Alien Abduction Body Marks: A Phenomenological Connection Between UFOs and Alien Dreams
Daniel Rekshan
School of Integral Noetic Science, California Institute for Human Science
INS 790: Phenomenology of UAP
Dr. Kimberly Engles
June 14, 2024
How Did UFO Abduction Syndrome Authors Connect Abduction Testimony with UFOs?
How did UFO Abduction Syndrome (UAS) authors (Mack et al., 1992) connect abduction testimony with UFOs? This paper explores the application of phenomenology to the research topic of alien abduction. The mythology of UFOs and alien abduction involves the notion that UFOs are alien spacecraft, which contain technologically advanced occupants who kidnap humans, on which to perform medical or scientific procedures (Bullard, 2010). However, the mythology necessitates several levels of extraordinary claims about cover-ups and secrecy such as alien mind control that causes abductees to forget their experiences or the secret government programs that threaten abductees to not speak about their testimony (Vallee, 1977). Yet, many credible witnesses and researchers testify that there is a real connection between dreamlike abduction narratives and alien spacecraft experienced as UFOs (Mack, 1994). How and why did the abduction researchers make the conclusion that abduction testimony supports the physical ET hypothesis of alien abduction, thereby connecting the dreamlike subjective testimony of alien encounters with objectively witnessed UFOs?
This paper is an essay that argues for the use of the phenomenological method to address research questions regarding the connection of alien abduction testimony with UFOs. My thesis is that the method, particularly with the Husserlian attitude described by Sokolowski (1999), is a powerful research tool to describe how people connect UFOs with alien encounters. First, this essay will present a literature review of alien abduction research. Next, the basic process and concepts of the phenomenological method will be described. The method will be applied to a case study involving strange body marks documented by Dr. Karla Turner, the abduction experiencer/researcher who concluded that aliens caused the marks and later revised that conclusion. Finally, the paper will conclude with a summary of the strengths and weaknesses of the phenomenological method applied to the question, how are UFOs and aliens connected?
When I have put forward the claim that alien abduction is defined by dreams and hypnosis, some contemporary experiencers and researchers have pushed back, suggesting that abduction is real and is supported by “conscious recall” of abduction events and physical evidence including body marks. I will respond to this argument with a literature review that demonstrates abduction was defined in terms of hypnosis and dreams. I will also use the phenomenological method to observe that consciously recalled abductions often involve similar characteristics to sleep paralysis and dreams, like bedtime settings, sensations of vibrations, paralysis of bodies, and disruption of consciousness and memory.
Phenomenology can help us make lasting observations, despite shifting UFO/UAP jargon and hypotheses. Contemporary conversations about alien abduction seem to occur in new jargon involving terms like non-human intelligence (NHI) instead of alien or ET, unidentified aerial phenomenon (UAP) instead of UFO or spacecraft, and experiencer instead of abductee. Additionally, emerging awareness adds complexity to our analysis, such as that alien abductions may be consciousness-based, as one of many contact modalities (Hernandez et al., 2018) similar to shamanism or NDEs (Gackenback, 1989; Ring, 1992; Mack, 1994 and 1999). Phenomenology will enable us to study the phenomena underlying the various terms to record the data of experience, rather than an interpretation from the experiencer or researcher, although those are valuable as well. Therefore, the application of phenomenology to UAP studies may help us describe how UFOs became associated with alien encounters.
UFO Abduction Syndrome is the Most Influential Definition of Alien Abduction and Involves Dreams and Hypnosis
If abduction is defined in terms of dreams and hypnosis, then phenomenology is an appropriate research method because dreams and hypnosis are subjective and intersubjective events, which phenomenology excels at describing. The fact that alien abductions are defined in terms of dreams and hypnosis may be demonstrated through at least two streams of literary connections. I argue that the most influential definition of alien abduction occurred in the 1992 Unusual Personal Experiences booklet, which introduced the UFO Abduction Syndrome as an interpretation of a survey conducted by the Roper Organization on the prevalence of 10 indicators of the syndrome. This document demonstrates that there was a strong cultural expectation that alien abduction tales provided direct insight into the world of the UFO and their occupants. The first lines of the abstract of the UFO Abduction Syndrome defined abduction in terms of “disturbing dreams, sleep disturbances and imagery related to the abduction experience”, the memories of which “may be as unacceptable to the subject or therapist” (p. 9) .
My first argument for this definition’s influence is derived from scholarly literature review. A recent definition of alien abduction that was reviewed by the American Psychological Association (APA) comes from the Varieties of Anomalous Experiences textbook, in which long-time academic abduction researchers (Appelle et al., 2014) referenced the UFO Abduction Syndrome as their first and only definition of abduction in their introduction. UAS was obviously influenced by Bullard’s 1987 folklore analysis and Hopkins’ 1981 best-seller Missing Time. It influenced future definitions of abduction, as well as our understanding of UFOs as alien spacecraft. Both Jacobs and Mack used the definition to introduce their research and books (Jacobs, 1993; OWN, 2019). Bullard (2010) suggested that alien abduction concepts achieved mainstream cultural saturation around 1997, as demonstrated by the success of Independence Day and Men in Black movies, which involved core abduction/UFO mythologies and were national blockbusters. Therefore, we may consider the expression of UAS in Unusual Personal Experiences to be a crucial definition for the rise of alien abduction testimony in the 1990s and, as we are exploring, the connection between subjectively experienced alien encounters and objectively documented UFO sightings.
My second argument that the 1992 definition of UAS is the most influential is derived from the observation of Bigelow’s role in publishing Unusual Personal Experiences and contemporary UAP disclosure narratives. For example, he ran the recent government funded UAP study program, which was written about in the 2017 New York Times article that many credit for legitimizing UAP studies (Cooper et al., 2021). Bigelow was also the source of the Kona Blue proposed secret UAP crash retrieval program (AARO, 2024). While it is outside the scope of this essay, it may be argued that Bigelow’s activities touch every part of the UFO/abduction myth in contemporary UAP disclosure narratives and, therefore, may be considered a cause of those myths. Bigelow funded the publication of Unusual Personal Experiences, its mailing to 100k mental health workers, and a series of conferences that propagated the definition to mental health professionals (Mack et al., 2024). He repeated the poll in 1998 and shared his findings with Mack (Bigelow, 1998). On the Joe Rogan podcast (PowerfulJRE, 2021), Bigelow admitted that he was inspired by his dreams of little men, which he connected with UAS through the work of Mack, Hopkins, and Jacobs.
It should now be clear that the definition of the UFO Abduction Syndrome in Unusual Personal Experiences may be considered as representative of the major 1990s alien abduction researchers (Hopkins, Jacobs, Mack, Bigelow, etc). Its very name may be a clue as to why and how objectively documented UFOs have come to be seen as alien spacecraft, despite the lack of objective evidence for the connection. A major reason that UFOs are associated with alien encounters may be that credible people have reported the connection to abduction researchers, who then publicized the connection to the mental health community and mass media, which in turn crystalised the mythology in collective imagination. There appears to be both a real encounter phenomenon occurring involving light UAPs or orbs and dreams that have anomalous physical effects, which is imagined as space alien abduction in popular media. Therefore, a phenomenological analysis of abduction researchers’ judgements regarding the dreamlike nature of abduction testimony should reveal why some people conclude that UFOs are alien spacecraft.
Phenomenological Method Applied to UAP Studies
We may begin to apply the phenomenological method to the topic of UAP studies and the connection of UFOs to dreamlike alien encounters. Phenomenology is a philosophical discipline that was developed by Husserl, Sartre, Merleu-Ponty, and others. It was concisely introduced by Sokolowski (1999). He described phenomenology mostly in terms derived from Husserl (Sokolowski , 1999, p. 4), whose key insight was that consciousness is experienced as consciousness of something, which was termed intentionality. In the language of phenomenology, intentionality is a type of conscious relation with an object of consciousness, respectively called noesis and noema. Take the visual perception of an apple for example, the act of visual perception is the noesis or intentionality, while the apple is the noema or object of consciousness. In addition to specialized language, phenomenology includes a method based on the phenomenological or transcendental attitude. This attitude is used to examine the contents of consciousness without making judgements about the world in a process called bracketing.
Phenomenology describes how consciousness moves from pure experience in sensation to an intersubjective world defined in part by shared concepts of the world, which involve making categorial judgements about the object of experience informed by the process of eidetic intuition, which relates to the essence or form of the object (Sokolwoski, 1999). An imagined cube is a typical example of an object of experience. One perceives only some sides of the cube at a time, but can associate it with a model of that cube in the mind, which is the process of categorial thinking or judging. The ability to associate the visual perception of a side of the cube with a model of the cube relies upon past experiences of cubes, which is synthesized in the process of eidetic intuition that generates an understanding of the species or class of thing. If another person views the cube, we may have an intersubjective experience with them in a shared lifeworld, in which we may both acknowledge the reality of the cube rather than the mere visual sensation of skewed rectangles. The intersubjective event has an impact on our experience of self, agency, the world, and truth as explored by many phenomenologists such as Sartre (1943).
Phenomenology acknowledges multiple modes of truth and ways of evidencing them, which is the process of demonstrating the truth of claims that are not immediately apparent. The truth of correctness regards truths of propositional claims like “Zeta Reticulean aliens abducted Betty and Barney Hill”. The truth of disclosure regards states of affairs such as direct testimonies or remembrance from the Hills. Alien abduction claims are complex because they involve direct phenomenological data like testimonies from interviews or hypnosis (the dream of aliens), while also involving indirect modes of knowing based upon established hypotheses for those experiences (the claim that the dream was not a dream, aliens are real, and UFOs are spacecraft).
The interaction between the abductee and the therapist/researcher may be described as an intersubjective event that confirms or develops an eidetic intuition of alien abduction, which in turn defines their shared lifeworld. The activity of testifying to alien abduction shifts the entire narrative from truth of disclosure, involving states of affairs like “I remember a light and a dream of a being”, to truth of correctness, involving the appropriateness of claims like “the light contained aliens who kidnapped me and controlled my mind so that I forgot them and had strange dreams”. After affirming the eidetic intuition of alien abduction, the experiencer-hypnotist pair affirm their shared lifeworld, in which the government is hiding the fact that mind-controlling aliens abduct people. The additional proposition about government cover-ups may be necessary to prevent cognitive dissonance by explaining why there is no physical evidence of the aliens or their spacecraft, which were subjectively experienced as dreamlike, but deemed to be objectively real by the UFO Abduction Syndrome authors.
One of the major strengths of phenomenology is that it gives us the ability to discern between raw data from the experiencers and interpretation from the researchers. Skeptics often reject abduction testimony because they find that the alien abduction hypothesis is hard to accept given the precedent of sleep paralysis and hypnagogic hallucinations (Blackmore, 1998). Ring (1992), along with his characterization of Devereux, may provide another nonskeptical perspective on abduction. They suggested that the event involved real experiences that occur within an imaginal realm, which is experienced through consciousness and is real in its own right even though it has imagined elements. While they acknowledged the authenticity and reality of abductee testimony, they offered a hypothesis that was primarily imaginal and did not necessarily involve physical spacecraft, although they considered anomalous physical events (Ring, 1992).
Dreams and Hypnosis May Connect Alien Encounters with UAPs
Now that we have introduced most of the concepts of Husserlian phenomenology, we may address the claim that abductions are not dreamlike because they involve “conscious recall” of alien abduction. It seems that credulous abduction researchers sought to distance themselves from controversies related to hypnosis surrounding the Myth of Repressed Memory (Loftus and Ketcham, 1994). Mack (1994 and 1999) introduced his process as light relaxation based on holotropic breathwork. The FREE Survey rejected testimony derived from hypnosis or dreams (Hernandez et al., 2018). Marden (2019), the Hills’ niece and abduction researcher, advocated for the veridicality of abduction narratives based on conscious recall. However, when subject to phenomenological analysis, it appears that consciously recalled abductions also involve elements that are characteristic of sleep paralysis or dreams such as being paralyzed by entities, vibratory sensations, and breaks in the stream of consciousness. The phenomenological method could be used to compare the characteristics of consciously recalled abductions with the precedents of dream-reality confusion, false awakening, OBE, and sleep paralysis.
One may raise the question if these encounters may be explained by dream-reality confusion (see Rassin et al., 2001) and sleep paralysis (see Cheyne et al., 1999). All of the abduction researchers and many of their abductee subjects have asked the question themselves. Interestingly, Mack presented a subject who claimed conscious recall, but their story involved a bedtime encounter with paralyzing beings and breaks in consciousness (OWN, 2019). The first abduction book of each major researcher (Hopkins, 1981; Turner, 1992; Jacobs, 1993; Mack, 1994; Marden, 2019) involved disambiguation with dreams and sleep paralysis, along with the acknowledgement that hypnosis could lead to problematic claims. All the authors asserted or implied that they could discern between reality and dream, false memory, or fantasy. Therefore, we must consider the possibility that some consciously-recalled abductions may be explained as dream-reality confusion involving special dream phenomena with anomalous physical effects.
How did the 1990s abduction researchers consider the possibility that abductions could be dreams, sleep paralysis, hypnagogic hallucinations, or false memories? Table 1 contains a list of intentionalities that are associated with dreaming, which informed my casual surveys of abduction researchers to ascertain the prevalence of these intentionalities in their research. I have found that most credulous researchers begin their study with dreamlike and fragmentary memories that are explored through hypnosis and are judged to be veridical testimonies of real events involving aliens, not dreams or sleep paralysis. Some researchers reserve final judgment about the nature of the aliens, whether they are physical or spiritual, and move to notably open perspectives like Mack and Turner. As a means to judge the scientific quality of their discernment, I counted their scholarly references in general, their sleep/dream science references, and found examples of well-cited scientific works (see Gackenback, 1989 or Baker 1990). Table 2 demonstrates that the major abduction writers a) quoted from scholarly literature, b) wrote on dreams, and c) did not reference relevant and available dream studies or sleep science literature.
We now arrive at one answer to the question, why do people associate aliens with UFOs? Vivid and strange dreams of strange entities are often reported in association with UFO encounters (Hopkins, 1981; Mack et al., 1992; Turner, 1992; Jacobs, 1993; Mack, 1994; Marden, 2019). Exploring these dreams through hypnosis or story-telling leads to abduction testimony that is associated with UFO sightings. Even though these encounters may be phenomenologically similar to angel (Pasulka, 2019) or fairy encounters (Vallee, 1969), the experiencer reports their stories to the abduction researcher and thereby establishes the connection between UFOs, dreams, and abductions. Therefore, it seems that people see UFOs, have dreams of aliens, and report it to researchers who believe them, investigate the phenomenon, and report their findings.
Body Marks May Be The Physical Link Between Dreams and UFOs
All of the UFO abduction researchers discerned that their subjects’ testimonies were real events and not sleep paralysis, hallucinations, or dreams. All the researchers used body marks as evidence for the abduction event, even though many did not publish documentation of their body mark subjects or later became skeptical of the marks. They initially assumed that a physical cause was needed to explain the anomalous physical event, therefore the physical alien abduction narrative seemed more reasonable than sleep paralysis. However, there are many cases of psychosomatic marks such as stigmata or those that appear in association with dreams or shamanism (Shenefelt and Shenefelt, 2014). Therefore, the mark may have a psychological cause, for which there is no need to posit physical space aliens and government conspiracies, although it is not a reason to discount abduction testimonies as unreal.
An analysis Dr. Karla Turner’s experience may demonstrate the strengths of the phenomenological method applied to UAP studies. Turner became interested in abductions after encountering Hopkins’ Missing Time (1981). She and her family began to experience many indicators of abduction and ET encounters such as UFO sightings, missing time, strange dreams, and body marks. In her autobiographical book Into the Fringe, Turner (1992) considered the strange appearance of triangular body marks to be proof that a new type of alien, who were dreamed about by a family friend, were physically real beings capable of marking his body and controlling his mind (p. 89).
Her conclusions in Into the Fringe were aligned with the UAS authors, as supported by the fact that Carpenter endorsed her book. However, she updated her conclusions in the chapter Redefinition in her book Taken (1994), which told the story of several other abductees. She suggested that the aliens may not be aliens at all, but could be non-human intelligences that are capable of creating and controlling experiences that she called Virtual Reality Scenarios (VRS), which she associated with telepathic encounters with fantastic beings and “downloads” regarding the environment, math, or science (p. 12). Many of the characteristics she described in these scenarios are similar to shamanic dreams (Laughlin and Rock, 2014), such as encounters with fantastic beings, communications regarding environment, telepathy and prophecy, and entities who can enter and control dream states.
I described her journey in terms of noesis and noema (intentionality and object) using the phenomenological method in Tables 3 and 4. Table 3 describes Turner’s encounter with Hopkins’ work, experience of its indicators in her life (dreams, UFOs, and body marks), and her conclusions that aliens are responsible. Table 4 describes her research journey that redefined her conclusions from Into the Fringe. Her journey may reveal why some people associate alien spacecraft with UFOs. While her family experienced strange lights, dreams, and body marks, they had no direct memories or evidence of alien encounters. Rather, she deduced that their experiences must have been caused by aliens because of a ) her reading of popular abduction literature, b) vivid or strange dreams regarding aliens, and c) her engagement with hypnosis, both as an amateur hypnotist and as a subject. Interestingly, after Turner worked with other cases in response to her first book, she redefined her understanding of abduction and proposed that the abduction event may not be alien abduction in a literal sense, but may be caused NHI engaging a Virtual Reality Scenario that is experienced as an abduction but may actually involve another order of psychic technology (Turner, 1994, p. 12).
Conclusion
I have applied the phenomenological method to analyze abduction researchers’ judgements regarding the relationship of abduction experiences to UFOs. It appears that alien abductions are experienced and defined primarily in terms of dreamlike fragmentary memories involving aliens and spacecraft, which are sometimes used to support categorial judgements that alien mind control is a more appropriate hypothesis than dreams or sleep paralysis. The experiences were initially thought of as dreams, but then were contextualized through an intersubjective experience of hypnosis based upon the premise that alien mind control causes the dreamlike and fragmentary quality of the memories. In response to the argument that not all abduction involves hypnosis, I pointed out that the abduction researchers originally defined abduction in terms of hypnosis, therefore all abduction testimony, as opposed to other entity encounters like with angels or fairies, could be seen as a response to a hypnotic suggestion.
A major weakness of the method is that it requires specialized language that implies psychological understanding, but is not itself based upon contemporary science. Rather than test its validity through experimental science, phenomenology evidences its truth through demonstration in the traditions of philosophy. It is more descriptive than predictive, which means that it could support a scientific research plan while not being scientific in itself. Another weakness is that observations seem to involve multiple layers like memory, communication, subjective interpretation, and so on. Unlike sciences such as physics or neuroscience, phenomenology does not measure phenomena using objective instruments, rather it relies upon observation by researchers trained in its methods. Both these issues may be addressed by a mixed-method approach to research that integrates subjective and objective perspectives.
Phenomenology applied to UAP studies seems particularly strong in elucidating meaning and discovering patterns within subjective experiences and evaluating hypotheses. It enables us to speak about how the abductee experienced their abduction event and how a researcher interpreted, or possibly influenced, their testimony. For example, the method enabled us to notice the distinction between the initial reports of strange lights or dreams and the final judgment that the testimony exemplifies an abduction event. Comparing the UFO Abduction Syndrome authors’ journeys with Turner’s suggests that there may be a spectrum of development regarding the abduction phenomenon. Hopkins stands at one end of the spectrum suggesting that the event is primarily physical, Mack stands at the center suggesting that the event may lead to spirit or psyche, and Turner stands at the far end suggesting that the event may be primarily psychical.
In conclusion, how did UFO Abduction Syndrome authors connect abduction testimony with UFOs? Our phenomenological analysis of the researcher’s judgements revealed a pattern that involved the interpretation of dreamlike fragmentary memories as evidence for alien abduction, rather than dream or sleep paralysis. Their conclusions appeared to be based upon the authority of body marks as physical evidence and proximity to corroborated UFO sightings as social evidence, which satisfied criteria for objectivity. The interpretation of the memories as alien abduction regards the truth of correctness, such that the reality of the aliens are deduced rather than directly presented to consciousness through simple remembering, which would be a truth of disclosure. Turner’s journey from her naive acceptance of the UFO Abduction Syndrome to her sophisticated positing of the Virtual Reality Scenario suggests that our collective eidetic intuition of the alien abduction phenomena may shift as more research is performed. In other words, one reason that UFOs are imagined to be alien spacecraft is because the UFO Abduction Syndrome authors discerned that fragmentary memories of dreamlike encounters and hypnotic testimony about aliens abductors and their advanced spacecraft must be real because of objective witnessing of UFOs and puzzling body marks. However, this observation says more about humanity than about the mystery of the UAP.
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Tables
Table 1
Intentionalities and objects associated with dreamlike definition of abduction
| Noesis | Noema | Reference |
|---|---|---|
| Perceptions | Paralyzed body, awake mind, hypnagogic hallucinations, vibrations, real-feeling fantastic entities | Elements of UFO Abduction Syndrome (Mack et al., 1992) |
| Discernment | Of experience from sleep paralysis, e.g., “in bed, but knows the difference between this and sleep paralysis” | See Marden, 2019 |
| Retrospective discernment | Of bizarre nature of experience, which at the time felt normal or was not reflected upon. | See similarity between high strangeness (Vallee and Davis, 2005) and REM dream bizarreness (Colace, 2003) |
| Memory | Fragmentary and dreamlike that feel malleable that is more frequently remembered with fantasy-prone and absorbed people | See Nemeth, 2023 |
| Themes | Telepathy, prophecy, earth responsibility, fantastic beings | See Krippner and Faith, 2001 |
| Intersubjective | Involves descriptions of intersubjective interactions with entities who can control the experience (like screen memory or VRS) | Entering and controlling dreams states shared with real entities is a characteristic of shamanic dreaming (Laughlin and Rock, 2014) |
| Anomalous physical evidence | Body marks or trance evidence supporting reality of encounter | Similar to physical evidence for fairy or angel accounts (Vallee, 1969) or other paranormal events such as body marks (Laycock, 2012) |
Table 2
Survey of abduction literature and dream references
| Title | Author | Year | Dream | Topic References | Total References |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Missing Time | Hopkins | 1981 | 44 | 0 | 25 |
| Secret Life | Jacobs | 1991 | 35 | 0 | 35 |
| Abduction | Mack | 1994 | 163 | 1 | 77 |
| Interrupted Journey | Fuller | 1966 | 245 | 0 | 0 |
| Passport to Magonia | Vallee | 1969 | 17 | 0 | 107 |
| Unusual Personal Experiences | Mack, Hopkins, Jacobs, Carpenter, Bigelow | 1992 | 25 | 0 | 6 |
| Abducted | Clancy | 2005 | 22 | 7 | 120 |
| Extraterrestrial Contact | Marden | 2019 | 43 | 1 | 51 |
| Sleep Paralysis, Sexual Abuse, and Space Alien Abduction | McNally and Clancy | 2005 | 8 | 7 | 26 |
| Memory Illusion | Shaw | 2016 | 13 | 10 | 227 |
| Alien Abduction or Sleep Paralysis? | Marden | 2022 | 8 | 8 | 12 |
Note: The dream column represents the number of times the word “dream” was used in the book. The topic references column represents the number of references in endnotes, reference lists, or bibliographies to scholarly literature on sleep or dreams. The total references column represents the total number of scholarly references.
Table 3
Phenomenological analysis of Turner’s Into the Fringe (1992)
| Noesis | Noema | Page |
|---|---|---|
| Awareness | UFO Abduction Syndrome through Hopkins’ work | x |
| Belief | UFOs indicate alien presence | x |
| Belief | Aliens may abduct humans and wipe memories | x |
| Belief | Body marks may be evidence for abduction | x |
| Intersubjective | Hypnotizes husband to explore abductee identity | 6 |
| Perception | Strange zig-zag light | 40 |
| Instruction | Professional ET hypnotist instruction to scan for unusual body marks as evidence | 43 |
| Observation | Photographed triangle mark according to instruction | 54 |
| Observation | Friend shares story of alien dreams and marks | 89 |
| Categorial judgment | Marks are evidence of new aliens | 89 |
| Eidetic intuition | Body marks, dreams, UFO sightings, and regression hypnosis may be indicators of an alien abduction phenomena | 160 |
Table 2
Phenomenological analysis of Turner’s Taken (1994)
| Noesis | Noema | Page |
|---|---|---|
| Communication | From those who read Into the Fringe | 1 |
| Education | Into abduction research | 2 |
| Recognition | Patterns in abduction narratives | 4 |
| Recognition | Abduction may be real and mental, real and illusory | 5 |
| Investigation | Multiple cases that responded to Into the Fringe | 7 |
| Discernment | Regarding hypnosis, conscious recall, dreams, and reality | 8 |
| Eidetic intuition | Abduction event may be instance of Virtual Reality Scenario (VRS) | 10 |
| Intersubjective event | Three person even involving perception of light, helicopter, and entities associated with paralysis that was discovered to be experienced in different way upon comparison | 11 |
| Categorial judgment | VRS events are not dreams, rather they are the product of a physical/psychical technology that is real, which is rationalized as an extraordinary dream | 12 |
| Observation | VRS is associated with telepathic contact, prophecy, downloads regarding math, etc. | 12 |
| Observation | VRS is associated with anomalous phenomena like lights, electronic malfunction, etc. | 13 |
| Eidetic intuition | Body marks, dreams, UFO sightings, and regression hypnosis may be indicators of a VRS caused by nonhuman intelligence, which may or may not be aliens, but is not a dream | 13 |