Strange Arrivals is a production of I-Heart Radio and Grim and Mild from Aaron Mankey.

In late May, I spoke with Stephanie Kelly Romano, an associate professor of rhetoric, film, and screen studies at Bates College in Lewiston, Maine.

She has conducted research into alien abduction narratives,

having collected stories from over 300 people

who believe they have had abduction experiences and examining these accounts for common themes

and what they can tell us about issues of control, rights, reality, identity, and power in our society. I'm Toby Ball. identity and

I'm Toby Ball and this is strange arrivals. Oh, I am Stephanie Kelly Romano. I'm an associate professor of rhetoric film and screen studies at Bates College and for my dissertation research I interviewed people who thought they had been

abducted by aliens.

So what kind of caused you to be interested in that particular subject?

Yeah, that's a question I get a lot. I became interested in this because truthfully,

when I was in graduate school, was watching the X files and I really liked the X files and

when you're in graduate school you don't have a lot of extra time to do things that you like

unless it's part of your research.

Additionally, I didn't necessarily want to just look at speeches of like dead

presidents and so I started looking at the X files and conspiracy rhetoric.

And of course there's the whole theme about the abduction and Mulder's sister.

And so then I got interested in people who think they've been abducted or

claim experiences with extraterrestrials and how do they carve out space for

themselves and legitimacy, right? Like how does that happen? I found when I was doing this,

that there seems like there might be kind of a feedback loop

in between the X-files and the population at large. Do you have that perception that you know the X files

obviously uses you know the the stuff that Bud Hopkins at all have done to kind of create this narrative

...