COMMON CONFABULATION:
THE FIVE MISTAKES
EVERY RESEARCHER MUST AVOID
1.
1.
BELIEVING AN ABDUCTEE WHEN THEY CLAIM THAT THEY'VE ONLY BEEN ABDUCTED ONCE.
When people remember their abductions, they sometimes say that they were abducted only once. People have told me many times that they experienced only one or two abduction events in the course of their lives. The evidence clearly indicates that people might have had hundreds of abductions as the aliens continually “mine” them and use them for whatever purposes they chose. In spite of this, the secrecy aspect of the abduction phenomenon is extremely successful. The vast majority of abduction events are buried in the abductee’s memory. Thus, when a person says that they were abducted only when they were a child, the chances are very much against this. When an abductee indicates that he or she remembers only one abduction, the chances are that they have forgotten many more, the latest perhaps being the previous night.
Abductees also say that they were abducted beginning at age five or six, and so forth. Once again the evidence clearly indicates that parents are abducted with their babies. Also, some abductees remember abductions, or parts of them, from before they were three years old. Therefore, because of memory difficulties, it is probably correct to assume that an abductee has had a lifetime of experiences from the time he or she was an infant, regardless of what the abductee remembers consciously.
2.
2.
BELIEVING AN ABDUCTEE WHEN THEY CLAIM THAT AN ALIEN IS SHIELDING ITS FACE OR HIDING ITS IDENTITY.
Abductees have other memory problems apart from those derived consciously. It is important for abduction researchers to understand that sometimes abductees make statements that seem on the surface to be logical but in fact are illogical. This is not to say that abductees are deliberately saying things that are false. They are usually convinced that their memories are reflective of reality. For example, the story that the woman told me about the aliens purposely preventing her from seeing their faces I have heard many times from other abductees. When one looks at this statement from a logical point of view based on other information, its illogicality and irrationality is immediately apparent.
Abductees have had a lifetime of abductions. I have found people who consciously remembered bits and pieces of over three hundred abductions by age 40. I have worked with people whose abduction activity intensified to an average of once every three nights for several months. Even if the number of abductions is only one per year, by age forty that is a large number of abductions. The point is that these abductees have seen the aliens’ faces many, many, times throughout their lives. If out of, say, 150 abductions that a person might have had during his life, I investigate six at random, what is the likelihood that I will happen upon an abduction in which the aliens would be shielding their faces knowing full well that the abductee has already seen them many times? The chance of this happening is extremely low. Moreover, invariably in the “shielding” session the abductee can be gently allowed to “see” the aliens’ faces with a minimum amount of shock, and they very nearly all do. Furthermore, researchers hear the story of aliens shielding their faces only on the first one or two abduction events and rarely on succeeding ones. When a person becomes accustomed to recalling abduction activity, I personally have never heard of this event transpiring. The evidence inexorably points to the fact that the aliens are not shielding themselves and the abductee has interpreted an unconscious desire not to be shocked by having to confront the memories of the aliens’ faces to an action of purposeful will by the aliens themselves. Thus, after becoming accustomed to remembering abductions, abductees no longer report aliens shielding their faces.
3.
3.
BELIEVING IN Doorway Amnesia
Like face shielding, another dubious notion that has entered into abduction research is “doorway amnesia.” This theory holds that abductees almost never remember actually entering into a UFO or going into rooms inside it. Actually, abductees characteristically skip over many areas in the abduction scenario: getting one’s clothes on or off, getting out of bed, moving from one room to another in the UFO, mindscan and other neural engagement procedures, and so forth. Doorway amnesia is just one of these typical “skips.” With patience, the abductee will often remember everything about the entrance into the UFO. I have literally hundreds of detailed accounts of abductees entering into UFOs or into rooms within them. Doorway amnesia is not a significant part of the abduction phenomenon, but it is an important aspect of the memory problems that abductees have.
4.
4.
BELIEVING AN ABDUCTEE BEARS "A MESSAGE" FROM THE ALIENS, OR SEEKING a "MESSAGE" FROM THE SUBJECT.
A common event that abductees sometimes describe is that the aliens have given them a “message.” The idea of the “message” dates back to the 1950s contactees and to the society’s conception of what aliens would do if they were to “make contact” with us. The “message” suggests that the aliens are trying to contact us by establishing a flow of knowledge that would in some way help or inform us. They have imparted important information to the selected person. Receiving the special knowledge makes the abductee or contactee feel “chosen” and the recipient therefore has a special connection to the aliens.
One of the most important stumbling blocks in the idea of the message is that while the abductee might remember if one were given, for the most part abductees forget the vast majority of their abductions. If the hypnotist were not to investigate the event in which the message is bestowed, it is very unlikely that the abductee would spontaneously remember it and thus there would be no reason for a message.
Perhaps the most important problem with the message is the same problem as that of the aliens shielding their faces; the great number of abductions a person endures. If one has many abduction experiences during the course of his or her life, what are the chances that they would give a special message to an abductee while at the same time doing their routine abduction procedures? And, what are the chances that the hypnotist would hit upon that particular incident out of the many that the abductee has had? It is certainly within the realm of possibility, but the older the person, and the more abductions he or she has, the more unlikely it gets. Furthermore, the large numbers abductees militates against an average person being singled out from the other abductees. While it is always possible that the aliens are busily giving a message to an abductee every time he or she is abducted, this is not born out by the evidence. I have never gotten a formal message imparted to an abductee, although I have received reports of conversations which could be interpreted as a message in a very general sense.
These conversations constitute areas in which investigators must be exceptionally careful. One of the great “red flag” areas of confabulation is when abductees recount alien dialogue. When all communication is telepathic, it is easy for abductees to “hear” his or her own thoughts and think that they are coming from the alien. This can happen both in the abduction event itself and in the hypnosis session. Thus, by tapping into one’s own cultural expectations of what “should” happen during an abduction, a “message” can emerge, especially if the hypnotist is naive or inexperienced and/or does not have the skills to understand the dynamics of the hypnotic session. The evidence indicates that the phenomenon is random and that the aliens do not particularly care about the average person’s life or status. Messages are not part of the abduction phenomenon in any significant way.
5.
5.
BELIEVING that an ABDUCTEE was welcomed with a tour of the ship.
Another doubtful idea voiced by some abductees is that the aliens gave them a “tour of the ship.” The “tour” idea suggests that this is the first time that the person was abducted, that the person is interested in the ship’s workings, that the aliens have nothing better to do than to show the abductee around, and that they obliged, as if the abductee were on a friendly visit.
In actuality, if a person has been abducted many times, the idea of a tour is somewhat illogical.
In fact, I have only one case in which a person was given a tour, but it was in an entirely different context than what virtually all abductees say [it involved a young hybrid child who wanted to show the abductee the areas of the ship in which he lived]. What usually happens is that the person is led down the hallway from room to room in which different procedures are performed upon him. When an abductee has conscious memories without the benefit of a competent investigator, he tends to remember bits and pieces of an event which tend to assume more importance than they would if he were to remember them in context. Thus, when a person is walked down a hallway and sees, or purposely goes into other rooms, his altered state of consciousness, his conscious fragmented memories, and his cultural expectations easily allows for him to interpret this as a “tour.”