Communion: A True Story (18 page)

This is because the idea of intellectually and technologically advanced visitors who hide their knowledge from us is threatening and infuriating. It suggests that there is something ignoble about mankind, or even that we are prisoners on our planet. Those are ugly notions, and I for one would prefer an empty universe to one that reacts to us with contempt or Olympian indifference.

We human beings have a very natural stake in the value and validity of our species and our minds. And this is doubly true of those whose sense of personal worth stems from intellectual work. If the human mind is second-rate, then so are those who live by it.

On a deeper level, though. I find that I am beginning to become a little more at ease with the idea that the visitors might actually exist. This is for an unexpected reason. I think of those rushing little figures, those haunting eyes, the smells, the little rooms, the uniforms, the sense of hard work being done. I remember how stiff and insectlike the movements of the visitors seemed, and how very careful they were to keep me under control at all times, and I think that I may know the reason for their peculiar manner of dealing with us. If I am right, then the source of their reticence is not contempt but fear, and well-founded fear, too. They are not afraid of man's savagery or his greed, but of his capacity for independent action.

I have seen them from close range, and if I was seeing real beings, then what was most striking about them was that they appeared to be moving to a sort of choreography . . . as if every action on the part of each independent being were decided elsewhere and then transmitted to the individual.

I return to the thought that they may be a sort of hive. If this were true, then they may be, in effect, a single mind with millions of bodies-a brilliant creature, but lacking the speed of independent. quick-witted mankind. If they think slowly enough, it may be that :t human being, fast thinking and autonomous, could be a remarkable threat. It may be that an old, essentially primitive intelligence has encountered a new, advanced form, and is frightened of the potential that our completeness as individuals gives us.

I can picture myself on some night of the future, watching them approach my bed. It will be so dark that I will barely be able to see. But I will see their short selves dressed in their familiar jumpsuits. I will see those big, bobbing heads and those grave, sharp eyes. I will feel their cool, tiny fingers upon me and hear their breathing as they carry me away, perhaps even catch an occasional high whisper, words said and thought like equal sails upon the same ocean. I will know then the reason for both their interest and their shyness: We awe them and frighten them. And I will understand why.

If I am right about them, it is unlikely that there will ever be the kind of open contact between our two species that seems so logical and useful to us. Even a well-intentioned human being would pose a threat, in that his accidentally taking an action they had not anticipated might cause them literally to lose track of him right in the middle of one of their own craft. Might he not then be able to explore it at will, learn its secrets, and potentially, at least, release all of us into the cosmos?

Can it be that any one of us has the potential to be at once inferior and superior to their entire species?

To contemplate such a notion makes my soul ache with longing to know for certain, and yet also to leap up, as if by some obscure hand it has suddenly been set free.

Hypnosis

FISHING IN THE PAST. PART ONE: THE SHALLOWS

SESSION DATE:
March 10, 1 996

SUBJECT:
Whitley Strieber

PSYCHIATRIST:
Donald Vein, MD

[Once we reviewed this apparent past material. Don Klein and I decided to go fishing in it.

This and the next would be the last times that Don would hypnotize me. Despite the fact that many complex experiences took place between April and October of 1986. our interest shifted after March from exploring new material to discovering some physical cause for it.

We will return to hypnosis in the future, but — while it is obviously of great interest — it does not advance any real understanding of the origin of what is happening, only of its content. Why, as I am no longer terrified, the more recent events should still be difficult to remember in their entirety without hypnosis is unclear.

We decided to cover the night at my grandmother's house. the fall of 1980 to New York, and anything else that might be of interest. We both recognized. and I wish to make this clear, that there might well have been a degree of degradation taking place, in the sense that I might have been unintentionally fulfilling expectations of seeing the visitors. While at the time of the hypnosis sessions recorded here and in the next chapter I was still avoiding reading books about anything connected with this sort of material, simply dealing with my own memories must have affected me, altering and changing my perceptions in ways that are probably impossible to detect. Despite this, there was confirmation from another witness that one of my memories was indeed of an extremely strange event.

At this session, Don and I examined an incident that took place in the country on an October or November afternoon in 1984. I was driving back to the house from the grocery store when I suddenly saw a fogbank. It was a clear fall day, the air dry. I got curious about the fogbank and drove off the highway onto a dirt road to try and get a better look at it. The next thing I recall, I was in the fog in my car and two people in dark blue uniforms were leaning in the windows. Then I was back on the highway, returning home. I had dismissed this whole thing until just recently, when I thought about it and decided to go back down that dirt road. I went to the exact spot on the highway where I had turned off. I remembered it because it had a lovely view; and I had looked at that view just before making the turn. The dirt road I had seen there didn't exist anymore, and there was no sign of a road ever having been there.

Budd Hopkins had wanted me to cover this incident first, before any further hypnosis, because of its similarity to one of the most common abduction scenarios. the removal of' the subject from a moving car. He did not tell me what I have subsequently discovered, that confusion of place is common among abductees. There are stories of roads that don't exist.

beaches that aren't there, structures that later prove never to have been built. There are also cases where clouds came down to the ground or strange fogs proved to contain something more than droplets of water. One might be tempted to ascribe such reports to trance states, but that does not explain what happens to the victims' cars while they are in the trance — and there are often hours of missing time involved. In addition, many experiences take place while moving cars are filled with people. Some period of time passes, and the occupants all wake up to find the car moving in a different direction, or at the wrong place on the highway, or some such thing. They do not find themselves where they ought to be: in a ditch.]

Dr. Klein: "You're in the car, in the car —"

"I went right past the turnoff. I went right past the grocery store and I keep going. I don't know . . . I want to take the car for a little run. Listening to WAMC'

"What do you hear?"

"It's
Don Giovanni
." (So I said, but it sounded awfully strange.) "Going . . . down the highway toward the interchange. I keep thinking I see something above the car. I'm a little nervous. I turn off the radio. I roll down the window then roll it up again. I don't know why- I missed the turnoff, and I'm going to turn around and go back. But I don't. Isn't a soul around.

I calm down, I turn the radio back on again." (I remember flipping the switch to find that a was already turned on. It had stopped working — which was typical of the car I had then.) "I get down past the diner, there's a real nice view off to the left. Looking out the window of the car. A white truck goes past. I — it's like the white truck isn't right. There's a — I don't know what is going on here. Now I want to go home. I feel terribly sick to my stomach. Awful feeling. I don't want to tell you what's happening to me."

"Perfectly all right. Just relax. You don't need to tell us. Only if you can. Relax. Tell us what you can."

"I was driving my car, all of a sudden there was this white pickup coming toward me.

Funny white pickup with a black windshield. And the next thing I know, I'm just stupefied. I wasn't thinking about — I just wasn't thinking about them at all, and just die damndest thing.

I'm sitting there in a long room. And there's this — being — standing in front of me. A long gray room. Bang. And I jumped down and wanted to get back in my car. I didn't know where the hell I was, what had happened to my car. anything. It was totally immediate. And then there's this-I feel like I'm being stared at. I have the feeling there's a lot going on but I'm just so totally stupefied. I can't describe how I feel right now. It's like I just got turned inside out.

And one thing I do feel, which is my stomach feels terrible. I just can't credit — I can't understand it at all."

"Don't try to understand it. Don't try."

"There's this one right in front of me. I'm sitting on the floor with my legs spread apart.

I'm dressed in my clothes. Wearing my brown sweater and I can see my shoes. 'Cause I'm sitting with my legs spread out in front of me. And somewhere there's someone watching me with great big eyes. Big black eyes. Just watching me. One second I think they're mean, the second second, I don't know what to make of it. I'm not scared now. I'm just amazed and totally — totally — it's like — just like I —I turned the corner and all of a sudden I was in Arabia or something

"And I'm thinking, there was this white truck — I'm trying to figure it out. What happened? I was sort of scared because I feel like I've done something wrong or gotten into the wrong end of the tunnel or something. And over here [gestures left], there's somebody who's moved around a lot. No one says a word. I don't say a word."

"Moved around?"

"I could see out of the corner of my eye someone or something is moving around a lot.

Just sort of darting around. And there's a whole row of people — little people — standing quietly over there on a little — they're a little higher than I am. And I'm still just — my mind is whirring and whirring and whirring like I'm short-circuited. I mean, it's a — a — on — like I'm on overdrive or something. And I have this feeling that I could kick my way out or dig my way out or something."

"Are they communicating with you?"

"You're just there?"

"I'm just sitting there."

"Are they paying attention to you?"

"Yes. There's one of them now sitting down in front of me staring right at me, and she's completely different from the others. The others are all very small people. This one is tall and thin. And she's sitting down. She's all gangly. I don't know what to ale of that. I don't know what to make of this. Where the hell — how the hell — you know, it's like I can't see. I just don't know what the hell to make of this. It's just impossible. It's totally impossible. It can't be like this."

"Maybe it's not like that."

"How the hell is it, then?"

"Look at it very hard, see if you see any changes. Look at it very hard."

"She's staring right back at me. She looks like a big bug. Just sitting there, staring at me."

"Are you staring back?"

"I don't know what exactly I'm doing. I'm feeling very sad "

"Sad?

"Sad. Yeah, I'm looking at her. She's looking at me."

"Do you know why?"

"No idea. I just don't understand it. It's very hard to understand."

"You say she looks like a bug?"

"Yeah. Great big black eyes. She's sort of brown She has a little, tiny mouth. She's chin."

"She have antennae".

"No."

"She have hair?"

"No, she's bald."

"She have ears?"

"I don't see any."

"Eyebrows?"

"No."

"Does she have a nose?"

"A little bitty tiny sort of two-holed nose."

"A nose, . or just t he holes?"

"I guess it's there."

"What's the mouth like?"

"It's straight and sort of — it's straight and — for some reason it's a little hard to look at."

"Try to make it out. Horizontal lips?"

"Yeah. It's very slight. Just an opening. Very slight lips. Sitting there like that." (I drew my hands around my knees to demonstrate the position. Then I paused, remembering a confusion of images.) "Something happened to me just then. She sat there for a long time, then put a hand out, put it under my shirt and under my sweater and under me and put it right up against my chest, on the side of my chest. And it felt sort of soft, and it's-it doesn't feel bad to be touched like that by that thing. And she takes her hand away.

"Where the hell am I? I'm way out in the country. I thought I was, uh — you know, I'm just scared to death. I'm totally coming out of it. I'm not out of it, either. I'm wrong."

"Try to relax."

"I'm just scared to death, Don."

"Just relax. Sit back, relax. The fear is real but it can't hurt you. Just relax. When did the fear start?"

"When I realized I was driving down this road and I didn't have any idea where I was. I was in the woods on a dirt road — where — what — how'd I get here? So sick of — I was driving down the highway, then I see this weird white pickup. Then I'm all jumbled up and confused. Then I'm sitting in my car on this road scared to death."

"Do you have any recollection of two people to uniforms being there?"

"I'm just sitting in my car alone."

"Anybody tell you to go back?"

"Yeah. He says to me, 'Get out of here.' Then this lady on the other side says, 'We don't want you here.' I say, 'Who are you?' She looks at me with a real mean look on her face. She's a — real mean"

"What are they wearing?"

"I mostly looked at the one over on this side." (Passenger side.) "I thought that was a woman. You know, I just can't tell what's going on here. I don't know what the hell happened.