Southernstar

Although different cases vary in detail sometimes significantly, some UFO researchers, such as folklorist Thomas E. Bullard argue that there is a broad, fairly consistent sequence and description of events that make up the typical "close encounter of the fourth kind" a popular but unofficial designation building on Dr. J. Allen Hynek's classifying terminology. Though the features outlined below are often reported, there is some disagreement as to exactly how often they actually occur.

Bullard argues most abduction accounts feature the following events. They generally follow the sequence noted below, though not all abductions feature all the events:

1. Capture. The abductee is forcibly taken from terrestrial surroundings to an apparent alien space craft.
2. Examination and Procedures. Invasive physiological and psychological procedures, and on occasion simulated behavioral situations, training & testing, or sexual liaisons.
3. Conference. The abductors communicate with the abductee or direct them to interact with specific individuals for some purpose.
4. Tour. The abductees are given a tour of their captors' vessel, though this is disputed by some researchers who consider this definition a confabulation of intent when just apparently being taken around to multiple places inside the ship.
5. Loss of Time. Abductees often rapidly forget the majority of their experience, either as a result of fear, medical intervention, or both.
6. Return. The abductees are returned to earth, occasionally in a different location from where they were allegedly taken or with new injuries or disheveled clothing.
7. Theophany. Coinciding with their immediate return, abductee may have a profound sense of love, a high, or "mystical experience", accompanied by a feeling of oneness with God, the universe, or their abductors. Whether this is the result of a metaphysical change, Stockholm Syndrome, or prior medical tampering is often not scrutinized by the abductees at the time.
8. Aftermath. The abductee must cope with the psychological, physical, and social effects of the experience.

Abduction claimants report unusual feelings preceding the onset of an abduction experience. These feelings manifest as a compulsive desire to be at a certain place at a certain time or as expectations that something "familiar yet unknown," will soon occur. Abductees also report feeling severe, undirected anxiety at this point even though nothing unusual has actually occurred yet.

This period of foreboding can last for up to several days before the abduction actually takes place or be completely absent.Eventually, the experiencer will undergo an apparent "shift" into an altered state of consciousness. British abduction researchers have called this change in consciousness "the Oz Factor." External sounds cease to have any significance to the experiencer and fall out of perception.
They report feeling introspective and unusually calm. This stage marks a transition from normal activity to a state of "limited self-willed mobility." As consciousness shifts one or more lights are alleged to appear, occasionally accompanied by a strange mist. The source and nature of the lights differ by report, sometimes the light emanates from a source outside the house presumably the abductors' UFO, sometimes the lights are in the bedroom with the experiencer and transform into alien figures.As the alleged abduction proceeds, claimants say they will walk or be levitated into an alien craft, often through solid objects like walls or a window. Alternatively, they may experience rising through a tunnel with or without the abductors accompanying them into the awaiting craft

After the so-called medical exam, the alleged abductees often report other procedures being performed with the entities. Common among these post-examination procedures are what abduction researchers refer to as imaging, envisioning, staging, and testing."Imaging" procedures consist of an abductee being made to view screens displaying images and scenes that appear to be specially chosen with the intent to provoke certain emotional responses in the abductee. "Envisioning" is a similar procedure, with the primary difference being that the images being viewed, rather than being on a screen, actually seem to be projected into the experiencer's mind. "Staging" procedures have the abductee playing a more active role, according to reports containing this element.

It shares vivid hallucination-like mental visualization with the envisioning procedures, but during staging the abductee interacts with the illusionary scenario like a role player or an actor."Testing" marks something of a departure from the above procedures in that it lacks the emotional analysis feature. During testing the experiencer is placed in front of a complicated electronic device and is instructed to operate it. The experiencer is often confused, saying that they do not know how to operate it. However, when they actually set about performing the task, the abductee will find that they do, in fact, know how to operate the machine

Abductees of all ages and genders sometimes report being subjected to a "child presentation." As its name implies, the child presentation involves the abduction claimant being shown a "child." Often the children appear to be neither human, nor the same species as the abductors. Instead, the child will almost always share characteristics of both species.

These children are labeled by experiencers as hybrids between humans and their abductors, usually Greys.Unlike Budd Hopkins and David Jacobs, folklorist Thomas E. Bullard could not identify a child presentation phase in the abduction narrative, even after undertaking a study of 300 abduction reports. Bullard says that the child presentation "seems to be an innovation in the story" and that "no clear antecedents" to descriptions of the child presentation phase exists before its popularization by Hopkins and Jacobs.

Bullard also studied the 300 reports of alien abduction in an attempt to observe the less prominent aspects of the claims. He notes the emergence of four general categories of events that recur regularly, although not as frequently as stereotypical happenings like the medical examination. These four types of events are:

1. The conference
2. The tour
3. The journey
4. Theophany

Chronologically within abduction reports these rarer episodes tend to happen in the order listed, between the medical examination and the return.After allegedly displaying cold callous disregard towards the abduction experiencers, sometimes the entities will change drastically in behavior once the initial medical exam is completed. They become more relaxed and hospitable towards their captive and lead him or her away from the site of the examination. The entities then hold a conference with the experiencer, wherein they discuss things relevant to the abduction phenomenon. Bullard notes five general categories of discussion that occur during the conference "phase" of reported abduction narratives: An interrogation session, explanatory segment, task assignment, warnings, and prophecies.

Tours of the abductors' craft are a rare but recurring feature of the abduction narrative. The tour seems to be given by the alleged abductors as a courtesy in response to the harshness and physical rigors of the forced medical examination. Sometimes the abductee report traveling on a "journey" to orbit around Earth or to what appear to be other planets. Some abductees find that the experience is terrifying, particularly if the aliens are of a more fearsome species, or if the abductee was subjected to extensive probing and medical testing.

Eventually the abductors will return the abductees to terra firma, usually to exactly the same location and circumstances they were in before being taken. Usually, explicit memories of the abduction experience will not be present, and the abductee will realize they have experienced "missing time" upon checking a timepiece.Sometimes the alleged abductors appear to make mistakes when returning their captives.
Famed UFO researcher Budd Hopkins has joked about "the cosmic application of Murphy's Law" in response to this observation. Hopkins has estimated that these "errors" accompany 4–5 percent of abduction reports. One type of common apparent mistake made by the abductors is failing to return the experiencer to the same spot that they were taken from initially. This can be as simple as a different room in the same house, or abductees can even find themselves outside and all the doors of the house are locked from the inside.

Most people alleging alien abductions report invasive examinations of their bodies and some ascribe psychological trauma to their experiences. Alleged abductees claim their memories of the abduction events have caused posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). "Post abduction syndrome" is a term used by abductees to describe the effects of abduction, though it is not recognized by any professional treatment organizations. The difference between PAS and PTSD is described as the recurrence of the phenomenon and the inability to identify when the disorder started; furthermore, the medical community considers PTSD to be a severe and debilitating ailment whereas "PAS" has been promoted only by fringe researchers.

Many alien abductees recall much of their abduction(s) through hypnosis. Because of this, it is claimed by some skeptics that the vast majority of evidence for alien abduction is based on memories 'recovered' through hypnosis. Due to the extensive use of hypnosis, the abduction narratives are frequently explained by skeptics as false memories and suggestions by the hypnotherapist. Alleged abductees seek out hypnotherapists to try to resolve issues such as missing time or unexplained physical symptoms such as muscle pain or headaches.

1. A person is predisposed to accept the idea that certain puzzling or inexplicable experiences might be telltale signs of UFO abduction.
2. The person seeks out a therapist, whom he or she views as an authority and who is, at the very least, receptive to this explanation and has some prior familiarity with UFO abduction reports.
3. Alternatively, the therapist frames the puzzling experiences in terms of an abduction narrative.
4. Alternative explanations of the experiences are not explored.
5. There is increasing commitment to the abduction explanation and increasing anxiety reduction associated with ambiguity reduction.
6. The therapist legitimates or ratifies the abductee’s experience, which constitutes additional positive reinforcement.
7. The client adopts the role of the "victim" or abductee, which becomes integrated into the psychotherapy and the client’s view of self.

There have been a variety of explanations offered for abduction phenomena, ranging from sharply skeptical appraisals, to uncritical acceptance of all abductee claims, to the demonological, to everything in between.Some have elected not to try explaining things, instead noting similarities to other phenomena, or simply documenting the development of the alien abduction phenomenon.Others are intrigued by the entire phenomenon, but hesitate in making any definitive conclusions. The late Harvard psychiatrist John Mack concluded, "The furthest you can go at this point is to say there's an authentic mystery here. And that is, I think, as far as anyone ought to go.

" (emphasis as in original) (Bryan, 269)Putting aside the question of whether abduction reports are literally and objectively "real", literature professor Terry Matheson argues that their popularity and their intriguing appeal are easily understood. Tales of abduction "are intrinsically absorbing; it is hard to imagine a more vivid description of human powerlessness. " After experiencing the frisson of delightful terror one may feel from reading ghost stories or watching horror movies, Matheson notes that people "can return to the safe world of their homes, secure in the knowledge that the phenomenon in question cannot follow. But as the abduction myth has stated almost from the outset, there is no avoiding alien abductors." (Matheson, 297)Matheson writes that when compared to the earlier contactee reports, abduction accounts are distinguished by their "relative sophistication and subtlety, which enabled them to enjoy an immediately more favorable reception from the public."

Abduction researcher Brian Thompson claims that a nurse acquaintance of his reported that during 1957 in Cincinnati she encountered a 3-foot-tall (0.91 m) praying mantis-like entity two days after a V-shaped UFO sighting. This mantis-like creature is reminiscent of the insectoid-type entity reported in some abduction accounts. He related this report to fellow researcher Leonard Stringfield. Stringfield told him of two cases he had in his files where separate witnesses reported identical circumstances in the same place and year.

While some corroborated accounts seem to support the literal reality of the abduction experience, others seem to support a psychological explanation for the phenomenon's origins. Jenny Randles and Keith Basterfield both noted at the 1992 MIT alien abduction conference that of the five cases they knew of where an abduction researcher was present at the onset of an abduction experience, the experiencer "didn't physically go anywhere. "Brazilian researcher Gilda Moura reported on a similar case, the Sueli case, from her home country. When psychologist and UFO researcher Don Donderi said that these cases were "evidence of psychological processes" that did not "have anything to do with a physical alien abduction," Moura replied "If the Sueli case is not an abduction, I don't know what is an abduction any more." Gilda Moura noted that in the Brazilian Sueli case during the abduction UFOs were observed. Later, she claims the experiencer had eye burns, saw lights and there seemed to be residual poltergeist activity.