The description of the symptoms of sleep paralysis is similar to the description many alien abductees give in recounting their abduction experiences and also other delusions involving paranormal or supernatural experiences.

So what do you think-Aliens on Earth,or just in our heads?

Link.
http://watarts.uwaterloo.ca/~acheyne/S_P2.html

__________________
----------------------------------
I still await the compelling Exhibit A.

I believe experiences of the mind like this can explain many "paranormal" things. Especially alien abductions - there is no way aliens would look so much like us. They look like the elves/fairies/little people people have been seeing for centuries

__________________
All the woo-woos come out on the internet. Someday a real mod's gonna come down and wash all the scum off of this message board.

Personally, I consider it unlikely that they'd look like us. However, saying that there's "no way" that they look like us sounds presumptuous. They might still have humanoid bodies, after all.

On the other hand, if you mean them looking 100% like humans with a minor cosmetic change, like elven ears or such, you would have a point there. However, I haven't seen many like that outside of the old 1950's movies.

__________________
I'm an engineer. I've produced many ideas that have beauty, but only a few that have truth. The difference is important, and truth is discovered only in a harsh and unyielding crucible. It's up to you what you propose to value. -- Jay Utah

Check out my writing, maybe.

I have had a sleep paralysis experience myself; it is difficult to remember the exact details, as after all it was most likely a state halfway between waking and sleeping- but I saw an alien in the corner of my room who looked almost exactly like this fellow-
http://www.bbc.co.uk/cult/st/gallery...0/tosbalok.jpg

I had recently seen a documentary about sleep paralysis so I kind of realised what was happening; unfortunately it faded away immediately. But perhaps someone else might have thought that they had been the subject of a failed abduction.
I think there is a good case to be made that the image of the alien which people imagine that they see in cases like this is very much influenced by popular culture; the image above was repeated every week on television around the world as part of the end credits of a very popular show, so may have diffused into the collective subconscious gradually over time. Certainly the grey alien image becomes popular in the early sixties; before that time aliens came in a variety of shapes and sizes.

The image of a humanoid alien with a large head seems to be tracable back through popular fiction (the Mekon, the aliens in this Island Earth, the alien in Invaders from Mars) right back to H.G. Wells, who used the image in his book First Men in the Moon.
Wells was probably plagiarising himself in that book; he first used the image of a big headed humanoid in a book about the distant future of humanity (Of a Book Unwritten, The Man of the Year Million, 1892); when you think about it, this large headed being is a reasonable extrapolation of the evolution of the human form into the far future, but it is not particularly realistic as an extraterrestrial being.

__________________
New Orion's Arm Site . The Starlark . Against a Diamond Sky (OA Novella Collection) . OA Flickr set

I don't know what you call it, but I had several of those dreams where you are floating/flying over your bed. I seem to remember the bed bouncing like I had fallen on it--but that was from my reaching down and grabbing on for dear life in the dream.

I have dreamed that I fell and even remember hitting the ground. I think the worst one was a dream I had in Jr. High.

I was in a classroom, and the rooms lights went out. I saw a shape behind me in front of the hallway lights. Just a dark shape of a man with an axe.

He came down between two rows of students. We were all still sitting at our desks. I hunkered down hoping he'd pass me. I heard no attack until ZZIP!--and felt my head cut off and fall to the floor at the assailants feet, seeing my own body still sitting at the desk.

Yes, it is clear that the mind can play very persuasive tricks on us, and they tend to be very suggestible. I wonder if you had recently seen a movie involving an axe murderer, perchance? The suggestibility explains the rash of abductions that happened a while back, and why we seem to be hearing less and less of these as the "news cycle" passes on to other issues, and the media gets bored with the concept. Are we seeing the waning of this particular delusion do you think? What will be next?

I don't remember seeing any movie, but that doesn't mean I didn't.

Heh, I've had a dream where I was killed too, it's pretty freaky. The dream was 1st person up to the moment I was shot, then I was floating 3rd person over my body. I woke with a pretty big start from that one.

__________________
Howling from the Shadows

It must be fun to lead a life completely unburdened by reality. --- JayUtah

You can't reason an irrational person out of an irrational belief. --- Noclevername

Apollo: The History and the Hoax
Enter the World of Athran

I get sleep paralysis all the time. Maybe once a month or so. The first few times it happened, I was totally freaked out, but now I've learned to enjoy it. As soon as I'm in that state, I tell myself that this is sleep paralyis. I can't move/talk right now, and there are some freaky stuff happening around me, but I've also got enough sense of mind to remain calm and deal with it raionally. I just chill out and fall asleep again.

__________________
Fraser Cain
Publisher
Universe Today - Free space news delivered by email every weekday.

I actually had a sleep paralysis situation just the other day, it is pretty freaky. I've had them before, not that many or I probably would have looked into it a bit, but all I can remember is being aware of myself lying there and trying to say something, trying to make a sound but nothing coming out. Induced a little bit of panic, because I thought I was awake and I couldnt' speak, but I soon realised that I was still asleep, so I immediately woke myself up just to make sure I could still talk! Was a little panic-inducing, but after reading a bit about sleep paralysis in the past couple of days I think I'll be able to handle it a little better in future.

And as for sleep paralysis being responsible for most, if not all, alien abduction theories, I wouldn't be surprised at all, I think it's a very likely explanation. I have a very questioning and critical mind for things related to the paranormal etc., but I was still a little freaked out by the experience. Someone with a suggestive mind or who had recently seen an alien film, I can completely see them being convinced of what they've seen. Its not a huge leap of logic in the slightest.

Kemal and Lonewulf

You are right if these supposed aliens are true extraterestrial entities. But they can look like us , if the are of human origin , living on Earth or living somewhere in space but originating from our planet.

After all if there is something true about these "Aliens" lets apply the Occams's razor method :

First there is on Earth a known Kind of space traveller : Homo Sapiens Sapiens ; then aliens looks like us , so conclusion they are of human origin .

If they truly abduct people (???) their motive must be very human motive , not something uncomprehensible.

<Alien 1> Okay, now for your Initiation into the Gooblezork fraternity. You have to go and take an earthling, then stick a probe up his butt.

<Alien 2> Awww, I don't want to do that! Humans are so ugly, and they stink.

<Alien 1> Shut up and do it! You want into the fraternity, don't you?!

__________________
I'm an engineer. I've produced many ideas that have beauty, but only a few that have truth. The difference is important, and truth is discovered only in a harsh and unyielding crucible. It's up to you what you propose to value. -- Jay Utah

Check out my writing, maybe.

No matter how good the science is, there will always be those who believe their experience is the result of aliens with a sexual dysfunction rather than their own. "Alien abductions" are simply a convenient way to make excuses for a subliminal obsession.

Likewise, there will also always be psycho-charlatans like Sims and Mack who take advantage of these people.

__________________
Anything may be possible, but not everything actually is. Some things are true and some things are not. Wisdom is knowing the difference.

I have some empathy for those people who believe they have had alien-abduction experiences. Our minds can play tricks on us to the point that no evidence to the contrary will persuade us otherwise.

One classic example is that of "recovered memories" - researchers investigating the phenomenon can actually convince subjects that certain events happened in their childhood (e.g. getting lost in the mall) so much so that even when their parents deny they ever took place, they won't--can't--believe them.

Heck, I consider myself a thoroughly rational person and yet I managed to convince myself I was dying from an incurable disease despite numerous healthy diagnoses from all the doctors I saw. Fortunately I was utterly wrong, but convincing myself of that fact did not come easy.

But I consider myself the lucky one. A friend of mine thought for years that he was dying from cancer. Instead of accepting numerous doctors' opinions to the contrary (including from the Mayo Clinic) he managed to convince himself that they were all involved in a conspiracy against him. Nobody could shake him of that delusion. A few weeks ago, after losing his job, it all got too much for him. He killed his wife and committed suicide. I don't excuse what he did, but he really was a nice guy and had a wonderful wife. No one saw this coming. Sadly what was once simply a delusion--a trick of the mind--escalated into a full blown tragedy.

So when people claim they have been abducted, I tend to believe that they really do believe it happened. It's not an "excuse" for some other short-coming or failure, they are thoroughly convinced it happened to them. As long as it does not become an obsession, I see nothing much wrong with that. As others have said, I reserve my contempt for those who seek to profit from other people's delusions.

We have "alien abduction", other times has things like the Mara riding it's victims during the night (and their horses too!). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mara_%28folklore%29

__________________
"-UFO detected, interceptor launched"

Hmm, sounds a bit like sleep paralysis, also.

Lol, Mara. The incompetent arch-nemesis of Belldandy, Skuld, and Urd from the Oh My Goddess! manga. Well that clears things up, Mara was the only character from Oh My Goddess that I hadn't been able to connect to a character from Norse mythology yet (excluding the human characters, Peorth who is named after a rune, and Morgan who is of course from Arthurian legend). Sorry for the off-topicness.

__________________
I met this wonderful girl at Macy's. She was buying clothes and I was putting Slinkies on the escalator.
-Steven Wright



My Website: The Black Cat's Web Page

I'm sad to hear about your friend, your point is well taken about the impact of psychology. It is as "real" as anything else in science, but only for the individual.

I'm sorry for possibly repeating something else some might have already covered (I didn't read through the whole thread before replying)

I have had, and sometimes still do have, episodes of sleep paralysis. It is really weird. I can instantly see how people can be convinced (either by themselves dwelling on it or through professional "help") that other worldly things happen to them at night.

Mine happens only when I am sleeping on my couch (sure it is just happenstance). I "wake" up after hearing a sound only to find my eyes are the only thing working. Can't move, can speak, and everything becomes, well, surreal. I was lucky enough to catch it in the act once, and actually think to myself I am having sleep paralysis. I tried to concentrate on it before drifting back into my sleep. What I found:

Sounds were very overstated. I remember my homes air-conditioning taking on a whole different sound, which becomes frightening the more I concentrated on it.

You imagination goes wild. It almost seemed as if anything I thought of at that minute become freightenly real. I had to convince myself everything I perceived or even thought of was not really happening. Only after that did I snap out of it and fall back asleep (but not before pulling the blanket over my head just in case, lol)

I am glad to have reconized it the first or second time it happened to me. If I didn't know any better I would have believed anything that happened to me during those episodes really took place.

Sleep paralysis is a fascinating, and necessary, phenomenon. If our brains didn't include it while we are sleeping, our bodies would continue to flail around trying to perform the actions we're doing in our dreams!

Some poor souls suffer from a lack of sleep paralysis and can injure themselves or others around them:

http://www.nature.com/news/2005/0510...71220a_pf.html

Suddenly a few bouts of sleep paralysis doesn't seem so bad....!

On this last post Tacitus I totally agree - not bad thing at all!

Sleep paralysis is truly an odd feeling - during stressful times in highschool I had an expirience or two with it. Though after realizing I was laying there frozen in bed it just took a little bit of time and thought getting my limbs to move again (musta been a good nights sleep because my body didn't want to give it up. :P)

__________________
Realization: What are you going to do today?

I used to sleep-walk a lot when I was a kid. Nowadays my nighttime motions seem to be restricted to tearing the sheets of my bed somehow. I don't know how it happens, but no matter how well I make my bed my sheets are always in a heap on the floor next to my bed when I wake up in the morning.

__________________
I met this wonderful girl at Macy's. She was buying clothes and I was putting Slinkies on the escalator.
-Steven Wright



My Website: The Black Cat's Web Page

Now here is one for you. I woke up laughing from a dream I had. This happened--its a fact with my hand up.

I dream't that I was watching TV--a commercial to be exact.

The scene:

A sport utility vehicle is bumping across the countryside.

The camera angle looks through the front windshield.

The driver is Dog Chapman--the Bounty Hunter. In the passengers seat is...

--Bob Newhart

Poor Bob is staring at Dog for driving like a madman, and is getting bounced all over.

The next scene shows the underside of the sport-ute, now wrecked, with one wheel spinning. The cameras POV rises, and we see Dog sitting on a pile of dirt shaking his head, and Newhart is standing next to him-- on a cell phone, of course:

"Honey, I'm going to be a little late for dinner..."

--And I woke up.


Where did THAT dream come from?

You don't happen to wear shirts with button-dwon collars, do you?

__________________
A person's name, or a mark representing it, as signed personally or by deputy, as in subscribing a letter or other document.

Yep--right under my sweater-vest.

They match my wingtip Oxfords.