Alien abduction is bullshiat, what a shock. Next you'll be telling me the Loch Ness Monster and the female orgasm aren't real either.

HailRobonia: In high school I had a very disturbing episode of sleep paralysis. I woke up and a creature was on me, holding me down... it was Joe Camel (of the cigarette ads), and he said "Hello there."

You might have been sexually assaulted by aliens because everyone knows that Joe Camel looks like a cock.

MMmmmmm, Limburger.

Aliens have been attributed to a bit of cheese for generations. Take for example, this famous "alien" (in the folkloric sense of the word, which includes all "supernatural" and "other-worldly" creatures:

The cellar-door flew open with a booming sound, and then he heard the noise much louder, on the floors below; then coming up the stairs; then coming straight towards his door.

``It's humbug still!'' said Scrooge. ``I won't believe it.''

His colour changed though, when, without a pause, it came on through the heavy door, and passed into the room before his eyes. Upon its coming in, the dying flame leaped up, as though it cried, ``I know him! Marley's Ghost!'' and fell again.

The same face: the very same. Marley in his pigtail, usual waistcoat, tights, and boots; the tassels on the latter bristling, like his pigtail, and his coat-skirts, and the hair upon his head. The chain he drew was clasped about his middle. It was long, and wound about him like a tail; and it was made (for Scrooge observed it closely) of cash-boxes, keys, padlocks, ledgers, deeds, and heavy purses wrought in steel. His body was transparent; so that Scrooge, observing him, and looking through his waistcoat, could see the two buttons on his coat behind.

Scrooge had often heard it said that Marley had no bowels, but he had never believed it until now.

No, nor did he believe it even now. Though he looked the phantom through and through, and saw it standing before him; though he felt the chilling influence of its death-cold eyes; and marked the very texture of the folded kerchief bound about its head and chin, which wrapper he had not observed before; he was still incredulous, and fought against his senses.

``How now!'' said Scrooge, caustic and cold as ever. ``What do you want with me?''

``Much!'' -- Marley's voice, no doubt about it.

``Who are you?''

``Ask me who I was.''

``Who were you then.'' said Scrooge, raising his voice. ``You're particular, for a shade.'' He was going to say ``to a shade,'' but substituted this, as more appropriate.

``In life I was your partner, Jacob Marley.''

``Can you -- can you sit down?'' asked Scrooge, looking doubtfully at him.

``I can.''

``Do it, then.''

Scrooge asked the question, because he didn't know whether a ghost so transparent might find himself in a condition to take a chair; and felt that in the event of its being impossible, it might involve the necessity of an embarrassing explanation. But the ghost sat down on the opposite side of the fireplace, as if he were quite used to it.

``You don't believe in me,'' observed the Ghost.

``I don't,'' said Scrooge.

``What evidence would you have of my reality beyond that of your senses?''

``I don't know,'' said Scrooge.

``Why do you doubt your senses?''

``Because,'' said Scrooge, ``a little thing affects them. A slight disorder of the stomach makes them cheats. You may be an undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese, a fragment of an underdone potato. There's more of gravy than of grave about you, whatever you are!''

Scrooge was not much in the habit of cracking jokes, nor did he feel, in his heart, by any means waggish then. The truth is, that he tried to be smart, as a means of distracting his own attention, and keeping down his terror; for the spectre's voice disturbed the very marrow in his bones.

To sit, staring at those fixed, glazed eyes, in silence for a moment, would play, Scrooge felt, the very deuce with him. There was something very awful, too, in the spectre's being provided with an infernal atmosphere of its own. Scrooge could not feel it himself, but this was clearly the case; for though the Ghost sat perfectly motionless, its hair, and skirts, and tassels, were still agitated as by the hot vapour from an oven.

``You see this toothpick?'' said Scrooge, returning quickly to the charge, for the reason just assigned; and wishing, though it were only for a second, to divert the vision's stony gaze from himself.

``I do,'' replied the Ghost.

``You are not looking at it,'' said Scrooge.

``But I see it,'' said the Ghost, ``notwithstanding.''

``Well!'' returned Scrooge, ``I have but to swallow this, and be for the rest of my days persecuted by a legion of goblins, all of my own creation. Humbug, I tell you; humbug!'' (My emphasis)

Pav: I am not a staunch believer either way but I can tell you that this study doesn't do a damn thing to prove or disprove the existence of aliens.

That's just kind of a broad statement. There are more star systems...not just planets but star systems out there than we can wrap our heads around. Of course there's life somewhere else. But did they break the laws of physics as we know them to travel faster than light? Okay, sure, we don't know everything. Did they make it all the way here to us? A little less probable but why not. Do they care enough about us to beam us up and probe us? Getting a little less likely. Occum's Razer has to come in at some point and assume that these people are hallucinating.

European UFOlogists tend to treat UFO phenomena, including abductions from a folklore perspective, as a psychological, social and cultural phenomenon. The French UFOlogist who served as the model for one of the characters in Close Encounters of the Third Kind is of this school. They make many valid points about the resemblance of ghost and witch and fairy lore to modern abduction accounts. They also point to the cultural variations in accounts: the English, for example, are more likely to meet friendly aliens who just want a cup of tea and a chat, while Brazilians are more likely to be raped, and UFO sightings in the Andes resemble fairy lights and mountain lights found elsewhere.

The Canadian researcher Michael Persenger has done experiments which produce ghost-like or alien presence like effects using magnetic stimulation of parts of the brain. He suspects that some "mystical" or "weird" locations are subject to geomagnetic anomalies which produce the sense of an alien presence which is then interpreted in accordance with cultural norms as good spirits, evil spirits, gods, fairies, etc.

As part of my studies I read a fair amount of folklore and theory. I've always been interested in "paranormal", UFO and other "weird" phenomena, reading omnivorously as a child and teenager, but I've always maintained a skeptical willingness to be convinced.

The idea that all these phenomenon are "all in your head" is surely wrong and silly. A lot of them come out of other people's heads. I have contemplated writing a book which searches for the cultural antecedents of famous UFO stories and abductions. There is plenty of evidence our expectations (formed by popular literature, art, comic books, movies, etc.) shape our "encounters" with the weird and unknown phenomena, many of which are perfectly natural and explicable, some of which remain pretty weird, wild and wonderful even after you have the scientific explanation.

Scrooge's desperate skepticism when faced with Marley's ghost is typical of XIXth century positivism, but Charles Dickens maintains a straight face and plays off on XIXth century spiritualism and traditional beliefs as well. He is an excellent ghost story writer and you might be interested to read not only his Christmas stories but other ghost tales.

I don't read Stephen King or other modern horror writers much, if at all, but I love the well-written and cleverly ambiguous tales of the supernatural written by British and other writers from the Gothic period in the XVIIIth century to World War II. I like my horror with more than a touch of humour and satire, and it is enjoyable when the writer can maintain a sort of balance between doubt and belief, as the characters often do.

Did it really happen? It did subjectively. Who's to say that phenomena that are all in your head are not just as real as those that are all in your hand? After all, Scrooge is right about the senses being cheats, and the senses, as Eastern and Western philosophy alike point out, are all we have to go on when thinking and feeling our way through the "real" world. The real world is constructed by our beliefs, culture, illusions, errors, etc. It is just as much in our heads as in our hands. The doctrine of Maya (shared by Hindus, Buddhists and Sykhs among others) attributes various degrees of reality to illusion. Some hold that illusion is entirely a cheat, some that it is "real" to a degree, although the "real" world is unknowable to human minds and even human minds are unknowable in the end to themselves.

There is a vulgar, crude way of believing that "things are all in your head" and more sophisticated understandings. Dickens does a great job of playing off two different interpretations--Scrooge's materialistic theory that the ghost is "all in his head" or rather, in his stomach, and the undeniable narrative in which the Three Ghosts and their visions are real in a way beyond mere materiality, which is proven by Scrooge's change of heart and mind, from a dedicated materialist in both the economic and physical sense, to a Christian or at least a philanthropist.

HailRobonia: In high school I had a very disturbing episode of sleep paralysis. I woke up and a creature was on me, holding me down... it was Joe Camel (of the cigarette ads), and he said "Hello there."

I am glad that it was such a ludicrous thing that I hallucinated, so I could easily discount it once I recovered. If my brain decided to see an alien or a ghost, I probably would have been a believer. And yeah, I realize that cartoon cigarette spokescamels assaulting people in their sleep is just as likely as the spirits of the dead doing it.

I've had an episode of sleep paralysis too. It scared the bejeebus out of me. A very tall man came into my bedroom, he had to duck to come through the doorway. He removed his hat as he ducked. He just stood at the foot of the bed and looked at me. I tried so hard just to move my arm or to speak to wake up my husband. All I could move was my eyes. Everything in the room was as it should have been. The pile of clean but unfolded clothes on the dresser, the window slightly open, the shadows.

It was terrifying.

Salem Witch: A very tall man came into my bedroom, he had to duck to come through the doorway.



This guy? Did he say anything about owls not being what they seem?