The Abduction Experience
Thomas E. Bullard studied 300 abduction cases accumulated through 1985 and identified eight phases, not all of which may occur in an individual case.
Capture
Examination
Conference
Tour
Otherworldly journey
Divine message
Return
Aftermath
Skeptics attribute an abduction narrative to popular culture absorption from movies and TV, hallucination, sleep paralysis, lucid dreams, false memory syndrome, incompetent hypnosis (when hypnosis is used to aid recall), fantasy-prone personality, psychosis, or a combination of many such aberrations. But David M Jacobs observes that such reductive explanations clearly do not fit all cases:
During some abduction events, abductees are missing from their normal environments. Police have been called, search parties have been sent out, parents have frantically searched for their children, etc. When people remember abductions, they sometimes return with marks on their bodies -- not just any marks, but with seemingly impossible, fully formed scars. They sometimes return with broken bones and have no idea how they were injured. Sometimes they find unusual stains on their clothes that were not there before the abduction...Some people return with their clothes on backwards, and / or inside out. They may return wearing someone else's clothes. Abduction often occurs with other witnesses who can confirm details, as with Barney and Betty Hill. Often it is with family members, but there are instances when friends or bystanders witness the abduction as well, but are not taken. People are abducted while fully awake, driving a car, gardening, and so forth. J. Scientific Exploration 20, 2, Summer 2006, p. 306.
Researchers notice that abduction-like experiences can be induced with drugs, some of which occur naturally in the human body. Dimethyltryptamine (DMT), which affects the pineal gland, has been studied extensively. It has been administered to volunteers by injection in the laboratory. Subjects then report:
» near-death experiences (NDE)
» contact with insectoid entities, particularly the praying mantis, but not with grey aliens
Rather than use these DMT observations reductively, to deny reality of alien contact, some researchers suggest the dissociative effects of DMT may facilitate human experience of nonlocal space-time and the paranormal phenomena associated with UFO. J. Scientific Exploration 22, 4, Winter 2008, pgs. 564 - 568. Comment: abductee Bill Foster reports being told by the alien chief, "the big guy", that time is not relative for them, and that they are not constrained by time as humans are; the aliens can hold time in stasis during the abduction process. The Black Triangle Abduction, pgs. 172, 357.
Many people are unwilling to even consider paranormal aspects of the UFO phenomenon. This recalls the analogous 1950s situation of ignoring abduction cases in favor of a "nuts and bolts" view of UFO. The 1961 Barney and Betty Hill incident and its pioneering investigation made abduction study respectable. The Interrupted Journey. It remains to recognize that further progress in understanding the UFO phenomenon is in the paranormal direction.
See Advanced Biomedical Engineering; also Druffel's Defense Techniques. Further reading: Stuart Appelle, "The Abduction Experience: A Critical Evaluation of Theory and Evidence", CUFOS Journal of UFO Studies, October 1996, New Series 6 pgs. 29-78.