FAIRIES AND FOLKLORE

THE ANAHEIM EXPERIMENT

It’s one of my favourite fortean experiments. In 1977, eight young men and women were brought to Anaheim Memorial Hospital in California, hypnotised and then asked identical questions about their experiences with UFOs. The group running the experiment (under Alvin Lawson) noted how the answers to the questions were similar both among the respondents and also to wider reports of UFO experiences. Common points included: aliens using breathing apparatus; smoke trails seen behind UFOs; and samples of body fluids being taken by our alien overlords. So far, so normal, you might be thinking. But the remarkable thing about the Anaheim experiment was that the eight students had never seen aUFO . The eight had, in fact, been recruited as “creative, verbal types” from the local university. Then, once hypnotised, they had been encouraged to describe a non-existent experience and they had done so in terms which would have convinced most UFO enthusiasts that their memories were ‘the real thing’.

The Anaheim experiment has been, over the years, used to make various points. It shows how hypnosis can kick up stock answers; John De Herrera wrote a short pamphlet on this. It hints that some far-out experiences are culturally constructed: it would be interesting to see how many of these UFO ‘memories’

were based on old episodes of Star Trek and Lost in Space. Then, the late, great Hilary Evans used the Anaheim experiment as a pointer to group ESP or even some kind of collective unconscious.

My real interest is not in the experiment, which is little more than a footnote in fortean history, but, rather, in the method. Why stop with aliens? Let’s take another form of encounter: the ghost. I’m open to doing the same thing with sasquatches, fairies, super-heroes, demons, angels, Christmas elves or any other form of the ‘impossible’. Get your eight or, better, 80 ‘creative, verbal types’ and let them off the leash in the depths of the unconscious. Use hypnotism, by all means. But my suspicion is that two glasses of red wine and a stopwatch would equally do the trick for some, pathfinding visualisation with prompts for others. Ask ‘contactees’ identical questions about their ghost encounter: then create a list of common elements. It becomes, of course, still more interesting if you can compare answers from different generations and different countries. Would French answers differ from American answers? Would pensioners see something different from the young? Would, for that matter, answers differ by gender or by personality type? Then, most importantly, what conclusions do you draw if, as at Anaheim, a significant number of real-life experiences parallel imagined ones?

THE LATE, GREAT HILARY EVANS USED THE ANAHEIM EXPERIMENT AS A POINTER TO GROUP ESP