As someone who really enjoyed the X-Files, it was fascinating to see how much of that TV show appears to have been based on 'real' claims. Far and above my favourite show was a season three episode called José Chung's "From Outer Space". Not only is it extremely funny, it explores well the multiple layers of how incidents can be seen from different viewpoints in totally different and entirely contradictory ways - and this seems absolutely typical of the experts that Watson calls on (some believers, others sceptics) in looking at how abductions have been handled.
The backbone of the book is the Barney and Betty Hill abductions in 1961, which seem to have started the phenomenon in its modern form, though there were earlier equivalent instances. The Hills crop up in most chapters, but along the way we also discover Victorian 'airship' sightings, the 'contactees' of the 1950s - who rather than being abducted claim to have had a more voluntary exchange of information with aliens and visits to their ships (who were almost all like ordinary humans and tended to come from Mars or Venus) - and the evolution of the key parts of abduction stories, from intrusive medical examinations to lost time.
This is all interesting stuff, though Watson does sometimes go into more detail than we really need. However, what can feel a little odd is that Watson will describe an abduction as if it were a fact - something that actually happened physically as described - then immediately after will tell us why it is unlikely to be true (or in some cases how it proved to be a hoax). It's as if the author is actually sceptical, but doesn't want to admit it. A good example of apparent acceptance of something unlikely was his description of the author Whitley Strieber, whose book Communion is alleged to be non-fiction.
Watson comments 'If Communion was the only book that Strieber wrote on these experiences, then we could agree with the skeptics that this was a piece of fiction written to exploit UFO believers. However, Strieber has written several more books on his encounters and it is obvious he is grappling to understand and explain the nature of his other people's alien encounters.' So the reason someone who wrote a book which Watson tells us 'sold millions of copies' would write more books is clearly not to make money but understand and explain a phenomenon?
In a summary at the end, Watson pulls together a devastating set of arguments, from the lack of physical evidence to the dependence on hypnotic regression which has been totally disproved as means of recovering memories, but rather implants fake memories. These arguments to any logical observer mean that there is absolutely no reason to believe in the existence of alien abductions. Watson also impressively demolishes a series of objections to criticisms of the Hill's abduction experiences that again show that there is no reason to accept them as credible. Yet even after all this he offers three possible analyses - that the aliens really exist (but are inscrutable), that they exist but not in the normal physical sense, or that they are a psychosocial phenomenon - made up consciously or unconsciously. I suspect he doesn't want to alienate (pun not intended) believers. But only that third option makes any sense from the information presented.
This, then, is a useful book (if expensive for a slim paperback) to get a flavour of what the whole abduction business is about and how it has been treated by sometimes self-proclaimed experts, and Watson provides some powerful analysis - but that analysis perhaps could have been deployed in a more consistent fashion through the book.
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Review by Brian Clegg
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