The following three part series is courtesy of Muertos, owner and operator of Thrive Debunked – a blog dedicated to fact checking errors and false statements contained in the conspiracy theory documentary “Thrive“.

Today, the concept of “alien abduction” is now a cultural meme. Virtually everyone in the Western world, and probably a good chunk of the non-Western world, is familiar with the paradigm: the belief that extraterrestrials visit the Earth, occasionally kidnap unsuspecting persons, subject them to weird experiments (usually involving an anal probe or some other humiliating procedure) and set them loose again. Alien abduction is now mainstream enough to be mentioned on comedy shows like South Park and Mad TV and gag lines in blockbuster movies like Independence Day. It’s one of those fringe topics that arouses intense, but usually temporary, curiosity.

Continue Reading Part 1

In part 1 (above), I wrote about the book Communion by Whitley Strieber, which so far as I know remains to date the best-selling book ever written on UFOs or related subjects. Strieber’s central claim was that he was abducted and sexually assaulted by nonhuman beings, which he calls “visitors,” on December 26, 1985 (a quarter century ago this week) and that after this experience he realized he’d been interacting with the “visitors” for most of his life. In this blog I continue the discussion of Strieber and his claims, focusing on his sequels, Transformation (1988) and Breakthrough (1995), as well as the film of Communion made in 1989.

Continue Reading Part 2

In the two previous blogs in this series (Part I (above), Part II (above)) I examined Communion and Transformation, the books written by horror author Whitley Strieber in which he claimed that he has been abducted by aliens repeatedly for most of his life. Communion came out in 1987 and began with the claim that Strieber was abducted from his New York cabin on December 26, 1985, which was 25 years ago this week. From there his claims evolved to include the following: (i) the beings that abducted him, which he initially declined to state were objectively real, actually are physical reality; (ii) that these “visitors” are conducting a large-scale program of “contact” with the human race; (iii) that the point of this “contact” is to transform human consciousness and get us to pay attention to spiritual matters; and (iv) that there are a number of weird side effects of “contact,” such as the ability to have out of body experiences (OBEs).

Continue Reading Part 3