Thousands of people have been brave enough (or crazy enough, depending on whom you ask) to come forward in the last half-century with tales of alien abductions in the dead of night. It’s a widespread phenomenon, but researchers are adding fuel to the skeptic fire with claims that what you think of as a real experience was really just a “lucid dream.”

Results from an experiment last fall by the Out-of-Body Experience Research Center in California show that out of 20 volunteers, 35 percent of them were able to have out-of-body experiences in which they encountered aliens. Lead researcher Michael Raduga said that the participants were all coached to “separate from their bodies” every time they were half-awake during the night, and some of them actually got somewhere. Continue reading →