I’ve never been a big believer in alien abductions. I believe in the possibility, of course, and I even believe that it’s possible that at some point in our history, extraterrestrials may have abducted a person or persons. I do not, however, believe that alien abductions happen on a regular basis. For one, it always happens at night, when people are sleeping. Why would the aliens have to catch us off guard? They can master interstellar travel but they need to capture us when we’re sleeping? Second, there are way too many things that happen to our brains when we’re asleep 9when alien abductions tend to occur) that one has to accept the rational explanation of a waking dream or sleep paralysis before jumping to the alien abduction explanation. As this article points out, researchers have just proven what many of us new all along. But I do have some issues with their findings. Read on…
Researchers say they have conducted “the first experiment to ever prove that close encounters with UFOs and extraterrestrials are a product of the human mind.”
In a sleep study by the Out-Of-Body Experience Research Center in Los Angeles, 20 volunteers were instructed to perform a series of mental steps upon waking up or becoming lucid during the night that might lead them to have out-of-body experiences culminating in encounters with aliens.
According to lead researcher Michael Raduga, more than half the volunteers experienced at least one full or partial out-of-body experience, and seven of them were able to make contact with UFOs or extraterrestrials during these dream-like experiences.
Raduga designed the experiment to test his theory that many reports of alien encounters are actually instances of people experiencing a vibrant, lifelike state of dreaming. If he could coach people to dream a realistic alien encounter, he said, that could prove that reports of such encounters are really just a product of our imaginations.
“When people experience alien abductions in the night, they usually don’t know they are actually in REM sleep and having an out-of-body experience,” Raduga told Life’s Little Mysteries, adding than an estimated 1 million Americans have such experiences each year.
“It’s very realistic and people cannot understand how it happens. [Our study] shows that it’s not about aliens, it’s about human abilities, and it can happen to almost anyone.” [ 7 Things that Create Convincing UFO Sightings ]
Study participants were told to try to “separate from their bodies” every time they became half-awake or lucid during the night. If they were able to dream that they had separated from their sleeping bodies, they were then supposed to look for aliens in their homes. If they were unable to have an out-of-body dream experience, they were told to go back to sleep and try again later in the night.
“Some could do it by the first attempt. Some needed three to five attempts to have an out-of-body experience. Not everybody could do it — some were unable to do it because of their fear. They were able to separate from their body but they became too afraid to look for aliens,” Raduga said.
By the end of the study, 35 percent of the volunteers said they had made visual contact with aliens, and they described their encounters for the researchers.
One participant, identified as Alexander N., recalled making a successful attempt to separate from his body: “I [then] tried to find aliens. Three of them materialized right before my eyes. They seemed more like creatures from the movie ‘The Thing’ than tadpoles with eyes like Princess Jasmine. They wanted to scare me, not to ‘make contact.’ As a result, I was extremely frightened and regained awareness in my own body.”
Raduga plans to publish his results and to conduct further studies on humans’ ability to fabricate alien encounters that seem real.
First off, I hate when anyone does a study like this and says they can “prove” that something doesn’t exist. It’s sort of like finding a Bigfoot costume and saying you’ve proven there is no such thing as Sasquatch. I do believe this study explains most, if not all, alien abduction claims. But still, if just one person was correct about being abducted, then this study can’t disprove that. Also, many people who claim to be abductees do not have an interest in UFOs or UFO history. They do not train themselves to have an abduction experience, as the test subjects in this study were trained to do. Of course it could happen naturally, but this study didn’t go about proving that aspect…
This research has been going on for years now. I remember watching the same report a decade ago on the discovery channel. I’m not a very big believer in alien abductions either. Mostly because we observe animals in their natural habitat by just silently observing. And that would make a lot of sense for aliens to do the same because it’s safer and easier, and sure advanced beings would want to keep things easy and safe.
I remember the same thing, Keith. Slightly different experiments, but all basically showing that the experience of an alien abduction can all too easily be recreated in the lab, either via drugs, electrodes, etc.