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Case of Erstein, about August 8, 1974:

Case number:

ALSACAT-1974-08-08-ERSTEIN-1

Summary:

In November 1975, a ufologist from the C.F.R.U. de Strasbourg reported a case of "enigmatic materialization" which occurred in Erstein on August 8, 1974, with a three days error margin on this date.

The anonymous witness is a young adult, known to the investigator.

Between midnight and one o'clock in the morning, as he was calm, without foreboding, he went to bed with the light on; a few seconds later he turned the light off.

He then heard a whisper that he could not identify. After a few seconds, he saw in front of him a small being that he at first took for a child. Its height was between 1 meter and 1.10 meters.

The being is described as "A middle-aged man, with huge, clear eyes without pupils, oval-shaped head, gray-green complexion, completely bald head, indistinct clothing and the same color as the head", and a gaunt arm was seen.

The witness was "fascinated" by the two huge eyes, he was unable to move and his gaze could not leave the spot where the eyes were; he had the feeling of screaming in terror but no sound crossed his lips. The mysterious noise had ceased as soon as the apparition began.

After a few seconds he felt the hand of the being caress his skull two or three times, then the vision ended instantly, the witness came out of his paralysis and turned on the light again.

Nothing was odd anymore. He woke up his brother who told him he noticed nothing suspicious.

The investigator explains that the witness was a deciced bachelor with a weakness for alcohol - he was not drunk at the time of the phenomenon. But after the event, he completely changed his lifestyle: he got married and has since led a regular and quiet life.

Data:

Temporal data:

Geographical data:

Witnesses data:

Ufology data:

Classifications:

Sources:

[Ref. ufa1:] BULLETIN D'UFOLOGIE "UFOLOGIA":

Discussion:

The event has all the features of an episode of hypnagogic hallucination:

• There is no UFOs, only an appearance of a being in the bedroom.
• The witness is in bed, he turned the light off: he is in a sleep or falling asleep situation.
• It begins with a sound, ordinary but perceived as unrecognizable, which triggers a semi-awakening from the sleep (here the brother in the same room may have been snoring, or whispering in his sleep).
• There is the effect of paralysis and the inability to scream.

The mechanism of hypnagogic hallucination is as follows:

A person goes to bed, and falls asleep, or begins to doze off.

A dream begins, with the presence of some "being" (monster, alien, fairy, gnome...)

The dream state is disturbed by a noise or a light, the person is then between waking and dreaming.

whereas the mind is half awake, the body is in a state of sleep, of complete paralysis, an automatic mechanism of paralysis that prevents us from moving around at the risk of injuring ourselves when we sleep.

As the person is half awake, and realizes the paralysis, the experience of what is basically a dream takes a taste of reality, one no longer realizes that it is a dream. One thinks, one says: "I am sure it was not a dream, it was more real than a dream."

If one wakes up completely, the "appearance" disappears, the paralysis ceases, but one remembers the dream whereas dreams are most often forgotten on normal awakening.

Statistics show that almost a third of people have had at least one such experience. It is obvious that when the experience is an "appearance" of one or more beings whose appearance does not appear too human, it can be misinterpreted as an "extraterrestrial visitation" by the witness or by a ufologist.

I provide a few references among dozens about the topic of hypnagogic hallucination and sleep paralysis:

• "The Old Hag phenomenon as sleep paralysis: a biocultural interpretation", paper by R.C. Ness, in Cultural and Medical Psychiatry, vol. 2 #1, pp 15-39, March 1978.
• "Lucid Dreaming: The Paradox of Consciousness During Sleep", book by Celia Green and Charles McCreery, Routledge publisher, U-K., 1994.
• "Wrestling With Ghosts: A Personal And Scientific Account Of Sleep Paralysis", book by Jorge Conesa Sevilla, Xlibris Corporation publishers, U-K., 2004.
• "Hallucinations and pathological visual perceptions in Maupassant's fantastical short stories - a neurological approach", by L.C. Alvaro, in Journal of the History of Neuroscience, vol 14, #2, pp 100-115, June 2005.
• "Effects of hypnagogic imagery on the event-related potential to external tone stimuli", paper by N. Michida, M. Hayashi, T. Hori, in Sleep, Vol. 28 #7, pp 813-818, July 2005.
• "Sleep and Society: Ventures into the (Un)Known", book by Simon A. Williams, Routledge publisher, 2005.
• "Mental representation of space: Insights from an oblique distribution of hallucinations", paper by T.A Girard, D.L. Martius, J.A. Cheyne in Neuropsychologia, vol. 45 #6, pp 1257-1269, 2007.
• "Parasomnias", paper by D.T. Plante, J.W. Winkelman, in The Psychiatric Clinics of North America, Vol. 29 #4, pp 969-987, December 2006.
• "Paranoid delusions and threatening hallucinations: A prospective study of sleep paralysis experiences", paper preview by J.A. Cheyne, T.A. Girard, scheduled in Consciousness and Cognition for April 2007.

Evaluation:

Hypnagogic hallucination.

Sources references:

* = Source is available to me.
? = Source I am told about but could not get so far. Help needed.

• [ufa1] * Ufology bulletin Ufologia of the ufology group Centre Français de Recherches Ufologiques (C.F.R.U.), France, #3, page 5, March - April 1976.

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