German ambulance chaser serves man
Tim Cavanaugh | October 9, 2006, 4:37pm
A Berlin lawyer is offering to get government compensation for clients who have been abducted by extraterrestrials. Like the twins paradox and causality anomalies, the unforeseeable ironies of space travel are exceeded only by the unforeseen ironies of law. In this case, it's a German law offering state compensation to kidnap victims. Can cattle ranchers be far behind in the search for alien compensation? The lawyer has yet to bring a case to victory, but he's boldly going where no lawyer has gone before:
"There's quite obviously demand for legal advice here," Jens Lorek told Reuters by telephone on Thursday. "The trouble is, people are afraid of making fools of themselves in court."
But what about the notoriously publicity-shy greys? How do you get them to show up in court? Just try and serve a subpoena on the Reticulians, with their antigrav devices and speedy ships!
My unironic, and unoriginal, theory on alien abduction claims is that they're cases of sleep paralysis. So maybe the makers of NoDoz should be liable.
Last year, Kerry Howley spoke with Susan Clancy, a recovered-memory skeptic and author of Abducted: How People Come to Believe They Were Kidnapped By Aliens.
Psion (The one that got away) | October 9, 2006, 8:00pm | #
One night, I awoke from sleep unable to move and terrified. An odd, bluish light filled my bedroom, and I recognized the circumstances as I suddenly recalled this had all happened to me many times before. My gaze fell to the bedroom door and my heart beat faster and faster as I knew it would soon open. I held my breath as my expectation was confirmed and freakish hands pushed open the door; several child-sized grays spilled through it.
Their faces were horrifying to look at -- these weren't the placid, enigmatic grays idealists like to paint pictures of when they think of extraterrestrials. These were beasts who rose to the top of the food chain just as we had, with all of the ruthless, vicious, survive-at-all-costs instincts still intact in spite of their advanced science and technology. Their faces were a reflection of their ancestry: grim and malevolent, they had all the reassuring charm of the DEA on a drug raid. Even if I didn't have a vague sense this had all happened to me many times before, their expressions told me in an instant these creatures weren't pleasant.
They fanned across the room, more blue light flooding in from the hallway. Why wasn't anyone else in the house aware of this invasion? I tried to raise the alarm, but my breath was still caught and I couldn't force a noise louder than a hoarse whisper ... not enough to wake anyone in the other rooms, but enough to call the attention of my unearthly trespassers.
They turned on me like predators, ignoring the rest of the room. They didn't move with an ethereal quality. They didn't glide like magical beings. They skittered. They scrabbled. They approached me like a pack of velociraptors, cautious, but stalking and looking at each other as silent communications coordinated their actions.
I summoned everything I had within me. Adrenaline at last overcame paralysis and I launched myself at the nearest gray, leading with a fist and intent on snapping his sinuous neck in defiant revenge and to take a stand for
homo sapiens.
"LEAVE ME ALONE!" was my roaring war cry.
And I landed on the floor in an empty room, having woke up from the strange dream in midleap to find my feet still hung up on the bed and wrapped in bedsheets. There was no bluish light, there were no grays. And now the rest of my family was awake and wondering what had caused the commotion.
Had I not overcome sleep paralysis (a defense mechanism to prevent us from acting out our dreams and harming ourselves) that terrifying dream, so realistic except for its eerie antagonists, would have continued. Even the vague recollection of previous abductions was imaginary. I might have awoke in the morning wondering if I had been a victim to one of those strange abductions that no one else witnesses. Parsimony suggests to me, however, that this experience provides a fantastic glimpse into the real mechanism of alien abductions.
