The sleep paralysis is an interesting explanation. I do recall, though, (30 years ago), that she heard them on the stairs first and then they came into the room, described their big black eyes, and small form. Glad I didn't wake up. She didn't talk about it afterwards, and being such a traumatic experience for her, it wouldn't have been very considerate for me to ask her about it. We were not UFO buffs at all. Weird stuff, and like you say, maddeningly, never definitive.
---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <no_re...@yahoogroups.com> wrote : ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <fleetwood_macncheese@...> wrote : I enjoyed reading about your serious consideration of UFO's. Purely going by logic, it doesn't make sense that we are the only living beings in the universe. However, I agree that many reports of UFOs are wishful thinking. True, we can't say whether we are the only intelligent beings in the universe - but it's a big place. This is the main problem. Just getting from wherever they are to here is such a monumentally enormous task and would take so long - even if you can get close to the speed of light - that it's vanishingly unlikely that any other life form could be here. And for them to be here just as we are becoming technologically aware is another stretch of credulity. But for them to be humanoid, capable of breathing our atmosphere and coping with our gravity! I have to say it does arouse major suspicions in me. It's not impossible though, it's just that we have no good evidence and plenty of better ways of explaining the evidence we do have. So I stay interested but sceptical. You tell a familiar story about your ex-wife though, and I have no reason to doubt the experience. I've got books full of similar recountings. But are aliens the best explanation for this? There have always been stories of people waking up paralysed and sensing a mysterious presence in the room. It's part of English folklore anyway. They used to call the creature the old hag, people would say it was terrifying as they couldn't breathe with this ghost thing was sitting on their chest. From the website of psychologist Susan Blackmore: The Sleep-Paralysis Experience In a typical sleep-paralysis episode, a person wakes up paralyzed, senses a presence in the room, feels fear or even terror, and may hear buzzing and humming noises, or see strange lights. A visible or invisible entity may even sit on their chest, shaking, strangling or prodding them. Attempts to fight the paralysis are usually unsuccessful. It is reputedly more effective to relax, or try to move just the eyes or a single finger or toe. Descriptions of sleep paralysis are given in many of the references already cited and in Hufford’s (1982) classic work on the "Old Hag". I and a colleague are building up a case collection and have reported our preliminary findings. Perhaps alien abduction is our modern sleep paralysis myth. People have pointed out the similarities between abductions and sleep paralysis. The majority of the abduction experiences they studied occurred at night, and almost 60 percent of the "intense" reports were sleep related. Of the intense experiences, nearly a quarter involved symptoms similar to sleep paralysis. Cox (1995) divided his twelve abductees into six daytime and six nighttime abductions and, even with such small groups, found that the nighttime abductees reported significantly more frequent sleep paralysis than either of the control groups. I suggest that the best explanation for many abduction experiences is that they are elaborations of the experience of sleep paralysis. Imagine the following scenario: a woman wakes in the night with a strong sense that someone or something is in the room. She tries to move and finds she is completely paralyzed except for her eyes. She sees strange lights, hears a buzzing or humming sound, and feels a vibration in the bed. If she knows about sleep paralysis, she will recognise it instantly, but most people do not. So what is she going to think? I suggest that, if she has watched TV programs about abductions or read about them, she may begin to think of aliens. And in this borderline sleep state, the imagined alien will seem extremely real. This alone may be enough to create the conviction of having been abducted. Hypnosis could make the memories of this real experience (but not real abduction) completely convincing. Does it cover you ex's experience? I do not know but people have always had this experience and the interpretation into modern memes like aliens instead of creatures from folklore like goblins doesn't seem unrealistic. I remember Susan Blackmore had a go on a machine designed to recreate these experiences using some sort of brainwave stimulator. She was in a laboratory but still found the experience terrifying, paralysis and an awareness of a presence, she had the whole thing. Experiments like this are never 100% conclusive but it does show that our minds can create a lot of stuff that seems externally derived. Thanks for the photo. I wish I could see more in it than I do see ;-) I have seen weird things though, I saw Venus on the horizon once. It was dancing around and changing shape, colour and size. Amazing to see, I had binoculars and my neighbours came out to look and were astonished. Anyone else would see a UFO doing typical UFO manouvres (ask Nabby) but when you know it's a planet and the lighting effects are caused by the atmosphere moving about you don't get so carried away. Almost the entire population of Mexico city did just that one summer, endless videos were taken of this light that appeared every evening and hovered over the city. Videos with hysterical voice-overs sold by the truck load, they were great but there's only so many wobbly pictures of Venus I can look at, and the invasion never happened. that's the way it is with UFO's, it never quite happens. Two personal experiences I can't explain: My ex-wife had an alien visitation, where they came up the stairs of our house, put a probe into her side and studied her, while I was asleep next to her. She was speechless and in shock afterwards - I can't say whether or not it was real, but her description and reaction sure seemed so. Other than that, last summer, I was in the yard and looked up, and saw a metallic shiny disc, hovering in the sky. I took some bad pictures of it, and felt as if I was being watched (attached). -
