For what it’s worth, I found myself pretty compelled by a theory someone told me years ago, that alien abductions are flashbacks to birth and/or diaper changes:
laid on a table, bare walls, bright lights you’re staring up at (unnecessary, and unpleasant for a baby, but common in hospitals and some homes)
one or more figures crowded around you (parents and/or doctors)
these figures are empathetic & warm towards you (or are at worst kind of apathetic, not malevolent)
communicating telepathically (in a way you can’t make sense of, perhaps wearing masks if doctors)
they examine your genitals (how dirty is the diaper? is there a rash?)
weird equipment around (appropriate to a hospital where most babies born in 1900s when abduction stories started becoming popular)
figures have big heads and eyes (very salient features to babies, also maybe the heads are spatially closer and babies’ eyes are still doing a fisheye lens thing)
and most bizarrely, the figures are grey (newborns have bad color perception!)
This is surprisingly underdiscussed; the only google result for “alien abduction as flashback to diaper change” was this which links to a forum post since gone offline (archive.org link). But it seems like an incredibly obvious explanation that should be the default. It also explains why the experiences are so similar around the world, even among people who hadn’t heard the stories before!
Obviously not all alien abduction stories follow this pattern, but the fact that so many do seems to me very satisfyingly explained by this theory. The fact that this makes sense to me may be taking as part of its evidence my own experience doing emotional work and finding (among other things) surprisingly large pockets of emotion and meaning stored in apparently-boring memories (like standing in my kitchen around age six, looking at a shelf… but feeling terrifyingly alone). And helping other people do similar work, etc. But flashbacks are in general well-studied.
So it seems to me that the only culturally mediated part here is how people interpret the experience after it happens. You could imagine a culture where someone comes into work one day and says “hey guys, I had this trippy flashback last night to my nappy being changed! it was so weird seeing my parents all bulgy-eyed and grey”.
For what it’s worth, I found myself pretty compelled by a theory someone told me years ago, that alien abductions are flashbacks to birth and/or diaper changes:
laid on a table, bare walls, bright lights you’re staring up at (unnecessary, and unpleasant for a baby, but common in hospitals and some homes)
one or more figures crowded around you (parents and/or doctors)
these figures are empathetic & warm towards you (or are at worst kind of apathetic, not malevolent)
communicating telepathically (in a way you can’t make sense of, perhaps wearing masks if doctors)
they examine your genitals (how dirty is the diaper? is there a rash?)
butt probed (wipe, diaper cream, and/or rectal thermometer)
weird equipment around (appropriate to a hospital where most babies born in 1900s when abduction stories started becoming popular)
figures have big heads and eyes (very salient features to babies, also maybe the heads are spatially closer and babies’ eyes are still doing a fisheye lens thing)
and most bizarrely, the figures are grey (newborns have bad color perception!)
This is surprisingly underdiscussed; the only google result for “alien abduction as flashback to diaper change” was this which links to a forum post since gone offline (archive.org link). But it seems like an incredibly obvious explanation that should be the default. It also explains why the experiences are so similar around the world, even among people who hadn’t heard the stories before!
Obviously not all alien abduction stories follow this pattern, but the fact that so many do seems to me very satisfyingly explained by this theory. The fact that this makes sense to me may be taking as part of its evidence my own experience doing emotional work and finding (among other things) surprisingly large pockets of emotion and meaning stored in apparently-boring memories (like standing in my kitchen around age six, looking at a shelf… but feeling terrifyingly alone). And helping other people do similar work, etc. But flashbacks are in general well-studied.
So it seems to me that the only culturally mediated part here is how people interpret the experience after it happens. You could imagine a culture where someone comes into work one day and says “hey guys, I had this trippy flashback last night to my nappy being changed! it was so weird seeing my parents all bulgy-eyed and grey”.