Here's an interesting review of a book explaining where people's beliefs about alien abduction come from.

Here's a quote from the review

http://www.slate.com/id/2129111/?nav=navoa

Intersting read. The actual book its reviewing is by a former Harvard psychology department researcher who was involved in a study into the area a few years ago. Her name being Susan Clancy.

Just curious, are there any alien abductees here in the fora? And does the above explanation describe who you are?????

I was abducted by aliens. See, a group of Mexicans decided to try to take me over the border into Mexico, and...

Oh, THAT kind of Alien Abduction. Nope, haven't dealt with that.

Funny, Lonewulf.

I saw a program on one of the science channels about sleep paralysis and how it could possibly explain alien abduction.

Six hundred years ago, there were similar tales of being abducted by witches. The symptoms described were very similar to sleep paralysis.

Curious...

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In its' early years, Astronomy magazine ran an article called "The Zeta Reticuli Incident"..circa Nov/Dec 1974. It was about the Betty Hill, Barney Hill incident in Exeter NH. They became famous...sort of... What is interesting is that Betty claimed upon a physical examination, a large needle was inserted proximate to her navel (below) to do a pregnancy test....at the time, medically.. amniocentesis was unheard of. Barney revealed that he was placed in a large tube...like a tunnel...on a slab....."They" were going to take a picture of him (Hmm..MRI?). And the kicker, the Marjorie Fish starmap in three dimensions revealing trade routes....with the mystery "star"...the, at the times of Betty's rendition...previously entirely unknown category of nearest red dwarf...in the approximate right holographic position.Zeta A and B reticulum were two of the others.
Now for an Afro-American businessman with little science background, and his high school education wife with even less...I think they really lucked out by lying about and clearly describing three independently confirmed future advanced technologies years before they appeared in the annals of science and technology. (Betty had the scar from the needle...and both were told that they could be "found" if necessary in the future by implants...RFID tags anyone? Ciao. Pete

The MIB is kinda interesting, though, now that I think about it. Does anyone know if the tales of the MIB are all bunk?

This is supposed to be a joke, right?

The procedure of Amniocentesis has been around for well over 100 years, red dwarves have been known as such for a similar length of time and the patent for the MRI was given in 1972.

(NB: For any technology capable of interstellar travel, one would have thought that amniocentesis & MRI's would have been rather primitive investigative tools in any event, no?)

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I've got my own little theory on the abduction phenomenon.

You see, it seems to me that people are always very willing to believe in alien and/or supernatural entities - even profoundly hostile entities of that sort. But no one wants to hear that aliens, or spirits, or whatever, don't exist.

I'd say this indicates a deep, profound fear that such beings do not exist - that people are frightened of the concept that we're alone in the universe. It's just a hunch, not all that well supported, but the idea of being alone frightens me and, and at least one other poster has mentioned being frightened by that possibility... Perhaps there is something to this. Then again, it could very well be a red herring.

I think it makes perfect sense. Humans are very social animals, that generally can't stand being alone. Even the people we consider "loners" have at least one or two friends (Hey, look at me! I've got you guys!) And those that truly are loners...well, incidents like Columbine show how much lonliness and alienation affects the mind. So the idea that we are, essentially, alone, goes against our deepest instincts and disturbs us greatly.

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Hi. While it is true that amniocentesis has been around since ~1882...it was not the routine pregnancy test used in Betty Hill's era...that was the rabbit test...it died. My recollection is that the very first MRI image popularly seen was a poor resolution mouse...in Discover magazine. I remember holding it up to my chemistry classes at Hanover High School, and telling them...learn this technology, imaging without ionizing radiation...I had worked in X-ray solution service technology..and could see what was coming.That could only be the years 1978-81, long after Barney & Betty's experience.
The Astronomy magazine article specifically spent a long time on the anomalous ability of Betty to draw in a star...unknown to the astronomers of the day in that position. Not my invention. Ciao. Pete

No, sorry, but I must disagree with you. From here (my underlines):

"Nadler and Gerbie published the important article "Role of amniocentesis in the intra-uterine diagnosis of genetic defects" in the New England Journal of Medicine in 1970. This was the real impetus in genetic amniocentesis and diagnosis, and from then on, genetic laboratories for analysis of amniotic fluid had become prevalent."

Secondly, in your original post you stated: Looking here, I note that:

During the 50's and 60's NMR spectroscopy became a widely used technique for the non-destructive analysis of small samples. Many of its applications were at the microscopic level using small (a few centimetres) bore high field magnets. In the late 60's and early 70's Raymond Damadian, an American medical doctor at the State University of New York in Brooklyn, demonstrated that a NMR tissue parameter (termed T1 relaxation time) of tumour samples, measured in vitro, was significantly higher than normal tissue....his description of relaxation time changes in cancer tissue was one of the main impetuses for the introduction of NMR into medicine.


So, even ignoring the facts that: (1) When you first recall seeing an MRI is hardly relevant; (2) you are speculating that what was described was actually an MRI; and (3) it is remarkable that a species capable of interstellar flight might use coeval technology to ours: then your statement is evidently incorrect.

With respect to the Red Dwarf star apparently identified, I have not read the Astronomy article to which you refer and so cannot comment on it. However, I must note that Red Dwarf stars are easily the most common form of Main Sequence star (comprising well over 50% of all the stars in our galaxy) and as you yourself describe the Hill prediction as 'approximate', I am loath at this point to put a lot of weight on it.


(EDITED TO NOTE: I just looked up the Betty & Barney Hill 'episode' and note that it was supposed to have occurred in 1961. It is my error that I had assumed that it took place circa 1974 as this is when the 'Astronomy' article was written according to trinitree88's post. As such, many of the objections that I raise above regarding dates become inappropriate and I withdraw them.)

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"Certainly, in the topsy-turvy world of heavy rock, having a good solid piece of wood in your hand is often useful." - Ian Faith

There is one massive assumption here that I do not consider valid unless it shown to be otherwise. Betty and Barney Hill claimed these things happened to them. They were supposedly abducted in 1961. However, it does not necessarily follow that they made those particular claims in 1961. They could have made them decades later. Even if they aren't lying, memory is a fickle thing and can be easily changed over the years to incorporate new information or outside events, especially when there is strong outside pressure.

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There's also the little detail that amnioscentesis (which I may have just spelled wrong) isn't a pregnancy test. It's a test done on pregnant women, but it is not a test to prove that someone is pregnant.

And, yes, I was wondering when they first "came forward" myself.

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"Now everyone was giving her that kind of look UFOlogists get when they suddenly say, 'Hey, if you shade your eyes you can see it is just a flock of geese after all.'"

"You can't erase icing."

"I can't believe it doesn't work! I found it on the internet, man!"

True Gillian, amniocentesis is only done when it is known a woman is pregnant. If a woman is without child, there is no amniotic fluid to test!

Wooo! Wooo! I hear it!

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My original objection was that the 'future technology' supposedly described was in fact not so. However, this was based on a misunderstanding on my part of the dates involved. Hence my retraction on that specific objection.

The statements from the Hill's were apparently taken after hypnosis sessions in 1962 (this is enough for me to have alarm bells ringing already, but that is another argument for another day). I haven't seen transcripts of these hypnosis sessions, so I can't comment on how accurately these claims have been reported in the morass of abduction sites that pollute the web.

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"Certainly, in the topsy-turvy world of heavy rock, having a good solid piece of wood in your hand is often useful." - Ian Faith

If an alien did poke something into your abdomen, how would you know what the heck they were doing?

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Trick question! You would know they were poking something into your abdomen 'cause you'd feel it. While you wouldn't feel it while you're numb, you didn't say that you were numb while it occured.

HAH!

Hi. Several posters have raised questions which might be answered by a read of the text, Incident in Exeter... by Raymond Fowler of Wenham,Ma. I once heard him speak to see what his demeanor was,..you can tell a lot in a personal meeting forum. He's straight about things, and was the one who catapulted Betty & Barney to fame. It is hard to sort out the needles of truth from the many haystacks of anecdotes...but they are there. Ciao. Pete.

This case hinges on a hypnotic retreival of 'buried' memories, a technique which has very little credibility nowadays.

As I mentioned on this thread, I experienced a slight case of sleep paralysis myself, and saw an alien very similar to the one described by the Hills. I am sure that such images are very much influenced by popular culture, particularly films and TV; in that thread I gave examples of comparable alien images stretching back to H G Wells. Betty Hill is said to have been a fan of such films, including Invaders from Mars mentioned in the link.

Not it turns out that an episode of the Outer Limits was shown on TV in the states a few days after the so-called Hill 'abduction', but before the hypnotic regression took place; on that episode there was an alien which resembled the one decribed by the Hills -here it is; I think we can probably trace the Hill's alien experience, and the predominance of the Grey alien image in UFO culture, to that particular image on an early 60's TV show.

I also have grave doubts about the so-called sketch map of Zeta Reticuli; the perspective seems way off. When I have time, I'll check it against the locations of those stars as determined by Hipparchos (using Celesta) and report back.

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A discussion of the Bellero Shield theory
http://www.csicop.org/sb/9409/eyesthat.html

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If I recall correctly, she simply drew some points on paper, said they were stars, and left it at that for her 'star map'. No names, no reference point, nothing. If that is correct (feel free to tell me if I got that wrong) then it's hardly amazing that they matched a pattern of some stars.

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What I meant was, if an alien comes at you with something that looks like a melon baller, how the heck are you supposed to know what kind of proceedure is going on? A doctor sticks a needle in me when I visit, but I won't know what its supposed to do unless he tells me.

And then I have to take his word for it!

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Yeah, that's a point, I was just being silly. However, common sense can take over a bit.

If you're stuck with a needle, you can probably think that it's an injection. If you're injected with something and feel sleepy, then you know you've been injected with a sedative. If you wake up, then you'll know they didn't want you dead.


A melonballer, however, would be a lot more frightening, because there's only a couple uses I can think of for that kind of instrument, and they're all "ew". o.o;

Abduction by Aliens or Sleep Paralysis?

I'm inclined to think either of two scenarios:

1. Sleep paralysis and too much tv.
2. Abduction phenomena are real.

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It's true memories fade: that's why we have pencils and paper. My recollection of the story was that Betty experienced a very painful needle test, and protested loudly to "them".
The reference to Barney saying that "they" told him they were taking a picture...came from a separate interview years later....I remember being surprised that it was not in the original book story.
The Marjorie Fish star map took her some time to construct. Parallax measures of nearby stars were known by then, and she constructed a three dimensional model using spheres suspended from strings from the ceiling...to scale , and then photographed her model to show the stereo effect. One orientation contained all but one of Betty's stars....the one discovered about six years later to be local. Quite a coincidence, don't you think? Ciao. Pete.

Using the much more accurate data available from the Hipparchos catalogue (as shown in Celestia) I have been entirely unable to reproduce the Fish star map; the named stars cover a much wider part of the sky than implied in the Fish map as seen from the vicinity of Zeta 2 Reticuli, so it seems the locations she was working with were wrong in the first place. It appears that the resemblance between the Hill diagram and the Fish map was almost certainly a coincidence.

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All the same, did she ever give them a name? Or say where they'd be found in the sky? Odds are that if I hung 3 balls from a mobile and claimed they were stars I'd be able to find a group of stars that matched that configuration almost exactly, it's not hard to do with so many of them out there.

Also, apparently they'd only look that way from Earth, which she couldn't have seen them from, as such I think it is incredibly likely that it was a co-incidence.

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Having a recent interest in UFO's I have endeavoured to learn more about the subject. I find the persistance and scope of reports compelling.

Learning what I can of the phenomena would be incomplete without studying the abduction as well. One comment I have seen is that abductees are all kooks and people with mental problems. Another is that scientist never report abductions or UFO's. I have found references that refute this.

Karla Turner held a PHD and tought college courses. Now deceased from cancer. She sought to determine why she and her husband seemed to suffer from stress symptoms when their lives were happy and accomplshed. She kept a journal and was shocked at her discoveries. She wrote three books on the subject. Into the Fringe documents her personal discovery. Taken was a case study of eight women.

Her books are out of print but are available for pdf down load at this web site. They are not huge books and can be read in a reasonable time frame.

http://www.karlaturner.org/

If you want to debate or form opinions on the subject make them informed opinions. What better source than a first hand account from a well educated person with first hand experience. Having a carear as an educator made her well qualified to document and relate her experience.

I would think completely independent witnesses, armed with video cameras, would be much sources (maybe backed up with some nice radar tracking), than a person who well after the fact "remembers" some "abduction".

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Before even going into any discussion, just a side remark: This is linked to the UFO question and the Extraterrestrial Hypothesis (ETH). If the ETH is valid, then there might be something to abductions by aliens. If the ETH is not valid, then the abductions are not alien-related. Up until now, the ETH has not been proven valid.

In that Karla Turner's academic expertise was in Old English studies, I fail to see how it applies to the subject matter. Also note that she co-authored some of her works with noted psychics.

Please explain why these works should appeal to the skeptic as a scientific or scholarly approach to abduction.

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