By Brian P James

This article is dedicated to the memory of my late mother – Doris James – who passed on in April 2003.

The subject of the ‘Alien Abduction’ experience, or what I prefer to term the ‘Alien Encounter’ experience, is now well-known in both UFO-lore and ET-lore. Indeed, the same sort of ‘otherworldly’ experience can be found throughout legend and mythology of many cultures, so it is not just a ‘recent’ phenomenon of the UFO era. The number of explanations and theories for this experience are also many and varied, but the one I wish to concentrate on here is the ‘explanation’ offered by some doctors and psychologists (and indeed some researchers who seek to deny the phenomena!) that the experiencer is suffering nothing more than the hallucinatory or delusionary effects of some psychosis. Over a period of four years from 1999 to 2003 I unfortunately had the opportunity to study the effects of such psychoses first hand, and from this I believe there is a very strong argument against this simply explaining the alien encounter experience/scenario. My observations and conclusions are based on the psychotic experiences of both myself and my late mother, Doris.

At the outset I should make it clear that I am a ‘repeater’ UFO witness, and indeed a ‘repeater experiencer’ of various paranormal phenomena, including the alien encounter. I will make it very plain here that even when viewed against my acknowledged stress-induced psychoses, this does not preclude my ability to make objective observations and conclusions, having been a paranormal investigator/researcher for nearly as long as I have been an experiencer - I have been both an experiencer and researcher of paranormal for well over 30 years. To give a further insight into the ‘history’ of my interest, and the basis for my conclusions here, is that neither of my parents, nor any of my grandparents, had any interest at all in anything related to sci-fi or any aspect of the paranormal – at no time was I surrounded by the ‘alien imagery’ that surrounds children these days from all manner of mediums. It should be remembered that when I was a child – in the late 1950s and early 1960s – there was little sci-fi on the limited hours of television schedules then (the family didn’t have a TV until 1962 anyway) or other mediums (and few existed then, other than comics) to be of any possible influence. After all, Dr Who was the first mainstream sci-fi in the UK, and this was first broadcast in November 1963. In many ways I have never quite grasped just where my keen interest in space, sci-fi and the paranormal was first ‘generated’. Details of my experiences have been published in the magazines of various UFO research groups, such as BUFORA, Contact (UK), SPI, SUFOG and my own group APRA – the accounts and reports can be found on www.apra.org.uk.

I will now provide a chronological account of experiences by both my late mother and myself.

Over the course of two or three years prior to 1999 I had noticed that my mother had started to suffer a loss of ‘will’ and was starting to have trouble recalling ‘recent’ memories. As my mother was by then in her mid-70s, at the time I put it down to the effects of ‘old age’ that will come to us all. However, in 1999 I noted a significant decline in my mother’s mental abilities, and a holiday in August of that year (ironically to see the solar eclipse) obviously caused a dramatic decline in her faculties and short term memory. Unfortunately, when I raised my concerns over possible senile dementia with the family GP, I was told that my mother was normal, and I was the one with problems – it defies belief I know!

In June 2000, during another family holiday, my mother lost all grip on reality – looking back with hindsight, a common factor in her stages of decline was a change in environment. At this point in June 2000 my mother lost her ability to reason logically, and effectively I suddenly became a stranger (or was ‘recognized’ as her younger bother) while her ‘conscious memory’ suddenly regressed over 30 years into the past, to a time when my mother’s parents were still alive. Even at this earliest stage in my mother’s decline with dementia she was starting to suffer delusions and hallucinations – such things as characters on the TV were part of the room and the immediate reality. More concerning was that my mother was suddenly hallucinating the presence of her late mother and father, and even eldest sister who had died in the early 1950s, and she was communicating with these hallucinations. On the return from what was a very stressful holiday, another GP from the practice had to deal with the immediate problems caused by this dramatic onset of dementia, and he immediately recognised a considerable problem, and immediately engaged the services of the welfare system (which in itself was a huge relief for me). A visit by the Community Practitioner Nurse (CPN) confirmed my mother’s dementia, and likely Alzheimer’s disease. Subsequent tests by the Optima project at the Radcliffe Infirmary in Oxford confirmed Alzheimer’s disease. Scans confirmed both degeneration of brain tissue and vastly reduced blood supply in the temporal lobe area – which is of course one area of the brain that psychologists insist is the cause of ‘Alien Abduction’ experiences when the alleged witness is suffering temporal lobe epilepsy.

Sadly, my mother was never to regain any of her previous faculties, and from that point on needed the ever-increasing support of myself and professional carers, to the point two years later that she had to be moved into a dedicated home for dementia sufferers.

From the time my mother slipped into this dramatic condition, she began to suffer ever-increasing hallucinations, caused by different ‘stimuli’:

* The inability to recognise one’s own image.

Since the conscious memory had receded back in time, my mother no longer recognized herself in a mirror. This inability very quickly lead to what to he were very stressful situations, whereby “another woman” in “the next room” were constantly mimicking everything my mother tried to do. The only resolution to alleviate this stress situation was to remove all mirrors in the home.

* The inability to recognise people you know (Prosopagnosia).

Again, as the conscious memory has dramatically receded back in time, suddenly present family and friends become strangers. Indeed, this was one of the most stressful aspects of my mother’s decline, as her entire memory and knowledge of me as her son was wiped out in a matter of days. My mother would occasionally partially recognize me as someone she knew, but she could only interpret my appearance as being her father – in reality my grandfather and myself had little in common in appearance, but this only shows how the affected brain can make so little sense of the data presented to it.

* The inability to logically interpret everyday objects.

In common with the above, my mother had no faculty to logically interpret everyday objects – and this got progressively worse over time. Examples of this would be: a coat hanging on a hook being a person – my mother increasingly refused to go to the front door because of the “woman” standing by the door – this was a coat on a hook beside the door; or cushions etc on chairs becoming “children”. Towards the end of my mother’s time in her own home, this form of hallucination got so bad that almost every object in the house became misinterpreted as a ‘person’ of some description. Except for the ‘woman’ at the front door, my mother would frequently try to converse with all these imaginary people she perceived around the home, especially the ‘children’. Frequently these ‘children’ would be referred to as her sisters and brother, as they would have been in their childhoods in the 1930s.

It should be clear from the above that my mother suffered at times constant and very stressful hallucinations, and we can only wonder at how awful it must be for the sufferer, when nothing about one’s surroundings can be interpreted logically. It is also very clear that despite this month after month of hallucinations, my mother never once described anything that she couldn’t interpret as either a woman or a child – not once was did she hint at anything ‘non-human’ which we can only imagine would have caused considerably more stress and anxiety, as a ‘monster’ or whatever. Some might argue that she may have misinterpreted a perceived ‘alien’ as a ‘child’, but I am convinced that this is clear evidence that temporal lobe degeneration, and its consequences, did not produce any hint of what we think of as an ‘alien encounter’.

The second part of this ‘study’ is based on my own experiences, and how they changed considerably under both stress-induced psychoses and the dramatic effects of prescribed medication to combat this stress.

As I stated earlier, details of my experiences have been published elsewhere, and I will not list them all again here, but to summarize they have included:

* Repeated UFO sightings, from my earliest memories onwards.

* Repeated Alien/ET experiences, again from my earliest memories onwards.

* Night-time ‘visitations’ – whether these might be considered as ‘alien’ or other paranormal such as ghosts is irrelevant for this study.

* Out-of-body experiences or astral travelling.

* Repeated paranormal events occurring in and around the home(s).

* An increase in all the above after my own near-death situation (although not an actual NDE) due to severe illness in January 1992.

* It was from 1994 onwards that even ‘new’ phenomena started to occur, such as the ‘shadow entities’ that I have described elsewhere – and which are described ever-frequently by others.

As can be seen, and as I stated earlier, I have had over 40 years to log, evaluate and make sense of these experiences, and for around 15 years before becoming actively involved in any form of ‘research’ capacity, when I then began to investigate and evaluate further. I knew, and indeed know, that I am a perfectly sane person, who is aware of the unusual going on around me. At no time have I made any outlandish claims of contact - although arguably anyone with these or similar experiences over so many years is perhaps closer to the old description of ‘contactee’ than the prominent claimed ‘Contactees’ themselves. I am quite clear in my own mind (no pun intended given the subject matter considered here) that I was and am perfectly able to rationalize all such occurrences and events that I was experiencing – I could differentiate them quite easily from normal ‘dreams’ (and we could probably argue for years on what constitutes a dream!)

As noted, my own experiences did increase in frequency after my own serious illness – Ulcerative Colitis - that started in late 1990, and was ongoing until it finally had to be resolved by urgent corrective surgery in January 1992. After this time - and which is a common thread – my own comprehension of my own self and spirit changed. Yes, I did change spiritually, and I became more aware of psychic events. However, while such occurrences and experiences increased in frequency, they could still be rationalized as being totally different and separate to ordinary dreams etc. Even during the recovery from surgery, I was able to study the effects of hallucinations, and the differing abilities of the left and right brain to evaluate these. While recovering from significant abdominal surgery (seven hours in theatre) in October 1992, I started to lapse into repeating/cyclical dream experiences where I was either:

a) Turning into a ‘cyborg’ – I had various tubes inserted in all parts of my anatomy as part of normal post-operative procedures, but I just started to hallucinate these tubes multiplying and sprouting from all over my body.

b) Melting – I could see and feel my entire body slowly melting into a pink sludge on the hospital bed!

The second situation above gave me a very clear insight into left and right brain comprehension. During one of my spells ‘melting into a pink sludge’, one of the nurses – Meena – came round and asked “Are you alright, Brian?” Believe me, half of me was trying to scream “Do I (expletives) look alright – DO SOMETHING!”; but the logical half of me enabled me to know this wasn’t reality, and I simply said “Yes, fine..” The reasons for these hallucinations was quite simple, as the painkiller that was provided (for ‘self-administration’ when pain became too much) was Pethidine – which is very closely related to Heroin!

As I have commented above, the situation of being primary carer for my mother (while trying to keep a full-time job to pay the bills) was slowly taking its toll on both my mental and physical strength. This became more so when every effort I made as carer was being rebuffed – the repeated, and then continual verbal abuse and eventual physical abuse is very hard to take as ‘thanks’ for one’s every effort…

Despite this stress, and its undoubted affects on me mentally, I was still aware and able to rationalize my ‘paranormal experiences’.

By mid 2001 the stress was taking a worrying toll on me both physically and mentally, and I had my first minor breakdown, but there was no hope of respite in terms of resolution by the local authority funding a care home place (this wasn’t to happen for a further year). I was by now consulting my GP on a regular basis, his view was that medication to counteract my stress, and its effects should be sought. Since my GP is also an advocate and practitioner of herbal and indeed homeopathic remedies, initially herbal remedies such as Valerian and St John’s Wort were tried (without prescription). Sadly, these natural medications were unable to counteract the stress in themselves, so my GP reluctantly prescribed ‘modern’ pharmaceutical anti-stress and anti-depressant drugs – over the course of the next few months I was to ‘try’ such medications as Venlafaxine, Amitriptyline, and Clozaril. The effects of these drugs were dramatic, but for all the wrong reasons.

My mental state was hardly helped by any of these pharmaceutical drugs, and indeed they began to exert obvious intense psychoses of their own – a very common side-effect of all such drugs! The most common effect was for me to start experiencing clear hypnopompia and hypnogogia – these experiences were clearly different to what I had been used to while I was ‘normal’. These ‘gogic’ experiences were invariably very painful, such as experiencing being in an operating theatre, and having a maniac surgeon operate on me when I’d no anaesthesia – can you imagine what its like to watch and feel a surgeon – using a scalpel the size of a bread-knife – slice open one’s entire abdomen from bottom to top? I woke up screaming the house down! One such experience (where I thought I fell off a building) again with very realistic sounds and feelings of excruciating pain as I hit the ground - resulted in a physical shoulder injury that had to be finally corrected by surgery in August 2003. These injuries and pain were at levels I have never before experienced in a dream, or even during my other experiences. All too frequently I would wake up screaming in pain that I had just ‘suffered’ while transitioning the hypnopompic state.

I was finally able to come off all anti-stress and anti-depressant medications when my mother was finally found a care home place in July 2002. These clearly identifiable ‘gogic’ dreams ended immediately.

So why do I claim/state that drug-related psychoses do not cause or explain the alien encounter scenario? Remember, I had been aware of such ‘alien’ experiences for decades before I started to experience the clear hypnopompia and hypnogogia. Despite all the ‘gogic’ experiences, and at times excruciating pain that I was experiencing within them, not once did any of these dreams within this twelve month period involve any sort of UFO or alien component. Again, consider the ‘history’ of my conscious mind and memories:

* I was a repeater UFO witness and experiencer for decades.

* I was person who has either studied or researched the subjects of UFOs and aliens (as well as other paranormal subjects) for decades. From these interests alone my subconscious will have stored countless accounts and imagery from what I had accumulated.

It would not be unreasonable to assume that at some stage in this twelve month’s of stress/depression/medication-induced psychoses, subconscious images and feelings of an ‘alien’ nature – whether they were in fact my ‘own experience, or merely the recollection of someone else’s accounts – would surface again in my ‘altered state’, but no, they did not occur once. What are the probabilities that 40 years worth of subconscious memory of such things would not resurface once in twelve months, under the very conditions that others would claim they should happen? Given all the ‘data’ that would have been in my subconscious, why did these subconscious thoughts/images never once creep into my mind while under the effects of the drug-induced psychosis?

Surely this is clear evidence that such experiences are not simply the result of psychoses?

References

• Robert Jay Lifton - The Protean Self: Human Resilience in an Age of Fragmentation (Basic Books, New York, 1993)

• Richard McNally and Susan Clancy, Ph.D - Harvard study into claims of alien abduction (see http://www.news.harvard.edu/gazette/2003/02.20/01-alien.html)

• Martin Kottmeyer - Abductions: The Boundary Deficit Hypothesis (Skeptical?), Magonia, 32, March 1988

• RIMA E. LAIBOW, M.D - Clinical Discrepancies Between Expected and Observed Data in Patients Reporting UFO Abductions: Implications For Treatment (http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Rampart/2271/fs-abduclaibow.html)

• Stuart Appelle - The Abduction Experience: A Critical Evaluation of Theory and Evidence, in the Journal of UFO Studies, #6

• Don Donderi, Ph.D - The Scientific Context of the UFO/Abduction Phenomenon, International UFO Reporter, Spring 1996, Volume 21, Number 1

• John Mack - Abduction: Human Encounters With ALiens (1995); (Also see http://centerchange.org/projects/project.asp?id=14)

• Budd Hopkins - Sight Unseen: Science, UFO Invisibility and Transgenic Beings (2003); Witnessed (1996); (also see http://www.intrudersfoundation.org)