Our commentary
Alien abduction and Christianity
Our own look at a common question, by David Dell. The background on this page is ours, not a summary of the book.
Abduction stories are some of the most disturbing accounts in the whole UFO subject. People describe missing time, being taken and examined, and being returned. Whatever lies behind them, the people telling them are often frightened, and they deserve to be heard with care.
How the modern abduction story began
The template took shape with Betty and Barney Hill, who reported a light following their car in New Hampshire on the night of September 19–20, 1961. Under hypnosis with Dr. Benjamin Simon in 1964 they gave accounts of being taken aboard a craft, and John G. Fuller's book The Interrupted Journey (1966) made the case famous. We look at the Hill case, and the skeptics' answers to it, in UFOs and spiritual deception.
What researchers have said
One of the best-known academics to take abduction reports seriously was John E. Mack, a psychiatrist and professor at Harvard Medical School who had won the Pulitzer Prize in 1977 for A Prince of Our Disorder, his biography of T.E. Lawrence. In the early 1990s he began a study of about 200 people who reported recurrent encounters, and he published Abduction: Human Encounters with Aliens in 1994.
Skeptical explanations point elsewhere: false memories, sleep paralysis, and dreamlike states during REM sleep. In a 2021 study in the International Journal of Dream Research, 75% of the volunteers asked to try were able to produce alien-encounter experiences through lucid dreaming.
An older comparison
Some writers have noted that abduction accounts resemble older accounts of demonic encounters. The Orthodox monk Fr. Seraphim Rose devoted a chapter of Orthodoxy and the Religion of the Future to UFOs and abductions and concluded that they are manifestations of the demonic. That's an interpretation, not a proof, and we weigh it in Are UFOs demons? A Christian view.
“For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.” Ephesians 6:12 (KJV)
What Scripture promises
Whatever these experiences turn out to be, Scripture doesn't leave a believer without hope:
“For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, Nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Romans 8:38–39 (KJV)
“Ye are of God, little children, and have overcome them: because greater is he that is in you, than he that is in the world.” 1 John 4:4 (KJV)
“Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.” James 4:7 (KJV)
If someone tells you about an experience like this, listen first. Sleep problems are real and worth raising with a doctor. Spiritual fear is real too, and a pastor can help carry it. Neither response cancels out the other.
Sources: Barney and Betty Hill incident · John E. Mack · Alien abduction · Ephesians 6:12; Romans 8:38–39; 1 John 4:4; James 4:7 (KJV)