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59 This stress response, according to mental health professionals who have studies such situations, shows up in cases where an actual traumatic event has occurred. It may be that abductees continue to wake up at a certain time each night because a traumatic event had occurred previously at that time, as if a preventative warning, a wake-up-and- protect-yourself alarm, is sounding subconsciously. The ongoing feelings of fear and intrusion are fostered not only by the consciously recalled encounters but also by situations in which external evidence points to unremembered events. For instance, without any conscious memories of a disturbance or problem associated with the area, Anita has a phobia about driving alone along a certain stretch of US Highway 287. There is, however, a possible connection with her alien involvement. “This [stretch of highway] is where my older brother called us to look out the window one night,” she said, “to see a UFO going over at treetop level.” And although she remembered nothing further about that night, her phobia about the area is suspicious. So are the various marks and injuries she has discovered on her body. “Lots of mornings,” Anita said, “I have gotten up feeling like someone beat me up in my sleep.” This is another common abductee report, waking up with sore, damaged-feeling muscles and joints. “| have waked up with bruises on my arms, shoulders, and legs,” she continued, “with no idea where they came from. | have found scratches that | could not remember having gotten the day before.” The evidence for vigorous physical activity during the night, although unremembered, comes from more than just Anita’s sore or scarred body, however. In one incident, she woke up in the morning and felt an unfamiliar pain in her right hand. “| sat up in bed,” she explained, “and found that sometime during the night my ring had been squashed on my finger.” She managed with effort to remove the ring, but neither her husband nor a jeweler could completely restore its original shape. On another occasion, Anita got out of bed one morning and found the crucifix from her necklace lying on the floor. “It had been on my neck the night before,” she said, “and the chain was still on [me]. But the only way to remove the crucifix is to remove the necklace and take it off the chain.” She has also awakened several mornings to discover that something had happened to her clothing, a report frequently echoed by other abductees. In one instance, she woke up with her nightie on backward, although she was certain she had not taken it off, turned it around, and put it back on. And on a different occasion she found that the nightie was not only backward but had also been turned inside-out. In the night during one of these events, she had an altered-state experience in which she recalled a group of Tan aliens observing her as she was “free-falling,” an event which did not feel unduly upsetting for some reason. Anita had quite a severe reaction to another similar event, however, venting much more emotion than the situation seemed to call for. It was in the winter, during the Christmas holidays one night, and she had worn socks to bed for extra warmth. When she woke up the next day and found that one of her socks was missing, Anita became extremely upset and angry at her family. She said she was “very belligerent” toward them, even accused them of playing a practical joke on her, one which didn’t strike her as humorous. Anita was also physically upset that morning, suffering from a violent headache and nausea which caused her to vomit, yet there was no illness to account for the symptoms. Still, she might not have been overly concerned about the vanished sock and her physical