Warning - the following text contains SPOILERS!
This article contains significant plot details that people who haven't experienced the source material yet might wish to avoid. Read at your own risk.
The Aurans are a parasitic alien race from the planet Aura, and exists on a different "vibratory plane" that makes them ordinarily invisible, and allows them to exert telepathic influence over living humanoids and take over the bodies of the dead or those who intentionally allow them to.
Biology[]
The Aurans claim that they don't need to behave parasitically: as long as their host cooperates and allows them, they may act symbiotically instead. However, despite using that word, it is clear that the method requires the host to completely submit to the Auran and willingly become a mere spectator within its own body, which is controlled by the Auran. They are not capable of forcing themselves upon an unwilling living host.
Since the Aurans can also inhabit dead bodies (at least recently deceased ones), they may simply use their telepathic influence over humanoids and turn them murderously homicidal, thus providing dead bodies for the parasites in the form of victims. It's not known if they're incapable of willing someone into suicide, or simply find homicide easier, as a single mind-controlled subject can provide numerous victims rather than just one. In any case, it remains possible for a determined subject to resist the Auran's influence.
Culture and society[]
Due to the biological limitations of existing in a different plane, the Aurans claim that they cannot build spaceships or any other kind of technology on their own. When their sun was about to die, they became desperate to find a way to escape their doomed homeworld, and started sending out distress signals to lure spaceships into approaching their planet, at which point they used their telepathic abilities to make the crewmembers violently murder each other, so that the Aurans could take over their dead bodies and inhabit them, taking hold of the spaceship to leave.
Appearances[]
- Planet of the Vampires (1965)
Notes[]
- Although the film is loosely based on the 1960 sci-fi story "Una notte di 21 ore", by Renato Pestriniero, the Aurans are not present in the original version, in which the supernatural force reviving the dead bodies is not identified.