Aliens

I used to be fearful of being abducted by aliens. It was a phobia I had, I guess. When in my teens, I was interested in the supernatural, cryptozoology, extraterrestrials, and the like, and I would watch TV shows about aliens and aliens abducting humans. I found the shows fascinating — (I even did my high school senior essay on a related topic, the “Roswell Incident”, and was in a way hopeful that we would find out that we were not, in fact, alone in the universe) — but when I lay awake at night, in the dark, trying to sleep after having watched those shows, I became terrified that it may happen to me; it may not have been likely, but what if? I would be at their mercy, undergoing procedures that I may not like; I am quite sure I wouldn’t want to be anal-probed, at any rate.

Nobody had really been verifiably abducted by beings from another world, I learned. Most likely, people were experiencing a phenomenon known as sleep paralysis. The brain releases a chemical to stop the body from acting out dreams, but sometimes this happens in a state between sleep and wakefulness, causing a person to be paralyzed while having disturbing dream-like visions. But that didn’t make “abductions” sound that much more phenomenologically pleasing!

But there had to be aliens out there, right? Somewhere? Just look at vast age and size of the cosmos! But as Enrico Fermi asked, “Where are they?” Hopefully not on their way to my bedroom to operate on me!