I’ve always found it curious that smart reliable people can truly believe they have been abducted by aliens. Not that I believed a word of their stories, but I’m now convinced that some or most “victims” actually believe what happened to them was real.
I had a crazy dream that was ultra realistic, almost to the point of a hallucination. It involved a dream within a dream (thinking I had forced myself to wake up, but was still in a dream), a feeling of floating around the room, and watching my self sleep; as real as riding a rollercoaster or flying in a small plane, and was ultra vivid.
I wasn’t scared, because I knew I was merely dreaming, but and I not been in that state of mind, and had been dreaming about aliens, I might have woke up and seriously questioned what the heck had happened. Fortunately, my ass is not sore.
So, I learned two things: 1) Not everyone claiming abduction is a pure hoaxster or fame seeker. 2) Avoid Pepsi before bed.
Agree totally, T SQUARE. I don’t believe in alien abduction for a tenth of a second. But I once had a peculiarly realistic dream in which an airplane with very bright lights came right up to my bedroom window and hovered there. I could hear the engine roar and see the light illuminating my room very vividly and accurately, not like a regular dream at all. That was followed by a “blackout” period, after which I was aware of being in my bed, sleeping normally.
Because I am a rationalist, a skeptic, and a reader, I know I was merely experiencing an interesting psychological phenomenon that is well documented, if not 100 percent understood. But wow, if I were just a gullible soul who secretly hoped for something special to happen to me, I would had been absolutely certain that was an alien abduction.
A farcical novel that offers up one down-to-earth (if not entirely plausible) explanation for some “alien abductions,” while taking simultaneous potshots at both the government and media establishments and the UFO subculture, is Christopher Buckley’s Little Green Men. I’m a little surprised it hasn’t been made into a movie yet.
In the novel, an extremely top-secret and renegade govt. operation has a team of agents in alien costumes kidnapping, drugging, and, ahem, examining various persons nabbed at random from back country roads, empty parking lots, and golf courses, etc. – in order to deflate the gravitas of the UFO subculture by keeping the movement on the fringes, by intentionally creating the most pathetic, ridiculous victims possible. The plot kicks in gear with the abduction (from a country club golf course) of our antihero, a smug, conservative political TV pundit who, following his abduction, goes public with his experience, causing his life to go to pieces – he becomes a laughingstock in his former establishment social circles, loses his TV show, and is sued for divorce [IIRC] – and who refashions himself as a leading activist of the UFO subculture, demanding answers from Washington on Area 51, etc. etc… and becomes a national folk hero of sorts in the process.
Funny this thread has come up. I have been having pretty obvious disruptions to my REM sleep cycle, which has resulted in sleep paralysis, cataplexy and a slew of another annoying symptoms. But since I have read that many people who claim to have been abducted by aliens have experienced hypnogogic hallucinations associated with interrupted REM-sleep patterns, I pretty much lie awake at night praying that it doesn’t happen to me. Knowing it’s not real wouldn’t make it any less terrifying. I think if someone did have a hypnogogic hallucination without knowing that such a thing existed, it would be logical to conclude that it was real.
Gods, I hate those dreams. They always end up as incredibly realistic sequences in which I drag myself out of bed and painstakingly prepare for the day while my whole body feels like lead. It usually takes me a while to realize that I’m still lying in bed. Sometimes I have to go through the same mental acrobatics several times before I can actually wake up. :mad:
These days I always do the “Am I Dreaming?” check before I attempt to get up if I suspect I’m in one of those recurring loops.
I also used to have nightmares about missing the bus - I was a teacher’s pet type kid and my Dad was the only one who had a car, but he worked when I had class.