Thoughts about people claiming alien contact

Response to InsertNameHere

But on the other hand we have the "My car was chased by a physical aircraft and I lost time, and such and such was revealed through hypnosis etc" type stories, which are more physically realistic and more likely to have people accept the potential of the tale to some degree (although they also seem to often lean towards the fantastical after those headline points which is where they lose credibility in many people's eyes)

Hence my earlier post about 'categorizing' experience. I think missing time accounts should be their own sub/genre, particularly those where there are multiple people involved. By the way one of my best friends, while in the army in the late 1960s with another soldier had a close-up UFO sighting. The radiation burns they got were extensive enough for hospitalization, moreso for his friend, and his friend showed me scars he still has from it. That's about as nuts&bolts as you get I suppose...

You could leave hypnosis out if you wanted. I've met plenty of people who remember such things consciously (including me) who were never hypnotized about it. In fact one of my biggest gripes in the field is that angle. This thing with hypnosis does not reflect reality as much as it reflects a cultural paradigm, and a few hypnotists who were obsessed with it and wrote books and hence become 'popular leaders' in the field, and the media insistence on always making it clear that hypnosis "must" happen before anybody remembers this (which is so wrong).

I cannot think of anything worse for any topic's data collection integrity than handing a person over to a hypnotist with a paradigm and letting them "help the person remember." I actually have a bias about this, and I have a difficult time fighting the bias in myself, in regards to people whose only 'experience' with the topic is through hypnosis. I just have a hard time taking it seriously, though I know that is unfair of me.

I once read and posted some notes on Karla Turner's book (Into the Fringe), I read that I think in 2011 when someone sent me a PDF of it, and there were a few experiences in there (not hers but someone in her family I think it was) that had a lot of overlap with mine -- two bizarrely specific things [neither about aliens by the way!]. Plus a couple comments from her intro that embarrassed me, since it turns out I wrote my case study after she published that, though I hadn't read it, and I would have said some things differently in my own to seem "less embarrassingly unoriginal" had I seen it. (But then, that really sums up my experiences about the topic across the board -- that I thought I was unique and it turns out I wasn't at all. Back when I realized this, it left my mind completely boggled and finally thinking, "Well wait... doesn't that at least lend it some empirical evidence of a sort?!")

Anyway, SHE remembered things "under hypnosis." So... that just kind of leaves me lost for an explanation because my experience did not influence hers or vice-versa, and I had no such form of memory and she did, and yet we were describing some very similar things. So despite my knee-jerk wish to invalidate the hypnotic recall accounts, their overlap with accounts of mine and others who did not have that, are clear enough that I don't think I can.

Still I fight the bias, but you know what they say, you cannot reason someone out of a position that reason did not get them into...

I also found a few incredible similarities with my own experience in the first abduction book I ever read (Jacobs's Secret Life which I bought in part because the title felt like it summed things up for me at that time. I literally had 'paranormal'-type experiences with any book I bought on the topic disappearing, and the only reason I finally got to read one, his, was because I literally sat outside the bookstore in my car and read it in the parking lot).

I kind of hated the book although my own issues with the topic at the time were probably most of that. I didn't like his attitude either, and I had a completely different model for what/why might be going on. I thought he was paranoid. And yet a couple of his subjects used, I am not kidding, WORD FOR WORD the same description I did for some things in my journals or letters to friends, plus a couple of my experiences were incredibly similar to some of the stuff he recounted. That mostly just left me confused since some was not familiar, and I didn't know, did that mean I forgot that part? Or misunderstood another part? Which of us were 'right'? It mostly led to more confusion. Anyway, there were clear experiential correlations.

So I ask myself, how can I dismiss their accounts as likely being over-influenced by him, since I did not influence their experiences or vice-versa yet I had some very similar things? Unless there is yet a third source influencing all of us (and this is not impossible by the way), it frankly just makes the "other people interacting with us" seem less complex an explanation than anything else. I think when the seemingly skeptical explanation actually requires more suspension of disbelief or grand complex schemes than the assumed model for it in the first place, it's time to be skeptical about the skeptical model too.

Later, I had an experience that reminded me slightly of his book and I had to dismiss it as having no validity, because having read the book, obviously I felt I had polluted myself and nothing that matched it could now be trusted. (Although the irony was I'd had a similar experience long prior to reading it -- but not exactly.) Which made me mad I'd read it at all, and only contributed to my avoidance of the topic (there are so many good reasons why, that being only one), but highlighted the problem that if you can't trust your own experience you have no data at all.

I trust my experience on everything ELSE in life. Nobody who knows me would have reason to doubt my experience or recount of any other topic.

As for the physical:

Our people believe that reality consists only of "objectively and completely physical" vs. "subjective hallucination." It reminds me of when my daughter was a little girl and had a huge argument with me about how our cat could not be a cat or a tom because it was A KITTY. It was so funny. It seems a little the same to me, we have these labels and definitions and we do not have the psychological or scientific subtlety to see that in fact there may be a lot of things between the two polarities of 'objectively physical' and 'subjective hallucination.' And there may be more 'gradients' within both of those than we realize.

Response to compressedFusion

We need this to what end?

All good points you made in that post.

I said in my case study, in the intro:

For all the theories about "contact," the bottom line is that it is affecting people. In many cases, it is scaring people. In some cases, it is hurting people. From the personal issues of fearing for one's sanity, to the social issues of "coming out of the closet" about the experiences, to the religious beliefs and fears that come into glaring relief, to the psychological issues that are brought out in full force by this, to the physiological symptoms and mind-boggling 'paranormal' side-effects, it can be devastating, particularly when you combine all of those effects simultaneously. This is not improved by wanna-be gurus who will help you remember an invariably lousy experience, any more than it is by scientists and psychologists, our own experts and our best hope, insisting they won't study the subject because "they know there's nothing to study."

If we can't be professional enough objectively, let's at least be compassionate enough personally to look into what can be done to help people deal with the effects of these experiences, whatever their true cause. I'd like to spend less time searching for gods and aliens and more time searching for ourselves. It seems to me that in the quest for understanding our own species, the source of our experience may become more clear.

Response to Ectoplasm8

People have been listening with an open mind for years. Has it gotten us any closer to an answer? An open mind isn't the answer.

Maybe the rather huge assumption that we should have an answer about that, when we don't even have an answer about what NORAD can measure, is the more fundamental problem.

Maybe the interesting idea that simply "hearing accounts" of what is likely a huge range of completely different experience categories (many semi to completely unrelated to one another) is supposed to bring about any kind of an answer is unreasonable on its own.

Answers come from science. The only science you can apply to fields with no physically tangible evidence is empirical science, which even in perfectly normal areas of inquiry is often a complete disaster (due greatly to the problem with "correlation is not causation").

I study biology and related topics (by which I mean I obsess on peer reviewed journals and specialists who write about the reviews and details of such topics) at some length for years now, and we cannot yet even figure out what truly "keeps and restores" obesity in people -- every seeming scientific evidence point has one that contradicts it or simply provides a completely different alternative to it, and what factors are clearly present in some categories of people based on either existing size or genetics, are clearly operating differently in others, some for gradually better understood reasons like hormones and most we still have no clear idea about. We had questions which led to answers which led to more questions than we had to begin with. And this is of a perfectly PHYSICAL, MEASURABLE thing that we can easily stick in test tubes.

But everyone figures we should have the entirety of UFOlogy all figured out or it must be lies and delusion.

...in the thousands and over 65 years...

We don't have an answer for the God-mythos yet and humans have been experiencing that kind of stuff since the dawn of time. We don't even have a psychological answer aside from archair guesses, never mind a physiological answer for why humans seem to need God the way they need vitamin C or why quite a number of "anomalous experiences" fall into the religious category. We can hand-wave it away as mass delusion by weak minds (people do), but I like topics like sociology and psychology, and I find it interesting that such experiences are present in cultures throughout time and around the world, and I think understanding them better might lead to more insight that can end up in a science field (like the notes above on cognitive science). Scoffers simply hanging about telling anyone who had an experience they attribute to god or related deities (or psi, for that matter) would be so useless it makes me wonder more about the psychology of the people doing that, than about the psychology of the people reporting that.

I think we used to send young men off to slaughter infidels and now we need something else for that psychology to do so they sit in the armchair debunking instead. Same psychology, different cultural outlet.

The answer should be a simple one with thousands of events. We have many thousands of witnesses, many thousands of abduction stories, many thousands of encounters. We're not talking about 10 people.

I don't have access to all those thousands. The few I see aren't categorized in any decent way to make even the most relaxed comparative evaluation possible, nor are they documented to the degree that I'd even have the "gut sense" help of which roads might be the more useful, or at least the more interesting to me, to follow. Do you have access to all those? Can you point me to a link that isn't just internet chaos and piece-meal that wouldn't take me twenty years of all my spare time reading to try and correlate?

Because it's not like we have a decent organized collection and objective people could say, "Hmmn, now here's the sense I make of it." Rather, we have what amounts to a diversity of input and sources and agendas and chaos and no clear map even for the most patient and altruistic of armchair investigators, never mind scoffers who don't truly want to know anyway.

Now, doesn't common sense say if this is actually happening, in at least one of those cases, in the thousands and over 65 years, something concrete and real would have come about?

Implants are concrete and real for the individual who experiences them [I would testify to that personally]. However, they don't say "made on mars" on the side, they are not "extraterrestrial materials" and we do not have a technology matching it to make it even seem like technology to us. Hence they are dismissed as being anything more than "biological anomalies which those claiming alien abduction associate with their experience." To me this merely indicates that even in a field where there is almost no evidence, even when there IS evidence, it's dismissed for reasons which range from completely retarded to possibly simply lack of our own scientific advancement, so much for just wanting something measurable.

If you say "No", what is your argument for that? Are going to say they are just too intelligent? Well, they aren't intelligent enough to hide the fact that they abduct people. They aren't intelligent enough to not be seen. They aren't intelligent enough not to crash.

You have a big set of assumptions there, of which I see no evidence. Such as:

a) They clearly ARE intelligent enough to hide the fact that they abduct people given there is no objective physical evidence for it. And, it may be that only a tiny percentage of the people actually abducted actually remember it (consciously, I'm ignoring the hypnotic angle here), and this may be for reasons which are actually beyond easy control, such as physiological variables in the individuals themselves. Even in our own technologies, we can give people drugs of all kinds and how they affect the people, and how they affect memory for example, varies greatly, even if they are "mostly" predictable.

b) By "seen" I don't know if you mean seen by the abductees (see point A) or seen in craft (see point C).

c) You are making what I consider the same wild-assumption many abductees do: that UFOs which crash (I have no idea how many of these occur since I assume at this point our and other militaries are good enough and fast enough to drag them underground incredibly fast) are directly related to "abduction experiences." EVEN IF abduction experiences describe people/creatures similar to what have allegedly been found on crashed craft, that doesn't mean it is the same technology involved. Even in our own models we are much better and more consistent with some technologies than others, especially where individual human biology/psychology are involved.

If you believe this phenomena, you also have to see the fallibility. The imperfect alien being. A fallibility that would have given us something in many decades of visitation.

It did give us something. Not just in decades, but in Millennia. It gave us individual unrelated testimonial accounts even from otherwise believable people with rather clear correlations that are overlapping extended eras and a variety of cultures. The data it provides is sociological and empirical, not physical, but it is still data.

I don't see how anyone could read 'Alien Identities' by Thompson, about Vedic history (oral which became documented), and not see the startling if not overwhelmingly obvious correlations between modern day UFOlogy reports and ancient Vedic history. I am pretty sure that 4000+ years ago they were not influenced by Western science fiction, nor do I think most Western people are aware of let alone influenced by Vedic history.

I think if there is any burden of proof -- and I don't think there is one, but if there were -- it should be on the debunkers to explain why these empirical overlaps have occured around the world and throughout time if there is nothing to it.

Response to Ectoplasm8

I have issues with lumping alien visitation as a realistic possibility, with sleep paralysis for example. You can say 'well maybe sleep paralysis is not a real thing and is made up'. But, studies have shown it is an actual event. Having experienced it for myself, I can fully understand how it could be misinterpreted as being abducted. Am I basing the entirety of abductions off my one experience, no.

And maybe sleep paralysis and other issues are actually sometimes related to the experience but not for the reasons you suspect. We don't know.

But, before so readily accepting alien abductions, why don't you need something more than just stories?

I assume you're asking the intellectual-inquirers on the thread only, since the people like me who have reported such experiences don't generally have a problem with taking a "repeated personal experience" seriously especially if we eventually find out that oddly enough, the experience no matter how odd on its own merits, is apparently being had, in individualized variants, by others as well. We can question our sanity or covert experimentation or whatever, but whatever the cause may be, I don't think there should be any doubt that something is going on. Maybe that something isn't aliens, but we're never going to find out anything at all if we dismiss all raw data because it isn't yet proof.

Why don't you want to have something tangible and real? Why settle for less than?

That's like saying, why don't you want to be independently rich? Why settle for working for a living? I think most people settle for no physical evidence because they don't seem to have any choice in the matter. The only data appears to be sociological and empirical and of course things like implants; that data is not nearly as objective, logical and measurable as we would like, nor is it always even strongly indicative of -- let alone proof of -- any relationship to the flying Chevy NORAD was tracking.

I don't think people willing to "not mock and ridicule" others speaking of abduction experiences are simply not-wanting evidence or not critical thinkers at all. I think they are simply realistically observing what appear to be the facts: we have reportive data, we have some correlations in that, we do not have physical data, at least nothing provable as alien related; we merely have whatever data we have. It would be nice to have more, especially the physical and objective stuff.

If that isn't enough, then why not walk away. You're right, if we don't have it after 65 years -- or millennia of these experiences as seems to be the reality of them -- chances are objective physical evidence is not going to leap out at us soon and it's certainly not going to come through a discussion forum.

So that brings it back to: what do skeptics get out of hanging about on threads maligning the accounts and the people reporting them? To me it seems like "evangelism" and even "crusade-ism" psychology, which I see as just as dysfunctional as anything that could be leveraged at abductees.

Response to InsertNameHere

What is the point of sharing a story if there is no need to be believed?

There are thousands of discussion forums where people share experiences without any assumption that "those disinclined to believe will suddenly be swayed to their way of thinking." Usually they share experiences with others who have similar experiences.

In fact they usually share experiences for the opposite contextual-reason: because they assume they are ALREADY believed. This is why vegans and low-carbers do not tend to post on the same forums. Because neither group wants to have to "prove" anything about their eating plan just by talking about why eating less carbs or less meat made them feel better. I don't think it's any different for other topics that humans engage in, including UFOlogy.

Aside from lunatics and intell I don't know of anyone who posts about their experience in the hopes of making non-believers believe, so to speak. All the people I have met related to this topic have if anything been incredibly reluctant to post about their experiences in areas where they are likely to get their case jumped about it. Most don't talk about it on the internet much at all -- I have had people contact me over the years through something I posted they read, but many of them never ever posted anything public at all.

When I first started posting on mine, I sent them to the primary skeptic of the forum I was in. I figured he was going to slaughter me anyway, so I may as well just start there, rather than waiting for him to come get me. It turns out everyone was lucky: he was a real skeptic, not a scoffer. He didn't necessarily believe what I was telling him, or believe I was sane, though after enough exposure to me he eventually (I think, anyway) didn't believe I was lying, which is not to say that one cannot be 'unintentionally misled even by self' of course. He was trying to 'correlate' some of the accounts such as mine and so often asked questions related to that, and he was trying to nail down whether it might all just be psychology and so asked a lot of questions related to that. As I fuzzily recall. And mind you I don't actually know what he eventually decided, except that I believe he eventually concluded that "something" was going on -- what that might be, is another story, and I suspect the conclusions people come to vary more with their psychology than with the accounts.

if there are elements at work including PTSD, history of abuse etc, then there is nothing anyone on an online forum can say or do to resolve it, and blaming it on aliens isn't going to help either ufology (as the tale could have nothing to do with the field whatsoever), or more importantly the individual.

I believe PTSD is a spectrum issue not the either/or modern psych assigns to it, which in our rather fractured culture I suspect the majority of people have varying degrees of. (Although true PTSD, before the term was adopted to mean any reaction to past trauma but was better used for trauma such as combat, reflected what amounts to a neural-shortcut born of fear-of-fear and repeated experience, which is a whole 'nuther ball of wax).

I believe history of abuse including any form of PTSD has no reason to manifest in a delusion of alien abduction. I believe that psychology -- all human psychology and not just abused children -- CAN use any symbolism it wants, whether in dreams or whatever, to attempt to "model and vent" suppressed biochemical from the experience for example, but I think it is a huge, hand-waving assumption and invalidation to simply assume that any claims of contact are borne of PTSD. This is where the multiple-individual experiences and sightings over time/cultures come in, in a way; those are the points of the empirical data which in a perfect world, would keep us from the probably erroneous assumption that it can't be anything but psychology.

It is entirely possible that a psychophysiological difference in abused children may in fact make them more likely to either experience or recall the experience of abduction, which may have zero to do with the legitimacy of the abduction itself, but merely the likelihood of their involvement and/or ability to remember it.

I would like to see an independent professional investigative function for this field (both sightings and abductions), but it won't happen as it would be expensive to operate with no return.

I agree that the only people interested enough to bother on their own time are people having the experiences (who make lousy investigators as they aren't objective), or people with a genuine interest in the topic and/or psych/soci-ology which they might spend "hobby time" reading about even in other topics, with that kind of interest.

reply to post by Ectoplasm8

Just more babbling verbage with not much content.

So he made a reasoned and well-written and accurate explanation related to science and you essentially say 'talk to the hand.' The tendency of people to dismiss the most reasoned arguments with a single scornful insult is an example of the scoffer, not skeptic, mentality.

RedCairo
I don't see it that way. Heck have you looked at the racial makeup of Italians? Let alone Americans? If we were to compare 'stories' about 'interaction with Americans' as something we had no proof for, they'd have a much wider range than most the so-called alien stuff does...
However this does go back to my categorization point. We have to group this stuff, down and down, until we can finally start comparing apples with apples or at least fruit with fruit...
This logic would be more comfortable if the topic of genetics and 'designed species' that may come in a myriad of forms as a result, weren't such a strong part of the subject itself. It would also be more comfortable if "altered states" of the humans involved, and/or partial or affected memory, were not so often and clearly a part of the experience...

OK, fair enough, I take the point that there are a lot of factors at play in regards to genetic makeup and how people remember things etc. I also agree for the need for stronger documentation & categorisation. I can only hypothesise at this time that there might be a reasonably large volume of outliers reporting grey aliens for example with very distinctly different anatomy. Surely a % margin of error would have to be devised somehow to determine acceptable deviation if going down this categorisation route.

I think we should simply accept that "they believe something happened to them."
I don't find it reasonable that we can't at least give these far more complex experiences the same consideration we give reported experiences in other areas of human life.

It's one thing to suggest that we accept that someone believes that something happened to them, and allow for consideration. However due to the exotic nature of the stories it is also reasonable that they have increased scrutiny.

I don't consider UFOlogy a pseudoscience because I don't consider it a science period. I consider the field to be "research into preliminary data which might, eventually, lead to some groundwork for hypothesis which could then allow science a place to begin."

My position on it being a pseudoscience is exactly because it is clearly not a science, but some of the research in this field is often presented (or attempts are made at presenting it) in a scientific manner.

I think having some kind of safe-space environ where people can share experiences without the imposing filters - distortions - suppressions caused by 'the reaction' others have is important.

Some forums seem to do this for abductions specifically, I rarely bother to drill down into those sections though as I feel the participants just tend to feed off each other, which comes across as being quite unhealthy, as there appears to be a lack of grip on the real world amongst said participants, and it doesn't appear to provide any real resolution for them (although I suppose that's something they aren't really looking for).

It really isn't up to anybody to prove it except the people who want proof.
I don't feel obliged to DO anything to "help other people feel better about it"

Couple of things here:

We can hardly go round to some alleged abductee's home and wire it up with cameras and then superglue a GPS to them, can we? That would be gross invasion of privacy and very stalkerish. If people want to be believed, they have to provide evidence.

While you personally might not feel the need to be believed, or perhaps it is a much lesser motivation than other overriding needs, others clearly have acceptance as a more primary driver (everyone's different after all), that is something that will never be met for those people in an environment where scrutiny is common where there is no evidence to support the case.

If you (anyone claiming abduction) want to claim you get abducted by aliens/something, and expect people to believe it, how can it possibly be a reasonable expectation that others prove it on your behalf, especially random people on the internet? Would love to understand the reasoning behind this as a few people have mentioned this expectation now.

I find the second line quoted there particularly interesting. Is there a general sense that people feel bad when someone posts an abduction story? Do we somehow need to feel better about it? Did I miss a memo around this, maybe others feel bad and I have just never noticed?

I'm not sure where you are coming from with this, but to clarify: my concern is that abduction stories denigrate ufology which already has a weak foundation. I don't have some sort of need to feel better when a topic regarding an alien abduction is posted (maybe others do?), but I don't need to lend them any credibility either where evidence is lacking.

personX is upset that someone is saying they experienced an alien, because personX doesn't believe or want to believe that aliens exist and/or that they would be doing that to humans, so personX demands that the guy recounting his story "prove it!" Well, guy recounting his story maybe doesn't give a rat's butt about whether personX has such an emotional reaction to the entire idea that he feels obliged to hunt them down online and rant ad nauseum everywhere about how it's all crap and anybody with such claims is either a liar or delusional. Maybe that's personX's problem, not the problem of the people with the experience.

If someone posts about having an abduction experience, it's obviously important enough to them to recount it and assert it as being fact. If there was absolutely no need to believed by someone wrapped up in that they wouldn't post about it in the first place. How people respond to that depends on the individual who reads the thread.

There is no provable physiological evidence of the various accounts people have of alien abduction, period, so why the heck would it matter even if there were money in it.

Properly resourced & professional research, regardless of field, doesn't grow on trees.

There is no evidence I can give you about my belief in a divine energy or my love for my child either

Can't comment on whatever divine energy is (I'm not religious); but I would argue that you could actually prove that you have a child (physical evidence) and that you support & generally behave positively towards them in a manner not dissimilar to any other parent in the world who claims to love their child (technical evidence).

Here's a thought: maybe people sharing such accounts on a UFO-related forum are sharing them for the same reason that people share their thoughts on politics, their eating plan, child rearing, spiritual practices, their favorite team sport, and anything else on the internet: because it has meaning to them; because it has a place in their life; because people naturally "congregate" to share about such things as a form of emotional exploration and social bonding.

It's true that people online gravitate towards groups similar to their own point of view as a result of exploring communities where there is a shared area of interest, or play the same online games etc. The internet is great for that and far better than going down the pub for a pint and chatting to random people.

Ufology has an interesting caveat however, a lot of the communities are either saturated with skeptics or true believers. This isn't necessarily unique, look at politics communities for example, the same tends to happen there with different political ideologies.

Conflicts often arise when there is some degree or crossover/parity in the distribution of participant outlook.

Maybe it is too soon to start insisting on standards of data which will only create more filters, suppression and distortion in the accounts, or on interpretation which will only force us to create paradigms of why-how when it is way too soon for that, and then distort the data based on that instead. Maybe at this point the most useful thing would simply be a compilation of raw-as-possible data, with a decent and down-to-granular categorization system, to allow somewhat 'objective' others to go through that, find correlations and disparities, look for meta-patterns, look for concomitants, look for relationships with other fields of inquiry which DO have a degree of research possible, and so on. Maybe things like genuine disinformation or even strategic deception would actually become apparent as patterns using that approach, and as they are gradually realized, allow us to far more easily clear out whole categories and patterns of things that we would then know only add confusion.

Would be good, I doubt that there is anything/anyone willing to step forward and take this on though.

I agree that if it were disassociated from UFOlogy that a lot of the problems our culture has with it would go away. Unfortunately that is like looking for your keys a block away from where you dropped them because the light is better there. It cannot be totally dissociated from UFOlogy entirely, because it actually includes experiences which are perceived to be 'UFOs' and 'Aliens.' This is horribly inconvenient, I know.

I thought about the overlap quite a bit before making the suggestion, while there is inconvenience there due to the overlap, there's plenty of overlap in the various social sciences and various other classical sciences overlap each other to some degree (physics and maths go practically hand in hand if I remember correctly from my school years). So ultimately I considered it to be a reasonable proposition to move towards considering these UFO's and Abductions as separate topics.

Hence my earlier post about 'categorizing' experience. I think missing time accounts should be their own sub/genre, particularly those where there are multiple people involved. By the way one of my best friends, while in the army in the late 1960s with another soldier had a close-up UFO sighting. The radiation burns they got were extensive enough for hospitalization, moreso for his friend, and his friend showed me scars he still has from it. That's about as nuts&bolts as you get I suppose...

Military can get pretty messed up depending on the activities they were involved in and equipment exposed to.

There are thousands of discussion forums where people share experiences without any assumption that "those disinclined to believe will suddenly be swayed to their way of thinking." Usually they share experiences with others who have similar experiences.

In fact they usually share experiences for the opposite contextual-reason: because they assume they are ALREADY believed. This is why vegans and low-carbers do not tend to post on the same forums. Because neither group wants to have to "prove" anything about their eating plan just by talking about why eating less carbs or less meat made them feel better. I don't think it's any different for other topics that humans engage in, including UFOlogy.

Kind of addressed this already, but to re-iterate, everyone is different and has their own motivations, some of these people are seeking agreement/belief.

Actually, this is quite an interesting area to think about/explore in relation to the original post in this thread. Why do people post their experiences knowing full well that they are likely to receive a negative response, then get upset when that’s exactly what happens, especially when there are plenty of other online environments that will provide a more tame response?

We can hardly go round to some alleged abductee's home and wire it up with cameras and then superglue a GPS to them, can we?

I agree. But, I don't believe that abduction, even when physical unless you were out on a boat and captured or something, is likely to be perceivable via camera and GPS. I believe that there is a frequency-based technology which literally splits the energy of a person and 'captures' a little over half of it and you might say 'moves it.' The rest of them left behind is usually catatonic. That does not make it non-physical, except for the catatonic portion. It makes it "partly" physical for the "blended result" upon return which I suspect is affected by everything from psychology to physical health. Obviously, this is a major belief system on my part, but then again I experienced much of this repeatedly, I was profoundly lucid after a dozen years of self-hypnosis and jungian-meditation work just prior, so probably far more aware than the average person during such experiences, so I feel I have reason to have come to that conclusion.

I don't expect anybody else to believe it of course. But it also makes me shrug-dismissive of the great desire to wire people up with cameras and GPS. Those assume on process/technology I don't believe is an accurate model of what is happening. And if it's a wrong model then it's a waste of time to begin with. I welcome others to waste their time, and I sympathize with the lack of options when our tech can't evaluate such an idea, but oh well.

(I actually did get lucid and try to find/get 'evidence' to 'take back with me' more than once by the way, and failed, which literally made me enraged. I'm sorry I failed, but I did try. Since those experiences stopped happening to me, not much I can do about it now.)

f you (anyone claiming abduction) want to claim you get abducted by aliens/something, and expect people to believe it, how can it possibly be a reasonable expectation that others prove it on your behalf, especially random people on the internet?

1. Just for the record, I don't actually claim that. I report that I had interactive experiences with other sentient and seemingly autonomous identities which appear to coincide with the descriptions of what our current culture calls 'aliens' though I dispute that assumption. I report that I did not volunteer for this, didn't believe it at first, was sometimes injured by it, that it happened both while awake and while asleep, appeared to be both physical and not, that it was 'associated' with otherwise unrelated experiences such as spontaneous psi, "visions" of planetary doom, interaction with offbeat identities not in the alien category (but probably in fey or occult categories), perception of what appeared to be multiple realities and timelines, and more. I observed "overlaps" between these experiences and references I saw eventually or had already heard of in eastern mysticism and western fey legends. I admit to huge confusion and eventually fear present at the time; not now, although the confusion to a degree remains over many elements. I admit personal bias, unintentional to begin with, and eventually formed by my own experience as certain belief systems which are, alas, unfalsifiable with our current state of technology. I accept that people who think like I do are as critical as I would be about it in their shoes, albeit most seem to have less sense of good-natured-humor than I do about most things, and more evangelical need to share their critique.

2. I don't expect anybody else to prove my experience, what I meant by my comment was that since I don't really need the sense of validation that onlookers seem to be so intent upon, that their great concern about it kind of becomes "their issue not mine" simply because I don't share it. I have observed in other fields such as religion (had a philosophy-major friend who was a sysop in CIS religion forum in the old days), Athiests who spend all their time hanging around christian groups insulting them and insisting they 'make me believe' or whatever, and I tend to consider those sorts to be more unstable and dysfunctional than I do the religious people I have little in common with (I have spiritual beliefs but they are a nearly accidental outgrowth of spontaneous experience, not intentional initially, not intellectually derived, and not 'religious' formally). I consider many of the debunkers in the UFOlogy field to be a similar personality profile to those persons mentioned. I consider critical thinking and skepticism hugely important in this subject; I consider the scoffer pseudo-skeptic element to be as much or more damaging than the clearly mentally unstable individuals, or intentional intell interference, which helps make chaos out of the larger pool of experiential reporting.

(I have made so many references to my case study in this thread that when I finally get it kicked up to amazon kindle I will offer anyone who's posted on the thread a free copy, for any interested, since it's starting to seem out of context without a complete reference, given how much I've relied on it here. I'm just waiting for my best friend to make me a bleeping cover image. I had it online in early to mid '96 but have a revised (hopefully much corrected and some additional late-chapter overview materials) version now.)

Actually, this is quite an interesting area to think about/explore in relation to the original post in this thread. Why do people post their experiences knowing full well that they are likely to receive a negative response, then get upset when that’s exactly what happens, especially when there are plenty of other online environments that will provide a more tame response?

No idea why others do it, can only speak for myself. Note that I have a very limited number of threads on this topic which I post on at ATS. This one in particular drew me due to the subject title; I am, in fact, "a person claiming alien contact" (despite my debate with the 'alien' paradigm), and the thread is not actually about 'whether experience X is true' but about 'the individuals reporting it' -- which is actually one of the elements I find interesting, as that is more about psychology and sociology in some respects, than UFOs.

When I first posted a few of my experiences back in '94-95, it was because I wanted someone to beat up on it. To me it was more like posting some kind of anomalous result you got from some experiment, something seemingly impossible and ridiculous but which you know happened, and that you want people to either replicate or find and point out the flaws in, to either help explain it or explain it away -- either is good.

20 years later, I don't share on the topic to convince anyone, although presenting data or 'presentation style' to balance-out the average impression of the field does have some merit and is part of it. That is not for the skeptics, that is in support of the people with experience, and in support of the rare open minded by critical individual looking into the topic in general.

I also don't share to find validation or community with similar others, though that would be ok I suppose, but I tend to have issues with validating myself so often avoid other peoples' experiences, and I have little in common with the communication style and psych profile of most people officially talking about their alien abductions online from what I've seen. Even way back then I thought abduction groups I saw operated like cults, I thought many of the people in the field seemed pretty left of center at best (and usually worse), so I would usually post my stuff and leave, come back when I had a rare time off work and read responses on my own threads and that was mostly it.

When I finally looked into the UFOlogy field just a little (circa 1994-95 to begin, very slowly and piecemeal and not for long), I never saw and met so many nutso paranoid irrational poorly communicative people in my life, although after some exposure, I did admit that
(a) such experiences can lead to some degree of one or more of those qualities temporarily [to be fair, so can massive overwork, sudden death or divorce, sudden assault/rape trauma, and other less esoteric stresses in a person's life], and
(b) that I had been initially biased in a way to ignore the (not real numerous, but) sane intelligent people in the topic and only notice the crazies. Which I see is quite common.

I also discovered that the most rational, believable, conscious-memory people I ran into were usually not sharing anything publicly -- they contacted me after I posted online, or I would never have met them. So the profile of people publicly sharing accounts is heavily skewed, for onlookers.

I realized: would someone whose personal and business reputation mattered to them, someone who was themselves pretty skeptical and found the topic nothing but embarrassing frankly, someone who observed the amount of chaos and craziness in the field, actually WANT to join that fray? No. A pretty tiny percentage of the most-reasonable people will ever be public about this stuff. While the people craziest are the most inclined to be as public as they can (as are the people motivated by other things, e.g. intell). Sad but true. I have met people who are CEOs and PhD engineers and other practical people who, as representatives, would lend this at least a degree of credibility at least in terms of 'well probably insanity or stupidity isn't the cause' (if nothing else). But they won't share in public. Nothing in it for them.

Once in awhile, a reasonable experiencer of these things may see some similar account, comment or question online, and a rare one may post something, momentarily tempted, and then usually a bunch of scoffers jump their case and they say f--- it and walk away and don't do that again, and others similar to them onlooking learn that lesson vicariously. They don't feel obliged to have their personal reputation trashed, integrity slandered and sanity questioned. I am not saying that it is wrong for people to question this, I am merely reporting on why the most reasonable people I know in this topic don't talk about it publicly.

It doesn't do anybody any good, is the thing: there is no decent research and no field-wide logical framework even for recording data, little but attack on anyone daring to even report the experience, so there is nothing in it for most of the 'very practical, reasonable' people to gain from sharing, not even a dose of altruism or something. They read stuff sometimes out of an interest in corroboration, as a form of 'grounding' validation, but that's about it.

The thing is, I totally SEE the point of view of the argument here: I totally agree, it's ridiculous, there's no evidence, why should anybody believe it (maybe they shouldn't). It's just that ranting about this does not make it better. It doesn't fix anything. So... why do it. I can see why people share experiences, there are several 'social outreach, corroboration, sense of community, sense of validation' and other reasons why 'contactees' might with to talk online about it. I don't see the motivation from the opposite angle, but perhaps a sense of altruism about 'making sure everyone else can see how stupid this is' might be part of it -- I have certain topics where I am the resident skeptic so I understand it. Skepticism... not scofferism.

I saw that the media was constantly making it sound like people only remembered such things after hypnosis, which clearly was not only wrong but intentionally misleading it seemed, and that they had respectable scientists as the 'con' side and total weirdos as the 'pro' side even when there are many other options, which was also intentionally misleading.

I saw that in the 'abduction' area, it seemed people's accounts changed, or morphed over time to fit popular paradigms, or appeared to suppress or quickly drop elements which weren't alien related, or appeared to graft-on elements which implied things were physical when they might not have been. And I saw (in my own stuff) that things which were physical were often denied and avoided, called dreams even if they happened in the middle of a wide awake daytime experience, out of fear, so the bias actually worked in both directions.

I also saw symptoms which look more like MPD but when you see this in rational normal people it may indicate covert research more than it indicates aliens, although the latter may be used to shield the former, and to confuse the hell out of the larger topic of course.

I saw that the entire topic appeared to be a big cluster-F of chaos and disorganization, disinformation and confusion, psychological issues (both for debunkers and abductees), victim psychology (which might be reasonable if the experience, no matter its source, is legit), and probably hypnotic leading since I just can't believe that isn't present when memories are 'obtained' that way, and a thousand other things.

I wrote my stuff down at the time in occasional journals or letters to friends without many paradigms because I was already a skeptic, I didn't initially know my experiences had any relationship to this topic (and didn't believe it, when it first showed up as that. I had screen memories years prior to that, but when I rarely ran into them, I assumed it was just some frightening anomaly of psychology), and it was my way of venting, of moving it into a model of "gee how weird huh" instead of quietly freaking out.

I was so unexposed to UFOlogy I didn't even realize the commonalities my experiences had with others, so I thought it was just novelty psychology on my part when it first started evidencing that 'symbolism' and the actual word 'aliens' in my experiences. And I considered it first impossibly surreal and then fascinating when I realized these seemingly very unique experiences were a bit unoriginal when recounted to others. It was both frightening and validating. Then the "big picture implications" of what this might imply about our world were kind of terrifying.

After a couple years, I wrote a case study narrating the accounts I'd bothered to write down, for a therapist friend (who'd gotten some of those letters in the first place). First because it was just a sudden obsessive interest following another typically offbeat experience. I rationalized that her understanding the psychology of people "having" these experiences had its own importance. But mostly (it was a ton of work) I wrote it because, as I said in the intro:

When I finally began writing this, I was half-looking to write what I wanted to read: a first hand, honest case study, without too many assumptions, without defensiveness, without a need to prove anything. An account that would let someone objective see what was going on with the individual and make up their own mind. Not just a few "peak experiences," in the context of other collected stories that matched, but a personal development curve. Not just a few memories, but any accompanying physiology and psychology symptoms as well. Even the things that seemed to contradict the stories. Even the confusion. Even the things that just made it look like a mental aberration. Everything.

Not so we can learn "a truth about gods or aliens or [check one]," but so we can learn a truth about people. All the strange glamor of the esoteric experiences aside, they are foremost a study of humanity, of individuals. Without those individuals, there is no study of this field possible. Whether they are treated like liars or lunatics from the skeptical side, or like victims or chosen ones from the believers' side, none of those approaches are conducive to getting unaffected, honest data, none of them are fair to the individual, and none provide an open environment for learning anything new.

It turned out to be incredibly educational for me about myself, and a degree of "closure" on the experiences, in a way. It certainly changed my perspective on it, gave me a larger one, more awareness of the relationship of the seemingly disparate experiences, a little more cynicism about the source of some of them (both as 'mere psychology' and as 'covert psych experiment' possibilities -- but not only this, you understand); but also a much more relaxed and solid sense of acceptance of the topic at large than I'd had to begin with.

During/after writing that, I saw how my own "skeptical" stance had been from ignorance and media-bias influence more than my assumed greater objectivity. I saw how my own biases affected all kinds of things, both in how I considered the topic and its people before, and how I related to myself and my experiences during, and how I considered the larger topic after the fact. I saw that what the entire topic from every angle most profoundly lacked was simply "integrity," by which I don't just mean honesty, but honesty with oneself, and as much effort as possible to release any elements that create distortion in the recall, the recording, the communication, and this on everyone's part in the fields where people talk about these things, not just the people with experiences.

I learned that being in the middle of those experiences, anyone is going to have some offbeat symptoms, for reasonable cause, but this skews interpretation of the experience by onlookers. When you start feeling like someone can literally drag at least half of you off to another world, your body is afraid, survival instincts create a 24/7 hypervigilance like soldiers get, your psychology is reacting about the same as someone who had a rapist-assaultist crawl in their window each night would, and the fact that you can't seem to get a single shred of objective proof for anybody or to support your own sanity, despite all the physical symptoms, is enough to drive one crazy all on its own. So in short, even on the occasion when someone who was generally "stable and rational" had these experiences, they were probably not much of either during them, just due to the effects of the experiences themselves.

That doesn't help the impression that those interested in the field have either, even when the small % of people who are very left-brain (sic) DO bother to share about it. If they do it "during" they sound pretty out of balance. If they wait until the primary drama/trauma has passed, their ordinary personality has recouped its grace. At that point usually, because they are sane to begin with, they don't waste their time talking about it to people who either aren't the same kind of personality, or who would merely diss them for it, and often they're just glad to move on and focus on other things in life. They will talk about it if it comes up, in personal settings, that's about it.

Though I live in the same world as others, I pointedly avoided the UFOlogy topic all my life (I thought it was because I was more rational than other people. Now I believe it was a reaction to a close-up UFO sighting with my best friend when I was 8, probably). I wouldn't even stay in a room that had a TV show on about it. So I managed to be a lot less influenced by the subject than I suspect many are. And I am functional, decently accomplished at the various things I do, a mature professional with decent communication skills. At this point it's been 20 years since most of these experiences occurred for me.

So I post such as here at ATS, rarely though very intensely for periods (typing about 120wpm helps), in part to demonstrate to onlookers that not only obviously-crazy people have these experiences, and not only hypnotized people remember these experiences. Sure, nobody knows me, but communication to a degree is its own presentation.

I like to demonstrate just by being present, that if we are going to dismiss these experiences in our culture, that it should not be simply because we assume people are crazy, non-critical thinking, hypnotized, etc. The hand-waving dismissal of a big genre of human experience due to assumptions about the instability of the person is a big part of the response to these topics, and it is understandable given the vastly larger % of such indicators in communications shared publicly, but that is a distorted view. Sometimes I pop up and post to try and provide a little more balance to the other side, you might say.

Whatever the cause of these perceptual-experiences, the fact is, even decently bright, rational, functional people have those experiences also. I met them because they wrote me, seeing that I seemed to be those things, and they told me the same thing I'd told myself and later told my friend: that they saw all the above things I did, and it made them avoid the field, avoid the people, avoid the topic entirely, aside from occasionally lurking in some online place where they saw something I wrote. So what I realized eventually was that the public who only sees forums and TV shows doesn't know about this whole tiny sub-subculture of people: the very sane, conscious-memory people who have had these kind of experiences.

It would be great if we had some organized model for data collection, so that people such as that could document their account in detail and contribute, and perhaps offer the option for others to contact them with questions for example. Unfortunately at this time in the field there is nothing like that. Most of the so-called "leaders" in UFOlogy (Greer, Streiber, Jacobs, etc.) make the 'reasonable' people I know with so-called abduction experiences either laugh or want to run away. They certainly don't want to be associated with that.

So I offer myself as an example of the type of 'contactee' personality most people don't see. You might say that I volunteer to only slightly represent a contingent of people who will seldom if ever be public, and without whom the impression of this topic and its presenters is sorely skewed. I am a very poor representative in some respects, because over the last 20 years I've gotten massively more 'woo' in so many ways than I was at the time, and many people with such experiences are not at all, and consider all that stuff ridiculous -- they wouldn't want to be represented by me, as a result. On the other hand, the contingent of down to earth, successful people in business / science / arts who don't bother talking about it publicly don't have room to complain since they aren't providing their own alternative.

So for:

Why do people post their experiences knowing full well that they are likely to receive a negative response

Because I have a solid ego and a thick skin so I am not too affected by it, and feel my participation despite that may have value to some others.

then get upset when that’s exactly what happens

I don't get emotionally upset about such things, but I will point out where I feel someone is being unreasonable or illogical (usually while they are in the process of insisting others are unreasonable and illogical lol).

especially when there are plenty of other online environments that will provide a more tame response?

Not sure what those would be, I am only a member of two forums I know of that have this topic and the other it's only barely and indirectly existent. Unless you mean something private buried on ATS for abductees. As I mentioned, I don't have a lot in common with most the abductees I have encountered online, with exceptions. I have more in common with those who have contacted me but who don't tend to participate much in public. Was never into 'abduction groups' even back in the day during such experiences. Actually I have much in common with the skeptics and even (sadly) the debunkers, it just so happens we are not on the same page on this particular topical matter, though we probably are on others.

RedCairo
I agree. But, I don't believe that abduction, even when physical unless you were out on a boat and captured or something, is likely to be perceivable via camera and GPS. I believe that there is a frequency-based technology which literally splits the energy of a person and 'captures' a little over half of it and you might say 'moves it.'

Out of interest, are you familiar with this particular technology, and do you think it would have relevance in this field for reports of non-phsysical abduction cases once it is more advanced?: uk.ign.com...

reply to post by g2v12

Why? Because it is illogical to refute anything that is false.

This is one of the dumbest statements ever. You were sounding perfectly logical until the end. Refuting falsehoods is exactly what this site is about "Deny Ignorance." You see, you can fix ignorance. You cannot fix stupidity. Stupidity is a kind of stubborn, ego driven barrier to logic.

Refuting a falsehood is proving something is wrong. There is another name for this, it is called learning.

V

reply to post by GENERAL EYES


I have got to the point where i'm nearly ,but not quite, at the stage where I couldn't care less who is going to guffer and s'n-word' at me when I open up about my experience. They can laugh all they like, but I know the truth, there are aliens amongst us. They look like us!! But when they don't look like us, my God you will know.
I can't get any counselling and I have to carry on as if everything is normal! I had a psychiatrist for 5 minutes, who tried to tell me I was psychotic, but because I wouldn't admit I was and accept any medication refused to see me after our first appointment. I'm not going to lie to myself! These things really #ing happened. I couldn't get out of the door quick enough. I wasn't going down that road of starting on anti psychotic drugs! I hate taking asprin for a headache.

The neurologists are the spooks as far as I'm concerned, but I wont go into that now. U2U me if you have a question.

I can't say all this hasn't effected me in some way, because I know it has. For instance I went for a job interview earlier on in the year. I was an hour late and my shoes had rubbed so I was limping. An hour in to the interview ... things seemed to be going well, all things considered. Then I get asked this random question, which was so ambiguous I didn't know where to start. I just glared at them I was so annoyed and then blurted out ' you tell me!! ' I never used to be like that. I was so embarrassed. I don't have a short fuse, but I get exasperated easily. Even watching some documentaries, which clearly I know is a manipulation of the truth.

Anyway I didn't expect to get the job and I didn't lol



hx

happinness
reply to post by GENERAL EYES

 

I have got to the point where i'm nearly ,but not quite, at the stage where I couldn't care less who is going to guffer and s'n-word' at me when I open up about my experience. They can laugh all they like, but I know the truth, there are aliens amongst us. They look like us!! But when they don't look like us, my God you will know.
I can't get any counselling and I have to carry on as if everything is normal! I had a psychiatrist for 5 minutes, who tried to tell me I was psychotic, but because I wouldn't admit I was and accept any medication refused to see me after our first appointment. I'm not going to lie to myself! These things really #ing happened. I couldn't get out of the door quick enough. I wasn't going down that road of starting on anti psychotic drugs! I hate taking asprin for a headache.

The neurologists are the spooks as far as I'm concerned, but I wont go into that now. U2U me if you have a question.

I can't say all this hasn't effected me in some way, because I know it has. For instance I went for a job interview earlier on in the year. I was an hour late and my shoes had rubbed so I was limping. An hour in to the interview ... things seemed to be going well, all things considered. Then I get asked this random question, which was so ambiguous I didn't know where to start. I just glared at them I was so annoyed and then blurted out ' you tell me!! ' I never used to be like that. I was so embarrassed. I don't have a short fuse, but I get exasperated easily. Even watching some documentaries, which clearly I know is a manipulation of the truth.

Anyway I didn't expect to get the job and I didn't lol

hx

So let me get this straight. You turned up an hour late for a job interview, they were kind enough to interview you anyway which resulted in you becoming annoyed and yelling at them.

Topped off by a what sounds like a similarly disruptive visit to a counselor (It seems to me that there is more to that particular appointment than we are being told)

And based on these experiences you don't wonder that perhaps there might be a problem at work that doesn't involve aliens?

Variable
reply to post by g2v12

 

Why? Because it is illogical to refute anything that is false.

This is one of the dumbest statements ever. You were sounding perfectly logical until the end. Refuting falsehoods is exactly what this site is about "Deny Ignorance." You see, you can fix ignorance. You cannot fix stupidity. Stupidity is a kind of stubborn, ego driven barrier to logic.

Refuting a falsehood is proving something is wrong. There is another name for this, it is called learning.

V

I think they may have been referring to the Appeal to Ignorance logical fallacy [Argumentum ad Ignorantiam], specifically the shifting of the burden of proof away from the claimant.


I think. Maybe they weren't. Benefit of a doubt, though.

reply to post by InsertNameHere


nooo ... lol you missed the point. Put it this way I think the way I feel reminds me of Richard Drayfass in close encounters. I think lol

I had had a breakdown because of what I saw and... it is all documented. Every single word of it. So!! In the meantime I try to get on with my life without being too touchy ... but can you blame me as I have met real aliens. Life isn't quite the same for me as it was a couple of years ago. I am not scared just overwhelmed. It is all very very real. Aliens do walk amongst us. I am no nut nut lol



hx

reply to post by Ectoplasm8

Ectoplasm8
reply to post by compressedFusion

 

People have been listening with an open mind for years. Has it gotten us any closer to an answer? An open mind isn't the answer. The answer should be a simple one with thousands of events.
...

Now, doesn't common sense say if this is actually happening, in at least one of those cases, in the thousands and over 65 years, something concrete and real would have come about? If you say "No", what is your argument for that? Are going to say they are just too intelligent?

... why don't you need something more than just stories? Why don't you want to have something tangible and real? Why settle for less than?

Can you name any respectable institution that offers a degree program for this topic? What about a specialization within a degree? How about a class that takes it seriously. At the bare minimum can we name an academic professor doing research into this over the last 40 years besides John Mack?

It seems quite obvious to me why there wouldn't be any evidence. Nobody is researching it. Outside of the Condon report this topic has received close to zero exposure. If ETs are flying about snatching up people what evidence do you expect to find from a bunch of anecdotal stories? What evidence are you expecting if there are no scientific observations?

If we want to figure out what is going on then it needs to be thoroughly researched. Anecdotes are not evidence and the burden of unraveling the mystery lies with all of society. Without scientific research we are simply guessing at the cause of the "thousands" of events you suggested. We can't guess at the answer, even if it is simple. We must research it and it needs to be done rigorously.

But it is not taken seriously. We have not been open minded about it. It is ridiculed and examples like John Mack are a cautionary tale for those daring to study what is happening.

Theres to many account to believe dont get me wrong I believe there is life out there but why come down and do experiments on us then go if there is life out there then they live amongs us thats my view

reply to post by InsertNameHere

quoting InsertNameHere in bold

compressedFusion: We need this to what end? Do we need evidence to believe them

Yes. Due to the potential ramifications resulting from visiting spaceships and/or humans being abducted by something being fact, and the potential consequences of getting it wrong, evidence is necessary for belief to be established.

How can we establish belief without critical thinking and observation? It would be foolhardy to either believe or disbelieve without research. The evidence will probably only be obtained through research. Research and study would answer the question of "What is happening and why".

quoting InsertNameHere in bold
compressedFusion: or not to mock them?

No, as discussed previously (no one in this thread has taken the position that is it acceptable that I can tell?) Although such behaviour is not an irrational response.

The intent of this thread was to collect data either supporting or contradicting one basic assertion. We ridicule beyond what is due. Requesting evidence from anecdotes just seems to be another tool to that end. I was hoping that the contrast would have been clearer with my question.

quoting InsertNameHere in bold
compressedFusion: Isn't it enough for both sides to simply have compassion and listen without judgement?

What is the point of sharing a story if there is no need to be believed?

I'm not sure why people share their stories. I certainly wouldn't if it happened to me. Perhaps they are hoping for some cathartic effect. What do we do with the stories? So far we haven't done anything other than demand evidence from the people telling the tales.

Ideally, we would listen and nod our heads with understanding (not belief). We would remain skeptical but polite. Then those of with the aptitude and the inclination would study the phenomenon in a rigorous manner which would result in a conclusion. The conclusion would generate a world view or belief. Perhaps the conclusion would be something mundane and we could all put this to rest and stop posting under the Aliens & UFOs forum .

It doesn't seem to make it past the first step. I don't understand why you would go straight to evaluating the data (or disbelief) without research. We basically only have the Condon report. The Condon report paved the way for this issue being closed by suggesting that there is no value researching it further. It dealt with UFOs and not the numerous reports involving alleged contact that occurred much later.

InsertNameHere

RedCairo
I agree. But, I don't believe that abduction, even when physical unless you were out on a boat and captured or something, is likely to be perceivable via camera and GPS. I believe that there is a frequency-based technology which literally splits the energy of a person and 'captures' a little over half of it and you might say 'moves it.'

Out of interest, are you familiar with this particular technology, and do you think it would have relevance in this field for reports of non-phsysical abduction cases once it is more advanced?: uk.ign.com...

Doesn't seem related to me.

"Looking at the brain while dreaming" seems completely different to me than "literally capturing >half the physics-energy of a human being and shifting the frequency beat-pattern of it" (I think, anyway; sending it perhaps a bit offside the sine-wave on/off pattern we have for 'here' to what amounts to 'another perceptual reality' where it can be moved at will. Within that reality, the experience appears to be wholly physical, although a certain degree of the beta-brainwave mind seems incompletely available, which affects perception, memory, and functionality while 'there').

I can only speak to the experiential portion including an understanding of what was going on at the time (which may be wrong, but was what 'felt obviously true'). I haven't the vaguest clue what tech may exist (or not) in our world which might be preliminary to this.

I felt/experienced that after the energetic separation-and-capture, they dump the 'you' (which is a bit more than half of you energetically) into the blue gel stuff for transfer/transport, and eventually return that portion of your energy to the mostly bio-shell lying catatonic where the energy re-integrates.

I will share this (though I'd rather send people to the case study with a vastly more complete account) although of course, I'm sure this will be interpreted as a claim of sorts, although I am merely reporting "my perceptual experience" -- whatever its true origins may be.

The first time this 'frequency split' (as I interpreted it) happened to me, I was sitting up on my bed with the light on looking at something. I was literally "hit" as if a weapon had hit me, powerfully and sudden, while the process went through. I had been reaching up to turn off the light when it happened, which I didn't because it hit me so hard I literally collapsed unmoving, and I fell on my arm awkwardly which hurt worse and worse as time went on, although I couldn't move to correct it.

I spent a long time with my brain and vision not working properly and very, very slowly coming to some understanding about it partly based on what I could 'feel was so' about 'half of me being gone.' I don't think my mind could have been as alert as it was except for the really horrible pain in my arm. I eventually "breathed myself back in" is what it felt like, and was suddenly ok enough to think fully, move, pick up my arm with my other hand and turn over, and then was instantly unconscious. I woke up with implants.

I didn't realize that's what they were until that evening when I happened to be watching a video of a SF show (Star Trek TNG) which (in an android) mentioned such an idea -- and I was already aware of some 'overlap' between cultural 'aliens' and the experiences I was having, so I saw the sync of course, at that point. I was instantly and deeply upset, but also felt like, at least, maybe now that I knew what the hell was the source, I could get them to come back and fix the injury (of one of them).

I came to believe the point of the implants was to make this process easy for them, to affect the body so it would 'separate and slide the frequency' as needed without the much more abrupt experience that resulted in the implants to begin with.

Who 'them' is -- our black ops? Outer space dudes? Interdimensional entities? My Loki-like subconscious? -- I have no idea. I'd like someone to figure that out. I don't have much invested in what the answer is. Only that having an answer seems like something useful for our culture.

The implants were in a variety of places, but shared a placement pattern in the hand/wrist and foot/ankle. The one on the bridge of my nose hurt like hell, and felt literally like a tiny piece of rice made of metal had been stuck in me and bruised that area horribly. I had 'flashes' of pain (which was 'agony' in the one "near the outside of the brain" -- I might add, I had never felt anything in such an area of my body before, I didn't even know one *could*, and never since) from them for days, which then went away and after that none of them were apparent or bothersome anymore.

One implant was misplaced, in my knee, which was injurious. Three days later after much effort toward this goal each evening after work, I finally managed to get them to come back and fix it. I could not visually see them, but I could feel them as clearly as I feel anything in reality, only they reached INTO my body. I was wide awake and alert with the light on (and freaking out, in the "OMG how can this be so REAL?!" way). Although as they interacted with me I felt my state of mind shifting until I was pretty dreamy. The injury was ok after that; I could barely walk and was crying if I tried by the time I succeeded in the call to them, but the next day it was a little sore but by end of day fine.

Feeling that I had finally figured out that it was real, and how to 'call' them (using a meditation technique I'd heard someone talk about years prior), and having a physical (if bizarrely un-visual) experience "in MY reality," and a prior experience where I had gotten lucid [in a different environ than the norm for such experiences], but totally-utterly lucid and tried to escape to "get evidence to take home" (sadly failing), all that near the same timeframe finally changed a lot of things with me in terms of how my psychology dealt with this. I'd been treating it like archetypes until then; seemingly physical at times but often not, probably more along the 'ghosts and entities' category, until those experiences forced it into what I considered the "reality" of my body with no argument or denial possible.

Feeling like I had some understanding of how it was happening relaxed me hugely about it. And there is no proof this is accurate obviously, but at the time I wasn't focused on what would convince anybody else, only on what the hell might be going on with me personally.

I said about the implants in an excerpt in my case study:

I sat at my desk that afternoon thinking My god, I'm a hypochondriac! I imagined myself going to the doctor and telling him about my pains, including the one in my head, and maybe throwing in the story of the night before for good measure -- I'd end up in a psych ward, I guessed.

So... probably not real common that most people are going to volunteer for excision. And as noted, the issues with mine were gone shortly, I didn't even feel them after that, so I'm not sure, even if I'd been living with a surgeon, that digging them out would have come to any useful end aside from that we see with others who have done so: "Hmmn, this is an anomaly, but it isn't cosmic material, and doesn't say Made on Mars on it, and it isn't clear how this would work, so obviously you're just imagining it."

As for the focus of OP's thread, what does that say about me, reporting such experiences? Not sure, especially since most the experiences eventually 'went away' -- those sorts, anyway. It certainly indicates, by symptom-label alone, something so offside the norm for our culture that anyone could question sanity based on that; however my sanity, practicality, intelligence and more are pretty solid otherwise, which makes questioning it solely due to the topical matter seem like an injust bias of sorts -- I have observed in others who clearly do have psychological problems that these are seldom present in one completely isolated area, and usually are present throughout their lives, and apparently rather quickly in their communications.