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URECAT - UFO Related Entities Catalog

DECEMBER 1984, LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA, USA, A WOMAN:

Brief summary of the event and follow-up:

Ten years after the alleged fact, a ufology bulletin indicates that in Los Angeles, California, on December 1984, at late night, in an apparent dream-like state, a woman saw a humanoid described only as of a typical "Grey" and dressed in a gold colored outfit come to the door of the apartment building and attempt to enter.

The frightened witness ran to her room.

The "grey" then somehow entered the bedroom, picked up the witness' infant daughter and struck her hard on the bottom. The witness began struggling with the creature over the child.

Suddenly, she found herself on the roof of the building with her daughter, the creature and two other persons, who were described as in a state of trance and did not respond to her questions.

The short creature was holding a wand-like instrument, which it dipped into a gold colored solution.

Holding the wand and apparently making a loud "whooshing" sound, the creature gradully made a large saucer-shaped object began forming overhead.

A blue beam of light came from the saucer down to the roof like a "stairway." At this point the witness is unable to recall anything further.

Basic information table:

Narratives:

[Ref. ar1:] ALBERT ROSALES:

Albert Rosales indicates in his catalogue that in Los Angeles, California, on December 1984, at late night, in an apparent dream-like state, the witness saw a small humanoid dressed in a gold colored outfit come to the door of the apartment building and attempt to enter. The frightened witness ran to her room.

The small creature then somehow entered the bedroom, picked up the witness infant daughter and struck her hard on the bottom. The witness began struggling with the creature over the child.

Suddenly she found herself on the roof of the building with her daughter, the creature and two other persons, this two were in a trance-like state and did not respond to her questions. The short creature was holding a wand-like instrument, which it dipped into a gold colored solution.

The creature continued to hold the wand apparently making a loud "whooshing" sound and gradually a large saucer-shaped object began forming overhead. A blue beam of light came from the saucer down to the roof like a "stairway." At this point the witness is unable to recall anything further.

The being was described as a typical "gray" type entity.

Albert Rosales indicates that the source is Duane Bedell, Heartland UFO Journal # 3, December 1994.

Points to consider:

This case shows most of the usual characteristics of an hypnagogic hallucination episode - aka "sleep paralysis" - turned into a story of a close encounter of the third kind:

• There is only one witness, nothing is said of her personality, the date is not precise, the place is not specifed, the hour is not specified.
• There is an obvious lack of an investigation, only a witness' report is provided. As the witness is not named, it is probably not possible to remedy the lack of investigation.
• The story surfaces, without any indication how it surfaced, 10 years after it allegedly occurred.
• Other people involved in the experience are mentioned, but their possible positive or negative testimony is absolutely not specified, whereas it was one of the most important thing to document.

It is possible - but not certain - that this story emerged in whole or partly from "memories recovered by hypnotic regression sessions", a method that does not allow to make any difference between memories of real or dreamed or hallucinated events. Nothing is specified about this.

Whatever my be, clues that it could have been an hypnagogic hallucination episode abund:

• It happens during the end of the night.
• The story specifies that the witness was not in a normal state of consciousness during the episode but on the contrary, "in an apparent dream-like state."
• The story has many fantasy of fantastic, absurd, aspects, with the alien being stirring a golden liquid with some sort of "magic" wand, which makes appear a "flying saucer." These are typical dream elements, not found in stories of close encounters of the third kind by really conscious, multiple, witnesses, in broad daylight.
• The people of the rooftop are described as being like in a trance and do not answer the witnesses questions. This is again a strong clue of the dream-like nature of the experience.

The sparse information in the reported story and the lack of any investigation-bound information does not allow for stating that this explanation is certain; but on the other end there is nothing here to claim that it cannot be the correct explanation.

Beyond this attempt at an explanation, it must be kept in mind that we only have a second hand story, ill-located, obtained through an unspecified channel from a unique witness about whom nothing is know except that she was in an altered state of consciousness.

I provide a few references among dozens about the topic of hypnagogic hallucination and sleep paralysis:

• "The Old Hag phenomenon as sleep paralysis: a biocultural interpretation", paper by R.C. Ness, in Cultural and Medical Psychiatry, vol. 2 #1, pp 15-39, March 1978.
• "Lucid Dreaming: The Paradox of Consciousness During Sleep", book by Celia Green and Charles McCreery, Routledge publisher, U-K., 1994.
• "Wrestling With Ghosts: A Personal And Scientific Account Of Sleep Paralysis", book by Jorge Conesa Sevilla, Xlibris Corporation publishers, U-K., 2004.
• "Hallucinations and pathological visual perceptions in Maupassant's fantastical short stories - a neurological approach", by L.C. Alvaro, in Journal of the History of Neuroscience, vol 14, #2, pp 100-115, June 2005.
• "Effects of hypnagogic imagery on the event-related potential to external tone stimuli", paper by N. Michida, M. Hayashi, T. Hori, in Sleep, Vol. 28 #7, pp 813-818, July 2005.
• "Sleep and Society: Ventures into the (Un)Known", book by Simon A. Williams, Routledge publisher, 2005.
• "Mental representation of space: Insights from an oblique distribution of hallucinations", paper by T.A Girard, D.L. Martius, J.A. Cheyne in Neuropsychologia, vol. 45 #6, pp 1257-1269, 2007.
• "Parasomnias", paper by D.T. Plante, J.W. Winkelman, in The Psychiatric Clinics of North America, Vol. 29 #4, pp 969-987, December 2006.
• "Paranoid delusions and threatening hallucinations: A prospective study of sleep paralysis experiences", paper preview by J.A. Cheyne, T.A. Girard, scheduled in Consciousness and Cognition for April 2007.

List of issues:

Evaluation:

Hypnagogic hallucination experience. Insufficient data.

Sources references:

* = Source I checked.
? = Source I am told about but could not check yet. Help appreciated.

• [---] ? Article by Duane Bedell, in the ufology bulletin Heartland UFO Journal, #3, December 1994.
• [ar1] * "1984 Humanoid Sightings", compiled by Albert Rosales, circa 2001, at www.ufoinfo.com/humanoid/humanoid1984.shtml

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This page was last updated on May 28 , 2012