Revision 796672183 of "Alien abduction entities" on enwiki

'''Alien abduction entities''' are the beings alleged to secretly abduct and subject experiencers to a forced [[medical]] examination which often emphasizes their [[reproductive system]].<ref name="medicaldiff">Miller, John G. "Medical Procedural Differences: Alien Versus Human." In: Pritchard, Andrea & Pritchard, David E. & Mack, John E. & Kasey, Pam & Yapp, Claudia. ''Alien Discussions: Proceedings of the Abduction Study Conference''. Cambridge: North Cambridge Press, 1994. Pp. 59-64.</ref> Mainstream scientists and mental health professionals overwhelmingly doubt that the phenomenon occurs literally as reported and instead attribute the experiences to "deception, [[suggestibility]] (fantasy-proneness, hypnotizability, [[false-memory syndrome]]), personality, sleep phenomena, [[psychopathology]], [[psychodynamics]] [and] environmental factors."<ref name="Appelle, 1996">{{cite journal |last=Appelle |first=S. |date=1996 |title=The abduction experience: A critical evaluation of theory and evidence |journal=Journal of UFO Studies |volume=6 |pages=29–78 |url=http://citeseer.uark.edu:8080/citeseerx/viewdoc/summary;jsessionid=2A16D66678FEE5E1D8806E76066C47E6?doi=10.1.1.127.1853}}</ref> Skeptic Robert Sheaffer also sees similarity between the aliens depicted in early science fiction films, in particular, ''[[Invaders from Mars (1953 film)|Invaders From Mars]]'', and those reported to have actually abducted people.<ref name="skepticalperspective" /> The first alien abduction claim to be widely publicized was the [[Betty and Barney Hill abduction]] in 1961,<ref name=time>{{cite news |title=Testament for Believers |url=http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,828455,00.html |quote=On the night of Sept. 19, 1961, Barney Hill and his wife Betty were driving home to Portsmouth, N.H., after a holiday in Montreal. A brilliant waxing moon sailed through a cloudless and star-fretted sky. As the Hills watched, first idly and then in terrified astonishment, one of the stars detached itself Tom the firmament and came down to earth—so near that the Hills could see it was no star.  |work=[[Time (magazine)|Time]] |date=November 18, 1966 |accessdate=2008-07-30 }}</ref> which featured diminutive, large-eyed beings who wore military-style uniforms.

==Alleged motivations==
{| class="wikitable" align="right" width="40%"
|-
! colspan="4" align="center" |'''Entities Reported in a Survey of 203 of pre-1985 Abduction Claims'''<ref name="varietyofabductionbeings">Bullard, Thomas E. "The Variety of Abduction Beings." In: Pritchard, Andrea & Pritchard, David E. & Mack, John E. & Kasey, Pam & Yapp, Claudia. ''Alien Discussions: Proceedings of the Abduction Study Conference''. Cambridge: North Cambridge Press. Pp. 90-91.</ref>
|-
! Type
! Description
! Number of Reports
|-
| Short Humanoids.
| Includes [[grey alien#Height|short grey aliens]] and similar entities.
| 51
|-
| Average (Human) Height Humanoids
| Includes [[grey alien#Height|tall grey aliens]] and similar entities.
| 25
|-
| Tall Humanoids
| Beings similar to, but much taller than a normal human. Considered an atypical abduction category.
| 23
|-
| Mummy-like
| Beings that resemble the reanimated [[mummies]] of horror movies.
| 5
|-
| Miscellaneous Humanoids
| Includes [[reptoids]], [[hairy dwarves]] and others.
| 33
|-
| Human-like
| Includes [[Nordic aliens|Nordics]] (also known as Orions). Possibly Annunaki and similar entities.
| 52
|-
| Non-human
| Bullard described them as "Monstrous" and resembling [[science fiction]] creations.
| 14
|-
|}
Experiencers sometimes claim to have been given information regarding the motivations and goals underlying the bizarre procedures of the abduction event by their alleged abductors. Dr. John G. Miller says that in the cases he's studied, abductees report that when they ask their captors why the invasive and humiliating medical procedures are being performed on them, the entity will often express sentiments like "We have the right to do this."<ref name="medicaldiff" />

Author and UFOlogist Jenny Randles conducted a study focused on the motivations given by the abductors for the abduction phenomenon to alleged experiencers.<ref name="whyaretheydoingthis">Randles, Jenny. "Why are They Doing This?" In: Pritchard, Andrea & Pritchard, David E. & Mack, John E. & Kasey, Pam & Yapp, Claudia. ''Alien Discussions: Proceedings of the Abduction Study Conference''. Cambridge: North Cambridge Press. Pp. 69-70.</ref> Her study sampled about 50 abduction claims and found that in about 60% of the alleged cases, the abductors had offered the experiencer insight into their motivations for performing the abduction.<ref name="whyaretheydoingthis" /> She found that similar motivations were reported by abduction claimants irrespective of whether or not memories of the event were assisted by hypnosis.<ref name="whyaretheydoingthis" />

Randles says that the reported motivation formed a loose narrative centered on long term surveillance and interaction.<ref name="whyaretheydoingthis" /> The entities target certain individuals for some unique quality and abduct them repeatedly. During the abductions information is supposedly being subconsciously implanted to be "activated" by the entities at some later time.<ref name="whyaretheydoingthis" /> This time is sometimes claimed to correspond to some major change on earth that the entities desire to assist us in dealing with.<ref name="whyaretheydoingthis" /> She notes that different types of reported entities are said to have differing motivations, with the "Nordic" type being more benevolent than the "Grays."<ref name="whyaretheydoingthis" />

==Types==
<!-- Move the table down here when there is enough text to prevent it from interfering with the table in the section below. -->
Sometimes a single abduction claim will report multiple types of entities appearing to work together cooperatively.<ref name="varietyofabductionbeings" />

===Brazilian types===
{| class="wikitable" align="center" width="100%"
|-
! colspan="4" align="center" |'''Claudier Covo's Brazilian Alien Typology (based on a study of 138 alleged abductions)'''<ref name="brazilabductions">Moura, Gilda. "The Abduction Phenomenon in Brazil." In: Pritchard, Andrea & Pritchard, David E. & Mack, John E. & Kasey, Pam & Yapp, Claudia. ''Alien Discussions: Proceedings of the Abduction Study Conference''. Cambridge: North Cambridge Press. Pp. 186-190.</ref>
|-
! Type
! Description
! Percentage
|-
| Alpha
| Humanoids 0.8 to 1.4 meters tall.
| 67%
|-
| Beta
| Human-like beings 1.4 to 2 meters tall. 
| 19%
|-
| Gamma
| Human-like beings more than 2 meters tall. 
| 8%
|-
| Delta
| Animals, robots, etc.
| 3%
|-
| Omega
| Energy beings.
| 2%
|-
| Sigma
| Very short beings about 0.15 meters tall.
| 1%
|-
|}

==Reported technology==

===Weapon===
According to [[Nick Pope (journalist)|Nick Pope]]'s book ''[[The Uninvited (book)|The Uninvited]]'', the [[grey alien]]s use a device that is black, cylindrical, is the size of a US Number 2 pencil, has a bluish light on one end. It is used as a weapon on combative abductees to make them more compliant, by numbing the will. It looks like a ''[[Star Trek]]'' "phaser" being fired, only that a bluish-white beam is being fired at the combative abductee.

===Medical===
[[Linda Moulton Howe]] reported on a pencil-sized cylindrical device with a light on one end that has been independently reported in at least two alleged abductions.<ref name="panelonculture" /> The device is apparently used in a manner analogous to a surgical scalpel by the alleged abductors.<ref name="panelonculture" /> One alleged abductee claimed that when the device was used, the chest opened bloodlessly in "slow motion," and compared it to watching a flower blossom in time lapse photography. The claimant further described the device as "opening the body with sound."<ref name="panelonculture">Hall, Dick & Randles, Jenny & Basterfield, Keith & Moura, Gilda. "Panel on Cross Cultural Patterns in Abductions." In: Pritchard, Andrea & Pritchard, David E. & Mack, John E. & Kasey, Pam & Yapp, Claudia. ''Alien Discussions: Proceedings of the Abduction Study Conference''. Cambridge: North Cambridge Press. Pp. 193-195.</ref>

==Plausibility and veracity==

===Hypnosis as an influence on abductor descriptions===
Regarding the various types of reported abducting beings, folklorist and abduction researcher Thomas E. Bullard says "The small showing for monstrous types and the fact that they concentrate in less reliable cases should disappoint skeptics who look for the origin of abductions in the influence of Hollywood. Nothing like the profusion of imaginative screen aliens appears in the abduction literature."<ref name="varietyofabductionbeings" />

Bullard, in something of a concession to skeptics, has noted that the presence or absence of hypnosis as a method for memory retrieval in abduction claimants seems to affect descriptions of the abductors themselves.<ref name="varietyofabductionbeings" /> Hypnotically-assisted recall is more likely to produce descriptions of the "standard" Grey humanoid while cases where hypnosis was ''not'' used "include more variety."<ref name="varietyofabductionbeings" /> However, rather than take a firmly skeptical position based on this observation, Bullard says "Whether hypnosis shapes and implants memories, or breaks through a surface screen memory to reveal the true appearance of the beings, remains a question in need of resolution."<ref name="varietyofabductionbeings" />

===Geography and culture as influences on abductor descriptions===
Although proponents have argued that there is a core narrative consistent across abduction claims, there is little doubt that variation occurs in the details of reports across cultures and geographic boundaries. The biology and attitudes of the abductors are points of drastic divergence between the home countries of different abduction claimants.<ref name="skepticalperspective">Sheaffer, Robert. "A Skeptical Perspective on UFO Abductions." In: Pritchard, Andrea & Pritchard, David E. & Mack, John E. & Kasey, Pam & Yapp, Claudia. ''Alien Discussions: Proceedings of the Abduction Study Conference''. Cambridge: North Cambridge Press. Pp. 382-388.</ref> Robert Sheaffer observes:

<blockquote>
"In North America large-headed gray aliens predominate, while in Britain abduction aliens are usually tall, blond, and Nordic, and South America tends toward more bizarre creatures, including hairy monsters."<ref name="skepticalperspective" />
</blockquote>

As noted above, the so-called [[grey alien]]s are most popularly associated with abduction reports. Again, however, this seems to be a North American paradigm best-known since the 1980s. On the contrary, some researchers (such as [[Kevin D. Randle]] in his 1997 book, ''Faces Of The Visitors: An Illustrated Reference To Alien Contact'') have noted a vast variety of alleged creatures have been reported in abduction accounts worldwide, with some of the alleged creatures not even described as [[humanoid]].

Although in North America, "aliens" of extraterrestrial origin are the most commonly blamed in these incidents, in Europe and other parts of the world, the beings involved are as often perceived to be [[demonic possession|demonic]] or [[supernatural|spiritual]] in origin.{{Citation needed|date=August 2008}} Common elements in the descriptions of abductions and visitations vary by region and local culture, with only a very few elements being the same worldwide, such as an otherworldly sensation, reports of [[mind control]], [[repressed memory|repressed memories]] being rediscovered, and [[human sexuality|sexual experiences]]. These elements, and many aspects of what witnesses describe, are very common in old stories of encounters with [[fairy|faeries]], [[demon]]s, and other [[magic (paranormal)|magical]] creatures.

In Brazil, there are strong links between the abduction phenomenon and [[spiritist]] traditions.<ref name="brazilabductions" /> Brazilian abduction researcher Gilda Moura reports that following an increase in spiritism in the 1980s, there was a surge in the popularity of "Spiritist Centers" where paranormal healings occurred that "involv[ed] actual surgical cutting".<ref name="brazilabductions" />

These kinds of centers first appeared in the 1950s where claims of medical practitioners operating out "of a space laboratory" spread among the Brazilian population, especially among the spiritist community.<ref name="brazilabductions" /> Descriptions of these alleged healing experiences share much common imagery with the alien abduction and medical examinations reported in the anglophone world.<ref name="brazilabductions" /> Moura notes that the critical difference between Brazilian reports of spiritual space surgeons and "typical" abductions is that Brazilians perceive the phenomenon as "pleasant and spiritual" while abductees report "terror."<ref name="brazilabductions" />

====Science fiction as an influence====
Sheaffer also sees similarity between the aliens depicted in early science fiction films, in particular, ''[[Invaders from Mars (1953 film)|Invaders From Mars]]'', and those reported to have actually abducted people.<ref name="skepticalperspective" /> Commonalities exist in the appearances, behavior, technology and societies of fictional and allegedly real abductors.<ref name="skepticalperspective" /> Furthermore, the contents and structure of the "abduction narrative" as outlined by researchers like Nyman and Bullard was already established in fictional form by 1930 in a [[Buck Rogers]] strip.<ref name="skepticalperspective" />

However, Bullard does not see evidence for influence on abduction claimants from science fiction sources.<ref name="varietyofabductionbeings" />

==See also==

* [[Alien abduction]]
* [[Alien abduction claimants]]

==References==
{{Reflist|30em}}

[[Category:Alien abduction phenomenon|Entities]]
[[Category:Alleged UFO-related entities]]