Major corporations such as General Motors, AT&T, Pepsi-Cola, and Mars Candies run expensive TV commercials showing aliens coming to earth to steal our consumer products (thereby implying their products’ desirability). These events-along with extensive Internet coverage-indicate the degree to which alien-abduction narratives (AANs) have seized the public imagination. Although reports of visitations and abductions of humans by strange creatures have apparently occurred throughout recorded history, modern researchers agree that these reports have dramatically increased since 1947 in the case of UFO “sightings” and since 1966 for abduction narratives.

The year 1966 also saw the publication of John Fuller’s The Interrupted Journey, the abduction story of Betty and Barney Hill that is still considered paradigmatic for the modern form of the alien-abduction narrative. One of the most popular and influential explanations of AANs is that UFO stories constitute the basis of a new mythology that is developing in our highly technological age.

An AAN can refer to a single experience or to a group of experiences. They usually involve a claim that someone took the narrators out of their beds (or cars) and subjected them to medical examinations and other unusual experiences. In a typical AAN scenario, one or more individuals either come forward voluntarily, or they contact and are then interviewed by a specialist in this type of phenomenon. In each case, a narrative is presented consisting of a report of being kidnapped and experimented upon by “alien” creatures. Frequently, these accounts include expressions of trauma and terror as the “victims” are subjected to painful or humiliating procedures.

Several individuals have emerged to play leading roles as advisers to these narrators, who in many cases are alleged to display symptoms characteristic of post-traumatic stress disorder. These advisers include artist Budd Hopkins, historian Dr.David Jacobs, author Whitley Strieber,Harvard University psychiatrist John Mack, and clinical social worker John Carpenter, to name a few. During the modern period of narratives about alien beings, several labels have been advanced to identify a person presenting some type of AAN.All of them introduce serious epistemological and methodological difficulties. In order to be precise about the subject matter under consideration, the term “narrator” is proposed to overcome some of these problems.

Since the early 1950s, some have been called “contactees.” These include George Adamski, George King, and, more recently, Billy Meier. The characteristics of their narratives include:

• The narrator is an ostensibly ordinary individual who may have been on some spiritual quest

• Benevolent or at least friendly beings present themselves by means of a sighting, apparition, or just voices. These beings conduct the narrator on a tour of some kind, during which he or she is lectured on humanity’s future, morality, and other topics.

• These visitations or tours are repeated over a period of time and may increase in duration, complexity, and the importance of subjects revealed

It is worth noting that this pattern fits even some traditional historical figures such as Joseph Smith, the founder of Mormonism.

In summary, the contactee narrative has gradually narrowed in meaning to denote persons claiming to have received religious or prophetic messages (involving religious awe, perhaps, but not terrifying experiences) from alien beings. In many of these cases, the use of this term today suggests that either mental illness or fraud was implied or suspected, but not necessarily. Another contactee category is the “walk-in” or “host body” narrative. While sometimes engendering fear in others, these rarely involve a selfreport of fear, in part because the original personality has been replaced. Examples include Marshall Applewhite, founder of the Heaven’s Gate group, and Frederick Meier.

Contactee and walk-in narratives are not AANs, since they lack the elements of coercion and fear. It is not just contact, but abduction and its accompanying fear, that implies victimization, unwilling selection, and terror. Contactee narratives, and the activities that accompany them, have more in common with channeling.

Since the Betty and Barney Hill case in the 1960s, as documented in Fuller’s 1966 book, the term “abductee” has increased in usage. It is still in general use today by those who hold to the extraterrestrial hypothesis (ETH) in the ufology field, whether skeptic, believer, or neutral. It is a term that carries with it the ideas of fear and unwillingness. However, not every abductee becomes a narrator.

Some refuse to talk at all.

In his controversial work Abductions:Human Encounters with Aliens (1994), psychiatrist John Mack has adopted the term “experiencers.” Although this appears to be an attempt at neutrality toward AANs, it unfortunately makes the unscientific assumption that an experience has occurred, when we have no independent evidence that this is the case. In a 1996 article, Leonard S. Newman asserts that the origins of UFO abduction reports, since there is no consensus data on alien visitation that is even remotely convincing to conventional science, must be considered entirely terrestrial. If nothing else, this is just the null hypothesis of scientific study. The fact that Newman can confidently assert that UFOs are not of extraterrestrial origin succinctly illustrates the weakness of 50 years of UFO “research.” Newman believes that a set of personal and cultural phenomena and processes parsimoniously explains the psychological symptoms reported by abductees. He agrees with Mack about the mental health of the vast majority of experiencers and does not deny the subjective power of their reports. However, Newman takes a different social-psychological approach and discusses the experiencer stories as narratives with a purpose. As used here, the term “narrative” was defined in a 1994 paper by Newman and his mentor, Roy Baumeister, at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio.Narratives can be understood as a natural, everyday process of making sense out of one’s experiences; that telling stories is a fundamentally social activity. Baumeister asserts that when we construct narratives about our lives, we operate out of four specific needs for meaning:

• We seek to find purpose to the events that befall us;

• We seek value and moral justification;

• We seek evidence of efficacy by showing a level of control over the environment; and

• We seek self-worth and affirmation Narrative speech is the preferred mode for most people, and narratives can be subject to powerful social effects. Only a minority of people normally report their experiences abstractly, in what is called “paradigmatic speech.” According to Newman, UFO abduction reports-whether obtained under relaxation or hypnotic regression-are narratives subject to many motivations and influences. Newman addresses the issue thus: If UFO abduction reports are not about UFO abductions, why would people recall something that did not happen to them in consensual reality, and, in particular, why would they recall something as traumatic as an alien abduction?

Many theories have been advanced to account for the occurrence of these narratives.These include:

• Extraterrestrial hypothesis. This is the most commonly understood explanation, the one that most closely fits the modern scientific worldview (or at least its popular equivalent). This hypothesis proposes that visitors from other physical places in the universe come to earth in flying vehicles and abduct humans for scientific purposes of their own.

• Psychosocial hypothesis. This category includes all attempts to understand AANs in terms of social science. For example, it considers the severe limitations of the hypnotic regression method and the existence of a cogent alternative psychological explanation, as discussed by Leonard Newman at the national convention of the American Psychological Association in Los Angeles in 1994. As Newman shows, regression hypnosis and abduction reports are far from convincing evidence of alien contact when seen from the perspective of conventional research psychology. Some of the therapeutic issues raised by AANs are similar to those encountered in investigations of near-death experiences, reincarnation, and so-called past-life regression, even satanic ritual abuse and multiple personality disorder. This area has been identified by sociologists as similar to the “wild psychotherapies.”.

• Religious-spiritual hypothesis. This category includes the view that AANs are part of a new modern mythology. It is based on the similarities between AANs and traditional religious narratives.

Below we offer some examples of the latter category.

First,AANs share with revealed religions a similar narrative status as viewed by science and ordinary common sense. When someone talks about visions or other highly personal experiences that have led them to a religious conversion (called “witnessing”), their testimony constitutes personal knowledge based on a perceived event that was real to them. AANs differ from such traditional witnessing in that they assume a modern technological worldview capable of acknowledging UFOs; but they are similar in disregarding the normal verification requirements of scientific or social consensus. In effect, the AAN may sometimes take the form of a verifiable event but, upon closer examination, will not yield weight to a testable hypothesis (e.g., that a so-called first contact has occurred). Instead, like any religious assertion, it inspires personal awe and transformation but remains aloof from scientific cosmology. Abduction experiences cannot be corroborated (even the New Testament gospels are similar stories in this sense), so we don’t know what really happened and still might not know even if we had been there. This is also the case with so-called past-life regression and other types of hypnotically obtained recollections, which are highly vulnerable to aggressive scientific critique. Even so, we have found debunking (the tool of the dominant scientific worldview) to be completely ineffective in dispelling the personally transforming effect of such experiences. Instead, as with religious belief, abrasive approaches tend to strengthen resolve. Consequently, belief systems growing out of AANs typically produce very powerful defensive protections-sometimes fundamentalist and even cultic-to ward off criticism. Both AANs and religious stories can involve a dramatic reframing of a person’s Weltanschauung. Consider the following two Bible passages (emphasis mine), and ask yourself: Could an AAN turn into a biblical account? Are the two forms of narrative interchangeable?

On one such expedition I was going to Damascus, armed with full powers and a commission from the chief priests, and at midday as I was on my way, your Majesty [King Agrippa], I saw a LIGHT BRIGHTER THAN THE SUN COME DOWN FROM HEAVEN. It shone brilliantly around me and my fellow travelers. We all fell to the ground, and I heard a voice saying to me in Hebrew,“Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me? It is hard for you [to resist].”Acts 26:12-14 (Jerusalem Bible) I know a man in Christ who, fourteen years ago, WAS CAUGHT UP-whether still in the body or out of the body, I do not know; God knows-right INTO THE THIRD HEAVEN [which is the highest]. I do know, however, that this same person-WHETHER STILL IN THE BODY OR OUT OF THE BODY [such distinctions were known even then], I do not know;

God knows-was caught up into paradise and heard things which must not and cannot be put into human language. . . .In view of the extraordinary nature of these revelations, to stop me from getting too proud I WAS GIVEN A THORN IN THE FLESH [an implant?], an angel of Satan [literally:messenger from the adversary] to beat me and stop me from getting too proud. 2 Cor. 12:2-4, 7 (Jerusalem Bible)

Second, AANs appear across time and cultures. In cultures that practice shamanism, there are stories of “little people.” Hinduism contains many tales of “space” beings. Buddhism has its cautions about encounters with “skandha demons.” American Indians talk of the “little men.” The Celtic cultures of Europe have their leprechauns. These similarities led Thomas Bullard to make his groundbreaking study of AAN folklore. But to his own surprise, Bullard found that AANs are not as culturally diverse as most folklore. We think there is merit in supposing this is due more to the context of a modern, media-driven society than to the content of the folklore.

What remains obscure is the psychosocial impact of folkloric traditions on individuals in the mass-media age and the possible mechanisms for triggering intrapsychic experience organized around mass media-driven folkloric icons. In the domain of mass psychology, far too much is assumed, and pitifully little is understood thus far, even in theory. Instead, media-savvy communicators draw on the known effects of careful manipulation of symbols to sell products and pedal influence. It may be easy to influence people but harder to offer insight when seeking to explain the power and cultural value of AANs in today’s society. Third,AANs have been the topic of millenarian anxieties. The 1995 collection The Gods Have Landed characterizes the UFO myth as millenarian, that is, concerned with the “end of time” both in its historical movements and its social dynamics. Christianity made linear time important, especially when measured on the clock toward the Endtime. Before the Christian era, the source of transcendent meaning tended to be “outside of time” (or perhaps in “missing time”). Narrators now as then become a new elect standing against the secular worldview. They await “revealed” aliens to vindicate them. Although this can be interpreted by the larger society as a trend toward irrationalism, we should take heed that this dismissive observation was very much the way the ancient Romans viewed the early Christians. Fourth, AANs may be acquiring mythic status. In the 1950s, at the height of the early UFO flaps, Carl Jung wrote Flying Saucers: A Modern Myth of Things Seen in the Sky. Unfortunately, although Jung took the phenomenon seriously,his use of the term “myth”was characteristically misunderstood by our utilitarian culture. To the Western mind, a myth is a kind of lie.We do not see myths as the source of human experience-that which makes one the member of a group.

In modern times, initiation into adult society comes less from traditions ritually imbued by family and culture and more through random encounters with the mass culture of films,music, and television. Witness the nearly apocalyptic rhetoric of media events such as the death of Princess Di or the final Seinfeld episode. Perhaps societies driven by such hypostases of personality, like the United States, evolve a multimyth marketplace that eventually replaces the monopolistic functioning of traditional religious myth with an ongoing array of popular avant-garde religions. In such a context, the AAN has fertile ground to readily take form and multiply. Furthermore, if AANs are more like an antimyth-in opposition to established science and religion-it raises a new possibility that resistance is growing to the desacralizing effect of science. I am reminded of Arthur Schopenhauer’s famous edict: All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed.

Third, it is accepted as being self-evident. And finally, AANs have raised issues of good and evil and thereby divide even AAN believers into denominations. In addition to some fundamentalist Christian attitudes toward AANs, an intense debate has arisen in the ufological community among those who give full credence to the claims of first contact and who yet differ about the intentions of the alleged sources of the phenomena. As a result, one faction fears alien invasion or human conspiracy or both (perhaps represented by Vallee, Jacobs, and Hopkins), another camp appears to welcome alien salvation (like Sprinkle and Boylan), and still a third stays on the fence (maybe Fowler and Strieber). Is this the beginning of first contact religion denominationalism? It appears that there is an unlimited number of possible explanations for the AAN phenomenon. Most of them are untestable, not scientifically useful, or employ tests that are internal to the explanation itself and not extendable to other systems. The Rorschach-like nature of the AAN derives from the many ways of approaching it with a specific set of concepts: physical, metaphysical, religious. This is a blind alley. Even allowing for the possibility of hoax and deception will not cause the phenomenon to go away. The field still calls for an approach that studies the narratives strictly in terms of known human experience,not in terms of speculative theories.

Aliens are not attempting to solve our spiritual problems. Investing even a hypothetical alien lifeform with intense interest in human religious behavior can only be properly characterized as an anthropomorphic conceit. The reality is that we are engaged in our own spiritual struggles, on both the individual and social levels, and our intuitive faculties produce images reflecting that struggle. Then our cognitive processes impose sequences of order and meaning upon these images, resulting in narratives. Narrators and the “researchers” who shepherd them are fundamentalists, each after their own fashion: Christian, meta-physical, or materialist. And each in their own fashion is attempting to understand the implications of their respective stories.

The Christian tradition says that “God is not a god of the dead but of the living.”Namely, our spiritual realm is not the realm of outer space or other dimensions but of the earth itself. We are led to other matters in our attempt to avoid the fears we feel as the result of our unwillingness to face ourselves and the consequences of our actions. The struggles embodied in AANs may come about because of a general failure to face reality. The eternal quality of the alien “presence” reflects the relevance of that presence only as a signal from ourselves to ourselves. When we are back about our own business as human beings, individually and collectively, the aliens will disappear. Well before the advent of the computer sciences, German philosopher Rudolf Steiner claimed to see the spiritual effects of what he described as the “hyper-materialization of the modern worldview.” This prophecy has an interesting connection to alien abduction narratives, for in the same essay where Steiner predicted that a “spidery network of automata covering the earth” would gradually attain its own consciousness, he also said that this development would bring about the arrival of “beings from the heavens” in response to an increasingly virtual (illusory) human existence.Whether AANs are a new reality or part of the illusion remains to be determined.