The terrifying phenomenon of alien abduction is all too real to those who experience it whatever its cause might be.
One abductee, Stephanie Sanchez, spoke exclusively to the Daily Star about her bizarre night-time encounters with a demon, or alien, that plagues her dreams.
She says the 'ET' first visited her I 2004 - and has been back many times since.
“I was living with my mom in New York,” she says.
“It was the middle of the night when I was woken by a scratching noise …like long nails on a sheet”
A mysterious figure, perhaps three or four feet tall, was leaning strangely over her bed. Stephanie felt compelled to reach out and touch the mysterious intruder, which seemed to have two stubby horns on its head.
“This thing took these two chopstick looking things and held it against where my ovaries were," she said. "I thought it had even punctured through. It was extremely painful and all I can think was 'GOD GOD GOD'. It lasted only seconds and then vanished.”
Like many abductees, Stephanie had repeated experiences. Even though she had moved house more than once after that first bizarre encounter, whatever it was found her again.
“I had an overwhelming sense of dread,” she recalled. “I was terrified. I felt like something just swooshed into the room.
“I tried relaxing and of course I was telling myself I was crazy.”
But then, she says, something very real dropped onto her chest: “It was like electricity/pulsing into me very forcefully. It did hurt and I could feel the pulse in my entire body. I reached out and tried squeezing it. It felt like I was pulling on toffee.”
While many of Stephanie’s experiences have occurred while she was in bed, and might be written off as particularly vivid dreams, there have also been unusual visitations in the daytime: “Another time there was a blackout that happened late afternoon,” she says.
"I saw a tiny ball of light almost like a meteor in my living room fly from the middle of the room into the wall. Shortly after that happened the power went back on”.
She says that she isn’t sure whether the beings that visit her could be classified as aliens, angels or demons. But she says the phenomenon is probably very common.
“I get the feeling that humans are ‘worked on’ and manipulated continuously,” she added.
On another occasion, she says, she was beamed into an “enormous” disk-shaped craft and she saw other abductees being experimented on.
“They seemed to be both lying down,” she said. “One was East Asian and I’m not sure about the other.
“I saw the Asian woman’s face. Her eyes were open but she looked unconscious. She was lying down, most of her body was inside this machine like a body scan except much thinner and compact than the ones we use, from her shoulders-up. Her body would convulse every few seconds.”
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Stephanie’s fiancé was “scared” by how often she would wake up with night terrors.
“Waking up with scratches and bruises is a sort of normal occurrence for me,” says Stephanie. “I rarely remember how I get them. I don’t even notice they are there unless I’m looking at my body.
“I found a recent one under my jawline which I thought was an odd area to get one. I also have eczema so I scratch often absentmindedly ."
Stephanie told us that sometimes things are disturbed in her bedroom as well.
“I sleep with two eye masks and they wrap around your head. I’ll find pillows and my masks sometimes on the floor as well.”
“Which is weird,” she says, “but probably coincidental”.
There have been many explanations offered for the alien abduction phenomenon – from a simple delusion to a misfire in the physiological system that keeps us still while we sleep.
But something strange is undeniably happening to Stephanie, and people like her. And the sooner scientists understand exactly what it is, the better she and her fiancé will sleep.
