Post by auntym on Nov 18, 2018 13:05:08 GMT -6
mysteriousuniverse.org/2018/11/captured-by-the-light-alien-abductions-their-origins-and-misconceptions/
Captured by the Light: Alien Abductions, Their Origins, and Misconceptions
by Micah Hanks / mysteriousuniverse.org/author/mhanks/
November 18, 2018
For a number of decades, people have claimed that they have been taken aboard unusual flying craft–often against their will–and examined in alien environments by strange beings.
Known to those who study unexplained aerial phenomena as UFO or alien abduction, the earliest UFO literature was essentially void of any references to such captures or kidnappings. However, beginning in the 1960s popular books on the subject, namely John G. Fuller’s The Interrupted Journey, began to chronicle the claims of those like Betty and Barney Hill, a New Hampshire couple who alleged they were taken aboard a flying saucer and examined by aliens while returning late one night from a vacation at Niagara Falls.
Other books that followed expanded on the narrative of abductions, producing similar reports to that of the Hills–some of which dated prior to their own 1961 encounter–and before long a shift in the focus of the UFO community at large was well apparent. Conferences that once showcased Air Force veterans like Major Donald Keyhoe, advocating the release of UFO information by the government, and civilian researchers and scientists like J. Allen Hynek seeking trace evidence of landed saucers, were replaced by those now taking up the case of the abductees: Harvard psychologist Dr. John Mack and artist-turned investigator/hypnotist Budd Hopkins, as well as those like Whitley Strieber, a successful novelist who eventually came forward with his own abduction experiences… both to fanfare, and attacks from critics.
Then, with the coming of the new millennium, the focus of the UFO community seemed to shift once again, this time moving gradually away from the abduction phenomenon, in favor of more “nuts and bolts” approaches to studying odd things in the skies.
What caused the shift? Has the widespread accessibility to information sources (and, perhaps more importantly, opposing viewpoints) led to fewer budding researchers following what could be deemed more credulous lines of thought, despite interest that persists in a UFO phenomenon? Could it also be that the once popular abduction literature–after decades of being sustained on even less physical evidence than that which exists in support of UFOs themselves–finally began to collapse inward, under the weight of broader scientific scrutiny?
Perhaps it’s a combination of factors that have caused the shift away from alien abductions that once held the hearts of so many in the UFO community. In a sense, UFO reporting in the last few decades has taken a postmodern approach, in the sense that old ideas once taken for granted are now more thoroughly questioned. Some of the better books on the UFO subject to arrive in recent years have focused almost exclusively on science, historical analysis, and sometimes just bare-bones journalism: Leslie Kean’s UFOs: Generals, Pilots, and Government Officials Go On the Record comes to mind, as well as my friend David Marler’s Triangular UFOs: An Estimate of the Situation and John B. Alexander Ph.D.’s UFOs: Myths, Conspiracies, and Realities all come to mind in this regard. From the more skeptical side of the equation, Bad UFOs: Critical Thinking About UFO Claims by Robert Sheaffer takes a look at famous cases, and calls into question how and why caution should be employed by UFO advocates. Occasionally, groups from one camp may criticize the other (or hit back in defending their positions) although, in my opinion, perspectives from both sides of the fence are helpful, and necessary, in an effort toward looking at the phenomenon objectively.
Of course, one thing that the reader of any of the aforementioned books will notice is that there is very little (if any, in some cases) to be said about alleged alien abductions in such modern examples of UFO literature. We could speculate all day on the reasons for this “shift,” as I’ve called it, although a more interesting line of inquiry, in my opinion, has to do with its origins in the first place: where did the idea of alien abductions come from? Or at very least (and so as not to presuppose that all such claims are to be ruled out of hand, however unlikely they seem), are there cultural predecessors in myth and fiction that might give us an idea about some of the influences behind the strange rise, and sudden fall, of what became a fringe movement within an already controversial subject like UFOs?
As several researchers have outlined already over the years, the general features of the alien abduction motif are all common in much earlier literature, including fairy folklore of the British Isles, as well as other mythology from around the world (the works of Jacques Vallee come to mind here, as do those of Jerome Clarke, among others). Cultural groups since time immemorial have spoken of gods and spirit folk who occasionally carry humans away from the mortal realm, sometimes accompanied by periods of missing time–a trope that has been present in alien abductions as early as the Betty and Barney Hill encounter.
CONTINUE READING: mysteriousuniverse.org/2018/11/captured-by-the-light-alien-abductions-their-origins-and-misconceptions/
Captured by the Light: Alien Abductions, Their Origins, and Misconceptions
by Micah Hanks / mysteriousuniverse.org/author/mhanks/
November 18, 2018
For a number of decades, people have claimed that they have been taken aboard unusual flying craft–often against their will–and examined in alien environments by strange beings.
Known to those who study unexplained aerial phenomena as UFO or alien abduction, the earliest UFO literature was essentially void of any references to such captures or kidnappings. However, beginning in the 1960s popular books on the subject, namely John G. Fuller’s The Interrupted Journey, began to chronicle the claims of those like Betty and Barney Hill, a New Hampshire couple who alleged they were taken aboard a flying saucer and examined by aliens while returning late one night from a vacation at Niagara Falls.
Other books that followed expanded on the narrative of abductions, producing similar reports to that of the Hills–some of which dated prior to their own 1961 encounter–and before long a shift in the focus of the UFO community at large was well apparent. Conferences that once showcased Air Force veterans like Major Donald Keyhoe, advocating the release of UFO information by the government, and civilian researchers and scientists like J. Allen Hynek seeking trace evidence of landed saucers, were replaced by those now taking up the case of the abductees: Harvard psychologist Dr. John Mack and artist-turned investigator/hypnotist Budd Hopkins, as well as those like Whitley Strieber, a successful novelist who eventually came forward with his own abduction experiences… both to fanfare, and attacks from critics.
Then, with the coming of the new millennium, the focus of the UFO community seemed to shift once again, this time moving gradually away from the abduction phenomenon, in favor of more “nuts and bolts” approaches to studying odd things in the skies.
What caused the shift? Has the widespread accessibility to information sources (and, perhaps more importantly, opposing viewpoints) led to fewer budding researchers following what could be deemed more credulous lines of thought, despite interest that persists in a UFO phenomenon? Could it also be that the once popular abduction literature–after decades of being sustained on even less physical evidence than that which exists in support of UFOs themselves–finally began to collapse inward, under the weight of broader scientific scrutiny?
Perhaps it’s a combination of factors that have caused the shift away from alien abductions that once held the hearts of so many in the UFO community. In a sense, UFO reporting in the last few decades has taken a postmodern approach, in the sense that old ideas once taken for granted are now more thoroughly questioned. Some of the better books on the UFO subject to arrive in recent years have focused almost exclusively on science, historical analysis, and sometimes just bare-bones journalism: Leslie Kean’s UFOs: Generals, Pilots, and Government Officials Go On the Record comes to mind, as well as my friend David Marler’s Triangular UFOs: An Estimate of the Situation and John B. Alexander Ph.D.’s UFOs: Myths, Conspiracies, and Realities all come to mind in this regard. From the more skeptical side of the equation, Bad UFOs: Critical Thinking About UFO Claims by Robert Sheaffer takes a look at famous cases, and calls into question how and why caution should be employed by UFO advocates. Occasionally, groups from one camp may criticize the other (or hit back in defending their positions) although, in my opinion, perspectives from both sides of the fence are helpful, and necessary, in an effort toward looking at the phenomenon objectively.
Of course, one thing that the reader of any of the aforementioned books will notice is that there is very little (if any, in some cases) to be said about alleged alien abductions in such modern examples of UFO literature. We could speculate all day on the reasons for this “shift,” as I’ve called it, although a more interesting line of inquiry, in my opinion, has to do with its origins in the first place: where did the idea of alien abductions come from? Or at very least (and so as not to presuppose that all such claims are to be ruled out of hand, however unlikely they seem), are there cultural predecessors in myth and fiction that might give us an idea about some of the influences behind the strange rise, and sudden fall, of what became a fringe movement within an already controversial subject like UFOs?
As several researchers have outlined already over the years, the general features of the alien abduction motif are all common in much earlier literature, including fairy folklore of the British Isles, as well as other mythology from around the world (the works of Jacques Vallee come to mind here, as do those of Jerome Clarke, among others). Cultural groups since time immemorial have spoken of gods and spirit folk who occasionally carry humans away from the mortal realm, sometimes accompanied by periods of missing time–a trope that has been present in alien abductions as early as the Betty and Barney Hill encounter.
CONTINUE READING: mysteriousuniverse.org/2018/11/captured-by-the-light-alien-abductions-their-origins-and-misconceptions/