Phenomena Magazine even pointed out the possibility of hypnopompic sleep to explain alien abductions: "After this horrific 'Old Hag' experience, as Siegel called it, he was able to classify it as sleep paralysis combined with hypnopompic hallucinations (Hypnogogic is the borderline state when falling alseep; hypnopompic is the transition state when waking up). Siegel noted how his encounter resembled, in a striking variety of details, author Whitley Strieber's alien abduction report in his 1987 book, COMMUNION." [Author's note: The link to Phenomenon Magazine is from the Google cache. Apparently, Phenomenon Magazone is no longer online.]

Phenomena Magazine continued:

Sleep researchers contend that more than half of all humans have a hypnogogic or hypnopompic sleep hallucination, or experience sleep paralysis, at least once in their life. "Ordinary, perfectly sane and rational people have these hallucinatory experiences," says Robert A. Baker, a professor of psychology at the University of Kentucky, and an expert on the phenomenon.

Numerous clinical studies of sleep paralysis have found up to 75 percent of persons surveyed were on their backs when the experience occurred. I found this statistic of particular interest to my own case since I was also on my back during each of my three encounters, though I normally always sleep on my side.

One of the more intriguing cases I found of a sleep disorder that could have been mistaken for succubi visitations or even alien abductions involved a retired engineer in Connecticut. He inexplicably began experiencing, at age 64, both nocturnal and daylight encounters with an extraordinary range of images, especially female human faces and gray-faced entities that resembled classic descriptions of alien abductors. (To respect confidentiality between this man and his psychologist, I will refer to him as Rob Greeley.)

Over several years, into the early 1990s, Greeley kept a meticulous daily log of these visitations, a copy of which I have acquired. Here are a few representative descriptions taken at random from 1988 and 1989 entries. At 4 a.m. on May 2, he woke up "looking at a glowing alabaster sculpture of a cherubic-like child's head" that soon morphed into "a gray faced image" of an alien being. He goes on to describe instances of feeling "a vibratory paralysis coming over me," of seeing "smiling women's faces," and of "being shaken awake" and feeling "a tremendous blast of heat" and hearing "gibberish being spoken."

"I am not alarmed or frightened by any of this," Greeley told his psychologist, "because I know I am normal and feel well in every way." Determined to document his experiences within a framework of objective reality, Greeley set up a video camera that he turned on during these manifestations of vivid imagery. Nothing out of the ordinary ever appeared on this videotape. The phenomena seemed to be generated and projected solely from his unconscious mind.

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