Carl%20Sagan%20-%20The%20Demon%20Haunted%20World

THE DEMON-HAUNTED WORLD
When I was a boy, our house was filled with monsters. They
lived in the closets, under the beds, in the attic, in the
basement, and - when it was dark - just about everywhere.
This book is dedicated to my father, who kept me safe from
all of them.
Maybe the abduction therapists should be doing more of that.
Part of the reason that children are afraid of the dark may be
that, in our entire evolutionary history up until just a moment
ago, they never slept alone. Instead, they nestled safely,
protected by an adult, usually Mum. In the enlightened west we
stick them alone in a dark room, say goodnight, and have
difficulty understanding why they're sometimes upset. It makes
good evolutionary sense for children to have fantasies of scary
monsters. In a world stalked by lions and hyenas, such fantasies
help prevent defenceless toddlers from wandering too far from
their guardians. How can this safety machinery be effective for
a vigorous, curious young animal unless it delivers industrial
strength terror? Those who are not afraid of monsters tend not
to leave descendants. Eventually, I imagine, over the course of
human evolution, almost all children become afraid of monsters.
But if we're capable of conjuring up terrifying monsters
in childhood, why shouldn't some of us, at least on occasion, be
able to fantasize something similar, something truly horrifying,
a shared delusion, as adults?
It is telling that alien abductions occur mainly on falling
asleep or when waking up, or on long automobile drives where
there is a well-known danger of falling into some autohypnotic
reverie. Abduction therapists are puzzled when their patients
describe crying out in terror while their spouses sleep leadenly
beside them. But isn't this typical of dreams, our shouts for
help unheard? Might these stories have something to do with
sleep and, as Benjamin Simon proposed for the Hills, a kind of
dream?
A common, although insufficiently well-known, psychological
syndrome rather like alien abduction is called sleep paralysis.
Many people experience it. It happens in that twilight world
between being fully awake and fully asleep. For a few minutes,
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