In the world of alien abductions there are a number of reasons why an “experiencer” may wish to share previous incidents with other people. Humanity has always found comfort in sharing collective and individual experiences and making social circles a part of things that transpire in our lives. And yet the list of reasons why people sometimes don’t find it necessary or even possible to share their experiences is just as long. Often people will keep these events completely to themselves never suggesting to others that they may have had an experience even approaching extraordinary.
Of course it’s impossible to share an unusual experience with friends and family under some circumstances. And the secrecy of abductees is difficult to chart or study by its nature because it is a secretive response to a seemingly random and unusual event. Nonetheless, abductees who come forward later after years of silence sometimes cite ridicule and public perception among the reasons they chose to stay silent about the events they witnessed. In addition to the standard reasons, sometimes they find it impossible to share something so monumentally life changing with people around them because they fear the weight of their experience will quickly outweigh their own personalities and reputations – whether they are believed or not. Just as celebrities are often not remembered for anything other than the factors that made them famous in the first place, abductees fear being categorized by friends and family in ways that would make it difficult to relate to them afterward.
Political and career aspirations are another factor often cited among abductees as reasons to keep quiet about their experiences. When a politician reports seeing a UFO, the subject often comes up as a jab to their credibility. And this has been seen by a number of people who then later have to choose whether or not to laugh off their experience as nothing or reveal that it was very real. The idea of seeing something unusual has quite a heavy stigma associated with it – something that can ruin politicians. This even extends into their families, so that the subject may be hushed up and kept quiet in order to avoid a scandal. The same could go for CEOs and others looking to progress their careers. Pilots have lost their licenses shortly after spotting an unusual object, and later believed the loss could be blamed only on a UFO sighting that happened just prior to their grounding.
But is this yet another one of those problems that perpetuates primarily because the witnesses involved are intimidated into allowing it to perpetuate? Would the public perception of interacting with the supernatural change significantly if everyone were candid about it? Or would we find that even with more people interacting with forces beyond our understanding the subject would still be taboo and strictly off limits? It seems strange that the same stigma is not also associated with witnesses who claim interaction with some different yet equally unexplained supernatural phenomena such as out of body experiences, precognition, and even religious experiences. Perhaps there’s just something about aliens in general the public is not ready for.