The Myth of the Alien Abduction

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The phenomenon is real biological. It's happening in the brain, but how it's described or the narrative account that's built on it comes from culture. Some of it might also be the way in which our brains absorb cultural images iconography. Certain things become like the basic structures for how we perceive beer and threat and power. So you don't even know, we might think that a lot of us are sort of commercial.

Shermer and Alderson-Day discuss the psychologist’s journey to understand the phenomenon of sensed-presence: the disturbing feeling that someone or something is there when we are alone. Using contemporary psychology, psychiatry, neuroscience, and philosophy, Alderson-Day attempts to understand how this experience is possible. Is it a hallucination, a change in the brain, or something else? The journey to understand takes us to meet explorers, mediums, and robots, and step through real, imagined, and virtual worlds.

Ben Alderson-Day is an Associate Professor in Psychology and a Fellow of the Wolfson Research Institute for Health and Wellbeing at Durham University. A specialist in atypical cognition and mental health, his work spans cognitive neuroscience, psychiatry, philosophy, and child development. His new book is Presence: The Strange Science and True Stories of the Unseen Other.