Doorway Amnesia & Alien Encounters
When you think of aliens and UFOlogy a few different things may spring to mind: implants, men in black, flying saucers, little green men. But what about amnesia? A theory purports that amnesia and the intentional disturbance of our reality is also one of the key elements of an alien encounter…or even abduction.
Memory distortion at the hands of aliens is one of the most common, yet often subtle, elements of many contactee stories. It’s like self-reporters and publications often don’t put this information front-and-center because, if amnesia or memory loss is involved, it may be easier to turn that same memory distortion back on the person who has believed they were contacted or had contact with aliens. However, as mentioned, it is a common enough symptom that a research piece entitled Memory distortion in people reporting abduction by aliens was published by the Journal of Abnormal Psychology in 2002.
Specifically, there is an even more subtle kind of memory distortion that doesn’t seem to involve losing entire days and nights: doorway amnesia. You’ve likely experienced it at some point or another. You walked through a door, maybe in a hotel or your own home or a museum…only to forget why you are in that particular room in the first place.
But, as a note, we’re not suggesting that everyone who has experienced doorway amnesia has also been contacted by aliens. In fact, it is a fairly normal occurrence examined by Scientific American, While most people write this off as being distracted and not paying attention...Scientific American explores another option: that walking through doorways somehow causes people to forget. A group of researchers from the University of Notre Dame studied this and found, in a study, that peoples’ memories were worse after passing through a doorway than after walking the same distance within a single room. According to Scientific American, “The doorway effect suggests that there's more to the remembering than just what you paid attention to, when it happened, and how hard you tried.”
What does this have to do with aliens? Don’t worry I’m getting there.
Here’s the idea: if aliens can visit us, largely undetected, then they must be pretty technology advanced and also aware enough to manipulate (or understand) our world. Maybe they understand this biological quirk enough to manipulate it. Perhaps they watch as we grow disconnected from our purpose, if only for a moment, only enough time to pass through a doorway…and exploit it.
That’s why some people who have potentially encountered aliens “remember” again after hypnosis or otherwise deeply connected explorations of the self and our brains. Because, when we really pay attention, we can see where the film of our brain has been edited and where memories folded into the grooves of our brain were left, never remembered in the first place.
Dr. Thomas Bullard studied over 500 alien contactee and abductee cases and discovered, in his research, that recurring doorway amnesia was a part of nearly every story or interview. He noted that only a handful of people who had claimed to be inside of an alien craft could remember the journey to the craft…and he believes that journey, that missing piece, occurred during doorway amnesia.
Whether a quirk of our own minds or something stranger, you might think twice the next time you walk through a doorway.
The above image is from Flickr user Aaron Harmon and is licensed under Attribution 2.0 Generic (CC BY 2.0).