Hallucinations are experiences of one or more senses—sight, sound, hearing, smell, touch, and taste—that appear real to the person experiencing them but are not. Skeptics often accuse people who say they have had a paranormal experience of having experienced a hallucination instead. This accusation is most often made in cases of alien abduction, which skeptics say cannot possibly be real. Believers in alien abductions, however, counter that there are too many reports of alien abduction, with too many specific details and too many common elements among those reports, for the experience to be the result of a hallucination.

SEE ALSO:

• Alien Abduction Experiences

SOURCE:

The Greenhaven Encyclopedia of Paranormal Phenomena – written by Patricia D. Netzley © 2006 Gale, a part of Cengage Learning