Dreaming Reality

Constance Clear. Reaching for Reality: Seven Incredible True Stories of Alien Abduction. Consciousness Now Inc, 1999. 
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Therapist and social worker Constance Clear introduces yet more abduction accounts, the majority of which have clearly been influenced by the abduction folklore and to have been re-normalised by hypnotic regression. The majority of these accounts seem to revolve around episodes of sleep paralysis and hypnogogic hallucination, compounded by other psychological problems, for which the myth of alien abduction has become a symbol and an attempted solution.

More interesting is the story of Maggie, a middle aged Puerto Rican woman, whose narrative retains much more of the motifs and features present before the introduction of the alien abduction scenario. Her experiences involve protean sleep paralysis/hypnogogic hallucination experiences, with the potential to turn into either ghost stories or indeed child abuse narratives.

Recently John Rimmer and I discussed as to whether there were people who as children (or indeed as adults) had actually seen Santa Claus. Maggie is one such person, remembering at Christmas time when aged about nine "looking out my bedroom window and seeing Santa Claus and his reindeer passing across the sky''. Does anyone know of anything similar? – Peter Rogerson. Magonia 70, March 2000.

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