Terence Hines - Pseudoscience and the Paranormal

It seems clear, then, that by far the most parsimonious explanation of the alien abduction memories is that they are vivid false memories created by a combination of variables, including exposure to the alien abduction “script,” presence of hypnopompic experiences, hypnosis of believers in the reality of these experiences, and group pressure from other believers. Of course, not all of these factors will be present in every case. In other words, the “mix” of causative agents will vary from person to person. Not all will have been hypnotized, not all will have been subjected to group pressure, and so on. An entire issue of the journal Psychological Inquiry (Pervin 1996) was devoted to the issue of the psychology behind alien abduction claims. It contains thirteen articles covering the range of explanations for this phenomenon and makes valuable reading. The papers by Clark and Loftus (1996) and Ome et al. (1996) are especially relevant to the notion advanced here that abduction reports are due to false memories created by various psychological processes. Bartholomew and Howard (1998) have also discussed the psychology of alien abduction experiences at some length. Their discussion is especially valuable for the way it shows the similarities between these current experiences and experiences with ghosts, witches, and fairies in earlier times.

Another question that can be asked about the UFO abduction reports is whether those who report such experiences are in some way different from those who do not. In the first edition of this book (Hines 1988), I suggested that those who believe in such experiences might be more fantasy-prone than those who do not. There was some evidence for this view in the results of a study (Slater 1985a, 1985b) of nine abductees, but more recent research has generally not found large differences in factors such as fantasy-proneness and hypnotizability between those who do and do not have abduction experiences (i.e., Spanos et al. 1993; Newman and Baumeister 1996; Orne et al. 1996). Rather, as Orne et al. point out, the degree of hypnotizability and fantasy-proneness found in most normal individuals may suffice to produce these sorts of memories when people are subjected to the amount of social and psychological pressure to which those who publicly espouse such memories have been subjected. In other words, it is not the experiencers who are different from the norm, it is the degree of psychological pressure to which they have been subjected that is different from the norm.

Certainly Budd Hopkins and John Mack are two of the best-known names in the UFO abduction business. But Whitley Strieber’s work also should be discussed. Whitley Strieber is an author of horror fiction whose best-known book, until Communion hit the best-seller lists, was Wolfen (1978), made into a movie in 1980. Communion is the “true story” of Strieber’s encounters with and abduction by some type of alien beings. During his terrifying experience, which began in December 1986, a needle was inserted into his head and an instrument of some sort was inserted into his anus.

Both Klass (1988) and Swords (1987) have critiqued Strieber’s accounts of his experience. Klass’s book is especially valuable, as it covers the entire subject of UFO abductions. Both critiques note that Strieber’s life has been filled with highly unusual and bizarre occurrences. When he was twelve, for example, he was assaulted by a skeleton on a motorcycle; earlier, he had had a threatening encounter with Mr. Peanut. In the early 1970s, he awoke one night and saw a tiny humanoid figure run by him holding a red light. In 1985 he was awakened while staying at his cabin in the Catskills and found the place surrounded by a strange blue light glowing in the fog. In all, Swords lists thirty-three separate highly unusual experiences of this sort reported as fact in Communion and finds no independent confirmation for fully thirty of them. For three experiences, the “confirmations” confirm only the most mundane aspects of the event. For example, Strieber reported that in 1982 he had a series of encounters with a mysterious white figure. A baby-sitter confirmed seeing a youngster in a white sheet outside a window. Strieber’s wife, Anne, “clearly says that she didn’t see anyone or anything, just was poked while asleep; and that W.S. first started talking about little white things. All her subsequent ‘description’ of a being was in response to imagining what it might look like” (p. 5). Strieber uses as further confirmation of some of the events he claims to have experienced the testimony of his son, born in 1979 and seven years old in 1986. Swords properly excludes the child’s comments from the class of confirming evidence “because of the powerful potential for idea suggestibility which exists” between father and son (p. 5).

Strieber is clearly obsessed with intruders, an obsession that apparently began long before he had his encounter with the aliens in 1986. He admits that late at night he often searches for possible intruders by “opening closets and looking under beds” and “especially [in] corners and crannies. I always looked down low in the closets, seeking something small” (Strieber 1987a, p. 101). He also has elaborate burglar alarms in both his New York City apartment and his cabin in the mountains.

Klass (1988) shows that Strieber has a history of telling stories he claims to be true but which turn out to be false. In an interview published in Winter’s (1985) book of interviews with famous horror fiction writers, Strieber described in graphic detail being present and nearly shot in 1966 when Charles Whitman killed many people in his sniper attack from the Texas Tower on the campus of the University of Texas in Austin. In Communion, however, Strieber admits that he was not present at the tragedy. Sprinkled throughout the book are other recantations of stories Strieber previously held out as true.

From reading Communion and hearing Strieber on several television and radio talk shows, I believe that he really believes that the encounters he says he had with the aliens were real. He is, however, not at all sure that the creatures are “only” members of an advanced civilization. He thinks they represent something even stranger, perhaps “mankind’s first encounter with a quantum reality in the new macrocosm” (Strieber 1987b, p. 8). He also feels that “the abduction experience is primarily a mystical experience” and that following the experience “spiritual and paranormal life events” become more common (p. 7).

Insiders in the UFO business these days are often heard to say that the belief that UFOs are extraterrestrial craft is silly. There is insufficient evidence to justify such a belief. Further, the logistics of space travel from some distant star are too difficult. (In this they agree, surprisingly, with Carl Sagan [1972] when he points out the difficulties in overcoming such obstacles to space travel as the speed of light and the amount of fuel needed.) Do these “avant garde” UFOlogists conclude from all this that UFOs exist only as perceptual constructions, misidentifications, and hoaxes? Not at all. Instead, a host of bizarre new hypotheses has sprung up to save the dedicated UFOlogist from having to admit that there is no foundation to all the reports. One UFO group called Samisdat, based in Toronto, Ontario, believes that UFOs are really secret Nazi aircraft. Supposedly, just as World War II ended in May 1945 Hitler and all the other missing leaders of the Third Reich were whisked away by UFO to a secret Nazi hideout in the Antarctic, where they reside today, plotting the rise of the Fourth Reich. This same group also markets Nazi propaganda.

Some fundamentalist Christian groups believe that UFOs are really angels and foretell the Second Coming or Judgment Day. Of course, only those who truly believe in the UFOs will be saved when the world ends. Actually, this type of group has a longer history than might be suspected. Even in the 1950s there were groups who believed that UFOs were harbingers of the end of the world, sent to save believers. One such group was infiltrated and studied by several social psychologists who wrote a classic book on the dynamics of such a group and the group’s response when the end of the world did not come as predicted (Festinger, Riecken and Schachter 1956). As you might expect, the failure of the world to end on schedule did not suggest to several members of the group that their belief was wrong. Instead, they rationalized events to convince themselves that they had simply miscalculated. That particular group is no longer in existence, but another group that has suffered several failed end-of-the-world predictions is still around: the Seventh-day Adventist Church. This sect was founded in the 1840s when one William Miller predicted that the world would end in the year following March 21, 1843. It didn’t, so Miller promptly recalculated that the end would come on October 22, 1844 (Randi 1980; Numbers and Butler 1987). It didn’t. Nonetheless, the church is still in business. They now contend that the end of the world is near, although they are wise enough to avoid making specific predictions about the date.