THESE LITTLE GREEN MEN TIED ME UP, AND THEN . . .

Somebody is finally taking seriously all these people who claim they have been abducted by aliens and experimented on and God-knows-what-else. A Harvard psychologist (who else?) named Susan Clancy has a book coming out in October that tries to explain this phenomenon--"Abducted: How People Come to Believe They Were Abducted by Aliens."

According to a preview in the New York Times, Dr. Clancy has interviewed dozens of abductees as part of her studies in the nature of memory. She says they are not crazy and their experiences should be taken "as seriously as any strongly held exotic beliefs." Such as, for example, religious visions.

Dr. Clancy relates these abduction memories to a more familiar occurence called sleep paralysis. You may have had this sort of experience at some time yourself. "While in light dream-rich REM sleep, people will in rare cases wake up for a few moments and find themselves unable to move," she tells the Times. "Psychologists estimate that about a fifth of people will have that experience at least once, during which some 5 percent will be bathed in terrifying sensations like buzzing, full-body electrical quivers, a feeling of levitation, at times accompanied by hallucinations of intruders."

This short review in the Times doesn't make it clear how she goes from sleep paralysis to the elaborate scenarios described by many of these abductees. Apparently they have a sleep-paralysis episode along with a weird dream, and their minds draw on all the familiar details of sci-fi movies--especially those well-known creatures with spindly bodies, big heads, and bug eyes. The whole thing is so vivid upon awakening that they become convinced it really happened. It helps that these people are generally interested in the paranormal, susceptible to hypnotism, and highly emotional.

At a basic level, she concludes, these abduction stories have an almost religious element to those who believe them. The stories give their lives a meaning, a way to understand the odd and dispiriting things in their lives, a comforting sense that, as so many abductees come to believe, "we are not alone in this world."

What about you?

Makes sense to me. I have had at least one episode of sleep paralysis that I can remember, and it was really a weird experience. If I had thought to put it together with a dream about little green men--well, I'd be a True Believer, too.