The Abduction Scenario's Missing Link

I don't think any part of the whole UFO anomaly has intrigued me more than the "abduction" scenario.

Having always been fascinated by the aliens, I remember walking with my best friend in high school just as fast as we could after school to go see Close Encounters of Third Kind when it came out at the theater. So it was just natural to follow suit as the years unfolded by getting into Betty & Barney Hill, Travis Walton, Bud Hopkins, Whitely Strieber, Raymond Fowler, That guy from Gulf Breeze, David Jacobs, etc.

Now after what I myself would call an obsessive fixation with the abduction phenomenon, I am really beginning to wonder about one specific key element within the scenario. What about the abductees themselves? We all like to state that they come from all walks of life, and that abductions are no respecter of persons. Right?

(actually, this excludes the fact that the abduction phenomenon does in fact seem to have a hereditary quality)

Doesn't it seem to you that of all these countless thousands of abductees, that at very least a few brave souls should be willing to commit themselves to a comfortable and prolonged study of this phenomenon with themselves being the center piece? This being a study wherein they themselves are constantly monitored? How about just constantly being monitored outside the realm of such a study. How about simply committing to an anonymous, yet verified physical examination, and subsequent reported findings from accredited physicians in an effort to substantiate the abducted victims who claim to have been operated on physically, multiple times?

In short, if the abduction scenario is no respecter of persons involved in this horrifying experience, and in fact they do feel utterly betrayed, isn't it a bit odd that they themselves don't respect this intrusion enough to do everything in their power to prevent it from happening to others? We see this same reaction to just about every other form of atrocity a human being can suffer at the forceful ill will of someone or something else, why not in the case of abductions?

To me, this is the abduction phenomenon's "missing link". What think yee?

The biggest piece missing from this "puzzle" is any form of evidence. We have nothing to research other than personal stories. We have no security camera film of aliens coming, we have no stolen alien artifacts and no artifacts proven to be of extraterrestrial origin.

but what could anyone do apart from selling tim foil hats.
we do see people on the streets warning everyone that aliens are abducting people but dismiss it as crazy talk.

as there is no footage of abductions, mabye video recording is impossible so how would anybody prove it?

without proof, people don't want to beleive even if they say they do.

if your neighbour said he/she was abducted, what would you do?
tell people about it and you risk the abductee being mocked and alienated.
believe him and try to help and you risk yourself being mocked and alienated.

Originally posted by MasterOfSparkz

Doesn't it seem to you that of all these countless thousands of abductees, that at very least a few brave souls should be willing to commit themselves to a comfortable and prolonged study of this phenomenon with themselves being the center piece? This being a study wherein they themselves are constantly monitored? How about just constantly being monitored outside the realm of such a study. How about simply committing to an anonymous, yet verified physical examination, and subsequent reported findings from accredited physicians in an effort to substantiate the abducted victims who claim to have been operated on physically, multiple times?

Some "abductees" do exactly what you ask, and most end up with prescriptions for medication alleviating the symptoms of paranoid schizophrenia.

I automatically place more credit in abductee accounts where the individual claims to have been abducted only once or twice throughout their lifetimes. At the very least, it makes it easier to rule out mental illness. Although there are a plethora of other possible explanations, the monitoring of individuals who've only had one or two such episodes will likely yield nothing, whereas the monitoring of individuals who are in "constant" contact with "E.T" will result in the individual taking prescription medication for a very long time.

Originally posted by Turiddu
The biggest piece missing from this "puzzle" is any form of evidence. We have nothing to research other than personal stories. We have no security camera film of aliens coming, we have no stolen alien artifacts and no artifacts proven to be of extraterrestrial origin.

Or perhaps what is missing from the evidentiary puzzle is our ability to discern what proof of these matters does exist.

Originally posted by listerofsmeg
but what could anyone do apart from selling tim foil hats.
we do see people on the streets warning everyone that aliens are abducting people but dismiss it as crazy talk.

as there is no footage of abductions, mabye video recording is impossible so how would anybody prove it?

without proof, people don't want to beleive even if they say they do.

if your neighbour said he/she was abducted, what would you do?
tell people about it and you risk the abductee being mocked and alienated.
believe him and try to help and you risk yourself being mocked and alienated.

Are you honestly unaware of what is basic controlled experimentation and the credible results that can be obtained thereby? One does not have to either run around like a babbling lunatic warning of the world's end, nor does one need to humiliate themselves in lab rat fashion to do as much.

No, you my friend are simply being sympathetic to a cause that neither of us understands. A common and accepted understanding of this matter is CRITICAL. Would you not agree?

Originally posted by SaosinEngaged

Originally posted by MasterOfSparkz

Doesn't it seem to you that of all these countless thousands of abductees, that at very least a few brave souls should be willing to commit themselves to a comfortable and prolonged study of this phenomenon with themselves being the center piece? This being a study wherein they themselves are constantly monitored? How about just constantly being monitored outside the realm of such a study. How about simply committing to an anonymous, yet verified physical examination, and subsequent reported findings from accredited physicians in an effort to substantiate the abducted victims who claim to have been operated on physically, multiple times?

Some "abductees" do exactly what you ask, and most end up with prescriptions for medication alleviating the symptoms of paranoid schizophrenia.

I automatically place more credit in abductee accounts where the individual claims to have been abducted only once or twice throughout their lifetimes. At the very least, it makes it easier to rule out mental illness. Although there are a plethora of other possible explanations, the monitoring of individuals who've only had one or two such episodes will likely yield nothing, whereas the monitoring of individuals who are in "constant" contact with "E.T" will result in the individual taking prescription medication for a very long time.

Could you please cite figures and statistics to substantiate your first paragraph? It's NOT that I personally doubt what you are stating, it's simply that this issue is of such importance to me that I NEED the substantiation of facts and figures to fortify my ignorance of the matter.

As far as your second paragraph is concerned, this is my quandary:

What other mental illness has been shown to in fact not hamper functionality, and yet at the same time yields an identical delusion and psychosis in the stricken?

Now, please do not get me wrong. I am CERTAIN there are in fact mentally ill individuals that assuredly claim to be abductees. However these same individuals make up only a portion of the "abducted" populous. IMO, mental illness does not stand up well to the real skeptical examination of the matter.

Logic dictates that if we can not consider the phenomenon real because of an evidentiary loss according to personal claim, we must have ample evidence at hand to claim the mental illness explanation as a real, and therefore identifiably responsible factor, for the personal claim of abduction. Neither is a given at this point.

I think it's a bit much to presume "thousands and thousands" of abductions when this totally unproven phenomena has all the characteristics of folklore.

Why is it that even basic UFO reports go through skeptical analysis and probably 99% are dismissed as hoaxes, errors, or simply unknown, yet somehow we are supposed to take 100% of abduction stories as real?

I am sure 99% of abduction stories are hallucinations, fantasies, hoaxes, cries for attention, or other nonsense, if not 100% outright. And at least with UFOs you have photos, radar reports, and some vestigial evidence. With abductions you have nothing but a story and pictures of scratches.

Even assuming there is such a thing as abductions, there is no way these massive numbers promoted by abduction researchers could be real. *IF* there are UFOs visiting, maybe they do pick someone up from time to time. But millions and millions? Not a chance in the world.

There is one man that for me anyway, has proven in the cases he studied and was involved with that this is a real phenomenon.Dr John Mack was the light that this subject needed, he quite often found in his case studys of certain people claiming abduction that they were ,NOT suffering from any form of mental illnesses, NOT hallucinating or suffering from dream paralysis,NOT making it up,NOT suffering from Temporal Lope Epilepsy.

He found that most of his case subjects were describing actual and real events that they believe were happening to them, put it this way ,these people were acting,describing and behaving in a manner that this was very real to them. Quite often Dr Macks findings and research conclusions are often over looked or ignored by those who would do not want this phenomenon or reality to be real in any shape or form.

“Passport to the Cosmos provides the most sophisticated and insightful analysis to date about alien abduction phenomenon. [Mack deserves] thanks for holding his ground in the face of critics.” — Michael Zimmerman, Ph.D., Chair of the Dept. of Philosophy, Tulane Universit

I would highly recommend a thorough reading and research of Dr Macks work and conclusions on abduction and the lack of mental disorders that he found were non existent with a large number of his case studies.Below is some material for those that are seriously interested in this subject;

The final issue of the Program for Extraordinary Experience newsletter includes coverage of the release of Passport to the Cosmos.

link; www.passporttothecosmos.com...

n the focus on the material realm to the exclusion of the subtle realms, we have virtually rid the cosmos of nature, rid nature of spirit and, in a sense, denied the existence of all life other than that which is physically observable here on Earth.

link; www.passporttothecosmos.com...





Link to the late Dr John Macks institute; www.johnemackinstitute.org...

This peice by Mack is a must i feel on the abduction reality it is from the a talk given by Mack;

Studying Intrusions from the Subtle Realm: How Can We Deepen Our Knowledge? by John E. Mack, M.D. Developed from a talk given at the International Association for New Science Conference, Fort Collins, Colorado, September 16, 1995

quote from source;

I want to talk with you about what I have been finding over the past now nearly six years in studying the alien abduction phenomenon. In the context of this meeting I wish to talk particularly about the ways that we know, how we actually know anything. What is the appropriate epistemology for a particular subject? It seems to me that all science, all knowledge really, is about the discovery of patterns, and that includes patterns of meaning. But how we know, the approach that we use, depends on what the matter at hand happens to be.

link for talk MP3 player; www.passporttothecosmos.com...




[edit on 15/07/2010 by K-PAX-PROT]

reply to post by MasterOfSparkz
I tend to steer clear of the abduction back-end of the paranormal and ufology. It's too vague to form conclusions and some of the players are deeply unconvincing. Hopkins, Jacobs and Mack have been conned at one point or other. Hopkins and Jacobs have drawn a lot of fire relating to the neutrality of their approaches. Guys like Greg Bishop have sat in on sessions and insist that the hypnotherapist is leading the patient. Listening to interviews with Hopkins, Jacobs, Sprinkle and abductees has failed to increase my trust in their evaluations or how they project their beliefs. They roll out anecdotes I've heard dozens of times and don't support them with news accounts or witnesses.

On an individual level, I usually hold off making a comment on abductee claimants. There are all kinds of people involved in this scenario and some should be treated respectfully and allowed the benefit of the doubt. So, yes, I steer clear, but don't dismiss it as entirely BS.

For sake of speculation and answering your OP questions, I have some potential ideas. Being the centre of a study would demand more resources than probabilities of success would support. Abductees don't claim to be taken every night or even every year. It's a random, unpredictable event. The abductees presumably have day to day lives with jobs, families and social lives. If they are victim to an unknown intelligence that has the ability to enter locked homes without disturbing sleeping kids, partners or dogs...it's a tough thing to capture. If this intelligence has access to a person's inner thoughts and can add 'screen memories,' it would be hard to prevent the thing from knowing you were attempting surveillance or testing. Whatever is behind the UFO phenomena and maybe abductee phenomena is careful enough to always fall short of definitive evidence.

So the missing link isn't why abductees won't become the 'goat in the cage,' the missing link is how we'd get evidence of something so ephemeral? How do you catch something that can read your mind and appear and disappear at will through walls or other dimensions? If we did get lucky, what then could we do to stop it?
**************************************************************

Just in addition, if someone like Mack couldn't make a halfways committed point in support of his professed beliefs, is it worth really investigating? Is it worth listening to any of the abductee researchers at all?

“If by real you mean ‘in the physical world entirely,’ I would not say that about these experiences. There are physical elements to them – marks on bodies, UFOs and lights seen by several witnesses, even those observed to be missing by others – but rarely – but the experience as a whole cannot be said to be in this material world. But if real means something that is powerfully significant whether or not it is material or existing in another dimension of reality – if we open reality to all sorts of realms beyond three dimensions, some of which are only accessible to non-traditional states of consciousness – if we mean by real that we live in a multi-dimensional universe of which our three-dimensional world is only part of the whole – than yes they are real.”

John Mack having a WTF moment in interview.

That's like playing 'yes or no' whack-a-mole with an oily politician!

reply to post by K-PAX-PROT


I REALLY appreciate your input K! Mack is one of my absolute heroes. Having followed what he himself researched vigorously, at times sacrificing his personal stature for a TRUE unwavering sense of integrity, (what you have certainly helped to re-illuminate here), he IS the reason I recognize this phenomenon as both REAL and singular.

IMO, Mack's research firmly, with more than ample evidence in tow, convinced me that the abduction phenomenon is in no way absolutely dependent on categorical mental illness.

I would like to state for the record that my personal communications with the John E. Mack Institute have been met with both sincere and efficient responses.

Brillian and TRULY useful responses Sir, S&F (I'm learning)

Originally posted by MasterOfSparkz
reply to post by K-PAX-PROT

 

I REALLY appreciate your input K! Mack is one of my absolute heroes. Having followed what he himself researched vigorously, at times sacrificing his personal stature for a TRUE unwavering sense of integrity, (what you have certainly helped to re-illuminate here), he IS the reason I recognize this phenomenon as both REAL and singular.

IMO, Mack's research firmly, with more than ample evidence in tow, convinced me that the abduction phenomenon is in no way absolutely dependent on categorical mental illness.

I would like to state for the record that my personal communications with the John E. Mack Institute have been met with both sincere and efficient responses.

Brillian and TRULY useful responses Sir, S&F (I'm learning)

Tank you for your comments, i like you really respect and admire the late Dr John Mack , he has influenced me in my perceptions of this reality and given my mind much food for thought and amazement. He is sadly a loss that may never be replaced in this field of research but his work is invaluable and i will for ever be grateful to this kind and gentle man that cared not for prestige, fame ect or indeed worried about his own reputation , his courage is a lesson to all of us in this particular field of investigation. Take care and remember keep it real.