ET Dreaming

By Rosemary Ellen Guiley

c. Visionary Living, Inc.

Do you dream of extraterrestrials and UFOs? Have you wondered about what the dreams mean?

I conducted an informal survey with a professional colleague, psychotherapist Carol D. Warner, on dreams of ETs and UFOs. We received numerous replies from a variety of sources in response to flyers, website postings and ads in magazines such as FATE and Venture Inward. While the project is not complete, I’d like to share with you some of my preliminary thoughts on the possible meanings of these intriguing dreams.

The purpose of our project is to aid dreamers, therapists and other dreamwork facilitators in their understanding of ET/UFO dreams. Many of these dreams are vividly realistic to the dreamers and seem like waking events rather than dreams. Do dreams of ETs and UFOs automatically imply an invasion of our dreamscape by alien beings? Or are they more symbolic, like most of our other dreams?

The prevailing wisdom in dreamwork today is that only the dreamer can truly interpret his or her own dreams. Others – even professional therapists – cannot decide what a dream means for someone else. However, others can offer possible interpretations – ideas that occur to them if they’d had the dream themselves – which can be of great help to the dreamer by stimulating creative thinking about a dream.

With that in mind, here are three points to consider in evaluating your own ET/UFO dreams:

1. ETs and UFOs have become common dream symbols.
Our dream imagery reflects our waking environment. For decades, ETs, UFOs, alien beings and space travel have been a significant part of our popular culture, appearing in our literature, mass media and advertising. It’s only natural that these subjects and images should appear in our dreams – just as the automobile, once an “alien” machine, now dominates our dreaming.

As dream symbols, ET and UFO images convey personal associations within the context of the dream. For example, if a dreamer considers ETs and UFOs to be threatening or frightening, these associations take on symbolic meaning in the dream, representing those feelings about something else in waking life. Similarly, if a dreamer associates ETs and UFOs with excitement, mystery, awe or even salvation, then these would also be related to the dreamer’s waking life situations.

The context of the dream is important. Perhaps the dreamer has no negative associations with UFOs, but in the dream a UFO seems sinister. In that case, the dreamer might ask why something that is not normally frightening to him is a threat, and then try to relate that to waking life.

Thus, from this perspective, ETs and UFOs are ordinary dream symbols, just like houses, cars, buildings, animals, and so on.

2. ET dreams are modern versions of ongoing collective otherworld contact.
Ancient beliefs about dreams held that dreams were genuine intersections with other realms that were populated by gods, demigods and hosts of nonworldly beings who coexisted in parallel but invisible realms. In fact, some of our experiences with such entities could take place only in the special state of consciousness of dreams.

Many dreamers believe this to be the case today, too. I do. I think that in addition to our personal dreams, we have dream encounters in other realms. It’s possible that the beings we encounter reflect our cultural conditioning. For example, dreams of fairies are far outstripped by dreams of ETs – yet centuries ago the reverse would have been the case. ETs may be but the latest “clothing” or “framework” for certain otherworldly experiences that are part of the evolution of collective human consciousness.

There are interesting parallels between ETs – especially the abducting variety, which I will focus on here – and other entities from myth and folklore. Let’s look at three of them: the fairy, the vampire, and the angel.

First, what are the dominant characteristics of abducting ETs? They usually strike at night while the victims are asleep. They can be invisible if they choose, and they have supernatural powers over human and animals. They have the power to shapeshift. They come in brilliant light, passing through walls, and creating poltergeist-like disturbances. They paralyze their victims and levitate them to their world, a spaceship, where time passes much differently. The victims are subject to medical procedures and sexual assaults. The ETs are intensely interested in human mothers and babies, for their own – and also the hybrids with unusual eyes that they create with humans – are sickly. The human victims sometimes are returned to locations other than the place where they were abducted; they are exhausted and often bruised. Or, they wake up in their own beds exhausted. The ETs often have apocalyptic warnings about the end times and the dire fate of the earth. Some abductees are shown star maps or are taken on cosmic tours, and are given special information for humanity, which may be presented to them in mysterious books or couched in strange symbols.

ETs have long been compared to fairies. In 1987, folklorist Thomas E. Bullard examined ET reports and opined that ETs were not fairies per se. However, the comparison to fairies cannot be dismissed out of hand.

In his exhaustive work The Fairy Faith in Celtic Countries (1911), W.Y. Evans-Wentz wrote about the great dread of fairies. They were considered to be evil spirits who lived in another dimensional world. They visited the realm of humans at night, and were quite dangerous for either man or beast to encounter. They could be invisible if they chose. They had supernatural powers over people and animals, and they could shapeshift. If you were in the wrong place at the wrong time, they attacked you while you were sleeping, paralyzed you, and carted you off to their world, inside the earth, where time passed much differently. If you were “taken,” it meant you had been abducted by fairies while you were sleeping or dreaming. You might be abducted physically, or you might be taken in spirit, with your shell of a body left behind. You might be forced to stay with the fairies forever, or you might escape back to the world, perhaps returning to some place other than where you had been seized. You felt much worse for the wear, tired and exhausted. Fairies were intensely interested in human mothers and babies, for their own were sickly, with unusual eyes. The fairy realm of the inner earth, just like outer space, was a place of mystery and uncertainty, and to be feared. Fairies issued no apocalyptic warnings about the fate of the earth; however, they had associations with salvation. The “gentry” fairy folk of Ireland claimed to have the power to destroy half of the human race, but would not do so because humans were “expecting salvation.”

Other interesting similarities exist between ETs and vampires. Forget the Bram Stoker or Anne Rice variety of vampires – those are fictional creations. The real vampire of folklore originated in Slavic lore as the restless dead who returned from the grave to attack the living – both man and animal – while they slept. The grave, just like inner earth and outer space, inspired fear and dread. Vampires usually were invisible, but sometimes could be seen by their victims. They possessed supernatural powers over humans and animals, and they had the power to shape-shift. The vampire sexually assaulted their paralyzed victims and drained away their vitality, causing them to have wasting-away illnesses. Like ETs, their entry into a household was through mysterious means, and was often accompanied by poltergeist-like disturbances: movements of objects, banging noises, and so forth. Vampires subsisted on the blood of their victims. There are UFO cases – mostly from South America – in which victims reportedly were drained of blood or fell mysteriously ill of wasting-away diseases after being attacked by red lights from chupa-chupa UFOs. (Chupa-chupa comes from chupacabra, or “goatsucker,” a blood-sucking entity that chiefly attacks animals.) Some of these chupa cases are questionable, but others are an enigma.

Vampires, of course, had no save-the-world agenda. For that aspect we find similarities between the ET and the angel. Apocryphal literature – sacred texts outside the canon – is full of dream vision recitals of prophets who were visited by angels in their sleep. The Book of Enoch is the best known of these texts. Back then, angels were not the saccharine creatures presented to us in the media today. They were fearsome beings of great power, who – despite their obedience to God – were not necessarily kindly disposed towards inferior humans. The angels came in brilliant light and levitated the prophets into their world, heaven. The prophets were taken on guided cosmic tours and given special information about creation and the fate of humanity, along with dire warnings about sin, judgment and the end times. They sometimes were given mysterious books, or were dictated books. They were returned to earth with the instructions to disseminate the information.

We have considered here a few examples of both negative and positive encounters with otherworldly beings. The dominant medium for these encounters is the dreamscape, as well as altered, dream-like states of consciousness. The ET embodies both positive and negative features. Like the vampire, the ET is a soul stealer. Like the fairy, the ET is a trickster. Like the angel, the ET is a messenger of salvation. The ET both terrifies and fascinates us.

Carl G. Jung died before the emergence of the abduction scenario, but he did consider the reality of UFOs and the significance of UFOs in dreams. He thought them to be a modern myth of projection from the unconscious, of salvation from the sky, largely in response to the deep collective fear of nuclear annihilation that developed after World War II.

Perhaps the ET is part of our inner struggle of opposing forces of good and evil. The forces are personified by different beings and projected onto the landscape of our consciousness, especially our dreams, in ways that make sense to us in our time and place. From this perspective, ET dreams may say more about the collective of human consciousness than about personal matters.

3. ET dreams are real experiences.
Modern ET experiencers firmly believe that their dreams of ETs are genuine encounters, in which events take place that are as real as waking life. This especially applies to abduction dream experiences. As I mentioned earlier, ancient beliefs about dreams considered them to be real experiences in other realities. I believe this to be the case, too, although I think that most of our dreaming takes place in a reality where we work out inner material in the form of symbolic imagery. Nonetheless, I have had startling dreams in which I have felt to really be in the presence of nonworldly beings. If people can dream of really being with an angel or a god of healing, for example, why not an ET?

Unfortunately, the field of abduction research has been fraught with controversy over dubious hypnosis, which is often the only way abduction dreams are recalled. Many experiencers are not well versed in dreamwork, and once they feel they are being abducted, they interpret all of their dreams accordingly so. One experiencer opines in her book that dreams of flying and being examined by doctors and nurses – among many other ordinary dream themes – are really ET “screen” dreams – which would make all of us abductees.

How to approach your ET dreams

It is unlikely that we will ever be able to make definitive statements about what ET dreams are and what they are not. We can consider only the sense they make in each context. Clearly, ET dreams share striking similarities to different kinds of otherworldly dream encounters that cannot be ignored, even if we interpret ET dreams literally. Jung envisioned a “psychic reality” in which we accept our experiences in both inner and outer worlds equally. From this perspective, we can find truth and validity in ET dreams in all three of the areas covered here: as ordinary dream symbols, as part of our ongoing otherworldly experience, and as real experiences in the full spectrum of consciousness.

To understand your own ET dreams, look first for ordinary dream symbolism with personal meaning, and then consider if and how the dreams fit the theme of humanity’s contact with other realities. Certain dreams make speak to you as real encounters. Many encounter dreams reported to us were benevolent in nature, in which the ETs were helpful figures who might be interpreted as angels by others. Abduction dreams recovered by hypnosis must be approached much more carefully, and taken to a qualified therapist.

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Versions of this article appeared in FATE September 2003 and in Dream Network Vol. 22 No. 4.