Harvard psychiatrist John E. Mack, a leading authority on the spiritual or transformational effects of alleged alien abduction experiences,[1] said, "The furthest you can go at this point is to say there's an authentic mystery here.
"[2] Mack was also unconvinced by piecemeal counterclaims; he said skeptical explanations need to "take into account the entire range of phenomena associated with abduction experiences", up to and including "missing time", directly contemporaneous UFO sightings, and the occurrence in small children.
Various authors, including Jacques Vallée and John E. Mack, have suggested that the dichotomy 'real' versus 'imaginary' may be too simplistic; that a proper understanding of this complex phenomenon may require a reevaluation of our concept of the nature of reality.
Matheson says that after experiencing the frisson of delightful terror one may feel from reading a ghost story or watching a horror film, people "can return to the safe world of their homes, secure in the knowledge that the phenomenon in question cannot follow.
"[5] Various hypotheses have been proposed by skeptics to explain reports without the need to invoke controversial concepts such as intelligent extraterrestrial life forms.
Skeptics are also likely to critically examine abduction claims for evidence of hoaxing or influence from popular culture sources such as science fiction.
For example, abductees often score higher than average people in tests measuring hypnotic suggestibility, absorption, magical ideation, and dissociative experiences; abductees are more likely to accept suggestions of a hypnotist as true, are prone to becoming fully engrossed in their imaginations and fantasies, are more likely to believe in unusual phenomena, and experience more alterations in consciousness, such as spacing out.
But most of the central elements of the alien abduction account are present, including sexually obsessive non-humans who live in the sky, walk through walls, communicate telepathically, and perform breeding experiments on the human species.
Unless we believe that demons really exist, how can we understand so strange a belief system, embraced by the whole Western world ... reinforced by personal experience in every generation, and taught by Church and State?
This was reportedly proven by the Phase Research Center during its mass alien abduction experiment (Los Angeles, USA, October 2011).
[4] Abduction researcher and folklorist Thomas Bullard said hypnotized subjects become suggestible, "edit[ing] their thoughts less rigorously", thus becoming more likely to confabulate or open themselves to the implantation of memories.
Yet the Hills stubbornly held to their interlocking, hypnotically recovered accounts despite Simon's suggestions at the end of treatment that their memories could not be literally true.
For example, the hypnotist may either knowingly or unknowingly use loaded questions that influence the already ambiguous memories of abductees in such a way the patient creates an alien abduction narrative for them.
[4] Skeptics Robert Sheaffer and Phillip J. Klass say individual abduction researchers appear to exert influence on the characteristics of narratives retrieved during hypnotic recall.
[citation needed] Thomas E. Bullard said the presence or absence of hypnosis as a method for memory retrieval in abduction claimants seems to effect descriptions of the abductors.
[19] According to Newman and Baumeister (1996), "there is increasing evidence that hypnosis does not simply reveal the UFO abduction phenomenon—it plays a major role in creating it".
Skeptics like Robert Sheaffer assert that this variation supports a psycho-social hypothesis as an explanation for the origin of the abduction phenomenon.
[4] For example, it is believed many abduction accounts retrieved through hypnosis may be strongly influenced by science-fiction books or movies that subjects have recently encountered.
[4] According to Kottmeyer, the abduction claims of Betty and Barney Hill bore a striking resemblance to a movie and television show they had both recently watched.
According to Bullard, "The small showing for monstrous types and the fact that they concentrate in less reliable cases should disappoint skeptics who look for the origin of abductions in the influence of Hollywood.
In studies conducted from 1990 to 1995 at University of New Mexico, psychiatrist Rick Strassman found that approximately 20 percent of volunteers injected with high doses of DMT had experiences similar to purported alien abductions.
The scenarios and narratives offered by alleged abductees and SRA victims feature similar elements; both are typically said to begin when the experiencer is in their youth; both are said to involve entire families and to occur generationally; the alien examination table is similar to the satanic altar; both phenomena focus on genitals, rape, sexuality, and breeding; witnesses often report that the events happen when they are in altered states of consciousness; and both phenomena feature episodes of "missing time" when the events are said to occur, but of which the victim has no conscious memory.
Seraphim Rose, who devotes a whole chapter in his book Orthodoxy and the Religion of the Future[28] to the phenomena of UFOs and abductions, which, he concludes, are manifestations of the demonic.