the physiognomy of the aliens, the appearance of their spacecrafts, the ordeal of the medical examination, and so on — to popular science fiction comics, stories, and films of the past fifty years. The scholarly consensus would seem to be that the abductions simply did not take place; there is no originary event behind the memories. The notion of originary event is crucial here. Clearly, we will not get far by denying the existence of the memories themselves. Our scepticism is rather directed at what, if anything, may lie behind them. We suspect that the abductees’ reports do not stem from actual alien encounters, but that some other complex his - torical, sociological, and psychological processes are at work. Whatever the pro - cess turns out to be (and we are a long way from an adequate explanation of the phenomenon), it is reasonable to assume that the abductees’ memories do not faithfully represent actual historical occurrences