"A time to remember"

Dear readers,

The English magazine "Fortean Times" is always a source of articles which make me think. Another fascinating article appears in the March 2012 issue (pp56-57) penned (or typed) by one Rob Gandy.

A management consultant, Gandy, had an unusual experience in December 2006, which he shares with us. After working on bicycle repairs, then talking to his wife, he lost a portion of his memory for recent events. At first, his wife thought he had experienced a stroke. However, the diagnosis was Transient Global Amnesia (for more click here.) His memory slowly returned.

Gandy points out that a FT contributor, Gail-Nina Anderson, who also had a TGA episode, joked that "...if she had been on a dark lonely road when she experienced TGA, she would have been able to attribute the time lapse to aliens."

Gandy then writes "A stereotypical; event in ufology is that someone is driving through the countryside at night when their car enters a luminous cloud, or similar; then the driver finds himself miles down the road with half an hour missing."

"A number of commentators have argued that many, if not all, perceived UFOs are actually forms of a rare meteorological phenomena. Therefore, my speculative interpretation of these events is that they do involve rare meteorological phenomena and these phenomena can induce TGA in humans who get too close to them."

What is the frequency of TGA?

"Estimates...varies from a minimum of 2.9 cases per  100,000 population (Spain) and 5.2 per 100,000 (USA); but among people aged over 50, the rate of TGA incidence is reported to range from approximately 23 per 1000,000 (in a US population) to 32 per 100,000 (in a population in Scandinavia.)"

Gandy argues that some people who have a TGA episode, might arrive at an interpretation of an alien abduction, in their world view.

Lost time:

"I surmise that most, if not all, reported episodes of lost time are not, "lost time: but "lost memory," and suggest that there are rare meteorological phenomena that can induce memory loss on a temporary basis."

Comments:

I find the meteorological part of Gandy's hypothesis a bit of a stretch. Why do we need a rare meteorological phenomena to cause a TGA? TGA's happen to some people, in a variety of circumstances.

I do however, think that TGAs may have an involvement in some UFO encounters. Just as hypnagogic and hypnopompic imagery; (click here);  fantasy proneness; (click here) sleep paralysis (click here for a detailed article by Keith Basterfield) ; migraines (click here); false awakenings (click here)  and other conditions seem to be involved in some encounters. TGAs may account for element of some such events. Perhaps, many abduction accounts may involve one, or a combination of these triggers?

"Abduction:Human Encounters With Aliens"

Hi

Long time readers of this blog will be aware of Pauline's observations on potential psychological explanations for some UFO abductions. Readers who have looked at my recent postings on abductions will know that this is also an area of interest to me. I must emphasise that neither of us are suggesting that all abductions can be explained in this way. However, if we eliminate some cases, but there remain cases which cannot be accounted for in these ways, then we learn something about the remaining cases.

In this post I want to present some data after examining some detailed abductee/experiencer case histories as presented by John Mack in his book "Abduction:Human Encounters with Aliens." Published in 1994 by Simon and Schuster. London. ISBN 0 671 85194 2. In reviewing these 13 case histories I was looking for indicators which might relate to migraines, and/or sleep paralysis.

Migraine:

Pauline's post of 28 August (click here) 2010 mentioned that Richard Grossinger's book "Migraine Auras:When the Visual World Fails" speaks of migraine prodrome. "Migraines are often augured by incipient sensations, an undefined prodrome that may occur days, hours or just minutes beforehand." These prodromes may include "...strong tingling or a sensation of vibrating wires (paresthesias) in the feet, hands, face and/or tongue area." (p69.(

Taking a look at possible migraine related occurrences in Mack's case histories I note:

Experiencer Scott (Chapter five) - Abduction experiences since age 3

"Beginning when he was eight, Scott was taken repeatedly to physicians, especially neurologists, for the evaluation and treatment of frequent throbbing headaches that had begun when he was six...the headaches were diagnosed as "atypical migraine."" (p94.)

Experiencer Jerry (Chapter six) - Abductions before age 7

"Jerry...realized she was "paralysed kind of up to the waist"...Jerry described the paralysis as being like a painful vibration. Then "a tremendous vibration" extended into her hand...The powerful vibrations seemed to shake Jerry's whole body." (p122.)

Experiencer Eva (Chapter eleven) - Abductions since early childhood

"Following this session, Eva again experienced an intense headache and was extremely thirsty for a day or two." (p255.)

Experiencer Dave (Chapter twelve) -Abductions from age 3

"He also remembers having the same feelings, "a vibration of some kind, a tingling," that he had in association with later abductions." (p268.)

"The vibration, "then went from below my naval and out through my chest, and then it was real tingly..." (p273.)

Experiencer Peter (Chapter thirteen) - Various abductions

"I remember my whole body vibrated and shook maybe for a second, two seconds, three seconds." (p295.)

"Once more he felt the vibrations in his body..." (p322.)

Sleep paralysis:

The name given to the experience of waking from sleep to find that you are unable to move is "sleep paralysis." It is a relatively common phenomenon which happens to many people at least once in their lifetime. Some people regularly experience it. It is when you awake from the "dreaming" or "rapid eye movement" phase of sleep, where your muscle tone is low - hence you feel you are paralysed and cannot move. However, almost inevitably you can move your eyes. Hypnopompic imagery (click here for more details) can accompany sleep paralysis. These hallucinations can generate images of figures, unusual noises and can appear "as real as real."

Are there any indicators of episodes of sleep paralysis in Mack's experiencer case histories? Yes there are.

Jerry

"She woke up terrified...she could not move." (p118.)

"In the years following, Jerry had a number of 'nightmares' in which she would awake paralyzed, hear 'buzzing and ringing and whirring' noises in her head and see humanoid beings in her room." (p119.)

Catherine

"She recalled a dream from age nine in which she was paralyzed and terrified as 'some kind of creature' with long fingers...grabbed her." (p143.)

Paul

"No longer at home in his cellar, Paul now was lying on his back in his bed at night and experienced 'things'...he could not move at all." (p232.)

Eva

"...she recalled waking in the night and seeing 'three midgets'...she felt helpless and could not move." (p243.)

"I was frozen again...totally frozen..." (p244.)

Peter

"It is not clear to Peter whether he fell asleep or not...Now he was paralyzed..." (p302.)

Other comments:

Two general comments which Mack makes are of interest to me:

(1) "One of the more difficult phenomena that Catherine and many other abduction experiencers have to deal with is a virtually constant flow of sensory experience, especially light flashes...intrusions of patterned color images..." (p168.)

Could these be migraine related?

(2) "During his childhood Arthur tended, like many abductees, to get significant throat and sinus infections." (p371.) I don't think I have ever come across anyone who has made this observation before.

Final comment:

I know that I am taking selective quotes from case studies, but I am looking to draw attention to the fact that there may be relationships to migraines and sleep paralysis, which were not looked into at the time.

I would urge anyone investigating a new account to take a detailed medical history as part of the data gathering.

For an article on sleep paralysis which I wrote several years ago, click here then scroll down.

For one of the best websites for information on sleep paralysis click here

I welcome comments from readers.

"Life with the aliens"

Hi readers

My rainy day Fortean Times reading continued with the segment titled "the UFO files." In this issue, Jenny Randles commences a two part article headed "Life with the Aliens."

After revealing that a United Kingdom soap opera plans to feature one of its stars in a relationship with an "alien," Jenny delves into her casebook of encounter events.

In 1978 a woman, living near Lymm, Cheshire saw a silver glowing entity looking into her window.

Next, in 1942, during the Second World War, a woman living near Halifax in the UK, saw a blue sphere appear outside her window. Three, 1.5 metre tall figures emerged, wearing silver overalls and "gold fish bowls" on their heads. An unusual absence of sound was noted. Finally, the figures left though the wall.

These cases seemed to be isolated instances in the lives of the witnesses, but in other cases, the events are lifelong. Jenny's third example involved "Georgina" from South Wales.

In her early childhood, she saw "Strange people who entered and passed through my bedroom or stood there just watching me in the night."

She also found "...herself inexplicably outside, staring into the sky with a puzzling sense of longing." There were also episodes which could be sleep paralysis. Later in life, she had several 'time lapses.' Doctors diagnosed temporal lobe epilepsy.

Jenny closes part one of the article with "...I'll develop the theme of ongoing alien contact and find intriguing links with epilepsy, migraine and out-of-body experiences that offer fascinating clues about UFO reality."

Comment:

Note Jenny's comment about migraine, and then recall my previous post (28 August 2010) where I took a look at the possible relevance of migraine auras and prodromes to the UFO abduction phenomenon. I feel this is an unexplored area of research.

If you'd like to read the entire article by Jenny, then click here.

Precursor to an abduction?

Hi

I have the flu at the moment, and have been spending the day in bed. Lying here, listening to ABC FM radio classical music,I had a thought about migraines (see previous post 28 August) and abductions. I am always surprised when these "connections" between two topics come to me, for I never feel that I have been consciously thinking about them.

In my 28 August post about migraines, I noted the following quote from a book:

"Aura onset
Migraines are often augured by incipient sensations, an undefined prodrome that may occur days, hours or just minutes before-hand..."

I just went back to the copy of "Migraine Auras: When the Visual World Fails" by Richard Grossinger, to see what else he had written on this topic. He said:

"A few people report a roaring sound, as of the sea heard in a shell, just before the appearance of phosphenes. Others feel persistent, strong tingling or a sensation of vibrating wires (paresthesias) in the feet, hands, face, and/or tongue area..." (page 69.)

"Sometimes an aura 'rehearses' for days by propelling bright flickers or stars or luminous sparks across the field of vision..."

Connection

So, what is the connection which my brain came up with?

It goes back to a post of mine dated 9 March 2010. This post was about the experiences of an English abductee/contactee Mike Oram as told in his book "Does it rain in other dimensions?"

Mike mentions, time after time, that "...I was strongly aware that something was about to happen..." (page 126.) "I sensed quite strongly that something was about to happen..." (page 136.) "I had a feeling that something was going to happen for the past two hours..." (page 138.)

In summary, Mike describes a sequence where he knows something is going to happen, a buzzing sound starts in his head, then vibrations spread through his body, then the event happens.

Comment
Could these "knowing" experiences, followed by noise and vibrations, which Mike describes actually be a migraine prodome? Could Mike have integrated these normal but little understood and little known sensations, into a tale of being an abductee/contactee? Remember that a percentage of people who have migraines never experience the classic migraine headache and just experience auras. There could be a number of people who have these sensations, never have a headache and do not realise they are experiencing a migraine.

Dear readers, if you are an abductee/contactee what do you think of this hypothesis?

Another connection

In the same 9 March 2010 post, I referenced the story of Robert Monroe, who wrote of his out-of-body experiences in his 1971 book "Journeys out of the body." On page 24 Monroe describes how his experiences involved a "feeling" which swept his entire body and a roaring sound caused by these vibrations. This sounds to me exactly like a migraine prodome. What do you readers think?

In closing

The end words of my 9 March post were:

"Could there be a physiological or neurological explanation for someone experiencing a sound, vibrations and then a sense of floating off to somewhere else? In addition Oram's sense that he "knew" sometimes something was about to happen reminds me of the advance notice people get of the onset of a migraine headache." A perceptive comment from me, six months before I read Grossinger's book!

Over to you for comments.

Abductees and migraine auras

Hi readers

Adelaide is experiencing its wettest August for 18 years. This is quite something for us here, given that a year ago we were in the grips of a long drought.

Today's post is a new area for me in some ways. I am always on the look out for scientific research which bears on the topic of UFO abductions. I was in my local library (you know I am a book nut don't you? Didn't the pile of books by my bed give that away?) the other day browsing the shelves, when I came across a book titled " Migraine Auras:When the visual world fails" by Richard Grossinger. Published by North Atlantic Books. Berkeley, CA. 2006. ISBN 978-1-55643-619-2.

I was not thinking about UFOs, simply flicking through the pages when I came across the following on page 121.

"Alien abductions"
Accounts from reputed UFO abductions have a distinct migrainoid ring to them: inexplicable lights, missing time, humanoid or animal-headed creatures-though these matters of course raise other ontological issues.

Attribution of migrainoid qualities addresses the neural components of such "close encounters," it is not to say that there are no alien abductions ...merely to note that these episodes share elements with fugues that originate in the brainstem. Encounters with aliens...might be actual metaphysical meetings and yet evoke migrainoid vestiges, falsifying the entities..."

Hold on, I thought, could there be anything to this ides? So, I borrowed the book to read it. The following are my notes which I'd like to share.

Firstly, the subject of the book is "Migraine Auras."

"In ordinary discourse migraines are pulsating, throbbing headaches with one sided pangs..." (p4.)

However, "A headache is neither a sole nor necessary nor even primary criterion of a migraine..." (p4.)

The term migraine "...is a loose confederation of altered neurological and psychomatic states within a single biophysical matrix." (p5.)

"..."Common migraines" are aura-less pulsing unilateral headaches. "Classical" migraines, by contrast, are headaches with auras." (p5.)

"Today people mostly skip the old terminology and refer to "migraine with aura" or "migraine without aura."" (p5.)

Frequency

"Current estimates are that approximately 15 per cent of migraine headache sufferers experience an initiating aura. " (p5.)

"About 20 per cent of all migraineurs report auras without headaches; and at least 3 per cent of migraineurs only experience auras, never headaches." (p6.)

The initiating event produces a flow which "...grows until it becomes a spreading moil, a mirage reliable enough to have a scientific name. It is called a scotoma (the plural is scotomata)..." (p10.)

Comment:

I was not aware, until reading this book that a person could experience a migraine aura without a headache.

What is a migraine aura?
It can be a visual effect, but can also affect any neural pathway.

"Visual distortions are the most common auras; yet auras comprise symptoms as diverse as tingling, muscular or motor weakness, hemiplegia (paralysis on one side of the body), faintness, decreased levels of consciousness, impediments to language formation and memory, lethargy, sleepiness, spasms (almost anywhere), unpleasant temperature variations (surges of both heat or cold or both simultaneously), and other spontaneous sensations...hearing...tactility...kinesthesia...and strange or wrong smells without a source..." (pp6-7.)

Examples:
1. When reading it may appear that a flaw appears in the text, which expands covering up words.
2. Flashing, zig zag patterns in either eye.
3. Loss of peripheral vision.

Complexity

"The migraineur does not know whether there are real objects behind these hallucinations, as they may develop into entire landscapes with imaginary personages and events. One sufferer regularly encountered a figure clad in black seated with his back toward him or standing at a long table." (p37.)

"...some migraineurs see expressionless faces or faces that are not faces..." (p40.)

"Advanced migrainious sensations...There may be extreme deja vu...and jamias vu...Time may also seem to be progressing in slow motion or at sonic speed...A few people experience magnification or diminution of their own body image..." (pp40-41.)

Comment:

I had no idea that there were such complex aspects to a migraine aura. The appearance of landscapes and persons is a new concept to me.

Little attention

"Despite their commonness and frequency, migraine auras become an enigma. A majority of people in the West have either never heard of them or, if they have, do not know their nature, degree of seriousness, or ubiquity. Most people who have experienced their spontaneous distortions of vision have no name for these and have gotten no diagnosis. " (p53.)

More statistics

In 2006 in the USA, 28 million suffer chronic migraines. 12 per cent experience migraines in any one year. Women outnumber men 3:1. 25% of auras occur in the age range 30-40 years.

"Migraine auras can be both early-life phenomena that decrease in frequency with age and later-life phenomena that increase in frequency with age...The former pattern is, however, more common . " (p65.)

Familial - "...roughly 25-30 per cent of offspring with a migrainious parent and 70-75 per cent of those with both migraininous parents being migrainious too..." (p65.)

Frequency - 8-10 per year, once monthly, once a week- it varies.

OBE-like?

"I noticed that the ground looked further away than usual, and then it seems that I was looking down from a height of perhaps 10 metres, watching myself crossing the field..." (p67.)

Aura onset

"Migraines are often augured by incipient sensations, an undefined prodrome that may occur days, hours or just minutes before hand..." (p69.)

Sleep and auras

"Auras may begin during sleep and elapse entirely in a dream -a pulsing light or oscillating feature in the dreamed landscape blossoms into a scotoma... The dreamer, if she awakes at this point, does so into a full-blown aura." (p82.)

"Usually one gets to escape such hallucinations by waking up, but migraines can merge with dreamscapes while retaining autonomous identity..."

Comment:

This is an extremely interesting bit of data. I'd like to see if any abductees who experience migraines would like to comment on this entire topic! Particularly the area of auras without headches, where a person may not even know they are experiencing a migraine!

Would it be possible for someone who experience only the aura and not a headache, to wake up from an attack top find strange figures int their room and perceive them as aliens?

What degree of reality does an aura have? Is it as real as real?

End of an aura

"Not only do auras (and ensuing headaches) culminate spontaneously, but their abatement is often accompanied by a variety of soothing and/or invigorating, purgative, and cleansing events. Dissolution may give rise to an outburst of tears, copious urination, a bowel movement, a fit of impressible sneezing, a discharge of sweat glands throughout the body; a nosebleed or a runny nose." (pp85-86.)

Comment:

A nosebleed. How many abductees could relate to this?

"Some people experience full hallucinations or dysphasia after scotomata have passed..." (p88.)

Example given are of a man hallucinating a hot summer day in California with his wife while he was actually with another person in New York.

Summary:

As you will see by my scattered comments, this book which is the first comprehensive compilation of material about migraine auras, may have much to relate to, and possibly explain, some apparent alien UFO abductions.

Don't forget, migraine auras are not happening in the eye but in the brain itself.

An end note

One of the concluding sections to the book is about the use of herbal medications in treating migraine sand migraine auras.

"Wood betony improves digestion,...Considered to have a grounding influence, Wood betony was the herb of choice in medieval times for demonic possession and visions and has been rediscovered in a modern context for inconsolable paranoia following UFO abductions." (p192.)