Secret life: firsthand accounts of UFO abductions (31 page)

Unaware abductees can have inexplicably exaggerated emotional reactions to normal activities. For instance, they might wake up in the morning with intense feelings of euphoria. They ride the crest of an emotional high that seems to have no cause and that may last for several days. One young woman woke up feeling extremely euphoric. When she rode her bicycle into town she had the inexplicable feeling that she was falling in love with every man who looked into her eyes. Conversely, abductees might feel an almost overpowering rage at someone for simply staring at them, while this might not have ever bothered them in the past. Animals with large
eyes might provoke great anxiety in abductees, who sometimes inexplicably develop aversions to deer, rabbits, monkeys, cows, and even inanimate objects. Ken Rogers was a small child when his mother brought him a souvenir “tiki god” from a trip she had taken; the face and eyes of the souvenir so frightened him that he threw it out after having it for one day. One unaware abductee had several abductions from his car. After the last one, he sold his car and gave up driving for several years but did not know the reason why.

Obsessions and phobias relating to “borderland science” are also a common symptom of PAS. For example, after an abduction, some unaware abductees suddenly become obsessed with unidentified flying objects. They buy every book they can get on the subject, compulsively talk about it, and seem unable to concentrate on much else. Yet a few days or weeks before, they had little or no interest in UFOs. Others go to the opposite extreme and are inordinately repelled by the subject of UFOs. They refuse to entertain the notion that there “might be something to it.” They dislike talking or even thinking about it. They become extremely angry when the topic is raised and may leave the room so that they do not have to participate in a discussion. Their attitude is so negative that it assumes the dimensions of a phobia.

Some abductees experience extreme emotional reactions when they see illustrations of aliens in a book about UFOs. The pictures rivet the abductee as she stares at them in stunned horror, unable to take her eyes off them, all the while wondering why she is reacting in this manner. Others will pick up a book on abductees and have a powerful yet puzzling reaction to it, becoming extraordinarily emotionally involved with its contents. They might break into tears and sob for no apparent reason. Still others become inordinately frightened by such books and are unable to read them through to the end.

Memories or dreams can become an obsession as the unaware abductee desperately tries to understand their meaning. It is common for abductees to feel that in some way they left their bodies, usually during the night. When they floated out of bed they were often accompanied by someone they believe to be a deceased relative or an angel.

A few unaware abductees claim not only that they have had out-of-body experiences but that they have also experienced what they call astral travel. They know that they have in some mysterious way
experienced a strange displacement in location. One minute they were in one spot and then seemingly the next instant they found themselves in another place. They might be aware of this occurring several times during their lives. The only way that they can reconcile what has happened to them is through the only available cultural explanation—astral travel—no matter how ill-defined that might be.

Other PAS anxieties are related to babies. Some women develop “avoidance” postures toward babies. Even though they may have already had children, they find that they do not like babies very much or claim to be “not a baby person.” Sometimes babies generate not only anxiety in them but even fear or dread. Others react in a completely opposite fashion and become convinced that they once had a baby that has since been taken from them. They have the inexplicable feeling that they were once pregnant and actually gave birth. Some women can become so obsessed with the “missing baby” that they may even substitute a doll for it to assuage their baffling feelings of desire and guilt.

Missing-time episodes are common in abductees’ lives. They are unable to account for a “lost” period of time, which might be as short as an hour or two or as long as a day—and sometimes even longer. Trying to understand the origin of the missing time can torture the victims. It makes no sense. They have no explanation, and yet they know it happened.

The basic reproductive procedures that occur during an abduction experience can fundamentally influence the psychosexual development of the individual. This is especially true for young abductees, who are most vulnerable and impressionable.

Consider this scenario. A young girl is taken on board a UFO occupied by strange-looking creatures. She is stripped naked and cannot physically resist. Every inch of her body is examined and touched. Her genitals are probed and manipulated. By the time she has reached sixteen years old, she might already have had a number of traumatic internal examinations that have been stored in her unconscious mind. As a boy, the events surrounding the taking of sperm can be just as traumatic and humiliating.

To complicate matters, while the aliens are performing their procedures,
young boys and girls sometimes see naked adults being examined and probed on other tables. Children watch as the aliens perform procedures on sometimes-erect male genitals. They see naked women enduring internal gynecological procedures. Children see their parents being subjected to gynecological and urological examinations. These events can induce a profound sense of shame and guilt in children, both for having seen them and for thinking that perhaps they caused these events to occur to their family members. Furthermore, the children learn that adults have no control over the situation and their roles as protectors cannot be fulfilled. Adults are powerless. Only the aliens have power, and the children are wholly and totally dependent upon them. This can lead to a deep sense of distrust and suspicion in young people.

The problems are made incalculably worse by the bonding and sexual-arousal procedures performed on all abductees. When the alien performs bonding on a young child who is lying naked on a table, the rush of pleasurable emotions in her is irresistible. She is completely defenseless. This is even more injurious when the Taller Being (“male” or “female”) elicits intense sexual arousal feelings, and even orgasm. Then, while bonding and/or sexual feelings are at a peak, the Being begins the gynecological or urological procedures and physically intrudes into her genitals or mechanically extracts his sperm.

These procedures can have devastating effects on the child’s psychosexual development. The sexually bizarre nature of the event is retained deep within the unconscious mind. Abductees are forced to have sexual feelings while they are focused on a nonhuman creature in a strange setting, and then they are made to forget these feelings so that they are unable to come to terms with them. When the alien is finished with a young girl, he coldly turns around and walks out of the room while she is lying there with the residue of sexual feelings. In other less-frequent scenarios, the aliens might urge the teenage girl to “breed”: They might conjure up mental pictures in her mind of humans having sexual intercourse, or they might flood her mind with clinical images of the physical details of intercourse to instruct her; they might bring in a man or boy to have intercourse with her for demonstration purposes. The psychological ramifications of all this can be profound—leading to guilt, shame, distrust, and other psychosexual development disturbances, as well as resulting sexual dysfunction.

These abduction events can influence sexual attraction and behavior. Some women abductees report that they prefer men who are small and dark, or they like powerful, dominant men who make love to them and then “just walk away.” Sexual fantasies for women may include odd science fiction themes. Some men and women who are psychologically accustomed to frequent violation, pain mixed with “pleasure,” and the inability to move on a table report fantasies involving masochism and bondage.

As a result of these procedures, some abductees lose interest in sexual relations completely. They might go for years without a sexual relationship. Any sexual contact is unconsciously viewed as another assault; therefore it is to be avoided. In one extreme case, an abductee’s avoidance behavior was so profound that not only was it impossible for her to have normal sexual function, but she was unable even to talk about her reproductive organs, refusing to admit that she knew their clinical names.

For men, impotence and difficulties with ejaculation are common. Some become obsessed with control. They try to control every aspect of their bodies, including ejaculation. Some men masturbate excessively, unconsciously trying to keep the aliens from having their sperm. Others have a feeling of shame and guilt when they are sexually active, unknowingly rekindling feelings that they may have had during the abduction experience.

The problems engendered by PAS lead both men and women to question their own mental stability. They are often extremely introspective, having continually ruminated about their odd behavior—both sexual and otherwise—for most of their lives. These problems can be so severe that thoughts of, and even attempts at, suicide are not rare for adults and even young children.

Many abductees engage in a lifelong search for answers to questions they cannot fully formulate. For some, the New Age movement (wherein spiritual and humanistic values are achieved through alternative pathways to conventional learning) provides an answer. In some way they know they are in contact with a “higher” or “cosmic” consciousness. They feel sure that they can communicate with other people by mental telepathy. They know that they have been in touch with another realm of existence.

Some unaware abductees become attracted to channeling and might even become channelers themselves. The personal, benevolent, channeled messages they receive from “alien spirits” give them a secure feeling that the ill-defined events they have been undergoing are benign, and they feel enriched and emotionally rewarded by the messages.

It is not unusual for a person to seek answers to the disturbing qualities of their lives through organized religion—usually evangelical Christian groups. When the abductee tells the minister that strange things have been happening to him, the minister frequently invokes “demons” or demonic possession. It is the devil’s work. Prayer and faith will vanquish the demons and allow the victim to lead a life free from harassment. For some abductees this explanation and prescription are satisfying because they give meaning to the experiences and dictate a course of action to control them. But for many others the demonic analysis does not quite ring true. When prayer fails, they look elsewhere for answers.

It must be emphasized that unaware abductees are trying to deal with the phenomenon as best they can. The internal pressure to discover the origin of their experiences can be tremendous. In New Age and psychic societies they find kinship with others who claim to have had the same type of experiences. They discover meaning in their half-memories that satisfies the “cosmic” implications for which they were searching. In religion they find solace and seek to master the events through faith and prayer. Often their quest is primarily to reinforce their hope that they are not mentally ill. They anxiously want to prove to themselves that their feelings and bleed-through memories are “legitimate,” and that they are not just fantasizing. They desperately want to exert intellectual and emotional control over fundamentally uncontrollable events in their lives.

Rather than joining New Age groups or religious sects, many abductees turn to mental health professionals for help. They know that there must be something “wrong.” A few abductees have even checked themselves into hospitals because they think that mental problems are causing them to imagine the bizarre events in their lives. Others seek conventional psychological or psychiatric help.

The vast majority of professional therapists are not trained to help abductees. “Standard” therapy not grounded in the knowledge of what actually happened to the abductee rarely dissipates anxieties,
and the problems continue unabated. Well-meaning therapists try to convince abductees that their problems stem from familial relationships in childhood, or that their vivid dreams originate in repressed sexuality or in childhood sexual abuse. When the abductee says that her problems might have something to do with seeing a strange object in the sky, a “monster” in her bedroom, or an unexplainable lapse in time, the psychologist or psychiatrist tries to convince her that these are just fantasies and the problems are psychological. Some less conventional therapists who have attempted to deal with the residual effects of the problems regardless of their cause have had the best success. A few have referred abductees to competent abduction researchers.

Hypnotic regression—and special counseling by an individual familiar with hypnosis, psychological techniques, and the abduction phenomenon—affords the best opportunity for the abductee to come to terms successfully with the predicament that she finds herself in. Few people are trained for this work.

Recognition that a PAS symptom is related to UFOs often starts with a memory that suddenly wells up. Casual reading about abductions might trigger a memory. Glancing at a book with a representation of an alien in it might cause the terror and anxiety of forgotten incidents to come rushing back. The same anxiety might be triggered by viewing a television show on abductions or even just engaging in idle conversation about the topic with a friend. Or one day an abductee simply remembers a piece of an incident with no obvious activating mechanism.

For some abductees, knowledge of the abductions finally gives them the answers they were seeking, and they let go of previously held belief structures that were never fully satisfactory. But, for many others, awareness of their involvement in the abduction phenomenon brings about a new set of problems.