Mack, John E.

Mack, John E. (1929–2004) Dr. John E. Mack was one of the leading experts on alien abduction experiences, in which people claim to have been temporarily held captive by extraterrestrials. In the early 1990s, as a professor of psychiatry at Harvard University, Mack began a ten-year study of two hundred persons who claimed to be abductees, concentrating more on the psychological aspects of the abduction experience than on trying to prove whether aliens were real beings. Nonetheless, by the end of his study he had decided that most abductees really had encountered aliens. He wrote about some of his work in Abduction: Human Encounters with Aliens (1994), which is considered one of the most important books on alien abductions. In his book, Mack argues that anyone who cannot believe that aliens are real is “either unfamiliar with the rich complexity of the abduction phenomenon itself, or … wedded to a worldview in which the idea of an intelligence or beings from outside of the earth visiting us is simply not possible.” In other words, ignorance and prejudice keep people from believing in aliens who come from another planet.

SEE ALSO:

• Alien Abduction Experiences

SOURCE:

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