Dana Scully Characterization What was Dana's character like? her Catholic faith served as a cornerstone, What are some personality traits? rigid skepticism Is there anything else interesting? she was abducted by Duane Barry,
What happened after that abduction?
What happened after Scully's abduction in the X-Files?
Throughout the series, her Catholic faith served as a cornerstone, although a contradiction to her otherwise rigid skepticism of the paranormal. Due to her career in science and medicine, she drifted from her Catholic Christian upbringing but remained somewhat entrenched in her religious beliefs. Scully almost always wears a gold cross necklace, given to her by her mother as a Christmas present when she was fifteen. When she was abducted by Duane Barry, a self-proclaimed alien abductee, it was the only item left behind in Barry's getaway car. Mulder wore it as a talisman of her until Scully miraculously reappeared in a Washington, D.C. hospital. After she recovered from the trauma of her abduction, he returned the cross to her. The abduction visibly tested the limits of her faith -- Mulder believes that Scully was taken aboard an alien spaceship and was subjected to tests. However, because of Scully's skepticism, she believes she was kidnapped by men and subjected to tests, not aliens. She believes she could have been brought there by Barry, and she began to exhibit symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder on a case involving a murdering fetishist named Donnie Pfaster. This psychological re-victimization continued after Pfaster escaped from prison five years later and again attempted to kill her in her home, ending only after she fatally shot him. She struggled with what motivated her actions to kill Pfaster, and questioned whether it was God compelling her to kill him, or "something else." Sometime after her recovery from cancer, Scully began to regularly attend Mass again. At the request of Father McCue, Scully got involved in a case concerning a paraplegic girl who was found dead in a kneeling position with her palms outstretched and eye sockets charred. After Scully discovered the girl was part of a set of quadruplets and two more were murdered, Father McCue shared with her the story of the seraphim and the nephilim, which Scully interpreted as a possible explanation for the deformations and deaths of the girls. Scully continued to have visions of Emily, and when the last girl died, Scully believed she was returning the girl to God. Upon her return to Washington D.C., she went to confession to gain peace of mind and acceptance for Emily's death. In confession she regretted her decision of letting the girl go. This suggests Scully had doubts about her faith. In the sixth season episode "Milagro", Agent Scully's vulnerability is exposed. In this episode, the murderer takes the victim's heart out. The suspect, a writer named Phillip Padgett, has a particular interest in Scully and is fascinated by her beauty and personality. When she goes to a church to observe a painting, the writer is there and talks to her about the Sacred Heart of Jesus. During the conversation he says she visits the church because she likes art, but not as place of worship. Scully doesn't say otherwise and later she says to Agent Mulder the writer told her her life story. All this suggests that Scully isn't a devout Roman Catholic, although she attempted to approach again the Catholic community and the Catholic faith to which she was devout in her youth, after handling the strange case presented in "Revelations" and also after dealing with life-threatening cancer during the fourth season. CANNOTANSWER
The abduction visibly tested the limits of her faith -- Mulder believes that Scully was taken aboard an alien spaceship and was subjected to tests.
Dana Katherine Scully, MD, is a fictional character in the Fox science-fiction, supernatural television series The X-Files, played by Gillian Anderson. Scully is an Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) special agent and a medical doctor (MD), partnered with fellow Special Agent Fox Mulder for seasons one to seven and seasons 10 and 11,  and with John Doggett in the eighth and ninth seasons. In the television series, they work out of a cramped basement office at FBI headquarters in Washington, DC to investigate unsolved cases labeled "X-Files". In 2002, Scully left government employment, and in 2008 she began working as a surgeon in Our Lady of Sorrows, a private Catholic hospital – where she stayed for seven years, until rejoining the FBI. In contrast to Mulder's credulous "believer" character, Scully is the skeptic for the first seven seasons, choosing to base her beliefs on what science can prove. She later on becomes a "believer" after Mulder's abduction at the end of season seven.

Scully has appeared in all but five episodes of The X-Files, and in the 20th Century Fox films The X-Files, released in 1998, and The X-Files: I Want to Believe, released 10 years later. The episodes in which she does not appear are "3", "Zero Sum", "Unusual Suspects," "Travelers," and "The Gift" (excluding archive footage). The 11th season marked Anderson's final time portraying the character.

Background
Dr. Dana Katherine Scully was born on February 23, 1964, in Annapolis, Maryland, to William (Don S. Davis) and Margaret Scully (Sheila Larken), into a close-knit Catholic family with Irish ancestry. She has an older brother, Bill Jr., an older sister, Melissa, and a younger brother, Charles, who is never seen on the show except in flashbacks. Scully's father was a navy captain, who died of a heart attack in early January 1994. Dana Scully grew up in Annapolis, Maryland and later in San Diego, California. As a young girl, Scully's favorite book was Moby-Dick and she came to nickname her father "Ahab" from the book, and in return, he called her "Starbuck". Due to this, she named her dog Queequeg.

Scully attended the University of Maryland, and in 1986 received a bachelor of science degree in physics. Her undergraduate thesis was titled Einstein's Twin Paradox: A New Interpretation. Just out of medical school at Stanford University, she was recruited by the FBI; she accepted the agency's offer of employment because she felt she could distinguish herself there. After two years in the bureau, Section Chief Scott Blevins assigned her to work with agent Fox Mulder.

Storylines

Upon being partnered with Mulder, Scully maintained her medical skills by acting as a forensic pathologist, often performing or consulting on autopsies of victims on X-Files cases.

In season two, Scully was kidnapped by an ex-FBI agent turned mental patient named Duane Barry, and then taken from Barry by a military covert operation that was working with the alien conspirators, but was later returned. In season three she found out that a super hi-tech microchip has been implanted in the back of her neck. After having it removed, she developed cancer in the fourth season and was hospitalized after the cancer became terminal. She was saved after Mulder broke into the Department of Defense to retrieve another chip to be implanted back into her neck. At the time, Scully was also undergoing experimental medical treatments and was having a dramatic renewal of her faith.

Scully was pronounced infertile during the fifth season. In the season-five episode "Emily", Scully discovers that she unknowingly mothered a daughter during her abduction (in season two). Her daughter Emily was adopted by another family. Emily died shortly afterwards, and they were unable to further investigate after Emily's body went missing. In the seventh-season finale, "Requiem", Scully mysteriously became pregnant. The child, named William, after her own father, as well as Mulder's father, was born at the end of the eighth season. The show did not initially reveal the cause of Scully's pregnancy, but later episodes and movies would see Mulder and Scully call William "our son"; the pair had unsuccessfully tried for a child through in vitro fertilization. Around this time, Mulder was fired from the FBI by Deputy Director Alvin Kersh, and Scully left the field to teach forensics at Quantico. William was given up for adoption during the end of the ninth season after Scully felt she could no longer provide the safety that William needed. William was a "miracle child", of some importance to the alien conspirators. He demonstrated extraordinary powers, including telekinesis.

In The X-Files: I Want to Believe, she is shown working as a medical doctor at the Our Lady of Sorrows, a private Catholic hospital in Virginia. Early on in the film, Scully is contacted by the FBI, who are looking for Fox Mulder in the hope that he will assist them with the investigation of a missing FBI agent. In exchange for his help, the charges against him will be dropped. Unlike Mulder, Scully was apparently not considered a fugitive by the FBI. However, she did continue to maintain her romantic relationship with Mulder throughout the six years that he was on the run from the American government. In the movie, they are shown to be living together in a secluded house.

In the first episode of season 10, "My Struggle" (2016), Scully is still working as a doctor for Our Lady of Sorrows hospital, now performing surgeries on children with severe birth defects. She has extraterrestrial DNA, as the test that she performs on herself confirms. After the FBI reopens the X-Files, 14 years after their closure, she rejoins the bureau. In "Mulder and Scully Meet the Were-Monster", Scully jokes that she often enters dangerous situations alone due to the immortality she seemingly obtained during the events of the episode "Tithonus". At the end of "Mulder and Scully Meet the Were-Monster", Scully steals a dog from an animal control center, named Daggoo, which is named after yet another character from Moby-Dick. In "Home Again" Dana's mother, Margaret Scully, dies after suffering a heart attack. In the show's 10th-season finale, "My Struggle II", Scully is in a race against time to save humankind, creating a vaccine from her own extraterrestrial DNA.

Characterization
Throughout the series, her Catholic faith served as a cornerstone, although a contradiction to her otherwise rigid skepticism of the paranormal.  Due to her career in science and medicine, she drifted from her Catholic Christian upbringing, but remained somewhat entrenched in her religious beliefs.

Scully almost always wears a gold cross necklace. Two conflicting stories exist of how Scully received the necklace. After Scully's abduction in season two, Scully's mother told Fox Mulder she gave Scully the necklace as a birthday present. In season five, Scully recalls receiving the necklace as a Christmas present. Scully's sister, Melissa, also receives a similar necklace on that occasion. When she was abducted by Duane Barry, a self-proclaimed alien abductee, it was the only item left behind in Barry's getaway car. Mulder wore it as a talisman of her until Scully miraculously reappeared in a Washington, DC, hospital. After she recovered from the trauma of her abduction, he returned the cross to her.

The abduction visibly tested the limits of her faith — Mulder believes that Scully was taken aboard an alien spaceship and was subjected to tests. Because of Scully's skepticism, though, she believes she was kidnapped by men, not aliens, and subjected to tests. She believes she could have been brought there by Barry, and she began to exhibit symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder on a case involving a murdering fetishist named Donnie Pfaster. This psychological re-victimization continued after Pfaster escaped from prison five years later and again attempted to kill her in her home, ending only after she fatally shot him. She struggled with what motivated her actions to kill Pfaster, and questioned whether it was God compelling her to kill him, or "something else".

Sometime after her recovery from cancer, Scully began to regularly attend mass again. At the request of Father McCue, Scully got involved in a case concerning a paraplegic girl who was found dead in a kneeling position with her palms outstretched and eye sockets charred. After Scully discovered the girl was a quadruplet and two more were murdered, Father McCue shared with her the story of the seraphim and the nephilim, which Scully interpreted as a possible explanation for the deformations and deaths of the girls. Scully continued to have visions of Emily, and when the last girl died, Scully believed she was returning the girl to God. Upon her return to Washington, DC, she went to confession to gain peace of mind and acceptance for Emily's death. In confession, she regretted her decision of letting the girl go. This suggests Scully had doubts about her faith.

In the sixth-season episode "Milagro", Agent Scully's vulnerability is exposed. In this episode, the murderer takes the victim's heart out. The suspect, a writer named Phillip Padgett, has a particular interest in Scully and is fascinated by her beauty and personality. When she goes to a church to observe a painting, the writer is there and talks to her about the Sacred Heart of Jesus. During the conversation he says she visits the church because she likes art, but not as place of worship. Scully doesn't say otherwise and later she says to Agent Mulder the writer told her her life story. All this suggests that Scully isn't a devout Roman Catholic, although she attempted to approach again the Catholic community and the Catholic faith to which she was devout in her youth, after handling the strange case presented in "Revelations" and also after dealing with life-threatening cancer during the fourth season.

Relationships
While in medical school, she carried on an affair with her married instructor, Dr. Daniel Waterston, who may have been the "college boyfriend" mentioned in "Trust No 1". In the show, whether or not the relationship became sexual is never indicated. According to Anderson in the episode's audio commentary, Scully came very close to having an affair with the married Waterston, but left before she could break up his marriage. The end of her relationship with Waterston came about following her decision to go into the FBI. After her entrance to the FBI's Academy at Quantico, Scully began a year-long relationship with her Academy instructor, Jack Willis, with whom she shared a birthday.

Towards the end of the series, her previously platonic friendship with partner Fox Mulder developed into a romantic relationship. When Mulder was injured in a boat crash, he awakened in a hospital and told Scully that he loved her. In the season six episode "How the Ghosts Stole Christmas", a ghost that seems to know the inner workings of Scully's mind suggests that her source of intimacy for Mulder comes from her desire to always prove him wrong. By the end of the sixth season, Mulder and Scully were increasingly shown enjoying more light-hearted activities together, such as practicing baseball, using FBI funds for a "night out" during a movie premiere, and watching a movie at Mulder's apartment. In the season seven episode "all things", Scully is shown getting dressed in Mulder's bathroom, while Mulder sleeps, apparently naked, in the bedroom. In "Trust No 1" a man reveals to Scully that he works for a "new" Syndicate like-organization, and his job requires him and a few other colleagues to spy on her around the clock. Due to this he knows intimate details of Scully's personal life, right down to her "natural hair color" (Titian, as later confirmed by Chris Carter). It is suggested by this man that Scully ultimately initiated a sexual relationship with Mulder, as he remarked that he was very surprised when she invited Mulder "into her bed". The last scene of the series finale featured Mulder and Scully holding each other on a bed, facing an uncertain future together in love.

In the film, The X-Files: I Want to Believe, which takes place six years later, Mulder and Scully are still in a relationship. Scully was concerned that Mulder's continuing pursuit of the unknown was taking its toll on their relationship, and they could not be together if he could not "escape the darkness". However, the film ends with the couple sharing a passionate kiss, and in the "secret ending" after the majority of the credits, a happily smiling Scully is seen in a small rowboat with Mulder, both clad in swimwear, in a tropical sea, having taken him up on his offer to run away together. In the 10th season, Scully and Mulder are no longer a couple, as she chose to leave him. At the end of the season, Scully gets a vision, which is revealed to have come from her son, William,at the beginning of season 11. Over the course of season 11, Scully and Mulder search for William. Skinner learns from the Smoking Man that the Smoking Man, who is Mulder's father, also artificially impregnated Scully, thus is William's father, as well. In the third episode of the 11th season, "Plus One", Scully and Mulder are intimate again. In the season-11 finale, "My Struggle IV", she reveals to Mulder that she is pregnant with his child.

Conceptual history

Chris Carter named Scully after his favorite sportscaster, Vin Scully of the Los Angeles Dodgers. John Doggett was likewise named after Vin Scully's longtime broadcasting partner, Jerry Doggett. Scully's character was also inspired by Jodie Foster's portrayal of Clarice Starling in the film The Silence of the Lambs. Scully was a known name in UFO lore. In 1950 the less than credible Behind the Flying Saucers was published, written by Variety columnist Frank Scully. The name Scully was also used in 1976 film All the President's Men, an obvious inspiration for the show, in a list of names who work for the Committee for the Re-Election of the President.

The casting for Scully caused a conflict between Carter and the Fox network. Carter had chosen 24-year-old Gillian Anderson, whom Carter felt was perfect for the role. Of her audition, Carter said, "she came in and read the part with a seriousness and intensity that I knew the Scully character had to have and I knew [...] she was the right person for the part". However, Fox executives had wanted a more glamorous "bombshell" for the part (in a 2008 interview Anderson stated that Pamela Anderson had actually been the network's first choice), hoping that this would lead to the series involving a romantic element. This led Carter to insist that he did not want the roles of Mulder and Scully to become romantically involved. Carter decided Scully would be the skeptic to play against established stereotypes; typically on television the quality was attributed to a male. Because Duchovny was much taller than Anderson, during scenes where Mulder and Scully stand or walk next to each other Anderson stood on "the Gilly-Board", an apple box named after her.

Scully appears in every episode of the 10-season series with the exceptions of "3", "Zero Sum", "Unusual Suspects", and "Travelers". She has appeared outside The X-Files on numerous occasions, the most notable being in the Millennium (also created by Chris Carter) episode "Lamentation", in which the main character, Frank Black, visits the FBI Academy in Quantico, Virginia, and Mulder and Scully are briefly seen descending a stairway. In fact, they are Duchovny and Anderson's stand-ins.

An animated version of Scully, which featured the voice acting of Anderson, appeared on season eight of The Simpsons, in the episode "The Springfield Files", as well as Canadian animated series Eek! The Cat, on the episode "Eek Space 9". The animated television series ReBoot featured characters Fax Modem and Data Nully, obvious spoofs of Mulder and Scully, in the episode "Trust No One". Anderson provided her voice work for the episode, but co-star Duchovny declined.

Reception

Anderson won many awards for her portrayal of Special Agent Scully during the ten seasons of The X-Files, including an Emmy for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series in 1997, a Golden Globe for Best Actress in a Television Drama Series in 1997, two SAG Awards for Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Drama Series in 1996 and 1997 and a Saturn Award for Best Actress on Television in 1997. In total, Anderson received for the role, four Emmy nominations, four Golden Globe nominations, nine SAG nominations and eight Saturn nominations.

Film critic Scott Mendelson, writing in The Huffington Post, cited Scully as an example of strong female characters on television, calling her "one of the most iconic characters in the science-fiction genre". Radio Times Laura Pledger also named her as a strong TV woman, placing her at No. 1. Rebecca Traister of Salon.com opined that Scully had a better character arc than Mulder. She wrote, "The very fact that her character was such a hard sell made her repeated brushes with the supernatural all the more powerful. Mulder's desire to believe was so expansive, his credulity so flexible, that it's not as though he was ever going to have either shaken from him. But Scully's surety was solid, stable, rigid; every time she saw something she thought she'd never see, we saw it crack, sparks fly from it. She was forced to question herself, grow, change". She praised her for being more "rational, resilient, [and] mature" than her partner and for their mature relationship. In a review of "Irresistible", Emily VanDerWerff of The A.V. Club wrote that it was a cliché to put Scully in danger, as "Scully is [the show's] heart, and any time she's in danger, it feels like the show itself is about to be stabbed through the heart".

The character of Scully has become something of a sci-fi heroine due to her intelligence and resilience, frequently appearing on lists of important female science fiction characters, such as Total Sci-Fi Onlines list of The 25 Women Who Shook Sci-Fi, where she came in fourth. TV Squad named her the thirteenth greatest woman on television, while the site also listed her among the most memorable female science fiction television characters. She is also often cited as being an unlikely sex symbol, frequently being included in lists of sexy TV characters. She was listed in AfterEllen.com's Top 50 Favorite Female TV Characters. The pairing Mulder/Scully was ranked number 15 on Sleuth Channel's poll of America's Top Sleuths.

Angelica Jade Bastién of Vulture emphasized the importance of Scully's character in popular culture by listing all the strong female characters she inspired or may have influenced in some aspects, including: Temperance "Bones" Brennan of Bones, Peggy Carter of Agent Carter, Veronica Mars of Veronica Mars, Olivia Moore of iZombie, Dr. Maura Isles of Rizzoli & Isles, Olivia Benson of Law and Order: SVU, Joan Watson of Elementary, Sydney Bristow of Alias, Abbie Mills of Sleepy Hollow, Zoë Washburne of Firefly, Stella Gibson (another character portrayed by Anderson) of The Fall and Olivia Dunham of Fringe. Jade Bastién wrote: "Do all the characters Scully has influenced live up to her? Definitely not. Gillian Anderson's performance and her chemistry with David Duchovny aren't exactly elements that can be replicated. But these characters prove that Scully isn't only the heart of The X-Files, but also the character who had the most profound influence on popular culture".

Indiewire's Liz Shannon Miller ranked Scully as the No. 1 most important character of The X-Files, writing: "Scully's legacy is so important in so many ways, from giving us the gift of Gillian Anderson's acting, to inspiring an entire generation of young women to pursue careers in STEM. Intelligent, loyal, flawed and brave, Scully was the show's beating heart and saving grace even in its lowest years. As Chris Carter himself has said: 'It's Scully's show'."

"The Scully Effect"
The character is believed to have initiated a phenomenon referred to as "The Scully Effect", as the character's role as a medical doctor and FBI Special Agent inspired many young women to pursue careers in science, medicine, engineering, and law enforcement, and as a result brought a perceptible increase in the number of women in those fields. At the 2013 San Diego Comic-Con International, Anderson noted that she has long been aware of "The Scully Effect" and stated: "We got a lot of letters all the time, and I was told quite frequently by girls who were going into the medical world or the science world or the FBI world or other worlds that I reigned, that they were pursuing those pursuits because of the character of Scully. And I said, 'Yay!'" Anne Simon, a biology professor and a science adviser for the series recalls: "I asked my Intro Bio class back then how many of them were influenced by the character of Scully on The X-Files to go into science and half of the hands in the room went up. That's huge! That was saying that the show was really having an effect." "The Scully Effect" remains a subject of academic inquiry.

References

Bibliography

External links
 Dana Scully on IMDb
The Scully Effect on Fanlore

The X-Files characters
American female characters in television
Female characters in television
Fictional characters with cancer
Fictional characters from Maryland
Television characters introduced in 1993
Fictional special agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation
Fictional female detectives
Fictional female doctors
Fictional feminists and women's rights activists
Fictional forensic scientists
Fictional paranormal investigators
Fictional American physicians
Fictional surgeons
Fictional female scientists

de:Akte X – Die unheimlichen Fälle des FBI#Hauptdarsteller
sv:Lista över figurer i Arkiv X#Dana Scully
The Door in the Lake is a children's science fiction novel by Nancy Butts, first published in 1997. It is a story about loss of time and identity.

Plot summary
Twelve-year-old Joey Finney vanishes while camping with his family. When he comes back, he cannot remember what happened during the two years he was missing – or why he has not grown. Then he starts to have seizures and seems to remember what happened. He believes that he was abducted by aliens. What could be the explanation for all of this?

Reception
Publishers Weekly said that "the plot is slim and standard issue science fiction (and, in its observations of the Finney household, it may also owe a debt to Caroline Cooney's The Face on the Milk Carton and Whatever Happened to Janie?). Butts grounds the paranormal actions in the details of everyday life, and wraps up the story with a water-tight climax.  An agreeable diversion for UFO enthusiasts."

Carrie Schadle in her review for School Library Journal said that "the action and resolution of the story are fairly compressed and taut, and as for the believability—who's to say?—we're talking alien abduction here, but the details are convincingly written." She also voiced concerns about the main character meeting someone he has met on-line, after concealing this from his parents - "be aware that this one element can all too often lead to tragedy in the real world."

Kirkus Reviews said that "Although the plot is disjointed and contrivance-driven, Joey's feeling of dislocation, and the discomfort others feel in his presence, is credibly presented... it's rare to find stories for young people about closer encounters that aren't played for laughs."

This novel was a Scholastic Book Club selection and was also chosen by the ALA as a Quick Pick for Reluctant Readers.

Awards
 Quick Picks for Reluctant YA Readers (1999) 
 Sequoia Young Adult Master List (2001)
 Sunshine State Young Reader's Award Reading List (2001)

See also
Alien abduction
Flight of the Navigator, a film with a similar premise

Notes

1997 American novels
1997 science fiction novels
American science fiction novels
American children's novels
Children's science fiction novels
Alien abduction in novels
1997 children's books Alien abduction claimants (also called abductees and experiencers) are people who have claimed to have been abducted by aliens. The term "abduction phenomenon" describes claims of non-human creatures kidnapping individuals and temporarily removing them from familiar terrestrial surroundings. The abductors, usually interpreted as being extraterrestrial life forms, are said to subject experiencers to a forced medical examination that emphasizes the alleged experiencer's reproductive system.

The first alien abduction narrative to be widely publicized was the Betty and Barney Hill abduction in 1961. Since that time, the credibility and mental health of alleged experiencers has taken on great importance to those seeking to determine the veracity of the abduction claims. Mainstream academics and members of the skeptics movement generally doubt that the phenomenon occurs literally as reported, and have proposed a variety of alternative explanations.

Such skeptics often argue that the phenomenon might be a modern-day folk myth or vivid dreams occurring in a state of sleep paralysis. On the contrary ufologists and paranormal researchers hold positions closer to the face-value of abduction claims. The discovery of common psychological traits shared by abductees would have the potential to determine a neurological explanation for the claims, while other commonalities or differences may serve to reinforce that the claims of the experiencers do in fact correspond with objective reality.

Overview

As a category, abductees have some psychological characteristics that render their testimony suspect.  Dr. Elizabeth Slater conducted a blind study of nine abduction claimants and found them to be prone to "mildly paranoid thinking," nightmares and having a weak sexual identity. According to Yvonne Smith, some alleged abductees test positive for lupus, despite not showing any symptoms.

Abductees and the paranormal
Alleged abductees are seen by many pro-abduction researchers to have a higher incidence of non-abduction related paranormal events and abilities. Following an abduction experience, these paranormal abilities and occurrences sometimes seem to become more pronounced. According to investigator Benton Jamison, abduction experiencers who report UFO sightings that should have been, but are not, reported by independent corroborating witnesses often seem to "be 'psychic personalities' in the sense of Jan Ehrenwald."

Sometimes abductees experience the sensation of being both human and alien at the same time, a phenomenon Joe Nyman calls "dual reference." Dual reference emerges in hypnotic regression sessions wherein the subject reports pre-birth or pre-life existence as one of the same species as those he or she would later report abducting them. When presenting a paper on the subject to the 1992 MIT alien abduction conference several investigators in attendance accused him of leading his subjects in his hypnotic regression sessions, possibly encouraging them to confabulate. However, some of Nyman's subjects disagreed with the accusations and defended him.

Age demographics
In a study investigating the motivations of the alleged abductors, Jenny Randles found that in each of the four cases out of fifty total where the experiencer was over forty years of age or more, they were rejected by the aliens for "what they (the experiencers) usually inferred to be a medical reason." Randles concludes "[T]he abduction is essentially a young person's experience." Given the reproductive focus of the alleged abductions it is not surprising that one man reported being rejected because he had undergone a vasectomy. It could also be partially because people over the age of forty are less likely to have "hormonic" or reproductive activity going on.

Children as abductees
Although abduction and other UFO-related reports are usually made by adults, sometimes young children report similar experiences. These child-reports often feature very specific details in common with reports of abduction made by adults, including the circumstances, narrative, entities and aftermaths of the alleged occurrences. Often these young abductees have family members who have reported having abduction experiences. Family involvement in the military, or a residence near a military base is also common amongst child abduction claimants.

Deborah Truncale, a pro-abduction researcher believes that the reports made by children should be taken similarly seriously to those made by adults. She notes several characteristic behaviors of children fictionalizing stories, such as pausing to think, attempting to anticipate the reaction of the listener, or trying to fake convincing eye contact. Truncale sees child abduction claimants as lacking these mannerisms, instead, she says, they can be described as "generally more animated [than children making up stories] and speak[ing] quickly, [they recall] an account without the behavior that involves...story telling."

Some pro-abduction researchers argue that children do not include the image of the Grey-type alien as part of their "image bank," and consequently their reports are not likely derived from cultural depictions of UFO related phenomena. Budd Hopkins once investigated "several mask and novelty stores" for a commercially produced grey alien costume for children, but could not. He feels that this supports the hypothesis that children are not familiar with "greys." John Carpenter also believes that young children are not "contaminated" with cultural images of greys. He reports that a fellow investigator who is a school teacher requested her children to draw an alien, and that none of them drew a Grey-like being.

Children seem to react to their alleged abduction experiences differently from adult claimants. Many alleged adult experiencers report doubting their sanity or the veracity of what they believed happened to them. Children, by contrast, never seem to doubt that their experiences happened to them. For an adult, an abduction experience can challenge much of what they believe about the world. Children however, by virtue of being in a formative stage of development, more readily assimilate the experience into their developing worldview.

Many repeat-abductees report that, as children from the ages of 2–6, they would be visited by balls of light that would enter their room at night. These balls would seem to play games with children and fly around the room. Some have interpreted them as being a way for the alleged abductees to develop their psychic abilities the way a physical ball helps develop coordination and athletic abilities. As such these intangible orbs have been dubbed "psychic toys." Although these phantasms are alleged to have appeared regularly, no corroborating sightings from members of the abductees' families or others that may have been expected to see them have been reported.

Hopkins Image Recognition Test
UFO and abduction researcher Budd Hopkins has designed an image recognition test (known as the Hopkins Image Recognition Test, or HIRT) for Children that he claims is helpful in verifying legitimate occurrences of alien abduction. There are ten different illustrated flash cards in the HIRT, nine of which depict "images from myth, from the real world, and from popular culture." The tenth image is the "grey" type entity commonly associated with claims of abduction. The images are drawn simply in black and white, featuring characters drawn in what Hopkins calls a "neutral and inexpressive" fashion. This is supposed to be a preventative measure intended to keep the images from affecting the child's responses on an emotional basis.

Procedure
The test would be administered to two groups of about 10–12 children individually, one group being composed of children who are thought to be possible abduction experiencers, and a control group. Furthermore, the test consisted of three parts. The first portion of the test is treated as a flash-card type children's game where the administrator asks the child to identify the figure depicted on the card presented to them. Hopkins reports that when the allegedly abducted children encounter the Grey face, they frequently will respond by recounting a detailed abduction narrative containing elements extremely similar to those found in claims made by adults, he even recalls an instance where a child-claimant reported a "baby presentation" scenario. Parents have sometimes supposedly seemed disturbed by their children's responses to the "Grey" face. He says no child in the control group of any test session has recognized or attached significance to the "Grey" image.

During the second phase of the HIRT, the administrator asks each child to separate the flash cards into two piles, one pile for those depicting characters they like, and one for those depicting characters they dislike. As the child divides up the cards, the administrator asks for the child to explain the reasons they liked or disliked the characters on the cards. Hopkins says that abduction-candidate children usually file the alien head under the "dislike" category for "[the reasons] we have come to expect." By contrast, control group children often file the alien head under the "like" category, because "they had no reason to dislike something they didn't recognize."

Stage three involves more active participation on the part of the children. The administrator will ask the child to make up a story about an imaginary encounter with the character depicted on it. This usually acts as a trigger for reporting an abduction account in the potential abductees if earlier tests had not elicited an explicit account of this type.

Criticism
Hopkins's test has been criticized by abduction researcher David Gotlib, who felt that Hopkins's use of terminology in describing the test implied it had been evaluated and standardized in a scientifically rigorous way, when in fact it had not. Hopkins withdrew the offending statements. Psychologist Richard Boylan raised a similar objection to the way Hopkins had hyped the test. Boylan also voiced criticism of the test itself, noting that the grey face was "the only anomalous figure in the set," and that a "spooky narrative" in response to the image was to be expected. This, he said, was "obvious, but is not probative."

Prevalence
Reports of the abduction phenomenon have been made around the world, but are less common outside of English speaking countries, especially the United States.

The Roper Poll
In 1991, Hopkins, Jacobs and sociologist Dr. Ron Westrum commissioned a Roper Poll in order to determine how many Americans might have experienced the abduction phenomenon. Of nearly 6,000 Americans, 119 answered in a way that Hopkins et al. interpreted as supporting their ET interpretation of the abduction phenomenon. Based on this figure, Hopkins estimated that nearly four million Americans might have been abducted by extraterrestrials. The poll results are available at this external link: Abduction by Aliens or Sleep Paralysis

Criticism
Writing in Skeptical Inquirer, psychologist Susan Blackmore notes that based on her analysis, "I conclude that the claim of the Roper Poll, that 3.7 million Americans have probably been abducted, is false."

List of notable abduction claimants
 Betty and Barney Hill
 Stan Romanek
 Travis Walton
 Whitley Strieber
 Calvin Parker

See also
 Alien abduction insurance

References

Alien abduction
Paranormal