"Take a few minutes and think through a dialogue, an imaginary dialogue — questions you might ask, answers you might get. What Whitley or your son might am . . . "
"I can't imagine talking to it. It doesn't seem like something that would talk. I mean, I can't — it just doesn't seem like something that would talk. They aren't capable of talking. I dust can't imagine that. l dust wouldn't even think of asking it anything. I don't get the feeling it wants to talk, and I don't get the feeling that it can talk, or that if it could it would necessarily want to communicate. I don't think it does."
"Just one last question about it, since we know he came there, and was seen several times.... Do you ever have any feelings that he was there any other time, any inkling, any sense of another time you felt he was there?"
"No. I know Whitley does because he sees things out of the corner of his eye. That's why I think n made a mistake poking me. Because that gave it a kind of reality testing. Then appearing to the babysitter gave it further reality testing. It's almost like he was making a mistake there, wasn't thinking through his plans well enough."
"What do you think his plans were?"
"Well, that I don't know. Seemed impish to me, to poke people and run."
"So, we'll move on to something else. I want to go to the October fourth night again. And this is a strange night, and you've had glimmerings of things and half-memories. Describe hearing your son crying. I want you to take a few minutes and hear that sound, as if you were in bed that night, hearing the sounds, listen for the sounds . . . any words, what kind of voice..."
"I don't know if he said 'Mommy, Mommy' or 'Daddy, Daddy.' It seems like he screamed. It seems like he called me, but everybody says he called Whitley. Screaming, though. [Long pause. Becomes visibly tense. Gasps.] Well, I don't want to say it because I feel it's been influenced and I don't want to say it."
"Don't worry. Say what you feel."
"Well, I know Whitley told me it was him screaming. He told me that. Now, when I take that thought into my mind. and then I think about the screams. I can hear Whitley screaming. It's very hard, because Whitley's not the one who's supposed to scream. He's supposed to protect us. But I can hear him screaming. I can see his face, very frightened. Terrified. His eyes widen and get very white. Just so frightened. I don't know — is that real or not? Because maybe my imagination is doing that."
"Don't worry about that."
"If he was screaming it would be so unusual. He's always so calm. But he does get frightened. He gets very frightened sometimes."
"The way you describe his voice, his face —"
"Oh! I can picture it! I'm trying to remember when I would have seen it. I just hear the voice of a woman . . . he's so frightened . . . and I think at the same time he would have been a bit ashamed of himself. because whatever he saw, he would have been frightened for us, not just for himself. But he was so frightened that he had to feel mostly frightened for himself."
"Did he seem very far away from you when he screamed?"
"No. because I can see his face. No, not far away
"Was he in the room?"
"That I don't know at all. I don't picture any room."
"Can you remember another time he screamed like that?"
"Well, I'm trying to picture if there ever was a time. There've been some times when he's seemed frightened, but I don't think there's ever been a time when he screamed. You know, it's frightening to see a man scream, because men don't scream. Maybe they should or could, but they don't. So it's an experience you don't have. You never feel a man scream. I think most men don't even know if they could scream."
"Why is he screaming?"
"[Whispers.] I don't know. [Long silence.] It's fading away now. I was trying to think about that time, what I remember about it."
"You said you heard a woman's voice? Annie?"
"Mumbling in a soothing way
"Mumbling?"
"Yes."
"Do you remember words?"
"I don't remember them. Maybe it was the tone of voice that made them sound soothing. Saying like, 'That's OK, don't be afraid.'"
"Did it sound like Annie's voice?"
"It was deeper. She has kind of a highish voice. [Long pause.] I get the feeling of ignorance being a kind of protection for me."
"Tell us what you're feeling now. Anne."
"I feel like I don't want to say anything. I don't know why that is. Usually I say a lot of things. [Long pause.]"
"I want you to say what you feel. Can I ask you another question?"
"Yes. If you ask a question, I might actually talk."
'In all of this, can you tell how Anne relates to all this?"
"I know my role, and it's rather a tiresome role, but — born with a certain personality, you can't fight it. I'm the one who's not informed, except through Whitley. I'm the one who responds emotionally. I know if it feels right. Whitley doesn't have any talent for that at all. Sometimes he can't feel the most obvious things."
"Do you feel your roles have been chosen? Did you choose these roles?"
"I feel they're inevitable roles."
"Because of the person you are?"
"Yes. I also feel that they're roles not only because of who you are but who you're with, and therefore you plan certain parts. according to who you're dealing with."
"I want you to take a few minutes and think over all of this, your role, your son's, Whitley's, the little white thing, Whitley's screaming . . . mull over these images and think, what is central, what is marginal, what does it mean?"
"A feeling that Whitley was vulnerable. That's a rather frightening feeling. I would rather not know about these things that make Whitley vulnerable."
"Anything else, Anne?"
"No."
She was then brought out of the trance.
"Whitley's supposed to go. They came for Whitley."
I listened to the recording of Anne's first hypnosis on March 17, 1986, the Monday after the "confirming" encounter in the country. I hadn't listened to it on the previous Friday because she told me she hadn't remembered anything much. And indeed, on careful questioning, that was her perception.
I asked her, "What do you mean, 'Whitley's supposed to go'?"
"Well, that's what I said."
"Do you see me go?"
"No. But I hear it. There's a lot of noise sometimes. I keep my eyes closed."
"But don't you worry?"
"No. You're always there in the morning."
Fortunately, by the time I did listen to the tape I had become so used to being shocked that I did not really react too badly. I didn't end up stalking the streets or sitting in my office staring into space.
But her testimony had a powerful effect on me. It was by no means a "typical abduction scenario" that could have been drawn from subconscious memories of things she had read in the paper over the years. It was unlike other testimony — and thus was almost certainly taken not from her cultural background but from her actual memories and perceptions.
Hers was probably the moat remarkable element yet to be introduced into this account.
This was because there seemed to be so much unconscious process implied by her testimony.
It really did appear that she had performed a function she had been trained to do. And then there was that enigmatic female presence. In my own hypnosis I remembered it making some sort of noises to me when it was beside the bed on the night of October 4. Anne remembered this too. Despite the slip about my screaming she had no reason to identify that presence at the bedside, or to add that it was saying something while the screaming took place.
The temptation was, of course, to say that the visitor hypothesis was now so compelling it must be true. Testimony like hers, supportive in a totally unique manner, suggested very powerfully that there was some sort of design behind our experience. They had been taking me for reasons of their own and Anne had somehow been programmed to rehabilitate me by regrounding me in life.