num_pages: 191
description: They're tiny. They're tall. They're gray. They're 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's no evidence 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 Clancy interviewed &amp; evaluated abductees--old &amp; young, female &amp; male, religious &amp; agnostic. She listened to their stories--how they struggled to explain something strange in their remembered experience, how abduction seemed plausible, &amp; how, having suspected abduction, they began to recollect it, aided by suggestion &amp; hypnosis. She argues abductees are intelligent, sane people who've 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 &amp; on TV) &amp; a powerful drive for meaning that science is unable to satisfy. For them, otherworldly terror can become a transforming, even inspiring experience. "Being abducted may be a baptism in the new religion of this millennium", she writes. This book is not only a subtle exploration of the workings of memory, but a sensitive inquiry into the nature of belief.
language: English
title: Abducted: How People Come to Believe They Were Kidnapped by Aliens
titlecomplete: Abducted: How People Come to Believe They Were Kidnapped by Aliens
genres: Anthropology, Social Science, Religion, Science, Psychology, Nonfiction, Aliens, Paranormal, Sociology, Skepticism
ratings_count: 318
publisher: Harvard University Press (Cambridge, MA/London)