extraordinary%20encounters

194 Oleson’s giants
Jones, Hufford says that “one can hardly distinguish
the experiences themselves from their
interpretations.”
Hufford argues that if would-be explainers
had listened to what the witnesses reported
about the particular symptoms of Old Hag
experience, they might have been able to explain
it sooner. Research in the 1960s and
1970s in sleep paralysis both underscores the
accuracy of the testimony and explains most
of it, though, so far, not the peculiar fact that
the contents of the experience are consistent no
matter to whom or in what cultural context
they occur.
In Hufford’s judgment, too much scholarly
writing on extraordinary experience reflects
“unexamined prejudices and makes facile assumptions
about cultural processes,” thus
confusing rather than clarifying issues.
Old Hag sleep paralysis may explain at
least some abduction and other ostensibly
UFO-related “bedroom visitations.” For example,
John A. Keel, author of several books
on UFOs, has written of his own encounters
with strange entities, including one in which
“I woke up in the middle of the night to find
myself unable to move, with a huge dark apparition
standing over me” (Keel, 1970).
Addressing the abduction phenomenon,
Hufford has said, “If the paralysis attacks, as
described by abductees, are directly linked to
abductions, there is every reason to believe
that the abduction phenomenon has great historical
depth and is associated in complex
ways with other classes of anomalous experience”
(Hufford, 1994).
See Also: Abductions by UFOs; Keel, John Alva
Further Reading
Hufford, David J., 1982. The Terror That Comes in
the Night: An Experienced-Centered Study of Su -
pernatural Assault Traditions. Philadelphia: University
of Pennsylvania Press.
———, 1994. “Awakening Paralyzed in the Presence
of a Strange ‘Visitor’.” In Andrea Pritchard,
David E. Pritchard, John E. Mack, Pam Kasey,
and Claudia Yapp, eds. Alien Discussions: Proceed -
ings of the Abduction Study Conference, 348–354.
Cambridge, MA: North Cambridge Press.
Keel, John A., 1970. Strange Creatures from Time and
Space. Greenwich, CT: Fawcett Gold Medal.
Oleson’s giants
On May 2, 1897, during a spate of mysterious
“a i r s h i p” sightings that some popular
speculation tied to possible visitors fro m
other planets, the Houston Po s t published a
letter from John Leander of El Campo, Te x a s .
Leander related the story of a local man,
i d e n t i fied only as Mr. Oleson, an elderly, ret
i red sailor who once served on Danish ve ssels.
Ac c o rding to Leander, in Se p t e m b e r
1862 Oleson had witnessed the crash of a
mysterious craft and seen the bodies of the
giant beings who had flown it.
At the time the incident took place, Oleson
was serving as mate on the brig Christine on
the Indian Ocean. A furious storm erupted
and raged for hours until, finally, a wave
washed over the ship, and Oleson and five
companions were swept onto a small, rocky island.
All were injured, and one soon died.
The island was devoid of life, and the men resigned
themselves to their deaths. As they sat
hopeless at the base of a cliff, they witnessed a
bizarre and terrifying sight: an immense flying
ship, apparently out of control and about to
crash, was heading directly toward them. Fortunately,
the wind blew it off course, and it
smashed against the rocks a few hundred
yards away.
Overcoming their deep fear, the sailors
made their way to the wreckage. The machine,
which they deduced had been the size
of a battleship, lay in a shapeless mass, revealing
little except that the craft had had four
large wings. There were things that looked
like tools and furniture, evidently from the
ship’s interior, and the men opened boxes covered
with unusual characters. Inside the
boxes, they uncovered nourishing food.
“But their horror was intensified,” Leander
wrote, “when they found the bodies of more
than a dozen men dressed in garments of
strange fashion and texture. The bodies were a
dark bronze color, but the strangest feature of
all was the immense size of the men. They had
no means of measuring their bodies, but estimated
them to be more than twelve feet high.
Their hair and beards were also long and as