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‘Beam me up’: Odd experiences may not be alien after all

As viewers, we have become familiar with them: the boy who befriended an extraterrestrial in E.T., the man who had a transformational alien experience in Close Encounters of the Third Kind and the investigators of alien abductions on The X-Files.

But Brockport psychology professor Stuart Appelle has an even more up-close-and-personal familiarity with people who believe they have had experiences with aliens. He has interviewed them, hypnotized them, studied them and written about them. Those who contact him sometimes have credibility; he’s been approached by family and friends with stories to tell.

You are now entering The Twilight Zone ...

Our story begins when Appelle, a member of UUP who earned a Ph.D. in experimental psychology, specializing in perception and sensation consciousness. He focused on optical illusions and reports of unidentified flying objects and abduction.

Over the years, Appelle, joined by a clinical psychologist, hypnotized 20 people who believe they were abducted. They often remembered only fragments, so Appelle interviewed and hypnotized them to see if they had additional memories. Most reported that the aliens were indifferent, while others said that sometimes the aliens subjected them to psychological and physical probing that occasionally included rape and/or surgery.

Revealing the experience while under hypnosis can be traumatic.

“They’re usually just bawling their eyes out,” Appelle said.

Skeptics might take note that, in a 1997 Time/CNN poll, 22 percent of the respondents said they believed space aliens have visited the earth.

Like someone investigating a new species, Appelle probes research on the subject. Along with UUPer Steven Jay Lynn of SUNY Binghamton and Leonard Newman of the University of Illinois at Chicago, Appelle authored a chapter of a book published by the American Psychological Association entitled “Varieties of Anomalous Experience: Examining the Scientific Evidence.”

In the chapter, “Alien Abduction Experiences,” Appelle analyzed studies about psychic sensitivities, boundary-deficit personalities and sleep problems as possible causes for the outer space experiences.

However, the authors report that clinical examination and standardized tests have shown that, “as a group, abduction ‘experients’ are not different from the general population in terms of psychopathology prevalence.” A recent Roper survey reported that about a million people in the United States believe they have been abducted by aliens. Most insist on anonymity and are embarrassed, Appelle said. Many remember seeing an alien next to their bed, but when they next woke up it was morning.

The professor said he eventually stopped hypnotizing people because he was not seeing anything new being revealed.

He was also concerned as to whether hypnosis retrieves memories, creates them or embellishes them. His curiosity, though, still thrives.

“I’d like to find out what’s causing it,” he said. “I would like to see more research on different kinds of sleep phenomena and cultural influences.”

So, are the stories real?

“I think it’s possible,” Appelle concluded. “I’m not sympathetic to the idea that it’s impossible.”

— Liza Frenette