Posthuman Blues

In his March 2 essay regarding the Peter Jennings UFO special, historian and abduction researcher David M. Jacobs writes the following:

"Finally, the Peter Jennings production must be seen in light of something else of which I am assuming the producers were unaware. The sighting phenomenon is the abduction phenomenon. UFOs are here to abduct people." (Emphasis mine.)

Could he be right? Certainly, UFO events seem designed to impinge on our collective psyche in some abstruse sense, but I don't agree that UFOs are necessarily "abduction machines." I might venture so far as to propose that the UFO phenomenon's central purpose is psychological conditioning, but the "abduction" experience is more than likely a small facet of an overarching agenda.

Jacobs isn't a stupid man, and he bases his conclusions on many years of active research. Although his interpretation of the alien agenda is decidedly malign (see "The Threat," an ominous treatise that declares nothing less than the impending demise of the human race as we know it), he's not easily lumped with fear-mongers such as David Icke (who preaches that humanoid reptiles have infiltrated the government).

Of course, this doesn't mean he's right. Although he professes to be painfully aware of the pitfalls of hypnosis as an investigative tool, I suspect his unconscious hunches have led him into an intellectual cul-de-sac. His UFO/abduction paradigm, while internally consistent, functions by virtue of excluding much of the absurdity embraced by researchers who tend to doubt the prevailing "nuts and bolts" extraterrestrial hypothesis.

On the off-chance that I might be a abductee -- and thus a vital piece of Jacobs' puzzle -- I decided to take his online questionnaire and share the results (excluding all of my "no" responses for sake of readability).

"Do you have any scars or marks on your body that neither you nor your parents can remember how you received?"

I have a series of shallow furrows near my shoulder. I don't know how they got there or, for that matter, when exactly they got there.

"Have you ever experienced an odd displacement in which you found yourself inexplicably in a location different from where you remember being only seconds before and it was not the common 'road hypnosis' while driving?"

Not that I can remember. (Of course, the fact that I can't remember may point toward an exceptionally well-executed abduction.)

"Have you ever dreamed of being in a hospital?"

Yes.

"Have you ever dreamed about lying on a table?"

Yes.

"Have you had any disturbing or realistic dreams about babies or small children?"

Even better: I've had a couple fairly disturbing dreams about child-like aliens.

"Have you ever dreamed about UFOs?"

Certainly.

"Have you ever woken up paralyzed with a sense of a person, presence, or something else in the room?"

Yes. But it was sleep paralysis.

"Do you have inexplicable fears about certain areas such as stretches of highway, open fields, rooms in a house, and so forth?"

Actually, I experience somewhat unaccountable attractions to certain places of no pronounced personal significance.