In the 1950s, reports of alien encounters first began to emerge. Antonio Villas-Boas of Brazil famously declared that he had been abducted by aliens. According to his own testimony, he had been out in the fields when he noticed a UFO and a group of humanoids who took him onto their spaceship for a few hours.
Since then, accounts of alien encounters and abductions have been reported from numerous places around the world, with many of the victims being American women (60-75%). Skeptics suggest that these reports are fueled by the popularity of UFO and extraterrestrial literature in the U.S.
Those who say they have seen UFOs, interacted with aliens, or been taken onto a spaceship may not be lying, as the night scenes experienced in their dreams can seem so real that their alien captors are convinced that the events really happened.
Researchers examined numerous alien encounter tales and found that they all portrayed a dreamlike state. This provided evidence that these accounts may be ordinary yet vivid dreams.
To further investigate, 20 volunteers were recruited to enter lucid dreaming, a state of consciousness where a person is aware of dreaming and can influence dream content. Participants were asked to imagine an alien encounter and describe it upon waking. As a result, half of the volunteers reported alien sightings. However, the article detailing the experiment was not accepted by a scientific journal in 2011, but only caught the attention of the media.
In a follow-up experiment ten years later, 152 volunteers participated, with 114 successfully achieving a lucid dream. Of these, 61 percent reported that the aliens they encountered had the same likeness to aliens in movies and TV shows, while 19 percent were indistinguishable from humans. Making contact with the aliens was possible for only 12 percent of the participants, and 10 percent even reported having been aboard their spacecrafts. Notably, around a quarter of the subjects reported intense anxiety and an immobility similar to sleep paralysis, a sensation often described by those who claim to have been abducted by aliens. These results led the authors to conclude that the experience was likely real.
Numerous testimonies confirm that sleep paralysis can cause people to believe not only in meetings with aliens but also encounters with brownies, devils and other evil spirits. Many people indicate that these experiences are real and not imagined.
Many people have reported waking up feeling as though they've been strangled or attacked by a spiritual being. They may also experience other sensations such as vibration or hearing voices. These events are scientifically explained as the result of a spirit's invisible grasp. Because the REM phase is when people experience dreams, the ability of the body to move is disabled. This helps to prevent any injuries that the sleeper may inadvertently cause while dreaming.
Even though he's aware and mobile, he knows it's impossible to move when REM sleep comes too early or late. When someone experiences unusual physical sensations in their brain, they often believe they are being observed.
Between 8% and 60% of adults have experienced Sleep Paralysis at least once in their lives. However, this is often misunderstood to mean that every single adult has experienced it. About 28% of sufferers are students and another 28% are people who experience a lot of stress. However, reports note that women are more likely to experience Sleep Paralysis than men.
American neurologists believe that the sensations felt during sleep paralysis are similar to NDEs. People perceive themselves as if they were observing themselves from the outside. They are unable to move, and they usually sense an evil presence nearby. This is because the brain's midbrain region is activated, which causes it to recognize threatening stimuli during sleep. It's believed that this is because the brain needs to differentiate between threats as it sleeps.
The University of California at San Diego — USA and Johns Hopkins University (USA) both agree that the hallucinations of sleep paralysis and alien abduction appear similar to the effects of psychedelic substances in the brain. At least, a survey of over 2,500 people who had tried these drugs reported a similar experience.