However, it seemed to me that a rigorously objective approach still might prove more productive than surrender to a specific view.
But how to remain objective? I was being exposed to this. I was disappearing into the night. I had remembered probes going into my brain. My wife had painted a picture of me as a sort of soldier of the night, vulnerable and helpless.
One could state a few things with certainty, if one was careful. Something happened to me and possibly to my son. Its source and nature were unknown. but there was a strong suggestion that it included some sort of physical component external to and independent of us. This could be anything from some sort of sensitivity as yet unknown to fluctuations in the earth's magnetic field to actual visitors. Another thing that could be stated was that my wife had been aware that something was happening, and she responded by preserving her own neutrality — maybe she had been trained to do this and maybe not. It could also be that she was doing it out of an instinct to help her husband. The support she had provided may have been her own invention, rather than the outcome of training or suggestion from the visitors.
Could she herself have been the woman — or the source of the female being — who at once gave me those insights on the night of October 4 and comforted me in my anguish?
Who were the old gods, really? Perhaps we gave them to ourselves. When unconscious was joined to unconscious, maybe this was one possible outcome.
In general, Anne's memories were clear until it came to anything that might have related to the visitors. At that point she became unable to remember. This was most forcefully illustrated early in the transcript when she was recalling her day alone with our son on July 30.
We have questioned him very gently about this matter, and have discovered a wealth of information, which I will deal with in a separate section. Before Anne's hypnosis I found two short essays he had written for his school Journal over the course of the fall, both of which could easily be descriptions of events relating to the visitors — or they could simply be the work of an imaginative little boy. And yet even the drawings of the "monsters" accompanying the stories suggest the large, slanted eyes of the visitors.
As both stories concern only him and his mother, we decided that they might refer to July 30. Since the three of us are almost never separated, it was easy to pinpoint that particular date. I had gone to Philadelphia to appear on a National Public Radio program. I spent the night at the Harley in New York and returned to the country on the morning of the thirty-first.
I found everything totally normal, and my wife and son perfectly happy.
Were it not for our son's two essays and all these other strange occurrences, we never would have even guessed that something might have happened that day. Before her hypnosis, nobody told Anne that she would be asked about it, nor was any allusion made about why.
She was unaware of the essays in the journal, which we had prevented her from seeing.
She remembered her day clearly until she reached the evening. Then she seemed to think that the two of them might have been invited somewhere. Then she went almost totally blank.
Both of our son's essays refer to her fainting when the monster appeared.
Interestingly, she remembered watching "TV" at some point. I remember more than once watching a screen, such as the gray one I was put in front of when I was twelve.
Hypnosis then proceeded to a regression about the night of October 4. Neither hypnotist nor subject knew much about the events of that night, as is clear from their initial mutual confusion.
Frankly, Anne's totally unprompted allusions to a vague and powerful and very definitely female presence have been one of the things that has left me with long thoughts. I have gone to her and watched her in peaceful sleep, and wondered what it all might mean.
When she was first asked by Dr. Naiman what she remembered about the night of the fourth, she evidenced obvious distress, screwing up her face and clenching her eyes as if shrinking from a painful sight or noise. And yet when he asked her what she was thinking of, she promptly replied that she didn't know. A little persistence on his part brought a strangely conflicted memory of a night of activity that went on around her but in which she was not allowed to participate. At first she clearly remembered that the night was uncomfortably light, although she later denied this memory. As Dr. Naiman had not been apprised of the importance of the light, he made no special effort to draw information about it out of her, thus leaving both her memories and her denial intact. This also means that there were probably no hidden cues that she should recall the light more clearly.
After the session, she was asked what had made her say that the night seemed too light. "I had a vague memory of my eves closed and my eyelids all lit up as if the light was on in the room. But it was very vague."
She was asked why she repeated so many variants on the theme that it wasn't a peaceful night. Despite reinforcement during hypnosis that she would shake some of these memories free afterward, she was not able to do so. She said, "I feel like I'm a piece of spaghetti with you on one end pulling and them on the other end refusing to let go."
She finally closed this section of her regression with, "I just see a light. I mean, it's not dark. You know, it's not dark."
Later in the regression she began to make references to the house being full, as if there were something "different" about it, to use her word. We often have houseguests in the country, and the presence of Jacques and Annie was nothing unusual. Was she trying to indicate that somebody else was present in the house? The transcript was not suggestive enough on this point to be sure, but during both sessions she indicated that a woman was present. There was also that cryptic reference to "a friend" being in our bedroom, a reference that was never expanded upon.
When asked who this friend might be, she said she just had the feeling that somebody was there. Why friend, though, why not simply person?
"It was somebody we knew. An old friend."
"Jacques or Annie?"
"No. Somebody else."
"Can you picture them?"
"No. It's just what I felt."
Then there was the matter of who screamed. We carried out experiments at the house to find out Just how clearly a voice from our son's room coup be heard in our bedroom above.
Screams could be heard easily. But loud talking was much less audible. and it would not have been possible that soft words of comfort could have been heard over screaming, even given our sparse soundproofing.
However, if the screaming was actually much closer to Anne, the words of comfort would also have been audible — especially if they were intended for us both and the screaming was muffled by some unknown effect.
There followed the first of the allusions that supported the notion that I ought to revise my understanding of my life. "I don't think Whitley was there very much. He was gone. You know, he goes sometimes at night. He goes and works. Or he just goes."
I don't remember going, though. I never work in the middle of the night. Once I'm in bed, I generally stay there all night unless I hear our son. And that happens no more than two or three times in a year.
While Anne's hidden role seemed to be that of passive supporter, her own life role is very different. It was clearly revealed by a statement she made before the second session, when Dr. Naiman asked her if her presence in his office was voluntary. "If I had said, No, I'm not going through with this,' I wouldn't be here." She is as independent a person as I know, a committed feminist who is politically and socially as active as she cares to be. Except when it comes to this. In this matter; she is passive, which is in itself awfully strange.