When sleep's an alien experience

[emad]

Ian Sample, science correspondent
Wednesday October 26, 2005
The Guardian


Strange encounters of the alien kind have more to do with sleep disorders than little green men with a penchant for kidnapping, according to a study. A survey of people who believed they had had contact with aliens showed they were much more likely to experience sleep paralysis, a state where people are temporarily stuck between sleep and wakefulness and unable to move.

"When a person is in that state, they can see things and hear things and be convinced they're real," said Chris French, head of Anomalistic Psychology Research at Goldsmith's College, London. He added that often people will see bright lights and menacing figures and given the choice between truth and madness, many decide the experience was real.

Sleep paralysis itself was not enough to explain beliefs of alien encounters on its own, according to the survey. Most "experiencers" already had an interest in the paranormal, the survey found. They also had "dissociative tendencies", meaning they could be almost oblivious to their actions for periods of time.

The study was carried out by giving a questionnaire to 19 experiencers and 19 others with no belief in alien contact. Professor French will discuss the findings at a talk at the Science Museum's Dana Centre tonight. Many who claimed to have had close encounters described being taken by aliens only to be subjected to painful medical examinations aboard alien vessels. Prof French said: "It makes people feel special. These aliens have travelled across half the cosmos for them. It's just a shame they're not more careful with their probes."
http://education.guardian.co.uk/higher/news/story/0,9830,1600781,00.html

[Dogmudgeon]

1. Been there, done that, and it sucks.

I have sleep paralysis, and I've had the whole abduction experience, as well as a number of other nasty scenarios, often involving my "death".

The odd thing is that the aliens never used any kinds of probes on me. Of course, my initial experiences pre-dated the "anal probe" school of stand up comedy. My own aliens were fond of electricity and surrealistic movies. Plus, anally fetishistic aliens and "anal prison rape" comedy really got going at about the same time. I wonder why that is. But I digress. My precious pooper has remained untouched by any sadistic evil doer other than colorectal doctors wielding colonoscopes.

I also note that Prof. French has been bitten by the stand-up ridicule bug himself. I guess he's never experienced sleep paralysis.

Sleep paralysis can be a terrifying experience even when the scenario is rather mundane, and I'm sure it has driven a lot of mystical and otherworldly theories and ideas over the course of human history. One of the main brain structures that seem to be involved in SP is the locus caeruleus, which mediates panic in mammals. So the next time you're tempted to emit a "bwa-ha" at the expense of an experiencer, think of what kind of terror drives those beliefs. Then decide whether you want to be a "candle in the dark" or a "poke in the eye" to the experiencer.

Of course, if you opt for the poke-in-the-eye route, and those pooper-peeking otherlings really do exist, they have carte blanche to use my account to track you down and map every cell of your lower intestine, cloaca, and rectum.

:evilgrin:

--p!
It's not anal exploration -- it's quality control for sausage manufacture.

[frogmarch]

2. Me too

I've had a couple of episodes of sleep paralysis, though "night terrors" best describes them. I didn't see aliens. Both times, I saw an angry Jesuslike figure, who kept trying to cut my brain out. Figures, I guess, since I'm an atheist.

[enlightenment]

3. I've experienced it once -- but no aliens

just a very large man, standing at the foot of the bed, with his arms crossed. Not scary, really (beyond the "what is that man doing in my room??") -- until he stretched out one hand toward me. I was absolutely convinced that he was suggesting I "go with him" -- where, I don't know. I got the sense he was a ghost or someone from the past.

I'm an historian and a skeptic, so my brain came up with something reasonable for me, I guess.

It was terrifying, in the end. The combination of bright blue light, weird figure (cloaked in shadow despite the bright light, of course), none of the normal night sounds I was familiar with (they "returned" when it was over), the strange soundless wind that disappeared when the light and figure did (I remember my curtains twisting like someone was wringing them out to dry) -- and naturally, the inability to move, at all.

I prefer not to experience that again -- and sympathize with those who experience it repeatedly. yikes!

[TechBear_Seattle]

4. Sleep paralysis and night terrors: I know them well

I have a tendency, particularly when dealing with stress in waking life, to wake up in a panic and experience brief visual and audio hallucinations, all while unable to move.

What I was told was: Dreaming seems to be a reorganization or recompiling of memories. Since memories seem to be stored in the same parts of the brain that process and act on sensory input, the brain experiences a "storm" of activity. The conscious mind normally interprets this activity as sensory input and tries to act on it; to keep that from happening, the consciousness is "detached" so it can't interfere. Normal dreams result when this detachment is incomplete; the random noise is passed in to the consiousness' "pattern matcher" and order is imposed, giving rise to the very odd, disjoined "logic" of dreams.

A similar disconnect is made between the brain and body, for a similar reason. Electrical activity in the part of the brain that moves the leg, for example, would be interpreted by the body as instructions to walk, run, jump, etc. Dream twitching occurs when the disconnect between brain and body is incomplete.

In my case -- and in hundreds of thousands of people every night, apparently -- something hits the "panic button" of my brain. My body floods with "fight or flight" hormones, which causes the feeling of panic. My consciousness reconnects quickly, but it takes a few seconds for the body to get "put back on", as it were, resulting in the sleep paralysis. Worse, it takes a few seconds for the electrical storm in my dreaming brain to dissipate; the conscious mind can't tell the difference between real and "simulated" sensor input and tries to make the best sense it can of what I'm "experiencing."

The end result: waking in a panic, unable to move and real sensory input -- the shirt hanging over the back of a chair, the street light reflecting off the wall, the humming of my refrigerator motor -- being overlayed with random static and getting interpreted as a ghost waiting for me to die, a looming bogeyman and aliens coming to take me away. The context being picked up from my dreams is usually negative because, again, this almost always happens when I am facing a lot of stress, which brings negative memories to the fore.

Damned scary when you are a kid, I can assure you. Not much of a picnic when you are an adult and know what's going on, either. Fortunately, it doesn't happen often and I know (now) that it's safe to go back to sleep.

It seems reasonable that a similar disconnect might happen outside of REM sleep, due to sleep deprivation, emotional upset, or organic trauma or disorder. I expect that would account for quite a few tales of UFO abduction, with attention-seeking lies rounding things out.

[moggie]

5. I've experienced it twice

No space aliens or probing either time, though. The first time, I awoke unable to breathe, with an evil copy of myself strangling me. I "came to" just as I thought I was about to die. Not pleasant. By contrast, the second time was rather pleasing: I awoke to see two beings I thought of as fairies spiralling across the room, accompanied by a tinkling sound. I knew about hypnagogia/hypnopompia before either of these incidents, so once I was fully awake I understood what I'd experienced.

[Mr. McD]

6. I have experienced Sleep paralysis dozens of times

but no aliens or anything. When I first experienced it my first thoughts were that I was slipping into death. Quite frightening until I understood what was going on. It has been many years since it has happened.