“After working with 20 or so [alien] abductees, . . . it became clear to me that I was dealing with a phenomenon that could not be explained psychiatrically.”

—John E. Mack

“The best explanation for many abduction experiences is that they are elaborations of the experience of sleep paralysis.”

—Susan Blackmore

Kate, a woman profiled by journalist Marcia Jedd in a 1997 Fate magazine article, claims to have pleasant memories of small, gray humanoids visiting her throughout her childhood. These beings often peered into her family’s Michigan farmhouse at night, and on occasion visited and talked with her in her room, Kate maintains. She professes, however, that she became afraid of the beings as she grew up and realized that other children were not having similar experiences. When a minister she consulted at age fifteen reacted negatively to her stories about contact with the...