Paleo-abductions While the term "alien abduction" did not achieve widespread attention until the 1960s, modern speculation about some older stories interpreted them as possible cases. UFO researcher
Jerome Clark dubbed them "paleo-abductions". • In the November 27, 1896, edition of the
Stockton, California,
The Evening Mail, Colonel H. G. Shaw claimed he and a friend were harassed by three tall, slender humanoids whose bodies were covered with a fine, downy hair who tried to kidnap the pair. • In the October 1953 issue of
Man to Man Magazine, an article by Leroy Thorpe titled "Are the Flying Saucers Kidnapping Humans?" asks the question "Are an unlucky few of us, and perhaps not so few at that, being captured with the same ease as we would net butterflies, perhaps for zoological specimens, perhaps for vivisection or some other horrible death designed to reveal to our interplanetary invaders what makes us tick?" • Rogerson writes that the 1955 publication of Harold T. Wilkins's
Flying Saucers Uncensored declared that Karl Hunrath and Wilbur Wilkinson, who had claimed they were contacted by aliens, had disappeared under mysterious circumstances; Wilkins reported speculation that the duo were the victims of "alleged abduction by flying saucers".
Two landmark cases An early alien abduction claim occurred in the mid-1950s with the Brazilian
Antônio Vilas-Boas case, which did not receive much attention until several years later. Widespread publicity was generated by the
Betty and Barney Hill abduction case of 1961, culminating in a made-for-television film broadcast in 1975 (starring
James Earl Jones and
Estelle Parsons) dramatizing the events. The Hill incident was probably the prototypical abduction case and was perhaps the first in which the claimant described beings that later became widely known as the Greys and in which the beings were said to explicitly identify an extraterrestrial origin. Though these two cases are sometimes viewed as the earliest abductions, skeptic Peter Rogerson notes that these cases established a template that later abductees and researchers would refine but rarely deviate from. Additionally, Rogerson notes purported abductions were cited contemporaneously at least as early as 1954, and that "the growth of the abduction stories is a far more tangled affair than the 'entirely unpredisposed' official history would have us believe." (The phrase "entirely predisposed" appeared in folklorist Thomas E. Bullard's study of alien abduction; he argued that alien abductions as reported in the 1970s and 1980s had little precedent in folklore or fiction.)
Later developments R. Leo Sprinkle, a
University of Wyoming psychologist, became interested in the abduction phenomenon in the 1960s. Sprinkle became convinced of the phenomenon's actuality and was perhaps the first to suggest a link between abductions and
cattle mutilation. Eventually, Sprinkle came to believe that he had been abducted by aliens in his youth; he was forced from his job in 1989.
Budd Hopkins had been interested in UFOs for some years. In the 1970s, he became interested in abduction reports and began using
hypnosis to extract more details of dimly remembered events. Hopkins soon became a figurehead of the growing abductee subculture. The 1980s brought a major degree of mainstream attention to the subject. Works by Hopkins, novelist
Whitley Strieber, historian
David M. Jacobs and psychiatrist John E. Mack presented alien abduction as a plausible experience. though the motives for this effort were unknown. There had been anecdotal reports of
phantom pregnancy related to UFO encounters at least as early as the 1960s, but Budd Hopkins and especially David M. Jacobs were instrumental in popularizing the idea of widespread, systematic interbreeding efforts on the part of the alien intruders. The descriptions of alien encounters as researched and presented by Hopkins, Jacobs and Mack were similar, with slight differences in each researcher's emphasis; the process of selective citation of abductee interviews that supported these variations was sometimes criticized – though abductees who presented their own accounts directly, such as Whitley Strieber, fared no better. The involvement of Jacobs and Mack marked something of a
sea change in the abduction studies. According to
Boston Globe writer Linda Rodriguez McRobbie, "Abduction and contact stories aren’t quite the fodder for daytime talk show and New York Times bestsellers they were a few decades ago...Today, credulous stories of alien visitation rarely crack the mainstream media, however much they thrive on niche TV channels and Internet forums." Skeptic
Michael Shermer noted that "the camera-phone age is increasing the burden of evidence on experiencers".
John E. Mack Harvard psychiatry professor
John E. Mack believed in the credibility of alien abduction claims. Niall Boyce writing in
The Lancet called him "a well-meaning man uncritically elaborating on tales of alien abduction, and potentially both cementing and constructing false memories". Boyce observed that Mack's work in
hypnotic regression of claimants helped spread the
Grey aliens meme into the culture. Mack was a well known, highly esteemed psychiatrist, author of over 150 scientific articles and winner of the
Pulitzer Prize for his biography of
T. E. Lawrence. Mack became interested in claims of alien abduction in the late 1980s, interviewing over 800 people and eventually writing two books on the subject. Due to Mack's belief and subsequent promotion of the claims of those he interviewed, his professional reputation suffered, prompting Harvard to review his position in 1994. He retained tenure, but "was not taken seriously by his colleagues anymore”. == Abductees ==