Religion and the Abductee Experience – My private journey into the phenomenon of the paranormal and abductee experience was and is an isolated, complex, uphill trek that tends to leave me feeling vulnerable and exposed not only to the elements but to opinions. To be more specific, I am speaking about opinions like yours, your friends and the public at large, yet here I am sharing my story with you. Am I a glutton for punishment, not really? This is just a part of my desire to see if anyone else, has had similar experiences, perhaps furthering my own exploration into the religious, abductee experience.
My religion seemed to add a twisted, exorcisty kind of atmosphere that made me think I was possessed or abnormal most of my childhood. The two worlds for any child can create a dysfunctional and skewed perspective concerning what reality is and what it slowly becomes. If I can levitate does this mean I’m an angel? If I see beings from above, does this mean they are from heaven? Most of these questions were answered from my childhood in the most basic to elaborate of ways. Who might I ask, could answer the questions that plagued me, especially if they didn’t understand the problems at large, the unequivocal intimidating type that molded and encouraged me to become a timid victim? Believe it or not, it was religion that was quick to answer me pointedly because in some peculiar and twisted ways, it played a role in my experiences.
Sorry, I’m not going to write about great experiences with the church I grew up with. I went to a Catholic school for the First grade, which played a surreptitious role in me being bused out a few days a week to a base and underground facilities where I grew up. I was warned early on that if I said anything to anyone, especially my parents, one of my parents would get hurt. What can a child do but believe that the adults scolding her, making her feel responsible are not only speaking the truth but making her a part of the consequences. I was tight lipped and proud yet I held on to a secret that no child should ever have to deal with. At age six, I was responsible for the well being of my parents, or so I thought.
This kind of responsibility leaves a mark; it’s like an emblazoned imprint on the soul because the mind of a child can only handle or empathize with what they are being told by adults. As time faded the mark of my censorship, the imprinted stigma stayed with me because the moments of responsibility took a toll on my childhood and in essence took away my childhood naivety.
It didn’t help that right around the time I was 13, the movie, The Exorcist came out in theaters. I thought for sure I was the object of some ill-begotten spirit. Night time was a panicky and heart palpitating occurrence, where I lived under the covers. I could always feel spirits looking down at me, just a nose length away from my face, trying to suck the breath out of me. I had two giant teddy bears on either side of me that did nothing but help me hide from whatever I knew was in the room with me. I loved sleeping under the covers because they always gave me a false sense of comfort, a divided barrier that hid me from whatever was antagonizing my sanity.
Obviously the paranormal plays a role with abductees. In my case, with spirits freely visiting me at night, I also had to deal with the infamous … closet! It didn’t matter what house I stayed at, closets always symbolized the omnipotent, ethereal world that was black and empty. As a very young child, I knew vampires, witches and goblins lived in closets but after age five, there seemed to be something more sinister, lurking within the claustrophobic blackness. I have always felt that because of my interactions with the Greys, I have become more empathic, almost as finely tuned and observant as they are. This came in handy, when I felt they were near.
A sound can be just a sound to everybody else but as an abuductee, sounds are the introduction, the beginning of a dreaded dream that always seems to portray itself with the same characters, over and over again. In the end, the closet doors always opened slowly, creaking methodically and within my child’s mind, everything the blackness represented eventually came out to play. Sometimes, I would hear a voice, speaking faintly, its words lingering in my ear or was it in my mind. Either way, there were always two black eyes to go along with the ominous voice, I came to dread.
Sometimes even in the light of day, I saw strange things. I had a picture of the Virgin Mary that was on a wall by my bed. I would look up to her in the mornings for some kind of explanation for the previous night’s activity. Occasionally, I would think I saw a faint change in her face, and I would jump out of bed because my nerves just couldn’t handle another manifestation of either the paranormal or spiritual. For a child, even the most symbolic representations of religion, can become a daunting reminder of the unreachable, the unfathomable beyond that is heavy handed and unyielding. Sometimes religion can make God seem like a million miles away.
One Saturday morning when I was 14, I abruptly awoke, opening my blurry eyes. I had to adjust my vision because my room was brightly lit. On this particular morning, for some bizarre reason, I didn’t feel safe immediately after waking up. I was facing the picture of the Virgin Mary and as I was gazing up at her, from my peripheral vision, a shadow like figure darkened both my windows, and the face of the Virgin Mary started to drip blood , becoming distorted. I quickly closed my eyes and hid behind my big teddy bear. My door was closed so making a run for it, was out of the question. I subsequently opened one eye and tried to peak around my teddy bears left ear. To my relief, the picture of the Virgin Mary was back to normal again and my room was bright with sunshine. I thought to myself, did I just dream that or did it really happen? I jumped out of bed and ran for the door, deciding the answer wasn’t important.
Questioning oneself is the modus operandi for most abductees. A mark on the body is either a beauty mark or just a mark, even if it has a strange design to it. Finding clothes put on backwards the next morning, just means, we weren’t paying attention the night before. A strange gooey substance coming out of our private parts is a mild case of the flu, diarrhea or food poisoning. Waking up with strange bruises on our body, just means we knocked into something the day before, and didn’t pay attention. Bloody noses that are extreme, occurring on a daily basis, are explained as dry nose and common place. Finding ourselves outside our homes in the middle of the night, is described as sleep walking, even if all the doors and windows are locked from the inside. One clear observation that can be made, is that we are the most absent minded and obtuse people on the planet, especially to those people who are our critics, and the naysayers of our experiences.
When I was 18, I called upon a young priest who occasionally gave service at the church I attended. My experiences were getting beyond what I thought I could handle and I decided I needed some outside guidance. I entered his office, seeing that he was young, giving the appearance of being slightly innocuous, yet astute in his demeanor. I was uncomfortable and sweaty beyond belief.
Within seconds of sitting down, I literally spewed out my predicament, leaving nothing to the imagination. A long, torturous silence followed and I felt compelled to high tail it out of his office because I became horribly uncomfortable. He eventually looked up at me from closed eyes and said, “Pray my child and God will help you.” I stated that I did pray and the experiences still happened. He then said I needed to pray harder. I basically bared my inner most secrets to this man, thinking he would be my redeemer and to my dismay, he brushed me off with a safe and predictable answer. I left his office feeling foolish for even thinking he could help me.
I decided to go see another priest (who was older) and prepared myself with a more resolute attitude, knowing he was going to help me and give me the answers I was seeking. To make a short story even shorter, within minutes of explaining my situation, I was asked to leave his office because he didn’t have time to deal with a paranoid and delusional parishioner like me. I left knowing that the religion I thought I could always count on, wasn’t there for me anymore.
The different times I did pray during an abduction experience, my abductors didn’t seem to pay attention to me or they ignored what I was doing. I realized that prayer is great for an abductees’ sanity after the fact, because it pacifies the nerves and serves as a familiar and safe haven. In order for prayer to work, we have to assume that ET’s have religion similar to ours and like us, they view God in the same way. If they are doing something terrifying to us, we can only assume, they must be malevolent in nature, opposite of our beliefs and that of God. If they don’t know God, how can they fear God? I remember thinking to myself years ago, that to assume my abductors followed society’s dictates and customs was just about as ludicrous as assuming they would ask me if I wanted to go with them instead of taking me against my will. I understood a long time ago they weren’t from here.
Growing up with an abductees’ state of mind was not easy, especially when high school became the mile marker that indicated that I was not like everybody else. Graduating from high school helped me feel normal because it seemed like a momentary way out or a reprieve from the abduction phenomena. Months after graduation, my nightmares and experiences became less and less and I “almost” lived a normal life.
The word “almost” is very important to remember here because it seems like the alien agenda carries within it, it’s own individual timeline for each abductee. This can mean months, even years can go by with nothing happening and then all of a sudden … boom, with no warning, they start up again! The rollercoaster begins and it’s a ride that consumes the senses, leaving no room for normalcy, only the descent of questionable insanity.
In some ways, my abduction experiences tested my belief in God because if he existed, how could he let this happen. Yet, I have to say, something really interesting happened as I started to stand up and face my fears. I knew that being human was not only to my advantage but a blessing in disguise. I realized I was a part of something that was wise, venerable and sentient. This connection allowed me to see, that I needed to stand on the building blocks of my own convictions. This birth right which I call our fundamental foundation consists of 4 pillars that hold all of us up as human beings. They are known as, the emotional, spiritual, physical and mental pillars of humanity. The consequences of abductions, can wreak havoc on these pillars, tearing them down one by one leaving a person broken and fragmented. Once the human foundation is unbalanced, the three pillars by proxy, have no recourse but to carry the burden of the faltering pillar. This unbalanced condition can become so intolerable for abductees, that they react from a survival perspective based on fear rather than an analytical response based on faith.
I had to figure out a way, how to become whole again during these dark and confusing times. I realized that my faith was more than super glue, it was the rudiments from which my pillars were made. God created my pillars and because they were made by his blue print, I knew they could rebuild themselves back up. I also knew that it is who I am in-between the abductions that matters most. The question of why me, turned into, it does not define me.
Faith replaced the religion that I grew up with and it has been the one constant throughout my life that has never let me down. Once I started to understand who I am, the abductions became less monumental in my life. This makes sense to me because I no longer feed the fear mongering monsters lurking in the closets; the door stays shut and if it opens, it’s because I opened it myself.