Alien Psychology

Links

Unusual Sensory Experiences Survey

Anomalous Experience

Dictionary of Folkloric Alien Creatures from: Encyclopedia Mythica

Alien Abduction

Transforming the Alien: LeHorla

UFO Links

UFO Folklore

Other Alien Lnks

The doctor's plot: New Republic

Sleep Paralysis

Personal Accounts of Sleep Paralysis: BISleep

Sleep Paralysis/Hag Phenomena: NARC

SUNDS

Sudden Unexplained Nocturnal Death Syndrome

Experiencing the alien

nightmare detail There are aliens among us. They have probably been a part of human psychology as long as there have been humans. An explanation based on biology and culture is that they are created anew each generation by unusual and evocative bodily experiences. These experiences arise from physiological processes, some of which are both extremely ancient and others of which are likely relatively modern, and elaborated and organized by cultural traditions. These experiences may include immobility or paralysis, felt "presences" that are alternatively extraordinarily frightening or beatific, intense emotion, auditory and visual "hallucinations," experiences of floating, flying, sensations of drowning or suffocating, and out-body experiences. These are certainly "alien" experiences insofar as they are definitely different from our familiar quotidian experiences.

If you have had such experiences perhaps you might be interested in completing our Unusual Sensory Experiences Survey.

These bizarre and often frightening experiences likely are at least one source of cultural tales, present in virtually all cultures, about demons, gremlins, witches, incubi, succubi, mare, and all sorts of alien creatures - including extraterrestrial aliens. These experiences are known by many names in many cultures, among these are: hagging, hexendrücken, aswang, kanishibari, da chor, agumangia, ukomiarik, ka wi nulita, phi um, and kokma. In some contemporary academic cultures these are known as "complex partial seizures," relatively mild temporal lobe epileptic seizures, hypokalemic paralysis, nocturnal seizures, and sleep paralysis. These sorts of unusual experiences are a source of skeptics’ favorite explanation for the current spate of alien abduction experiences, especially, sleep paralysis and associated hypnagogic and hypnopompic hallucinations (i.e., hallucinations just prior to falling asleep or upon awakening). Numerous authors have argued that many alien abductees have overinterpreted attacks of sleep paralysis and debate about the plausibility of this continues. Neither sleep paralysis nor any related transient altered state such as complex partial seizures can explain all alien possession or abduction (extraterrestrial or other) experiences but surely contribute significantly to the corpus of data referred to in explanations of alien experiences.

The natualization of the alien by science

The "demotion" or naturalization of the supernatural began as early as the 17^th Century. This likely arose, in part, because of the exposure of error, dissimulation, illness, and fraud as frequent sources of alleged possession, witchcraft, demon worship, and the like by Marescot in France, and Jordan and Harsnett in England. In some cases, such as that of John Darrell dealt with by Harsnett, the exposures themselves were probably as fraudulent and misguided as any false sorcery. A certain number of cases of possession or sorcery had long been attributed to natural intellectual and emotion disturbances. This was a point acknowledged by most of even the most committed exorcists (e.g., MacKay, 1841). Certainly by the 17^th Century these natural causes were gaining ascendancy as the preferred diagnoses for strange behaviors and strange experiences. Francis Bacon was an early debunker of extraordinary and his De Argumentis Scientarium is, among many other things, an ancestor of Carl Sagan's Demon-Haunted World. Nonetheless, there were still a number of doubtful cases. Moreover, Christians were loath to give up possession, witches, and sorcerers altogether since their elimination merely encouraged the atheists (Olson, 1992). An implicit domino theory helped prop up the belief in witches, demon possession, and were-wolves. If there were no witches, there were no imps and perhaps there were no demons. If no demons then perhaps there is no devil meddling in the affairs of the world. If no devil then perhaps no god. If there are no disembodied spirits floating in the night skies, then there are perhaps no embodied spirits or souls, mortal or immortal. This concern was primary in the arguments of Joseph Glanvill, a scientific apologist for the existence of witchcraft and early scientifically motivated investigator of spirit phenomena. Apart from the somewhat archaic language, Glanvill's arguments might easily be mistaken for those of almost any current apologist for alien abduction.

things done by persons of despicable power and knowledge, beyond the reach of art and ordinary nature," and these include not only "vulgar" persons, but "wise and grave discerners...when no interest could oblige them to agree together in a common lie." Unfortunately, he argues, no amount of empirical evidence could convince those who do not believe in witches, "since those that deny the being of witches, do it not out of ignorance of these heads of argument...but from an apprehension that such a belief is absurd, and the things, impossible....Upon these presumptions they condemn all demonstrations of this nature, and are hardened against conviction (Olson, 1992).

Glanvill clearly believed that the so-called scientific debunkers were "unscientific" in their stance. They first rejected the phenomenon out of hand as absurd, that is, on purely rational, not empirical, grounds. Their task was not one of explaining but of explaining away. Their minds, he declared, were closed on the matter.

This is proudly to exalt our own opinions above the clearest testimonies and most sensible demonstrations of fact: and so to give the lie to all mankind, rather than distrust the conceits of our bold imaginations" (Glanvill, pp. 5-6, cited in Olson, 1992).

Olson very elegantly links Glanvill's arguments about the possibility of witches to those of Boyle concerning the possibility of extended immaterial space (i.e., a vacuum). Glanvill, Boyle, and some current apologists for alien abduction all arguing not for credulity (whether or not they encouraged, or even succumbed to it, is another matter), but for open-minded investigation.

Glanvill's "more-scientific-than-thou" arguments are echoed today by the apologists for taking the alien abduction experiences at face value, i.e., as what they seem to be. Unfortunately, this reasoning conflates phenomena, experiences, and interpretations in a very rigid fashion. As the philosophers Patricia and Paul Churchland repeated argue, the scientific investigation of phenomena often changes the interpretation to the degree that they seldom resemble traditional interpretations (or folk beliefs, as they rather disparagingly label common-sense views).

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