The Demon-Haunted World_ Science as a Candle in the Dark - Carl Sagan [51]
I was glad to have an opportunity to spend several hours with Mr and Mrs Hill and with Dr Simon. There was no mistaking the earnestness and sincerity of Betty and Barney, and their mixed feelings about becoming public figures under such odd and awkward circumstances. With the Hills’ permission, Dr Simon played for me (and, at my invitation, McDonald) some of the audiotapes of their sessions under hypnosis. By far my most striking impression was the absolute terror in Barney’s voice as he described - ‘re-lived’ would be a better word - the encounter.
Dr Simon, while a leading proponent of the virtues of hypnosis in war and peace, had not been caught up in the public frenzy about UFOs. He shared handsomely in the royalties of John Fuller’s best-seller, Interrupted Journey, about the Hills’ experience. If Dr Simon had pronounced their account authentic, the sales of the book might have gone through the roof and his own financial reward been considerably augmented. But he didn’t. He also instantly rejected the notion that they were lying, or as suggested by another psychiatrist, that this was a folie a deux - a shared delusion in which, generally, the submissive partner goes along with the delusion of the dominant partner. So what’s left? The Hills, said their psychotherapist, had experienced a species of ‘dream’. Together.
There may very well be more than one source of alien abduction accounts, just as there are for UFO sigh tings. Let’s run through some of the possibilities.
In 1894 The International Census of Waking Hallucinations was published in London. From that time to this, repeated surveys have shown that 10 to 25 per cent of ordinary, functioning people have experienced, at least once in their lifetimes, a vivid hallucination, hearing a voice, usually, or seeing a form when there’s no one there. More rarely, people sense a haunting aroma, or hear music, or receive a revelation that arrives independent of the senses. In some cases these become transforming personal events or profound religious experiences. Hallucinations may be a neglected low door in the wall to a scientific understanding of the sacred.
Probably a dozen times since their deaths I’ve heard my mother or father, in a conversational tone of voice, call my name. Of course they called to me often during my life with them – to do a chore, to remind me of a responsibility, to come to dinner, to engage in conversation, to hear about an event of the day. I still miss them so much that it doesn’t seem at all strange that my brain will occasionally retrieve a lucid recollection of their voices.
Such hallucinations may occur to perfectly normal people under perfectly ordinary circumstances. Hallucinations can also be elicited: by a campfire at night, or under emotional stress, or during epileptic seizures or migraine headaches or high fever, or by prolonged fasting or sleeplessness* or sensory deprivation (for example, in solitary confinement), or through hallucinogens such as LSD, psilocybin, mescaline, or hashish. (Delirium tremens, the dreaded alcohol-induced DTs, is one well-known manifestation of a withdrawal syndrome from alcoholism.) There are also molecules, such as the phenothiazines (thorazine, for example), that make hallucinations go away. It is very likely that the normal human body generates substances – perhaps including the morphine-like small brain proteins called endorphins – that cause hallucinations, and others that suppress them. Such celebrated (and unhysterical) explorers as Admiral Richard Byrd, Captain Joshua Slocum and Sir Ernest Shackleton all experienced vivid hallucinations when coping with unusual isolation and loneliness.
[* Dreams are associated with a state