Why do some people believe they have been abducted by aliens?

In June of this year, a 12-year-old Jordan vanished in the rural town of Bridgend, Victoria. For eight days, police and volunteers scoured the area and surrounding bush to no avail. Then, after having been missing for over a week, Jordan was found miraculously alive. He was shaken but relatively unharmed; wherever he had been for those eight days is still a mystery. But Jordan and four witnesses say that he was abducted by aliens.

In the following months, alleged alien and UFO sightings have skyrocketed to levels unprecedented in Bridgend, with multiple residents also claiming to have been abducted or having witnessed an extraterrestrial presence. Aliens and alien abductions are still controversial topics amongst scientific communities, meaning that many medical professionals find themselves ill-equipped to handle patients who claim to have experienced such phenomena. This is especially the case in Australia since most research is conducted in the US, which excludes any Australian cultural factors that may be contributing to the phenomenon.

My name is Dr Alice Zhang, and I am a Postdoctoral Fellow in Psychology at the University of Melbourne. For the last two years, I have focused my research solely on understanding rare and misunderstood physicological conditions. Here in Bridgend, Victoria, my team and I will be conducting research into the local alien encounters to better understand the psychology behind those who believe in them.

If you want to keep up with the project, our Head Journalist, Isaac Lloyd, will be posting updates regularly on our blog. You can also keep up to date by joining our Discord server.

First entry- 11/24

November 26, 2024

There is a railway that passes through Bridgend, but the train doesn’t stop here. Unused, the tracks have rusted over, and grass and yellow dandelions have sprung amongst the rocks and the wooden planks. To get to Bridgend, Alice and I would have to catch a two-hour train from Melbourne to the next town over. Tilly would then meet us at the train station and drive us the rest of the way.

I stumbled through Southern Cross Station with one hand holding my phone and the other dragging my wheeled suitcase. One of the wheels had broken just after getting out of the Uber, so it swivelled side to side from one wheel to the other. My phone was open on a text chat with Alice, trying to locate her amongst the crowds that hurried to and fro between the platforms. I didn’t know Alice very well, we are both mutual friends of Tilly’s, but I know Tilly from school and Alice from uni.

‘Isaac!’

I spun to my side and saw Alice waving at me from beside the sushi stall. I had only ever seen her before sitting down before, so I never noticed how tall and slender she was. She was casually dressed, with her glossy dark hair tied back in a ponytail, and in one hand, she was holding her phone and in the other a cup of coffee. A wheeled suitcase was placed upright beside her, and a large duffle bag was slung across her shoulders. I hurried over to Alice with a smile of relief, and she greeted me likewise with a smile.

‘Hi, how are you?’ she asked. Her round eyes were bright and warm.

‘Yeah, I’m good thanks, how about you?’ I replied.

‘I’m good, thank you,’ Alice suddenly turned, looking up and focused as a woman’s voice echoed over the PA.

I turned to listen too, but couldn’t make out anything amongst the sounds of trains and chatting people. I could see the brightness in Alice’s visage gradually fade.

‘What’s going on?’ I asked.

‘They’ve cancelled the train,’ she replied.

‘What? Really?’ I could feel the muscles start tensing in my face.

Alice shoved her phone in her pocket and grabbed the handle of her suitcase. ‘We’ve got to catch a coach,’ she explained.

‘Argh, for real?’ with a sigh, I pulled my broken suitcase along and followed Alice towards the back of the station and into the underground coach terminal.

The road coach was an hour late, and when it did arrive, there were so many people waiting that not everyone got a seat. Alice and I hurried out onto the concrete road, hobbling with our luggage as people pressed against us. We scrambled single file onto the hot bus, Alice and I squished together as we sat down on the closely packed seats.

We arrived at lunchtime, but it felt like we had travelled all day. Alice and I shuffled lethargically out of the coach, both of us red in the face from the heat and exhausted from the journey. We waited, hanging like paper dolls, as the driver opened the bottom of the bus and hopped into the luggage compartment, handing out bags and suitcases to the eagerly waiting passengers.

‘Hey!’

It was Tilly, wearing a pair of jean shorts and a white Chappell Roan t-shirt. Their thick, curly brown hair bounced as she walked towards us, their freckled face beaming. Tilly is the type of person you can’t help but like, someone who is friendly and kind just because that’s the kind of person they are.

‘How was the trip?’ she asked.

‘Awful,’ I laughed. I tried to laugh it off, but really, it wasn’t that funny.

We packed our luggage into the boot of Tilly’s car, and began the second part of our journey.

I don’t know how to put my finger on it, but Bridgend feels like a town suspended in time, or even outside of time for that manner. All of the buildings are relics of the previous two centuries, a mismatch of decades and eras sitting belligerently side-by-side. Many of the posters and signs displayed were faded and worn, with their black ink washed blue and the faces of people stripped to pale shadows.

I am told there is a reasonable population here, but the town feels eerily empty while you walk through it. But once you enter a store or so on, Bridgend feels like just any other place.

We decided to stop for lunch at a café. It was full, and the baristas there were all alternative young people. It was just as if we had stopped for a coffee back in Melbourne.

While we waited for our food, I pointed out to Tilly how the streets seemed so empty while the café seemed so full.

‘Hm, I’ve never noticed that before’ she looked quizzically out the window beside us.

‘They’re big streets, they probably seem empty because they’re long and wide so everyone’s just further apart.’

Alice and I turned to the window too. A car drove past along the gaping road, but the footpaths were still. Even the trees were still.

‘Oh, you’re right,’ Alice told Tilly. ‘Are they wider than Melbourne’s or is Melbourne just really crowded?’

I’ve been unnerved by this place since I got here, I can’t say why though. It’s almost like culture shock… I don’t know. I grew up in a rural town myself, but Bridgend really is something else.

Tilly is the reason we came to Bridgend; she has family here, so naturally she was the first of us to find out about the “alien abductions”. I studied writing and media production after high school, so Tilly and Alice asked me if I could help them turn their research into a book. Alice says that there are too many “pseudoscientific UFO books that are just ridiculous”, so she wants to make one that is “genuine, scholarly, and grounded in the scientific method.” Unfortunately, I haven’t studied psychology like they have, so the best I can do when writing this book is to use my writer’s intuition, which should probably be taken with a grain of salt. But that’s why we’ve got people like Alice and Tilly working on this book too. To be honest by the end of the process I’ll be nothing more than an editor.

If you’re reading this blog, this is your official sneak peek into that book. I appreciate you coming along for the ride, it’s your support that is going to help us do this research and publish that book. And to be honest, I’m so keen to do this. I don’t believe in the abductions of course but as a writer, I can’t help but be curious as to what’s really going on.

Although Alice and I were exhausted, we had already arranged to go and interview Jordan, the boy who was originally abducted. So we hastily finished our lunch, then got back into Tilly’s car.

We drove out of town, and the buildings then faded away into fields of dry grass. Gumtrees and rows of cattle passed by like cardboard cut-outs against the window. With my neck pressed into the seatbelt, I began to groggily drift off. I then awoke with a start. Alice’s phone was ringing loudly.

‘Hello?’

I looked up and could see Alice listening with the phone pressed to her ear. She saw me and looked back, biting her lip with her eyes filled with concern.

Image credits: Sicong Li and Fran Janquier on Unsplash.