Alien Abductee Stress

"In case after case after case, I've been impressed with the consistency of the story, the sincerity with which people tell their stories, the power of the feelings connected with this, the self-doubt," John Mack, a psychiatrist at Harvard University who has worked with people who claim to have been abducted, told PBS' NOVA. " I worked with people over hundreds and hundreds of hours, and have done as careful a job as I could to listen, to sift out, to consider alternative explanations. And none have come forward. No one has found an alternative explanation in a single abduction case."

Research in the journal Psychological Science sheds light on the consistency of those powerful feelings by showing that those who claim to have been abducted share traits with people who suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD. Previous research has shown that when Vietnam veterans with PTSD heard 30-second audio "re-enactments" of their trauma, they exhibited psychophysiological activity. "For example, their heart rate will go up, their skin conductance activity, the sweating on the palm of the hand, will increase," says Richard McNally, a psychology professor at Harvard University. "Individuals who do not have PTSD but who have experienced traumatic events typically will not show that reactivity."

When McNally gave a similar test to people with memories of alien abductions, he found that their reactions were the same. "In fact, the actual magnitude of the reactions was at least as great as those reported in previous studies on people with post-traumatic stress disorder," says McNally. "It seems to underscore the power of emotional belief, that if you genuinely believe these things have happened, these terrifying events have happened, then you tend to show the emotional profile, the physiological profile consistent with that belief."