The first alien abduction occured in 1930. Big eyed, big headed beings abducted a woman named Wilma Deering and give her a physical examination. This appeared in the Buck Rogers comic strip, but fit all the tropes of later abduction stories.
The big headed, small bodied Greys derive from nothing more than what people like HG Wells postulated as the evolution of future man.
The first “real” abduction was recorded in 1961. Their memories of it were brought out under hypnosis. However what most documentaries don’t tell you is that the doctor who hypnotized Barney and Betty Hill stated that the memories were not real, that Betty had been obssessed with UFOs long before this,(most people who are abducted already believe in UFOs). Or that Barney’s description of the aliens matched “the galaxy being” from an episode of The Outer Limits that he’d seen a week before, or that he changed his story when he found that it didn’t match Betty’s.
It’s amazing then that later abduction cases followed the same pattern as the first, false, one.
Similarly, the first “flying saucers” reported by Kenneth Arnold in 1947 were not saucers at all. He described “dewdrop” or “tear” shaped objects that skimmed through the sky like saucers on water. But despite the misunderstanding, the term flying saucers caught on, and everybody started seeing saucers. The first crop circles were an admitted fake but people are still seeing them.
Movies and TV have played a large part in the UFO myth since then. Missing time, alien implants, and wiped memories all appeared in 50s movies before they were reported in “real life”. Nobody was “beamed up” until after Star Trek. In fact, the aliens’ mission on Earth ~ to create human hybrids because the aliens can’t feel emotions ~ is Mr Spock! Reptilian shapeshifters first appeared on “V” in 1983. And now that Stargate is cancelled, people are seeing Stargates.
I had two UFO experiences - a V-formation of disc shaped objects that turned out to be ducks, and a night sighting near the airport: a saucer shaped object with lights on the sides and a dome that rose straight up. It was an airplane with lights on its wings and cockpit. It was coming at me at an angle that made it appear to be rising upwards.
The principle called Occam's Razor is abused by UFOlogists as saying "the simplest answer is usually true"; if it looks like an alien spaceship, it probably is. That's not what Occam's Razor says. More like, to solve a problem, you should select the solution with the fewest assumptions. Atmospheric phenomena, misinterpretations, hoaxes and delusions are things we know exist. Aliens, advanced civilizations, interstellar travel, and mind wiping are (huge)
assumptions.
UFOlogists don't seem to believe their own hype. They make no attempt to prove anything. There are "UFO hotspots" where multiple sightings occur, but they don't set up bases with radar and a light plane. Usually the same victim is abducted again and again, but they don't have abductees wear a wire, or set up an alarm system. So the aliens have the ability to turn off technology; fine, set up something that sends a signal and when the signal is interrupted, send in a team.
So, no, I don’t believe in alien abductions or ancient aliens. This is not to say that I don’t believe in alien life elsewhere, but there is no compelling evidence that they’ve been here. Space is so vast and time so deep that two alien races may never meet or even learn of each others’ existence.
