Sex, Science, and UFO Abductions

In the late 1990s, I was approached by Hustler, Larry Flynt's well known pornographic magazine, to write a piece on UFO abductions. "Keep it lurid," they said. "Focus on rectal probes and such, but feel free to write anything you want." I did my best but their standards of lurid are much higher than mine. Also they did not really want something that explained away the alleged mystery but instead rewrote it to make things look less explicable than they actually were. Oh well, if you can't trust America's most notorious pornographers to make your reputation look good, who can you trust? 

For those interested, here's an excerpt from the piece I submitted, one full of scientific goodness. 

SEX, SCIENCE, AND UFO ABDUCTIONS

by Peter Huston

Robert Baker is a psychologist and frequent contributor to "The Skeptical Inquirer" concerned about therapists who believe their patients are being abducted by space aliens. "Most of the presenting symptoms reported by alleged abductees can be satisfactorily accounted for without resorting to the highly improbable and physically unsubstantiated claims of abduction by alien spaceships." He notes that often such claims begin with a report of someone waking up, terrified, feeling a presence, unable to move and often include waking-dream type hallucinations. The already terrifying memories of this experience are then later modified by hypnosis.

Sleep paralysis, the feeling of awakening and being unable to move, is a normal experience often shared by fifteen percent of the population at different times. Sometimes called the Nightmare, the Old Hag, the combination of paralysis, pressure on the chest, feeling of presence, and dream-type hallucinations in an otherwise waking person has been interpreted in different cultures in different ways, yet most involve common themes. And it is these common themes that do seem to emerge in many of today's UFO reports of Greys entering bedrooms. David J. Huford, a folklorist, categorized these themes in his classic work, "The Terror that Comes in the Night �An Experience Centered Study of Supernatural Assault Traditions."

"One 1995 victim was a quiet-spoken peasant, a farmer named Mjaka Hamad, who said he does not believe in spirits. He first thought he was having a dream. However, "I could feel it," he said, "something pressing on me. I couldn't imagine what sort of thing was happening to me. You feel as if you are screaming with no voice." He went on to say: "It was just like a dream but then I was thinking it was this popobawa and he had come to do something terrible to me, something sexual. It is worse than what he does to women." Space aliens? No, the parralels are obvious but this comes from an investigation done by prominent skeptic Joe Nickell into a report of a lustful demon in Zanzibar. (Skeptical Briefs, 1995)

Stories of European Demonic Incubbi and Succubi, Chinese Fox spirits, some vampire reports, even some Eskimo spirit beliefs, they all follow this same pattern, of a person waking up, unable to move and sensing a presence. Such reports have received comment for centuries. In 1949, Ernest Jones tried to explain the phenomena in Freudian terms: "The latent content of a nightmare consists of a representation of a normal act of sexual intercourse, particularly in the form of characteristic for women; the pressure on the breast, the self-surrender portrayed by the feeling of paralysis, and the genital secretion directly indicate its sexual nature, and the other symptoms, the palpitation, sweating, sense of suffocation, etc., etc., are merely exaggerations of manifestations commonly experienced in some degree during coitus when fear is present." (Robbins, Encyclopedia of Witchcraft and Demonology, p. 356)

But why sex? Neurophysiology offers the following: "Awakening in a state of sleep paralysis can cause one to hyperventilate� The hyperventilation then dminishes the supply of oxygen going to the brain � If the oxygen supply is further restricted, the sexual pleasure centers in the brain are stimulated. Knowledge of this phenomena is often used in autoerotic asphyxia i.e. the very dangerous practice of tying a rope around the neck during masturbation in order to heighten the orgasm. It is also why the alien abduction syndrome is replete with images of alien rape, probing of sex organs, and so forth. Freuqently this sort of sexual arousal is carried over from the REM sleep and, in the male, usually results in penile erection."

Michael Persinger, is a neuroscientist and researcher in Ontario. "The important thing about these states is that they all share a feeling of a sense of presence." He went on to explain that during some states the left brain actually detects the activity of the right brain and the result is a feeling of presence. Sleep paralysis, he stated, was a minor subset of these states, but there are many others including some types of seizure and epileptic type states. As for the tales of rape and anal probes, Persinger adds, "During dream states more access to internal states, visceral states and the person becomes more aware, more sensitive to their internal physiology. In women this can manifest as a sensation in their deep, deep vagina. With men this can manifest as a sensitivity deep within their anal regions."

But why rape? "They aren't all violent," says Michael Persinger. "Our data indicates that many females often see them as lovers. What I suspect we are seeing is a bias in reporting,"