In the late 1980s, claims of abductions by aliens gained notoriety through the publication of several books such as Budd Hopkins' Intruders and Whitley Strieber's Communion.  In both cases, the authors discuss ordinary seeming people with apparently normal lives who nevertheless report, in all sincerity, being abducted by aliens, examined, and then released.  In many cases, the abduction story was first revealed to the authors through hypnosis after the subjects had experienced memory gaps and abduction dreams.  The subjects' stories exhibit similar scenarios.  The aliens, for example, are typically small green or gray men.  Their spacecraft are typically saucer-shaped.  The fact that there have been no previous connections among most of the subjects is taken as evidence of the truth of their stories.  How could they all tell roughly the same story if they did not know each other?  Hopkins, Strieber, and apparently many others, are convinced that such abductions have actually taken place.
    Others, of course, disagree.  Psychologist Robert Baker argues that the agreement among subjects is largely due to suggestions by the hypnotists themselves, both before and during hypnosis.  The general culture, including movies and books, provides a quite standard reservoir of images on which to draw.  Moreover, Baker argues, dreams and memories revealed under hypnosis tend to reinforce one another, so that the subjects cannot honestly tell the difference between the content of a dream and that of a genuine memory of something actually experienced.