On December 29, 1980, a terrible event of some unknown kind took place near Huffman, Texas. (Oddly enough, this occurred on the same day and at about the same hour that a spectacular and controversial sighting was taking pace halfway across the world in Rendlesam Forest, England.) A group of people observed a diamond-shaped object floating in the sky, glowing with a fierce light. The object was surrounded by helicopters. Some of these people were exposed to heat and apparently radiation. They brought suit in federal court, assuming that they had been the victims of a secret aircraft gone wrong. There was a lot of amused scoffing, of course, and the case drags on to this day. Meanwhile, these poor people have had their health shattered — a double mastectomy has been performed on one victim — and the government stonewalls.
The most interesting thing about all this material, the most important, haunting thing, is that in the past half-century it has slowly stripped itself of all the illusion, the armies in the sky, the fairies, the incubi, the glorious creatures of old, and come down to what it really is: a difficult experience, terribly enigmatic, the very existence of which implies that we very well may be something different from what we believe ourselves to be, on this earth for reasons that may not yet be known to us, the understanding of which will be an immense challenge.
Even the issue of where science stands in relation to this material has been with us forever. The first debunker was probably the Bishop Adelbard of Lyons, who in the time of Charlemagne saved from an enraged crowd three men and a woman who had been seen climbing down from an airship by half the citizens of the town. They claimed to have been taken for a period of days. The bishop saved them by announcing to the crowd that the whole thing was obviously impossible, and that people had not seen what they thought they had seen, nor had the poor victims been in any airship, because there were no airships. Thus the first debunker had the distinction of saving the lives of the first abductees.
People have not climbed down ropes from faire ships since the turn of the century.
Perhaps the parallel world has also had a technological revolution, or the mind of man has created new possibilities in its secret universe, or the dead have discovered wonders about which the living only dream. Maybe there really is another species living upon this earth, the fairies, the gnomes, the sylphs, vampires, goblins. who attach to reality along a different line than we do, but who know and love us as we do the wild things of the woods . . . who, perhaps, are trying to save us from ourselves, or whose lives are inextricably linked to our own. If we die, must the gods, the fairies, the elves then fall into some blue glen of unknowing? Will their secret world go cold without us, or will there only be less excitement?
If intelligence is normally centered in a hive or group context, a species such as mankind with individual independence of will might be a precious thing indeed, an almost inexhaustible reservoir of new thoughts and ways of acting.
Up to a point, there would be a tendency for the hive minds to isolate us, both to protect our freshness and to protect themselves from us. But then, as we matured and came to understand them more clearly, the potential to enter into a relationship with us would emerge.
For such a species, old and with its single enormous mind essentially alone, that potential might eventually overwhelm even the most rigid instinct to self-preservation, especially if we were to learn a way of approaching them that would not threaten them.
This thought leads inescapably to the issue of modern abductions and encounters. They seem qualitatively more "real" than those of the past, although the extended visitations experienced in France, Japan, and other places in earlier times also imply wide contact.
In An Essay on Man, Alexander Pope said the following: So man, who here seems principal alone
Perhaps acts second to some sphere unknown.
Touches some wheel, or verges to some goal,
'Tis but a part me see, and not a whole.
The Hidden Choir
Budd Hopkins has developed great sensitivity to the problems people face after they encounter the visitors. He has dealt with more than a hundred cases, and knows the pattern of response. When he suggested that I meet the loose support group of others m the New York area, I was at first relieved. Then I became uneasy. "Don't worry," he said, "everybody half believes that they're dreaming all of this up. And that's the healthiest way. Nobody is going to show you an extraterrestrial belt buckle and blow your mind."
Still, I was not eager to meet the other "abductees." Just a few days before, I had interviewed a person who believed that he had been contacted by people who "gosh, just looked like the most beautiful gods and goddesses you ever saw," who explained to him that the world was soon going to end and that the "chosen" would be taken to live on a moon of Jupiter. I hope it isn't lo. This man described a familiar initial visitation, but had altered the terrifying and uncontrollable parts into a structure of belief congenial to him.
I expected to encounter people who hungered for belonging, for publicity, who tended to the imaginative and the grandiose, and who were a bit paranoid. I anticipated that their psychological deficiencies would be obvious to me.
This was all very far off the mark. They wanted nothing to do with publicity. They demanded anonymity. They were a group of average people. I cannot seriously maintain arguments that they are insane, or even particularly unbalanced. They were all anxious, that was obvious. Under the circumstances any other reaction would have been abnormal.
The group was for the most part rather hardheaded and not unusually imaginative. Among them were a business executive, a cosmetologist, a scientist, a hairdresser, a former museum curator, a musician, a dancer — in short a cross section of any big city. They clung firmly to the idea that they might have been dreaming, clung to it, I thought, as to a bit of driftwood in a storm.
I found that my experience had many similarities to those of the support group. We have almost all seen versions of the same creatures. Some of these are small and quick, wearing gray or blue uniforms. Others are taller, graceful, and thin, some with almond eyes and others with round eyes. I have also seen, in my childhood, a very commanding presence in white, which had light blue eyes and skin as white as a sheet. This came back to me in the form of disjointed memories apparently dislodged by all the thinking I had been doing about this subject.
Other relatively common observations are the seemingly ubiquitous dray table with the solid base, the smallness of the visitors, their large, black eyes devoid of iris or pupil, and the fact that there is either more than one type or more than one species appearing in the same context. Many of us also seemed to have relationships with particular beings.
Their skin tone seems to be gray, with other overtones. When they speak aloud, it is sometimes with a high, squeaking sound, other times in a deep bass. They can also create words inside the center of their Beads. One occasionally feels from them powerful emotions.
Other times they are as emotionless as stones. People report various smells, primarily pungent. Light, both as a means of anesthesia and as a medium of transport, is commonly described. "I rose up the shaft of light" and "The light hit me and I was totally paralyzed" are typical statements. Electromagnetic effects are also commonly reported, primarily malfunctioning cars, television sets, and home lights.
A number of us have also been in a small operating theater, but nobody seems to remember what transpires there. One woman was left to walk around in such a place by herself.