RESIDENT ALIENS: stories of nyc in the 1960s

A small but stubborn percentage of alien abduction experiences defy clear scientific explanation, but many of the rest can have a number of different physiological or psychological explanations, including epilepsy, which can be preceded by visual disruptions, narcolepsy, or sleep paralysis.

In normal sleep, your body is relaxed nearly to the point of paralysis, presumably to keep you from acting out your dreams. Sleep paralysis is a disruption of lucid dreaming in which the mind partially wakes but finds that the body has not. It can be terrifying: Individuals report sensing entities in the room with them and being unable to move, pressure on their chests, out-of-body-like sensations coupled with intense, heightened emotions.

In the past and in other cultural contexts, this experience was attributed to demons or evil spirits or a religious phenomenon. In America, science fiction was increasingly part of mainstream entertainment, and stories about alien contact experiences were covered as news, so aliens seemed like a plausible explanation for these experiences. Though now largely dismissed by mainstream psychology, hypnotic regression remains popular with experiencers.

Psychologists say that discerning true memories of actual events from true memories of imagined events is impossible, especially if the individual was predisposed to believe in paranormal or alien experiences. A recent international survey of more than 30, people, none of who were diagnosed with schizophrenia or other mental health issues, found that 6 percent of them reported experiencing a hallucination unrelated to drugs, alcohol, or sleep.

By the end of the s, the alien abduction bubble had burst. Five months later, two planes crashed into the Twin Towers and no one cared about little green men anymore. ET has gone home. Skeptics want to believe that fewer people believe, that more people are aware of explanations like sleep paralysis or false memories. Experiencers want to believe that public skepticism is subsiding.

This is validating, that they can talk about it and not be ridiculed. Yet if periodic polls are any indication, Americans have remained consistent on the subject of aliens for the last three decades. American disbelief of the government line on UFOs has also remained steady. In , 71 percent thought the government was hiding something; it was 79 percent in , according to a National Geographic Survey.

It also points to a strange moment for us humans, for how our understanding of our place in the universe has changed over the last 50 years. Using the binoculars, Barney claimed to have seen about 8 to 11 humanoid figures, who were peering out of the craft's windows, seeming to look at him. In unison, all but one figure moved to what appeared to be a panel on the rear wall of the hallway that encircled the front portion of the craft. The one remaining figure continued to look at Barney and communicated a message telling him to "stay where you are and keep looking. Red lights on what appeared to be bat-wing fins began to telescope out of the sides of the craft, and a long structure descended from the bottom of the craft.

Barney "tore" the binoculars away from his eyes and ran back to his car. In a near hysterical state, he told Betty, "They're going to capture us! He drove away at high speed, telling Betty to look for the object. She rolled down the window and looked up.

Almost immediately, the Hills heard a rhythmic series of beeping or buzzing sounds, which they said seemed to bounce off the trunk of their vehicle. The car vibrated and a tingling sensation passed through the Hills' bodies. The Hills said that then they experienced the onset of an altered state of consciousness that left their minds dulled. A second series of beeping or buzzing sounds returned the couple to full consciousness. They recalled making a sudden, unplanned turn, encountering a roadblock, and observing a fiery orb in the road. Arriving home at about dawn, the Hills assert that they had some odd sensations and impulses they could not readily explain: Betty insisted their luggage be kept near the back door rather than in the main part of the house.

Their watches would never run again. Barney said that the leather strap for the binoculars was torn, though he could not recall it tearing. The toes of his best dress shoes were scraped. Barney says he was compelled to examine his genitals in the bathroom, though he found nothing unusual. They took long showers to remove possible contamination and each drew a picture of what they had observed.

Perplexed, the Hills say they tried to reconstruct the chronology of events as they witnessed the UFO and drove home.

Why alien abductions are down dramatically - The Boston Globe

But immediately after they heard the buzzing sounds, their memories became incomplete and fragmented. Later, when she retrieved the items from her closet, she noted a pinkish powder on her dress. She hung the dress on her clothesline and the pink powder blew away. But the dress was irreparably damaged. She threw it away, but then changed her mind, retrieving the dress and hanging it in her closet. Over the years, five laboratories have conducted chemical and forensic analyses on the dress. There were shiny, concentric circles on their car's trunk that had not been there the previous day.

Betty and Barney experimented with a compass , noting that when they moved it close to the spots, the needle would whirl rapidly. But when they moved it a few inches away from the shiny spots, it would drop down. On September 22, Major Paul W. Henderson telephoned the Hills for a more detailed interview.

Henderson's report, dated September 26, determined that the Hills had probably misidentified the planet Jupiter. This was later changed to "optical condition", "inversion" and "insufficient data". Air Force's UFO research project. Within days of the encounter, Betty borrowed a UFO book from a local library.

On September 26, Betty wrote to Keyhoe. She related the full story, including the details about the humanoid figures that Barney had observed through binoculars. Betty wrote that she and Barney were considering hypnosis to help recall what had happened. Her letter was eventually passed on to Walter N. Webb met with the Hills on October 21, In a six-hour interview, the Hills related all they could remember of the UFO encounter.

Barney asserted that he had developed a sort of "mental block" and that he suspected there were some portions of the event that he did not wish to remember. He described in detail all that he could remember about the craft and the appearance of the "somehow not human" figures aboard the craft. Ten days after the alleged UFO encounter, Betty began having a series of vivid dreams. They continued for five successive nights.

Never in her memory had she recalled dreams in such detail and intensity. But they stopped abruptly after five nights and never returned again. They occupied her thoughts during the day. When she finally did mention them to Barney, he was sympathetic, but not too concerned, and the matter was dropped. Betty did not mention them to Barney again. In November , Betty began writing down the details of her dreams. In one dream, she and Barney encountered a roadblock and men who surrounded their car.

She lost consciousness, but struggled to regain it. She then realized that she was being forced by two small men to walk in a forest in the nighttime, and of seeing Barney walking behind her, though when she called to him, he seemed to be in a trance or sleepwalking. The men stood about five feet to five feet four inches tall, and wore matching blue uniforms, with caps similar to those worn by military cadets. They appeared nearly human, with black hair, dark eyes, prominent noses and bluish lips.

Their skin was a greyish colour. In the dreams, Betty, Barney, and the men walked up a ramp into a disc-shaped craft of metallic appearance. Once inside, Barney and Betty were separated. She protested, and was told by a man she called "the leader" that if she and Barney were examined together, it would take much longer to conduct the exams. She and Barney were then taken to separate rooms. Betty then dreamt that a new man, similar to the others, entered to conduct her exam with the leader. Betty called this new man "the examiner" and said he had a pleasant, calm manner. Though the leader and the examiner spoke to her in English, the examiner's command of the language seemed imperfect and she had difficulty understanding him.

The examiner told Betty that he would conduct a few tests to note the differences between humans and the craft's occupants. He seated her on a chair, and a bright light was shone on her. The man cut off a lock of Betty's hair. He examined her eyes, ears, mouth, teeth, throat and hands.

He saved trimmings from her fingernails. After examining her legs and feet, the man then used a dull knife, similar to a letter opener, to scrape some of her skin onto what resembled cellophane. He then tested her nervous system and he thrust the needle into her navel, which caused Betty agonizing pain, whereupon the leader waved his hand in front of her eyes and the pain vanished.

The examiner left the room and Betty engaged in conversation with the "leader". She picked up a book with rows of strange symbols that the "leader" said she could take home with her. She also asked from where he came, and he pulled down an instructional map dotted with stars. In Betty's dream account, the men began escorting the Hills from the ship when a disagreement broke out. The leader then informed Betty that she couldn't keep the book, stating that they had decided that the other men did not want her to even remember the encounter.

Betty insisted that no matter what they did to her memory, she would one day recall the events. She and Barney were taken to their car, where the leader suggested that they wait to watch the craft's departure. They did so, then resumed their drive. Jackson and Robert E. Although the Hills had noted that they had arrived home later than anticipated, the drive should have taken about four hours miles. They claimed not to have realized that they arrived home seven hours after their departure from Colebrook. When Hohman and Jackson noted this discrepancy to the Hills, the couple had no explanation a phenomenon ufologists call " missing time ".

Both claimed to recall an image of a fiery orb sitting on the ground. Betty and Barney reasoned that it must have been the moon, but Hohmann and Jackson informed them that the moon had set earlier in the evening. The subject of hypnosis came up, and it was decided that it should be carried out in order to elicit previously irretrievable memories. Barney was apprehensive about hypnosis, but thought it might help Betty put to rest what Barney described as "the 'nonsense' about her dreams.

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By February , the Hills were making frequent weekend drives to the White Mountains , hoping that revisiting the site might spark more memories. By the 's, steam power had shortened the journey to America dramatically. Immigrants poured in from around the world: The door was wide open for Europeans. After , nearly all immigrants came in through the newly opened Ellis Island. One immigrant recalled arriving at Ellis Island: Ah, that day must have been about five to six thousand people.

Jammed, I remember it was August. Hot as a pistol, and I'm wearing my long johns, and my heavy Irish tweed suit. Some of these then sent for their wives, children, and siblings; others returned to their families in Europe with their saved wages. The experience for Asian immigrants in this period was quite different. Since earlier laws made it difficult for those Chinese immigrants who were already here to bring over their wives and families, most Chinese communities remained "bachelor societies.

For Mexicans victimized by the Revolution, Jews fleeing the pogroms in Eastern Europe and Russia, and Armenians escaping the massacres in Turkey, America provided refuge. And for millions of immigrants, New York provided opportunity. In Lower New York, one could find the whole world in a single neighborhood. But after the outbreak of World War I in , American attitudes toward immigration began to shift.

Nationalism and suspicion of foreigners were on the rise, and immigrants' loyalties were often called into question. Through the early s, a series of laws were passed to limit the flow of immigrants. The Great Depression had begun, leaving few with the means or incentive to come to the United States. Many recent immigrants returned to their native lands, including hundreds of thousands of Mexicans, many against their will. The restrictive immigration policies of the s persisted. In the late s, with World War II accelerating in Europe, a new kind of immigrant began to challenge the quota system and the American conscience.

A small number of refugees fleeing Nazi persecution arrived under the quota system, but most were turned away. Once the US declared war against the Axis Powers, German and Italian resident aliens were detained; but for the Japanese, the policies were more extreme: Congress would officially apologize for the Japanese Internment in After the war, the refugee crisis continued. But millions more were left to seek refuge elsewhere.

Between and , the US admitted 38, Hungarians, refugees from a failed uprising against the Soviets. These were among the first of the Cold War refugees. In this era, for the first time in US history, more women than men entered the country. They were reuniting with their families, joining their GI husbands, taking part in the post war economic boom.

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By the early s, calls for immigration reform were growing louder. Gone was the quota system favoring Western Europe, replaced by one offering hope to immigrants from all the continents. The face of America was truly about to change. The effects of the Immigration and Naturalization Act of were immediate and significant. Within five years, Asian immigration would more than quadruple. This trend was magnified even further by the surge in refugees from the war in Southeast Asia.