So, is there a difference between ufo abductees and experiencers? In a conversation with the former Director of the Experiencer Research Team at Mufon, Kathleen Marden, the answer is yes.
Marden headed up a major study several years ago which we covered on this site and it produced some startling results to say the least.
The study was produced in conjunction with Dr. Don C. Donderi, a retired psychology professor and statistician at McGill University.
Those surveyed reported experiencing various types of contact with nonhuman intelligent entities (NHI) of purported extraterrestrial origin.
About 600 participants were tested with a series of questions with the aim identifying abductees as a separate group who exhibit the symptoms of UFO Abduction Syndrome.
It was a multi year two-part study gathering information from participants and comparing the two groups of experiencers, abductees and contactees.
So, most of us would automatically categorize the two groups as one, experiencers. But are abductees and experiencers one and the same? Interesting question.
Marden says the study questionnaire was designed to exclude those contactees who practiced astral travel, conscious contact with non-physical entities, remote viewing, and shamanic drug induced contact.
Marden added that “the greatest problem with a survey of this type is the inability to measure the psychological functioning of its participants and the veracity of the statistical data”.
UFO Abductees And Experiencers
One issue with a survey like this is that there are always going to be the potential hoaxers.
In other words, skeptics, people who just want to be “famous” or those who know little about this topic but will simply “throw a spanner in the works” just to be mischievous.
How did Marden and her team get around this issue?
They expected it and devised a set of what she calls trick questions.
“So we came up some trick questions. We had 118 questions overall. We wanted to have five to six hundred participants and in our trick questions, we were going to be able to determine anyone who was simply coming in to hoax and to skew our results”.
“And we eliminated the ones that were incomplete and we eliminated the ones who were obvious hoaxers. Then Dr. Don Donderi administered the American personality inventory”.
“The American personality inventory was developed to determine which self identified experiencers were actual ufo abductees and experiencers”.
“This was opposed to those people who knew a lot about the topic but who we’re just faking it”.
“And then those in the general population which was a third group, who knew very little about the topic and maybe were just trying to hoax us”.
“So what he found was that there were many people who were clustered right around what they called the ufo abduction group”.
“We didn’t have wannabes either in that group although we had a couple who were very close. We were able to identify the abductees as opposed to the survey takers”.
“When we compared their results we discovered those who were in the abductee group had certain characteristics at a much greater percentage than those experiencers overall”.
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So the difference between abductees and experiencers? Is there one?
One would assume that any type of ufo experience that involved contact would fall under the same banner.
But according to Marden, they found the group who had ufo abduction syndrome were rightly categorized under the banner of abductees.
“We only identified the abductees from the 118 question survey. We ended up with 516 surveys that we could use”.
“The difference is that among all the survey takers, there was this group who had ufo abduction syndrome, which we call the abductees”
“And so the experiencers were different than the abductees”.
“The abductees had the knowledge and the emotional impact of having been taken to a craft against their will”.
“We had people who were contactees, who had attempted to initiate their experience”.
“People who were channeling, people who were meditating and people who were having highly positive experiences”.
Did People Identify Different Races Of Aliens?
According to Marden, people identified a multitude of different alien races.
However, it was interesting that the majority of alien races identified belonged to what we know as the greys.
And the most prevalent group identified were around four and a half feet to five feet tall. That appears to match a large percentage of the physical traits in abductee accounts.
This is a fascinating insight into what abductees and experiencers reported and Marden goes into more detail during the interview.
The following is the full interview I recorded with Kathleen Mardeen on this study. It was conducted about six years ago.
