People looking for their own close encounter of the third kind can be trained to meet extra terrestrial life forms in their dreams, scientists claim.
Researchers at University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) say they can help people 'seek out' meetings with aliens in a half-dream state.
Volunteers underwent a series of mental exercises on waking, and of the 20 who took part, seven claimed to have seen aliens - from little green men to seven-foot-tall robots - as part of an out-of-body experience.
One volunteer, Craig, explained how he felt a floating sensation after falling asleep.
'I told myself to go see aliens. The next scene I was near a mountain in a clearing with trees around it. There was a space ship. There were two aliens with helmets on. They also had a type of robot with them,' he explained.
'It was about seven ft tall and was silver in colour. The aliens did not appear to be friendly.'
However, lead researcher Michael Raduga said that the study proves that extra terrestrial experiences are merely a product of the human brain.
'Alien contact is not indicative of the existence of otherworldly civilizations, but rather of a poorly studied state of consciousness that people fall into inadvertently,' he said.
The first widely-reported alien abduction in the United States took place on September 19th 1961, in Portsmouth, New Hampshire.
A plaque was recently unveiled in the city to mark the 50th anniversary of Betty Hill's otherworldly experience.
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