Kate Farmer of the Austrian Broadcasting Corporation (ORF) explores opposing views of alien encounters in this brief episode of “Reality Check”, originally aired in June 2005. Guests are Harvard Medical School psychologist Richard J. McNally and Will Bueché of the John E. Mack Institute.
The episode highlights McNally’s endorsement of the longstanding (1980s) theory that alien encounters are mistaken cases of sleep paralysis and the hypnopompic/hypnagogic hallucinations that accompany them, with the imagery of small grey aliens provided by pop culture.
McNally’s skeptical take was written about in Susan Clancy’s book, Abducted: How People Come to Believe They Were Kidnapped By Aliens (2005).
| Listen to segment (4min, mp3) |
© 2005 ORF
Originally aired June 2005 on The Austrian Broadcasting Corporation’s FM4 English language service. This episode is not available on the FM4/ORF website.