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The Fear

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mike

Paranormal Adept
I once had an uncle who fainted at the sight of blood.
the reaction was instant and beyond his control, as kids we used to prank him with the mechanism by either deliberatly making a small cut and waving it in his face or faking it with tomato sauce and a prop like a razor blade. either way his eyes would roll up in his head and he would collapse to the floor in a boneless heap, waking white as a sheet mins later. with the consequences the prank wasnt one you pulled twice and it was often the result of daring a new nephew or neice to try it for themselves.the con being the kid gets accidentially cut and had no idea that the uncle had that reaction, plausible deniablty. but wed all gather behind the shed later for a chuckle

i wonder if the "frozen" effect we see in abductions isnt the same as the incredable stillness an animal can effect when being hunted, a natural animal reaction to an extreme predator situation.

how frustrating would it be if in trying to contact another race they kept fainting on you in fright as soon as they clapped eyes on you.

my poor uncle knew what blood was and how it worked where it came from etc , but that didnt stop this relflex action of his from kicking in at the sight of even a small amount

i suppose if you were hell bent on communicating with creatures that damn near die of fright like a mishandled ginea pig, then all you could do is embark on a breeding program to breed the feature out of the species
 
I've been pondering this issue of extreme fear caused by these "encounters" recently. As The Clueless One put is so eloquently "What's so scary... they're just looking at you." What indeed. Alot of abduction reports tie words like robotic, emotionless and blank to the aliens, indicating some sort of empathic void (some claim this is deliberately generated by the aliens as a control mechanism but let's put that aside for now). Now we, as mammals, recognize in other mammals certain visual cues that indicate emotional response. We can usually tell when other mammals are happy, angry, scared or simply bored just by observing. We're not so good at it with other species however (reptiles maybe, birds less so, fish definately not).

So how do you read emotional intent on a completely alien species? Simple: you don't- because you can't. Further, suppose these beings are indeed devoid of emotion, what then? We don't understand a concept like that because we are never completely emotionless. That's something completely unheard of, it's the ultimate unknown and since reflexively the unknown is frightening to us, something like this should be terrifying. And thus, it is.
 
I wouldn't say the beings are emotionless...in fact I see it as the opposite. They got a black sense of humor and most of the time for me, a serious attitude problem.

"i wonder if the "frozen" effect we see in abductions isn't the same as the incredible stillness an animal can effect when being hunted, a natural animal reaction to an extreme predator situation."

Sometimes I see it exactly that way. For instance the event with me and my wife on the road in the country spoken about on the show. That time? I think if I could have gotten myself together I could have run. That, was paralyzing fear. It felt like adrenalin was coming from my feet and shins and creeping up my legs. Couple that with the top of my head pounding from my heart racing, and I didn't make a move.

But, the stuff at childhood...that was something else. I wanted to move, wasn't always thoroughly terrified (still scared, but not the bone numbing horror) as I neared my 9th birthday...but my legs just wouldn't work. I even sat up a couple rare occasions during those experiences, and my arms worked. My legs wouldn't, and my voice wouldn't. Everything else was fine. Didn't matter, I still couldn't separate my legs from the bed. But, most times all I could move was my neck/head. I think the light behind my head (just above the headboard I think) was what was rendering me still.
 
i tend to agree, there does seem to be some manipulation on the part of the entities in regards to these feelings.
carl sagan talks about the development of the brain in his book dragons of eden, and i was always fascinated by the idea that our current thinking gear is a series of upgrades rather than a custom built design, indeed the embrionic stage of human development mirrors this. that in human intrauterine development we run thru multiple stages very much like fish, reptiles, and non primate mammals before we become recognisaby human.
the brain of a human foetus also develops from the inside out and, roughly speaking runs thru the sequence: neural chassis, R-complex, limbic system and neo cortex

i suspect that there is a mechanism that relates to the "animal" part of our makeup that is being manipulated, a triggering of that "imperative" that we not move we see in a trapped animal

i think its Mr Streiber who's been using the word "allergic" reaction recently. and certainly extreem stress can cause symptoms of that nature
 
jritzmann said:
But, the stuff at childhood...that was something else. I wanted to move, wasn't always thoroughly terrified (still scared, but not the bone numbing horror) as I neared my 9th birthday...but my legs just wouldn't work. I even sat up a couple rare occasions during those experiences, and my arms worked. My legs wouldn't, and my voice wouldn't. Everything else was fine. Didn't matter, I still couldn't separate my legs from the bed. But, most times all I could move was my neck/head. I think the light behind my head (just above the headboard I think) was what was rendering me still.

I had a lot of night terror episodes when I was young. Layered dreams, waking up frozen and having the mentally shake myself out of it, etc.

One day when I was about 22, I woke up and could not move a muscle. I was able to slowly gain enough movement (very stiff) to get in the car and have my Mother drive me to the hospital (in Reykjavik, Iceland). They EKG'ed me and all sorts of things and ruled it a semi-paralysis due to stress (I had been through a stupid, youth-fueled, difficult breakup that week). I was fine the next day, but sore from my muscles having been so tense.

I had another weird one when I was in the US Army back in the early 80's and had gone to Iceland on my annual leave to visit family. On my last night, I stayed up on the NATO base there with a family friend and his family. I was taking a MAC C141 flight back to McGuire AFB the next morning and returning to Fort Mead or Fort Bragg (can't recall where I was stationed then). Anyway, I had switched from being 100% immersed in English while in the Army to 100% Icelandic in the space of one day and stayed in Icelandic for almost a month. Then, that night I was back to English, but perfectly fine. I woke the next morning and was COMPLETELY mute. I could not say a single thing! I had to write notes to Scotty (Family friend - Father in that home) and explain to him. He took me to the flight line and explained to the Airmen there what was up and they, of course, chalked it to me being in the Army (and wearing an Airborne beret, to boot)...funny guys those USAF MPs. I took a nap on the 141 and was fine when I awoke about 3 hours later. Very weird, indeed.

I still have some terror episodes, but nothing like I did when I was younger.
 
RonCollins said:
Has there ever been a case of a blind abductee? It just struck me that I have never heard of one.

Interesting question. This is a great line of inquiry! Does anyone know if there are statistics available that would allow a researcher to hypothesize about this?
 
mike said:
i wonder if the "frozen" effect we see in abductions isnt the same as the incredable stillness an animal can effect when being hunted, a natural animal reaction to an extreme predator situation.

I've wondered about this as well. One thing that may be worth considering is that it is my understanding, and I could be wrong here, that the instinct to freeze is inherited but needs to be learned for a given predator. I've seen numerous videos of humans walking into nature preserves and interacting with animals that are genuinely wild but have never been hunted by man. The animals, both young and old, seem to treat the humans with curiosity and will cautiously come to investigate them. It may vary between different species.

It's been my observation that a whitetail deer sort of seem to learn this behavior. An older, wild whitetail will instantly lock up if it sees a human but the really young ones seem like they kind of have to learn this behavior a bit and are less certain of what they should do when they see a human. I would imagine that the freeze instinct is inherited but that they have to learn when to apply it on a case by case basis. I've never seen a whitetail freeze up around a cow even though the cow is much larger than a wolf. I'd be interested to hear an expert's opinion on how much of this instinct is learned vs inherited.

My point here is that if humans are instinctively freezing up it might imply that we are inherently coded to do so for this "predator" as it doesn't seem as if there is a good case to be made that we have actively learned it from experience. I would tend to lean towards the interpretation that the fear instinct is being artificially manipulated somehow. I've experienced sleep paralysis dozens of times and I can see how being able to artificially induce that in somebody else would be an incredibly useful ability. Imagine if a policeman could artificially trigger a sleep paralysis response at range instead of having to use a firearm or taser.
 
dorkbot said:
I would tend to lean towards the interpretation that the fear instinct is being artificially manipulated somehow.

Perhaps it's merely a safety precaution. Humans are largely unpredictable and prone to violent outbursts. By the look of them (or rather the general description given) even a child could seriously harm or even kill one of these beings given their relative frailty. If we could cause lions and tigers and bears (oh my! <-required) to become terrified and immobile at will, they'd be alot easier to tag and track.
 
CapnG said:
If we could cause lions and tigers and bears (oh my! <-required) to become terrified and immobile at will, they'd be alot easier to tag and track.

I saw a doc the other day about sharks - they showed that if you put a baby shark on it's back you can put it in a 'trance'. The favoured hypothesis for this effect is that because sharks spend 99.9% upright, turning them on their backs totally confuses their senses and their brains cope with the 'total disruption' by shutting down everything except vital processes.

I've seen similar effects with other animals - I can't think of specific examples off the top of my...

Perhaps this is a built-in mechanism of some (or all) animals - when the senses are on overload and none of the 'signals' are making sense then the default 'mode' is one of paralysis because the brain is unsure how to proceed.

Just my two pence...

Just did a quick search on google - here's a diver putting a shark into a 'trance' by rubbing it's nose...

http://youtube.com/watch?v=http://youtube.com/watch?v=xWEdStaaZyE

Not quite the same effect, but interesting. What's happening to the shark? Is it totally perplexed by the sensation of having it's nose rubbed? After all, that isn't something that happens normally in it's natural environment.
 
Rick Deckard said:
I've seen similar effects with other animals - I can't think of specific examples off the top of my...

Tonic immobility.

Search youtube for "Chicken Hypnosis". There are three different methods for inducing it in chickens. Plenty of examples in the related videos as well:
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