Alien Abduction or “Accidental Awareness”?

“So then they roll me over on my back, and the examiner has a long needle in his hand. And I see the needle. And it’s bigger than any needle that I’ve ever seen.” So testifies Betty Hill, of her experience inside a flying saucer near Franconia Notch, New Hampshire, in 1961. Betty and her husband, Barney Hill, are the earliest known victims of alien abduction, and the 1966 bestseller The Interrupted Journey describes how they recalled the event under hypnosis. Their story includes nude medical exams and invasive probing—an alien abduction scenario many of us recognize from the TV shows and movies of the past 50 years.

But in 2008 a Columbia University psychoanalyst published “Alien Abduction: A Medical Hypothesis” which suggested that what is known as “accidental awareness under general anesthesia”—in which a patient awakens on the table during surgery—might lie behind stories of alien abduction. The analyst, David V. Forrest, noted the similarity of the classic alien abduction scenario—bug-eyed greenish humanoids surrounding the subject as she lies on an examining table under a bright light—to the operating room situation, where surgeons in scrubs and masks hover over the patient and enter her body with tools. Asked if being probed by aliens felt like his prior tonsillectomy, Barney Hill agreed: “Like that, but my eyes are closed, and I only have mental pictures. And I am not in pain. And I can feel a slight feeling. My groin feels cold.”

While in a hypnotic trance, Barney Hill told his psychiatrist, “I don’t want to be operated on.” He described a spacecraft lit by blue fluorescent light, which didn’t cast any shadows, as in a surgical suite. The aliens had oddly shaped heads with large craniums, and indistinct lips and nostrils; they were all foreheads and eyes. Though he was terrified, he felt sluggish. He was struck by the all-business, professional bedside manner of the alien “doctors,” and impressed by their determination to do whatever it was they meant to do.

He could have been describing the well-intentioned members of the Royal College of Anaesthetists, who have just released the largest collection of data on accidental awareness ever assembled. Awareness during general anesthesia first attracted interest in the late 1990s, when patient/activist Carol Weihrer publicized her own awareness experience. Awareness has since spawned support groups, Facebook pages, a horror movie, and an episode of Grey’s Anatomy, but is only now being generally recognized by the medical community. The Royal College notes that one purpose of the report is “to present an apology on behalf of the profession to all those patients who have hitherto been let down by a collective failure to understand or accept the condition.”

Of course, most patients who experience awareness never claim they were abducted by aliens—none of the hundreds of patients interviewed for the new report did—but the Royal College report documents the potential for lasting, perhaps permanent, psychological damage to afflicted patients. While half the patients in one survey experienced pain, two-thirds experienced helplessness and panic. Over 40 percent of the patients studied for the report experienced moderate to severe psychological harm, with some incapacitated by post-traumatic stress disorder.

One awareness patient describes a flashback: “It struck again days later as horrifying images and terror that rose from the depths of my being. I was once again in the grips of horror, again not comprehending, again trapped, again struggling to survive, yet wishing for death.” Alien abduction seems almost restful in comparison.