Dreaming of UFOs
• UFOs & Bogus Science
Clancy and McNally outlined their findings in the Journal of Abnormal Psychology last fall, whittling the abduction phenomenon down to an equation of sorts. Susceptibility to creating false memories, coupled with a disturbing experience like sleep paralysis and a cultural script that allows for abduction by aliens, may lead one to falsely recall such an encounter. "You don't necessarily have to endorse these experiences to create false memories," says Clancy. "You may have just seen 'The X-Files' and thought, 'That's crap,' but then you have an episode of sleep paralysis that freaks you out, and the show is still in the back of your mind."
And among people wavering about whether or not they've been abducted, hypnosis can push them to embrace this interpretation. In a 1994 experiment that simulated hypnosis, psychologist Steven Jay Lynn asked subjects to imagine that they'd seen bright lights and experienced missing time. Ninety-one percent of those who'd been primed with questions about UFOs stated that they'd interacted with aliens.
Still, if the abduction experience is a misinterpreted bout of sleep paralysis, why do abductees invest it with such emotion? ... This question brought him, in part, to the Divinity School conference. "I wanted to know whether people really have to be traumatized to produce a physiological reaction."