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THE U N INVITED
known as
The Oz Factor, because of the analogy with Dorothy being taken to a magical world in The Wizard of Oz. British ufologist Jenny Randles, who has made a par ticular study of this, has noted that the Oz Factor also oc curs in paranormal events such as time slips. Readers will have noted that I differentiate between abductions and paranormal phenomena. I will discuss later the possibility of a psychic element to alien abduc tions, but it seems to me that we must first explore the possibility that these events occur within the physical uni verse. After all, if UFOs are extraterrestrial spacecraft, then their visits here, and the abductions, may be likened to the first contact between Europeans and Native Ameri cans. The European ships were like nothing the Americans had previously encountered, and the Europeans, though similar in appearance to the indigenous people, were not identical. The whole situation may have been extremely strange to the Native Americans, but in no sense was it paranormal. One legend that links the idea of time behaving strangely with the concept of a mysterious
otherworld is
that of the Irish warrior-hero Oisfn, who fell in love with a fairy maiden, and went to live with her in Tir-Na-N'Og (the land of the young). He is blissfully happy there, but one day decides he wants to visit an old friend. He is given a white horse, but told he must not dismount while back in the mortal world, or he can never return. In the mortal world he sees that despite believing he had been away for only a short while, years have elapsed, and his friend has been long dead, while he has remained young. At this point he dismounts, to help some men lift a stone, and can