Alien Experiences

DIVA collection of essays that examine the production and consumption of Asian American popular culture, from musical expression to television cooking shows./div

In this compelling and revealing examination, author Rupert Matthews looks afresh at key episodes of alien activity on earth, and sheds light on the many mysterious phenomena associated with it. From Roswell to Taizé, the book dissects fascinating eyewitness accounts of communication and contact with alien beings, as well as chilling cases of a...

A Harvard psychiatrist, the author of A Prince of Our Disorder, presents accounts of alien abduction taken from the more than sixty cases he has investigated and examines the implications for our identity as a species.

Short Fiction Prize-winning collection of short stories that use science fiction to explore immigration, diaspora, and the concept of otherness.

Many current and ancient sources suggest that UFOs and extraterrestrial beings have been visiting the earth and interacting with humans for thousands of years. If this is true, monumental implications arise regarding the origin and evolution of humanity and the future of our planet. This book discusses the highly controversial subject of alien contact and abduction, recounting twenty-five cases of close encounter. The cases included have been selected from the files of psychotherapist, Barbara Lamb, who has been working with abductees since 1991. In her work with 560 individuals, more than 1,800 regressions have revealed encounters with what appear to be non-human life forms. Although extraterrestrial contact is difficult to prove scientifically, the events described in this book are accurate in that they have been presented as they were described by the individuals who experienced them. These are normal men and women living average, responsible lives who have been subjected to extremely unusual events. These individuals display such a compelling sincerity and marked emotional response to their strange experiences there can be no doubt they have experienced some kind of extraordinary event. As a reader, you may be curious about the subject, or you may be a confirmed skeptic. You may also be someone who is investigating unusual occurrences in your own life. Whatever the case may be, if with an open mind you will simply consider the possibilities inferred by the cases described herein, you might find yourself on the road to a greater vision of reality.

Close Encounters of the Fourth Kind: cases in which personal contact between an individual or individuals is initiated by the “occupants” of the spacecraft. Such contact may involve the transportation of the individual from his or her terrestrial surroundings into the spacecraft, where the individual is communicated with and/or subjected to an examination before being returned. One might expect that a “scientific conference” devoted to people who have reported being kidnapped by “little green men” would be dismissed out of hand. But C.D.B. Bryan, the greatly admired journalist and author of Friendly Fire, did not dismiss it: the conference was to be held at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and would have as its chairmen a Pulitzer Prize-winning Harvard psychiatry professor and a professor of physics from M.I.T. Bryan attended the conference throughout its five days. He approached the subject with no prior stand, no agenda, and an open (if slightly skeptical) mind. As the conference progressed, he was astonished by the quality of the stories told by the hundreds of men and women who came forward hesitantly and reluctantly with their utterly amazing—and utterly convincing—accounts of having been abducted and then examined aboard extraterrestrial spacecraft by spindly limbed, telepathic gray creatures with outsized foreheads dominated by huge, compelling, tear-shaped black eyes. What most astonished Bryan were the similarities found again and again in these accounts and the consistency of their details. It is here that the heart of the mystery lies: as the Harvard professor John E. Mack asked at the conference, “If what the abductees are saying isn’t happening to them, then what is?” This question—and the possible answers—are at the center of this richly explicit, serious, and riveting book. Bryan recreates the conference. He interviews ufology’s most prominent psychiatrists, psychologists, hypnotherapists, researchers, physicists, physicians, and folklorists. He interweaves throughout the testimony of the abductees themselves, who tell us their stories in chilling detail. He presents, in depth, the Close Encounter experiences of two women whose stories he tells on the basis of both their spontaneous recollections of the events and their memories that were retrieved through sessions of hypnosis of which Bryan himself was a witness. Finally, Bryan examines the current theories—psychological, psychiatric, medical, parapsychological—that have been put forward by the unconvinced to explain the abduction phenomenon. Are the abductees suffering from some sort of false memory syndrome? . . . a multiple or dissociative personality disorder? . . . Are they fantasy-prone? Close Encounters of the Fourth Kind is a detailed, objective exploration—the most concrete to date—of one of the enduring and amazing mysteries of our time. It is a book that will equally fascinate believers and nonbelievers.

Love for the theater is the theme of this autobiography, from one of Britain’s most respected directors, whose credits include Pick-Up Girls and the legendary The Mousetrap.