Christopher Bader was one of those kids who loved tales of the improbable. He grew up to become his own improbable tale:
He's a sociology professor at the conservative and Baptist Baylor University, a Presbyterian who has a particular interest in people who say they are UFO abductees or victims of religion-linked ritual abuse. His study of the two groups was published in a recent issue of the Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion.
"My students ask me all the time: 'Do you believe in UFOs? Do you believe in ritual abuse? Do you believe in Bigfoot?'" He said. "My answer is that I just don't care whether they're real or not."
Studying the sociology of religion is nothing like delving into theology, he said.
"We're not studying God. We're studying what people who believe in God and live on earth do," he said.
"God" and "religion" are defined broadly by sociologists of religion. Belief in UFO abductions and in ritual abuse both include a large dose of faith.
The scientific mainstream has not accepted any claims of alien abductions. And many who claim to have survived ritual abuse say they discovered the abuse through the recovery of long-repressed memories. The length of time between the alleged event and the recovery of the memory often makes it hard to investigate the claims.
So are there UFOs grabbing people? Are there Satanic cults abusing people? In many cases, people believe without the kinds of evidence that would convince outsiders - it's a matter of faith. And that means people who belong to support groups for UFO abductees or for survivors of ritual abuse can be studied as members of "new religious movements."
The only connection between the UFO folks and the ritual abuse folks is that the two groups gained attention in the 1980s, as Dr. Bader was starting his academic career.
Sociologists such as Bader study small groups like these because they believe this is a way to understand how successful faiths develop. After all, the largest religions all started with a few people considered unusual by their neighbors.
"It really is no crazier than anything else," he said of the outside-the-mainstream stuff he studies. "I appreciate it as a belief, and a sincerely held belief."
Not that he expects belief in UFO abductions to morph into a major faith anytime soon. "Not in my lifetime," he said.
Most of his work involves less controversial belief systems - why churches and denominations succeed or fail in drawing members. But when Baylor hired him a couple of years ago, he told his new bosses that part of his studies could seem a bit, well, odd for a Baptist school.
"But when I talk about Satanism in class, I'm not recruiting," he said.
His paper, published in the peer-reviewed journal, is the fruit of years of tentative contacts with support groups for people who say they've been snatched by aliens or ritually abused. Members of these groups are suspicious of outsiders. Much of his paper details how he gained their trust - and eventually, some information about them.
Eventually, he was able to get 55 of the UFO folks and 51 ritual-abuse survivors to anonymously fill out forms about their ages, education and other demographic information.
That information fills a hole in the study of these groups, he said. Most academic attention has focused on the beliefs or on psychological effects on the believers. Bader's goal was to identify the kinds of people who subscribe to these beliefs.
What he came up with has its limits, he admits. The sample size is small, and there's no way to know for sure if they represent the average UFO abductee or ritual-abuse survivor. But the results are in line with research done on other small, new religious movements, he said.
Many academics who study such movements tend to consider members of these particular groups as rubes, he said. "They assume that these are some country bumpkins who believe that the UFOs are plucking them off their tractors. That's not what people who are interested in new ideas are like."
It turns out that the folk who filled out Bader's forms are a lot like most Americans who seek out unusual faith experiences: They're generally female, white, affluent and well-educated when compared with the general population.
Of the 51 UFO abductees, 32 were women, 48 said they were white and six identified as Native American (three chose both categories), 34 attended some college, and 29 were white-collar workers. Most said they found some positive aspects to their experience.
Of the 48 ritual-abuse survivors, all were white women, 44 had attended college, and of the 21 then employed, 18 were white-collar workers. This was an unhappy population, and most reported they had dozens of multiple personalities.
What they have in common, Bader said, is that they mostly follow the pattern found in other new religious movements.
"The theory tells us that it doesn't matter about the personality of the 'god' involved," he said. "The point is that a certain demographic is interested in things outside the mainstream."