Often included in UFO reports are suggestions that the craft may have temporarily taken control of the senses and/or impulses of an individual witnessing them. The mysterious objects are often reported as strange, but even stranger is how people often react to them. Are these witnesses being controlled directly by some unknown entity? And what are some of the creepier reports where people were affected in this way?
One of the most bone chilling reports of a UFO encounter came in the form of a MUFON report last year of an event that happened decades before, now a footnote on the year’s UFO events and little more in retrospect than a single eyewitness account from Texas. And yet it was the fact that a child, upon seeing several strange creatures outside of his house was beckoned to open the door to let the mystery creatures in the house even though they were a complete mystery to him and even seemed a bit terrifying with their massive black eyes and long thin hands. How is it that these compulsions to cooperate with a paranormal experience happen? Why do people feel compulsions to act the way they do to facilitate these mysterious incidents? And is there a common thread reported that indicates when something strange is taking place?
Another account, this one posted to American Monsters, comes from the town of Felixstowe, England where one of the witnesses felt a compulsion to exit the parked car he was sitting in and run into the woods. Later, he returned and reported to doctors at the hospital that he had seen a fiery creature with large slitted eyes that peered out at him before he blacked out and lost all other memories of the event. He reported a terrifying loss of self-control and ran into the nearby woods just prior to the event. Meanwhile, his friends reported from the car a mysterious high pitched ringing sound which quickly seemed too loud to control and spotted an unidentified flying object shoot through their vicinity.
Another common thread in UFO stories is the sudden compulsion to go outside and look at the sky. So ubiquitous is this phenomenon, that often MUFON reports will include it without any explanation, stating simply, “I went outside and looked up in response to a sudden unknown urge to look at the sky,” or something similar. This compulsion is sometimes attributed to the paranormal event later witnessed, although often it is simply included as if suddenly stopping what you’re doing and going outside to look at the sky abruptly is a normal thing to do.
What do these compulsions mean? Are they a result of paranormal interactions or one of the progenitors to the phenomenon? It does seem in some cases that paranormal events seem to almost follow a dream-like narrative that could be indicative of an altered state of consciousness. But even this does not explain collective experiences where multiple witnesses independently describe the same event. It’s almost as if some witnesses, during these experiences, leave reality as we understand it and enter a collective dream-like space where the bounds of possibility are limited only by the horizon of imagination. And this realm seems to carry with it unknown sounds and sights that later can be described and defy explanation.