether they’re lying awake in bed or whether they’re dreaming about lying awake in bed. (This happened to me yesterday morning, in fact. I had woken up and was trying to get back to sleep and wasn’t sure at certain points if I was still awake or asleep again yet.)
When this happens, the person may in fact be asleep and dreaming about lying in bed. When that happens, they may be unable to move because the brain’s sleep module has turned off voluntary motion of the body (so that we don’t physicalize what’s going on in our dreams, e.g., by sleepwalking). The person may thus dream about trying to move but being unable to do so. This is especially likely if he is in the twilight zone between true sleep and true wakefulness.
Since the dream module in his brain is still partially engaged he may, for example, dream about sinister people moving about in the other room or–if he is a passionate UFO enthusiast–he may dream about aliens in his own bedroom.
I’ve never had the latter dream (not being a passionate UFO enthusiast), but I have dreamed about lying awake in bed, being unable to move, and thinking there were sinister people moving in the other room.
Not being a passionate UFO enthusiast, when I woke up later on, I interpreted this experience as what it was: Just a dream. There never were any sinister people in the other room. It was just my dream module giving me a low-grade nightmare.
But if I had been a passionate UFO enthusiast, my alien abduction lore would have told me to interpret nighttime paralysis with sensing a presence of some kind as evidence of alien abduction.
Upon waking, I might conclude that I had been abducted by aliens. I might further examine my body and turn up little scars and "scoop marks" that I had never noticed before (or had forgotten) and see this as confirmatory evidence. I might then go to a hypnotist to do regression hypnosis on me and, since regression hypnosis is (in my opinion) nothing but a guided fantasizing experience that consists almost entirely of confabulation, I might come away with recovered "memories" of an abduction experience.
I would be wrong but, given my pre-existing passionate UFO beliefs (and belief in regression hypnosis), this would be a reasonable (in the sense of non-psychotic) interpretation of my experience.
I think many people who think they’ve been abducted by aliens are the victims of belief-influenced misinterpretation of experience. Some are psychotic. Some are liars.
The above represent my best guesses (based on some familiarity with the field). I can’t rule out demonic activity in some cases, but I tend to think that physical/visible manifestations of the demonic are rare (tricking people into BIME is another matter, however).
Not being omniscient or infallible, I can’t say actual extraterrestrial visitation is impossible, but I am deeply, deeply skeptical of it.
I am providing an article link written by an Orthodox Christian bishop because I think he does a real good job explaining alien abductions:
http://www.orthodoxinfo.com/praxis/alien_abduct.aspx
I hope it is worth your time.
Jimmy,
Thanks for your lengthy response to my question! I too find the possibility of extra-terrestrial visitation to be very unlikely. But with all of the stories out there about alien abductions and other phenomena, I sometimes find it difficult to find rational explanations for what is going on. I think that your insights on the matter are very good, and I’ll also check out the link which Paul posted above.
– Paul (not the same Paul as the previous comment)
The Scriptures themselves have at least a few passages on ET apparations – both demonic AND angelic (can’t rule out the good guys, either, can we?). Not to mention Christ, Saints and Marian apparitions. Although, having been “terrestrial” at leat at one point in history, I don’t know if those would qualify as ET (although they would certainly seem so now).
As for the alien abduction type, I would tend to agree with our host (Bill Murray’s expression in Ghostbusters II as he interviews an alleged abductee just about nails it).
I completely agree with Jimmy. I think people are either delusional or conned by a hoax. But about that whole sleep paralysis stuff—that used to happen to me a lot back in college and other places and I had a sense of something evil hovering over me and I couldn’t move. Back then I wasn’t following the teachings of the Church (didn’t know what they were) and I was steeped heavily into sin. This never happened in my parent’s home and I always attributed that to the fact that their home was protected since they were devout Catholics. Since my reversion, I have never had one of those dreams-but I used to have them quite often back in the old days. Is there anything to that? Could it be a demon or something? Why doesn’t it happen anymore? They were quite frightening and it seemed like the benevolent being was just waiting to get my soul!
Here’s something interesting: Way back when I first noticed articles about crop circles, the circles were formed in basic geometric shapes. Once images of fractals started to become widely publicized, all of a sudden crop circles started to look similar to the circles near the region of convergence of the Mandelbrot set. This observation (along with common sense) lead me to believe that crop circles are hoaxes.
I can back up your post with personal experience, Jimmy!
A couple years ago, I was sleeping in my bed during the day & woke to noises. I listened for awhile & came to realize that a group of mobsters had somehow entered my apartment! I could hear their voices & all the details as they planned a hit & I was so terrified I couldn’t move! They had a big black dog who kept coming in my room & one of the mobsters would close the door & look at me to make sure I was still asleep. I could see him through the slits I was making with my eyes, trying my best to regulate my breathing so he woldn’t kill me. He was about 5’8″, about 50lbs overweight, white suit & fedora, dark greasy hair, large nose, dark sunglasses. I could see the orange-ish light of the late afternoon sun creeping in through the cheap paper blinds I’d put up. Finally, the dog came in & put his nose right in my face! I screamed out loud!
It was then that I woke to find it was about 5am. I rarely remember my dreams but this was one of the most real ones I’d ever had & it’s still very clear to me. ‘Bout gave me a heart attack! And until this post, Jimmy, I never related that experience to UFO abduction stories. I can totally see how it could happen if one were predisposed to believe that it could.
Also, I’ve had a theory for a long time about the aliens folks in our society tend to see; especially their heads: big pale head, big eyes, small mouth, no ears. Does anyone know if there was evidence of same prior to 1939? That’s the year The Wizard of Oz came out. If that film can have one of the most psychologically traumatizing moments in cinema history when Dorothy sees Auntie Em calling her in the crystal ball, why couldn’t the image of the great & powerful Oz’s head near the end have affected our culture so much that it became the face of aliens for us? I’ve been told that in Skandinavian nations they see aliens who are tall, blonde & blue-eyed. So mightn’t it be a cultural thing? Thoughts?
+J.M.J+
The Eastern Orthodox article linked above is interesting. I’ve actually heard some New Agers claim the exact opposite – that encounters with demons centuries ago were actually extraterrestrial encounters which Christians just misinterpreted according to their religious beliefs. They will often point out similarities between the demons and aliens, which makes me think that some so called “alien” encounters could very well be demonic in origin. (Without ruling out the possibility of dreams, etc.)
As for the big head in Wizard of Oz, that could well have influenced our view of aliens, as well as movies like “Close Encounters of the Third Kind”. Also, did you ever notice that these aliens with large heads, small bodies, large eyes, etc. look something like a fetus? An interesting thought….
In Jesu et Maria,
I once saw a special that pointed out that most accounts of “abduction” style encounters postdate an obscure mid-fifties movie in which the aliens grab people, tie ’em up and stick them full of needles (and where the creatures are themselves crudely similar to the stereotypical greys). Prior to that, apparently, most alien encounter accounts had aleins just sort of landing their spaceships, taking alook around on foot, then leaving.
Mostly agree, though I’m also inclined to suspect a larger dollop of the demonic at work in this phenomenon. I say this most only the basis of the fruits, which virtually always seem to involve stuff which, well, looks demonic (either in the alleged dehumanizing treatment of abductees or in the anti-Christ philosophy “revealed” to alleged abductees or “communicants” with ET. My working hypotheses is that Satan is, in one important sense, not proud. That is, he will delude people with any stupid means at his command, including a faith in ET, if that will do the trick.
BIME has had quite a run in the last few decades. Remember the rash of (alleged) childhood Satanic cult abuse, as well as other “repressed” memories of childhood sexual abuse? In the latter case in particular, studies found that a number of therapists routinely guided their patients to the conclusion that they had been horribly abused during their youth, even though the patients had no recollection of any such event. The therapist’s suspicions were usually “confirmed” under – what else? – hypnosis! This destroyed families (the parents were usually found to be the “abusers”) and left emotionally fragile patients far worse off than if they had never sought help. It did enrich some psychiatrists, though. I suspect abduction memories are along the same lines.
True. And that horrific fad also enriched a bunch of lawyers.
I actually remember that movie, derringdo, from a Saturday afternoon Science Fiction Theater when I was a kid. Scared the dookie outta me! I wouldn’t be surprised if what you say is totally true.
Have you read the Day After Roswell by Major Philip Corso?
http://www.obits.com/roswell.html
http://www.obits.com/corsopj.html
http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/067101756X/ref=sib_dp_pt/102-3608457-1119313#reader-link
I’ve read it; to me he seems to be a credible witness. What do you think?
Also:
An almost 600 page book:
DISCLOSURE
Military and Government Witnesses
Reveal The Greatest Secrets
In Modern History
http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/0967323819/ref=sib_dp_pt/102-3608457-1119313#reader-page
I’ve not read this, just looked inside at Amazon.
Col. Philip Corso, Sr. is listed (# 54) His son, Philip Corso, Jr. is (# 55)
How could all these people be wrong in what they saw? What do you make of this document?