AudioBlog: UFO Abduction Claims by the End of the 1970s

By the end of the 1970s, after the 1973 Pascagoula incident and the 1975 Travis Walton case, abduction claims were not only an accepted aspect of the UFO mystery by many investigators, they were considered worthy of attention by the news media, and there are many lengthy newspaper articles detailing reports throughout that decade. The narrative hadn’t yet been taken over by the now-common reports of being taken aboard a craft by creatures 3 to 4 feet tall with big, slanted, black eyes and being subjected to invasive medical procedures that seemed to have something to do with reproduction. The creatures and the natures of the encounters reported throughout the 70s were varied, but by the decade’s end, elements had emerged that would become common in the decades to come. What would also become common in such cases would be the use of regressive hypnosis, which was thought to be an effective means to recover lost memories. However, this technique has since came under criticism, particularly in its use to provide evidence in legal cases, as can be seen in the article titled “Hypnosis, Memory and Amnesia” which was published in the November 29, 1997 (pp. 1727-1732) Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society London B: Biological Sciences. Read more →