Abducted: How People Come to Believe They Were Kidnapped by Aliens

Susan A. Clancy

Harvard University Press, Jul 1, 2009 - Psychology - 192 pages

They are tiny. They are tall. They are gray. They are green. They survey our world with enormous glowing eyes. To conduct their shocking experiments, they creep in at night to carry humans off to their spaceships. Yet there is no evidence that they exist at all. So how could anyone believe he or she was abducted by aliens? Or want to believe it?

To answer these questions, psychologist Susan Clancy interviewed and evaluated "abductees"--old and young, male and female, religious and agnostic. She listened closely to their stories--how they struggled to explain something strange in their remembered experience, how abduction seemed plausible, and how, having suspected abduction, they began to recollect it, aided by suggestion and hypnosis.

Clancy argues that abductees are sane and intelligent people who have unwittingly created vivid false memories from a toxic mix of nightmares, culturally available texts (abduction reports began only after stories of extraterrestrials appeared in films and on TV), and a powerful drive for meaning that science is unable to satisfy. For them, otherworldly terror can become a transforming, even inspiring experience. "Being abducted," writes Clancy, "may be a baptism in the new religion of this millennium." This book is not only a subtle exploration of the workings of memory, but a sensitive inquiry into the nature of belief.

Contents

• How Do You Wind Up Studying Aliens?: 11
• How Do People Come To Believe They Were Abducted By Aliens?: 30
• Why Do I Have Memories If It Didnt Happen?: 54
• Why Are Abduction Stories So Consistent?: 81
• Who Gets Abducted?: 106
• If It Didnt Happen Why Would Want To Believe It Did?: 137
• Notes: 157
• Index: 171

Popular passages

Page 84 - For those atoms, which are of such nature that a world could be created out of them or made by them, have not been used up either on one world or on a limited number of worlds, nor again on...‎

Page 152 - In his hands I saw a great golden spear, and at the iron tip there appeared to be a point of fire. This he plunged into my heart several times so that it penetrated to my entrails. When he pulled it out, I felt that he took them with it, and left me utterly consumed by the great love of God. The pain was so severe that it made me utter several moans. The sweetness caused by this intense pain is so extreme that one cannot possibly wish it to cease, nor is one's soul then content with anything but...‎

Page 152 - ... golden spear, and at the iron tip there appeared to be a point of fire. This he plunged into my heart several times so that it penetrated to my entrails. When he pulled it out, I felt that he took them with it, and left me utterly consumed by the great love of God. The pain was so severe that it made me utter several moans. The sweetness caused by this intense pain is so extreme that one cannot possibly wish it to cease, nor is one's soul then content with anything but God. This is not a physical,...‎

Page 89 - To look at the man and to listen to his story you had an immediate urge to believe him. Maybe it was his appearance. He was dressed in well worn, but neat, overalls. He had slightly graying hair and the most honest pair of eyes I've ever seen. Or maybe it was the way he told his story. He spoke softly and naively, almost pathetically, giving the impression that "most people think I'm crazy, but honestly, I'm really not.‎

Page 78 - The air was filled with a big noise, and I thought it had engulfed me. I have really touched God. He came into me myself; yes, God exists, I cried, and I don't remember anything else.‎

Page 85 - Rather than think that so many stars and parts of the heavens are uninhabited and that this earth of ours alone is peopled — and that with beings perhaps of an inferior type — we will suppose that in every region there are inhabitants, differing in nature by rank and all owing their origin to God, who is the center and circumference of all stellar regions.‎

Page 85 - THE Pythagoreans say, that the moon appears to us terraneous, by reason it is inhabited as our earth is, and in it there are animals of a larger size and plants of a rarer beauty than our globe affords...‎

Page 86 - Entretiens sur la pluralite des mondes (Conversations on the Plurality of Worlds...‎

Page 86 - It is possible," he exclaimed, "that among the first contents of such a message may be detailed prescriptions for the avoidance of technological disaster, for a passage through adolescence to maturity.‎

About the author

Susan A. Clancy is a postdoctoral fellow in psychology at Harvard University and a Visiting Professor at INCAE, the Central American Institute for Business Administration.

Bibliographic information

• Title: Abducted: How People Come to Believe They Were Kidnapped by Aliens
• Author: Susan A. Clancy
• Edition: revised
• Publisher: Harvard University Press, 2009
• ISBN: 0674029577, 9780674029576
• Length: 192 pages
• Subjects: Psychology / Cognitive Psychology & Cognition; Psychology / Hypnotism; Psychology / Social Psychology