Are Aliens Having Sex With You While You Sleep?

Most of us are familiar with the concept of alien abductions.  If nothing else, we've seen the front pages of tabloids while checking out at the grocery store and read such lurid headlines as "Are Aliens Having Sex With You While You Sleep?" In general, those who claim to have been abducted by extra terrestrials are viewed as anything from attention seekers to lunatics.  When we think of this kind of person, we envision someone like Randy Quaid's character in Independence Day; a harmless quack who just isn't quite right in the head. Like the average American, I believed that alien abductees were anomalies in society; a small group of delusional paranoids who live on the fringes of society.

Recently, while researching for an article on the possibility of extra terrestrial life, my bias regarding alien abductions was shaken.  As I dug into the topic of alien abductions, I expected to uncover a couple of hundred accounts.  Imagine my surprise when I learned that there have been as many as four million cases of abductions in America alone. Four million Americans have been probed by aliens aboard a spacecraft? The thought boggles the mind!

That means that you have a one in 77 million chance of being abducted by aliens in the United States.  Just to put that statistic in perspective, consider the fact that you are twice as likely to be abducted by aliens as you are to win a lottery jackpot. In fact, you have a greater chance of being abducted by aliens than being killed by a shark. So while it may be safe to go back into the water, you'd better keep your eyes on the skies.

Reports of alien abductions hit the news in America in 1961 with the case of Barney and Betty Hill.  The Hills, through weeks of regression hypnosis, were able to reconstruct the details of their experience aboard an alien spaceship.  Since that time, reports of abductions have increased exponentially.  Over the last seven years, there has been an average of 10,000 reports each year of alien abductions.

Most scientists strongly refute allegations that aliens are abducting unsuspecting sleepers.  Psychologist point out that regressive hypnosis is just as likely to plant false memories as it is to bring out repressed memories.  Most recently, scholars have joined to point the finger at sleep paralysis as the most likely cause for the experiences described by those reporting alien abductions.

However, these theories fail to explain the abductions that take place while the subject is wide awake or those, like the case of Travis Walton, where there are multiple witnesses to the same event. After all, the overwhelming number of testimonies cannot be ignored. Something is going on while we sleep and, at least in my case, I'd sleep a lot better if I knew for sure what that something is.

Oblivion

There is a lot of buzz about Tom Cruise's newest film, Oblivion, which premiers in theaters on Friday, April 19th. The trailers are real teasers; giving us just enough to whet our appetites, but not enough to give away the story line behind the movie. Touted as an "intelligent sci-fi action" film, the movie is set 60 years in the future- after Earth has sustained an alien attack.  The movie revolves around Jack Harper (played by Tom Cruise), who is the last man on Earth.

Trivia: This is the third movie in which Tom Cruise has played a character named Jack.  The other two are Legend and Jack Reacher.

In a recent interview with Fandango, Tom Cruise talked about his perspective of the movie, which is unique in several ways. To him, the movie expresses the personal, emotional journey of Jack Harper. (A large part of the movie is made up of solo scenes with Cruise.) Along that journey, our protagonist finds love when he meets the tough and sexy, Julia (played by Olga Kurylenko). Jack and Julia's romance is set among a backdrop which Fandango calls "visually stunning."

For those who have been disappointed with the recent flood of predictable and recycled sci-fi offerings, this movie is for you.  Oblivion is reputed to provide a fresh and unexpected story line with lots of plot twists and surprises.  Be on the lookout for the scene which Cruise calls "the most unique fight scene I have ever done."

If the previews are any indication of the movie, Oblivion seems destined to be a hit.

Roswell Revisited

For those of you who continued reading after seeing the title of this blog, I commend you!

The mere mention of Roswell, New Mexico is sure to elicit a strong response in most Americans. For a great many people, that response is skepticism and scorn; the stalwart shields of the unbeliever.  Yet even among the increasing number of Americans who believe that we are not alone in the universe, Roswell has become so overdone our minds that we too fail to realize the real significance of that watershed event.

What makes Roswell so important?  It did not have the distinction of being the first UFO report.  In fact, as UFO sightings go, it didn't seem to have much going for it.   The government quickly stepped in; effectively squelching the story with its own account of a misidentification of a weather balloon. The whole incident held the nation's attention for a mere two days before it seemingly sunk into oblivion.

However, the fact that it refused to remain in oblivion is more significant that we may realize.  Thirty years after the incident, Jesse Marcel, a veteran of World War II and retired army intelligence officer dared to speak out.  He announced that what had been recovered in the desert was not a weather balloon but an alien spacecraft.  His claims ignited a firestorm of controversy about the incident that continues to this day.

Sixty-five years later, the event at Roswell, New Mexico is seared into the American consciousness.  Ask any college student about what happened at Nagasaki in 1945 or at Antietam in 1862 and you will most likely get a blank stare; despite the fact that these events are duly recorded in our history books.  However, ask them about what happened in Roswell, New Mexico in 1947 and you are sure to get a quick response, even though those events are not found in any textbook.

Whether what happened in Roswell was the cover-up of a top secret military aircraft or, as most believe, the crash of a "flying disk" from outer space; it is vital that we remember that Roswell marks the birthplace of American ufology. Because of that distinction, it is important that we periodically revisit Roswell, shake off the commercialism and sensationalism that surrounds it, and look again at the event that forever changed the way that Americans look at the stars.