Interestingly, one sound that is reported other than the various voices is a very low-pitched noise. There is a small body of research suggesting that low-frequency sound may have biological effects, especially in the area of disorientation.
There is as well a striking symbolic consistency, which lies hidden within many of the accounts I have heard and read. It has almost no reference to modern Western culture, and so is not particularly likely to have been drawn from some general pool of background symbols.
But the symbol is very ancient, as it happens, and through much of human history was tremendously important. I have had a lifelong interest in it — really, an obsession. The others m the colloquy all noted its presence. It is mentioned in many of the tapes people have allowed me to hear, and it appears m the drawings they have made. It is an incidental, though.
Before now, nobody has seen it as a general symbol of the visitors.
This symbol is the triangle Buckminster Fuller. in his autobiography, called it the "fundamental building block of the universe." It is the central symbol of growth in many ancient traditions. An understanding of it is the key to the riddle of the Sphinx and to the pyramid as the mark of eternal life. G. I. Gurdjieff relates it to the "three holy forces" of creation and it is the main sense of the Holy Trinity.
I had a pair of triangles etched on my arm in February 1986. "Dr. X," a physician in Arles, France, who prefers to remain anonymous, had a triangular rash appear around his navel after his experience.
Sifting through this colloquy will be the symbol of the triangle. While the colloquy was taking place neither I nor any of the participants was aware of the symbol's importance.
When we have contemplated sending a message into space, we have thought to send some core symbol — a prime number, perhaps, or the value of pi. The transmission of an isosceles triangle would not be an invalid choice.
On the night of April 13, 1986, eleven of us met at the home of Budd Hopkins. We were selected simply on the basis of the fact that we live in the New York area and could come.
During the colloquy I persistently asked that specific experiences be recounted, but did not have too much success. To many of these people, the details of what happened are an extremely private matter. And given the shrillness of the debunkers eager to accuse them of everything from charlatanism to insanity, and elements of the press so eager to scoff, I could not really blame them.
The purpose of the colloquy was not primarily to discuss the details of being taken, but rather the experience of coping with it, of trying to live a normal life without knowing for certain what is real, of facing the risk of personal and public ridicule, of finding one's way in a world that has suddenly become very strange indeed.
Needless to say, none of these people would allow his or her name to be used. The only real names in the colloquy are thus my own and that of Budd Hopkins.
This is our hidden choir:
Mary, cosmetologist, age 29
Jenny, dancer, age 22
Mark, museum curator and artist, age 55
Sally, business executive, age 36
Joan, beautician, age 23
Sam, scientist, age 39
Fred, musician, age 34
Pat, housewife, age 35
Amy, Pat's mother, age 56
Betty, executive, age 43
Whitley, writer, age 40
This is our colloquy.
Whitley: "Budd, I'd like it if you could begin. Even though you aren't one, you're still one of us."
Budd: "I'll tell you what I think would be the most interesting thing — rather than tell their experience, why not focus on the idea of how everybody feels about their experience?"
Whitley: "But say what happened to you so that there'll be some perspective in people's minds when they read it."
Budd: "The most valuable thing, really, is for everybody to say how you handle this, how you fit it into the rest of your life if you do, and how seriously you take it, and how important it seems to be to you and so forth. That's very crucial."
Joan: "Sometimes I have a problem feeling the importance of what's going on now, as far as things that take place in the world and jobwise, and the whole attraction of life itself, because I start thinking that this is so mediocre compared to what's out there. What we're doing — people put so much attention and so much pressure on whatever they're doing in their lives, sometimes it gets to seem like we're such jerks, and I say to myself, 'it doesn't mean anything.' There's something that's gonna happen soon, and this doesn't mean anything, what we're doing. And they're trying to tell us something, but nobody's listening."
Whitley: "What happened to you?"
Joan: "I'll tell you one thing. I was shown a picture of another city they are building. What we're doing now to our planet is killing it little by little, and it's going to come to a point where there's not going to be anything left. I think that they're getting ready to start another world. And there will be people who are a part of that. And it scares me, because I have trouble dealing with what's going on in my life now because I start thinking, This isn't really what's happening. It is ending, and they're telling us that, an they've implied that to me. What we are doing is killing ourselves. And that's scary."
Whitley: "Any other thoughts?"
Jenny: "I think what she's saying in terms of the mediocrity of what we're going through is only in the eyes of people around us, but that the important thing is right here, and some of us really understand what is going on, and maybe they are not 'them,' but they are us and we are them, so if you call them 'them,' and say, 'They are looking at us, they are doing this to us,' it's not right. They are us and we are them, and so. . ."
Whitley: "What happened to you?"
Jenny: "I'm not really sure yet because I've only had one hypnosis, but I remembered something from when I was five years old, a very scary experience, and I've always blocked it. From the time I was five I was afraid. And I saw things in my house, I saw people in my house, and I would wake up screaming."
Whitley: "You mean, not human people?"
Jenny: "I don't know, they were shadows. Small things. I saw once this green thing dripping down the wall. It looked like a very bright green triangular light. And I went screaming into my mother's bedroom, and she said, 'Just go to sleep. Obviously a dream.' And so those are the kinds of things I saw from the time I was about five, and I never connected it with anything, until about six months ago my sister said something to me about it, an experience that she had that she remembered me being in, and I remembered it but I'd thought it was a dream."
Whitley: "In February I had a triangular piece taken out of my skin on my arm."
Mary: "The best way for me to live with this is just not to believe it. I mean, there's a part of me that doesn't. The part of me that lives every day doesn't."
Whitley: "How much of this experience have you had?"
Mary: "A lot, since I was about five."
Whitley: "How much, would you say? How many times?"
Mary: "Seven. Eight, nine, ten."
Whitley: "Has anything happened to anybody else you know?"
Mary: "My whole family. Neighbors, quite a few friends. From before I ever knew them.
We've all just come together. Several generations."
Budd: "You said that there was one figure, one man —"
Mary: "There's always been one central figure."
Budd: "And he was nice?"
Joan: "Was he tall?"
Mary: "No, they were all little guys. He was my protector. Everybody else who was around was always really very — they were doing a job they needed to do, and that was it. There was no — they weren't angry or mad or happy about it. They were just doing what they had to do. But this one guy, in all instances, this one guy — when I got scared he calmed me down, when I felt bad he made me feel better." (Note: Others have had a very similar experience of a "friend" or a "protector." The perceived sex of the guide is not consistently opposite, but very often is.)