Subtle Energies of Alien Abduction

Daniel Rekshan
School of Integral Noetic Science, California Institute for Human Science
INS 753: Subtle Energy Systems II
Dr. Sean Esbjörn-Hargens
March 17, 2024

What is alien abduction, why is it relevant, and how does it relate with subtle energy systems? Subtle energy systems refers to personal experiences that are known through subtle senses like intuition, imagination, spiritual vision, astral projection, and so on. We know about subtle energy systems through other worldly journeys, which Couliano (1991) noted are the subject of sacred texts across many cultures. Outside of sacred texts, we know about them through published literature and reports, such as through Monroe’s famous Journeys Out of Body trilogy. Monroe’s work defined the field and many out of body experience (OBE) writers reference his work, such as Leland’s Otherwhere (2018). Many researchers familiar with OBEs, sleep paralysis, and dreams suggest that exotic dreams states may explain most abduction reports (see Raduga et al., 2020; Gackenback, 1989;  Blackmore, 1998;  Leland, 2018). This paper examines the topic of alien abduction as an exotic state of consciousness like OBEs or sleep paralysis and will follow Couliano’s approach to treating the topic like a literary genre similar to dreams (1991, p 7). 

This paper is modeled as a research article with introduction, methods, results, discussion, and conclusion sections. I will introduce the topic of alien abduction and discuss its cultural relevance in this section. I will consider the topic from multiple subtle energy schools of thought, primarily as OBEs described by Leland (2018) and as spiritual literature described by Couliano (1991). I will look to the 1992 definition of the UFO Abduction Syndrome, published in the Unusual Personal Experiences booklet as the most relevant definition of alien abduction. The methods section will introduce the practice of content analysis and define my scope of inquiry. I used content analysis on around 200k dreams from the public web and academic databases to compare prevalence rates of words associated with the key indicators of UFO Abduction Syndrome. The analysis produced the figures section that organizes dozens of charts for the various dream categories that I examined. The results section documents my observations of the content analysis. The discussion section contextualizes the results with prevalence rates from the literature, while considering the topic from multiple subtle energy schools of thoughts and multiple person perspectives. Finally, the conclusion considers the possibility that alien abduction is primarily a subtle energy experience, rather than physical.

The correct attribution of alien abduction to either physical or psychical phenomenon is immensely important, although Esbjörn-Hargens (2020) has noted that many ET/NHI encounter narratives are ontologically indeterminate, suggesting that the ET/NHI may exist at multiple stations of a spectrum such as partly physical and partly psychical. There have been several recent congressional hearings regarding UAPs and Schumer proposed the UAP Disclosure Act of 2023 that contained explicit references to NHIs, UAPs, flying saucers, recovered craft, and biological evidence (Senate Democrats, 2023). This is a work of legislation seriously proposed based on the notion that the government holds alien bodies and flying saucers, from which the military-industrial complex is secretly harvesting advanced technology for profit. The act clearly was proposed in response to the UAP whistleblower Grusch, who has sworn under oath similar claims (Blumenthal and Kean, 2023). 

It is important to note that many subtle world experiencers like Leland, Sprangler, and Swedenborg observe that they have unique modes of perception. It suggests that there may be many different types of subtle experiences that could appear in radically different ways. For example, Leland (2018) noted that his unconscious expectations of OBEs, such as an expectation that nonphysical visitations are alien abductions, influenced his perception of the experience. He was able to shift the content of his experience by shifting his concept of them or “translation table” as he called it. Sprangler (2014) described how he perceived various subtle beings in different ways, for example he wrote that he perceived the Sidhe as if through the West and all other beings as if through the East. Similarly, Swedenborg (2014) described how he perceived visiting spirits through spatial relationships anchored in his body, such as seeing an entity 15 feet forward and toward the right. This suggests that there may be discernible patterns in the content of reports about the various phenomena and that there is a spectrum of modes through which subtle realms are perceived and experienced. Therefore, it may be hypothesized that alien abduction experiences may be a special type of subtle energy experience similar to sleep paralysis or OBE. In other words, some people may naturally perceive subtle energy experiences through concepts typical of alien abduction narratives. Just as false awakening dreams and the entities associated with sleep paralysis feel real in the same way as waking reality, yet are primarily subtle experiences, so too may alien abduction experiences feel real yet be subtle experiences.

If alien abduction may be explained as a subtle entity visitation phenomenon, then the lived experience of abductees must be honored as real and communicative, but not as evidence for the superficial narrative of ETs, flying saucers, and saving entire civilizations through genetic harvest or listening to their apocalyptic prophecies. This notion reflects the work of Vallée (1988) and Bullard (1987), who both observed the similarity of fairy and alien folklore. Just as we appreciate science-fiction movies, funny dreams at night, or our most sacred text, so too may we appreciate abduction narratives. Even if every abduction story or ET/NHI encounter narrative is explained away as urban legend, false memory hypnosis, fairy trick, or earth light, the narrative is meaningful in the same way as dreams. Therefore an examination of abduction, sleep paralysis, OBE, and dreams may reveal some themes that are meaningful in the same way as religious testimony or literature.

My literature review indicated that alien abduction studies shifted in the early 1990s. In 1981, Hopkins published his definitive book Missing Time. In 1987, Bullard published his folklore study of around 270 reports including Hopkins’s tales, defining the characteristics of the abduction phenomenon. In 1992, Hopkins, Jacobs, and Westrum published their definition of the UFO Abduction Syndrome in a clinical voice with therapy recommendations, which Mack introduced in the Unusual Personal Experiences booklet that Bigelow mailed to 100k mental health professionals (Mack et al., 1992). The authors used a public opinion poll of around 6k people regarding 11 indicators, five of which were key indicators for the UFO Abduction Syndrome:

• Nearly one adult in five has wakened up paralyzed with the sense of a strange figure or presence in the room. 
• Nearly one adult in eight has experienced a period of an hour or more in which he or she was apparently lost but could not remember why. 
• One adult in ten has felt the experience of actually flying through the air without knowing why or how. 
• One adult in twelve has seen unusual lights or balls of light in a room without understanding what was causing them. 
• One adult in twelve has discovered puzzling scars on his or her body without remembering how or where they were acquired. (Mack et al., 1992, p.14).

Many skeptics such as Klass (1993) and Blackmore (1998) pointed out that the indicators do not mention abduction and therefore may be explained through other means. In a repeated survey, Bigelow (1998) added an explicit question about abduction and received only 3 of around 2k reports. The authors of Unusual Personal Experiences appeared to be surprised by the prevalence rates of the indicators, which may have prompted their actions to bypass the normal science processes of literature review and peer review to propagate their findings directly to 100k mental health professionals. Regardless of interpretation, it appears that exotic and strange states of consciousness and/or supernatural encounters are surprisingly prevalent.

Rather than use abduction narratives to prove or disprove hypotheses, what if we simply observed them like an intertextual literary genre? This paper presents a comparison of dreams that contain words related to OBE, sleep paralysis, abduction, and luminous UAP encounters. My approach uses content analysis and natural language processing techniques developed in the analysis and interpretation of around 200k dreams from social media and academic databases. This paper aims to document my initial inquiry into the data using a semi-rigorous format to ensure that my inquiry is primarily descriptive and interpretive rather than conclusive. 

My analysis will confirm that exotic dream phenomena are surprisingly prevalent, similar to the Unusual Personal Experiences indicators. It appears that around 0.7% of dream reports mention false awakening and 1.6% mention ufo and aliens. People appear to dream of aliens with similar themes as noted by many abduction researchers, such as themes of disaster and kidnapping. The analysis classified around 4.5% of dreams as exotic, meaning they contained words related to telepathy, entity visitation, OBE, sleep paralysis, etc., which is around half of what Krippner and Faith reported in their 2001 sample of dreams. The analysis is difficult to compare with the Unusual Personal Experiences indicators because they report the percent of people who have experienced the indicator at least once, while the analysis presents the percent of dreams that contain specific words. However, lifetime prevalence rates from dream surveys indicate that 6.5% of people have dreams of an alien and 23% people have sensed a presence (Schredl et al., 2004).  It seems as if there is a real phenomenon of entity encounters that involves confusions about reality with discernable thematic patterns.

Methods

A standard approach to deriving meaning from collections of dreams is the process of content analysis (Schredl, 2010). The process involves counting the number of occurrences of an element within the narrative according to an established code manual, the most famous of which is the Hall / Van de Castle (HVDC) code manual, which was developed in the mid-20th century. Bulkeley and Domhoff (2010) demonstrated that a) content analysis may be used to accurately predict aspects of the dreamer’s waking life and b) computational methods may be more efficient than the standard labor-intensive multiple rater system standard associated with the HVDC. In a methodological appendix, Domhoff (n.d.) suggested that sample sizes of 50 may be sufficient for analysis, with an ideal sample size of around 125 dream reports to make statistically valid conclusions about infrequent dream elements. Given that UFO, visitation, and alien dreams are typical dream themes (see Schredl et al. 2004 and Krippner & Faith, 2001), it may be assumed that a sample of 50-125 dreams for each type may be sufficient for initial comparisons.  However, the analysis does not involve the statistical tests that Domhoff used because the purpose of this analysis is description and exploration, not hypothesis testing.

HVDC content analysis is not ideal for several reasons. First, the coding system was developed in the mid-20th century on undergraduate’s dreams, which is problematic (see Henrich et al., 2010), with explicit focus on topics like “penis envy” and “castration wish” that are clearly informed by psychodynamic theories and not the dreams themselves (Schredl, 2010). Second, the process is time-intensive because it requires multiple trained raters to read and code each dream (Schredl, 2010; Bulkeley & Domhoff, 2010). Finally, the system leads to tautological conclusions like the continuity hypothesis, which suggests that dreams are a continuation of waking life. For example, Fogli et al.’s (2020) analyzed 24k dreams using an automated coding system based on the HVDC to test hypotheses like “a war veteran’s dreams are characterized by negative emotions and aggression”. In contrast, it is impossible to make hypotheses about visitation phenomenon because all characters like monsters, angels, aliens, or fairies are classified as “imaginary”.

Many researchers have explored methods outside of the HVDC system. McNamera et al. (2019) explored content analysis using artificial intelligence. Yu (2022) explored automatic sentiment analysis to classify dream reports. Bulkeley and Graves (2018) explored the LIWC system, commonly used in social sciences outside of dream studies, to analyze dreams. It appears that most researchers strive to connect their analysis systems to the legacy of the HVDC system using similar methods as described by Bulkely and Domhoff (2010) in their application of automatic word searches to dream content. 

I have developed a system of automatic analysis over the course of ten years, recently in collaboration with the DreamWell mobile app team, that uses advanced word search techniques to provide descriptive analysis of a massive database of dreams. The system was the subject of my Master’s capstone project, three presentations to the International Association of the Study of Dreams conferences, and two research articles in preparation. My major collaborator is my brother, who was the statistician on several peer-reviewed neuroscience papers and a data analyst for award-winning mobile apps. DreamWell has collected around 200k dreams from social media sources and academic databases to produce a representative sample of internet dream reports, upon which the app’s dictionary and analysis features are based (DreamWell, 2024).

We have chosen to separate hypothesis generation and testing phases, therefore this system does not test for statistical significance. Rather, it simply compares a set of dreams, typically identified by a set of keywords like “aliens” or “ufo”, with other known sets of dreams using a raw percentile difference calculation. We have developed several word lists to specifically describe dream phenomena similar to key indicators of the UFO Abduction Syndrome, as listed in Table 1. Raw numbers derived from content analysis are presented in a coherent visual system. Rather than produce tables of numbers and test for statistical significance, we are producing graphs designed to be shared on social media or as part of the online dream dictionary that tell a story through numbers. While the system may eventually output APA-standard tables and figures, it is outside of the scope of this paper to change anything in the DreamWell analysis system outside of the wordlists. This paper focuses solely on data from the DreamWell database because it represents a comprehensive and contemporary set of reports. While I will eventually compare dreams with explicitly identified alien abduction, sleep paralysis, and out of body reports, the additional data collection is outside of the scope of this inquiry. In this initial inquiry, I have chosen to focus on nine wordlists listed in Table 2.

The procedure by which the results are generated and discussed is simple. First, I have defined the specific word lists indicated above. Second, the team produced over 300 charts presenting various aspects of the content analysis, some of which are presented in the Figures Appendix. Third, I review the graphs for the following themes: prevalence of phenomenon, characters, emotions, events, and common keywords. Finally, I compare alien and ufo dreams with other exotic dream types as a way of exploring dreams possibly related to the UFO Abduction Syndrome. The discussion section will relate these results to the literature, as well as consider the dream phenomena described in the results section from relevant subtle energy system perspectives.

Like Unusual Personal Experiences, this paper presents prevalence rates of phenomenon and their interpretation. Every chart in the figure section is directly derived from an occurrence of a word or phrase in a dream report. Regardless of interpretation, these prevalence rates show that exotic dreams and entity visitations are uncommon, yet still discernibly prevalent. Unlike the Unusual Personal Experiences authors, I conclude that alien abduction may be primarily a subtle energy experience. While it appears similar to OBE or sleep paralysis as suggested by Leland (2018) and abduction skeptics (Blackmore, 1998), alien abduction narratives appear to be a distinct literary genre. It appears that dreams of aliens share characteristics with classic abduction tales, suggesting that there may be a spectrum of manifestation from subconscious alien dreams to abductions as OBEs and finally to physically manifested abduction episodes.

Results

Several hundred charts were generated from an analysis of around 200k dream reports from social media and academic databases. The analysis categorized dream reports according to the words that the report contains, for example, a dream containing the phrase “alien invasion” would be categorized as an “alien and ufo” dream. Each category is defined as a wordlist that contains positive and negative examples of the category to disambiguate negative examples and common synonyms. The analysis focused on nine wordlists: aliens and ufos, animals, exotic dreams, false awakening, family, fantastic beings, luminous bodies, out of body experience, and sleep paralysis (see Table 2). The analysis is summarized in Figure 13, which presents a mandala-like graphic for each category based on comparisons of that category with all dreams.

Figure 1 provides the prevalence rates of the selected wordlists, expanded in the charts of Figure 2. Around 43% of dreams involve family members, 16% involve fantastic beings, 4.4% might be classified as exotic, 2.9% mention sleep paralysis, 1.6% include alien and ufo themes, and 0.5% mentioned out of body phenomenon and astral projection. Only 0.015% of dreams involve luminous beings, which is very small given the large sample size of around 200k dreams. The difference in sample size makes description by comparison with luminous being dreams tenuous at best, due to the large effect a single dream or dreamer might have on the comparison.

Figure 3 presents an n-gram analysis of the dream categories. N-grams are keyword phrases that are uniquely common in the dream category. For example, alien and ufo dreams unsurprisingly contain phrases about “alien invasion”, “gray aliens”, and “alien ships”. Animal dreams contain phrases like “black dog”, “fish tank”, and “small dog”. Interestingly, exotic dreams and false awakening dreams contain phrases about “dream loops”. It is clear that the out of body category is primarily defined by dreams that contain phrases involving “astral”. Fantastic being dreams seem to primarily involve “zombies”, “spirits”, and “angels”.

Figure 4 compares all the dream categories with 4 types of special dreams: sleep paralysis, lucid dreams, nightmares, and recurring dreams. None of the dream categories were particularly associated with recurring dreams, suggesting that normal dreams are more recurrent than these particular dream types. However, it seems that both animal and family dreams are less recurrent than all dreams in general. Sleep paralysis seems to be a primary characteristic of all of the special dream categories, which is followed by lucid dreams as the most prevalent type. Interestingly, out of body dreams are the only category primarily associated with lucid dreaming, which suggests that lucidity may be a factor determining if an experience is interpreted as false awakening, sleep paralysis, or OBE dream.

Figure 5 explores characters in the dream categories. Fantastic beings are the primary character type in all examined dreams except for the animal and family dreams, which were considered as a control. Interestingly, alien and ufo dreams involve insects, animals, and strangers more frequently than family or known people. In contrast, false awakening dreams primarily involve fantastic beings and family members. Sleep paralysis dreams elevate the prevalence of romantic partners, which makes intuitive sense as many paralyzed sleepers try reaching out to their partners. It seems that all special dreams like aliens and ufos or OBE dreams involve fantastic beings, animals, and insects, while more typical dreams like family dreams involve more known people.

Figure 6 describes emotion in the dream categories. Fear is a primary emotion, often more prevalent than other emotions, nearly twice as prevalent as pain for sleep paralysis dreams. Confusion is primary for false awakening, which makes intuitive sense as the dream is defined by confusion about reality. Interestingly, fun is slightly more prevalent than confusion for OBE dreams. This may characterize the similarity and difference between false awakening, OBE, and sleep paralysis dreams. False awakenings tend toward confusion, sleep paralysis involves pain, and OBEs somehow engage a sense of fun. Interestingly, fun is the most prevalent emotion for aliens and ufo dreams, closely followed by fear. In contrast, family dreams have many emotions that are more equally experienced.

Figure 7 observes events and actions in the dream categories. The special dreams are characterized by disasters, like in alien and ufo or fantastic being dreams, and by health events like in sleep paralysis dreams. Disasters and health events appear significantly more than any other event type for the special dreams. In contrast, animal dreams primarily involve eating and drinking, while family dreams primarily involve sex and death. The prevalence of the health event category in the exotic dreams categories like OBE and paralysis suggests to me that the wordlist for health event may contain a phrase common to all the exotic dream events related to a natural inquiry into embodied awareness that is common to all exotic dream types. I would speculate that the word involves awareness of breath or body feelings, which I will investigate in future research.

Figure 8 compares characters in alien and ufo dreams with the other dream categories. This figure is similar to Figure 5 that presents characters in dream categories as compared with all dreams. These figures compare character types in alien and ufo dreams with those in the category. For example, the comparison with exotic dreams reveals that alien and ufo dreams have more characters in general than exotic dreams, but that exotic dreams more typically involve romantic partners. When compared with animal and family dreams, it appears that unknown characters, fantastic beings, and animals/insects are more associated with alien and ufo dreams.

Figure 9 compares emotions in alien and ufo dreams to the emotions in other dream categories in a similar way that Figure 8 compares characters. These comparisons show that alien and ufo dreams are less fearful than most exotic dreams, except for OBEs. Alien and ufo dreams are more fun than animal dreams, which involve much more hatred than the alien and ufo dreams. Fantastic beings dreams in general have more emotion than alien and ufo dreams, except fun and embarrassment. Luminous being dreams similarly have more emotions, but this may be caused by the small sample size of the category.

Figure 10 compares events in alien and ufo dreams to events in other dream categories. The analysis shows that disasters are a primary event for alien and ufo dreams, which are more prevalent than the other event types by several factors, which confirms the notion that alien dreams involve cataclysms or ecological and prophetic messages. Interestingly, sex is more common for all the other dream categories except for sleep paralysis, animal, and luminous bodies dreams, which suggests that genetic harvest themes may not be as prevalent in alien dreams as the early abduction research suggested. This observation requires further analysis because sleep paralysis dreams have been associated with spiritual sex acts such as in the famous incubus/succubus narratives.

Figure 11 compares exotic dream words in alien and ufo dreams with the other dream categories. The exotic dream wordlists include healing dreams, telepathy, OBE, false awakening, sleep paralysis, and precognitive dream categories. Since the general exotic dream categories are defined by these subcategories, they are much more prevalent in exotic dreams than other dream categories. When compared with fantastic being dreams, alien and ufo dreams have more types of exotic dreams except for sleep paralysis. Alien and ufo dreams are more associated with telepathy and precognition than false awakening or sleep paralysis. Interestingly, animals and family dreams are much more associated with healing dreams, while animals are more frequently associated with precognitive dreams. OBE dreams seem to involve much more exotic dream phenomena than other dream types.

Figure 12 breaks down the types of fantastic characters in alien and ufo dreams compared with fantastic beings in the other dream categories. Obviously, aliens and ufos are prevalent in alien and ufo dreams, then elves, robots and lizard people, which aligns with abduction literature expectations. It seems that spirits, demons, witches, and ghosts are more associated with OBEs, sleep paralysis, and other dream types than with alien and ufo dreams. 

Figure 13 presents summary charts of all the dream categories. The shape and proportions of the charts are directly derived from comparison between the dream categories to the entire database. To my eyes, it seems that alien and ufo dreams are more similar to exotic dream phenomena than family or animal dreams, yet also dissimilar in that the exotic dreams tend to present several wordlists that appear an order of magnitude more than others in their category, like health events for sleep paralysis. Alien and ufo dreams appear most similar to fantastic being dreams, which makes sense because aliens and ufo dreams are a subcategory of fantastic beings.

Discussion

My analysis sought to describe dream phenomena related to the UFO Abduction Syndrome through the key indicators presented in the Unusual Personal Experiences (Mack et al,. 1992) booklet. I sought to understand the results so that I could consider the phenomenon from multiple subtle energy schools of thoughts, which I will do in this discussion section after a general reflection on the process. I feel as if I have just scratched the surface and have discovered many paths of exploration, which will require future development to the analysis system and collection of specific data sets regarding dream and abduction experiences. 

The prevalence rates of exotic dreams both seemed natural to me and surprised me. Faith and Krippner (2001) suggested that around 8% of dreams may be classified as exotic, with around 1% defined as visitations involving spirits or ETs. It is difficult to compare the prevalence rates of reported dreams to the lifetime prevalence rates of the UFO Abduction Syndrome indicators. Unusual Personal Experiences observed that 5% of people have dreamed of a UFO (interestingly 2% less than the 7% who have seen a UFO), while a typical dream survey suggests that 4.5% of people have dreamed of a UFO (Schredl et al., 2004). Unusual Personal Experiences also observed that 15% of people have encountered a terrifying figure while the same typical dream survey suggests that 6.5% of people have dreamed of an alien being and 23% of people have sensed a presence in the room (Schredl et al., 2004). 

Like the authors of Unusual Personal Experiences, I must testify that there appears to be an under-researched phenomena involving entity encounters and exotic dream states like sleep paralysis and OBEs. While it may be argued that the prevalence rates and analysis has a reporting bias, the raw numbers of the sample size confirm that a measurable and significant phenomena may be occurring. One might argue that active dream reporters who are uniquely interested in exotic dreaming post to the sites from which the reports are gathered or else the unnatural laboratory reports from academic databases skew the interpretation. While it is impossible to say for certain, it does appear that thousands of people are consistently reporting exotic dream phenomena seem relevant to abduction narratives.

My analysis suggested that alien dreams are similar in theme to alien abduction reports, which may be explained through a variety of factors including the influence of abduction narratives on popular media. My analysis also suggested that alien dreams may be a special type of dreaming similar to false awakening and sleep paralysis, but one that is unique to itself in that it involves elements of lucid dreaming, out of body experience, and the reality confusion of false awakening. Dream researchers have advocated for a wide definition of dreams based on several spectrums, which include waking/sleeping phases (Pagel et al., 2001), suggesting that dreams may help explain waking-phase events. Krippner (1994) observed the anomalies of shared dreaming and apports, in which objects from dreams materialized in physical waking phases.  These anomalies may help explain the trace physical alien abduction evidence and corroborated witnessing. Skeptics argue that the similarity of dreams or sleep paralysis and abduction reports denies their reality (Blackmore, 1998), however the dream anomalies noted by Krippner may demonstrate their reality.  A literature review of dream anomalies is its own scope of inquiry and will be addressed in future research.

When I considered alien abduction from different schools of thought regarding subtle energy, I observed that alien abduction reports are both similar and dissimilar to those subtle experiences. For example, the analysis suggested that alien dreams involve more telepathy and precognition than sleep paralysis, while OBE dreams involve more of every exotic dream characteristic. When I compared prevalence rates of lucidity and false awakening across alien dreams, OBEs, and sleep paralysis, I could easily generate hypotheses that could be tested in future content analysis studies. For example, the unique prevalence of disasters and precognition in alien dreams would be worth studying. Additionally, the prevalence of health events in exotic dreams may provide insight regarding unique somatic characteristics of those phenomena.

Leland (2018) suggested that alien abduction narratives may simply be mistaken OBEs. He suggested that fear and anxiety regarding abduction might be relieved by updating a “translation table”, which is a term he used to describe how nonphysical events are perceived through physical concepts. My analysis has shown that OBEs, sleep paralysis, false awakening, alien and ufo, and fantastic being dreams have unique characteristics. While the scope of this paper is limited to the description of the phenomenon and not explanation, I observe that confusion and insight through lucidity may be a major factor in establishing an exotic dream as a false awakening, OBE, or sleep paralysis event. Given the association of lucidity with aliens dreams, over and above that which is associated with fantastic beings in general, I hypothesize that the form of the entity, such as angel or alien, may correspond to particular dream phenomena. In other words, a nonphysical event occurs and its manifestation in experience and the world may be determined by the personal translation tables of the experiencer, as well as their awareness of false awakening and lucid dream phenomena.

Conclusion

This paper is a direct response to the Unusual Personal Experiences booklet. In 1992, a survey of 6k people was used to justify the extraordinary hypothesis of alien abduction, which in turn was used to inform TV and media programming that influenced my own dream experiences in my 90s childhood. While the analysis of 200k dreams is a technical feat, I say that the capacity to actually sit down, read some of them, and observe their qualities without jumping to conclusions is a feat of imagination, which I may or may not have accomplished. As part of my research, I read Bullard’s 1987 work that retold around 270 abduction tales and presented robust quantitative analysis on them. In a personal email, Bullard told me that only a dozen people read his work, which is likely hyperbole but relevant. His communication made me wonder if Mack, Hopkins, and Jacobs actually read his work, which they appeared to incorporate into their hypotheses, although they appear to have ignored his later conclusions against the alien abduction hypothesis. The abduction researchers used the prevalence rates of dreams and dreamlike experiences to justify the abduction hypothesis, but none of them may have actually looked at how dreams and sleep paralysis narratives compare with abduction reports.

While I have not yet used the analysis system to look at explicitly identified abduction, sleep paralysis, and OBE reports, the fact that all these experiences are commonly identified as dreams suggests that looking at the dreams will provide insight. I believe my inquiry has explored two major claims. First, prevalence rates of false awakening, sleep paralysis, OBE, and alien dreams are close enough to the UFO Abduction Syndrome rates to describe the majority of sleep-related cases that do not present physical evidence. Second, the comparison of the exotic dream types with various fantastic characters in dreams suggests that the formal appearance of an entity as an alien, spirit, or some other form may produce a unique pattern of dream content. For example, alien dreams appear to be more lucid than other types of fantastic character visitations.

I explored the topic of alien abduction from several subtle energy schools of thought. First, I considered them from the naive perspective that aliens are physically abducting people, demonstrated in my consideration of the UFO Abduction Syndrome. Second, I explored the notion that they are misidentified sleep paralysis experiences, in line with Blackmore’s (1998) skeptical perspective. Third, I explored them as OBEs as described by Leland (2018), supporting his notion that if one could translate the form of the alien into another character type, then the quality of the encounter might shift. Abduction appears to be like false awakening in that it involves a confusion of reality, like OBE in that it involves journeys out of the body, and like sleep paralysis in that it involves an apparent experience of victimization by supernatural entities. Abduction is unlike those phenomena in its content and themes and it is unlike other subtle energy schools of thought in its inherent reality confusion like false awakening.

My inquiry into abduction research and related dreams has made me aware that this phenomenon seems to weave first, second, and third perspectives together in a sort of Gordian Knot. For example, many people claim there is overwhelming physical evidence for alien abduction, but I found no evidence that there was evidence except for residue tested by Jacobs (see FUFOR, 1987 and Rainey, 2011) and a scrapbook of anomalous body marks collected by Hopkins (see Bunn, 1999 and MUFON, 2015). As will be explored, the intersubjective event of Hopkins showing the other researchers his body mark scrapbook, may have lended unconscious authority to Hopkins’s physical alien abduction hypothesis (see Laycock, 2012). When confronted with the objectively measured prevalence rates of dream-like phenomena in Unusual Personal Experiences, the researchers appeared to jump to the conclusion that their hypotheses were confirmed, perhaps because they were unfamiliar with first, second, and third person perspectives of exotic dreams or other states like OBEs or fairy encounters.

This research has left me with the conviction that the first and second person perspectives are key to the entire riddle of alien abduction. Many smart people naively believe in alien abductions, UAP crash retrievals, and extraordinary conspiracies to keep these things hidden. They all claim that there is physical evidence like body marks, implants, and metamaterials. When I looked for the evidence, I found many stories and uncited claims. When I followed what citations were available for physical evidence, noting that implants are outside the scope of my inquiry (see Perrotta, 2021 for a review of evidence), I discovered Unusual Personal Experiences and only one news story about how Hopkins carried around a scrapbook of body marks photo (Bunn, 1999). 

How was it possible for so many smart people to believe abductions were physically happening? Laycock’s Carnal Knowledge (2012) documents how fantastic sexual trauma narratives have substantiated supernatural claims for centuries beginning with medieval witch hunts, observing that the narratives have an unconscious authority, of which one is unaware. Hopkins likely showed Mack and Jacobs a photograph of a perforated labia along with dozens of other intimately documented marks (Bunn, 1999), as Hopkins powerfully told stories about alien abduction. The unconscious authority of the fantastic sexual trauma narratives, supported by Hopkins’s photographs, may have convinced the researchers that there was abundant evidence, even though the photographs were simply documentation of anomalies. The prevalence of fantastic sexual trauma narratives in Hopkins, Jacobs, and Mack may not be derived from the actual experience of alien abduction, as suggested by the surprising disassociation of sex with alien and ufo dreams as compared with all dreams. Rather, the prevalence of fantastic sexual trauma narratives in the 1990s research may be an effect of the unconscious authority of Hopkins’s hypnotic storytelling.

While this paper primarily focused on third person perspectives through content analysis and literature review, it has elevated the role of second person perspectives in the study of alien abduction narratives. The prevalence rates from the Unusual Personal Experiences booklet, along with those from the literature and my dream analysis, suggests that people are truly having remarkable encounters with ET/NHI characters. All abduction researchers claim abduction appears physically real, at least in part, such as through their claims of body marks, trace evidence, and corroborated witnessing. However, the evidence often resolves into inconclusive anomalies. The UFO Abduction Syndrome appears to lack a solid foundation in third-person perspectives due to its similarity to known subtle experiences and strange absence of physical evidence. Its potency seems to derive from the second person perspective retelling of the first-person narratives by a hypnotist/researcher/author. In this way, it may be argued that all abduction researchers are simply unconscious dream interpreters. 

My first person experience is different from those researchers because I am an experiencer of all the key indicators for the UFO Abduction Syndrome. In 2022, I discovered a geometric body mark on my leg that was associated with a series of dream encounters with an NHI I call Galethog. It was so anomalous and puzzling that I was personally driven to understand the physical evidence of abduction marks, which is a gruesome and triggering topic to research. My dreams and intuitions involving this character clearly suggested an approach to dream studies and abduction research that treats all narratives, both real and imagined, as sacred text. It recommended deeply experiencing the phenomenon myself and reading all the different accounts of others. Rather than jump to any one conclusion like alien abduction, in a move that mimics Couliano’s (1991) treatment of spiritual journeys as intertextual literature and is similar to Bullard’s (1987) folklore approach, it suggested treating all ET/NHI narratives like dream reports. 

In conclusion, I must echo Leland’s (2018) notion that the validity of a translation table, which may be seen as the concepts one uses to interpret the dreamlike experiences of the subtle realms, may be best discerned from first-person perspectives. If the translation table leads to fear, harm, or limitation, then it could simply be set aside. If the translation table leads to greater well-being, insight, and creativity, then it may be adopted. My inquiry into alien abduction yielded two conclusions. First, the definition of the UFO Abduction Syndrome appears to be pseudoscience because it misappropriated exotic dream phenomena into an unconscious spiritual mythology based upon the authority of carnal knowledge. Second, alien abduction seems to be a special type of exotic dream phenomenon or subtle energy experience, which is mistaken for waking-phase reality in the same way as false awakening. 

During this research, I experienced a complete release from my childhood fears of alien abduction, which had been unconsciously driving my research into alien abduction. I was both magnetically attracted and repulsed by the abduction narrative, both fascinated and terrified. I am now able to read through abduction reports with a sense of equanimity. As I concluded this paper, I had a series of classic exotic dreams like nightmares, visitation, and false awakening that were textbook examples of their unique types. While I did experience fear, I also experienced lucid awareness and was able to consciously integrate them into my direct experience, which demonstrates that my unconscious dynamics regarding abduction have shifted. This shift, for me, is a sufficient validity test for the hypothesis that alien abduction is primarily a subtle energy experience.

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