[MIDUS]

Article: https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/sto...ms-examined-2/

Mark H. says he was abducted by aliens. He clearly remembers awakening one night, unable to move anything but his eyes. He saw flashing lights, heard buzzing sounds, experienced feelings of levitation, and felt electric tingling sensations. Most terrifying were the nonhuman figures he saw by his bed.

Mark believes they were aliens.

Later, he underwent hypnosis to try to recall exactly what had happened to him. Under hypnosis, Mark remembered being whisked through an open window to a large spaceship. He was very frightened when aliens took him into some kind of medical examining room. There he had sex with one of them.

Afterward, the aliens brought him back to Earth and returned him to his bed.

Mark describes the experience as terrifying. But did it really happen?

Some researchers at Harvard University devised an experiment to determine if memories of an abduction by space aliens would provoke the same physiological reactions that occur when other people, such as combat veterans and those who survive deadly car accidents, recall their traumatic experiences.

Richard McNally, a professor of psychology, and his colleagues recruited six women and four men who claimed they had been spirited away by extraterrestrials, some of them more than once. Under hypnosis, seven of the 10 reported having had their sperm or eggs extracted for breeding purposes, or experiencing direct sexual contact with the space aliens.

Each of these people was interviewed by either McNally or Susan Clancy, also a professor of psychology. Each also wrote a script that told the story of his or her abduction. The research team then made audiotapes, spoken in a neutral voice, from the scripts. The abductees listened to these tapes in the laboratory of Scott Orr at the Veteran’s Affairs Medical Center in Manchester, N.H. As the tapes played, the researchers recorded their emotional responses using such measures as heart rate and sweat on the palms of their hands.

The same procedure was done with eight people haunted by traumatic experiences unrelated to abduction by aliens.

When the two sets of measurements were compared, the results were striking. Abductees showed surprisingly strong physiological reactions to the tapes of their alien encounters. Their reactions were as great or greater than those of individuals who cannot shake memories of combat, sexual abuse, and other punishing events.

McNally announced these findings on Feb. 16 at a meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Denver. “The results underscore the power of emotional belief,” he noted. “People who sincerely believe they have been abducted by aliens show patterns of emotional and physiological response to these ‘memories’ that are strikingly similar to those of people who have been genuinely traumatized by combat or similar events.”