Unexplained fear of aliens

In my childhood up to my preteen years, I used to be very afraid of aliens, the common "grey" type of extraterrestrial beings. I was fascinated and at the same time tremendously scared of anything related to aliens and UFOs. I remember one evening I watched a documentary about alien abductions and I couldn't sleep all night, fearing I could be abducted, and I was not that young, I was 12 years old. I don't recall ever seeing a UFO, much less an alien. This fear only decreased when I entered my teenage years, though I have to admit that to this day, I'm 43 now, I still get the creeps sometimes reading about the subject (not to the point of not being able to sleep all night).
Another thing I recall from my childhood is that I could never sleep with the doors of my wardrobe open. I always had to have them closed. Again, can't explain why nor have any memory of events related to wardrobe doors open...
Could it be that something did happen to me, perhaps in my early childhood, that I don't remember? Can someone relate to my story? I would be especially interested in stories of people who could somehow recover their memories.

I can relate to your story.

I was terrified of being abducted by aliens all of my childhood. I think I was "weird" in that I would tell myself, "they could be real, but we don't know". Mantra -like. I was never abducted, as far as I know, but I was terrified of it.

I can't say where the fear came from. I seen Fire inthe Sky but the fear was well before that.

a reply to: Romanov

Well, let's say aliens are real and are centuries or millennia ahead of us in development.

What do we do to say "monkeys in labs" as we are centuries or millennia ahead of them in development?

a reply to: Romanov

I used to have extremely vivid dreams as a kid, which I later found out in life were episodes of sleep paralysis.
Over the years my obsession with alien abductions and first encounters grew and grew.

But some of my earliest nightmares were of E.T, the little lovable alien who almost died in a bathtub from the movie, it was a classic case of 'Old hag syndrome' which I diagnosed myself later in life. The little likable alien would be standing at the end of my bed and rush around my room while I lay there paralyzed, the only remedy was to slowly count to ten in my head as I couldn't actually speak out loud.

It put me on a personal quest to find the truth, and I found it, which put me at peace.
Everyone has fears, and when it comes to mental ones, you must face them to overcome them.

a reply to: strongfp

You have to ask yourself, what if it is real?

Sleep paralysis is just a label humans have put on an experience that people everywhere have been having since the dawn of time. It still isn’t known without a doubt exactly what it is. All the explanations for it are just theories which rest on the assumption that it couldn’t possibly be alien..

a reply to: Romanov

I can most certainly relate to your story.

As a member of a family who have seen multiple UFO's over the years, having touched one as a child that was "parked" in our pasture and having never actually remembered seeing an alien besides the clumsy ones in white suits once...

I have had vivid dreams over the years of what one would describe as a "grey"

Once as a child I had a visit by a grey in my dreams and then the next morning on my left index fingertip was 6 perfectly round holes with another hole in the middle.

They went away and I never really thought about them.

Once I hit my teenage years I never really thought about it again, except sometimes cloudy dreams of a grey... there was no fear involved.

I am a lucid dreamer, for the record. I do some pretty cool things there.

But the whole "grey" thing never really was a part of that.

Then one day I watched the movie "The 4th Kind".

I got flashbacks, the movie turned my head inside out and I had issues for a year or two coping.

I lived up in Alaska at one point in my childhood.

So I personally think there is something to it, but yet what do you do, really?

Not like you can stop it if it is happening.

So... just deal with it?

~shrug~

a reply to: underwerks

The mowing-devil, or Strange news out of Hartford-shire : being a true relation of a farmer, who bargaining with a poor mower, about the cutting down three half acres of oats, upon the mower's asking too much, the farmer swore, that the devil should mow it, rather than he. And so it fell out, that that very night, the crop of oats shew'd as if it had been all of a flame, but next morning appear'd so neatly mow'd by the devil, or some infernal spirit, that no mortal man was able to do the like. Also, how the said oats ly now in the field, and the owner has not power to fetch them away.

Sleep paralysis has been recorded for centuries, it has been described as a devil sitting at the edge of your bed, to demons, to old hags and witches.
The quote I gave you is something I have been attached to for sometime, folklore has a time place, once upon a time a devil was once blamed for crop circles, in today's world aliens are said to cause them. Just like I saw E.T at the end of my bed, someone 120 years ago most likely saw a demon or a old hag.

a reply to: Romanov

how did you know about the concept " of " grey type " aliens ????

i suspect the answer is the solution to your fear

one of my childhood fears was a NATO vs warsaw pact war - i am almost 15 years older than you

and i know now why i was afraid

a reply to: Romanov

I think part of the fear is instinctual -- the unknown can be dangerous and should be either avoided or have information collected about it so that it is better understood.

I had a similar fear as a child after I heard about alien encounters. My father did his best to tell me it was all crazy people and nonsense, but even at a young age, it struck me as odd that ALL of the witness would be mistaken, spinning yarns, crazy, etc. Especially as many of them were military and police personnel.

Later, that fear became a deep curiosity which I've had ever since.

I think, though, that something about the imagery or the notion itself trips the "Danger, Wil Robinson!" switch deep inside our psyche.

Cheers

a reply to: Romanov

Perhaps they are not going to abduct you.

Perhaps they are coming back to pick you up...like E.T.

a reply to: Romanov

i can't say it's fear of them that i have it's more like a realization that if indeed they are coming here we're screwed.
almost willing to bet that nothing and i do mean nothing we can do to stop them if things go bad.

i base this on the fact in order to get here they have to be so far advanced in their technology, that includes weapons.
that's why i often wondered why all those that say that a alien race that far advanced would have moved from being hostile to being benevolent. that's BS. sure some might, some might have a mentality like hitler did.

and if the hitler types come, and unless the worlds governments have developed space based weapons that we haven't seen or heard about, that have a hell of lot more destructive power than the, although advanced for our world, crude space traveling ability we have. compared to the tech that a alien race would have to have to travel the thousands of light years to get here which surly their weapons would be to. it would be stupid of them not to have devolved them cause there's no telling whats out there. we are screwed.

hell hawkins even said this.

originally posted by: ignorant_ape
a reply to: Romanov

how did you know about the concept " of " grey type " aliens ????

i suspect the answer is the solution to your fear

one of my childhood fears was a NATO vs warsaw pact war - i am almost 15 years older than you

and i know now why i was afraid

Good question, I don't remember how I knew grey aliens. Did I see a movie ("Close Encounters of the Third Kind" was a hit when I was a child)? Or a TV program? I don't recall.

originally posted by: strongfp
a reply to: underwerks

The mowing-devil, or Strange news out of Hartford-shire : being a true relation of a farmer, who bargaining with a poor mower, about the cutting down three half acres of oats, upon the mower's asking too much, the farmer swore, that the devil should mow it, rather than he. And so it fell out, that that very night, the crop of oats shew'd as if it had been all of a flame, but next morning appear'd so neatly mow'd by the devil, or some infernal spirit, that no mortal man was able to do the like. Also, how the said oats ly now in the field, and the owner has not power to fetch them away.

Sleep paralysis has been recorded for centuries, it has been described as a devil sitting at the edge of your bed, to demons, to old hags and witches.
The quote I gave you is something I have been attached to for sometime, folklore has a time place, once upon a time a devil was once blamed for crop circles, in today's world aliens are said to cause them. Just like I saw E.T at the end of my bed, someone 120 years ago most likely saw a demon or a old hag.

And what would a grey alien be called back in those days? It wouldn’t be called an alien..

originally posted by: underwerks
And what would a grey alien be called back in those days? It wouldn’t be called an alien..

Perhaps a "Boogeyman".

Same here.
A profound fear that I would keep my parents up at night screaming about.
Fast forward 30 years, no I'm the National Chief Investigator for MUFON Canada and part of the Experiencer research team.

a reply to: underwerks

An old hag, or a demon.

Look up stories of sleep paralysis or just simply google the term and look at the images, the similarities to aliens standing by peoples beds terrified unable to move is shocking.

I think what ever society and culture fears at the time is what people will wake up to.

Seen plenty of ufos an a few sky oddities, but never any humanoid interactions or sightings.

Used to get an odd sensation of dredd, or somwthing walking over my grave way to early from some of my dreams from what I remember, an I would recall the same feeling at a few different points while being awake in my life. It used to scare me quite a bit, but now it all a big dream of a small deja vu. Oddly enou

I also remember how my bed used to feel like it would spin before I crashed asleep too. Again never seen humanoids.

Well, the way aliens are generally depicted with their huge heads and spindly bodies and huge black eye sockets - like the skeleton of a fetus - they're pretty damned scary, particularly to a little kid.

And now that we're adults, who is even more scary? Yeah, the real Men in Black, mysterious and creepy authority figures pretending to be from some government agency, threatening people to be quiet about some UFO they saw, or else.

There could be a paper written about how the fearful "alien" threat seems to change as we get older and our circumstances change.

originally posted by: strongfp
a reply to: underwerks

An old hag, or a demon.

Look up stories of sleep paralysis or just simply google the term and look at the images, the similarities to aliens standing by peoples beds terrified unable to move is shocking.

I think what ever society and culture fears at the time is what people will wake up to.

I've thought that at times, but I spent a lot of my teens and early 20s obsessed with aliens; yet when I experienced a few sleep paralysis episodes around the same time they were of the form of "shadow people". Nothing like any of the aliens I had ever read about, even when at that point I was practically certain they exist.

The last sleep paralysis episode I had a few years back, which was probably my favourite yet, involved waking up and feeling a weight next to me on my bed. I closed my eyes in fear instantly and hoped it would go away, but the weight shifted towards me instead lol. When it got close enough I swallowed my anxiety and opened my eyes. Leaning over me and face to face was what seemed to be a small girl with straw like hair, a completely black face like a void and white eyes. The craziest thing was I got the impression of shock from this thing; like it didn't expect me to see it. In that moment, it recoiled away and scarpered away, making a weird scuttling sound that reminds me of an insect or even a pixie in a weird way. As with most SP episodes, trying to turn my body towards her direction was near impossible and by the time I could move properly the experience was naturally over.

I can definitely see the appeal of alien abduction experiences being SP episodes but there's also a lot of inconsistencies; especially since abduction experiences often involve heavy elements of movement where as SP often clearly does not. It's not easy to say.

I say 'often' above as I have had a SP episode that transitioned into free movement. I was surrounded by shadow people and genuinely felt a bit like I was in a hospital based on how they were acting. I was a subject. A transparent crystal ball the size of a basketball materialised in front of me, the shadows disappeared and I was able to move. I couldn't believe it; I sat up towards the ball and started touching it. Amazingly enough, my hands or arms would 'disappear' into the ball if I pushed into it. This lasted for a few minutes then I think I passed out beyond my control. That's not so far off an abduction experience I guess.

I'm glad I don't get these experiences anymore but part of me will forever be intrigued by them. I'm not a person who entertained the paranormal by any means throughout my life and the draw of aliens came from their practical reality (so many planets out there) so I always wondered why my mind did this to me if that's what it is.

originally posted by: nerbot

originally posted by: underwerks
And what would a grey alien be called back in those days? It wouldn’t be called an alien..

Perhaps a "Boogeyman".

pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov...